Today In History: Civil War Begins; Bush Accuses Syria Of Harboring Iraqi Leaders

April 13, 2017, is the 103rd day of the year, with 262 days remaining. The moon is in a waning gibbous phase, with illumination at 95 percent.

George W. Bush accuses Syria of harboring fleeing Iraqi leaders

One Sunday in 2003, President George W. Bush accused Syria of harboring senior Iraqi official and possessing chemical weapons — but he didn’t threaten military force.

Nevertheless, it was the accusation that Iraq had such weapons that served as the Bush administration’s primary justification for America’s war there, and while American officials took caution in their claim that there were no talks of transitioning from the war in Iraq to a war with Syria, they also warned of unspecified consequences if Syria failed to learn from the Iraq war.

“Syria just needs to cooperate with us,” said Bush.

Speaking on news headlines that addressed disorder in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s defeat, the president was not surprised.

“Well, no kidding,” he said. “It is a situation that is chaos because Saddam created the conditions for chaos. It’s going to take a while to stabilize the country, but soon, there will be more stability; there’ll be more medicine; there’ll be food delivered over time.”

No weapons of mass destruction were discovered at the time of Hussein’s capture, and 14 years later after Bush’s accusation against Syria, the United States once again finds itself at the frontline of conflict with the Syrian Arab Republic, now under the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad, who has been in power for 17 years.

Civil War (1861-1865) rears its ugly head

It was the bloodiest four years in American history.

It began the night before on April 12 in 1861, but things were worse the morning after — 34 hours, to be exact. Confederate shore batteries, under the orders of Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, had opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay, and on April 13, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly equipped fort.

The ongoing conflict between north and south had been waged over the issue of slavery, and members of southern leadership had discussed a unified separation from the United States as early as 1858. Four years after the attack on Fort Sumter, the Confederacy was defeated — at the cost of 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers’ lives.

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Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons via César (user)