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Bush And His Neo-Cons Deserve A Spotlight In Iraq

The Bush administration lied to the American people about the reasons for going into Iraq and then they attacked without the U.N.'s approval, and without several of our biggest allies cooperation or support. As a result the Bush administration has earned the right to be spotlighted, scrutinized, and held accountable for the results. The map I created spotlights a few of the key administration officials, and a couple of the companies, who I believe are profiting from the the death and destruction on both sides of the battlefield in Iraq.

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• During the first 12 months of the war in Iraq many of our soldiers did not have flack jackets (body armor) resulting in many unnecessary deaths. The military claims that the delay was caused by manufacturing problems using a new technology. But for some reason Bush could not wait any longer, he had to attack Iraq immediately. As a result many of our soldiers have had to pay a very high price.

• Many of the U.S. military's Humvees did not have armor door panels, or armor floor boards, resulting in the deaths of many U.S. soldiers. A quick and easy low cost fix was engineered and recommended by several members of Congress, but the military has ignored these ideas and opted for a much slower and much more expensive solution. The U.S. military leaders must want Congress to give them billions of more dollars while they study the problem with the help of their friends in the military industrial complex.

• Our soldiers have been complaining about the poor quality of the food they have been receiving in Iraq. One of the companies that has been given a contract to feed our boys is Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old company. And it was recently reported that Halliburton has been over charging the U.S. government for these meals. It turns out that Halliburton was basing it's cost on the number of soldiers it could have potentially fed rather than the actual number they did feed.

• There have been a surprisingly high number of our soldiers committing suicide in Iraq. I understand that the food is bad, the safety equipment is scarce, the work is hard and long, the missions are dangerous and largely unnecessary, and that the higher ranking people in the military and the Bush administration don't give a rats ass about our soldiers lives or comfort, but suicide still seems a bit extreme. I suspect there is something else going on here and that someone in the Bush administration is to blame.

• While our soldiers are busy fighting and dying in Iraq the Bush administration has been busy trying to cut veterans benefits, cut overtime pay requirements, cut job training, cut education, undermine Social Security and Medicare, it refuses to extend unemployment benefits, it encourages American companies to outsource their jobs to foreign countries, and it has been giving tax cuts to the people who need them the least while running huge budget deficits. It is a bit ironic that our soldiers are fighting for democracy in Iraq while they are losing it at home.

• After the first war against Iraq in 1991, "Desert Storm", many of our soldiers returned home only to being a battle with a strange sickness, and a military health system that was in denial about the causes. It was subsequently discovered, thanks to public pressure and money from people like Ross Perot, that many of our soldiers were suffering from an illness termed "Gulf War Syndrome Reaction". Although the illness is still not fully understood it is suspected that their bodies were reacting to untested injections given by the U.S. military, poisons in plumes of smoke from oil fires and destroyed Iraqi weapons, and chemical reactions from diet soft drinks stored in aluminum containers in the hot sun. I wonder what surprises await our boys this time around, other than the huge open parasitic sores many of them are getting.

• Although most soldiers are reluctant to admit that they committed war crimes, or atrocities against innocent non-combatants, it is clear that the U.S. has already killed and maimed thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens. The prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib is just the tip of the bloody iceberg of crimes and acts of inhumanity the U.S. is responsible for in Iraq and Afghanistan. How many more innocent woman and children will be killed and injured by Bush's unnecessary war so that the oil will flow and Israel will have more security in the Middle East?

• After the U.S. bombed Iraq back into the stone age it used troops to surround and protect a number of important sites in Iraq, including the oil ministry, airports, oil ports, and several banks. But it failed to send any troops to protect the Iraq Museum of Antiquates which contained artifacts that dated back to the dawn of human civilization. As a result many of these priceless treasures were destroyed and stolen. This is just one of many examples of the very poor planning by the Bush administration. And of course no one has been held accountable for this planning oversight.

• Bush decided not to wait for our biggest international allies to get on board before the U.S. set sail to Iraq in search of blood and oil. Now it looks like we are going to spend another $100 billion dollars, on top of the $100+ billion we have already spent, only to end up running from Iraq with our tail between our legs. In other words, we wasted a lot of money and killed a lot of American boys, and Iraqi citizens, for nothing. So not only did we not win the war on terror, we created a hundred million new potential terrorist. Israel really is going to need that wall now.

• The Bush administration has ban the media from photographing the coffins of the killed U.S. soldiers being returned to America. He is doing this for the obvious reason of not wanting the American public to see the real cost of his war in terms that they can relate to emotionally. In other words, he does not want to upset people to the point of motivating them to become anti-war activist, and thus voting against him in 2004.

