We were going to be greeted as liberators. Women and children waving the stars and stripes and throwing flowers at the tanks rumbling by. The men shaking our hands, offering friendship and hope.

Man.

Remember France in WWII?

It would be something like that.

President George W. Bush.

Nobody should forget who did this.

Doctrine of Preemption

War President

Patriarch of freedom and democracy to all the brown people

We have our empire.

Iraq was going to be free of tyranny. A rose would bloom. And then we would go off and plant more roses. Iran, Syria, Palestine. All of them. The troubled Middle East, with all its fucking oil, would be our rose garden. Fragrant and pleasing to the eye.

But the Iraq/Afghanistan Memorial Wall in Congress is full. Staffers are trying to figure out how to “squeeze in more names.”

Forget about that rose garden. Bush is planting his garden of stone.