A Guide to the President's First Post-Downing Street Speech on Iraq

[struggle4progress]

by Ralph Nader and Kevin Zeese
June 27, 2005

<snip> Insurgency Getting Stronger and Could Last More than a Decade: The Bush administration has been predicting the imminent defeat of the insurgency. Most recently Vice President Cheney claimed on May 31 on Larry King Live that the insurgency in Iraq is “in their last throes,” and predicted that the fighting will end before the Bush administration leaves office. These statements are inconsistent with statements made by Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, who acknowledged on Sunday, June 26th that the insurgency could last up to 12 years; and with his top U.S. Commander in the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, who testified before the Senate last week that the Iraqi insurgency is as active as six months ago and more foreign fighters are flowing in all the time. More and more people on the ground in Iraq are saying the fight against the insurgency is not winnable under present troop force. <snip>

Troops Continue to Be Poorly Armed and Severely Injured: The amount of time we have spent in Iraq is longer than World War I and by this time in World War II we were looking toward D-Day – yet in Iraq U.S. troops are unable to adequately protect themselves. The lack of body armor and armor for vehicles is still inadequate to protect U.S. troops after two years of soldiers’ complaints and media criticism. Will President Bush admit at least this fatal “mistake” to the soldiers he is addressing on Tuesday night? This incompetent management of the war and occupation has led to thousands of wounded. The DoD reports 13,074 but knowledgeable estimates range from 15,000 to 38,000 according to UPI investigative reporter, Mark Benjamin. The Pentagon does not provide publicly a comprehensive accounting of the human toll of the war from the American side, not to mention the larger toll on the Iraqi people. The Administration only reports the strictly combat-related injuries. Neither injuries incurred not in combat nor disease-connected sicknesses nor severe mental traumas are reported. What other President has deliberately undercounted American casualties? No wonder President Bush orders the return of U.S. casualties at nighttime to Andrews Air Force base and bans the press from the military airport at Dover, Delaware.

U.S. Respect in the World Diminishing: The illegally fabricated Iraq War and Occupation continue to isolate us further from the people around the world. Last week an Italian court issued a warrant for ten CIA agents involved in the rendition of a kidnapped Islamic cleric. And, in Australia, some U.S. students report such intense harassment for being Americans that they are leaving school there and returning home. The continued use of Guantanemo Bay to house uncharged “detainees” (a euphemism for prisoners), the Abu Gulag prison scandal, prison abuse reports in other parts of Iraq and Afghanistan, the rendition policy of seizing people and bringing them to countries known for torture all add up to a downward spiral in perception of the U.S. around the world. Our government can no longer claim the mantel of human rights protector when human rights organizations report that we are a human rights violator around the world. <snip>

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NAD20050627&articleId=535