Q&A on IRAQ for kids, (heavily snarky)

[moggie12]

*Q. Who are the Neo-Conservatives?*
.A. They're the people who thought it would be a good idea to invade Iraq.

Q. Why are some of them saying Donald Rumsfeld should resign?
A. Because Iraq is a disaster and they've got to find someone to blame. Otherwise, people will realize they're morons. A neo-con named William Kristol was just on FOX this past Sunday implying that the liberation of Iraq would've gone just hunky-dory if Rumsfeld hadn't messed it up. I'd like to provide the exact quote but FOX is too embarrassed to post transcripts of their shows.

. Are the neo-cons right? Is it all Rumsfeld's fault?
A. Of course not. The neo-cons are starry-eyed zealots who live in a dream world of their own conniving, insane idiocy. Invading a country like Iraq and stabilizing it - much less transforming it into a Western-style democracy as the neo-cons had hoped - would be extremely problematic even if an arrogant, incompetent jerk like Rumsfeld hadn't been put in charge of the whole thing.

Q. How was Rumsfeld going to turn it into a Western-style democracy? What was his plan?
A. That wasn't really his job, as can be seen from how little time was spent on this issue prior to the invasion. His job was to get rid of Saddam Hussein, the evil and ruthless dictator. There was a guy named Ahmed Chalabi who was supposed to run the place afterwards. It was Chalabi's job to turn it into a pro-Western democracy.

Q. Who came up with that plan?
A. Ahmed Chalabi.

Q. And Rumsfeld believed it would work? Why didn't the President stop him?
A. It was President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and the neo-cons who told Rumsfeld to invade Iraq and turn it over to Chalabi. Chalabi told them it would all be very simple and they believed him. That's why Rumsfeld thought we didn't need very many troops. He didn't expect too much fighting because the people of Iraq would be very happy when Ahmed Chalabi came to rescue them. The plan was that our soldiers would stick around for awhile to attend Chalabi's swearing-in ceremony and make sure the oil contracts got signed with the right companies. Then the US would then set up a few temporary bases that would stay there forever. After that, most of our soldiers could go home.

Q. That sounds rather naïve. Why didn't Congress and the American people stop the President and the neo-cons?
A. Some tried, but it was a very weird time in our country's history. The President was just coming off a stunning military victory in Afghanistan: People had been very worried that Afghanistan would result in thousands of US casualties because the Soviets had had such a hard time there when they invaded. When Afghanistan seemed to be a piece of cake, it gave Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld a tremendous amount of mojo. There was much swaggering, chest-puffing and flag-waving.

Q. Wait a sec, we'd invaded Afghanistan before Iraq?
A. Yes. That's where Osama Bin Laden and the Al Qaida guys had been hanging out. They're the ones who stole our planes on 9/11 and crashed them into our buildings, killing thousands of Americans. Unfortunately, Osama Bin Laden got away. Then we shifted into high gear for the Iraq invasion.

Q. Clarification, please. Did Osama flee to Iraq? Is that why we invaded Iraq?
A. No, invading Iraq was a part of the newly-created War on Terror, a post-9/11 Bush administration initiative. Prior to 9/11, the Bush administration had not been focusing on the threat posed by Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaida network. When the 9/11 attack occurred, the Bush Administration realized Al Qaida was a big problem. It was determined that something needed to be done. Therefore, we decided to invade Iraq.

Q. I seem to be missing something. How is invading Iraq related to Al Qaida's 9/11 attack? We'd been attacked by a bunch of primarily Saudi guys who stole our airplanes - not by Iraq.
A. President Bush determined that there was an Axis of Evil composed of three countries: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. It was felt that something had to be done about these three countries because they were evil.

Q. I'm still not getting the connection.
A. As mentioned previously, there were these three countries and they were evil. Of the three, Iraq was determined to be the evilest. This determination was due to the fact that we'd beaten them fair-and-square in a war back in 1990, but the extremely evil dictator, Saddam Hussein, stubbornly clung to power. Thereafter, he kept dissing us and the UN weapon inspectors. Bush and the neo-cons wanted to invade Iraq and get rid of Hussein more than anything else in the world. In truth, many non-nutty people (i.e., people other than Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the delusional neo-cons) were very worried about what Saddam was doing, particularly after he threw the weapon inspectors out in 1998, but most were satisfied that the risk had been contained.

Q. What made people change their minds?
A. After 9/11 and the Afghanistan invasion, the Bush administration put together a very frightening list of bad things Saddam had been doing in regard to Weapons of Mass Destruction. Because 9/11 had been an extremely horrible day, people remembered it vividly and were very scared that the US would be attacked again. When they heard that Saddam had WMD's and his people had been talking with the Al Qaida guys, they got even more scared. Nobody needed to draw them a picture of a mushroom cloud, so Condi Rice simply mentioned it in passing.

