In his March 23 column, Lewis W. Diuguid, angered by e-mails "gloating" over the successful election in Iraq, shoots back and claims that the rationales for the war shifted during the past two years:
"Tens of thousands of Iraqis and U.S. soldiers have suffered injuries in a war that Bush first sold as a way to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. "
"The reason for the war and casualties later shifted to the ouster of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein."
"The pro-war push shifted to giving the Iraqis the gift of democracy."
All three of those reasons were mentioned in the very first sentence of President Bush's March 19, 2003 address to the nation: "My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger."
Diuguid has apparently forgotten that President Bush on March 17, 2003 gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq, so the ouster of Saddam was an objective from the very beginning.
