Five Years of Lies

"When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth."

Khaled Hosseini
The Kite Runner


The war in Iraq was built on lies and false bravado. From the tales of errant WMD to the not so subtle conflating of Saddam and the terror of September 11th. The mission accomplished moments, last throes, fight them there and surge is working chicanery have had five years to obscure the truth of what has happened in Iraq. Any meaningful debate on Iraq policy must be navigated around the detritus of talking points and bumper sticker schlock. Almost every pronouncement from the administration on progress must be interpreted with either skepticism or outright disbelief. Awakening counsels are really the result of bribing one side of a future civil war. The the reconstruction of a country into an economic success has morphed into a failed free market laboratory. The spread of democracy in the Middle East has been revealed as an entreaty to ethnic cleansing, torture and has created a new class of diaspora left to flee the calamity as means of survival.

The lies that this war are built on have damned this country, its leaders, and its citizens to an endless feedback loop of suffering and human wreckage. The American attention span for the never ending and costly occupation of Iraq has continued to shrink. The lack of thirst for information or demand for the truth and accountability are acts of complicity in creating the lies that have sustained this war.

Now the next champion of this misadventure has grabbed the baton and kept marching forward with the same talking points and disrespect for the truth. John McCain is already finding convenient ways to falsely conflate Al Queda and Iran and then retracts the words as alleged gaffes. He is proudly proclaiming that we only have two options, continue on this reckless path or surrender to the forces of evil. Never mind the folly that led us to war in Iraq is the reason for the instability. There is no gray or in between even though the complexity of the mess we have created can't be mitigated with absolutes. Our right to the truth was stolen long ago. Until we get it back this trip through the hellish confines of this period our history will never end.