Bush's War Enters its Sixth Year

Today President Bush will be giving a speech where he will declare the Iraq invasion, launched 5 years ago this evening, "a strategic success" and "well worth the price" in terms of American blood and treasure (no mention, of course, of Iraqi blood and treasure).

Germany opposed the invasion, and we are still feeling the effects of that transatlantic rift, although Angela Merkel has managed to improve relations between America and Germany to a large extent.

Scanning the German press, there are quite a few commemorative efforts on both the war and Germany's decision to break with its strongest alliance partner:  Zeit, Die Welt, Der Spiegel. The best  - most infuriating - presentation can be found in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.  The Munich daily goes through Colin Powell's PowerPoint presentation to the UN on Februrary 5, 2003, which outlined the case for war (based on completely fraudulent information):  The Long Nose of Colin Powell. Also in the Sueddeutsche is an interview with Gunter Pleuger, Germany's ambassador to the United Nations during the run-up to the war.  Pleuger speaks about his impressions of Powell's presentation and the knowledge that it was based on lies:

Pleuger:"Das war alles sehr gespenstisch. Die meisten im Saal wussten, dass das, was Colin Powell da vortrug, nicht der Realität entsprach. Aber wir haben uns damals nicht vorstellen können, dass Colin Powell bewusst die Unwahrheit sagen würde." ("It was all very surreal.  Most of us in the UN auditorium knew that what Powell was presenting had no basis in reality.  But we couldn't imagine that Colin Powell would deliberately present falsehoods.")

Plueger then speaks about the enormous pressure that the US brought to bear on him and the other diplomats at the UN to go along with the Bush invasion.  In the end, the UN refused to vote approval for the invasion, and then suffered the vilification of the US.  But in retrospect the UN acted honorably:

Pleuger: "Schauen Sie sich die Welt doch an. Heute können wir sagen, dass die Entscheidung des Sicherheitsrates völlig richtig war, gegen diesen Krieg zu sein. Die Mehrheit der Staaten und die Mehrheit der Bevölkerung selbst in den Koalitionsstaaten waren gegen diesen Krieg. Mehr als die Hälfte der Amerikaner ist heute auch dieser Auffassung." ( Just look at the world. Today we can say that the Security Council was correct in opposing this war. The majority of the nations, and the majority of the people in the Coaltion countries, were against the war. Today more than half of all Americans share this opinion.)

We can now see that the Bush War has led to the Bush Recession (Wars are never good for the economy in the long run).

Today I grieve for the four thousand American troops killed, the tens of thousands who return home with permanent physical and emotional scars, the thousands of families across the country who have been destroyed by an unnecessary war, the deaths of untold tens of thousands of Iraqis and the displacement of over 4 million from their homes.  How many more anniversaries of this nightmare will we have to endure?

Comments

[Hattie]

Will we understand the need for restitution, or will we just congratulate ourselves for being a great country, if wrong on this one little point? A country that has suffered enough and now deserves an era of good feeling?
I am particularly put out by the people who say they were always against the war when in fact they backed it at the time, and I heard them say so. And even though I continue to support Clinton, she was wrong to vote for the war powers. It really is not possible to know if Obama would have voted for them, which gives him a clean record.
What I think is that we are all implicated in this war, some more than others, of course.
There is no reason we should be spared anything,not after what our country has done to Iraq.

[Vic Clogger]

George W Bush war ein richtiger Furtzenclown!