President George W. Bush always likes to say we've "turned the corner" in Iraq. He said it following the fall of Baghdad in May 2003, when we were treated to all those images of Saddam Hussein's statue being pulled down by an Army tank. He said it again a little bit later when he stood on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in front of a sign that read "Mission Accomplished."
He said it when our Special Forces shot Saddam's sons to death and he said it again in his famous "Bring 'em on" address. Corners were also turned when Saddam himself was captured and when G. Paul Bremer turned tail and handed Iraq's government over to a bunch of former CIA operatives in the region.
The next corner that will be turned will be later this month, when a fraudulent election which 50 percent of the Iraqi population is either boycotting or barred from participating in will take place. We've turned so many corners that it seems as though we've come full circle.
Anyone who tells you that the situation is improving in Iraq is a liar. That's up to and including President Bush.
In the last quarter of 2004, we lost 272 brave American soldiers, and another 2,117 were wounded. Contrast those numbers with those from the last three months of 2003, when 166 Americans were killed and 1,011 wounded.
These are official numbers supplied by the Department of Defense and not gleaned from some lefty Web site. The casualty count has risen more than 100 percent in the course of just one year.
Bush's Keystone Cops managed to capture the New Jersey nitwit who shined a laser pointer at a corporate jet, but have failed in their efforts to track down Osama bin Laden, the anthrax terrorist and their current poster boy, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. They remain unable to establish a link between Iraq and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on America, or to come up with any evidence whatsoever that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the United States.
This "pre-emptive" war will be over one day. And other than the damage and human suffering it caused, the irreparable harm done to our country's reputation around the world and the likelihood of war crimes charges for decades to come, it will have accomplished nothing.
In the meantime, our friends and neighbors here in Western New York and across the country will continue to be called up to bleed and die on the hot desert sands.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Jan. 18 2005 |