I See I'm Not The Only One Aghast That Bush Could Demand Gratitude From the Iraqi People

From the Boston Globe op/ed page, "Amid The Bloodshed, Bush Wants A 'Thank You'":

ON "60 MINUTES," President Bush was asked, "Do you think you owe the Iraqi people an apology for not doing a better job?"

Bush eventually answered, "Not at all. I am proud of the efforts we did. We liberated that country from a tyrant."

If Bush stopped there, all he would have been was arrogant. But he kept going: "I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude."

That is inhuman. We destroyed a nation under the false pretense of weapons of mass destruction. Between our invasion and the ensuing civil war, at least 53,000 Iraqi civilians and over 3,000 American soldiers have been killed. Nearly 23,000 US soldiers have been wounded. Tyrants are being hanged, and tyranny is still in the streets.

And the Iraqi people owe us a debt of gratitude?

Bush continued, "I believe most Iraqis express that. I mean, the people understand that we've endured great sacrifice to help them. That's the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq."

And people thought President Johnson was deluded about Vietnam?

On the same day, on Fox News Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney sputtered out more lies. Long after bipartisan commissions and committees found no ties between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and 9/11 or Al Qaeda, Cheney was still talking domino theory with the same intensity as Johnson and his minions once did.

"Iraq is just part of the larger war," Cheney said. "It is, in fact, a global war that stretches from Pakistan all the way around to North Africa. We've been engaged in Pakistan. We've been engaged in Afghanistan . . . remember what (Osama) bin Laden's strategy is. He doesn't think he can beat us in the stand-up fight. He thinks he can force us to quit. . . . Iraq is the current central battlefield in that war."

...Forty years later, Bush is even further removed from reality. Polls of Iraqis themselves, including one done last fall by the State Department, show that they want a pullout of US troops. Bush cannot claim a "victory psychology" is beginning to emerge. Instead, he scolds the Iraqis for not being grateful for his destruction. That is a sign of a president so lost in the forest, he no longer recognizes a tree.