http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0114-33.htmPublished on Friday, January 14, 2005 by the Star Tribune
Minneapolis, Minnesota
After all this time, after all these deaths, after all this money, what can you say about this: The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has ended. Nothing was found.
WMD, as they are casually called now by Americans, were the reason the United States went to war in Iraq. Saddam Hussein's regime, we were told repeatedly, had ongoing programs to produce biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, and it might use those weapons against the United States, or it might give those weapons to a terrorist organization targeting America. That was all a bunch of hooey.
A sentiment frequently expressed by the political right is that critics of President Bush seem to display an unseemly hatred for the man. That's really not the case. The anger is at his policies: They are wrongheaded. And nothing demonstrates this more fundamentally than Bush's adventure in Iraq.
Actually, "adventure" is the wrong word; it has a playful ring to it, and Iraq is anything but playful. More than 1,300 Americans -- every one of them a beloved father, husband, wife, son, daughter, brother, sister -- have died in Iraq. More than 10,000 have been wounded, many so horrifically that they face a lifetime of medical attention and disability. As for the toll of Iraqi civilians, who did not ask for this war, no one knows for certain, but it is certainly in the tens of thousands.
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http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0114-33.htm