How did we get lost in Iraq?

As it turns out, the United States government has systematically underreported violence in Iraq - in a hope to discredit the notion that Iraqis are engaged in a civil war. There is no way that the administration could honestly miss 90% of the attacks that occurred in a single day without either being extremely incompetent or extremely dishonest. Neither situation is desirable.

As it turns out, the Iraq Study Group thinks that there is no simple solution for solving Iraq's problems. So much for staying in the course. Of course, there have always been public figures and individuals that have expressed beliefs that Iraq would be unwinnable. By all the accounts, that is what everyone can agree upon - even Donald Rumsfeld. Even Bush seems to understand what the Study Group's report says.

What disturbs me the most is 2003. While it is absolutely vital that we understand the current situation in Iraq, we most also understand how we got here. How is it that the United States stuck itself into a country and planted roots into a volatile nation now locked in a hopeless imbroglio? We can look back to 2003 for the answer: Arrogance. 2003 was the year of cowboy diplomacy. It was, "Our way or the highway," because we were the United States, and we were determined to root out terrorists and teach them what happens when you threaten America. Some of us even believed the president when he told us that Iraq had WMDs. In fact, most of us believed him. President Bush spoke powerful words after September 11, and we were behind him all the way. Seventy percent of the country supported Bush in 2003.

The only problem was that the Bush administration was wrong the entire time. In fact, the administration was very likely lying to us. In 2001, both Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell made appearances on TV claiming that Iraq didn't have the capabilities to produce weapons of mass destruction. Hans Blix and his weapons inspectors found no WMDs in Iraq.

The Bush administration had ulterior motives when they attacked Iraq. Was the aim to depose the man who had tried to attempted to kill H.W. Bush? Or was the mission one for the imperialist quest of establishing a mini-America, a puppet government? A review of the facts reveals to appropriate reason for launching an offensive against a government dangerous to Iraqi citizens. Iraqi citizens now live worse than under Saddam Hussein's regime. And "freeing" Iraqi's from Hussein's oppression was never a goal - just a supposed by-product of our goal. I'm worried that no one will ever know the true reason for invading Iraq, because the possibility is floating around. The only ones who mught really know why we did it are Bush, Cheney, and Rove, but none of them are talking; even if they did talk, who would believe them?