2000 Who will be the last to die for the Republican Party's mistake in Iraq? Unfortunately, 2000 young American men and women have now died fighting Bush's illegal war in Iraq. This "milestone" is a direct result of the Corporate Republican Party's war on everything that makes America great. First, as I touched on in my Call for a Brain Drain article, Republicans ignore facts in favor of emotion. The GOP blindly followed Bush and forced a war in Iraq under the pretenses of ridding the country of weapons of mass destruction. The evidence at the time was poor and most experts believe that Sadaam probably did not have WMD. The Republican Party used the post 9-11 climate to propagandize and squash dissent. Second, once we realized no WMD existed, Republicans continue to tell the American public to "stay the course." The course isn't working and it never will. You can't force democracy on people at the barrel of a gun. It's never happened in human history and there is no reason to believe that it will. Iraq is made up of highly fragmented cultural groups who, historically, have only been united for 60 years. And even that required a strong man. Despite all the evidence that the aims of the war have failed, the Republicans insist that we still kill our troops so that Bush and co. won't have to admit to lying to the public. Third, our military has been weakened due to Iraq. The military is too involved in Iraq to help elsewhere. World wide perception now reflects that the USA is fallible. Young men and women no longer want to join the military for fear that politicians will breach their trust and go to war when it is not absolutely neccessary. Every additional day in Iraq makes us that much weaker. Fourth, the Republicans deserve all of the blame for Iraq. Sure, the Democrats should have made a bigger stink, but even if they did, nothing would have changed. The Republicans controlled every branch of government, leaving Democrats with no power. Karl Rove and the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy orchestrated a climate of fear after 9-11 that destroyed anyone bold enough to stand up to the Bush administration. I fault the Democrats for making craven political decisions instead of taking the moral high ground and informing the American people as to the Republican Party's lies. However, the Democrats were in no position to prevent this war and all the blame lies with the GOP. When addressing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Vietnam war, 27-year old John Kerry famously asked "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" We need to ask that question today. It's clear that Bush and the Republicans lied to get us into this war. Our subsequent rationale -- that we fought the war to spread democracy -- is fradulent for two reasons: 1) The USA supports all sorts of dictators and 2) the USA is in no position to go to war with every country whose leaders committed the kinds of violations that Hussein committed. Considering the fact that the war is pointless, the Republicans are arguably committing homicide against our troops. The death has got to stop. The party that claims to be "pro-life" is really "pro-hypocrisy."