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THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 2004
Our View
Time is now
Over the'Memorial Day weekend, we honored
the men and women who made the supreme
sacrifice in defense of this great nation. From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of the Persian Gulf, they stood up for the dictates of their nation’s leaders.
Today, however, men and women in harm’s way in Iraq are surely as confused as the rest of the nation by President George Bush’s ever-spinning reasons for carrying out the mission questioned from the start by leaders around the globe.
We invaded because of weapons of mass destruction we can’t find. Or because of Iraq’s ties to terrorists. Or because Saddam Hussein was tyrant. Or ... or ... or ....
We stayed after the president landed on an aircraft carrier and it was declared “mission accomplished” because we were chasing Saddam. Or Osama bin Laden. Or trying to create a democratic regime. Or aiming to mend ancient conflicts. Or ... or ... or ... or ....
If you needed a reason, the president and his team had one ready.
The need for more troops? It’s a long mission, and has risks.
These are pretty slim reasons for putting our troops in danger.
We have seen photos of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, the work of a few bad seeds{) but kept under wraps for months. We have seen constant attacks on U.S. troops by the people they were trying to win over.
But nothing that President Bush’s team has done since the day we invaded Iraq can match the inanity of the story of Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council positioned by the administration to be Iraq’s next leader.
Chalabi was embraced by the hawks in the Bush administration as the answer to Saddam from his years of running the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group very good at wooing conservative Republicans such as the ones filling the administration.
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