- Can you imagine if a year ago the Bush administration
and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were talking about the need to invade
Iraq based solely on the desire to liberate the people there?
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- Not because there were weapons of mass destruction. Not
because Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the world. Not because
Iraq had direct links to al-Qaida and was therefore responsible in part
for Sept. 11.
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- No, imagine if the only rationale given to invade Iraq,
kill thousands of civilians and injure tens of thousands more was to "free"
the people?
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- Imagine if the Bush administration told Americans that
they wanted to invade Iraq to liberate the people, spend about $1 billion
a week to occupy it and tens of billions more to rebuild it after they
bombed the hell out of it?
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- It would have gone over like a lead Zeppelin.
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- But "liberating" the people is about the only
supposed rationale left on the diminishing list of reasons to invade Iraq.
And even that one is now starting to fade.
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- Going into the war, there was a veritable grab bag of
"good" reasons to invade Iraq, all of which have since been thoroughly
discredited.
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- Proponents of the war had what they thought was a well
diversified portfolio of reasons to support their position. They thought
they'd hit on at least one or two of them to justify the slaughter.
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- Instead, they got a big goose egg.
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- There were no weapons of mass destruction. Claims by
Bush that Iraq could attack the U.S. within hours was proven a lie. Hussein
was not an imminent threat to the world. And there were no direct ties
to al-Qaida.
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- The whole thing was a fraud.
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- So all the arguments about Canada not "being there"
for the U.S. in time of need -- based on the false supposition that the
invasion of Iraq was somehow tied to Sept. 11 -- are down the toilet.
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- Proponents of the invasion now say the war was justified
because the U.S. and the British have "freed" millions of people.
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- They don't criticize the Bush administration for lying
to them. They don't re-evaluate their support for the war, even though
every "good" reason for going to war was proven false.
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- No, they just change their rationale for the war.
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- And many are now surprised at how difficult it is to
bring democracy to Iraq and clean up the mess the war caused, even though
the violence and backlash a U.S.-occupied Iraq is causing was well predicted.
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- The proponents of war just chose not to listen.
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- In fact, one of the main arguments against the "freeing
the people" rationale for war was that the U.S. would achieve nothing
by invading and occupying Iraq.
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- What would happen is U.S. troops would become magnets
for anti-American terrorist groups who would use the opportunity to shoot,
bomb and kill U.S. soldiers at every turn.
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- Anti-U.S. factions would sabotage any efforts to rebuild
the country. There would be competing groups warring over who would control
the country. And there would be no freedom -- just disorder, bombings,
looting, crime, unemployment, poverty and death.
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- It would be a nightmare, many experts predicted.
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- And the predictions proved correct.
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- It's now so bad, some U.S. officials are musing about
having the United Nations take over in Iraq because it's inconceivable
that the U.S. can bring democracy to the war-torn country.
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- I used to get a lot of vitriolic e-mails from people
who supported the war, carpet-bombing me with rhetoric about how anti-American
and anti-freedom I was.
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- "What do we do, wait until Saddam bombs us with
mustard gas?" was a favourite.
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- Turns out coalition forces couldn't even find a bottle
of Dijon.
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- Many of these people vowed to come back to me a few months
after the war to ensure I "ate crow" after a democratic government
was set up in Iraq and all was well in the land.
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- But I don't hear from these folks anymore.
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- I guess they're too busy chowing down on a helping of
crow themselves.
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- http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/brodbeck.html
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