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			Houston's Letter to the New York Times
				Wasn't Published
				12-13-03
	Editor,   I read David Brooks Editorial in the New York Times the other day and was impressed with his ability to turn something so wrong into something that, to the untrained eye, seems so right.  In the article of which I am speaking he claims that the new honesty coming from the White House is refreshing.  What he means by this is that when it comes to foreign affairs the fact that we have abandoned all forms of diplomacy and told the rest of the world that you are either with us or against is good.  I do not see the benefits of being honest about what we are going to do to a nation if said nation disagrees with us over an as serious a matter as the invasion of Iraq if, in the first place, we lied about the reasons outlining the need to go to war.  Where is the honesty in that?   According to Brooks it is good to give the finger to the French and Germans when they have apprehensions about invading Iraq due to questionability of the intelligence being used to justify such an invasion.  Well, we told those "Old Europeans" (Rumsfeld's term for the two nay-sayers) to take a flying leap and changed the name of French toast to "freedom" toast even though French toast was named after Joseph French, the breakfast pastry's American inventor (created in that all-American of cities, New York, in 1799) and stopped drinking Heineken Beer (which is Dutch, not German), and then invaded Iraq anyway.   If only the leaders of the United States had the foresight that the leaders elsewhere around the world seem to possess.  It turns out they were right, and we had lied.  There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Saddam never had any ties with al Qaeda (the al Qaeda-associated terrorist group was run by the Kurds under US protection in the North of Iraq and had been outlawed by Saddam), and, worst of all. The people of Iraq have not greeted us with the open arms we were promised.  France and Germany's reward for being right?  Oh, they don't ever get to have their voices heard again.    As it looks to me, this administration has lost its right to call the shots elsewhere around the world.  French and German Intelligence is obviously superior to what we have.  Their politicians know more about false reasons for invading another country they have experience being mislead by their leaders in the past, France with anything Napoleon chose to do, and Germany's invasion of Poland (a completely fabricated justification).  The members of the Bush administration have a horrible and complex history of screwing up overseas.  In the 1970s Bush the elder loved Manuel Noriega when he was the head of the CIA, then in the late 80s Noriega took over Panama and Bush was forced to invade.  Wrong choice.  Also in the 80s Reagan/Bush decided it would be a good idea to give billions of dollars in weapons to the Iraqis to fight the Iranians and to the Muhajadeen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets; guess what happened next?  Another three wars.  Fancy that.  One cannot claim that G. W. Bush's administration is different from that of Reagan's or G. H. W. Bush's administrations because the same people who were behind the scenes then are behind the scenes now ( Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Poindexter, Baker, etc...)   The leaders of the Republican Party in America, people like David Brooks included, use deceit that is coated in sugar to placate the American people.  They claim that the Bush administration is being honest but to do so people like Brooks have to lie to make that claim.  Where is the honesty?   Houston Wade   University of Hawaii at Hilo
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