'The Wrong Reason and the Wrong Way'

Kathie Costas is the wife of a Vietnam War veteran, veterans’ advocate and essayist who lives in Central Florida. She blogs at namguardianangel and bustingbalderdash.

How many coffins are you willing to let be filled for Bush? Isn't that what it all comes down to? He wanted to do this. He is responsible for all that came with it. He is just not being held accountable for any of it.

In the first phase of Iraq from invasion to the "Mission Accomplished" speech we lost 140 lives. As of today there have been 2,343 total U.S. fatalities and 2,309 of them were KIA. Do you even know how many Iraqi civilians have been killed? Oh, I am sorry I forgot. Things are fine in Iraq as far as Bush is concerned. Why should he face reality now?

Every year Vietnam was allowed to continue we lost more lives. What was the result in waiting to do the right thing? Did keeping them there longer accomplish anything? Did anything change? Maybe if people had listened in 1965 we wouldn't have lost 1,863 lives, or in 1966 some
6,144 more, or in 1967 another 11,153, or in 1968 yet another 16,589. Or maybe if they had listened my husband wouldn't have been one of the over 500,000 with PTSD [Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome] or the lives of 6,083 lost in 1970 would have still been here. What did doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason ever prove?

Iraq is the wrong reason and the wrong way. Bush could have freed the people of Iraq with the Iraqi Liberation Act from 1998 but didn't want to. Remember this was supposed to be about our safety. Well it wasn't and it was proven. So what was this all about?

Ask Cheney who said after the Gulf War when he was the Secretary of Defense what he said about Iraq back then. He said it would turn into all of this back then. He kept saying it until 1999. He is on tape for God's sake! CSPAN has been playing it. So was Bush 41! So was Powell who
was a general during it! So was Rumsfeld!

Bush wants you to believe he had the best intentions. He wants you to believe it so that you won't notice he didn't care about the lives of the troops he sent to face death. No plans to secure Iraq and no plans to bring them home sealed the deaths of 2,343 of our troops who signed up to defend us. How many more? How many more maimed? Over 16,500 already. How many more with PTSD to alter the rest of their lives and their families forever? Over 70,000 of them so far and more everyday.

What does keeping them there accomplish? What have the results been thus far? Death, destruction and chaos! Hundreds of billions gone!

Doing the wrong thing is still wrong! Doing it the wrong way and demanding to keep doing it the same way is insane! Our troops are in the middle of a civil war and all the planners knew this would happen. They were on tape doing speeches ever since 1991! Is our congress insane as
well? Do they bother to set any limits at all on Bush? Have you had enough yet? Do you even know why you are still allowing this to go on? I bet you don't if you have any conscience left at all.