Worst retort in history

President Bush made the claim that history will show that the Iraq war was worth the sacrifices. Lacking a time machine, we can only resort to speculation.

Bush's argument is that past wars in Japan and Korea, where the U.S. stood up to tyranny and then stayed in difficult locales for long periods of time, and the results were two of the most democratic, strongest countries in the world. He feels that this can be repeated in Iraq. President Bush to a VFW meeting: "The ideals and interests that led America to help the Japanese turn defeat into democracy are the same that lead us to remain engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq...The defense strategy that refused to hand the South Koreans over to a totalitarian neighbor helped raise up an Asian Tiger that is a model for developing countries across the world, including the Middle East.

This certainly is a position which one could reasonably disagree with except, apparently, if you're Harry Reid.

Senator Reid's retort: "President Bush's attempt to compare the war in Iraq to past military conflicts in East Asia ignores the fundamental difference between the two." Okay, very good start. If there's a fundamental difference between the cases the President pointed out - Korea and Japan - and the newest cases - Iraq and Afghanistan - then that is important. What's the difference? Religion? Culture? Economics? Differing tactics? Nope - "Our nation was misled by the Bush administration in an effort to gain support for the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, leading to one of the worst foreign policy blunders in our history."

So, Sen. Reid's only argument as to why Iraq and Afghanistan are different from Korea and Japan is that we were misled? I'm going to set aside for a moment the arguments against the 'misled' part - you know, where I wonder why no one says that about Al Baradai, Putin, Chirac, either Clinton, or Al Gore, who all had the same information and were all in agreement about the WMD issue - but this is really the best you can come up with? We can't succeed in Iraq because the government "lied?" That's it? That's the big gotcha?

Just this morning, I was reading an article which said that liberals pose policy in "paragraphs" while conservatives pose policy in "slogans". I didn't realize that "Bush lied / people died" was a paragraph.