Re-Writing History is Hard -- Part 2

U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno won't let Jeb Bush blame Obama for the current instability in Iraq:

Ahead of his official retirement on Friday, Odierno, the former highest-ranking officer in Iraq and one of the architects of the 2007 troop surge there, sought to set the record straight.

“I remind everybody that us leaving at the end of 2011 was negotiated in 2008 by the Bush administration. That was always the plan, we had promised them that we would respect their sovereignty,” Odierno said during his final press conference at the Pentagon.

Gen. Odierno brings up a good point, one that the Republican Party wants everyone to forget: The U.S. launched the invasion to bring freedom to the Iraqi people -- at least that is one of the reasons BushCo gave for the invasion.

The invasion itself was actually dubbed "Operation Iraqi Freedom," and even the idiots in the Bush Administration knew that if you give an invasion a title like that one, then you sure the fuck better follow through on the whole "freedom" part.  That is why the words "freedom" and "democracy" dominated BushCo's post-invasion rhetoric.  Here is an example of that from 2005:

"It took a four-year civil war and a century of struggle after that before the promise of our Declaration (of Independence) was extended to all Americans," Bush said. "It is important to keep this history in mind as we look at the progress of freedom and democracy in Iraq." * * *

The president said Iraq's path to democracy would not be a smooth one and highlighted what he called three milestones the nation has achieved. Those were: handing over sovereignty to the Iraqi leaders on June 28, 2004, two days ahead of schedule; holding elections in January 2005 and adopting a democratic constitution.

And that whole "freedom and democracy" thing is what George Bush tried to do in December 2008 when he signed the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq.  These are Bush's own words at the signing ceremony:

"The agreement provides American troops and Defense Department officials with authorizations and protections to continue supporting Iraq's democracy once the U.N. mandate expires at the end of this year. This agreement respects the sovereignty and the authority of Iraq's democracy. The agreement lays out a framework for the withdrawal of American forces in Iraq -- a withdrawal that is possible because of the success of the surge."

Iraqi sovereignty and Iraqi democracy -- that's what Bush's efforts near the end of his presidency were all about.  The Surge -- and the subsequent Status of Forces Agreement -- constituted BushCo's last shot at getting a flower to grow out of the steaming pile of excrement it deposited in the Middle East, and needless to say, it failed miserably.

What I find most humorous about the Republican Party's attempt to re-write history on Iraq is that Jeb and the rest of the GOP apparently wanted the United States to subsequently reject the Status of Forces Agreement signed by George W. Bush in 2008 and thus act more like a conquering invader than a liberator. If that's the case, then they should have called the invasion something other than "Operation Iraqi Freedom."  I think "Operation Free Iraqi Oil" and "Operation Crush The Brown People" were available.