Term of the Day: MISSION CREEP

For seven-and-a-half years, the United States was embroiled in the Iraq War. The initial invasion, taking place on March 30, 2003, began under false pretense: Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It is interesting to note that the Vietnam War was also begun under false pretense: Vietnamese navy firing on American naval ships.

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and there was no firing on American naval ships in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Many of those same individuals who were the cheerleaders in favor of invading Iraq -- including former Vice-President Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, George Tenet, among others -- are reappearing on television. They are once again beating the war drums for the United States to return to Iraq in light of the uprising of Isis, a group which has been described as "too radical for al Qaeda".

The term "mission creep" is fairly self-explanatory. It means a military mission where the number of troops going to that region slowly increases ... until we are fully involved in a full-blown battle/war effort. We have the beginnings of that now in Iraq.

It was originally stated that 100 troops, claimed to be strictly advisers, would be going to Iraq. That number, on the day it was officially announced, had increased to 300 troops. Days ago, 200 more troops were going to be added, for a total of 500 troops. Today, it was announced than 300 more troops are going to Iraq. The initial amount of troops in Iraq has increased 700% ... in less than two weeks.

Military engagement in Iraq once again seems more possible now.

There have been various factions of terrorists. Specific to Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan, we were introduced to al Qaeda, which was worse than other terrorist groups. Now, Isis is worse than al Qaeda. In however-many-years, there will be a group worse than Isis, and so on. I do not deny the atrocities Isis is committing, but our involvement is, to this blogger, unnecessary, and the build-up of troop numbers so rapidly is cause for deep concern.

I want to share with you a documentary that I shared in the Spring of last year. It was from a daily cable news program called 'The Rachel Maddow Show', and was based on the book Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. It first aired in February of 2013 and was, of course, after the end of America's war involvement in Iraq. Let this video be both a reminder of what was and a cautionary tale of what might be again.




Terry