War and the Vote

Retiring general Tommy "Bring 'Em On" Franks says we could be in Iraq at least another four years. Can our country really sustain that? It's costing us on average $3.9 billion a month--nearly double the $2 million previously estimated by Donald Rumsfeld--to maintain our forces in Iraq. With as many as 25 attacks against US troops happening each day, with deaths occurring almost daily, we have to weigh the human toll as well. All for a war that was sold on the premise that Iraq was in violation of UN Resolution 1441 and had weapons of mass destruction. All because, as the president said in the State of the Union address, Iraq at one time had "biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax... 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin... the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent..." With all those specific details, it's a tad disengenous that Rumsfeld now admits WMDs weren't the real reason for the war: "The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit [of WMDs] ...We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light - through the prism of our experience on 9/11."

This war--its (false) connection to the tragedy of September 11, the doctored intelligence documents, the president's outright lie about Iraq's access to uranium--must become a campaign issue next year. Americans, like Frederic, Wisconsin's Dan Gabrielson (killed yesterday by a rocket-propelled grenade north of Baghdad), are dying for it. And, according to one expert, it's not reducing the threat of terrorism one iota. There are plenty of reasons to vote Bush out of office--or impeach him--but this one tops my list.