Of course they did. By attacking Iraq on a tissue of lies, with dreams and designs on Iraq’s oil and assets, and with Israel’s foreign fantasy that they will be better protected without Saddam Hussein, who provided cash to exploit the Palestinians so desperate for their own country that they became suicide bombers.

Looking back over our Middle East policy, one can comprehend why Iran and Iraq represented a twisted foreign policy almost impossible to understand from a logical standpoint. Back when the CIA engineered the downfall of an elected president in Iran the U.S. placed the Shah in power. The Shah of Iran was later deposed, replaced by a hard line religious leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini.

The oil negotiations became much more difficult now. And Saddam Hussein surfaced in Iraq. The CIA also had a hand in bringing Saddam and his ruthless Bath Party to power. With U.S. backing Saddam obtained the wherewithal to conduct an eight-year war with Iran. We called Iran our enemy, justifying supplying assorted weapons, including chemical weapons to the bloody dictator, whose brutality was hardly consistent with the stated principles of the U.S., which calls itself a Christian nation. The question must be asked: “How could a Christian nation conduct such a massive supply of arms to a killer dictator like Saddam? But then, the war machine was in high gear!

When Russia conducted its war in Afghanistan the Reagan Administration wasn’t going to let the Communists control Afghanistan oil. The Taliban ultimately gained power, an oppressive religious movement which didn’t recognize women’s rights, rights to education, rights in the workplace, and rights to dress any other way but religious-dictated clothes with heads and other body parts covered and only their eyes visible.

The U.S brought this about. The hope was that they would control and guard the precious oil pipelines. When this goal was not accomplished we went to war against the regime we had supported. We removed the Taliban. In addition to replacing the custodians of the oil pipelines another event occurred; the poppy production resulting in prime grade heroin for the world drug market came back into zealous mode.

Some politicians in the U.S. have interpreted the United States as having a “manifest destiny”, a divine blueprint that so often collided with any kind of humane philosophy. Take the Bible Belt’s importing of slaves to achieve their economic goals. The Southern mansions, such as depicted in Gone With the Wind, the magnificent home called Tara with its white-pillared front and lavish lifestyle, were achieved through slave labor. That “manifest destiny” collided with reality – exploitation of the worst kind, a despicable way to acquire wealth.

Was it “manifest destiny” to only be able to bring the Southern Bible Belt into the ugly reality of the despicable kind of exploiters they were? Does it make sense to fly the flag of the slave owners in a hopefully more enlightened era?

During the Reagan Administration, when pursuit of huge tax cuts prompted Reagan to borrow liberally to fight Communism, the Social Security Trust Fund became a Republican Administration method of financing war. Less than a decade before Reagan assumed office the Vietnam debacle resulted in a huge death toll and an ultimate Communist takeover.

What a fantasy to label that war a major U.S. success. What twisted logic prompts some Vietnam vets to consider themselves “freedom fighters”? While respecting the fact that Vietnam vets went to war as the U.S. leadership asked them to, it must be asked whether their bruised egos have resulted in them becoming blurred to the reality of the colossal mistake of launching and sustaining the war.

Wasn’t it a Republican war hero and president who warned against the warped world of the military-industrial complex? Dwight Eisenhower is now the forgotten man of the Republican Party.

When the Iran Contra scandal, with the exposure of the U.S. and Israel being involved with arms shipments to Iran while that nation was a declared enemy and listed international terrorist regime, more warped thinking was the catalyst. Individuals connected to breaking U.S. law to send arms shipments to an avowed “enemy” were hailed as heroes, such as Oliver North, because some of the money didn’t wind up in a Swiss bank account but helped fund the war against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. The same Contra regime we backed in Nicaragua then shipped drugs to America that victimized our youth.

Was the Iran Contra scandal part of our “manifest destiny” for the United States? Hardly, let’s get real. The reality shows on TV need a reality show on political ignorance, stupidity, and double-dealing. The Elder Bush was hailed as an expert on foreign policy. I recall vividly when he came to Tampa and spoke glowingly of a $3 billion loan to Saddam! Saddam would buy farm products from the U.S., specifically from Republican Senator Bob Dole’s state of Kansas. What a cozy agreement with the dictator Bush would later refer to as “worse than Adolf Hitler.”

Well, Bush should know. After all, he helped build him up, just as the Reagan Administration had before Bush, and with no less than Donald Rumsfeld on the scene in 1983 to seal a deal. We helped him to acquire those weapons of mass destruction his killing machine used during the eight bloody years of the war with Iran. Saddam used poison gas on both the Iranians as well as his own Kurdish population.

