(Bush lands on the U.S.S. Lincoln, May 2, 2003 to announce "Mission Accomplished")
I think this article from The Smirking Chimp is well worth reading:
General Richard Myers: Bush toady, shameful liar
By Richard A. Stitt:
"The outcome and consequences of defeat in Iraq are greater than World War II."
-- Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Myers is no different from most of the top Pentagon brass and career political hacks who make up Bush's coterie of obedient sycophants. He's just another lap dog for the Bush pro war mob and has no concern for the enlisted grunts who are dying in Iraq for a failed Bush war policy and for which there is no good solution or exit.
It is far too late to take the advice given to Bush and Rumsfeld by General Eric Shinseki prior to the preemptive bombing of Iraq. General Shinseki said then that we would need between 300,000 and 500,000 troops on the ground to put down any resistance and restore Iraq's infrastructure.
For offering his honest, professional evaluation of the needed troop strength, General Shinseki was forced to retire shortly after giving his congressional testimony and assessment of what it would take to secure the peace in Iraq and minimize both Iraqi civilian and U.S. military casualties.
Myers's comparison of Iraq with World War II is an insult to the over 400,000 U.S. military who died in that war, a war that was fought against powerful and formidable foes, Germany and Japan.
First, unlike Iraq, neither Germany or Japan was divided into thirds by a No Fly zone imposed by the U.S. and Britain for a twelve-year period preceding Bush's preemptive war which was based on the lie that Iraq possessed WMD and the equally false claim that Iraq had direct ties to the al Qaeda airline hijacker bombers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
Second, the United Nations imposed severe economic sanctions against Iraq for that same twelve-year period. During those twelve years thousands of children died due to malnutrition and neglect, partly because of graft and corruption by corporations and countries which exploited the oil for food program. One such company was Bay Oil, a Houston-based oil company in Republican Congressman Tom DeLay's district and one of his largest political campaign contributors.
Third, Germany and Japan, unlike Iraq, had powerful air forces, submarine and naval armadas, well trained, well equipped and well-disciplined armies. It took the United States and our allies three years to achieve military parity before the war turned in our favor. Iraq had no navy, didn't launch a single missile as they did in the Gulf War, didn't put up a single aircraft fighter and had a ragtag, undisciplined, untrained, under equipped army, most of which simply retreated into the civilian population once Bush's "shock and awe" laser-guided missiles and bombs rained down on the Iraqi people, killing and maiming over 100,000 men, women and children.
The comparison between World War II and Iraq is just another one of the endless lies and myths perpetrated by a dysfunctional, failed, out-of-control group of war hawks whose fantasies for altering the entire Middle East have evaporated as quickly as the budget surplus bequeathed to Bush before he occupied the Oval Office.
Now, faced with gargantuan deficits as far as the eye can see, an endless war in Iraq with no clear exit strategy (since they had no clear entrance strategy to begin with), they are frantically spinning their lies, trying once again to reestablish the glory days of the Bush 9/11 media moment when he stood on the pile of rubble where once stood the twin towers of the World Trade Center, bullhorn in one hand, arm around a firefighter, exploiting a tragedy for political capital and personal vainglory. No matter to remind the media that Bush was nowhere to be seen for three days after the 9/11 attacks. But they are the ones who constructed the visual image to begin with in compliance with the well-scripted, Karl Rove-orchestrated made-for-media photo opportunity.
As for General Richard Myers, like all the giddy generals who euphorically thirst for war because it is their catalyst for quick promotions and their ticket to lucrative lifetime retirements, all courtesy of the U.S. taxpayers, he will assume the usual reward and revolving door top brass position on a corporate board. As a typical Bush Bootlicker and loyalist he will use his influence to guarantee no-bid defense contracts for the political cronies and K Street lobbyists who helped advance his career by continuing to propagate what Dwight D. Eisenhower accurately described and warned against as the military industrial complex.
If there is a lesson to be learned it is one that every voter should keep in mind when going to the polls to restore our democracy. This Republican administration and this Republican-controlled U.S. Congress are the most corrupt, corrosive syndicate of thieves and swindlers that this country has ever witnessed. When we hear the phrase, "Bush lied and people died" we will know that this is the Bush legacy. But it is a legacy which can still be cut short by the voice of the people in November 2006.
Unless and until we have fair elections and jettison this evil, pathetic tableau of Republican flotsam that is sinking into the abyss of Hell, democracy will be but a distant and fading image in the rearview mirror.
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