Cheney Must Be Happy: Halliburton Up $43

Bush and Cheney's war in Iraq is a disaster that has done very little, if anything, for the United States. Back when the war started in 2003, I was posting on the AOL message boards and was treated like a traitor for pointing out any number of obvious contradictions. I was actually slow to oppose the war and was bothered by a number of people I respected who supported the war, but by February of 2003, I was against it. I despised any number of outright lies that were becoming increasingly obvious and being bandied about to justify the war and, at the same time, I was particularly bothered by how Afghanistan wasn't going as well as it should have been, partly because of the administration's obsession with Iraq but mainly because the administration didn't seem to take its job very seriously. Osama bin Laden was based in Afghanistan. That's where al Qaida was. I found it disturbing that the Bush administration didn't seem concerned about finishing the job in Afghanistan.

The issue of Iraq has now taken on a larger context and we now recognize that Bush's war was a strategic failure based on a poor understanding of foreign policy and the world. Yes, there was incompetence but the larger failure was the conception of grandiose scheme to remake the Middle East in ways that contradict who we are as a nation and in ways that have little to do with democracy. Bush's policy was riddled with hubris and ideology and nonsense.

In Truthout, Frank Rich of The New York Times can be found once again giving his perspective, this time four years after the start of Bush's folly in Iraq:

Tomorrow night is the fourth anniversary of President Bush's prime-time address declaring the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In the broad sweep of history, four years is a nanosecond, but in America, where memories are congenitally short, it's an eternity. That's why a revisionist history of the White House's rush to war, much of it written by its initial cheerleaders, has already taken hold. In this exonerating fictionalization of the story, nearly every politician and pundit in Washington was duped by the same "bad intelligence" before the war, and few imagined that the administration would so botch the invasion's aftermath or that the occupation would go on so long. "If only I had known then what I know now ..." has been the persistent refrain of the war supporters who subsequently disowned the fiasco. But the embarrassing reality is that much of the damning truth about the administration's case for war and its hubristic expectations for a cakewalk were publicly available before the war, hiding in plain sight, to be seen by anyone who wanted to look.

(snip)

In one of its editorials strongly endorsing the war, The Wall Street Journal writes, "There is plenty of evidence that Iraq has harbored Al Qaeda members."

[In a Feb. 12, 2007, editorial defending the White House's use of prewar intelligence, The Journal wrote, "Any links between Al Qaeda and Iraq is a separate issue that was barely mentioned in the run-up to war."]

(snip)

President Bush declares war from the Oval Office in a national address: "Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure."

Price of a share of Halliburton stock: $20.50

[Value of that Halliburton share on March 16, 2007, adjusted for a split in 2006: $64.12.]

That last one is my favorite, though Mr. Rich offers many other examples. No bid contracts indeed!

Too many Republicans in Congress, the White House and the media lie to our faces and then deny that they're lying to our faces. Our country, at minimum, needs a two-party system, but it's time to send the Republicans home until they start offering people with more integrity. Integrity or not, even the rubber stampers should be sent home for turning a blind eye to the most corrupt era in anyone's memory.