Departing Iraq
June 30, 2005, was the peak of
neocon delusion. On that day American Enterprise
Institute neocon Karl Zinsmeister posted his article on
the AEI online site titled:
"The War is Over, and We Won."
No sooner than Zinsmeister put
delusion to paper than US military commanders reported
escalating and more sophisticated insurgency attacks.
Casualties exploded with more deadly bombings, giving
meaning to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld`s projection of
a 12-year war. The Congressional Budget Office estimated
that the conflict`s cost may exceed $700 billion.
A University of Chicago professor
published a study that concluded suicide bombings are a
response to military occupation and will increase with
the length of occupation.
Various Iraqi politicians expressed
their opinions that the insurgency was a response to the
US occupation and would not end until the Americans
withdrew.
British polls found that
overwhelming majorities blamed the London bombings on
Britain`s participation in the Iraq war.
By July 27 the Christian Science
Monitor had the headline:
"Iraq PM urges quick pullout of US forces."
The Washington Post
reported that the tone of statements by Secretary
Rumsfeld, Prime Minister Jaafari, and Gen. George Casey,
US commanding general in Iraq, "suggested a
heightened urgency to planning for the US troop
reduction, despite the continuation of lethal daily
attacks by insurgents in Iraq."
We have run out of troops and
money, the rest of the world has run out of patience
with our stupidity, and the upper regions of the Bush
administration may be crumbling under pressure of a
prosecutor`s investigations and eroding public support.
Bush administration neocons such as
Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Libby, along with their
cheerleaders at Fox "News", the Weekly Standard, Wall
Street Journal editorial page, National Review,
and the New York Times` Judith Miller will go
down in history as the architects and enablers of the
greatest strategic blunder in American history. The
neocon dream of conquering the Middle East for Israel
and destroying Islam as a force is now in history`s
trash heap of failed adventures along with such
miscalculations as Hitler`s march into Russia and the
Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor.
In seeking to get to the bottom of
the Valerie Plame affair, federal prosecutor Patrick
Fitzgerald is bringing us back to the Big Question: Who
cooked the books in order to justify the invasion of
Iraq? Was the ringleader Vice President Cheney? Was it
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his neocon cadres? Or was
it President Bush himself? What role did Condi "Mushroom
Cloud" Rice play in the orchestrated deceit of
Congress and the American public?
In the American system, high
government officials, no matter how powerful their
positions, are not the law. They are subject to the law,
which they are sworn to uphold, and when they violate
the law they are held accountable.
The US invasion of Iraq was illegal
and unwarranted. Those who conspired to bring this war
about must be identified and punished. Otherwise the
United States will sink from the rule of law into the
rule of men.
A true patriot does not confuse
government with country. A patriot`s loyalty is to his
country, and loyalty to country requires holding
government accountable.
Dr.
Roberts, [email
him] a former Associate Editor of the
Wall Street Journal and a
former Contributing Editor of National Review,
was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the
Reagan administration. He is
the author of
The Supply-Side Revolution
and, with Lawrence M. Stratton, of
here for Peter
Brimelow`s Forbes
Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent
epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
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