* I only had a page to work with and this is only a first draft. Please post your thoughts and ideas. Also, keep in mind that this is a 17 year old's writing... so it won't be all that good.
The day is March 19, 2003. The sunlight is beginning to ebb across the desert sands of the Middle East. President George W. Bush is addressing the American people. The Iraqi people are once again preparing for the worst. President Bush orders that roughly 125,000 young American men and women be deployed to the volatile land of Iraq. America is going to war.
The day is May 4, 2005. The sunlight is beginning to ebb across the desert sands of the Middle East. The climate may not have changed since the mid-March morning, but thanks to erroneous decisions primarily by the United States government, the entire globe has been swept by winds of unfortunate change. As time wore on and the facts were revealed, it turned a page that the Bush administration doesn’t want the American people to accept nor see, that this war is unjustified.
In the days leading up to the invasion, President Bush and his cabinet attempted to build support for the war. We were told that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in their possession, had the capability of producing weapons of mass destruction, and the intentions to use them on America. This is the most publicized fallacy in the President’s argument and was previously the strongest justification for invasion made by the President and other leaders. However, the bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report as well as other non-biased organizations have clearly stated that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction, did not have the ability to produce them and did not have the contacts to receive them. When George W. Bush spoke of attacking Iraq as a means of containing the threat of WMDs, he pointed out that such an attack against a country that possessed WMDs, would deter other nations from developing similar programs. Instead, the war on Iraq may have encouraged countries to begin producing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The most common example is the situation in North Korea. North Korea admits to having an active program to develop WMDs capable of hurting not only America but the entire world. Later, in attempt to patch their exposed wounds, the Bush administration called off the search for the imaginary WMDs.
Another angle of the disastrous war is the cost. As of May 4, 2005, has cost America $167 trillion dollars and has nearly doubled the national debt. Instead of fighting an unnecessary war, America could have enrolled 22 million children in pre-school, provided health insurance to 100 million children for one year, fully funded global anti-hunger efforts for 6 years, ensured that every child in the world was given basic immunizations for 55 years, and sent over 8 million underprivileged teenagers to a public college for 4 years. Who is going to pay off the debt? Who will be the one to bear the burden of this mistake? The obvious answer is that today’s children, the same ones that we could have sent to pre-school, given health insurance, fed, and given immunizations, will be ones that will severely pay for our government’s poor judgement.
1,600 is the number of lives lost. On paper, it may appear as just another number. What about the families of the fallen soldiers? What about the children of the deceased that will grow without ever having the opportunity to meet their father? What ran through the minds of the families that witnessed their child’s torched body hanging lifelessly from a bridge in Fallujah while civilians cheered uncontrollably below? These are questions that most of us fortunately cannot answer, but that a sad few will deliberate and be able to answer until the day they die. It also needs to be noted that the American death toll is not the only one to rise, but that innocent Iraqi children have been killed as well. The death toll won’t stop today either, but rather continue on for as long as we occupy the nation.
How will the bleeding be stopped? How will this war end? How will the United States as well as the rest of the world recover economically? These are just a few of the many questions that the Bush administration has repeatedly dodged answering. It is time for our soldiers to return to their children and spouses. It is time for us to subside the ever-increasing cost. It is time that our governmental leaders took responsibility for their actions and admitted the flaws in the conflict. The time has come to leave Iraq and end this unjustified war. After all, how do one ask a man to be the last man to die in Iraq – how does one ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
-- BamaLefty
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3598419#
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