by James Glaser
January 6, 2005

I must admit Washington has been real good at keeping everything low key so that this War in Iraq doesn't start looking like it is something big. Sure they eased in another 12,000 troops over Christmas to get us to 150,000 with boots on the ground, but who really knows how many sailors are on station or how many fly boys are coming out of Kuwait. You have to know with the billions and billions of dollars they are spending every month or hey, every week now, they are doing something big over there.

The Pentagon has this neat way of hiding casualties. They let the reports of wounded sit on some desk for a couple of weeks and then lay out about 250 of them in one bunch, so we don't know where or when the big battles happen. Now they won't even tell us when a Marine is killed in Fallujah, because they already claimed that that battle is over and if it is over, how come guys keep getting killed there? So, they tell us that the Marine was killed in Anbar Province, west of Baghdad.......Which is where Fallujah happens to be, but they avoid the name Fullajah.

George Bush's War in Iraq started on March 19th 2003 and on average, every day, day in and day out, 18 American Soldiers or Marines are killed or wounded. The real average works out to 2.04 killed per day and 15.58 wounded per day. Of course with the ban on showing flag draped caskets coming home on the news and never a number of wounded given on any day, this war doesn't seem so bad.

Intermixed with these figures are the stories about this couple of, or that one Soldier or Marine getting killed in Afghanistan, where Bush's other war is still taking American lives.

Here are some reasons to start believing that this war is bigger than Washington lets on. First of all, we have now deployed over 1,000,000 troops to Iraq for some time in the country. Some of those troops have gone twice now and some are on their third tour. Isn't there some saying about, Pushing Your Luck? Also there is the Stop-Loss policy the Army instituted after George Bush signed an executive order that authorized the Pentagon to involuntarily extend military service personal on active duty "For not more than 24 consecutive months." That is called a Back Door Draft.

The Corvallis Gazette-Times writes on January 3, 2005 "President Bush said repeatedly during his re-election campaign that there would be no military draft in his second term, but if a soldier who has completed his term of service and returned to civilian life is forced back onto the battlefield, how is that anything other than a draft, forcing involuntary servitude?" The Gazette writes that because the Pentagon is doing just that. The Pentagon is now taking people who are back in civilian life, their time in the military is all done and they are ordered to report for active duty. Richard Nixon abolished the draft in 1973.

A President from Bush's own party Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which made involuntary servitude illegal as of January 1. 1863. Who knew that President Bush would overturn the acts of two Republican Presidents? We claim we have an all-volunteer military, but try quitting. Now even after you have done your time honorably and you are home in a new civilian job or are using those college funds they talked you into the service for, you still can't say that you are a civilian again, because they can come and get you for years after.

This involuntary extension of your active duty service, this Stop-Loss policy, and the Call Back of former Soldiers and Marines all point to the fact that George Bush has us in a really big war that he and his administration are doing everything they can to keep quiet about it. We better hope and pray that we don't need troops for anywhere else, because we don't have any to send.