William Rivers Pitt: The Most Dangerous Days

[Guest guest]

" Zepp " <zepp

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 16:40:46 -0800

[Zepps_News] Pitt: the most dangerous days

 

 

William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Perspective, March 1, 2006

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030106A.shtml

 

 

 

 

William Rivers Pitt: The Most Dangerous Days

 

Vice President Dick Cheney spoke at the 46th Annual American Legion

Washington Conference on Tuesday to let everyone know that all is well

in Iraq. " This nation has made a decision, " said Cheney. " We will stand

by our friends and engage our enemies with the goal of a victory. And as

the president said in the State of the Union, 'We are in this fight to

win, and we are winning.' "

 

Cheney's optimistic assessment echoed the words of television pundit

Terry Jeffery, editor of the conservative weekly Human Events, who

appeared with Wolf Blitzer on CNN several days ago after a wave of

sectarian violence threatened to hurl Iraq into civil war. Blitzer asked

Jeffery if Iraq was falling apart, and Jeffery replied, " I think

actually these attacks on Shia shrines can be attributed to the

potential success of the Bush strategy. " The Neil Cavuto show on FOX, of

course, was able to locate a bright silver lining in the carnage. The

show carried an onscreen caption that read, " All-Out Civil War in Iraq:

Could It Be a Good Thing? "

 

Hmm.

 

Wednesday opened with a string of bombings in Baghdad that killed at

least 26 people and wounded 65 others. Tuesday saw 75 more people killed

in another series of bombings, the worst being five explosions in

Baghdad. Since the bombing last Wednesday of the gold-domed Askariya

shrine, sacred to Shi'ite Muslims, more than 1,400 people have been

killed in Iraq. Bush officials in Iraq and here in America have been

scrambling to slap a smiley-face on these horrors, but the threat of

all-out religious civil war looms larger by the hour. The so-called

" elected " government in Iraq is powerless to stem the tide.

 

A press release documenting Cheney's speech before the American Legion

stated that our impending victory in Iraq " will demand patience and

perseverance on the part of the American people. It will also require

continued sacrifice by the country's men and women in uniform. "

 

Let's take these one at a time.

 

Patience and perseverance on the part of the American people? It seems

as though this ship, after 1,077 days of utterly useless warfare, has

sailed. New polling data has Mr. Bush's overall approval rating stuck at

a fantastically anemic 34%. Only 30% of those polled approve of Bush's

handling of Iraq. The American people took this ride with Mr. Bush,

based in no small part upon the scare tactics he used to frighten

everyone into the belief that the Iraqi threat was imminent and the need

for war was immediate, but it appears today that the American people

feel this ride has gone on long enough.

 

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, no connections to al

Qaeda or 9/11. The deep sense of betrayal felt within the populace is

very real, and very dangerous to congressional Republicans staring down

the barrel of the midterm elections that are nine months away. Patience

and perseverance? Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

 

Continued sacrifice by the country's men and women in uniform, now, is

truly the sticky wicket. A new Zogby International poll of US troops in

Iraq has a full 72% stating flatly that America should be out of Iraq

within a year. 29% of those troops polled believe America should pull

out of Iraq immediately. A whopping 93% of troops polled believe the

occupation of Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with finding and

destroying weapons of mass destruction. So much for all of Mr. Bush's

canned, choreographed, fake-turkey photo-ops with the soldiers. The

soldiers he lionizes and hides behind, even while he slashes their

benefits, have run out of patience with him.

 

This is not a surprise. 2,298 American soldiers have been killed in

Iraq, and tens of thousands more have been horribly and permanently

wounded. Those who remain unscathed see, every day, the horrors of war

that have ripped through the Iraqi populace. They have seen the bodies,

the blood, and have themselves participated under orders in the

killings. They have seen their friends die. They have been deployed, and

redeployed, and redeployed again. One in ten of them suffer from

post-traumatic stress syndrome, a number sure to rise as time passes.

More than any other Americans, these soldiers have been lied to about

this war. The numbers speak volumes. They have had enough.

 

We have entered, perhaps, the most dangerous time period thus far in

this wretched engagement. Matters in Iraq threaten to collapse into

chaotic civil war, with the government in place unable to do anything

substantive to stop it. This White House remains adamantly and

stubbornly unable and unwilling to see the situation for what it is. The

lies they put forth to promote this thing - handwritten notes by Lewis

Libby demonstrate he knew the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame a month

before he claimed to have received it, thus bursting his defense that he

got her name from reporters - are collapsing into the hands of special

prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Frightened GOP congresspeople, desperate

to keep their jobs under the blotched shadow of an unpopular president

in an election year, are liable to do anything to protect themselves and

their leader.

 

And the dying continues.

 

Where will we as a nation be nine months from now? It seems almost

completely certain that we will still be engaged in Iraq. The last nine

months saw 631 American soldiers die, so we will likely be staring at

nearly 3,000 dead by the time November rolls around. The new rules of

military engagement in Iraq, which emphasize air strikes by warplanes

and helicopters, will bring about a massive rise in civilian casualties.

The sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni in Iraq could easily

spread throughout the entire Middle East, destabilizing almost a dozen

other nations.

 

How can this be? The answer is simple. We as a nation are being led by

a man - and an administration - that perceives reality through a prism

of triumphalism, that refuses to see the truth of things, that avoids

hard facts the way a cat avoids water.

 

He is enjoying this fantastic opportunity. 'Nuff said.

 

--William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally

bestselling author of two books: " War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't

Want You to Know " and " The Greatest Sedition Is Silence. "

 

 

--