Q. Did Saddam Hussein really have WMD's? Was Saddam really in cahoots with Al Qaida?
A. No, not really. The Bush administration just threw together all the evidence they could get their hands on, whether it was true or not. When we actually invaded Iraq, they couldn't find any WMD's. It turned out Saddam had been faking everybody out, pretending he had them for years so his Generals didn't kick him out of power. The joke was on Saddam, though, because he'd underestimated just how insane Bush and the neo-cons really are.

Q. But why was the Bush administration so hellbent on invading Iraq? I'm still not getting how it relates to the 9/11 Al Qaida attack.
A. Simple. The Bush administration strongly believes that US can't have people like Saddam Hussein making us look wimpy. Otherwise, the Al Qaida guys won't respect us and will keep attacking us. We must show all the evildoers that we have bigger balls than they do. Therefore, it was decided that we must get rid of evil regimes that disrespect us and install Western-style democracies in their place at gunpoint, starting with the countries that have the most oil. Once the people of the nearby countries see how great Western-style democracy is, they'll convert to democracy and we'll be one big happy planet. And we'll have lots of oil.

Q. That's crazy talk.
A. Yes, it is. A lot more people seem to be realizing that now, particularly since the Bush administration has been caught lying about Iraq and then trying to cover it up, although what good that does at this point is an open question in light of the gigantic geo-political mess Bush has made.

Q. Geo-political mess?
A. Yes. Invading Iraq was the absolute worst thing Bush could have done, handing Osama Bin Laden a victory far beyond what he could have imagined when he cravenly attacked on 9/11: Bush has bankrupted the US by getting involved in a military nightmare, made the rest of the world mad at us, inflamed every jihadist nut in the Islamic world, and given Iran more clout in the region than they ever could have hoped for. The kicker is, it was actually Iran who'd been concealing their attempts to develop nuclear technology. They'd been hiding what they were doing from the Europeans who'd been in charge of keeping an eye on them, although they've promised they're not going to develop WMD's and also put on a nice little tableau the other day so we could all share in their excitement. Is that ironic or what? The whole Iraq debacle will be one of those amusing anecdotes historians will shake their heads at 50 years from now, assuming Bush doesn't accidentally blow up the world in the next two years, thereby causing there to be no historians around to laugh at such things.

Q. In regard to blowing up the world, I hear we're going to attack Iran next. Will President Bush really do it?
A. Probably. Iran now has a real nutjob President who's freaking everybody out. He was voted into power last year (yeah, democracy!!). There had been a less nutty Iraqi President previously but, unfortunately, he'd been unable to bring out reforms and make the lives of the Iranian people any better. We did not help him in any way because, as previously mentioned, Iran is one of the members of the Axis of Evil. The Axis of Evil concept is somewhat rigid. We are not allowed to talk to evil people no matter what. They are evil and cannot be spoken to.

Q. I'm scared.
A. You should be.

Q. Is there any chance of impeaching Bush and getting rid of Cheney and Rumsfeld?
A. Though the Founding Fathers have been acclaimed as geniuses and rightly lauded for designing a flexible Constitution, they did not foresee the possibility of complete idiots getting control of the government. This is no doubt due to the fact that Texas wasn't a State in 1789. Though a "stupid clause" would now easily do the trick - had the Founding Fathers known they should've put one in there - people are now scrambling around trying to put an impeachment case together based on Bush's lies, etc. One fly in the impeachment ointment is that Cheney would become President if Bush were impeached. Therefore, we'd have to get rid of him first and make Bush appoint a non-idiot. The whole impeachment thing is further complicated by the fact that we are currently engaged in the stupid war Bush stupidly got us into, which makes impeachment talk somewhat dicey at this point, a rather ironic Catch-22 if you think about it. To give you some idea of how problematic the whole issue is, the Republicans are now running around saying people shouldn't elect Democrats in '06 because they'll impeach Bush: Yet - although it's the Republicans who're running around publicly admitting that Bush has done stuff for which he could be impeached - the Democrats can't figure out how to make political hay out of it. This is an indication that impeachment may be something of an uphill climb. At this point, our best hope revolves around the courage of brave Generals and non-insane Republicans (e.g., Chuck Hagel, Richard Lugar, John Warner, and there may be another but I can't remember his name). If we are lucky, some combination of these people will get together and slap Bush around until he realizes that he and everyone in his Administration are complete idiots and convince him to put non-idiots in key jobs.