Iraq Votes

The Mandarin just sent this to Andrew sullivan, but I doubt he will print it:

There are people all over the world who would love to be waving their purple fingers - in Burma, Tibet, North Korea, Chechnya, you finish the list. Bush's inaugural declaration of support for liberating the oppressed peoples of the world was a sick sham, as the Rove spin machine taught us within hours after Dubya stepped off the podium. "What President Ford meant to say,..." The hypocritical thing is why Bush decided to stretch our active and reserve forces to the breaking point to invade Iraq without provocation, among all the possible countries out there full of people yearning to breathe free. I think it is simple: there is a popular myth that Saddam made Dubya's Dad back down in the first Gulf War and Dubya (No Mission Left Un-Accomplished) was going to do whatever it took, for whatever shifting justification his minders could come up with as facts came and went, to erase that yellow stain on the Bush name. I am full of hope that the Iraqis can move beyond centuries of clan and sectarian feuds and achieve a government with broad popular support. Now Iraq has voted and we are celebrating a great victory. But are we all going to forget the means (Abu Ghraib for example) and the lies that brought us to this "end"?