You can run, but you can’t hide from the mounting death toll of American soldiers you’ve placed in harm’s way.
You can run, but you can’t hide from the innocent people, Americans and Iraqis, who have been killed and injured due to your deceptions.
You can run, but you can’t hide from the body bags that keep returning from Iraq.
Nor can you hide from your breach of faith in attempting to prevent news coverage of the flag draped coffins.
You can run, but you can’t hide from your own dereliction of duty to attend the funerals of the soldiers who have died.
You can run, but you can’t hide from the widows, widowers and orphans you’ve created and the dreams you’ve ended.
Mr. Bush, where is Osama bin Laden? Where is Saddam Hussein?
Where are the Iraqis who were to greet our troops as liberators?
Where are America’s allies? Where is the United Nations?
Where are the weapons of mass destruction?
Mr. Bush, the weapons you are looking for are in the dangerous repository of your own mind and hands.
Your entrance strategy for the war, like an earlier war in Vietnam, was based on deceptions. And, as the quagmire deepens, your exit strategy appears non-existent.
You can try to hide from the truth and try to hide it from us, but it has a way of finding light.
Mr. Bush, you can continue to deceive, twist and equivocate, but you can’t hide from the deaths and untold sorrow of yet another war–unilateral, illegal, immoral and unnecessary.
DAVID KRIEGER is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He is the editor of Hope in a Dark Time (Capra Press, 2003), and author of Choose Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age (Middleway Press, 2002).
He can be contacted at: dkrieger@napf.org.