Commentary
�Merit the sacrifice� for whom?
By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor


Mar 28, 2008, 00:23

As the number of US troops killed in Iraq passed the 4,000 mark, George W. Bush, after conferring Monday with US officials in Washington and Baghdad, told the American people that the outcome "will �merit the sacrifice," according to the Washington Post.

My question is, for what mother, father, husband, wife or child will this illegal pointless war that has sapped the blood of a million Iraqis as well, not to mention some $12 trillion from our Treasury -- better used for life-giving projects -- will this sacrifice be merited?

Of course, it will be merited by the defense contractors, the private armies of Blackwater, the contractors of Haliburton, its subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root, and dozens of other military suppliers and lobbying leeches. The lifeblood of these 4,000-plus will be the lifeblood of these creepy crawlers. And of source, this sanctimonious statement of merited sacrifice is coming from the Texas Air National Guard recruit who didn�t show up for his second year of service and nixed his opportunity to be a fighter pilot (for which he was expensively trained) in the Vietnam war, which yielded 58,000 American deaths and 2 million Vietnamese deaths. Was that sacrifice merited as well?

In fact, Peter Tremblay reports in The Canadian, �Over 70,000 deaths, and over 1 million disabilities among American solders attributed to Iraq Wars says US government data.� In Tremblay�s words, �U.S. investigative researchers have discovered an official U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs official, but not well publicized count, of 73,846 U.S. soldiers who have perished as an apparent result of Depleted Uranium based bio-chemical warfare exposure. This exceeds an estimate of 58,000 U.S. soldiers who had been killed in relation to the Vietnam War. Well over 200,000 American soldiers could be killed by 2010, as a result of the after effects of exposure to U.S. dirty bombs.�

In other words, weapons of mass destruction made in the USA have contributed to these massive figures, which exceed even the Vietnam figures. In addition, Tremblay writes, �Over one million US soldiers have apparently been disabled from Depleted Uranium based biochemical exposure. Over one million Iraqis have also been documented to have been killed.� And whichever set of figures you chose to believe, we still have Bush banging the war drum for "the surge" to continue. Behind him in the wings is the truly strange John McCain banging the war drum louder, willing it seems to do or say anything to get elected.

Nevertheless, as Tremblay points out, this massive death and destruction is what Bush and McCain call a �success,� a pyrrhic success at the very least, a total defeat for reason, law, and democratic process at best. And as Tremblay, points out, �How many sons and daughters of the American ruling class have been sent in harm's way of the apparent biological warfare that is being perpetrated in Iraq.� This would be equally true if even the administration�s figures were used. Yet in the name of fighting �extremists� and �terrorists� anything goes, especially with the homemade terror of 9/11 to buttress the argument.

That truth is, following Tremblay�s logic, only the ruling elite and their military/intelligence machine could pull off the intricate and massive destruction of the World Trade Center, certainly not 19 Muslim terrorists with box-cutters. Tremblay points to the evidence gathered by Dr. David Ray Griffin�s The New Pearl Harbor-Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11. I would also suggest the very graphic and well-researched what really happened website. As to the effects of the pollutants of the explosions on first-responders Ground Zero workers and neighborhood civilians, try 9/11�s second round of slaughter, my review of the documentary Dust To Dust: the health effects of 9/11, which DVD is linked in the article�s first line.

Returning to Iraq and Tremblay�s appraisal, �More than 1,820 tons (3-million, 640-thousand pounds) of radioactive nuclear waste uranium were exploded into Iraq alone in the form of armour piercing rounds and bunker busters, representing the world�s worst man made ecological disaster ever. 64 kg of uranium were used in the Hiroshima bomb. The very broad human and ecological disaster of the Iraq War has been drowned out by America's sound-bite driven media organizations, that are owned by the same fascist clique which presides over the Iraq War.� What �merits the sacrifice� of life today and for generations to come, which this DU presence will ensure? And what merited the false-flag sacrifice of 3,000 innocent lives on 9/11 if not the perverted reason to start the "Global War on Terror," this curse on the world and the US, brought to us by the Bush administration, who have to yet provide America with an �unbiased� investigation of the tragedy.

In fact, they exploit the homemade terror, the inciting incident of 9/11, everyday, in Iraq, Afghanistan, in the US, to keep the American people in a constant state of fear and paranoia, and to weaken dissent by corporate media, to monitor dissent by activists via spying on emails and phone calls in a variety of ways.

This is the Brave New World where it is now illegal to disagree, and where one is liable to be arrested for saying the above; subjected, without habeas corpus, to torture, tried, and sentenced to imprisonment indefinitely. For whom and what "merits this sacrifice� of the entire fabric of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and our system of law, its tripartite balance of powers, not the usurpation of them for a dictatorial executive branch, which Naomi Wolf in her book, The End of America, has compared to the rise of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, and dictatorships everywhere?

Thus, I disagree totally with the president. The violence, bloodshed, human and material cost of Iraq does not, will not ever, "merit the sacrifice" it has claimed so far, let alone for the further tragedy its continuation proposes. The very basis of the Iraq war, that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) more aptly applied to Bush. And the lie that Hussein was in league with Osama bin Laden (who seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth) only increases the absurdity. Bin Laden was an ardent religious leader whereas Hussein was a secular gangster armed and financed by the CIA. There is no merit to the sacrifice caused by that criminality, except to punish the guilty ones.

Thus, I think that the sacrifice of blood, our treasure, and liberty will gain merit only in the strange minds of Bush�s Texas buddies, thirsty for oil, the black gold and its profits. I can only add caveat emptor!