Thank You, George Bush! 2 Million Iraqi Refugees in Syria and Jordan 
As British government functionaries worked quietly behind the scenes, shrewdly seeking not to raise temperatures, the focus was on getting all British naval personnel held by the government of Iran home safely.
At that point Bush entered the scene, filling the air with harsh, vitriolic rhetoric, the kind of unneeded, ill-informed bluster that can destroy delicate diplomatic initiatives. At that point the British government in diplomatic jargon told Bush to butt out and shut up. He was told that his efforts were neither required nor wanted.
A debt of gratitude should go to those in the British government who promptly removed Bush's uncouth and unneeded presence from the scene. The wisdom of that action bore results as the British sailors are leaving Iran without any political repercussions visible on the horizon.
The move is reminiscent of what happened during recent international conferences when Tony Blair and the British team would meet with leaders of other nations to compensate for the absence of leadership coming from a clueless American chief executive operating on behalf of a vigilant neocon team hell bent on achieving a New World Order dominated by multinational corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel.
Bush's response to the Pelosi visit was predictable. He howled that Pelosi was meeting with a terrorist nation, making it taboo. This is coming from the son of the Elder Bush, who both assisted in the trading of arms for hostages under President Reagan in defiance of that Administration's ban on any form of trade with Iran, and who helped shape policies that enabled Saddam Hussein to engage in genocide in Iraq.
Not that the Young Bush does not have a track record of his own operating in tandem with Dick Cheney and the militant neocons. The entire push against Iraq was planned even before he took office by the Project for the New American Century.
It was just a question of when the attack would be launched on Baghdad supervised by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, a charter member of the PNAC team, whose "shock and awe" campaign was the first wave of what a recent report from an Australian scientist records as an ongoing tragedy of one million deaths in Iraq and steadily climbing.
According to the UN and Nuremberg charters the invasion of Iraq on the basis of presumed existence of weapons that never existed is a war crime. The neocons call it preemptive war and too many progressives have used this terminology rather than referring to such a brazen and deceitful act of aggression as preventive war.
Bush after the fact lied again, this time explaining that others made some mistakes, of course, never Mr. Bush, and that the belief in the "mushroom cloud" and "weapons of mass destruction" stated rationale was justified. Meanwhile, as he noted, the U.S. "got rid of a bad man."
Yes, and Saddam is the same "bad man" our CIA helped install and equipped with sophisticated weaponry, including the know how to make chemical weapons to bomb the Kurds of Iraq's northern territories.
Yes, Saddam Hussein, "Our Man in Baghdad" of earlier Republican administrations, had to go when the battle hungry neocons decided it was time to make the big move and grab those super rich oil fields for themselves, performed under self-anointed proclamations of freedom while they draped themselves around the American flag and delivered phony hosannas of patriotism.
A poignant article in the April 2 edition of the Toronto Star by Lyse Doucet of BBC Television mentions another tragic side of the horrific U.S. invasion in Iraq in addition to the number of Iraqi deaths. There are now 1.2 million Iraqis living in badly overcrowded Syria.
Jordan is located next door. It is also jammed with Iraqi refugees. In Jordan the current figure has ballooned to 800,000, meaning 2 million refugees within both countries.
How often do we read Ann Coulter or Charles Krauthammer on the subject of Iraqi refugees? Is this what Bush meant when he stood on that ship off the shore of San Diego and declared, "Mission Accomplished!" Is this something that should instill pride in us as Americans or, in a broader context, as citizens of the world?
Lyse Doucet asked a young refugee named Hussain why he left Baghdad. In Doucet's words, "He raises one leg of his black-and-red track suit to reveal a round dark scar.
"Then he pulls up one sleeve and shows three more - the marks of bullets meant to kill him when he was working at the ministry of the interior reputed to be dominated by Shiite hit squads."
Doucet asked the young Shiite why he does not want to go back to Baghdad. Hussain promptly answers that he does not wish to go back "to my death."
There are all kinds of Hussains out there. Others not as fortunate are dead. You, Mr. Bush, dare to call others terrorists? Yours has been an Administration of death and destruction. All the while you edge America ever closer to a $9 trillion debt.
Isn't there one courageous man or woman in Congress willing to stand up and introduce articles of impeachment against the leadership of a lawless, tyrannical and unelected regime?
KEYWORDS: Iraq War Refugees, Nancy Pelosi, Basshar al Assad, George W. Bush
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