January 13, 2007
by Steve Osborn

So, as well all know, Mr. Bush appeared on television with yet another "plan" for his war in Iraq. It will require still more billions of dollars to go into various corrupt agencies, businesses and organizations and ultimately back to Halliburton, KBR, Bechtel, the dividends of the Carlisle Group and other arms manufacturers and investors. It will require yet another minimum of twenty-thousand troops to be thrown into the meat grinder that Bush has created in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is a time to say "NO!" and this is it. No more money, no more troops, no more machinations. We need to fund whatever it takes to get us out of Iraq and that is all, period.

In 2002, Bush declared that Saddam was about to attack us with weapons of mass destruction and had to be stopped. He continued to sell this even when the various monitoring groups said they could find no evidence of these weapons. Bush's generals said it would take hundreds of thousands of troops to subdue Iraq and hold it. Bush fired the generals until he could find one that would agree with him.

Our high tech invasion against an army with no spare parts or new equipment went very quickly. Bush stood on an aircraft carrier in a rented flyer's costume and declared "Mission accomplished!"

Despite a desperate search for Weapons of Mass Destruction, none were found. Then the aim of the war was said to have been to remove Saddam Hussein from power and bring "freedom and democracy" to Iraq.

Well, Saddam has been removed and now hanged. Mission accomplished! The Iraqis have a Quisling government put in by us and answerable to us for its existence. Polls taken in Iraq show that over eighty percent of the Iraqis want us out of their country. A large percentage support killing us until we leave, if that is what it takes.

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On December 31, 2003, the US Army Times ran eight pages of small photos of American War Dead. Were they to do that again, it would take fifty-seven pages for the dead and three hundred ninety-eight for the wounded, not to mention the additional tens of thousands scarred mentally by the horror of Iraq and the countless others who will be felled or crippled by DU poisoning.

Nobody wants to count the Iraqi and Afghan war dead because that might put faces on what is collectively known as "collateral damage." Estimates range in the neighborhood of seven hundred-fifty thousand dead and almost a million and a half wounded.

Originally, this was all done to "avenge the deaths of just under three thousand Americans on 9/11.

Let's put this in perspective, just using the Army Times eight pages for five hundred dead.

• Americans dead in Iraq, 3,017, Afghanistan 359 = 3,356 = 57 pages
• Americans wounded, Iraq 22,834, Afghanistan 1,091 = 23,925 = 398 pages
• Est. Iraqi and Afghan dead = 750,301 = 12,505 pages
• Est. Iraqi and Afghan wounded = 1,437,420 = 23,957 pages
• Estimated total of the dead and the maimed in this bloody war = 2,215,002 = 36,917 pages

The rate of American deaths is rising as support fails for Mr. Bush's "mission." Haven't we written a large enough book of death and destruction? A foreign nation that was no threat to us has been laid waste. A majority of Iraqis think life under their dead dictator was much safer and more pleasant than their "democratic freedom" under the Bush puppet regimes. Then, at least they had food, clean water, power, education, medical care, and they could go to market or Mosque without risking death or imprisonment and torture.

No, Mr. Bush, no surge, tens of thousands of times NO!

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Stephen M. Osborn [send him email] is a freelance writer living on Camano Island in the Pacific Northwest. He is an "Atomic Vet." (Operation Redwing, Bikini Atoll 1956, ) who has been very active working and writing for nuclear disarmament and world peace. He is a retired Fire Battalion Chief, lifelong sailor, writer, poet, philosopher, historian and former newspaper columnist.