The President Is a Liar

Not that you needed it, but I've found more evidence that the President is a liar. Remember that the original reason he gave for invading Iraq was terrorism. That was a lie, so he switched to weapons of mass destruction. That was a lie. He switched to liberty and democracy. A lie.

The crisis in Sudan is more significant in every way than Iraq.

"But Saddam was gassing his own people," you may have heard. Well, that was back in the 80's and the casualty number of 5-20,000 still doesn't come close to the 200,000 civilians killed in fighting in Darfur over the last year or two. The US did nothing to condemn or stop Hussein when he was doing it, so why would we wait almost 20 years to take him out and why didn't we do it in the Persian Gulf War? This is not an acceptable reason to be in Iraq but not in Sudan.

"But Saddam was harboring terrorists." A lie. Saddam was a tyrant. Maintaining strict control of his borders and the people within them was critical to his position. With the Kurds and the Iranian war, he had his hands full. There are more terrorists in Iraq now than there could have been when Hussein was in power. There is no evidence that Hussein ever had contact with someone like Osama bin Laden. Interestingly, bin Laden is known to have lived and worked in Sudan for six years. Now there is an obvious link between Sudan and al Qaeda.

"But he must have been supporting terrorists with money and weapons." Another lie. There is no evidence that Hussein supported terrorists.

"But the President is supporting UN efforts to send peacekeeping forces to Sudan." Indeed, the man who championed the cause of going it alone in Iraq wants to get behind other efforts to help the Sudanese. How many billions of dollars will he pledge to the cause? How many months will it take for it to happen? How many more people will die? How many government contracts will he award to American corporations to rebuild the country?

"But Iraq is just the beginning of democracy in the Middle East." Yes, and Korea and Vietnam were just the beginning of democracy in Asia. It took 40 years to establish a stable democracy in South Korea, and North Korea didn't turn out so well for our efforts. Democratizing the world is a deep subject, and one that doesn't begin with simply invading countries and implementing a democracy. Before democracy, there must be security. There must be a long-term plan.

"But Iraq is strategically located, and is a rich source of oil." Why yes, it is. It figures prominently in long-term plans for containing the likes of Iran, Russia, and China. In fact, Iraq is quite critical to maintaining control of oil supplies. Even though we get most of our oil from countries outside of the Middle East, it is nice to know we will have a say in where other countries get theirs. That, and the military bases we will locate in Iraq will relieve us of having to beg Turkey and Uzbekistan to let us land our planes in their countries when we need to take on another Middle Eastern country. The democratization and de-weapons-of-mass-destruction-ification of Iran will be much easier now that we own Iraq.

So it is not about democracy, or killing of civilians, or harboring of terrorists, or weapons of mass destruction. If it were, we'd be sending troops to Sudan tomorrow. Iraq was less of a threat when we invaded than Sudan is today. Africa needs democracy more than any country in the Middle East. The President lied to us about Iraq. It is about imperialism.