Something Isn’t Right Here

by James Glaser
November 10, 2004

I distinctly remember President Bush telling us this last month that everything was fine in Iraq. That was one of the major points in his campaign. He was reassuring America that his premise for going to war was sound and now that we were there, things were headed in the right direction. With tens of thousands of Iraqis trained to take over from our troops, democratic elections just months away, it almost seemed like the end was near.

Today, almost twenty months from the start of the war and a little over eighteen months since Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech, we are having maybe the biggest battle of the war in the city of Fallujah.

Antiwar.com reports that 16 of our soldiers have been killed in the battle so far and as usual, we know many have been wounded, but they won't tell us how many. I keep hearing about the thousand troops who have been killed so far in this war, but the real number is 1147. Most reports put the number of American troops wounded, between 8,200 and 12,000.

United Press International (UPI) reports, "1 of every 10 soldiers from the war on terror evacuated to the Army's biggest hospital in Europe was because of mental problems." Between 8 and 10 percent of nearly 12,000 soldiers from the war on terror, mostly from Iraq, treated at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany had "psychiatric or behavioral health issues," according to the commander of the hospital, Col.Rhonda Cornum.

That means about 1,000 soldiers were evacuated for mental problems. UPI reports, "The hospital has treated 11,754 soldiers from the war on terror, with 9,651 from Iraq and the rest from Afghanistan.

What we have to remember is that this is just one American hospital. We have no idea of how many troops were sent to others.

I don't know what the true number is, but George Bush was wrong last year when he said that the mission was accomplished and he was wrong again this last month when he said things were going good in Iraq. Today we have thousands of Soldiers and Marines fighting a battle in the middle of a city filled with innocent civilians.

More of our troops are being killed and wounded every day. Remember those Iraqi troops we trained? Well they are walking away as fast as they can and in droves. Now Clerics from Fallujah have called those Iraqi troops we trained the "occupiers lash on their fellow countrymen." These Clerics, talking to these Iraqi troops have said, "We swear by God that we will stand against you in the streets, we will enter your houses and we will slaughter you like sheep."

Things are not going good in Iraq. Bush and the Pentagon are doing everything they can to start a blood bath of a civil war and it is working. Yes, we will take Fallujah, but we won't rid the country of terrorists. What we are doing, is we are making more and more Iraqis into patriots who will join the ranks of the insurgents trying to throw us out of their country.

George Bush and his administration have either been lying to us or they are out and out stupid. You can't destroy a city bigger than Minneapolis and expect the innocent people who live there to work with you after. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been displaced by this attack and over 100,000 innocent people are now prisoners in the middle of a battle.

Twenty months into this War and we are still stumbling around with no plan for peace and no exit plan for our troops, but the Defense contractors are making billions.


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