Today marks the fifth anniversary of our invasion of Iraq. There in Baghdad to commemorate (who can forget) our "Mission Accomplished" is none other than that immutable oracle of all things Iraq than America's own Vice President Dick Cheney.
Aside from Bush, Cheney, Condi and the CODEL (Congressional Delegation) amen choir visiting Baghdad composed of John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, the so-called now largely disbanded "Coalition of the Willing" will be marking the day with a lot of mourning and soul searching. Unlike their White House counterparts, its dethroned leaders (Blair, Howard, etc., etc., etc.) will mourn their electoral loss, but also the loss of their soldiers, the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives, and the loss America's global credibility, a loss that grows deeper by the minute every time Cheney utters another fictitious assertion during his victory lap tour of a shattered Baghdad.
No sounds of mourning from this White House. No sirree. Not this president, or his vice president, or their minions mining for any nugget that would enable a rewrite of the painful history that will follow them into their post-White House years.
No, I did not hear our leadership express any particular remorse for the thousands of American lives lost, for the tens of thousands of injured, or for the millions of Iraqis to whom democracy was never delivered. And frankly, I did not expect to hear it. After all, Cheney knows otherwise.
The vision of Dick Cheney marching into Baghdad as advance man for "Mission Accomplishing" CODEL McCain must have brought tears (you guess what type) to the eyes of Iraqis as he boastfully proclaimed to all that: "...the U.S. effort to install democracy and stabilize Iraq is a successful endeavor that has been well worth the effort."
OH REALLY??
Can't wait to share that one with our troops and the Iraqi people and gauge their reaction.
Problem is that the Iraqi people were having a hard time hearing Cheney's Green Zone-based pronouncements over the cacophony of explosions rocking Baghdad and Karbala, leaving two more American soldiers dead and at least 40 civilians killed by a suicide bomber in the otherwise "super secure" holy city of Karbala.
On average, despite the surge and the ensuing drop in violence in certain parts of Baghdad, we are losing at least one American soldier a day. But the number of attacks in the country is creeping back up. Meanwhile the Iraqi government dithers and demoralizes Iraqis praying for deliverance from five years of chaos governed by a regime that has all the characteristics of the Weimar Republic. That Iraqi government is proving as capable of governing Iraq as Cheney is capable of telling the truth.
Not satisfied to strain the outer limits of fairy-tale land with his "successful endeavor" assertion the Cheney chutzpah meter audaciously broke into even more chutzpah-ridden territory.
Like an addict craving his daily fix, Cheney could not control himself while in the inspirational sanctuary of the Green Zone. There, in the shadow of Saddam's throne room Cheney once again trotted out that now totally discredited canard that Saddam and Al Qaeda were linked to each other before the invasion.
This guy just hates inconvenient truths.
With no self-respecting reporter around to challenge him in that holy of holies, Cheney actually uttered the BIG LIE again, raptured by the notion that if he only repeats the falsehood every day for the next 306 days when his term expires, it will surely become a historical fact and redeem his illusion that Saddam and Bin Laden were weaving a global web of terror together.
How fortunate to the rest of us that in the very week that Cheney made his pilgrimage to the holy Green Zone to hand down his latest commandment to the ignorant peasantry, the Pentagon issued THE last, final word on the subject of Saddam and Bil Laden: proclaiming absolutely, categorically, unequivocally, irrevocably, irretrievably, that there is no proof whatsoever that there was any consequential operational link between Saddam and Al Qaeda.
Memo to Mr. Cheney: that definitive Pentagon study was not unveiled by some wacko left wing think tank. No, Mr. Cheney, it was issued by your boss' hand-picked Secretary of Defense Robert Gates...you can't blame it on the Democrats, but you will surely try.
So, Mr. Vice President, thanks for putting yourself out by making that tiresome journey to Baghdad now that that pesky Admiral Fallon is no longer around. Thanks for risking your safety to congratulate Iraq's inspirational leadership on their successful embrace of democracy. Thanks for conveying our gratitude to the Iraq government for a job well done in passing the laws necessary to reconcile divisions incubated by the sacrifice of our soldier's successful surge. Thanks for reminding us that the last five years' enterprise may have hit a few speed bumps, but that it was all worth the cost if lives and national treasure considering the dangers posed by Saddam's alliance with Al Qaeda. We Americans are truly grateful to you for sparing us the inconvenient truths that as of the day of your Green Zone pilgrimage, 3,990 Americans have died there. That tens of thousands more have been injured, and that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died or been wounded, and millions displaced.
But, after all, it has been a "successful endeavor" has it not?
Read more HuffPost coverage and reaction to the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq
Loading comments…
Posted March 19, 2008 | 01:21 AM (EST)