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MSNBC: Bush promised Iraqi civilians a better future. What are their lives like now?
This is not a bad article on the whole, but what I really want to draw attention to is the article's opening sentence:
"Honest people can still disagree about the ethics and wisdom of pre-emptive war.
In light of everything we now know about the way the Bush administration pushed intelligence agencies to find a link between 9-11 and Iraq even when those agancies tried to tell them no such link existed, about the CIA'S knowledge that there was no WMD program, and about the cherry-picked intelligence used to build a case to war, I am simply astounded that any journalist would begin an article with the words, "Honest people can still disagree about the ethics and wisdom of pre-emptive war." Don't they think journalists failed the country enough during the lead-up to the war, and during the war itself?
I'm sorry, but no, honest people cannot still disagree about the ethics wisdom of the Iraq war (which had absolutely NOTHING to do with preemption)! And by saying that there can still be honest disagreement about it, the author serves only to feed continued disinformation about the war.
Here's a fuller excerpt and a link :
Honest people can still disagree about the ethics and wisdom of pre-emptive war, but the available evidence makes a cruel joke of the former president’s pledge. By the barest possible count—violent deaths recounted in news reports and confirmed through morgue records—the war has claimed 133,251 Iraqi civilians since March 2003. That figure alone is 28 times the toll for U.S. and allied troops, but it doesn’t fully capture the war’s humanitarian impact. The effort to topple a dictator ended up displacing 3 million people, poisoning the country’s environment, damaging water and sanitation systems, and crippling an already shaky health care system.
Modern wars always claim more civilians than soldiers, but international law has long sought to reduce civilian harm. Under the fourth Geneva Convention, an occupying power must not only secure food and medical supplies but quickly restore social and health services after toppling a government. The State Department knows this drill: during the run-up to the war, its Agency for International Development (USAID) devised a $4.2 billion plan to address the inevitable humanitarian disaster. But President Bush quietly killed that effort just three weeks before promising the Iraqi people a brighter future. In a Decision Directive dated Jan. 20, he placed the Pentagon in charge of the relief effort as well as the invasion—a move that greatly complicated the public-health response. Ten years later, the results are on full display.
The State Department started planning for a disaster in 2002, as the Bush administration raised the stakes in its standoff with Saddam Hussein. When the nation is involved in armed conflicts, USAID normally coordinates relief efforts with international groups, keeping the military at arm’s length to protect the relief workers’ neutrality. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wanted a different arrangement for this war. He foresaw a quick campaign that would topple Saddam with minimal damage to the country’s civil infrastructure. In his dream, U.S. forces would get out quickly, and the relief organizations would step in to work directly with a new Iraqi government to rebuild. In short, we would be liberators rather than occupiers. The president acquiesced.
Dr. Frederick “Skip” Burkle is a seasoned disaster-response expert who helped direct the State Department’s planning efforts. He had managed war-related health emergencies since Vietnam, and he’d worked closely during the first Gulf war with Jay Garner, the retired U.S. Army lieutenant general Rumsfeld tapped to head his relief effort. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney were purposely minimizing the State Department’s involvement—a source of great irritation to Secretary of State Colin Powell—but they cleared Garner to name Burkle as Iraq’s interim health minister. Burkle knew the Defense Department was hostile territory, but he still wanted the job. “I’d been in five wars and I knew how to deal with the aftermath,” he says. “I knew that wars kill civilians by knocking out water, power, sanitation and medical care. I knew we had to restore those services quickly and set up a disease-surveillance system to tell us where people were most vulnerable.”
Modern wars always claim more civilians than soldiers, but international law has long sought to reduce civilian harm. Under the fourth Geneva Convention, an occupying power must not only secure food and medical supplies but quickly restore social and health services after toppling a government. The State Department knows this drill: during the run-up to the war, its Agency for International Development (USAID) devised a $4.2 billion plan to address the inevitable humanitarian disaster. But President Bush quietly killed that effort just three weeks before promising the Iraqi people a brighter future. In a Decision Directive dated Jan. 20, he placed the Pentagon in charge of the relief effort as well as the invasion—a move that greatly complicated the public-health response. Ten years later, the results are on full display.
The State Department started planning for a disaster in 2002, as the Bush administration raised the stakes in its standoff with Saddam Hussein. When the nation is involved in armed conflicts, USAID normally coordinates relief efforts with international groups, keeping the military at arm’s length to protect the relief workers’ neutrality. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wanted a different arrangement for this war. He foresaw a quick campaign that would topple Saddam with minimal damage to the country’s civil infrastructure. In his dream, U.S. forces would get out quickly, and the relief organizations would step in to work directly with a new Iraqi government to rebuild. In short, we would be liberators rather than occupiers. The president acquiesced.
Dr. Frederick “Skip” Burkle is a seasoned disaster-response expert who helped direct the State Department’s planning efforts. He had managed war-related health emergencies since Vietnam, and he’d worked closely during the first Gulf war with Jay Garner, the retired U.S. Army lieutenant general Rumsfeld tapped to head his relief effort. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney were purposely minimizing the State Department’s involvement—a source of great irritation to Secretary of State Colin Powell—but they cleared Garner to name Burkle as Iraq’s interim health minister. Burkle knew the Defense Department was hostile territory, but he still wanted the job. “I’d been in five wars and I knew how to deal with the aftermath,” he says. “I knew that wars kill civilians by knocking out water, power, sanitation and medical care. I knew we had to restore those services quickly and set up a disease-surveillance system to tell us where people were most vulnerable.”
Full article at: http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/03/18/president-bush-promised-iraqi-civilians-a-better-future-what-are-their-lives-like-now