On July 18, 2003, we saw England’s Prime Minister Tony Blair 
addressing a joint session of our Congress in an effort to justify 
the preempted war against Iraq.   This, of course, was in response
 to the mounting controversy over whether or not the invasion of
 Iraq was necessary.  His speech was eloquent and well received.

However, the day after Tony Blair’s speech, the viability of the 
information that George W. Bush and his subordinates presented to our 
Congress and public prior to our invasion of Iraq, found itself in the
 middle of controversy again.

On July 17, 2003, prior to the Prime Minister’s visit, the head of our 
CIA had come forward at a congressional hearing, to claim that any 
misinformation that our President or his subordinates had offered 
prior to Iraq, was due to CIA oversight.   It was a noble effort
 toward exonerating our Executive Branch of any wrongdoing.   And on 
the 20th of July, it was announced that in England, a former U.N.
 weapons inspector and advisor to Tony Blair, who was also 
heavy-handedly being queried for supplying misinformation, had 
committed suicide.  Sounds like a James Bond thriller, doesn’t it?


Well, here we are, in the most formidable Beacon of Light democracy
 in the world, wondering whether or not the CIA was really careless,
 or even worse, if our President and State Department have been 
writing their own scenarios.  As in a good soap opera, I suppose
 we’ll just have to tune in tomorrow, same time - same station.

It all started with the 911" tragedy.  President Bush justifiably
 declared war on terrorism and formally named Osana Bin Laden and 
his al-Qaeda as the enemy.   Along the way, however, the big picture
 began changing.  Into the mix comes Iraq, Saddam Hussein and his 
(WMD) Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Nothing more than speculation,
 of course, but enough to inject more fear into an already anxious
 and angry public.  What’s more, there was even some speculation 
along the way of a possible link between Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden.  Where was it all coming from?  Nowhere in particular, but an anxious, angry public was in no mood to sort things out.  Heck! Saddam Hussein had been blatantly ignoring the U.S. and the U.N. since 1991.  Wasn’t it more than likely that h e could be a threat to the entire world?   What’s more, hadn’t the U.S. and the U.N., including some of our NATO nations, been sweeping Saddam Hussein’s belligerent attitude under the carpet all these years?

At this juncture, I would like to say that while all this was going 
on, in order to avert armed conflict, the U.N. had started sending
 weapons inspectors into Iraq again, but had found no WMD.   And as
 far as our public was concerned, the majority at the time, would 
have preferred seeing the matter settled through the U.N. as in
 Desert Storm.   Fact is, that even our Pentagon militarists cited
 that a U.N. solution was far better than a preempted war.  But this
 wasn’t good enough for our guys ‘holding the coats’; they wanted it
 to happen yesterday.  And as it turned out, our war hawks had their
 way.

Today, after a ‘turkey shoot’ victory in Iraq and a few months of 
unsteady occupation, no WMD have been found.  What’s more, Saddam
 Hussein, his sons and Osam Bin Laden are still at large.  And as 
time goes on, the people of Iraq are looking at us more like 
conquerors rather than liberators.  Not only that, but we’ve got 
a good part of the world ‘pi---ed off’ at us.

Not counting the billions we’ll be paying over the years to cover 
the cost of the war itself, it’s costing us an additional 1-1/2
 billion a week for occupation.   Aside from that, we’re going 
from trillions in surplus to trillions in debt during this 
administration.

We have yet to hear how many lives it cost the Iraqis to become 
liberated and although our casualties ties during the war were low, 
Iraqi guerrillas are presently killing one or two of our boys every 
day.   What’s more, our ‘war hawks’ are saying it may take another 
3-10 years to democratize Iraq.  I don’t know, but there seems to be
 a lot of questions that need answering.   I certainly hope and pray
 that our President and his stalwarts are up to answering them.  
 That is, if there still enough of a democratic nation left to answer
 to.

Continuing on: In the July 22, 2003 issue of the Armenian Reporter
 Int’l, there was a small article on the front page entitled, Bill
 on Recognition of Armenian Genocide Withdrawn at the Insistence of
 V.P. Cheney.  I would like to know where did Vice-President
 Dick Cheney, Deputy Head of the Pentagon Paul Wolfowitz, U.S.
 Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and Turkish Premier
 Recep Erdougan, get the authority to keep our U.S. Congress from
 voting on an overdue bill recognizing the 1915-1923 Genocide of 
1,500,000 Armenians by the Turkish Ottomans?  And finally, if
 they had such authorization, does this mean that our present-day
 U.S. government believes in preempted massacres as well as 
preempted wars?

Joseph Vosbikian