John Tully

The Los Angeles Sun

June 19 2004

You don’t get to sneer about how the evidence was there.

You don’t get to scoff about how even Bill Clinton, Germany and France thought there were WMD’s.

You don’t get to shriek about media-elite liberals just Bush-hating, conspiracy theorists whining about Halliburton, and Saddam gassing his own people:

…Not when our leaders were so fully unprepared for this war that there was no legitimate flank or rear security support for the thousands of vehicles, many endlessly breaking down, in that convoy that stretched across the Iraqi desert at the beginning of the war.

…Not when they couldn’t even bribe Turkey into letting us enter Iraq from the north.

…Not when there weren’t enough MRE’s, tanks that would work in the sand and flack-jackets for our troops .

…Not when our Marines suddenly became gendarmes on the streets of Baghdad while we completely disbanded both the Iraqi army and police and the country was being destroyed from the bottom up as the looters demolished everything that the precision guided bombs did not.

…Not when Republican Senators Richard Shelby, Chuck Hagel and Dick Lugar had been screaming about the need for a plan post-war Iraq and what to do about the Shiites/Sunnis/Kurds on The News Hour and Charlie Rose virtually every night for the twelve months leading up to the start of the attack.

…Not when there was no budget for the war, funding was asked for on the eve of the initial strike and there have been no plans to pay for the ever-increasing cost.

…Not when Deputy Secretary Of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is asked to give the number of Americans killed in Iraq during a congressional commitee on April 29 2004 and he’s off by over two hundred soldiers.

…Not when they won’t let us see the bodies at Dover and undercount casualties received in combat by the thousands.

Now bugger off and prepare for the trials.

©2004 THE LOS ANGELES SUN