{"id":1398,"date":"2012-03-22T21:40:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-23T04:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/?p=1398"},"modified":"2012-03-23T02:09:20","modified_gmt":"2012-03-23T09:09:20","slug":"rewind-bushs-iraqi-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/?p=1398","title":{"rendered":"Rewind: Sun &#8216;n Fun in Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s time for another trip to yesteryear, back to those bucolic days in the summer of 2004, when Operation Iraqi Freedom a.k.a. the Iraq War, a.k.a the Slam Dunk was foundering into it&#8217;s second year, despite assurances from the Bush administration that all was well in the land of sand and oil. Now, thankfully, we&#8217;re out of Iraq and the Iraqis are left to administer their country on their own, even though sectarian violence continues and probably will continue until the country breaks out into an inevitable Civil War which has been building for a century. For a dry but informative read on the history of Iraq, pre-War, read <a title=\"Charles Tripp's History of Iraq\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/052170247X\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=coppercactusg-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=052170247X\" target=\"_blank\">Charles Tripp&#8217;s <em>History of Iraq<\/em><\/a> and see why we should have never gotten into this misadventure in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a photo-toon from our July 4, 2004 issue depicting Dubya&#8217;s rose colored glasses view of Iraq.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1399\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1399\" style=\"width: 491px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/?attachment_id=1399\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1399\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1399\" title=\"bushfantasy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/bushfantasy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"491\" height=\"449\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/bushfantasy.jpg 491w, http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/bushfantasy-300x274.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 491px) 85vw, 491px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1399\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">From President Bush&#39;s point of view, the new Iraq is a bright, rosy place chock full of fun and oil.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s time for another trip to yesteryear, back to those bucolic days in the summer of 2004, when Operation Iraqi Freedom a.k.a. the Iraq War, a.k.a the Slam Dunk was foundering into it&#8217;s second year, despite assurances from the Bush administration that all was well in the land of sand and oil. Now, thankfully, we&#8217;re &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/?p=1398\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Rewind: Sun &#8216;n Fun in Iraq&#8221;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,60,49,8,3,35],"tags":[50,22,52,9,115,458,21,110,98,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1398"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1412,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398\/revisions\/1412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bilgebucket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}