No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 
Next month the US will have the 1,000th military casualty in Iraq. But if we try to pull out Iraq will become a failed state generating more terrorists. This is what happened in Afghanistan when we pulled out precipitously after the Soviets were defeated there.

Iraq is already creating and training a lot more terrorists than we are stopping.

We were wrong to go in when we did, wrong to fail to plan to prevent looting (anticipated but ignored by Bush/Rumsfield/Feith), wrong to disband the military and police forces (organizedby Chalabi as he attempted to take over), wrong to prevent experienced Baathists who had not been criminals from continuing to do the jobs that were needed (also prevented by Chalabi), and wrong to try to restructure the economy in the Neocons image of some free-Enterprise fantasy while letting Haliburton and other US contractors rip off the Coalitional Provisional Adminstration (Hey! It wasn't ~their~ money!)

Bush 41 warned of the chaos that we would create by taking control of Baghdad when he stopped the Gulf War at 100 hours. Bush 43 and Cheney ignored his warning, and now we and the Iraqis are reaping the whirlwind.

Ignoring the facts as Bush and the Republicans are doing will not help. It is time to send in Kerry and a new team. We need some mentally healthy adults on the job, unlike Bush and Cheney. We need someone as President who will make decisions based on the ~facts~ on the ground, not on "gut feel", belief that God sent him, or Neocon fantasies as created by Ahmed Chalabi.

We really need to replace Bush. Now!!

posted by Richard at 3:44 PM