5 Years, 4,000 U.S. Dead and One Million Iraqi Dead – Mission
Still Not Accomplished
By Jack
Neworth
Last month marked the 5th
anniversary of the Iraq war. That’s a year and a half longer than WW2, but
the news is back to business as usual which means in-depth coverage of stories
like Ashley Dupre (Eliot Spitzer’s call girl) being offered a million
dollars to pose nude in “Hustler Magazine.” What a country.
The trend of the networks reporting on
stories as much for ratings as for news, goes back to when the decision that
news divisions had to show a profit. Today the networks have concluded that
after five years the war in Iraq doesn't get rating. Instead they feed us clips
of Dick Cheney suddenly claiming the war is a success. (Keep in mind Cheney
also said the troops would be “greeted as liberators” and the
insurgency was in its “last throes.”) Last month, when told by a
reporter that 2/3 of the country is against the war, Cheney said rather
contemptuously, “So?” (As in do you think I give a
sh*t?)
The truth is when Bush and
Cheney brag about the “success of the surge” it only confirms the
total failure of the previous four years. General Eric Shinseki warned congress
that we’d need two hundred thousand troops but Donald Rumsfeld dismissed
it as “absurd” and essentially Shinseki was forced to retire. (If
only it had been the other way around.) Rummy, another neo-con genius, proudly
predicted the war would last “six days, or six weeks but certainly no
longer than six months.”
John
McCain is another one. Last year he declared a bustling Baghdad marketplace was
evidence that Iraqis could “shop freely.” (At the time McCain was
wearing a bulletproof vest, surrounded by soldiers and Blackhawk helicopters.)
This year the military informed him that he couldn’t visit the marketplace
as it was more dangerous than last year! Some surge.
Lately people are referring to McCain
as “McBush,” especially after a press conference in March where he
charged the Iranians with training Al Queda. (The two have only been enemies
for 1400 years.) Panicked, Senator Liberman covertly whispered into
McCain’s ear and the Senator sheepishly corrected himself.
The wheels are coming off the straight
talk express. Not long ago McCain said, “If there were no casualties
Americans would support the war.” No casualties? Hello? We’re at
4011 (3872 since “Mission Accomplished”) with 30,000 wounded, record
suicides and PTSD cases possibly in the hundreds of thousands when this
occupation is all said and done. If it’s ever “all said and
done.”
One of the many
rationales for the war was to bring democracy to Iraq. Five years later we
can’t even bring electricity. It seems like only yesterday Paul Wolfowitz
said Iraq had “no ethnic strife and had vast oil revenues to pay for the
reconstruction.” What happened to those oil revenues? One-third are
siphoned off through corruption and actually fuels the insurgency.
To mark the fifth anniversary of the
war last month I visited the Arlington West Memorial north of the Santa Monica
pier. A project of Veterans for Peace, every Sunday volunteers erect a memorial
on the beach. Along with bulletin boards featuring photos of the wounded and
biographies of the fallen, the beach is covered with white crosses, each
representing a soldier’s death. In the center is a row of flag-draped
coffins which indicate how many GIs have died since the past Sunday. (Thanks to
Bush Sr. we’re not allowed to see the real coffins. What do you think this
is, a democracy?)
When I gaze at the
endless rows of crosses, or read about the fallen soldiers, young men and women
whose lives had barely started, it breaks my heart. I don’t know how the
volunteers find the strength to come back each week, but they do. They start at
4 A.M. grooming the beach and setting up the crosses. During a typical day
thousands of people will view the memorial. Around sunset the volunteers take
everything down, only to repeat the process the next Sunday. (To see the website
go to: Arlingtonwestsantamonica.org. Be sure to click on “Winter’s
Soldiers,” the GI’s actual accounts of the
occupation.)
Last month after
examining 600,000 documents from Iraq, the Pentagon concluded there was no
operational link between Sadaam Hussein and Al Queda. (Now they tell us.) Even
more offensive was the Gridiron Club Dinner in D.C. in March where George Bush
had the unbelievably poor taste to joke about missing WMDs. Given the loss of
life and destruction, I don’t see the humor. Impeaching Bush on the other
hand could be good for a few
laughs.
The fifth anniversary of the
war has come and gone. I wonder if most Americans even care? I worry that for
many a bigger question is will Ashley Dupre pose for Hustler?
Posted: Tue - April 1, 2008 at 08:14 PM
