Helen Thomas

WASHINGTON -- It’s time for the American people to say to President Bush: “Mission accomplished! Stop bombing Iraq.”

In his last debate with Sen. John Kerry, the president said his plan for Iraq will succeed but “my opponent has got a plan of retreat and defeat in Iraq.”

So Bush intends to continue this senseless war which he cannot justify. Why?

Bush has run out of rationales for the invasion and occupation of a country that did no harm to us. The various reasons he listed for his belligerency have been discredited, one by one, forcing the administration to devise ever-new explanations that in turn are then proved phony or are just plain laughable.

When do the American people become outraged at this gross deception that has cost more than 1,100 American lives, wounded nearly 8,000 and killed thousands of Iraqis, including civilians, women and children?

Does a real leader take a country into an unjust war? Kerry, the Democratic challenger, has not said anything about retreating from Iraq. OK, to avoid any squeamishness, let’s not use that word -- let’s just leave, something the United States should do sooner rather than later. Wouldn’t it be better to save lives than to save face? Does anyone doubt that the United States is capable of bombing Iraq back to the Stone Age? But the more important question is: Would we have any of our dwindling honor left in this world if we did?

The president proudly proclaims we are not going to “cut and run” even if the sane thing to do is to cut our losses and save lives. Vietnam might be a useful model: We left Vietnam and are now fairly friendly with our former foes.

We will be even more diminished as a people if we continue this mayhem. Iraqis are dying for their own country. What are Americans dying for?

Can Americans really trust a president who misled them into war with false apocalyptic warnings and false expectations of what a defeated Iraq would be like?

The United States is on a bombing rampage that turns homes in Sunni-held cities into rubble. Is that the way the president believes he can spread freedom in the Middle East?

A withdrawal would be a signal to the world that we have recovered our sense of decency. President Bush said in the first debate with Kerry that Americans are giving their lives for a “worthy and noble” cause. It’s still unclear what that cause is.

We would be applauded for our humanity if we pulled out of Iraq. It would not be a sign of weakness -- it would be a sign of our moral strength to do the right thing.

It looks like the exact opposite is just around the corner. Abundant signs point to a major U.S. military onslaught for the lethal interval that begins after our Nov. 2 elections and ends with the Iraqi elections in late January. The slaughter is about to get worse. In World War II, rebels defending their own land were called the “resistance” and honored as heroes in their fight against the Germans and Vichy French puppets, as were the Yugoslav partisans who fought the Nazis.

Why wouldn’t the Iraqis also resist a continuing U.S. occupation? As Bush once said, “No one likes an occupier,” a rare instance of empathy by the president.

We invaded Iraq under the phony pretext that the United States was being threatened by Saddam Hussein, when it clearly was not, and that it had weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be non-existent.

In their latest grasping for a reason to attack, Bush & Co. are trying to sell their monumental mistake on the ground that Saddam had the “intention” of producing such weapons some day. Is that assumption worth one American life or anyone else’s?

I guess being president means you never have to say you were wrong or sorry.

But there is nothing to stop the American people from saying it. And they can do it best at the polls.

(c) 2004 Hearst Newspapers