"I don't say that the difficulties we are experiencing around the world are caused by our presence in Iraq, but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates them." -- Gen. Sir Richard Dannat, British military commander, in an interview in the Daily Mirror.
DETROIT -- Again, we are grateful to the British for speaking the truth out loud. And again, the mainstream U.S. media give it scant attention. Just like the Downing Street Memo, which provided documented evidence that the United States had decided to attack Iraq regardless of the facts and intelligence was fixed to achieve that ignoble purpose, the convincing truth gets buried and Bush's wretched rhetoric gets vast coverage.
Gen. Sir Richard Dannat had the courage to say what many other British and American military leaders have long known -- the British and U.S. military occupation of Iraq contributes to the violence there, and the wise thing to do is to withdraw the English-speaking forces "sometime soon," as Dannat suggested.
Sooner rather than later will spare Iraqi, British and American lives. The insurrection, growing in violence, will never be quelled militarily. An orderly withdrawal of western forces, coupled with a political settlement, is the only hope for peace in Iraq.
Of course, that's not something Prime Minister Tony Blair, President George W. Bush's loyal lap dog, will admit, at least publicly. So damage control was the only option in a futile attempt to defuse the embarrassing public debate.
"In terms of what he is saying about Britain, he was saying exactly the same as we have all said," Blair claimed in declaring common ground with Dannat. He argued the British are able to withdraw forces from two Iraqi provinces because "the job has been done there." Pure crap.
White House spokesman and Republican fund-raiser Tony Snow feebly tried to downplay what Dannat said, saying, "His general point was that, you know, when your work is done, you hand over authority to the Iraqis." The work in Iraq will never be done as long as Bush and Blair's madness prevails in Mesopotamia.
Dannat said much more that undercuts some of the most basic premises of the U.S.-British occupation. "We are in a Muslim country, and Muslims' views of foreigners in their county are quite clear," Dannat told the Mirror. "As a foreigner, you can be welcomed by being invited in a country, but we weren't invited, certainly, by those in Iraq at the time."
Dannat displays a degree of cultural understanding and insight the people who planned the fiasco in Iraq never considered. He recognizes that the occupation inflames Iraqi opposition, and whatever welcome and tolerance the invading forces may have initially enjoyed "has turned to intolerance."
Dannat sees today the consequences of the pre-emptive war. "The military campaign we fought in 2003 effectively kicked the door in," he said. Now, it is clear the Iraqi people want to show us the door, but the architects of the disaster won't admit that manifest truth.
The British are also more realistic about reporting the death toll in Iraq. "The Lancet," Britain's leading medical journal, published the findings of a research team that pegs the Iraqi casualties as a result of the invasion and steady carnage since at more than 650,000.
"Not credible," Bush quickly dismissed the report. The former dunce and class clown, recently revealed as a lover of Shakespeare, must now be adding epidemiology and statistical analysis to his growing lists of intellectual pursuits.
The Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health conducted the death toll research based on a detailed survey of households and confirmations by death certificates.
"We don't do body counts," Gen. Tommy "The Failure" Franks cavalierly snarled after his "glorious" triumph in Iraq. Last December, Bush offered his own estimate of Iraqis killed in the war at "30,000, more or less." But he brushed off the latest report because of some unexplained flaw in the methodology.
I'm sure the same White House science advisers who refuse to recognize global warming and want to throw evolution into the trash heap with alchemy are guiding Bush on the issue.
Bush's voodoo casualty count not surprisingly ignored some cultural realities. Iraqi Muslims don't believe in embalming, open caskets and public funerals following several days of mourning. Their usual custom is for the body of the dead to be buried by sunset on the day of the death.
The Johns Hopkins group recruited Iraqi doctors to help in the survey and they obtained death certificates in 92 percent of the cases in the sample population clusters they examined. The results were then projected onto Iraq's 26 million population in arriving at 650,000 deaths.
"In this conflict, like all other recent conflicts, it's the population that bears the consequences," Dr. Gilbert Burnham, the lead author of the report, told the Baltimore Sun. The consequences of so many deaths feed the insurgency, radicalize the population and create more hostility toward the occupying forces. Even if the 650,000 number is high, it is a sure bet the actual death toll is significantly higher than the administration's "30,000, more or less" number.
For each death, scores of extended family members are left angry, outraged and bitter toward the invaders. Whether people lose a loved one in sectarian violence, terrorist attacks, murder or in the crossfire of U.S. and British troops trying to stop the assaults, their bitterness and retribution is still directed toward the invading armies.
The big push to redeploy troops to pacify Baghdad is an abject failure. The Iraq Health Ministry reports 2,660 civilians were killed in the capital in September -- 400 more than in August.
"The stakes are high," Bush mindlessly repeats as blood flows like the Tigris in the city he "liberated." He has no plan, no exit strategy nor any idea of what to do other than repeat his stump lines like "stay the course" and brand all who oppose him as disloyal and preparing to "cut and run."
The Busheviks just spew those lines ad nauseam, and their slaves in the media repeat them and pretend they actually mean something. The Google numbers are telling. "Cut and run Bush" shows 22.6 million items, "stay the course Bush" 19.9 million, and "stakes are high Bush" has 3.7 million references. For "Richard Dannat Iraq," you'll find 297,000. For "Lancet Iraq 650,000 deaths," the Google items are a mere 25,000. Sure, Bush's bromides have been around quite a while longer, but it is evident the media's incessant echoing of the lines gives them longer, undeserved life.
The Johns Hopkins survey shows 60 percent of the Iraqi deaths were among males 15 to 44 years old, deserved lives cut short in a war of choice. For them and their families, the stakes are high, indeed.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | October 17 2006 |