The Bad News...

By Michael Rivero

Today a C-130 Hercules crashed in Iraq. According to witnesses, the wreckage was spread out over a wide area. Anyone familiar with aircraft accidents will confirm that this indicates that the aircraft came apart high in the air, not on impact with the ground.

A week ago, a helicopter crashed in Iraq, killing 31 people. Officially blamed on the weather, reports from the crash site indicate the wreckage covered 2 square kilometers. Again, this strongly suggests that the helicopter came apart high in the air. The Baghdad meteorological office confirms that the weather was clear with only moderate winds and no sandstorms at the time of the crash.

The bad news is that the Iraqi people have gained the ability to shoot down our aircraft. The US, having lost control of the use of the roads in Iraq, resorted (as they did in Vietnam) to trying to run the war from the air. The folly of that approach was demonstrated in Afghanistan when the Mujahideen learned how to kill the helicopters the Russians relied on. And now it is happening again.

That's the bad news. There is more bad news.

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Both the United Nations' inspections under Scott Ritter and the subsequent United States search under Charles Duelfer confirmed that Saddam Hussein was actually in compliance with United Nations' demands to destroy the weapons he had possessed prior to Desert Storm. The remains of the destroyed weapons were documented. They did not go anywhere. They didn't exist. The inspectors found rotted and corroded remains dating back to the Iran/Iraq war. When inspectors visited the remains of Iraq's reactor that had been bombed by Israel, instead of a revived weapons program they found the building being used to grow mushrooms. Common sense tells you that if Saddam really had weapons of mass destruction, he would have used them to halt the US invasion. That is, after all, what weapons of mass destruction exist for. Common sense will also tell you that if the US really HAD thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, they likely would not have invaded in the first place.

Iraq has not been supporting "Al Qaeda". The CIA has concluded that not only is there no evidence to support such a claim, but that Saddam and Al Qaeda were actually enemies . Al Qaeda's avowed purpose is theocratic rule, and Saddam's government was a secular one. Had Saddam actually armed Al Qaeda, he would have found himself as their first target. > Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. Nobody has found any evidence to support that claim.

According to people who have been jailed by both Saddam and the US, the US torturers are much, MUCH worse.

The United States has killed more civilians in Iraq than died in 9-11.

And while we are at it, Iran actually gassed the Kurds, according to a study by the US Army War College.

That is the truth. Deal with it.

Bush continues to insist that the war in Iraq was justified, even as every single justification for that war has fallen into dust. Personally, I would like to see him talk to the families of those kids killed in that helicopter crash and convince them that this war was worth all the pain they are going through; that it was the right thing to do to send our kids over to Iraq, minus the armor needed for conventional wars (let alone what should have been given the kids if the US really thought they were facing an enemy armed with weapons of mass destruction). I don't know, maybe Bush will grin sheepishly and say the war was about the oil all along. I can't say that makes any sense either. The US is getting about $150 million in oil out of Iraq every month, for which it spends over $5 billion a month. Plus the dead kids, of course. Maybe Philip Zelikow, one of the official 9-11 Commissioners, was correct when he stated in a speech that Iraq was invaded for Israel.

But here is the really bad news.

Rather than admit that the invasion of Iraq is a "Charlie Foxtrot", Bush and his pro-war advisers will continue to pour your money and your children into Iraq, because they have to stay in Iraq in order to move on to the invasion of Iran. And the justifications for invading Iran are, well, the same ones they used for Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, support for terror, yadda yadda yadda... The nation will slide more firmly into unpayable debt at the rate of $5 billion a month, to fight a war whose real purpose is being hidden from the American people whose money and children are being spent so profligately. Bush can't even keep the smirk off of his face any more. He knows he is lying. He knows you know he is lying. And he knows there isn't anything you will do about it. Most people don't have the courage to stand up to a corrupt war machine until after it is their own child lying in that box, and of course by then it is way too late.

The people the US invaded are getting better at killing our kids, who were sent off to invade Iraq for, well, we don't really know, do we? They are angry, and rightly so. The people of Iraq know they did not do any of the things Bush claimed they did to justify the war. Our troops know it too. Our kids KNOW they are the villains, and they have to fight that awareness while they fight the Iraqi people, the climate, and the lack of supplies. The war cannot be won because all the stated goals have been exposed as deceptions. And your kids are stuck there, dying, not because they can win, but because they are just "placeholders", holding open the door to the invasion of Iran.

That's the bad news. Kinda sucks, doesn't it?