Don't know.
I'm googling to see if he did. I sure do remember something about it. Just don't remember exactly what. I commented to my hubby about it when I read it.
My opinion Joe Galloway: Iraq war about politics and power
My opinion Joe Galloway
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.20.2005
The spin-meisters have been having a field day. President Bush journeyed to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., not long ago to declare before a safe audience that he will never cut and run in Iraq.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld chimed in to warn that any withdrawal from Iraq short of victory would lead to radicals taking power throughout the Islamic world. Dick Cheney traveled to Fort Drum in upstate New York to stand before the usual photo-op backdrop of soldiers in desert uniforms and add Spain to Osama bin Laden's Islamic empire.
Ah yes, a new domino theory: First Iraq falls, and the next thing we know the Moors will be back running Spain and invading France. Where have we heard that one before?
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice then jetted to Europe and said the ban on cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of terrorist suspects extends to U.S. forces overseas.
Bush added several angry speeches this past weekend to defend his use of National Security Agency resources to keep tabs on Americans with international connections.
The administration is trying to reverse its sinking standing in the opinion polls; to rebut criticism from even some hawkish members of Congress; to counter perceptions at home and abroad that the war in Iraq isn't going well; and to counter those who demand that the United States abide by the Geneva Conventions and international treaties that prohibit torture.
The prize for the strangest argument of all, as usual, goes to Cheney with this: "Some have suggested by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein we simply stirred up a hornet's nest. They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq in September 2001, and the terrorists hit us anyway." That's right. And the terrorists who hit us didn't come from Iraq, weren't in league with Iraq and in fact had nothing to do with Iraq or Saddam Hussein.
The 9/11 attacks were plotted and directed out of Afghanistan. where al-Qaida was sheltered by the Taliban government.
We rightly invaded Afghanistan, overthrew the Taliban government and were in hot pursuit of al-Qaida and its leadership when Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld took their eyes — and considerable military and intelligence resources — off job one and diverted them to invading Iraq.
That's when they stuck the stick in the hornet's nest. By invading Iraq without a postwar plan for occupying, pacifying and rebuilding it, they created a recruiting tool of al-Qaida and a schoolhouse for jihadists worldwide who want to learn how to kill Americans.
By botching the mission — demobilizing the Iraq army and barring anyone who had belonged to Saddam's Baath Party from employment in the public sector — the United States unwittingly helped fuel the growth of a homemade insurgency among the minority Sunni Muslims of central Iraq, who ruled under Saddam.
Iraq, to put it plainly, is a disaster of the Bush administration's own creation. It was a disaster to invade Iraq when we did, on the spurious grounds that the administration originally gave as reason. Now they tell us it would be an even greater disaster to leave Iraq short of a victory that they can't define.
They can surround themselves with uniforms and wrap themselves in the flag and spin the message day after day, but they can't ignore their Republican friends in the House and Senate who must face the voters in 2006. They can talk tough all day long, but watch to see whether there's a drawdown of troops in Iraq before Election Day next November.
This isn't about victory over the terrorists. This isn't about supporting our soldiers. This is about politics and power.
Joseph L. Galloway covers military affairs for Knight-Ridder newspapers. Contact him at jgalloway@krwashington.com.