My Vocabulary Is Not Adequate To the Task As I Describe George Bush as Vile

by James Glaser
March 1, 2004

I didn't pick Vile out of the air; I gave it some real consideration. I thought about "ignominious" and "despicable," both would work, but Vile, really fills the bill so much better.

Vile— morally base, shamefully wicked. Despicable, vicious, loathsome, disgusting, degrading, ignominious, yes indeed, Vile, best describes our current President of the United States.

You see I get worked up when I read about how "Washington Conceals US Casualties in Iraq." This story was published by the Great Western Pacific Coastal Post and was written by David Walsh.

Walsh starts out with, "The Bush administration is deliberately concealing from the American people the numbers and condition of US military personal that have been wounded in Iraq." In the next six pages of the article he uses the "efforts by those few politicians and media figures who pursued the issue" to make this clear.

What causes this subject to make my blood boil is the fact that this isn't the first time the American people have been kept in the dark about our war casualties. In the first George Bush's War in Iraq, Washington kept telling us how few Americans were killed or wounded in the War. Today we know for a fact that way over 150,000 of those troops that served, are on permanent disability and well over 10,000 of our troops from that first Gulf War have died from what happened to them in the war zone. You have to bleed to get a Purple Heart, but biological and chemical weapons; either ours or theirs can kill and maim our troops as easily as a grenade or a machinegun.

Washington wants to keep the American public ignorant of our extremely high casualty rate, because they fear that many Americans will no longer wave that flag when their children are asked to serve in another war.

During World War II and Korea we did the same thing, but in Vietnam we had the war right on the television each and every night. Washington learned from that war being honest with the American people about the cost of a war, causes millions of citizens to take to the streets in protest.

That is not going to happen with our new George Bush. Honesty and George W. Bush will never be written into any history books together. This war in Iraq is George's War and he will do everything possible to keep the cost in blood of this war from being reported to us.

To get the whole story you will have to read David Walsh's investigation. It starts out with Daniel Zwerdling of National Public Radio trying to find out how many Americans have been wounded in Iraq. He called the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld's office and they told him to call US Central Command in Tampa Florida. Central Command told him Only Donald Rumsfeld's office would know the answer. A spokesman for the Army did tell him that by the end of 2003, 8,848 Army troops had been wounded seriously enough to be evacuated out of Iraq. Those were just Army troops, not Marines, Navy, or Air Force personnel.

Zwerdling asked Senator Chuck Hagel for some help. Senator Hagel is a Republican from Nebraska, a Vietnam Veteran, and former deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration. Hagel explained that he had been trying to obtain certain information from Secretary of Defense Rumsfled, including the "Total number of American battlefield casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. What is the official Pentagon definition of wounded in Action? What is the procedure for releasing this information in a timely way to the public and the criteria for awarding a Purple Heart?"

The Nebraska Senator received this reply to his questions, "the Department of Defense did not have the requested information."

In December, Mississippi Congressman Gene Taylor raised the possibility that the Pentagon was deliberately undercounting combat casualties.

In the November 5th edition of the Stars and Stripes it is noted that the Landstuhl military hospital in Germany had treated more than 7,000 injured and ill service members from Iraq. That is one hospital and that was almost four months ago. The Media now says that we have had less than three thousand wounded.

US Army Col. David Hackworth (retired) writes. "Even I... was staggered when a Pentagon source gave me a copy of a Nov.30 dispatch showing that since George W. Bush unleashed the dogs of war, our armed forces have taken 14,000 casualties in Iraq."

Lt.Col.Scott D. Ross of the US military's Transportation Command told Hackworth that as of Christmas his outfit had evacuated 3,255 battle injured casualties and 18,717 non battle injuries. That is a total of 21,972. Ross cautioned that his figure might include some of the same members counted more than once.

If you will think back a few months you will remember that many of these troops that were evacuated back to the States were treated very badly. "Once back in the US the injured are stored in dozens of military medical facilities around the country, their existence virtually ignored by the administration, their plight largely unreported by the media." UPI reported in October about how troops had to wait "weeks and months for proper medical help" at military facilities such as Fort Stewart in Georgia and were "being treated like dogs," according to one officer.

George W. Bush is the Commander in Chief for all American fighting men and women. These are "his troops" and it is George's responsibility to take care of them. George W. Bush is our President and it is also his responsibility to be honest with us about what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To cheat the American people with false and misleading information about our troops is so wrong. There is no reason for the Pentagon to keep us in the dark about this war. There is no reason for the Department of Defense to keep information from a United States Senator.

George Bush is destroying the trust that the American people have for their government and that is a vile.


BACK to the Politics Columns.