by skyhook77sfg » Thu Feb 10, 2011 5:13 pm
Should Donald Rumsfeld Apologize for the Iraq War?
by Jack Thomas
In March 2003, nine days into the war in Iraq, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked about why we weren’t finding those WMDs we were told Saddam had.
His answer?
“We know where they are.”
Of course, there were never any WMDs discovered in Iraq, so he couldn’t have known where they were, which makes me wonder if the title of Rumsfeld’s new autobiography, “Known and Unknown,” is some sort of sick inside joke.
Rumsfeld’s tome of self-love weighs in at 800 pages and let’s all be honest, that’s exactly 800 more pages than 99 percent of us are going to read. But The Washington Post got an advance copy and their review of it described it as “largely unapologetic.”
Which raises the question: Does Rumsfeld owe America an apology for the Iraq War?
Well, as a card-carrying Republican, a Conservative and Friend of Abe, the answer is obviously -- hell yes!
As a Conservative, I deplore waste in government and so far Operation Iraqi Freedom has cost us over 4,400 American lives and 700 billion dollars added directly to the deficit.
And what did we achieve? Well, depending on why you think we fought this war -- absolutely nothing.
If you bought the company line, like Congress did, that we fought the war to find WMDs before Saddam Hussein used them or gave them to terrorists? – Oops. There weren’t any. No nerve gas. No nukes. No atomic powered drills aimed at releasing the earth’s magma.
If you are one of my liberal friends who cynically thought we went to Iraq to ensure the supply of cheap oil? - Big Oops. Oil was 25 bucks a barrel in 2003. - Guess if it’s higher or lower now? C’mon, guess.
If you were one of the tragically ill-informed who thought the war in Iraq was about getting a payback for 9/11 - Super Oops. There’s never been any credible evidence that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. Even worse, the war in Iraq took manpower, money and resources away from the real hunt for terrorists in Afghanistan.
Hell yes, Rumsfeld owes us all an apology and $700 billion.
I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for either one, but I’m also not going to pretend that just because he played for my team he wasn’t an integral part of the greatest policy disaster of my lifetime. (NOTE: Rumsfeld is often described as the “chief architect” of the war, but I decline to use that phrase because it implies planning and forethought.)