BrainStream: Iraqi Militia Attacks Ring (Liberty) Bell, Bush Takes Vacation

I was thinking on the drive into work this morning, how our involvement in Iraq could be perceived as a colonization of sorts resembling closely our own country's events leading up to the Revolutionary War.

OK, so Iraq was never an American Colony ruled over by King George W that had to pay taxes back to us.....but technically we were supposed to go in, take out Saddam, and install a new government into Iraq.

Yet the reasons we went into that country in the first place have completely eroded away. It's been well established by David Kay that there were and continue to be no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq - the President himself now jokes about a lack of WMDs as our soldiers continue to die. Previous to that, it was proven that a British report Powell cited to bolster the claim of WMDs in Iraq was actually plagiarized from a California post-grad student at University. Other claims that Saddam was purchasing nuclear materials from Niger also proved to be false, causing incredible chaos when someone from the administration leaked that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson, (Valerie Plame), who helped to disprove those claims, was a CIA Operative.

Colin Powell admitted this past week that the mobile biological warefare labs he mentioned in his UN presentation and case for going into Iraq was based on poor intelligence. And by my count, that leaves nothing left of the original reasons behind invading Iraq aside from the fact that Saddam was a Bad Guy &tm;.

So OUR soldiers continue to pay the price of bad politics and what Bush thought would sweep him into another term is backfiring miserably taking our troops lives and those of the country we are occupying. Where is the UN? When is the Bush administration going to realize that Iraq is not ready to fully govern itself sans assistance? We need to strike a deal with the UN to transfer authority and bring in peacekeepers from all over the world - not just our "coalition".

I already stated how bad I felt the situation was when I read that thousands of calls have been made to the GI Rights Hotline to find out penalties of going AWOL or how troops can just get out of there. We don't have enough military there to maintain the peace so we either bring in the UN or leave. I don't want my country's soldiers - who pledged to die for us.....to die for me in this cause.

And the last straw to provoke this rant?

"During his stop in North Carolina on his way to a weeklong Easter vacation at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, Bush met with the family of Army Spec. Chris Hill, a soldier killed in Iraq. Bush usually meets with the families of fallen soldiers in larger groups." - Hedges, Stephen J and Bob Kemper. "U.S. military looks for ways to increase troops in Iraq, if needed." Chicago Tribune. 05 April 2004.

and

"The annual Easter Egg roll at the White House is back to being open to the public this year. But, like last year, the show will go on without President Bush.

...

Instead, Bush will be at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he is celebrating Easter and meeting on Monday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. - "Easter Egg Roll Reopens to Public." Associated Press. 06 April 2004.

A WEEKLONG vacation? How many vacations does this guy take? In this time of chaos that HE initiated in Iraq, shouldn't HE be in the White House - the primary home base of his rle as President of the United states being President? How many people, aside from students and teachers in various schools around the country, get a whole week off for Easter?

It would be a little better if he was at least talking for himself. Instead his spokesperson is "delivering messages" via proxy. This is not a time for him to be hiding away in Texas - he needs to be leading.

Meeting with Hosni Mubarak? Well, since we give the second most amount of monetary aid to Egypt that makes sense for Bush. But shouldn't he be meeting with the American people?

[BrainStream]
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