| President Bush and the GREAT MYTHS of Iraq
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Author: Richard Stoyeck Added: December 16, 2006
What a world we live in. Let's look at Iraq. We know the President said ostensibly that the reason for invading was to find weapons of mass destruction, and prevent Saddam Hussein from using them. His removal from office could create a new democratic Iraq. America invaded and found no weapons of mass destruction – not even a hint of them.
Now the media is basically reporting that we are involved in a Civil War in Iraq, and we are losing it. Somewhere in between the two ends of the story is the truth and you need to know it, so that you don't have to be inundated with bias from all sides of the media, both liberal and conservative. Let's go through the great myths of Iraq.
Myth 1 – Invading Iraq has helped us with the War on Terrorism
Nonsense, there is no war on terrorism in Iraq. Osama Bin Laden attacked the two World Trade Center buildings in NYC more than five years ago. Hello, has anybody heard recently whether anybody is looking for Bin Laden anymore. If so who, what resources are being devoted to taking down this awful, hateful man? I suggest very little is being done. Everyone's attention is on Iraq.
Saddam Hussein was not an exporter of terror. He used terror as an internal weapon inside Iraq to control the very people that we obviously can't control. These people do not want a democracy, if they did, they would fight for it. Instead, they fight each other, even in the same neighborhoods. It's a Civil War folks, pure and simple.
Myth 2 – The military's post war planning was okay, not great, but okay?
Really, Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department could not have done a worse job if they had set out to do one as an objective. There was literally ZERO post war planning, compared to the actual invasion that took place. The looting of the civil infrastructure after our invasion, including the pilfering of museums was a tip-off as to how undermanned, and under planned we really were.
Myth 3 – If only we "Stayed the Course" as the President is fond of saying, it will work out in the end.
There's a line that goes, "If you always do, what you always did, you'll always get, what you always got." In life, if something isn't working, YOU CHANGE IT. You do something else. You do not just keep doing what you were doing. This President is stubborn without being wise. Perhaps more than anyone else in the history of the modern Presidency, he shows a reluctance to learn from his mistakes, and total lack of desire to inquire as to alternative options. He's LOCKED into a thinking that just doesn't work. He has never allowed the decision making process to be VETTED by opposing thinkers. In this behavior, he is unique, and foolish.
Myth 4 – Iraq will become Democratic in time.
Sure, and I believe in the tooth fairy. This is not the American Revolution, a unique era with a unique group of the best read, self-educated men in history. Unrivaled in courage, our founders had the desire to stand against England, and form a Republic for which it stands. President Bush is right, when he says; I haven't seen Thomas Jefferson in Iraq yet. Jefferson doesn't exist in Iraq, and perhaps never will.
Richard Stoyeck’s background includes being a limited partner at Bear Stearns, Senior VP at Lehman Brothers, Kuhn Loeb, Arthur Andersen, and KPMG. Educated at Pace University, NYU, and Harvard University, today he runs Rockefeller Capital Partners and StocksAtBottom.com http://www.stocksatbottom.com
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