by James Glaser
February 2, 2004

We all know about how Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction were used to take us to war and how now they don't exist. We remember the President talking about Iraq trying to get processed uranium from a country in Africa and that his proof was childishly poor forgeries.

We can never forget Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, telling us that he knew right where those WMDs were, as did our Secretary of State, Colin Powell. To this day we watch and listen as Vice President Dick Cheney runs around the country still claiming Iraq has those weapons and still talks about the link between Saddam and al Qaeda, a link that even President Bush says is not there.

It isn't just the Bush Administration that is passing bad information, but those in Congress too. Senators and Representatives from both parties have been going to Iraq and every one of them come back with glowing reports about how much we are helping the Iraqi people and how things are better now than before the war. Water and electricity are claimed to be flowing at higher levels now, than before we attacked.

These same Congressmen and women claim that troop morale is high and that our service men and women feel that they are doing an important job defending America. Then we read in the Stars and Stripes that over 50% of the troops have morale problems, many don't know what they are doing there, and that over 600 of them have been evacuated from Iraq for psychological problems. It seems that every Congressman missed that report and they only talked to troops that were upbeat.

Now we are getting the Real story from people we can trust. I would have to say that most Americans would trust the word of a Catholic Bishop that just returned from Iraq and what Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton of Detroit said when he got back was that he was "shocked and discouraged" by what he saw on a recent visit to Baghdad.

In an article published in the National Catholic Reporter this past week, Bishop Gumbleton said, "I was overwhelmed with sadness over what is happening to the people of Iraq, and also to the US troops there." The Bishop's trip ended on Jan.22 and lasted eleven days.

Now here is what is so different with the Bishop's report and those in our government. The Bishop says, "Without exception, people said things were worse now than before the War." With unemployment approaching 60% and food supplies dwindling, ordinary Iraqis "Are humiliated and feel degraded" as they try to cope without electricity, telephones and in some places- running water.

Now don't you think our members of Congress could have done a better job checking out the country? You know after all the bad information that we got before the War, I would have to believe that the Bishop is telling the truth and that those members of Congress that went over there, only talked to the Iraqi people that our government wanted them to talk to. I am sure the people in the puppet government we have set up, the government that we put convicted felons in, have electricity and running water and I also bet those are the Iraqis that our government officials talked to.

Here is what the Bishop had to say about our government officials. He said US officials live and work in the Coalition Provisional Authority's compound nicknamed the "Dream Zone, " and some of their statements about improved conditions make it appear they never get out to see the reality ordinary people experience.

The Bishop and the rest of his group visited three hospitals, delivering medical supplies they had brought. Bishop Gumbleton said conditions were worst at the pediatric hospital, where there were shortages of medicines and no new equipment since before the Persian Gulf War of 1991. He said that the two Catholic hospitals, run by the Dominican Sisters, were better equipped, but still in need of supplies.

Now these next lines ring true to me. "The (American troops) we talked to don't understand what they're doing there, and they're always sitting ducks in danger of being killed. They don't speak the language, they don't understand what people are saying around them, and wouldn't know it if someone were warning them a car bomb was coming at them."

I believe that statement 100%, because it was the same way for me over in Vietnam. Yes, I went over there to defend America, but when I was there I could see that we were killing way more civilians, women and children, that we were the "enemy." In every one on one conversation that I have had with returning troops from Iraq, they tell me the same is true and that many, many Iraqi civilians are killed by panicked troops when a convoy is attacked in a city or town.

How can the Bishop's report and our government's reports be so different? Just from my experience in a combat zone and my years of talking to other veterans from many wars, I would have to say that our government is once again lying to us.

Remember this is an election year and Washington wants us to feel good about this war in Iraq. After Saddam Hussein was captured they started telling us that the number of attacks on our troops was going down and now we find out that January was the second deadliest month of the war for American troops.

This is getting bad! Who do we believe? It doesn't matter if they are Republicans or Democrats as most voted for this war. Both sides want their vote to look good. We screwed up, we made an unprovoked attack on a country we thought was an imminent threat to us and it wasn't. We have killed thousands and thousands of innocent Iraqi people to defend our Nation from what? That was the reason for this War, our National Defense. Washington framed the whole question about going to war around the "fact" that Iraq could attack us and now we find out they couldn't.

Over three thousand young Americans dead or wounded because of a lie or bad intelligence, either way it was a wrong for us to attack for the reasons we did.

Now Washington and even the President, is saying we deed an Independent Investigation about how we could have been so wrong about so many things dealing with Iraq. I say yes to the investigation, but let us include how so many in our government could keep feeding us false reports about what is happening in Iraq right now.

Sometimes those in power think it is for our good that they lie to us, but you know what, eventually we find out about those lies and so does the rest of the world. Credibility means a lot for a government and a nation and we are losing ours.