(Chapter 16 0f “Destined For Destiny: The Unauthorized Autobiography of George W. Bush”)
No president asks for war. It is always a last resort. Not a first choice, anyway. Let me put it this way: it depends on the alphabetical order of the choices.
And while a president may not ask for war, he may dream of war. And they are wonderful dreams. They are dreams in which rose-colored fields of flowered Iraqi grass sway in the evening breeze. Soldiers prance through green meadows, smiling, holding hands in the sunshine.
In this glorious dream, the Commander in Chief appears in the distance like a thousand-story building, he is a ghostly apparition on the horizon behind the troops, out of range of the gunfire. He is wearing his flight suit, holding his helmet at his side, urging our fighting men and women in their sacred mission with great and inspiring words. Words such as “freedom”, “victory”, and “bring ‘em on.”
Soon the soldiers are holding hands and skipping through the happy fields and enjoying not only the fruits of democracy, but also a bounty of hot dogs – as many hot dogs as they can eat. Jesus rules benevolently over all the people, looking down lovingly from the heavens. All bask in His unconditional love. Except for terrorists, who are locked away deep in a prison under the world, where no one will ever find them, and where their private parts are electrocuted hourly for all eternity.
Clearly, this is a positive vision for Iraq and the world.
Therefore it came as some surprise to me when I outlined this plan in detail to my military commanders in the spring of 2003, and some of them argued that it was “unrealistic” and “pie in the sky”.
“Pie is good,” I replied. “Pie is delicious.”
My Joint Chiefs of Staff and other advisors explained to me that in order to launch this war, we had to have what in military lingo is known as a “reason.”
There were many good reasons to go to war with Iraq. The first one I proposed was that I was Commander in Chief, and I was ordering it.
When I was told this would not be a good enough reason, more ideas were generated.
One excellent reason, for the moment, was to find Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which we had sold to him in the 1980’s. I believed strongly that the evil dictator had those weapons, because my Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, still had carbon copies of the receipts.
But since the weapons have yet to be found, it is reasonable to assume that the dictator used the art of Iraqi black voodoo to make them disappear.
Another superb reason we thought of was to bring liberty to the people of Iraq. This was a people who above all others on Earth deserved to have the full resources of the United States mobilized to save them from tyranny.
But there was one reason many on my staff believed to be more important than all of the above: Someone had to pay for the attack on our country on September the 11th.
I did not know where the perpetrator, Osama Bin Laden, was hiding at the time. I knew intuitively that he was in a hole, but that was all the information I had. With such vague intelligence, it was not practical for my commanders to formulate a plan to dislodge him from this unknown hole. So, in lieu of him, we settled on someone else: Saddam Hussein.
Let there be no misunderstanding – I did not take any chances selecting someone who may have had nothing to do with a terrorist attack on our country. To be on the safe side, I verified Saddam Hussein’s ties to Al-Qaeda with my Jesus stone. This is a magical amulet that I keep under my desk. I take it out of its velvet sackcloth and hold it aloft only when faced with the most vital decisions facing our country. It seemed to warm my hands when I passed it over Iraq on my Oval Office map.
In the face of this compelling evidence, America’s mission was clear.
But try as we might, during the first few months of the war, we could not find Saddam Hussein. We put out a reward for his capture. Then we began to get tips that he had fled underground. Into a hole. We then armed our fighting forces with shovels and pickaxes to dig in likely spots across Iraq.
Take back everything I said about it not being worth finding Osama Bin Laden in a hole. This time, plans were drawn up to dig as many holes as it took to find this substitute culprit of the September 11 attacks.
Eventually, after many months of diligent searching, we succeeded. We found Saddam Hussein in a hole in Iraq. He was not properly groomed, and he smelled of mold.
This is what burrowing does to a man. He loses the ability to see in direct sunlight. He grows little feelers on his lip, which appear to the naked eye to be normal human whiskers. But they are not. They are a mucous membrane not unlike those of a mole, which uses these feelers to sense his way through his labyrinth of tunnels. He burrows down deeper and reproduces with other burrowing vermin. He finds a secluded warren in which to secrete his young, and quickly spawns a race of mutant mole-people.
That is why it was especially important to capture Saddam Hussein in a timely fashion, before he and his army of evil mole-men could burrow their way to America and attack our homeland from underneath.
The day Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces was one of the greatest moments in the war effort, except perhaps for Mission Accomplished Day. I had promised that the terrorists would be smoked out of their holes, and on that day, this sacred pledge was honored. I cannot say with any certainty whether smoke was used to expel him from that location. But make no mistake: We found him hiding in a dirt hole. And soon he would face justice for being the leader of Iraq.
But let us back up and start the story of the war from its noble beginnings.
