Nov 21^st

Mona Charen says, “Perhaps President Bush was wrong to topple Saddam Hussein. I don’t think the verdict is clear. Excepting for the original decision to invade, Bush’s errors were recognized and corrected before he left office.” She doesn’t believe the verdict is clear?  Jeb Bush apparently agrees with her although few others do.

She tells us that, “Bush’s errors were recognized and corrected before he left office.” That statement is simply laughable. Tell us, Ms. Charen, how do we correct over two trillion dollars of debt we incurred by toppling Hussein? No tax increase; no pay as you go for this Congress. How would you suggest that Bush has “corrected” the well over four thousand American deaths and the thousands of amputees? How has Bush “corrected” Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth’s double amputation? What exactly did Bush “correct” before he left office?

To claim that the Congress voted overwhelmingly for this “war” is not an out. The intelligence about Iraq’s developing weapons of mass destruction was supplied by the Bush administration. The executive branch is in control of most of the intelligence that Congress gets and so the executive branch has considerable power to control Congressional votes on issues like this one. Naturally Congress voted overwhelmingly to support the Iraq invasion.

Then Charen brings up the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 2011. She writes as if this was simply an arbitrary action on President Obama’s part; it wasn’t. Her hero, George Bush, had signed a “Status of Forces Agreement” with Iraq on Dec. 14, 2008 before he left office. That agreement committed the US to withdraw all troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. If Obama had violated that agreement Charen and her right wing colleagues would have been all over him for prolonging the war. We were in negotiations to leave a few forces in Iraq but the sticking point was where they would be tried if they committed crimes. The Iraqis, naturally enough, wanted then tried in their courts while the US wanted any American lawbreakers tried by the army. No agreement was reached so the US withdrew. Some, like former Secretary of Defense Panetta in his recent book, have maintained that the President should have fought longer and harder to reach an agreement.

Charen finishes by claiming that in a recent election, “…the loser, Nouri al-Maliki hijacked the election and took power President Obama looked the other way because Maliki was Iran’s man…and President Obama has …leaned toward Iran’s interests in the Middle East.” Interesting! The fact is that Nouri al-Maliki resigned the Premiership at American insistence in August of 2014. He was succeeded by Haider al-Abadi who is the current Premier. Is this just Charen’s attempt to paint the President as a Iranian sympathizer hoping no one is bothering to pay attention? Maybe Charen is one of the 20 percent of Republicans who believe the President is a Muslim.