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Al Jazeera (English)
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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

Saddam Sideshow Obscures Reality
(David B. Livingstone, AlterNet, December 14, 2003)
It's worth wondering what we all might be paying attention to this particular Sunday morning were it not for this "triumph of American intelligence." . . . at least some would have been riveted by a lower-profile but no less interesting news item, one that surely would have been a hot topic on "Meet The Press": the Halliburton overcharges. . . . Remember? Just a day or two earlier, Halliburton, the company whose former leader just happens to be Vice President Cheney [who to this day continues to receive over $100,000 each year as a paycheck from Halliburton!] and which had the good fortune to get a fat billion-dollar no-bid Iraq reconstruction contract, was being excoriated by the Pentagon for some $60 million worth of inflated invoices. The malodorous stench of corruption was beginning to seep out of the hermetically sealed Bush bubble, and things were beginning to look a bit bleak for the administration on the homeland propaganda front. . . . But as if on cue, along comes assistance from that most unlikely of sources. America's boogeyman Saddam Hussein rides in to save the day, replete with appropriately bedraggled appearance and whipped-cur onscreen manner, just in time to deflect all eyes from a good hard look at the character of the man serving as their Commander In Chief. . . . Away with all of those tough questions about fraud and sweetheart insider deals. The photo-ops and soundbites from this one may go a long way toward overcoming that "mission accomplished" gaffe. . . . In the public eye, maybe. In reality, not by a long shot. A telling detail, somewhat glossed over in the television coverage, is the underwhelming response to Saddam's capture from the Iraqis themselves. . . . For them, the issue stopped being Saddam months ago. For the Iraqi people, the issue is now American occupation and the incontrovertible fact of America's failure to bring peace, stability and democracy to the country it destroyed – not to mention its failure to justify doing so in the first place. . . . Besides the tough questions surrounding Halliburton that will now go unasked in the tide of Saddamania, there are other compelling issues which this glorious victory seems destined to sweep under the carpet. Where are those WMDs, anyway? How many civilians have we actually killed? Why are American service personnel still coming home in body bags, or with limbs missing? . . . And, given that the pre-war justifications for an attack have been systematically dismantled and discredited ad nauseum – no ties to 9/11, no nuclear program, no chemical weapons, no anything – why have we sacrificed our global credibility, the goodwill of much of the world, and hundreds of U.S. soldiers in the hellhole that Iraq has become? If the Bush administration has its way, the world may never know.

posted by LoZo 5:16 PM