The War in Iraq has been a complete disaster that is about as obvious as you can get. Following 9/11 the Bush administration used the opportunity to rush through a credible sounding excuse to go into Iraq. This was done on the backs of people with solid reputations and years of service to their country being pressured to lend credence to shaky evidence.

Links between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 hijackers were conjured up like rabbits out of hats. With the nation firmly behind the decision and only administration officials and certain lawmakers privy to the entirety of the evidence the country was behind invading Iraq. Thus, we went in started a war with an army which was quickly dispatched and were left to clean up the mess.

That’s when the big problems came. Foreign fighters came into the country in order to form a branch of Al Qaeda – something paranoid Saddam Hussein never allowed. Local militias formed and fought against our troops. Neighborhood thugs formed gangs and they too waged war on our men and women. The ramifications of the lies began to float to the surface.

So we sent in more troops as the strategy to “micromanage” the invasion failed for whatever reason. We realized there were no links between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime. We realized there were no links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Then we learned the evidence used to justify the War in Iraq had so many holes in it if a Daisy Cutter bomb were dropped directly on it there would be an eighty percent chance of missing.

Things became bad, then got worse and then became a national nightmare. We were in over our heads and had been hoodwinked by our own president’s administration. We sent in more troops with the deal being the government of Iraq would take over once the country was stabilized. We would get our men and women out of harm’s way and a stopper would be put on the runaway spending train of billions of taxpayer dollars per month.

The increase in troop levels combined with cash payoffs stabilized much of the violence. The other half of the “surge” never happened and we are still spending billions per month. While we focused on stabilizing the mess we created in Iraq the justified war in Afghanistan worsened. Afghanistan was where the people who attacked us on 9/11 had training camps and where there was the government which provided them with refuge. Things have worsened to the extent we recently reengaged in talks with the Taliban.

Now the thing we focus more on than anything else is the “surge.” We don’t talk about the deaths of the soldiers we talk about the half way successful “surge” as fully successful. We don’t talk about the need to find a way out of Iraq as fast as possible. We don’t discuss handing over control and continuing rooting out Al Qaeda not just Bin Laden but the networks all over the world. I say that because even if he and his number two were found (and I hope they are) the rest would still be out there scattered all over the globe training to strike.

Certain politicians use the “surge” as a distraction. They use it to distort the fact that we should never have been there in the first place. They use it to put an honorable face on the dishonorable act of swindling a nation. They use it to make it seem we went in to get an enemy then vanquished him and won, and that is a ball faced lie.

“Surge” is a way not to be held accountable for phony evidence and bad votes. People use the image of a “surge” to try and make people forget about the bad and look at the fact we were able to contain the mess we made. The “surge” quelled the violence started by an unjustifiable invasion. It is a way to put distance between themselves, George W. Bush and a bad economy. The “surge” has been successful at containing the violence. The bluster is pure distraction and nothing else.

To read about my inspiration for this article go to www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com.