The mission that was accomplished

I have a new understanding of Bush's speech on May 1, 2003, under the banner, "Mission Accomplished." The mission was "the removal of Saddam" (see below), a short-sighted mission, at best. That's why there was inept planning for securing and rebuilding Iraq. That's why Mr. Bush could feel that the major work was done, although the war continued.

Mr. Bush's speech that day has bothered me for a year and a half because it's hard to avoid the conclusion that it functioned as a double-dog-dare to the insurgency. Also, it must feel like salt in the wounds of our soldiers in Iraq. And it's one of Bush's many flip-flops and horrifyingly simplistic assessments.

Here's how he sounded a year and a half ago, May 1, 2003 (on aircraft carrier): "...my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. (Applause.) And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country" (White House Press Release).

And how much of the reconstruction money have we spent? The Washington Post recently reported that the Administration wants to "redirect" Congressionally allocated reconstruction funds because "increasing violence has forced a sharp shift in its rebuilding effort."

Including previous reallocations, the administration hopes to redirect more than 20 percent of $18.4 billion in reconstruction funds to cope with an escalating insurgency and the glacial pace of rebuilding. With two weeks left in the fiscal year, and 11 months after Congress approved the money, only $1.1 billion of it has been spent, because of attacks, contracting problems and other unforeseen issues, according to figures released by the State Department.("U.S. Plans to Divert Iraq Money")

Bush took some hard knocks over his speech on the aircraft carrier. So here's how he defended it on April 30, 2004, in an "off the cuff" response to a reporter in the Rose Garden:

"We're making progress, you bet," he told reporters." ... "A year ago, I did give the speech from the carrier saying that we had achieved an important objective, that we had accomplished a mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein," Bush said. "And as a result, there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq. As a result, a friend of terror has been removed and now sits in a jail." ("One Year Later, Bush Defends Iraq Speech," CNN)

Here's it's "achieved an important objective" rather than "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." Also our own torture chambers were only just coming to light--torture that the administration had known about for months and that had been sanctioned by the administration. Even now, the administration has yet to satisfactorily distinguish between "terrorist" and "enemy combatant." The people attacking our troops in Iraq--are they terrorists or are they fighting back against a preemptive assault? It makes a difference, both to the Geneva Convention and to our own administrations' new rulings that allow torture of terrorists.

Then on May 1, 2004 the following day, in a prepared radio address, Bush sounded a little different:

"A year ago, I declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, after coalition forces conducted one of the swiftest, most successful and humane campaigns in military history. I thanked our troops for their courage and for their professionalism. They had confronted a gathering danger to our nation and the world. They had vanquished a brutal dictator who had twice invaded neighboring countries, who had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people, and who had supported and financed terrorism" (White House Press Release).

Here we have one of Bush's propaganda attempts to link Saddam and terrorism--so that fighting Saddam is equivalent to avenging the attacks on 9/11--a connection that our own Congress has declared unfounded. This is Mr. Bush's effort to justify his actual mission: toppling Saddam. That's what this has been about, not the trumped up WMDs, not fighting the terrorists who attacked this country on 9/11, and certainly not liberating Iraq (a variation on Daddy Bush's rationale for the Gulf War, "liberating Kuwait," which was really about oil, as my college freshman tell me the high school history books now teach).

Toppling Saddam was essential because now we have a military base in the Middle East, one that isn't in Saudi Arabia, which meets the demands of terrorist networks like Al Qaeda (headed by Saudi Osama bin Laden), and more particularly, the Saudi terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, and it's bound to please Bush's Saudi business associates. That mission was accomplished--but at what loss of life and limb?