by James Glaser
October 7, 2004

Don't kid yourself, the reason we attacked Iraq, was because George Bush and his administration made the citizens of the United States fear that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction and was willing to use them.

I can still remember talk of mushroom shaped clouds over American cities and Washington pointing to British Intelligence, who said Iraq could launch an attack in 45 minutes.

Today all George Bush will say is that the world is a safer place without Saddam and that we went to war there to bring the Iraqi people freedom and democracy. That sounds good now, but it is a lie. We went to war to stop the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction against our country. Fear produced by the Bush administration got us into this war.

What is so sad, is that not only have we killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians and have had over a thousand of our own troops killed, but thousands and thousands of Americans and Iraqis have been maimed for life, because George Bush could not wait a minute longer to go to war.

I seem to remember a 12,000+ page report given by Iraq's government claiming that they had destroyed all of their weapons and we didn't believe them. Now we find out they were telling the truth and if we had let the United Nations Weapons Inspectors have a little more time, we would have found this out before the killing began.

A new US report by George Bush's weapon searchers has said, "Iraq was Minimal Weapons Threat in '03." The report by Charles A. Duelfer, said that the last Iraqi factory that could produce unconventional weapons was destroyed in 1996.

Ever since we attacked Iraq, George Bush has had thousands of people searching that country, looking for anything that would prove him right to claim Weapons of Mass Destruction and they couldn't find any. Every military unit had an eye out for weapons too.

This report by Bush's own people concluded that Saddam Hussein had made "Fundamental decisions, beginning in 1991, to get rid of Iraq's illicit weapons and accept the destruction of its weapons producing facilities as part of an effort to end United Nations sanctions." Saddam just couldn't convince the UN that he had done that and the sanctions stayed on and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children died for lack of medicine, drinking water treatment, and sewage treatment. America and the UN would not allow the chemicals needed to treat water into the country, nor the parts needed to fix bombed infrastructure.

We can debate who was to fault for these children dying, we can not debate that the children did die. Then Secretary of State Madeline Albright took the responsibility for those children dying on the TV program 60 Minutes and gave terrorists the world over the best recruitment tool they could ever have.

George Bush rushed to war. The man did not have the patience to wait and see if Iraq really had the weapons Bush claimed they did.

Hundreds of thousands if not millions of innocent Iraqis have suffered because of Bush's decision to go to war. Much of Iraq is destroyed and a whole generation of young Iraqi children have had to live through the horror of war and continue to live through a horror of life each and every day.

George Bush can claim that he was trying to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq, but what he has really brought is death, destruction, and a generation of children who will suffer with a life time of Post Traumatic Stress.

Also George Bush has brought pain and suffering to thousands of American troops. Tens of thousands of their loved ones will be affected by the loss of sons and daughters, husbands and wives and mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers.

Thousands of American troops will suffer for the rest of their lives with the loss of limbs, eyes, hearing and burns. Thousands of troops will suffer and their families will too, because of the trauma that never leaves so many who are sent into combat.

George Bush will claim that if he had to, he would do the same thing again, because if he really took responsibility for all of the carnage caused by his war, he would go insane, Bush must tell himself that what he did was good for America.

What George Bush did, and what he is still doing, is causing untold hardship and death for thousands of innocent people on both sides. Because Bush had never witnessed a real war, he had no idea of what he did and he still has no idea of what he is still doing.