US Troop Death Toll Surpasses 9/11; Saddam Appeal Rejected.

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A sad milestone was passed on Tuesday: The 2,980th U.S. soldier was killed in Iraq, surpassing the 2,975 Americans killed on 9/11.

I found something more than a little unsettling about that statistic… beyond the obvious nausea of lives wasted in an unnecessary war I objected to even before it began.

No, the “disconcerting” uneasiness I get from that statistic is the implication that Iraq and 9/11 are somehow connected. I mean, we don’t compare two other unrelated stats to one another anywhere else. The number of people killed by sharks in Alabama each year is equal to the number of people killed by alligators in South Carolina each year, but you never hear anyone comparing those two statistics to each other because no one perceives any link between the two. So why do we still talk about Iraq in the context of 9/11?

The implication appears to be that “attacking Iraq is… in some way… a direct result of 9/11.” Yet we have known for quite some time that the Bush Administration planned to invade Iraq from the day they entered office. So why do we continue to link Iraq and 9/11?

Because the Bush Administration does. Even to this day, they continue to suggest that “invading Iraq was necessary” before “Saddam could give (additional) support to our enemies.” They suggested he’d give them weapons… which he didn’t have. They suggested he’d give them financial assistance… though we’ve long known Osama bin Laden is an heir to the bin Laden Family construction fortune, worth anywhere from two to 200 million dollars. So they didn’t need his money. Maybe he might supply training, which has been sufficiently debunked to all but the most deep-in-denial neocons for whom “Salman Pak” has become the “grassy knoll” of the 21st century. So why don’t we take more notice when the media nonchalantly compares anything Iraq related to 9/11? Hey, EVEN I did it. I too fell victim to the Iraq/911 analogy fallacy when I first heard the latest gruesome body count. The ONLY connection between the two should be the notion that it is YET ANOTHER 3,000 DEAD AMERICANS AS A DIRECT RESULT OF THIS ADMINISTRATIONS INCOMPETENCE. Period, end of story.

The next big announcement: The Iraqi court denied Saddam Hussein’s appeal, and the war crime for which he was convicted… the massacre of 148 Shi’ite Muslims in the city of Du’jail after a failed assassination attempt, will stand, and he is to be hanged 30 days from now for that crime… just in time for Bush’s 2007 State of the Union Address (he was first convicted the day before the November election, and his appeal took just long enough so that the Bush Administration could squeeze just a *little more* juice out of that PR turnip).

The White House has been pointing to the Du’jail massacre as clear evidence why Saddam deserves all that has befallen him. Yet, back in 1983, his crime didn’t seem to bother the Reagan Administration much, sending “Special Envoy Donald Rumsfeld” to Iraq to meet with close U.S. ally Saddam Hussein a mere 18 months after that very massacre. Is it just me, or does it seem INCREDIBLY disingenuous to condemn someone for something you turned a blind eye to 25 years earlier?

And now he is to be hanged for that very same crime in time for George W. Bush to brandish it as some sort of pathetic “proof” that it’s all been worth it: the 3,000 dead soldiers (tens of thousands more permanently disabled), $455 Billion dollar pricetag and counting, Iraq embroiled in Civil War, without a “face saving” Exit Strategy in sight.

The question every American needs to be asking: “Was it worth it?” Only those deepest in denial could possibly say yes (even the NeoCon HQ, “Project for the New American Century” (PNAC) has been reduced to a voicemail box and cobweb-site that is no longer being updated).

PostScript: As I type this, the passing of former President Gerald R. Ford has just been reported. It was under Ford that Dick Cheney rose to prominence as the youngest Chief of Staff in history (age 35), brought in by his friend Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The ouster of Nixon and loss of the war in Vietnam ate away at these two, champing at the bit (yes, the correct term is “champing”, not “chomping”) for a second chance to “prove Nixon right”. President Ford deserves two big kudos in this respect: one, for not allowing Frick & Frack to hijack his domestic and foreign policy… Ford, rather than follow the road of the three Presidents’ before him, recognized the fact that Vietnam was “unwinable“, simply declared victory, and pulled the troops out of Vietnam. That took guts. His second great “achievement” requires the blessing of hindsight: his pardoning of Richard Nixon and allowing the United States to “move on” rather than endure the International spectacle of putting a former President on trial. Nixon was already gone, and (unlike Bush), his crime did not cost any lives. The country (IMHO) was better served by Ford’s pardon of Nixon than wasting the remainder of his Presidency putting the former President on trial.

This entry was posted on December 27, 2006 at 1:57 am and is filed under Political News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.