1 Boring Old Man

Back in 2002, when the Bush Administration began to talk of War in Iraq [Iraq? Did I hear that right?], I recall being confused. When the campaign wound up [Bush, Cheney, Rice, the New York Times], I really didn’t know exactly what to think. I got in trouble with my high school classmates on an email forum by questioning going to war with Iraq [Iraq?]. At the time, it was my last year of my profession, and retiring was a full time job, but even with that, I followed the unfolding of events with a heavy heart. I didn’t believe Bush but I had no idea why all of this was all happening, and ,frankly, still thought they might be privy to inside information.

By the end of 2004, I was good and retired and happy as a clam except for one thing – the 2004 elections. Having the time, I looked into things, and found out that the whole "March to Iraq" was a complete sham. The intelligence was cooked, and the campaign was an orchestrated remake of an old Neoconservative Plan, opportunistically tagged on to the 9/11 attack. I thought we were in Iraq to hold on to power – "superpower." But, you know, even that was too lofty an interpretation. We were there for oil, pure and simple. All that rhetoric coming from the Administration was based on misinformation and deceit, a front for the takeover of our government by the oil business.

Now, it’s apparent that going to Iraq was an imperialistic mistake based on big lies. The course of the war was determined by plans for occupation and exploitation of Iraq’s oil fields. The war is predictably going south, and it’s time to review, reflect, and retreat. Instead, we get another Hollywood remake. Our best and brightest produced a Report with recommendations. Bush is going from place to place pretending to be considering his options with great fanfare. His few remaining operatives are stumping against the report, notably Condoleeza Rice. It’s another campaign, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

It’s an ingenuous bit of badly scripted sham politics from the people who brought you "The March to Iraq" – this time it’s "Stay the Course" "The New Way Forward." The cast is smaller and the audience is more aware. The writers are much less talented, and the actors are tired, just waiting to retire. The problem is that the plot is unchanged, no matter what they call it. It reminds me of that amazingly bad movie John Wayne made as an old man – "The Green Berets." It was made after the war in Viet Nam had also gone totally south, and nobody was in the mood for a World War II flick about a new bad war. But, hope springs eternal, I understand Sylvester Stallone is making another Rocky movie – "Rocky Balboa."