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WASHINGTON, April 26, 2005 -- If anyone was inclined to believe the Bush Administration's original arguments in favor of invading Iraq, all hopes have now been dashed by the President's own weapons inspector.
In a final addendum to a report issued last fall on its 18-month search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, the Iraq Survey Group concluded that the search "has been exhausted" without discovering a single WMD. "As matters now stand, the WMD investigation has gone as far as feasible," the report said.
At its peak, the investigation occupied 1,000 military and civilian translators, weapons specialists and a variety of experts in various fields of weaponry. The report also closed the door on another theory, that Iraq had secreted WMD's to Syria.
None of this should come as a surprise, especially after the President himself gave up months ago on his argument about the imminent threat of WMD in favor of the new claim that the world was better off without Saddam Hussein, no matter why the U.S. invaded.
In addition, just last month another Presidential Commission blasted the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency--the nation's entire intelligence apparatus--for misjudging the strength of Saddam Hussein's arsenal and refusing to even consider the possibility that it might not contain WMD's.
It would do the country good if President Bush were to apologize for misleading us about the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. The President should come clean and admit the truth of the revelation by his former Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill that even before Nine-eleven he was obsessed with Iraq. At least that would explain why the President had ignored warnings about the threat of worldwide terrorism, and why he blamed Saddam Hussein for Nine-eleven, another accusation deemed unfounded by the President's own investigators.
Nothing the President says now can bring back the 1,500 American soldiers killed in Iraq since the invasion; nor can the 12,000 wounded Americans be made whole. The tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis killed remain an afterthought. And the thousands of American families whose lives have been disrupted by repeated deployments of Reservists and members of the National Guard suffer in silence.
Anything the President says about the war in Iraq--even if consistent with the facts--will probably be too little too late. The majority of the American people lost faith months ago and no longer believe the invasion of Iraq was worth the cost. The heralded democratic elections, held up by the President as the last good reason for invading the country, is now in a shambles with hundreds of Iraqis and American soldiers being killed by insurgents each week.
What next? How long will our troops be forced to remain in harm's way? How long will our overextended military rely on the "economic draft" to fill the ranks? How long will the rural and urban poor be willing to bear the brunt of sacrifice in a war that grows less popular each day? How far off is reinstatement of the draft?
The President is now spending his time trying to convince Americans that the Social Security system is in imminent danger of collapse--and that turning our money over to Wall Street is the way to save it. The American people believed the President's dire warnings about Iraq. It'll take some doing for the American people to be fooled twice.
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