Don’t Let Them Forget Iraq

They don’t talk about it. When it’s mentioned they look shifty and hurry to change the subject or retreat behind a stubborn barricade of denial. They keep their ex-president (whose name must never be spoken publicly) hidden away in fortress Texas, far from the campaign trail. But it won’t go away.

However much they pretend it’s not there, these desperate and depressing Republican hopefuls scrabbling towards the brass ring of the 2016 presidency, the lingering stench of Iraq still hangs around them like a ripe dog turd that’s been trodden into the carpet. They try their best to ignore it but we mustn’t let them.

Don’t let them forget how deliberately and repeatedly a Republican President and members of his administration lied to the American people.

Don’t let them forget that there is no doubt now that these were lies. Not misunderstandings, not faulty intelligence, not matters of opinion, but great big, dirty, self-serving lies that have been exposed many times for all to see.

Don’t let them forget that it is beyond question the war they still refuse to apologize for had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, Al Quaeda, or ‘WMD’.

Don’t let them forget the thousands of American service men and women who gave their lives or were wounded in this War of Lies for absolutely nothing.

Don’t let them forget the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians slaughtered and the millions made refugees, the worst man-made disaster the middle-east had seen in living memory. All completely unnecessary.

Don’t let them forget that the economy and infrastructure of a whole nation was brutally smashed while corporate cronies of the Bush administration made obscene fortunes out of the wreckage.

Don’t let them forget the vile Bush-sanctioned regime of torture, the horrors of Abu Ghraib and the other CIA hell-holes where men, women, and children were sadistically abused.

Don’t let them forget the massacres and war crimes and the lethal legacy of toxic waste that is still killing and deforming children in places like Fallujah.

Don’t let them forget that the criminals and sponsors of torture in the Bush regime all got off scot-free, exposing a rotten American political system more concerned with self-interest and expediency than law or what is right.

Don’t let them forget that the world is still waiting to see justice done.

Don’t let them forget Iraq.

Internet Writer

(cartoon by Stuart Carlson)