• It was reported that Pat Tillman, the NFL player who gave up his million dollar contract to join the Army, was killed by "friendly fire" in Afghanistan. When are we going to learn that the Republican Party has no idea about how to fight and win a war without the unnecessary sacrifice of the lives of American soldiers.

• The Bush administration has failed to capture the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people through it's compassionate conservative war on terror. I guess blowing to pieces family members and friends is not the best way to win hearts and minds. So instead of the Iraqi people embracing democracy, they have become affirmed haters of democracy. Now the different ethnic and religious groups in Iraq have united in an effort to kill the American occupiers. And instead of supporting America's puppet leaders, they are supporting the new anti-American Iraqi religious leaders. This is just one more example of the Bush administration's failure to properly plan for the aftermath of the invasion. And of course no one in the administration has been held accountable for this failure.

• The Bush administration has been very active in using the media to paint a positive, but un-true, picture of the Iraqi situation, both before, during, and now after the war. Each time a new horror is exposed the administration try's to deflect the criticism by pointing out the positive things we have done in Iraq, which I suspect are also un-true, or they point out some action the Iraqi people have taken to kill our American soldiers, which maybe true but are certainly embellished. We are being played for fools, once again, and this time the cost are very high in dollars and human lives

• It has been reported that the U.S. military is now using a system of "collective punishments" against Iraqi insurgents families and their homes. In other words, if a member of a family is suspected of being a anti-American terrorist, all the members of that family are automatically guilty of being terrorist and they are imprisoned, or killed, and their homes are destroyed. This is the same technique that the Jews in Israel have been using against the poor people in Palestine with ugly and continually increasing violent results. I guess if you can't win hearts and minds you just incite more hatred until you have an excuse to kill everyone who inhabits the land you want.

• After America attacked and bombed Iraq it became the American taxpayers job to pay companies like Halliburton to rebuild Iraq. The Iraqi oil revenues cannot be used because Iraq has debts owed to other countries that need repaying, and the rest of that money belongs to the people of Iraq. So instead of giving Iraqi citizens the money, power, and responsibilities of rebuilding their own country, which might have given them something to do other than trying to kill American soldiers, America has given those big money non-bid contracts to American companies that are big supporters of Republican and Democratic politicians. You can probably guess what happened next; when money corrupted politicians give taxpayer's dollars to corrupt corporations you get corrupt results, and that is exactly what we have all been witnessing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• You would like to think that our military leaders knew that the Iraqi people were well armed, and that they would become highly motivated to kill Americans after a short period of a repressive occupation. But instead of keep our soldiers at a safe distance from hostile population centers, they have done the exact opposite. They might as well have paint big red and white targets on the backs of our soldiers and charged admissions to the Iraqis who wanted to shot at them. This war has become another Vietnam, and we already know how that war turned out. Thousands of our soldiers get killed, it cost billions of dollars, and in the end we run away without achieving our proclaimed mission.

• If our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan was to end anti-American terrorism we have already failed in a big way that is costly and shameful. On the other hand, if our mission was to kill a lot of people, waste a lot of money, and anger a lot of people, we are already a huge success. According to Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz this war is already a big success. I think that America people are learning an important lesson from this war in Iraq; never trust a Republican, or a neo-con.

• Many critics of the Bush administration have been claiming that the administration had no plans for what to do after the initial phase of the war. However, if the plan was to allow the wounds to fester and become infected with gangrene and maggots, than there really was a plan. Congratulation Bush administration, you fascist neo-con sneaky devils have fooled the American citizens once again.

• It has been reported that the borders of Iraq have been allowed to remain wide open, thus allowing people and arms to move freely in and out of Iraq. I wonder how many of the killed and injured American soldiers were the victims of people and arms that came into Iraq after the initial attack? Why didn't America's leaders properly plan to prevent this occurrence? Why has no one been held accountable for this failure?

• The Pentagon said that they do not keep a count of the number of Iraqis, or Afghanis, killed during this war on terror because they don't care. I'm sure if we tied the number of tax dollars they get from Congress to the number of people they kill we could get a nice big body count number. Bush still has not learn how to properly motivate his killers with better financial incentives. We have all come to the understanding that Bush is a slow learner, but this is just sad.

• It was reported that when the U.S. turns over sovereignty to the new Iraqi government on July 1, 2004 that Saddam Hussein will also be turned over to the new Iraqi government. Can someone please remind me why we wasted $200 billion dollars and the lives of almost 1000 young American men?