By a few, of course you mean 49 nations. Of course when you're just making up things it makes your point look more valid if you just say a few.
Great fake and expensive Coalition that sure was !
Iraq War critics such as
John Pilger have pointed out that the vast majority of troops provided came from the U.S. and Britain and is therefore accurately described as a predominantly Anglo-American force rather than as a coalition.
Salon.com columnist Laura McClure, noting the large amounts of
foreign aid being offered in exchange for supporting the Iraq War, referred to Bush's coalition as the "Coalition of the billing".
[8]
In the second debate in
2004 U.S. presidential election,
Democratic presidential candidate
John Kerry questioned the size of the coalition participating in the initial invasion, saying, "...when we went in, there were three countries:
Great Britain,
Australia and the
United States. That's not a grand coalition. We can do better". Bush responded by saying, "Well, actually, he forgot Poland. And now there's 30 nations involved, standing side by side with our American troops". The phrase "
You forgot Poland" subsequently became a sarcastic shorthand for the perception that most members of the coalition were not contributing much to the war effort compared to the main three allies. The majority of the population in most countries involved did not, according to surveys, support the endeavour or their nation's participation.
[9]
Late
U.S. Senator Robert Byrd, then ranking
Democrat on the
Senate Appropriations Committee, referred to the coalition formed for the
2003 invasion of Iraq by the
acronym COW, expressing his concern that the United States was being "milked" as a "
cash cow".
A
Canadian Members of Parliament,
Carolyn Parrish, referred to the "Coalition of the Willing" as the "Coalition of the Idiots". She was reprimanded for these comments, and was eventually removed from the
Liberal Party of Canada caucus following a long-standing dispute with Prime Minister
Paul Martin over policy.
The list of coalition members provided by the White House included several nations that did not intend to participate in actual military operations. Some of them, such as
Marshall Islands,
Micronesia,
Palau and
Solomon Islands, do not have standing armies.
The government of one country, the
Solomon Islands, listed by the White House as a member of the coalition, was apparently unaware of any such membership and promptly denied it.
Some of them, such as Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau and Solomon Islands, do not have standing armies. However, through the Compact of Free Association, citizens the Marshall Islands, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia are guaranteed US national status and therefore are allowed to serve in the US military.
In December 2008,
University of Illinois Professor Scott Althaus reported that he had learned that the
White House was editing and back-dating revisions to the list of countries in the coalition.
[5][6] Althaus found that some versions of the list had been entirely removed from the record, and that others contradicted one another, as opposed to the procedure of archiving original documents and supplementing them with later revisions and updates