It's been over four years since Bush, in an "augmented" outfit that looked more at home among the Village People than an aircraft carrier, declared "Mission Accomplished". What mission? What accomplishment? A new movie to be released this month is now the topic of a PBS Now documentary that asks: how did it come to this? I have a Carvellian quick response: we fell for it! The movie to look for at theaters is called, appropriately --No End in Sight.
This week, NOW's David Brancaccio speaks with two very different, but unforgettable men who allege that US bungling in Iraq created and fueled the deadly insurgency. Paul Hughes, a retired Army colonel, was part of the transition team after the US invasion of Iraq. He says key decisions were made that ignored the realities of Iraq. Omar Fekeiki was a Washington Post reporter and translator who risked his life to help US journalists."No End in Sight" was trumpeted as an expose of critical errors, denial and incompetence. That's all well and good and I applaud the effort. I've screaming bloody murder about all those issues from the get go. [See: Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes, also: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire; ]What I have yet to hear is the unvarnished truth: This war is morally war and its a crime, punishable by death under US criminal codes! This "so-called "President" should be frog marched out of the Oval Office and locked up before he can kill again!
What's worse, I despair for the American people. I fear the consequences if what is said is true that a people get the kind of government they deserve! I long ago gave up "goppers" --wasted protoplasm for whom there is no hope of redemption, incipient psychotics for whom truth is whatever lie they can get away with. I had hoped reason might prevail! This time! Guess I was wrong. Lunatics rule the roost and there is, indeed, no end in sight!
As for the PBS Documentary, Brancaccio always does a good job. But I am losing patience with the endless fusillade of verbosity, apologies, and tortured explanations. "Errors, denial, and incompetence" are easily said in retrospect. Where was the moral leadership when some 90 percent of Americans tasted blood?
An updated study puts Iraqi casualties at one million dead though we were told we were at war with al Qaeda.[See: Is the US Responsible for the Death of Nearly a Million Iraqis?] There is no reason to believe that the US has ever, in any way, been at war with al Qaeda, a "phantom menace" that Bush's utterly failed and incompetent administration has never defined, located, or, worse, connected to the events of 911. As I recall, the first person to link al Qaeda to 911 was Colin Powell, the liar to took the WMD fraud to the UN. NOW's Coverage of the Documentary "No End in Sight" Part 1:
NOW's Coverage of the Documentary "No End in Sight" Part 2
