image credit: U.S. Army
Caption: Sgt. Auralie Suarez and Pvt. Brett Mansink take cover during a firefight with anti-Iraqi forces in the Al Doura section of Baghdad, March 7. The Soldiers are from Company C, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Iraqi security forces nearby are also engaged in the fighting.
I just read this column of Joe Galloway's, and if I were a Christian I'd have probably concluded that experience with a loud "Amen". In my case, I can do this:
The president can still swagger and smirk on occasion, but all he can promise now - with 150,000 American troops operating in the middle of a bloody civil war that our actions unleashed - is more of the same. More billions. More dead and wounded Americans. More slaughtered Iraqis. That, and as he told the nation: "There will be good days and bad days."
I can promise the president from Texas that this ill-begotten, poorly planned and mismanaged war will be his lasting legacy when, in 22 months, he packs his bags and heads home to the ranch in Crawford.
Iraq will hang around his neck - and those of Cheney and Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle and Douglas Feith - like a rotting albatross for all the days of their lives.
No doubt the contractors who are bloated like ticks on the billions they've sucked out of the public trough will write the checks to build George W. Bush a really fine presidential library on the campus of Southern Methodist University.
All of it will be a lie, just like the lies his administration told to beat the war drums five years ago.
How will the curators portray the broken military, the broken Constitution, the broken laws, the forever broken troops who came home missing limbs or eyes or pieces of their brains, the broken promises to cherish and care for the families of those who were killed and those very wounded veterans?
How and why did so many Americans, including so many in Congress and in the media, sit idly by while so much that was precious to us was bent and twisted and broken by men who had the power and the money to do the right things but chose to do the wrong things?
Galloway: A broken military, broken laws and broken troops
Read the rest. It's worth it.
UPDATE: Taylor Marsh has been live blogging the Health Care Presidential Forum today. The forum is sponsored by the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the Service Employees International Union. She also wrote an introductory article.
2 comments:
Hi, Cujo. Thanks for the Galloway. I bet his righteous anger has helped smack some McClatchy readers into the awareness more are showing now. At last.
Keep up your good work here!
Thanks, lotus. Yes, I think Galloway's column will be part of the steady drip, drip, drip of intruding reality that's going to bring people around. Support for the war's been dropping steadily, and eventually it will be down to the rock-hard core of people upon whom no amount of persuasion will work as long as the war doesn't directly affect them. Until then, though, every column that makes the case well can persuade a few more folks.
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