by James Glaser
January 17, 2005

"Once you lose your reputation, how do you get it back?" That was a question put to me by a couple of Canadians I was having coffee with as we talked about America's failing reputation in the world today.

Most Americans, including our President, don't think it is that big of a deal that no Weapons of Mass Destruction were found in Iraq. But to a lot of the world it is a big deal. Another "big deal" to Canadians is that for the first time, Canada did not fall into step with the United States when we went to war. Canada and our other neighbor Mexico sat out the War in Iraq, because they didn't buy President Bush's story about Iraq being a threat.

The reason Canada thinks finding no WMDS is a big deal is that it vindicates their bowing out of the war. Canada and Mexico were right and so were France and Germany and about 170 other countries.

George Bush and the United States were dead wrong, because as those two Canadians pointed out to me many times, the whole reason for the War was because of Bush's fear of Iraq using those Weapons of Mass Destruction in an attack on the United States. (remember the talk of mushroom shaped clouds over American cities?) Back when Bush was beating the war drum he never talked about bring democracy to the Middle East, nor was Iraq a bed of terrorism before American troops went there.

George Bush staked our nation's reputation on the fact that if we didn't attack Iraq, Iraq was going to attack us. Now we know he was wrong. The whole world knows that we attacked Iraq for something they didn't have and for something they couldn't use. Iraq gave the United Nations a 12,500 page report explaining how they destroyed their WMDs. George Bush and his administration said they were lying. Now we know they were telling the truth.

The world watches as George Bush rewards those people in our CIA with our highest Medal of Freedom for doing a terrible job. The whole world has been watching as almost 1,400 Americans have been killed and over ten thousand wounded. They watch as tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed and wounded. The world watches and sees that

America tortures Iraqi civilians in the same prisons that Saddam Hussein used.

George Bush has lost us our good reputation and we have no way now of getting it back. We have killed and maimed by some reports well over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. We have destroyed some cities like Fallujah, which had a population of over 300,000 people, who are now displaced and living in refugee camps. We have destroyed Iraq's water system, sewage system, and that country's electrical grid. We have bombed hospitals and people's homes. We have turned Iraq into a horrible place filled with chaos. Death and destruction in Iraq are shown every night on the world's news programs.

All of this, because George Bush said that Iraq was going to attack us. We now know what a pitiful small third world country Iraq was and so does the rest of the world. They know Iraq couldn't have even thought of attacking the US, but then they knew it before this war started and that is why they didn't help us in this war. They knew we were wrong ... and they were right about that.