While Washington Continues Its Role, as the “Merchants of Death”

by James Glaser
June 14, 2004

In Washington, the Bush administration is telling the world that we are winning the War on Terrorism. That is, they are telling us that, until someone questions their assessment of that war.

Sunday, Secretary of State Colin Powell had to admit to the nation, that the report showing terrorism was on the decline with George Bush as President, was a "Big Mistake."

Powell said it was "Very embarrassing." I am not a happy camper over this. We were wrong."

Of course like so many other lies coming out of the Bush administration, the impact of this lie has already taken effect. The nation has listened to politician after politician, touting the State Department's April 29th report on the amount of Terror attacks in 2003. The Bush administration has used this report as proof that their policies are working.

Now Colin Powell didn't all of a sudden think Hey, this report is wrong, I better tell the American people about it. No, he only came clean after Congressman Henry Waxman of California challenged the findings. But the damage has already been done and many Americans believe that there is less terror in the world and that isn't true, but that lie did make George look good, too bad Waxman questioned the report.

There are Bush reelection TV ads out claiming we are winning his War on Terror because of this report.

While American Soldiers and Marines continue to get killed and maimed every day in Iraq, the Bush administration is now telling us that things are going well in that war. The truth is that Iraq is in a state of chaos.

Sunday a car-bomber killed a dozen people near a US garrison in Baghdad and gunman assassinated an Iraqi official from the Ministry of Education. There was also a rocket attack on US Headquarters in Baghdad and a US helicopter crashed.

Also on Sunday, an American Soldier was killed and two others wounded in an ambush near Taji. The suicide car-bombing was the 15th so far this month, On Saturday, Deputy Foreign Minister, Bassam Salih Kubba was shot to death as he drove to work. According to CBS News, he played a lead role in forming the new Iraq Government.

On top of all of this, a rocket hit US Administrator, L. Paul Breamer's office building in the "Green Zone," While at the same time, Iraq's Chief of Border Police, Maj.Gen.Hussein Mustafa was wounded.

Some Washington news Papers had new torture pictures and it is now reported that orders for torture came from the General in charge of Iraq. These are the things reported. When American troops kill la kid or a whole family, they never tell us about that. When Iraqis kill Iraqis, we don't hear about that unless some of those people worked for us and an American reporter found out about it. On slow news days we hear more about what happens to the average person in Iraq, but when Americans are killed or wounded, there isn't time to tell about the Iraqi civilians.

A couple of stories that you probably won't read about, is that this weekend Iraqi Police Maj.General Majeed Almani Mahal was wounded in an ambush in Baqouba 40 miles northeast of Baghdad. In Kirkuk, a cleric, Lyad Khorshid, was killed on Saturday. On Sunday another car-bomb exploded near a civilian convoy guarded by US Troops and one Iraqi civilian was hurt.

Even after a blood filled weekend like this one, George Bush can smile and say that things are looking up for the Iraqi people.

According to Dan Morgan of the Associated Press, Congress is going to pass a Defense Bill that will have us spending over one trillion dollars in the next decade on "an arsenal of futuristic planes, ships, and weapons with little direct connection to the Iraq war or the Global War on Terrorism"

That should surprise no one. The United States has sold more weapons to more countries than any other nation. That is the way that many rich Americans get richer. We have wars as proving grounds for new weapons systems.

The United States, our country, sells more small arms to small countries and we sell more sophisticated weapons to rich countries that any one else. We have a whole class of people that make their fortune, by providing the means to kill other people.

You and I, the American tax payer, provide all the money for the research and development of new weapons systems. We even start wars so these people have a market to sell their product. We say that we have these wars to bring freedom and liberty to other countries, but if that was true, all you would have to do is count all of our wars and you would see that the world should be free by now. All the weapons that have been used to kill our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were either provided to those countries by our government or we gave those governments the money needed to buy them.

When we give a country like Iraq or Afghanistan or even Israel billions of dollars in aid, which frees up their money to buy our weapons, we fool no one but ourselves. The rest of the world knows what we are doing, only the American public is in the dark. Washington can pretend that they are helping each of these countries, while already rich American Arms Merchants get richer.

I would have to say that those in Washington who get us into war and those who sell those weapons to other countries are helping to kill our Soldiers and Marines as much as the people pulling the trigger on one of the weapons we provided them with.