the iraq war article and video

After having read the scholarly article on the Iraq War and watched the video, I have to say that I am not even slightly surprised by them. I think it has been pretty obvious over these past couple of years that President Bush is out numbered in his views on the U.S. pulling out of Iraq. When someone only has something like a 25% approval rating, that's their hint that maybe they should start listening to what other people have to say. President Bush keeps insisting that us leaving Iraq would put the world in a "catastrophic situation". However, I fully agree with Bob Herbert, author of "Nightmare is Here", who insists that it's too late; the situation already is catastrophic.

While I did attempt to watch the video you sent us, it had a very difficult time loading. It would play about 10-20 seconds, then get stuck and pause for about a minute and then play 10-20 seconds again. For that reason, I only watched about the first five minutes of the video. But that was enough for me to hear the comment (more or less) "In fact, as with other Bush Administration policy decisions in Iraq, the decision to disband the Iraqi army was made by a group of men virtually unexperienced in any militia decisions."

While I did agree with the article, I have a feeling that the video was just a little too left wing for me. I am without a doubt a democrat, but I think that it is just poor judgment and naivety to think that the Bush Administration has no militia experience. President Bush himself served in the military, and I'm sure many other members of the Bush Administration did as well.

As far as the article goes, though, I can say that it did not surprise me at all. I have mentioned previously that I do not know a lot about the struggle in the Middle East, so basically everything I read and see are news to me. According to Bob Herbert, the government has been virtually lying about the number of civilian casualties in Iraq. Once again, although this is news to me, it is not at all surprising news. President Bush is not getting anywhere near the approval that a president should be getting. It is therefore not at all surprising that he would try to avoid the fact that the majority of the nation is against him by insisting that he is right in his decision to stay in Iraq. It's bad enough that most of the country thinks that we shouldn't even be in Iraq, not to mention the fact that we have cause way more deaths over there than the general public is told to believe. Why wouldn't the government try to cover up or lower the number of Iraqi civilian casualties? It's basically the only hope President Bush is clinging to that he will end his presidency on a good note. Maybe, if the American public can't be swayed on their wanting to leave Iraq, they can at least not think of our government as a murderous villain.