Bill Berkowitz / WorkingForChange – 2004-11-13 00:42:20
http://www.workingforchange.com/column_lst.cfm?AuthrId=1
“Eight Marines Killed in Iraq; Seven Dead in Baghdad Blast” Associated Press, Saturday, October 30, 2004
“US Has Killed 100,000 in Iraq: The Lancet” Informed Comment (Juan Cole), Friday, October 29, 2004
(November 1, 2004) — Here is what we know that we know about President Bush’s permanent War against terrorism and his War in Iraq:
• We know that Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein in power;
• We know, however, that the world is not safer since his removal;
• We know that the War in Iraq was sold to the American public as a “cakewalk” and a war that could be conducted in the cheap;
• We know that the war in Iraq was marketed through weapons of mass deception — there weren’t any stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein had no connection to 9/11, and Iraq had no relationship with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist network;
• We know, according to a recent speech by former CIA director George Tenet, that the CIA “did not live up to our expectations as professionals” regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the search for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq;
• We know that a recent report prepared by the Democratic staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee charges the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith with compiling “selective reinterpretations of intelligence,” distorting the views of American spy agencies in order to help make the case for an invasion of Iraq;
• We know that the president thought that US forces would be greeted as liberators and they weren’t;
• We know — from comments recently made by the Rev. Pat Robertson — that in a February 2003 meeting with Robertson, the president wouldn’t acknowledge the possibility that there could be major US casualties in Iraq;
• We know that post-war planning was woefully inadequate;
• We know that US troops have been ill-equipped from the beginning of the occupation;
• We know that there are more than 1,100 US service men and women dead, and thousands more wounded who will never be the same;
• We know, according to the British medical journal The Lancet, that perhaps as many as 100,000 Iraqis have been killed since the US invasion;
• We know from recent remarks made by US military officials that the Iraqi insurgency has more fighters, is better financed, and is better equipped that the Bush Administration has led the American people to believe;
• We know that the President’s re-election campaign has been built around the oft-repeated and fear-mongering mantra “We are fighting the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and in other parts of the world so we do not have to fight them in the streets of our own cities” (President Bush to the Troops in Fort Carson, Colorado, November 2003);
• We know that America is no safer now than it was on September 10, 2001.
For more of what we know about the Bush Administration see, “100 Facts and 1 Opinion: The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041108&s=facts by Judd Legum, The Nation
For more please see the Bill Berkowitz archive http://www.workingforchange.com/column_lst.cfm?AuthrId=1
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