Happy "Mission Accomplished" Day

3,924 American troops have been killed in Iraq since May 1st, 2003, when Bush told us the war was over and the mission was accomplished. One of them was a friend of mine, shot down by a sniper in Fallujah at the age of 25.

276 Coalition soldiers have also been killed since the war ended.


I don't know how Bush, or the people who supported him in his 2004 reelection, can live with themselves. While troops were dying, while the war was still in a critical and dire phase, our Commander-in-Chief was out there strutting in costumes and calling it a day.


This man is the ultimate coward. Not only did he avoid combat service in Vietnam by using his father's connections to join the National Guard (leapfrogging more qualified candidates), but he went AWOL from the Air National Guard for the last two years of his service. During his presidential runs his cronies helped him lie about his military record, they bamboozled Dan Rather with fake documents to cover it up, and they proceeded to tar real war hero John Kerry with ads like this:



John McCain, the so-called straight-talker, stood by Bush and supported him even as Karl Rove and the Republicans used these despicable tactics. John Kerry had the class to stick up for McCain in 2000, when McCain's war record was being questioned by the same right wing scumbags, but McCain barely showed any concern over these Swift Boat ads. It shouldn't surprise you. Even today McCain has signed onto repulsive smear campaigns against Barack Obama, calling him an the candidate of Hamas, an elitist, a terrorist sympathizer, and someone who is unpatriotic-by-association.

At the 2004 Republican National Convention, Bush's followers mocked John Kerry and all of our veterans by wearing Purple Heart band-aids. McCain spoke at that convention, giving Bush his full-throated endorsement despite this ongoing smear campaign against an American war hero.


After his 2004 reelection, not only did Bush keep an incompetent like Donald Rumseld at the helm, not only did he cut benefits for veterans, they also ignored shameful conditions at Walter Reed Medical Center until the press made them take notice.

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And just this month, George W. Bush and his good buddy John McCain have opposed a new G.I. Bill that would provide returning veterans with college scholarships.

Soldiers are still paying the price for Bush's epic blunder. It's been five years, with no end in sight. John McCain thinks another 100 years would be fine with him. And still our soldiers suffer, and die, and come home to inadequate care and inadequate compensation for their sacrifices. This war has been going on longer than the Civil War or World War II, and it has cost us more than Vietnam.

More than any other factor, this election is about ending this war and ending the occupation of Iraq. John McCain will follow in Bush's footsteps and keep troops in Iraq throughout his presidency. Barack Obama will bring the troops home. In coming months I expect McCain to make shady promises about his secret plan to end the war, achieve "victory," and bring our troops home. He cannot be elected if he doesn't tell this lie to the American people, just as Bush did, just as Lieberman did, just as Nixon did in 1968. But you mustn't believe him.

Bush, McCain and the entire Republican machine are liars who have sent our brothers and sisters to die for a false cause. For this country to right itself, we have to turn the page on George W. Bush and everything he stands for.