Being President is a tremendous honor. There is always somebody there waiting on you. And there is a great deal of free stuff that they give you. They will give you anything you want to eat. A hot dog any time of day! Everything has got the presidential seal on it, too: towels, coasters, the little paper covering on drinking glasses. Everything. But being President is also an awesome responsibility. And one of those responsibilities is the ability to launch missiles and blow up a whole country.
When it was my turn to blow up a whole country, I took the responsibility very seriously.
In the early hours of a particular date in 2003, I believe it was, I gave the order to begin the attack.
In the hours leading up to the attack, much effort was expended in careful consideration and brainstorming by my top military advisors to come up with a name for the war. It is now well known that the name we settled on was “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
But it was not my first choice.
Other choices included “Showdown in the Gulf”. At the time it was proposed, we did not know that CNN had already taken it. And there was “Shakedown in the Sand,” which I believe the World Wrestling Federation later used when they entertained the troops during their USO tour.
Weeks later, after the decision had been made, the name of the war no longer mattered. What mattered was that my staff was assembled, and it was time to start a war. I looked up at them and said solemnly, “It is time to attack Iraq.”
As I said it, I realized “Attack Iraq” was the perfect name for this war, because it rhymed. But I had thought of it too late. This was the eleventh hour. All of the government folders with the label “Operation Iraqi Freedom” had already been printed up.
This was to be the first casualty of the war. A reality of wartime that every combatant must face is that there is real loss. The loss of a good name for a war is a setback I did not foresee. But there was no time to mourn. I forged ahead with the bombing campaign.
It was a glorious beginning to freedom in that first 24 hours. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of Iraqi people were killed. And it looked very good on TV, one must admit. It looked just like the Fourth of July. Bombs went off, lighting up the night sky with brilliant colors.
If only we could have heard the screams of the dying. Actually, the screams were probably drowned out by the sound of the bombs. That may have been for the best, as the top commanders do not necessarily need to concern themselves with details.
Our troops behaved bravely in Operation Iraqi Freedom. But of course there are always a few bad apples who violate the rules of war. This happened in the prison “Abu Graheebref.”
America does not torture. Therefore, military justice was handed down swiftly against these wrongful torturers. We started at the bottom and worked up the chain of command, all the way to the top. The highest-ranking official involved in the promotion of torture was Private First Class Lynndie England. A court of military justice found that she was solely responsible for the shameful abuse of these prisoners. She was found guilty and is currently serving her prison sentence.
As President, it is my job to say where the “buck stops” in these matters, and I declared decisively in this instance that it stopped with Private First Class Lynndie England.
Some critics point to these bad apples and suggest that they are a reflection of all of our brave fighting men and women. I wish to quickly remind such negative-sayers that my glorious vision for Iraq came from Jesus Himself. Are these critics prepared to go on record criticizing the policies of our Lord? I do not think so.
But now is not the time for blaming, blaspheming, or pointing out who failed at what, and which intelligence was false or not. Now is the time to recount the proud history of a President.
One of the most dangerous operations of the war took place late in November, a year or two ago. A plane carrying a very important passenger crept towards Baghdad in the dark of night, protecting this special cargo from terrorist or insurgent attack. The plane landed near the base, and out stepped the President of the United States.
I was quickly ushered into the mess hall, where I served a turkey dinner for the grateful troops, and then bid farewell to the newly liberated and peaceful Iraq, hightailing it out of there to avoid getting killed in the crossfire.
But perhaps the most historic moment of the Iraq war took place on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was gleaming in the midday sun on a quiet day in May of 2003.
At a specified moment, an F-18 fighter jet streamed in from the west, blotting out the sun for a split second and causing all eyes on deck to look up in unison. Little did they know it was a President of a certain United State who was in the passenger seat, being flown there, dressed as though he was the pilot himself.
When they told me I would be flying jets in the National Guard way back in my youth, no one could have guessed the momentous impact it would have. For the culminating moment of my service would happen on this fateful day nearly 30 years later.
It was the most important mission in the war. The final mission. The fighter touched down expertly on the battleship’s landing strip, and out came a determined leader, to announce to a thankful nation that the war was over and we had been victorious.
The whole world watched in awe that day, as they realized yet again that America had saved the Middle East from chaos.
This was a great moment for our country, and would be the fullfillment of my destiny.
I would like to dedicate this chapter to the brave and resilient people of Iraq, who we had no choice but to attack. They endured our military assault, graciously allowed us to fight the terrorists in their homeland over there so we would not have to fight them over here in ours, and then they rose out of the rubble to take on the challenge of becoming our newest insurgent enemy in the War on Terror.
May God bless them, and bring us swift victory in the fight against them.