Was supplying a killer dictator with all kinds of destructive weapons part of the U.S. manifest destiny? That question has never been answered. Two years into Bush the Elder’s Administration a curious event took place. Kuwait was slant drilling for oil on Iraq’s property, stealing revenue that obviously belonged to Iraq. Saddam asked April Glaspie, our Iraqi ambassador, what the U.S. would do if he invaded Kuwait to stop their theft? Glaspie asked U.S. officials, who said to tell Saddam that essentially we would do nothing and that this conflict was an Arab problem to be solved by Arabs.

In other words, the U.S. provided plenty of incentive for Saddam to go to war. When Saddam did go to war, no doubt to some degree prompted by the U.S. answer to his vital question, the Elder Bush was silent about the billions in loans he had overseen for Iraq, knowing full well what a fanatical dictator killer Saddam was, as Bush self-righteously asked the world to stand up against the Middle East Hitler equivalent.

The world responded. The Elder Bush was suddenly declared a marvelous international expert in foreign relations. The Gulf War did succeed. As Iraqi soldiers rushed forward in the desert to surrender, U.S. tanks surged forward, plowing many of them under the sand faster than Wall Street could count the soaring stock values of war-related industries.

When it was pointed out on television that the weapons we sent to Iraq had been used to kill the Kurds, and following the Gulf War, so many more Kurds were killed, that when we did nothing, British Prime Minister John Major prevailed on the U.S. to join him in stopping the killing machine. Saddam was engaging in “ethnic cleansing”. One wonders how many U.S. war machine businesses had profited from this sordid killing venture. Was all that part of the U.S. manifest destiny?

Now we come to 9-11. The Bush Administration did all in its power to prevent an investigation, and with good reason. Repeatedly, there were warnings that something might happen. The immigration policy was so weak that with the 19 individuals who were involved with this debacle, it was later learned that between them they had 50 some driver’s licenses. The 9-11 killers knew that the U.S. borders were porous.

Reagan helped bring this flood of illegals into our land by at one point declaring that they could become citizens if they had been in the U.S. for a certain period of time. This caused illegals the world over to simply rush to the U.S. and its borders, figuring they just had to stay so many years, and presto citizenship, with Social Security, welfare, Medicaid, the whole enchilada.

The Bush Administration tried desperately to link al Qaeda to 9-11. By doing so it figured it would get the monkey of neglect they were guilty of off of their respective political backs.

By utilizing the National Guard and taking men up to 65, they could avoid the political disaster of the draft, and so “have their cake and eat it too.” By using a series of carefully calculated lies, the Bush Administration went so far as having Colin Powell read from “forged documents” to stir up a war in Iraq. So anxious to hail a fast victory, like his father had accomplished in the Gulf War, Bush used a Karl Rove photo opportunity to don a flight suit and declare “Mission Accomplished” and immediately the fallacy of this announcement was revealed.

The Civil War in Iraq had in reality begun, shortly after Bush claimed it was all over. But the “manifest destiny” crew along with their Bible Belt believers, whose track record of slavery, opposing civil rights laws, and launching religious rants with demagogues like Jerry Falwell leading the parade, carried the U.S. into a living hell.

With TV photos of over 12,000 U.S. military personnel injured, many without legs or arms, and over 1,200 dead, hiding their coffins from TV on their return to the U.S., and estimates as high as 100,000 dead Iraqis, Bush took bows for bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq. He declared brazenly that he would have gone to war in Iraq even without the issue of weapons of mass destruction being a factor. “Saddam was a bad man!” was the cry of the Bible pounding religious right. Yes, he was a bad man and presumably remains so, but the question that needs to be asked is this: Who built him up?

Iran has witnessed what the U.S. has done in ignoring the Geneva Convention guidelines on conducting war. North Korea has seen what the U.S. will do, going so far as providing false information to whip U.S. citizens into war.

Are Iran and North Korea justified in fearing this “born again” president? Are they justified in fearing a nation that could be so divided between right and wrong to this degree that they refuse to recognize U.S. conduct is not only not Christian, it is a danger to the entire civilized world.

Where do we go from here? One thing is for sure, that to link divinity with a U.S. track record of wars in Vietnam, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War is absurd. Meanwhile Bush has pushed the U.S. to the brink of bankruptcy. One Letter to the Editor in the Miami Herald resulted in the posing of a vital question:

“Why are Russia, France, and Israel allowed to have these weapons but not Iran? With the U.S. forces having destroyed Iran’s neighbor and U.S. think tanks openly discussing the possibility of an Iran strike, the Iranians are now in greatest need of defense. Global nuclear disarmament can happen only when all nations agree not to store, produce and do research for more nuclear weapons. Non-proliferation negotiations where the United States gives up its nuclear arsenal are the only alternative to wars.”

Can reality set in for once on U.S. foreign policy? In four horrifying years George Bush has plunged the U.S. into a near catastrophic national debt, helped the pharmaceutical companies with their billion dollar deal for Medicare, and held citizens hostage to these companies. Meanwhile the costly war in Iraq continues with no end in sight. Four more years. God help us!