I was in the military during Gulf War I and proud to be there. I served in the middle east and fully supported our mission at that time as spelled out by President George Herbert Walker Bush.
President George W. Bush started this war on the wrong foot and has not found his balance yet.
1. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress convinced us otherwise.
2. Saddam was not a threat to anyone outside of his own country. Our no-fly zones were working to protect the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south.
3. There was no doubt that Saddam was a bad man and had committed atrocities on his people, but Iraq was not a failed state such as Ethiopia or Afghanistan. The citizens got up each day, went to work and came home going about their lives in relative safety. Now they are moving by the thousands out of their homes in the cities to the country. Sectarian violence is rampant. Civil war is imminent. Baghdad is an armed camp with concrete walls for sidewalks. Bodies are found daily. Women's rights have moved backwards as Islamic law begins to spread. As Ronald Reagan used to ask, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" Ask the average Iraqi who is just trying to make a living and who knows little of politics.
4. Where there were once no terrorists, now there are thousands using the Iraqi people and U.S. troops as cannon fodder.
5. There was no 911 connection. Saddam was a despot, but not crazy. He did not want to invite another attack.
6. Our troops are on a brave and gallant mission doing their best to protect themselves from the relentless roadside attacks. The fault is in the strategic mission not in our troops who are only following and trusting in the orders of the officers and civilian authority giving those orders.
90 percent of the fatalities in the past two years have been IEDs. The poor young men and women are getting picked off like ducks in a shooting gallery while the terrorists are honing their skills with each attack.
Iraq has become the Harvard of terrorist training camps with a ready supply of targets.
When will it end?
When enough people begin to protest vocally and when active duty generals begin to resign in protest, the slaughter will end. America needs to become angry. 2350 deaths make me angry, but I guess we need more for the nation to wake up. The presidents approval ratings are down, but we only know this from polls. Americans need to take to the streets and let their views be known.
Everyone needs to watch the movie "Network".
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.
Can you all say that?
