2000

"Since the war in Iraq began, an average of fifteen U.S. troops have been killed each week. That's more than two every single day. How many people realize that?" -From the post 2000 by The Cunning Realist.

Yesterday, we reached the 2000 United States' soldiers dead mark in the War in Iraq. This doesn't count the number of dead from other's countries' militaries, the number of U.S. soldiers injured or maimed, nor does it count the number of Iraqi civilians killed. Here is a quote from someone in the McGlaughlin Group recently:

""Okay, the human toll: U.S. military dead in Iraq, including suicides, 1,983; U.S. military amputeed, wounded, injured, mentally ill, all now out of Iraq, 47,400; Iraqi civilian dead, 117,100."

Now, conservative U.S. estimates put the Iraqi civilian dead closer to 30,000. However, estimates from groups outside the U.S. put it closer to the number in the quote. (The true number may never be fully known as so many were lost in the chaos.) Whatever the number, be it somewhere between 30,000 and 117,100, our actions and presence in Iraq has killed as many Iraqis as Saddam Hussien. We have lost any moral high ground we may have had.

Then again, there wasn't any to begin with as this war was started by lies of the Bush Administration. There were no weapons of mass destruction, Saddam had NO ties to Al Queda (the people who did attack us on Sept. 11), AND Iraq was at least a decade away from reconstituting any near a functional nuclear program. (Do a Google on "Iraq war lies" and you will see plenty of documented evidence that this war was a sham and has not made America safer.)

This war is despicable. The loss of our soldiers' lives, one of our countries greatest resources, is inexcusable. The fact that everything points that this adminstration had nothing close to a working plan for the war and after effects, as evidenced by the many CIA reports, and has yet to give an exit strategy is abominable. Yet, yesterday, President Bush said the following: "And the best way to honor the sacrifice of our fallen troops is to complete the mission and lay the foundation of peace by spreading freedom."

I'm sorry, but that is the biggest piece of bullshit logic I have ever heard in my life. "To honor the dead we shall send more of our solidiers to die in our ill-conceived, ill-planned and illegal war and not give them an exit strategy so there will be no forseeable end to the death in the future," is basically what Bush, and his cronies, are saying. (Sect. of State Condeleeza Rice said recently that she could not rule out that our soldiers may be fighting and dying in Iraq a decade from now. Tell me again how this isn't Vietnam repeated? Oh, sand instead of jungle.)

That is the exact logic that Nixon and Johnson used with regards to Vietnam and not "cutting and running." How many U.S. soldiers did we end up having killed? 58,226. I don't know off hand how many were wounded and came back "broken." Was that war worth the cost?

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. This war costs the U.S. 6 billlion dollars a month and an average of 2 soldiers lives a day. And for what? So we can have an Islamic controlled government installed? (If you read the Iraqi constitution, they are establishing that Islam be the foundation of the laws. Oh, what happened to the secular democracy like ours that we were helping to create.) So we can have a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites? So we can continue to fight an indigenious insurgency of people who didn't want us to be there in the first place? They didn't want the British there when they occupied and created Iraq in the 20's. Bush obviously didn't read his history about that. Nor did he read that invaders have always fought and lost in Iraq.

""Beyond the Euphrates began for us the land of mirage and danger, the sands where one helplessly sank, and the roads which ended in nothing. The slightest reversal would have resulted in a jolt to our prestige giving rise to all kinds of catastrophe; the problem was not only to conquer but to conquer again and again, perpetually; our forces would be drained off in the attempt." - Emperor Hadrian AD 117-138


Honor the sacrifice by sending more to die in a war that is wrong from all angles (wrong in reason, wrong in planning, and wrong in excution)? I'm sorry, but my country's soldiers are not to be used that way. They are too valuable! 2000 and climbing is too high a sacrifice for a president's lie. (Especially when that president jokes about not finding weapons of mass destruction. How dare you, Mr. Bush!!!)


P.S. Dad, I was incomplete in what I had said. President Bush is my "Nixon" AND my "Carter" times a thousand!