November 26, 2005
"We don't know the course
of our own struggle will take [sic], or the sacrifices that might
lie ahead."
GW Bush, November 11, 2005.
"Akers said his son is
burned on more than 75 percent of his body. . . . 'We've been
talking to the doctors in Germany. It's just a case of if he
can get through the infection,' Don Akers said. 'The biggest
part of the burn is his face. The odds are not in his favor'.
"
Cadillac News, November 24,
2005.
On November 24 the number of US dead
in Iraq for the month reached 75. In October, 96 Americans were
killed. The corpse total is over 2100. More than 7,000 of the
15,804 wounded (as at November 24) have lost limbs or minds or
will bear hideous disfigurement to their graves.
What for? Why have they died
or been maimed? What righteous cause has made it imperative
for thousands of young Americans to have their lives cut short
or be horribly mutilated?
Among the worst of those wounded
were Sergeant Spencer Akers, who was burned on over 75 per cent
of his body, and 26 year-old Latseen Benson of the 101st Airborne.
Specialist Benson was blown up on November 13 and "lost
his legs and possibly part of an arm and was in a coma Tuesday
night [November 15] in a hospital in Germany."
Latseen Benson is aged 26,
unconscious and legless. His mother said he was forced to extend
his service under Rumsfeld's Stop-Loss Program. In all decency
he shouldn't have been sent back to Iraq, but now "My
son is now fighting for his life with half a body left".
What for? Why has Latseen
Benson been reduced to less than half a man? Democracy has not
benefited one tiny bit from the physical destruction of a soldier
who had his service extended by orders of the unfeeling reptile
Rumsfeld and the Pentagon he has filled with forelock-tugging
dummies.
Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney and
the other armchair warriors are experts at public posturing about
the horrors of their war, but they weep only crocodile tears
for such as Latseen Benson.
Cheney is now smearing and
insulting those who mistakenly accepted the word of the President
of the United States when he lied about his reasons for making
war on Iraq. Cheney calls opponents of his war "opportunists"
who are telling "cynical and pernicious falsehoods"
and sneered at the gallant warrior, Congressman John P Murtha.
Cheney's theme is that Democrats
are trying to obtain political mileage by saying what is so widely
known : that he and Bush and Rice and Rumsfeld and other warped
psychopaths told deliberate lies about the reasons for their
brutal crusade.
Certainly some Democrats are
trying to gain political advantage by pointing out they were
lied to. (And the gutless ones are sitting on the fence.) But
politicians are made that way, and most of them around the world
are unprincipled, pompous, money-grubbing assholes, so if
the boot was on the other foot then the posturing self-righteous
Republicans who cry 'Foul Play!' about the Bush lies being recognized
would be using that boot to kick the hell out of their opponents.
So don't let's have any more
of that sort of nonsense, from either side, especially when
young men are having their boots and feet blown off in a foreign
country that posed not the slightest threat to any American and
had nothing whatever to do with 9/11, as eventually admitted
by Bush.
Does anyone remember the British
reporter who on January 31, 2003 asked Bush and his puppy dog
Blair "One question for you both. Do you believe that there
is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men
who attacked on September the 11th?" Bush replied "I
can't make that claim."
He couldn't just say 'No',
of course. The man is incapable of admitting the whole truth,
even to himself, when it doesn't fit his fixed ideas. This,
after all, is the knave who told the monstrous lie that "we've
learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making
and poisons and gases."
Unfortunately Bush and the
zealots in Washington made so many statements about supposed
Al Qaeda links with the Twin Towers atrocity -- and are still
making them -- that genuine patriots like Latseen Benson really
believed they were committed to war by their president "for
9/11". That is what Latseen Benson said, as reported in
his local newspaper. He was maimed for a lie, and his body was
destroyed while his mind still believed his commander-in-chief
had told him the truth.
Latseen Benson comes from Anchorage,
Alaska. And it so happens that the draft-dodger Bush visited
Anchorage November 15 and while he was there announced that
"As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy
our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders
who voted to send them into war continue to stand behind them".
But as Specialist Benson's mother said : "I would have
appreciated a little house call while he was here to tell me
why a very fine boy has to be fighting for his life."
But house calls are not the
Bush style. He would not dare to visit with Mrs Benson. He
would not know what to say to the mother who knows her son lost
both his legs because Bush and his cohorts told lies. A meeting
with the mother of a maimed soldier could not be scripted. It
could not be stage-managed, like his obscene performance on
an aircraft carrier when he delivered his arrogant smirking inanities
in front of a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished".
