Generals Order Their Soldiers to Kill

And to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten.

This week the George W. Bush Presidential Library opened in honor of his 2 terms as President.  While I never disliked him personally, his decision to enter into a war with Iraq was one of the worst mistakes ever made by a President and will have disastrous consequences for years to come.  It was nice to see all the living Presidents together and the bipartisanship was welcome in this world of disharmony.

In the days after 9/11/01 the decision was made to invade Iraq as part of the Bush Doctrine on the war on terror.  The Administration said that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  The intelligence they used was "cooked up" and faulty from some unreliable sources.  They used this to sell the war to the American public (who was scared after 9/11).  It is now known all of this wasn't true, no WMD's.  How disgusting, thousands of Americans and Iraqi's died because of lies.  There is no question that Saddam was a bad man but after the first Gulf War he was contained by the no fly zone and barely in control of his country.
It was also said Saddam had ties to Al-Qaida and so therefore was indirectly involved with 9/11.  Another falsehood foisted upon the American public.  Saddam was intensely hated by Bin Laden because his was a secular ruler and did not run a theist state based on Islam.  Bin Laden had plans to actually try to overthrow Saddam.  We were also supposedly going to be seen as liberators and would be welcomed with flowers.  Once again lies and and a major miscalculation.  Iraq is a country made up of Sunni, Shia and Kurds.  Saddam was a Sunni so was his Basque party that  ruled the country.  The Sunni are the minority in the country and there has always been serious tension between the sects.  So once we invaded and deposed Saddam the tensions exploded and there was a serious insurgency that the administration never expected.  How stupid were these people in the administration.  Even a dope like me knew that major problems would erupt because of the religious divisions of Iraq.

So this is the Legacy of President Bush.  A decision to invade a country who had No WMD's, no connection to 9/11, no threat to the USA and because of it, thousands of American soldiers lost their lives and many thousands of innocent Iraq'is died for no reason.  How could a person live with that on their conscience?  While I agree the President needs to keep our country safe from the many threats in today's world.  The Iraq war was a horrid example of an Administration out of control, selling the public on lies and half truths to do something that was unnecessary.  The consequences of this disastrous decision will continue for many years.  The money that was spent there could have been used to help the American people with infrastructure improvement, healthcare etc.  The deficits run up from this war are massive and continue as a burden on our economy.
In the future we need to be vigilant in our fight against terrorism but never again should we be so vulnerable that we allow our government to run rampant into something similar to Iraq.  Many thousands have paid the ultimate price and we must never let it happen again.