They say that if you live long enough, you’ll see everything. But I’m beginning to doubt I’ll live long enough to hear a Republican say they’ve ever been wrong about anything. Remember that disastrous war in Iraq, the one that put so many young men and women in VA hospitals, the one that was never funded, that ballooned our national debt, all while doing nothing at all good for our nation?

That was the war where we were going to be “greeted as liberators,” the one the neo-cons promised “would be a cakewalk.” That was the war we were lied into fighting, with whoppers like this one from Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, when he said: "We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons...including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas. ...large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons—including anthrax and botulism toxin, and possibly smallpox."

That lie was compounded by Bush II (George the Dim-Witted) who blamed 9/11 on a nation that had absolutely nothing to do with that attack (and he knew it). Still, he told us this bald-faced lie: “... for the sake of protecting our friends and allies, the United States will lead a mighty coalition of freedom-loving nations and disarm Saddam Hussein. See, I can't imagine what was going through the mind of this enemy when they hit us. They probably thought the national religion was materialism, that we were so selfish and so self-absorbed that after 9/11/2001 this mighty nation would take a couple of steps back and file a lawsuit.”

Instead, he launched a hasty and ill-planned invasion, putting soldiers at unnecessary risk because, according to Rumsfeld, “you go to war with the army you have, not with the army you want.” There was no urgency, no clear and present danger, but we went ahead and sent troops into Baghdad in very expensive but unarmored Humvees, and lots of those soldiers suffered unnecessary deaths or life-changing injuries because Dubya, Cheney, and Rummy wanted to hurry things up.

They promised us it would be quick and cheap. “"Five days or five months,” Rummy assured us, “but it certainly isn't going to last longer." And the cost? “Something under $50 billion,” Rumsfeld said. So far, however, the tally on that war is well over a trillion dollars, and we’ll be paying for it as far into the future as anyone cares to look.

There wouldn’t be much point in revisiting this criminal folly except for the fact that the nation we destabilized is even more unstable. We broke it, but we have no way to fix it. Meanwhile, the billions in war materiel we shipped over there is being swapped among sectarian factions in that beleaguered country, and the neo-cons want us to bomb someone, soon. More wisdom from those who are never wrong about anything.

They are, you may recall, the same party and the same people who deny the science of climate change, and who nearly tanked the global economy.

But, with the exception of George W. Bush, who’s had the good sense to make himself scarce, these guys are all still sounding off about everything, without a shred of guilt or embarrassment about the stupidity of what they did when they had the power to cause so much harm. And did.

What they lack in brains they more than make up for in sheer gall.

_______

