By August of 2001 George Bush was being viewed as a single term president even though he'd been in office a mere 8 months. Another failure loomed on the horizon for George W. Bush except this time it wasn't as the head of a failed oil company Arbusto Energy or as a corporate officer of Harken Energy Corporation this failure was to occur on level George Bush had never even consider: The failure of a Presidency in the United States. To use an over worked phrase everything changed for George W. Bush on the morning of September 11th with the attacks on World Trade Center and the The Pentagon. In a singular moment George Bush's Presidency was transformed from one of failure to that of an Administration at war, but not with a country: With a known terrorist organization Al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden whose family is one of the wealthiest in Saudi Arabia and which has done business with the Bush family. Al-Qaeda takes responsibility for the attacks which leads to the Bush Administration requesting that the Taliban government of Afghanistan turn him over to U.S. authorities so that he can be tried in a U.S. court for the crimes he has taken responsibility for. The Taliban refuse at which point President Bush orders the U.S. military to attack Afghanistan and remove the Taliban as its governing authority which they do. Unbeknown-est to the American public or anyone else outside of the Administration planning has begun for an military incursion into Iraq for the purpose of removing Saddam Hussein from power. The justification for this will be laid out in President Bush's first State of the Union Address in which he uses the phrase Axis of Evil to describe the governments of Iran, Iraq and North Korea. The administration will also use September 11th and Saddam's possession of Wepons of Mass Destruction. Administration officials: Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and President Bush himself will make public statements which are used to help reinforce the Administrations reasoning for attacking Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein from power. Here are some of their statements
President George W. Bush on Nuclear Capabilities:
"I strongly believe he was trying to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program."
Source: President Bush, Prime Minister Blair Discuss War on Terrorism, White House (7/17/2003).
President George W. Bush on Al-Qaeda:
"The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men -- the shock troops of a hateful ideology -- gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the 'beginning of the end of America.' By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed."
Source: President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended, White House (5/1/2003).
Vice President Richard Cheney on Al-Qaeda:
"I continue to believe. I think there's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government. We've discovered since documents indicating that a guy named Abdul Rahman Yasin, who was a part of the team that attacked the World Trade Center in '93, when he arrived back in Iraq was put on the payroll and provided a house, safe harbor and sanctuary. That's public information now. So Saddam Hussein had an established track record of providing safe harbor and sanctuary for terrorists. . . . I mean, this is a guy who was an advocate and a supporter of terrorism whenever it suited his purpose, and I'm very confident that there was an established relationship there."
Source: Morning Edition, NPR (1/22/2004).
Vice President Richard Cheney on Nuclear Capabilities:
"[T]he reporting that we had prior to the war this time around was all consistent with that -- basically said that he had a chemical, biological and nuclear program, and estimated that if he could acquire fissile material, he could have a nuclear weapon within a year or two."
Source: Transcript of interview with Vice President Dick Cheney, Rocky Mountain News (1/9/2004).
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Nuclear Capabilities:
"We said they had a nuclear program. That was never any debate."
Source: This Week with George Stephanopoulos, ABC (7/13/2003)
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Al-Qaeda:
"Well, there's no question but that Iraq has relationships with countries that are on the terrorist list. They also have relations with terrorist networks. They also have al Qaeda currently in the country, among other -- Abu Nidal just, they say, committed suicide with four or five slugs to the head; that's a hard thing to do -- but he was in Iraq. So there's no question about those relationships."
Source: Testimony of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld before the House Armed Services Committee, House Armed Services Committee (9/18/2002).
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on Al-Qaeda:
"Saddam Hussein -- no one has said that there is evidence that Saddam Hussein directed or controlled 9/11, but let's be very clear, he had ties to al-Qaeda, he had al-Qaeda operatives who had operated out of Baghdad."
Source: Meet the Press, NBC (9/28/2003)
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on Nuclear Capabilities:
"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Source: Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, CNN (9/8/2002).
Yet through all of their pronouncements about the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the Middle East and the world at large none of it was true. Weapons of Mass Destruction which didn't exist. Connections between Iraq and Al-Qaeda that never happened. Bringing Democracy to Iraq. In all of their public statements and their fear mongering not a single reason for the justification for the invasion of Iraq was true.
George W. Bush continues to be a failure at everything he does when its connected to Iraq. The Golden Dome Masque is bombed in February and sets in motion what has become a Civil War in Iraq between the Sunni's and the Shiites and his administration continued to insist that Progress was being made in Iraq. Al-Maliki becomes Prime Minister and this will improve the situation in Iraq now that there is a national unity government even though its suspected that he is under the control of Muqtada al Sadr who heads theMahdi Army who are believed to be responsible for most of the Shiite Death Squads operating in Baghdad having infiltrated the army and the police.
During the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections President Bush tried to frame the Democrats as soft on national security it didn't work and they regained control of both houses of the congress. Last week in a speech he gave concerning Iraq and the administrations policies there he announced there would be an escalation in the number of U.S. military personnel in Iraq its just the fifth time they done this. He even admitted to making mistakes and saying that he would listen all opinions be they inside or outside the administration. Just the opposite has occurred with both Dick Cheney and George Bush saying in interviews today that even with opposition not only from the Democrats but their own party they were going to do what ever they wanted and just ignore congress. George Bush's new policy is just a rehash of his old policies in Iraq all of which have been failures save for one the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.
Finally the saddest failure of all. George W. Bush managed to take the worlds empathy and sympathy for the United States after the September 11th attacks and turn the worlds citizens and many of their governments against America. How does one achieve such a thing? Only George Bush knows
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