by Jimmy Breslin / Newsday –
http://www.newsday.com
(September 23, 2003) — George Bush won’t mention the names below in today’s speech, nor will your gullible news and television people — the Pekinese of the Press.
Therefore we print promptly and thus prominently the names of American soldiers killed in Iraq and reported from Sept. 9 to Sept. 19:
• Spc. Ryan G. Carlock, 25, 416th Transportation Co., 260 Quartermaster Battalion (Petroleum Support), Hunter Army Airfield, Ga. Died in attack on truck Sept. 10. Home: Macomb, Ill.
• Staff Sgt. Joe Robsky, 31, 759 Ordnance Co., Fort Irwin, Calif. Home is a mobile home park trailer in Elizaville, N.Y. Died in Baghdad while trying to defuse a homemade bomb on Sept. 10. He volunteered for this duty because he didn’t want children killed by land mines.
• Sgt. Henry Ybarra III, 32, D Troop, 6th Squadron, 6th Cavalry. Home: Austin, Texas. Died when truck tire exploded, Sept. 11.
• Marine Sgt. Kevin N. Morehead, 33, 3rd Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group. Home: Little Rock, Ark. Died of wounds received when raiding enemy forces.
• Sgt. 1st Class William M. Bennett, 35, 3rd Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group, of Seymour, Tenn. Died of wounds in same raid on Sept. 12 in Ramadi.
• Sgt. Trevor A. Blumberg, 22, lst Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne, Fort Bragg, N.C. Home: Canton, Mich. Died in attack on his vehicle in Baghdad on Sept. 14.
• Staff Sgt. Kevin C. Kimmerly, 31, 4th Battalion, 27th Field Artillery Regiment, North Creek, N.Y. Killed when his vehicle was hit by rocket-propelled grenade while on patrol in Baghdad Sept. 15.
• Spc. Alyssa R. Peterson, 27, 311 Military Intelligence Battalion, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky. Home: Flagstaff, Ariz. Died of wounds on Sept. 15 at Tel Afar.
• Spc. James C. Wright, 27, Fourth Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. Home: Delhi Township, Ohio. Died when vehicle hit by rocket-propelled grenade during ambush near Tikrit on Sept. 18.
George Bush told lies and they died.
First, your government lied to ensure Bush’s re-election. Who votes against a president in time of war? And even better, you get oil with the winning election.
So Bush lied to you. Not misstatements. Lies. He and his people threw away their honor and consciences to lie to the people they had sworn to protect.
The lies of Washington put young men from Seymour, Tenn., and Maspeth, Queens and Palos Hills, Ill., into boxes. And that, dear reader, is quite a lie.
At the start, Bush claimed that Iraq had poison gas and was making nuclear weapons. Soon, they will poison us all and blow us up. His proof was documents forged by elementary-school pupils. Still, Bush used it in his State of the Union speech. Condoleezza Rice said it was only 23 words in a speech. What are you so concerned about?
The 23 words were only about nuclear bombs.
Look now at the lie that George Bush carries into the United Nations today:
We went into Iraq because they were part of the World Trade Center attack.
That’s what they told you, and Americans, who honor their government, believed what their government told them. And so did all those young people as they were about to put up their lives in the desert.
On Oct. 14, 2002, Bush said, “This is a man [Saddam] that we know has had connections with al-Qaida. This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al-Qaida as a forward army.”
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, on Sept. 26, 2002, “Yes, there is a linkage between al-Qaida and Iraq.”
Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said on Sept. 25, 2002, “There have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of al-Qaida going back for actually quite a long time.”
They knew exactly what they were saying and what it would do. It was using a Big Lie in an age of screens and faxes. What did you think it was, a government telling you the truth? Why should they do that?
At summer’s end, suspicions rose. It was time to change the lie before it became a liability. How do you do that? By using the ultimate con: telling the truth.
Here in the world of professional lying is how you use the truth to defuse a lie when it becomes dangerous to keep: Suddenly, Donald Rumsfeld on Sept. 16 announced, “I’ve not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.”
That same day, Condoleezza Rice jumped up and chirped, “And we have never claimed that Saddam Hussein had either … direction or control of 9/11. What we’ve said is that this was someone who supported terrorists, helped train them.”
And then the next day, George Bush said, “There’s no question that Saddam Hussein has al-Qaida ties. We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11 attacks.”
So the three now say that they never said that Hussein was involved in the World Trade Center attack. Look up what we said. We never said it.
Of course they did. Anybody who thinks they didn’t is a poor fool. Take a half-word out of a sentence, replace it with a smug smile or chin motion and the meaning is there. Saddam was in on the Trade Center with bin Laden. Of course Bush and his people said it. Then go to the whip, go to the truth.
Only the strong memory is an opponent, and there are few of them. Otherwise, the only thing that can remind people and maybe even inflame them are these dead bodies coming back from Iraq to Heber, Calif. They arrive here in silence. We have no idea of how many wounded are in government hospitals with no arms or legs. You never hear Bush talking about them. He often acts as if subjects like this have nothing to do with him.
