"In the world which is upside down, the true is a moment of the false."
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| rock and roll means fuck "In the world which is upside down, the true is a moment of the false." |
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Tuesday, February 03, 2004 where is the outrage? what the hell is wrong with a nation that can apparently freak the fuck out over a second or two of an exposed breast (moments after kid rock turns an american flag into a poncho and 'raps' while girls in hotpants wave really large flags behind him) but seem to all but fucking mum about the rationale for this godawful war finally being shown to be a sham? of course, to anyone paying attention, it's been exposed as a sham since before the bullets began to fly. whatever. better late than never. but there seems to be damned little commotion out there. think about how these people must feel. Imagine that you are the parent, or the brother or sister, or the wife, husband or child of a young man or woman killed in Iraq - one of the 138 who died in the march on Baghdad, or one of the 384 who have died there since May 1, when major combat was pronounced over. Imagine, for that matter, that your loved one is among the almost 3,000 men and women who have been wounded in Iraq since the war began - many of whom will forever bear their horrible injuries as a reminder of where they were and why. The why of it was torn apart last week. .... Imagine how the loved ones of the dead may feel as they watch the spectacle of political jockeying over who should take the blame for a war being started on the basis of flawed intelligence, over whether there will be an investigation, and over the effect the timing of such an investigation may have on Bush's campaign to get himself re-elected. If I were such a parent, or spouse, or child, or wounded soldier, I expect my fury would be visceral and overwhelming. I would not let these men forget what they had done to my family. Blood is on their hands. Beyond those Americans who have lost - and continue to lose - relatives and friends in the war in Iraq, the rest of America should be appalled. For what the architects of the war in Iraq have done to individual families, they also have done to the whole American family, diminishing the nation's dignity and stature, and its safety. .... Plenty of voices were raised against going to war - including from the intelligence community. Plenty of voices - including some high-ranking Iraqis ---said there were no WMD anymore. United Nations inspectors in Iraq thought Hussein might be hiding something, but they wanted more time to find out for sure. Many, many voices were raised against the notion of a tie between Hussein and al-Qaida. But these voices were ignored - even ridiculed - in the Bush administration's gathering momentum for war. The U.N. inspectors - ironically a chief source of U. S. intelligence on what weapons Hussein still might have - were withdrawn. There was no more time as far as Bush was concerned. The facts as presented to them were conclusive and could not be doubted. Bush and his people could not wait to bring it on. And bring it on they did. They surged all the way to Baghdad without encountering a single milligram of poison gas, anthrax or any other element of the vile stash Hussein was supposed to have. And they still haven't found any. The brutal dictator's statue was hauled down in the center of Baghdad. The president of the United States stood in his flyboy suit beneath a sign proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," and basked in the glory of it all. But America was now trapped in Iraq, unprepared for the war's aftermath. It is a complex and deadly trap. The war on terrorism, meanwhile, was emphatically not over. Underlying the mess was the ugly suspicion that the only people to get any lasting benefit from the war will be Bush's friends with multibillion dollar contracts. if ever there was a time to hold these evil fucks accountable, to demand answers, it's now. apathy is not an option. indifference is an insult to those who are stuck over there and to those who aren't coming back. even mitch albom, usually somewhat of a wanker, is callin' america out: Shrugging is not an option. You can blame the CIA and demand an investigation or you can blame President George W. Bush and demand his accountability. But you cannot shrug. You cannot walk away. You cannot say, "Oops." Not unless you're the kind of person who sees a dead man in the street and steps over him. .... The most stunning sound in America last week was silence -- an echoing silence after chief weapons inspector David Kay, a man put in charge by the president, announced that he could not find any of the biggest reasons we went to war in Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction. He used four simple words. "We were all wrong." That sentence should have brought down the walls. Wrong? You can be wrong when you project interest rates. But when your intelligence says bombs, vials, gasses and poisons, and the truth is a lot of empty holes, and you kill thousands of people and lose hundreds of your own and cost this generation maybe the next hundreds of billions of dollars, well, that's not a small mistake. You don't just shrug it off. .... But "we were all wrong." And a lot of people died for it. And it is not unpatriotic to demand an accounting. On the contrary: It's the most American thing you can do. You may feel the intelligence let the president down. The CIA misled him. Fine. Then how could he not demand an independent inquiry? What about the next international crisis? Don't we want to be right? And if you feel that the buck stops at the White House, then doesn't Bush owe America an explanation? Doesn't he owe something to the families who lost loved ones in combat -- and who lose more every day? It's this simple, folks: one or the other. You can't choose "Oh, well." someone put it very simply the other day: "three words: chickens. home. roost." it's time to demand answers. answers now, not next year and not from some toothless panel hand picked by the fox himself. that will only happen if the american people insist most vociferously upon it. i'm not optimistic. stephen malkmus and the jicks: "animal midnight" "sacrifice for you is just flirtation and friendship a cold convenience. i wonder sometimes what you're made of. is it rayon or is it dust?" posted by downtown | 1:35 AM |
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Cost of the War in Iraq
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