04 July 2005
Oops! My Bad. . . .
When I read the Declaration of Independence beyond the ending of the declaration itself, the litany of complaints against Parliament and George III sounds all too much like many actions, policies and attitude of President Bush and his Administration. It’s unnerving .
Here’s a listing of accomplishments, errors, misdeeds and actions that elicit patriotic shame in millions of Americans and international distrust and outright enmity toward the United States.
I find it frightening that KBR’s security personnel are Defense Department procurements controlled in Washington, D.C. by a contract administrator separate from military command and control in a war zone!
On this national holiday honoring the colonial insurgents and their Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, I am not comforted by the parallels I see today in the Republican-controlled Congress and in our President.
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Here’s a listing of accomplishments, errors, misdeeds and actions that elicit patriotic shame in millions of Americans and international distrust and outright enmity toward the United States.
- Fabricated rationale to use military force for invading Iraq
- Inadequate full-time military personnel required the extensive activation of Reserve and National Guard units.
- Federal Government drew on National Guard personnel without, apparently seeking each state’s legislative authorization. The assumption that Cheney and Rumsfeld could call upon National Guard units infringed on each state’s personnel resources for responding to natural disasters, any local terrorist activity and security resources for protecting state and local communities and property. Further, many local police and fire fighters, as Reservists or National Guard members, left their communities with diminished resources and without funding their temporary replacement.
- Inadequate protective gear, an insufficient number of armored troop and supply vehicles and poor language skills revealed the extent of unpreparedness in our military’s ability to wage war.
- Erroneous and insufficient knowledge of Iraqis, historical politics, alliances among religious factions and languages, principally Arabic.
- Wrong understanding of Iraqi views toward the British and the Americans and about Iraqi tolerance of occupation troops.
- The US military used D-Day planning and tactics for invading Iraq.
- Once Baghdad was conquered, the real, remaining objective was to kill or capture Saddam Hussein, family members in government and inner circle of civilian and military forces loyal to Hussein.
- There was no budget or allocation of funds for waging a war on the ground, so Bush convinced Congress to authorize additional funding thereby erasing the surplus left him by Clinton and creating the highest level of the National Debt ever.
- Coalition troop deployments from the most dependent countries in Europe and Asia causing the people of those countries to question their participation in the US’s war with Iraq.
- Demonizing of the Ba’athist Party in Iraq threw out the primary, trained leadership corps in the Iraqi military and in the government bureaucracy available for rebuilding a new government and infrastructure.
I find it frightening that KBR’s security personnel are Defense Department procurements controlled in Washington, D.C. by a contract administrator separate from military command and control in a war zone!
On this national holiday honoring the colonial insurgents and their Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, I am not comforted by the parallels I see today in the Republican-controlled Congress and in our President.
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