Bush Should Honor 'Mission Accomplished Day' by Resigning

[Bob Geiger]

On May 1, 2003, George W. Bush flew with great fanfare onto the USS Abraham Lincoln and announced from the flight deck that the war in Iraq was all but over.

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended," declared President Bush, in a nationally televised address, backed by a giant banner proclaiming "mission accomplished."

I'm sure that many Americans -- and certainly the military families with loved ones in harm's way -- breathed a sigh of relief and hoped that the Bush administration's pre-war claims would come true: That the effort would be quick, decisive and with minimal spilling of American blood and that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld knew what he was doing to protect the troops in the occupation that would follow.

Of course, we now know that the president's shipboard posturing was premature at best and, at worst, a device to mislead the American people into believing that the toughest times in Iraq had past.

Aside from the things Bush obviously knew before invading Iraq – that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction and had nothing whatsoever to do with September 11 – he also had a direct warning from Army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki. Shinseki warned Bush and Congress on February 25, 2003 that the U.S. was not preparing adequate forces, with appropriate troop levels, to ensure peace and stability after the initial invasion.

When asked by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) to estimate the size of an allied occupation force after victory, Shinseki said "Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably a figure that would be required."

"We're talking about a post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems," said Shinseki.

Amazingly, when not claiming that everything is just swell in Iraq, Bush and Rumsfeld have tried to tell Americans that the post-invasion difficulties encountered could not have been foreseen – despite having been told precisely what to expect by the highest-ranking Army officer, who was tasked with providing exactly that expertise.

Rumsfeld and then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz moved immediately to discredit Shinseki and to repudiate his assertions on required troop numbers. Wolfowitz said that Shinseki's estimate was "wildly off the mark."

He also said that Shinseki's prediction came at a "delicate time" when the Bush administration was trying to cobble together a broad-based coalition to support an invasion of Iraq and that it was "..not a good time to publish highly suspect numbers."

Finally, Wolfowitz countered Shinseki by saying it was difficult to understand how someone could predict that the occupation would require more troops than the invasion itself.

I guess Shinseki assumed that being a highly-decorated Army officer with almost four decades of service – including extensive combat duty in Vietnam – coupled with the fact that his job was to make those manpower determinations, might make his opinion more worthwhile.

General Shinseki "retired" shortly thereafter, in June 2003, and it is widely speculated that he was forced out for contradicting Bush's take on what would be required by the Army in Iraq. Shinseki has confirmed only that he was indeed forced into retirement, while withholding comment about any specifics.

So what are the families of the brave men and women killed in Iraq to think now? We know what Cindy Sheehan and Gold Star Families for Peace think and we know they want answers and accountability.

According to the Defense Department's Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) U.S. Casualty Status, America has lost 2,401 military people in Iraq, effective April 28, 2006. Of those killed, an astounding 94 percent -- including 24-year-old Casey Sheehan -- died after the president's announcement that hostilities had effectively ended.

And, as with most important issues, this White House continues to insist that they don't owe Congress, the American people or grieving families any answers for their misleading rationale for war and the ill-advised strategy that has resulted in so many more deaths.

But a growing percentage of the American people no longer support this war -- 60 to 70 percent, depending on the day and the poll -- and we demand to know why our people have died fighting in a country that never attacked us, had no ties to the people who did and who possessed no ability to harm our people. We want to know why Bush and Rumsfeld didn't listen to General Eric Shinseki when he warned that our lack of troop numbers would endanger our soldiers on the ground yet more.

We want to know why we have killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, including a sickening number of young children and why the majority of the world now hates us, after wrapping us in their warm embrace on September 12, 2001.

And we will continue to ask why we were led to believe the mission was accomplished, only to have 2,255 other men and women killed after the Commander-in-Chief grandly flew onto an aircraft carrier and told us the worst was over.

The numbers don't lie, Mr. President.

If you had a sliver of the integrity of which you so stridently speak, you, and the vast majority of your administration, would do the right thing -- and resign.

You can reach Bob Geiger at [e-mail] and read more from him at Democrats.com.