Eleven years ago today, America went to war in Iraq on the false premise that there were weapons of mass destruction there, which did not exist!
It is clear that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld KNEW that fact, but they convinced Colin Powell to speak before the United Nations on a lie that he was not privy to, took advantage of his far greater stature than any of them had!
The Iraq War led to 4,400 American dead, and over 30,000 wounded, with many losing limbs or part of their skull, and many having mental and emotional trauma which continues today!
It led to the longest war in American history, except for the Afghanistan War, which was put on the back burner, and still goes on today, making both wars total failures, but another 2,000 killed in that war.
It did not create a stable Iraq, but killed at least many hundreds of thousands in Iraq, if not a million or more.
We spent a lot of treasure, helping to double the national debt under the Bush-Cheney regime.
We allowed ourselves to engage in war with Iraq, when Iran was the much bigger threat, and remains so in 2014.
We also gave the excuse for Vladamir Putin of Russia to invade and take over Crimea, as allowed under international law, because, after all, we had claimed the right to invade a sovereign nation in a war of choice, a preemptive war, making us no better than past aggressors, who attacked without a direct provocation.
Many feel that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld are international outlaws, and it is clear that if it were possible to arrest them, they could be tried on human rights abuse at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, the Netherlands!
Of course, that will not happen in reality, but this is not something that should be overlooked as an example of what happens when the wrong people are put into power, particularly with the reality that George W. Bush did not win the popular vote in the Presidential Election of 2000, but won the court case that was decided on party line vote in the Supreme Court, a majority which had been picked by Republican Presidents!
History will not judge the Bush Presidency well, and no matter what the Republican Party of 2014 does to sweep the past under the rug, the truth will win out, and it will not be pretty!