Bush writes to Cindy Sheehan

Dear Cindy,

I hear you want to ask me what noble cause your son Casey died for last year. It's a good question. I'm not misunderestimating you. Let me confront it by telling you how I got into this war in the first place. Maybe you will appreciate my position when you understand it from my position where I see it.

Listen, before I got elected the first time, I knew this for sure: nothing establishes a leader's credentials better than a war. I saw how the Falklands War helped Maggie Thatcher. Win a war, and you stand a better chance of getting your domestic agenda greased.

So I was quite indisposed to a war. The best place was Iraq, because it had a bad man as a leader who wouldn't get sympathy from a rattlesnake. Besides, a lot of the guys who worked for my Dad thought he shouldn't have stopped when he did, before kicking Saddam's ass.

Also, Wolfowitz, Perle and the neo-cons had long surmiserated that the U.S. should have a war to establish our military superiority for the world to get it through their heads that we're the boss now, and to have military bases in the Middle East. Got to project our power, as the pundits pundate. These neo-cons also thought they could turn Iraq into a democracy, and so spread democracy throughout the Middle East, which I thought at the time was pretty cock-eyed myself. Some of the people on my side of the fence are nuts beyond the belief of a Christian person.

But most importantly, being a Texas oilman in my bones, I had to agree with Dick Cheney that this would be a way of getting control of mucho barrels of oil real quick and easy. Dick met with a number of oil guys, and they started divvying up Iraqi oilfields between our Texas companies.

Then there was this guy, Ahmed Chalabi, who was telling us that the Iraqis would welcome us as liberators. He impressed us all. He looked like the perfect guy to run Iraq. With him in charge, we could have our bases there, and have our corporations control Iraq's oil. This guy could charm the pants off a lesbian, and he did.

So we had very good reasons for this war, but we had to figure out how to sell it to the country. We weren't sure that oil and military bases were the best selling points, even though these were plenty good reasons for me.

But then 9/11 happened. All of a sudden, the country was stoked with war fever. We kicked Taliban ass big-time in Afghanistan, so we were all pretty gung-ho to start the war in Iraq we'd planned all along to commit our resourcefulness.

We came up with two good reasons to sell the war: Saddam had WMD and a connection with Al-Qaeda. Listen, I wasn't the only one who was scared this side of shitlessness. How did Condi put it? The smoking gun as a mushroom cloud, and all that bad stuff. Anyway, the country bought these reasons, like we knew they would. Give them reasons that sound OK, and they'll do the right thing, even when they don't know what they're doing. We went to war, and won before you could say mission accomplished. I put Garner in charge of Iraq, but then he wanted to have elections -- so I fired him pronto, and put my man Bremer in there. A solid guy, he did the right bidding. He made a bunch of decrees that capped corporate taxes at 15% so our Texas oil companies could make themselves some real money without regulations and restrictives. He also disbanded the army because Chalabi wanted the Baathists purgatived. In behindsight, a mistake, but then you gotta break a few eggs before you bite your omelet.

Meanwhile, Saddam hadn't put up much of a fight. In fact, him and his cronies probably decided to start a gorilla operation against us before we even invasioned. This has continued all along, to this very day as I write to you, as we all know, with help from Iran, Syria and Al-Qaeda. Many of our boys have died tragically, including your son. It's a goddam shame that war kills people, but there it is.

It turned out that Saddam had no WMD and that there was no connection between him and Al-Qaeda. So we had to go shopping for other reasons that sounded good besides being good also, too. For example: we need to fight the terrorists over there so we won't have to fight them here. A good set of words that I can say again and again. It helps to have a clear, simple script. After all, that's how you win elections, as I've proved with my record.

Quite frankly, at that point I wondered if we couldn't just come out with it, and say we went to war for national security reasons -- to secure our oil supply and to stabilize the Middle-East with U.S. military bases. But Karl was adamantated. He insisted we can't go all candid on everyone to undermine our own positions to our detrimentation.

Meanwhile, Bremer was working on how to have a series of carefully arranged elections that would bring moderates to the Iraqi leadership. We couldn't trust Chalabi anymore. He was making common causalities with Iran.

But then Al-Sistani brought on a big protest march of Shiites who insisted that all Iraqis should vote in a singular country-wide election. Thousands marched on TV. That pretty much put our and Bremer's election plans from the frying pan into the fire.

There was no other way out. We had to have a real election. And so we went back to the original neo-con idea of spreading democracy like butter on the tough bread of the Middle East. That became our reason. Freedom on the march, and all that good stuff.

Listen, I know we don't have a democracy in Iraq yet, and I don't know what it will look like, or whether the Kurds will split off and the Shiites will instituition a theocracy in which women have no rights like driving a car. But that's something for the Iraqis to decide. They insist on doing things their way. Heck, it looks like they might even want to run their own oilfields. I hope they still want our bases there. We'll just have to hope for the best from now on with a strong commitment to our commitment that will never falter. We kind of lost control of the processing ever since Al-Sistani brought on his protest march and blind-sided us from behind. Who'd have thought a simple war could get so complexicated?

Now I happen to think these three causes are pretty good for which your son died, since this is the question you're looking for an answer. One, securing our oil supply. Two, having U.S. military bases in the Middle East. Three, getting my domestic agenda passed, which was why I ran for office in the first place. These are all very noble causes indeed, otherwise I wouldn't have gone to war like I did. I'm being honest with you, Cindy, that's what I believe. Heck, I'm trying to be honest with myself -- not easy when you're surrounded by the kind of folks who naturally suck up to a successful politician like a bunch of beggars with their hands always open under your nose when a handkerchief will do. It's been quite a journey, I don't mind confessing you.

Maybe none of these causes will actually be in fulfillment, but they're still noble on their faces. And even if you disabuse me about those causes, I think you will agree that our latest cause, democracy in Iraq, is a noble cause -- even though we came to this cause rather late in the high noon, after all our other causes kind of tripped over their feet and busted their noses.

So if you're looking for a noble cause, that's why Casey died, for democracy in Iraq. He gave his life not for us, but for the Iraqis. I hope this helps.

Sincerely,
George W. Bush.