Bogged Down: Things Just Aren't Going Freedom's Way Lately
Grim-faced U.S. troops under sniper fire, burning Humvees, rows of mangled Iraqi corpses, Apache helicopters and heavy artillery pounding slum neighbourhoods, mortar attacks ...
You'd think the invasion had just begun, but all this and much, much more is part of a really long sequel nearly a year-and-a-half after G.W. Bush pulled the glory plug.
Operation Slaughter Iraqis is outlasting all those other nifty yet majestic code names.
Still no victory parade in Baghdad; it's certainly a lot safer pulling it off on an aircraft carrier in sight of San Diego.
A Pentagon spokesman admitted the insurgencies couldn't be militarily defeated, though this month, a colleague said it could take a decade.
That, and a winning Iraqi Olympic soccer squad signals real progress -- if re-opening Vietnam War wounds won't work.
Said Bush on the campaign trail: "Knowing what we know today, we still would have gone on into Iraq."
For once, we should believe him, but let's recap.
Most recently, we see a Shiite rebellion bloodily suppressed by U.S. troops, a campaign that should crack a smile on the face of Saddam Hussein as he fondly recalls 1991.
Overseeing and marinating in the deja vu is Washington's hand-picked interim leader, Iyad Allawi, who shares with Saddam a history of Baathist thuggery and CIA servitude.
New U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and sure to be the real power there is John Negroponte, a key diplomatic figure in his country's backing of murderous goons in 1980s Central America.
Even given all of that, there was still shock over Abu Ghraib.
Rubbed so raw were those sensitivities that Red Cross and U.S-Iraqi witness reports of in-carceration, torture and rape of children in those same American-run lockups has been largely confined to European media.
There's evidence U.S. medical personnel aided and abetted torture, even whitewashing death certificates.
"That's not America," we're told, but whenever "I was just following orders" becomes a common military lament, it's a good hint things aren't going freedom's way.
More recently, U.S. soldiers were forbidden by their officers to rescue men being tortured by Washington's Iraqi allies.
It's the same kind of sovereignty Iraqis had under Saddam.
Meanwhile, American armour-piercing weaponry has poisoned the countryside with tonnes of "depleted uranium" sure to sow birth defects and cancers.
It's one of those freedom gifts that keeps on giving.
Speaking of giving, U.S. politicians are demanding answers about $8.8 billion in Iraq rebuilding funds unaccounted for. And according to the White House's own Office of Management and Budget (OMG), of $18.4 billion earmarked last fall for Iraqi "re-construction," only $366 million had been spent by the end of June, reports The Nation
Not a dime of U.S. money had gone into improving the country's sanitation, water treatment or health care, the OMG reported; some Iraqi oil money did, but it's not certain where billions more of those petrodollars went.
A Reuters photographer who followed the Iraq exploits of Dick Cheney's favourite war profiteer Halliburton for six months thinks he has the answer.
"The (Iraqi) oil industry money is going ... not to infrastructure, not to rebuilding the country, and not to helping the Iraqi people. It's going to (Halliburton subsidiary) KBR, to build those bases for the military," the man told Truthout.org's William Rivers Pitt.
Who can imagine why Iraqi saboteurs target oil pipelines? Where's their gratitude in being forced at gunpoint to finance foreign domination of their land?
All that oil-fuelled activity has delivered only a fraction of the jobs promised Iraqis -- the vast majority going to foreigners.
If all else fails, there's always employment as a poorly-armed human sandbag so the occupiers can lighten their own losses.
Who said there was no post-war planning?
Not to worry, Iraqi sandbags -- you'll soon have democracy.
Never mind most of you want those American troops to leave your country while the Pentagon has already made it clear in advance their boots'll be there indefinitely.
Some things in a democracy are non-negotiable. That notion's reinforced by daily air strikes against populations not thrilled with the prospect of involuntary statehood.
Women and children inevitably fill hospitals in their wake.
"I'm the commander ... I don't feel I owe anybody an explanation," ever-accountable Bush once told writer Bob Woodward.
