Does winning a war give someone a license to say stupid things? Otherwise, what could be the explanation for two things said today by George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld? George stated that "the war in Iraq is about peace." This is an actual quote, I'm not making it up. War is Peace. Slavery is Freedom. Ignorance is Strength. Personally, I find the whole situation double-plus ungood.

In the other quote, Rummy called the chaos in Baghdad "untidy". Well, yes. If you consider anarchy in its purest form untidy, I suppose that is true. People are destroying the infrastructure of the largest cities and many of the smaller cities in the country and nobody is stopping them. Banks are being robbed, hospitals looted of everything down to the beds. My vote for understatement of the year goes to Donald Rumsfeld.

Of course, this should have been expected. The stated goal of the war was to remove the Baathist regime from Iraq. Once it was removed, the US would step in and take the reigns of government. What seems to have been overlooked was that the Baathist regime was the government. Iraq is not like the US where a different political party can take control every four years. The Baathist regime was pervasive in the country. Every aspect of government was controlled by it. Rooting out Saddam Hussein's regime when it has run the country without opposition for the past 30 years means destroying every aspect of government, including such low level government functions as police and fire protection. There are no reigns of government left to take. This is the anarchy we are seeing now. If the US had decided to put enough troops on the ground, then perhaps there would be enough soldiers to take on police duties as well as fight the remaining gunwielders. But Donald Rumsfeld want to make a point that a war could be won with a lot of air power and few ground forces, so we are stuck with the situation.

It seems the US does not want to step up to its moral and legal responsibility to provide security for Iraq. International law requires an occupying force to provide security for the country it is occupying. The Pentagon has responded that they are not an occupying force because the war is not over. The war is not over because people are shooting at them. People are shooting at them because there is no security force to maintain order. There is no security force to maintain order because the US cannot or will not provide it. They will not provide it because... Well, I think you see the picture. Is this the real reason nobody in Washington is willing to declare victory? So long as the war drags on, you can escape your obligations under international law?