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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: puborectalis who wrote (639390)	10/6/2004 10:54:51 AM
From: AuBug	Respond to of 769670

Invasion of Iraq lacks true reason Alexander Simon, Tuesday, October 05, 2004 The Bush administration either explicitly or implicitly provided the following reasons for invading Iraq: Iraq possessed WMDs, Iraq presented a military threat to the United States, Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and that Saddam Hussein was a despotic leader. The first three reasons have proven to be completely false. However, like all good propaganda, the fourth reason contains a degree of truth. It is a well known fact that Saddam Hussein was a dictator who is responsible for the murder and torture of thousands of Iraqis and that he used chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War and against Kurds in Iraq. The Bush administration has exploited this fact in an attempt to present its aggressive actions as being motivated out of concerns for human rights. Anyone who even vaguely familiar with U.S. foreign policy should find the proposition that our government is concerned about human rights in Iraq laughable. ... The real reasons for the invasion are apparent: oil and political legitimacy. The Cheney report concluded that the United States will become more dependent upon oil imports from the Middle East. Next to Saudi Arabia, Iraq has larger oil reserves than any other nation. Establishing a puppet government in Iraq has obvious advantages. From the onset, political legitimacy has been a problem for President Bush. The majority of the people did not vote for him. His record on the economy, the environment and fighting actual terrorists is abysmal. This has always been a crisis-dependent administration. On 9/11 Osama bin Laden gave the Bush administration the gift of political capital. Instead of utilizing his political capital and the international goodwill that emerged in the wake of 9/11 to fight al-Qaida, Bush squandered his political capital on invading Iraq (which was a gift in many ways to bin Laden). Fighting actual terrorists is hard, invading Iraq was supposed to be easy. History has proven that a short, low-cost war is an excellent way of boosting a president's popularity. Predictably, the initial invasion was easily accomplished. Also predictably, Bush's approval ratings increased. Now, $144 billion in taxpayers' money later, 1,000 dead American soldiers later, thousands of dead Iraqis later, it has become apparent that this is a protracted, bloody conflict with no immediate end in sight. Those who argue that citizens should passively accept the actions of the government do not understand what it means to be a patriotic American. According to President Theodore Roosevelt, "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president ... or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong ... is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Alexander Simon is an assistant professor of behavioral science and political sociology at Utah Valley State College in Orem. This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A6. harktheherald.com