Now that's tough leadership, by golly -- tough on everybody.
BILL KAUFMANN
You'd think the invasion had just begun, but all this and much, much more is part of a really long sequel nearly a year-and-a-half after G.W. Bush pulled the glory plug.
Operation Slaughter Iraqis is outlasting all those other nifty yet majestic code names.
Still no victory parade in Baghdad; it's certainly a lot safer pulling it off on an aircraft carrier in sight of San Diego.
A Pentagon spokesman admitted the insurgencies couldn't be militarily defeated, though this month, a colleague said it could take a decade.
That, and a winning Iraqi Olympic soccer squad signals real progress -- if re-opening Vietnam War wounds won't work.
Said Bush on the campaign trail: "Knowing what we know today, we still would have gone on into Iraq."
For once, we should believe him, but let's recap.
Most recently, we see a Shiite rebellion bloodily suppressed by U.S. troops, a campaign that should crack a smile on the face of Saddam Hussein as he fondly recalls 1991.
Overseeing and marinating in the deja vu is Washington's hand-picked interim leader, Iyad Allawi, who shares with Saddam a history of Baathist thuggery and CIA servitude.
New U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and sure to be the real power there is John Negroponte, a key diplomatic figure in his country's backing of murderous goons in 1980s Central America.
Even given all of that, there was still shock over Abu Ghraib.
Rubbed so raw were those sensitivities that Red Cross and U.S-Iraqi witness reports of in-carceration, torture and rape of children in those same American-run lockups has been largely confined to European media.
There's evidence U.S. medical personnel aided and abetted torture, even whitewashing death certificates.
"That's not America," we're told, but whenever "I was just following orders" becomes a common military lament, it's a good hint things aren't going freedom's way.
More recently, U.S. soldiers were forbidden by their officers to rescue men being tortured by Washington's Iraqi allies.
It's the same kind of sovereignty Iraqis had under Saddam.
Meanwhile, American armour-piercing weaponry has poisoned the countryside with tonnes of "depleted uranium" sure to sow birth defects and cancers.
It's one of those freedom gifts that keeps on giving.
Speaking of giving, U.S. politicians are demanding answers about $8.8 billion in Iraq rebuilding funds unaccounted for. And according to the White House's own Office of Management and Budget (OMG), of $18.4 billion earmarked last fall for Iraqi "re-construction," only $366 million had been spent by the end of June, reports The Nation
Not a dime of U.S. money had gone into improving the country's sanitation, water treatment or health care, the OMG reported; some Iraqi oil money did, but it's not certain where billions more of those petrodollars went.
A Reuters photographer who followed the Iraq exploits of Dick Cheney's favourite war profiteer Halliburton for six months thinks he has the answer.
"The (Iraqi) oil industry money is going ... not to infrastructure, not to rebuilding the country, and not to helping the Iraqi people. It's going to (Halliburton subsidiary) KBR, to build those bases for the military," the man told Truthout.org's William Rivers Pitt.
Who can imagine why Iraqi saboteurs target oil pipelines? Where's their gratitude in being forced at gunpoint to finance foreign domination of their land?
All that oil-fuelled activity has delivered only a fraction of the jobs promised Iraqis -- the vast majority going to foreigners.
If all else fails, there's always employment as a poorly-armed human sandbag so the occupiers can lighten their own losses.
Who said there was no post-war planning?
Not to worry, Iraqi sandbags -- you'll soon have democracy.
Never mind most of you want those American troops to leave your country while the Pentagon has already made it clear in advance their boots'll be there indefinitely.
Some things in a democracy are non-negotiable. That notion's reinforced by daily air strikes against populations not thrilled with the prospect of involuntary statehood.
Women and children inevitably fill hospitals in their wake.
"I'm the commander ... I don't feel I owe anybody an explanation," ever-accountable Bush once told writer Bob Woodward.
Now that's tough leadership, by golly -- tough on everybody.
BILL KAUFMANN
posted by R7 | 9/02/2004 12:16:00 AM
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