[Vision2020] On Being a Principled Man

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings:

If Bush were a principled man, he would have at least done the following:

1. Shown up for his physical exam for the Texas National Guard.  The taxpayers of this country had invested over $1 million in his training and he just blew it off.

2. Shown up for duty witht the Alabama National Guard.  To this day no one has come forward (except for one liar) to testify that they saw Bush with his new unit.

3. Would have totally disconnected Osama bin Laden from Saddam Hussein, especially when the CIA was telling him that there was no connection.  A principled man would have told his VP to cut out that crap, too.

4. Would have had his own verified sources for announcing to the world that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium in Niger.  It was pulled from an October, 2002 speech, but put back into the 2003 State of the Union speech, with no additional evidence to back it. The claim was never verified, the only documents having been proved to be forgeries.

5. Would not have said on February 8, 2003 that “an Al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq . . . for help in acquiring poisons and gases.” The 9/11 Report could find no evidence for this.

6. Would not have said that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was a member of Al Qaeda, when Osama bin Laden had rejected him as a flake.  Before Bush said this, Rumsfeld and the CIA had already announced that there were no connections before 2005, after Osama took a full 8 months to recognize him as one of theirs.

7. Would hot have blamed all the violence in Iraq on Al Qaeda, when he knows that only ten percent of the insurgency and sectarian violence is due to foreign fighters.  Iraqi Sunnis don't need outsiders to tell them that they have always been at odds with Muslims most of them consider to be heretics.  As happened in Bosnia, all it takes is the chaos of an ill-planned invasion to inflame these sectarian hatreds.

8. Would have directly answered one of the most essential questions about this war: "Is it or is it not a civil war?” All evidence points to a Yes answer, and if so, the U.S. should not be in the middle of a civil war.  An honest man would answer Yes or No, but all Mr. False Tough Guy has to say is "It's tough."  That's not good enough, George.

Yours for principled leaders,

Nick Gier