A meeting with Mrs Benson would have to be unrehearsed and devoid
of the public relations bells and whistles that are vital for
performances by this soggy apology for a leader. Without meticulous
preparation for every Bush appearance in public he would be reduced
to demonstrating his true capabilities, which at their height
would be those of a third rate clerk for an itinerant pox-doctor.
Which brings us to the vice-president.
It is of course entirely coincidental
that Cheney indulged in his tirade about "cynical and pernicious
falsehoods" at the very time when news was breaking about
him that just might be embarrassing. At a Senate hearing on
November 14 about excessive oil profits, five executives were
asked "Did your company or any representatives in your
companies participate in Vice President Cheney's energy [task]
force in 2001?". Every one of them said "No".
They lied.
In addition to the Washington
Post publicizing emails contradicting their replies, the Government
Accountability Office discovered that Chevron and others "gave
detailed energy policy recommendations" to Cheney's people.
It was not in any way illegal
to take part in Cheney's secret deliberations that he refuses
to reveal to the American public. So why did these people lie
about it? What were their recommendations and why are they being
concealed?
None of the oil company representatives
who lied to the Senate Committee was on oath, because the joint
chair, Republican Senator Stevens of Alaska, insisted they should
not be. Why? Did he know they were going to tell lies, and
therefore wanted to protect them? Because, however bizarre
it seems to people of normal mind and morality, no charge of
perjury can be brought against them because they did not take
a specific oath to tell the truth. The lying officials from Exxon
Mobil, Conoco, Shell Oil and BP America are going to walk away
from this. They have been asked "to clarify" matters.
Yawn.
But it still looks pretty nasty
for Cheney, who drove the whole sordid oil exercise, and is
summed up well by Democrat Senator Frank Lautenberg : "Whatever
was discussed at that White House energy task force meeting,
it seems to turn out very well for the big oil companies, but
it's been disastrous, daily disastrous for the American public."
That, unlike the statements of the oil companies, is the truth
; and the truth is something that Cheney does not want revealed.
Because Iraq was discussed by his task force, all these weeks
before 9/11. It is impossible, unthinkable, that a globally-focused
oil cabal analyzed the entire gamut of energy production without
talking at length about such a large producer of oil as Iraq.
And Cheney insists that what was said must remain secret.
It stinks.
Small wonder Cheney is terrified
his discussions might be made public. And there is no better
way to deflect attention from the institutional dishonesty that
permeates the Bush administration than to indulge in shrill malignity
about those who unveil the truth.
Cheney was deeply involved
in plotting the war on Iraq. His finger-puppet, Bush, whose
character defects are such that he is incapable of admitting
a lie, is just an incoherent simpleton. But Cheney is a master
of calculating duplicity. He has no moral sense, and lying comes
naturally to him : not through ignorant conviction, like the
pathetic and foolish Bush, but through vicious determination
to smash his opponents. This torture-supporting, lily-livered
poltroon, who weaseled his way out of the Vietnam War because
"I had other priorities", is anxious to show that
he is macho man. Like the fetid milksop in the White House,
he stands behind the troops -- but it is a very long way behind.
It is for the vanity of Cheney
and Bush that soldiers continue to be killed. Soldiers have died
or been maimed, not for "freedom" or "democracy"
or any of the slick slogans dredged up by cynics to justify their
slaughter, but for the benefit of oil companies and to help
Cheney and Bush get out of the quagmire of deceit that they created.
American troops will be forced to stay in Iraq to be shot at
and bombed because these men will not admit they were wrong.
On Veteran's Day Bush tried to justify his war, and anounced
that "We don't know . . . the sacrifices that might lie
ahead."
Of course we don't. But there
is one thing that is absolutely certain : George Bush and Dick
Cheney are not making any sacrifices, and will never do so.
President Eisenhower declared
that "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can
; only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity"
; but this type of wise warning from a real leader passes well
over the heads of the arrogant, conceited oafs who have driven
America to calamity. Eisenhower knew the real costs of conflict.
If photographs of Specialist
Benson were to appear in public they would make even Cheney's
staunchest supporters reconsider their dedication to war. And
of course this is why pictures of maimed soldiers are discouraged.
It is they and their relatives who are making the sacrifices,
just as has been made by those who were killed and by their
grieving families. The difference is that those who lost limbs
and minds will live for years as a reminder of an administration
that was determined to show it was tough, just for the sake
of looking tough.
Nothing has appeared in the
mainstream media about Specialist Benson of the 101st Airborne
who has lost his legs, or about Sergeant Akers of the Michigan
National Guard who is horribly burned. They are not on the
front pages. But Bush and Cheney are all over the front pages,
and the mother of Latseen Benson has asked them why they sent
her son to war to be maimed. She deserves a truthful answer.
So do we all.
Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs.
He can be reached through his website www.briancloughley.com