To those of us who opposed the War in Iraq from day one, it is not very satisfying to see our predictions verified. Many of us remembered the travesty of Viet Nam, and the some 50,000 Americans who lost their lives in vain for that losing battle, and the thousands of others whose lives were devastated by battle injuries and PTSD. The outcome of Iraq we feared would be the same.

And, so it would appear to be. Evil though he was, Saddam Hussein repressed the ancient animosities between the Sunni and the Shia. Bush’s war was the opening of Pandora’s Box that unleashed the evils of that Muslim rivalry. Before the war there were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. Now there are fewer than 500,000. Republicans often criticize Democrats for blaming everything on Bush. Sorry, Bush is responsible for the current mess in Iraq. Thank goodness Obama is President, McCain would have us in about five more wars.

Here is a letter to the editor of the North County Times that I wrote in July, 2007.

There’s an old quote attributed to either Abraham Lincoln or P.T. Barnum, “You can fool all the people some of the time…” The Bush Administration didn’t fool all of the people about Iraq (didn’t fool me,) but they fooled enough—enough of Congress to pass the Iraq War Authorization Act in October of 2002. Polls indicated that nearly 70% of American citizens were convinced that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.

The quote continues, “and some of the people all of the time…” True, you see their letters in this paper regularly. However, it is clear that Messrs. Ficere, Montgomery, Fisk et al. get their “talking points” directly from Rupert Murdoch’s minions at Fox Noise. The Fox propagandists are not so much foolees as foolers.

“But you cannot fool all the people all of the time.” The 2006 election results verify that conclusion. In 1994 Dick Cheney said that taking over Iraq “would be an occupation….a quagmire…pieces of Iraq would fly off.” Did Cheney fool himself into changing his mind or did he purposely set about to create more wealth for Halliburton without worrying about the chaos he knew would be created in Iraq?

Chaos indeed.