George W. Bush's Involvement In The Iraq War

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There has been much debate in the past about the effectiveness of President George W. Bush’s presidency in regards to his involvement in the Iraq war. The negativity surrounding his presidency began during his January 29, 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush steered public focus on Iraq, which he labeled as part of the "axis of evil" aligned with terrorists and posing "a grave and growing danger" to U.S. interests through its possession of "weapons of mass destruction". In the latter half of 2002, the Central Intelligence Agency reports requested by the Administration contained reports that Saddam Hussein was intent on reconstituting Iraq’s nuclear weapons programs, had not properly accounted for Iraqi biological…show more content…
Remnants of the old regime, joined by Islamic terrorists who infiltrated the country, kept up a steady insurgency throughout the summer of 2003 and into the autumn. A war described as one of liberation took on the feeling of a war of occupation. In April 2004, 139 Americans were killed in Iraq in a single month. By July, the number of soldiers and Marines who had died there stood at more than 1,000. By then, world opinion had shifted strongly against the United States—Le Monde had long since retracted its pro-American headline—and, at home, a strong anti-war sentiment re-energized the Democratic Party. The initial beneficiary was little known former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who spoke of "regime change" not in Iraq but in Washington. Dean fizzled in the primaries, but the Democrats' energy didn't, and the party settled on Massachusetts senator John Kerry as its presidential nominee. Kerry didn't mind reminding people that his initials, J.F.K., were the same as John F. Kennedy's, but Democratic party regulars agreed privately that the animating force in their party was A.B.B.—"anybody but Bush." Meanwhile, public opinion surveys showed Bush with near-unanimous support among Republicans. He'd run for office vowing to be "a uniter, not a divider," and he achieved that goal after a fashion: he helped each party to unite behind

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