qUESTIONS TO THE READERS.
1. Is american any safer now, with saddam gone?
2. Was saddam ever a threat to national security?
3. where the fuck are the weapons of mass destructions.
Iraq Numbers Add
Up To A Real Scare
By Ike Awgu
Commentary for The Ottawa Sun
6-26-5
Politeness aside, it's pretty clear to nearly every Canadian who isn't a flake that the war in Iraq was a big mistake and our absence from it a blessing.
I've never been particularly terrified of numbers, but here are some that should startle you: 22,353 -- the minimum total number of dead Iraqi civilians since the war began in 2003; 12,896 -- the number of American and allied troops injured in Iraq since 2003. And 1,724 -- the number of American teenagers and young adults (many of whom were poor and joined the military to pay for college) who will be returning home in caskets.
The most telling number in the Iraq saga however is one I haven't mentioned. It's the number zero -- that's the number of weapons of mass destruction that have been found, or will ever be, within Iraq's borders.
To most Canadians this is all old news. What isn't old new news however, and I've cleverly titled "new news" are the secret transcripts collectively named the Downing Street memos that were leaked last month to the press on the Internet.
The memos shed light onto the processes occurring behind the scenes at the highest levels of government that convinced two of the world's wealthiest nations into invading one of its poorest.
The first initial paper to be called the Downing Street memo was published in the Sunday Times of London last month. The memo summarized a July 23, 2002, meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers.
A British official, an entire year before the war in Iraq, when commenting on discussions with the Bush administration stated that, "There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable."
The memo contradicts what President Bush was saying right up to the onset of the war, that military action was a last resort. Bush claimed that it was Saddam (who's apparently been giving relationship advice to his guards in an Iraq jail) who forced the hand of his administration and caused the war.
The leaked memo also reveals the cavalier manner in which the Bush administration treated safeguarding a post-war Iraq. A British intelligence officer states, "In particular, little thought has been given to creating the political conditions for military action, or the aftermath and how to shape it."
The results of this lack of planning are put on display for us each day on CNN and other news programs; near incessant car bombings, kidnappings, religiously motivated murders and foreign fighters with AK-47s as common as rice at a Greek wedding.
In summary, the memos make clear what most already know: That the Bush Administration was disproportionately and disturbingly inclined toward war.
In addition however, they show that the British government mistakenly believed it could exert more influence on the president than in the end it could.
The British repeatedly warned the Americans, a year before the invasion in 2002, that steps had to be taken to prepare for post-war Iraq. American troops and Iraqi civilians are now paying with their lives for the U.S. government's mistake. The memos also state that the Bush Administration, a year before the war in Iraq, was dismissive of the need for UN Security Council approval for an Iraq war.
The implication given is that final push for a UN stamp of approval, the display in which Colin Powell embarrassed himself, was likely the result of pressure from London.
Over 20,000 of the planet's poorest people have paid with their lives for the incompetence of the planet's richest 300 million. Numbers generally don't scare me, but to most of you, that should be disturbing.
http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Ottawa/Ike_
Awgu/2005/06/22/1098577.html
