I want the President of the United States to apologize for ignoring his own intelligence analysts and launching a war of choice that led directly to this:
Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week’s bombing of a Shiite shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad’s main morgue. The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S. military and the news media.
Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday Monday — blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their heads. Many of the bodies were sprawled with their hands still bound — and many of them had wound up at the morgue after what their families said was their abduction by the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
I have a bit of an inside angle on the advice the President received and rejected. My best friend was a Near Eastern Studies major at Princeton and the fathers of two of my closest high school friends were professors of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. And it wasn’t just egghead academics that told the President he was nuts to go into Iraq. His father told him, people like Pat Lang told him, Colin Powell told him.
Listen up Bush. You haven’t liberated shit. You haven’t brought freedom anywhere. You brought garroting and suffocation and forced rape and waterboarding and kidnapping and beheading and truck bombs and amputees and brain damage and carnage on an untold scale and attack dogs and mass graves and one lie after another and illegal domestic surveillance of peace activists and the basic denial of due process to American citizens and a fiscal crisis and less health care, worse schools, lower paying jobs, staggering corruption, and extravagent wealth to defense contractors and speculators in gold.
You need to leave office now. And you need to ask for forgiveness. And you need to pay a price for your crimes.
1,300
in only a few days, 1,300 people were killed.
this is the part that really got me:
Way to tell em Booman!
It’s a shame that Bush is almost certainly not allowed to read posts like this on the internets. And, even more tragically, if he did manage to read this diary, he wouldn’t “get it” anyway.
Bush might go down in history as the “most dangerous imbecile” in the 21st century. And to achieve such status in the very first 5 yeas of that century would be truly remarkable.
True.
The 20th century was full of dangerous people but I’m hard pressed to think of any that were also imbeciles.
I can only imagine how you felt writing that, as I felt nauseous reading it. But it definitely makes the point.
And what else is sickening is the ways that those it this country have had to pay for the invasion of Iraq. I mean, we could have a single payer health care system instead. (I don’t want to rant, sorry if I did.)
George Bernard Shaw said that Hell is full of musical amateurs. George W. is going to get an earful.
I’m not the only one to say this but seriously, you have to wonder if things could be more screwed up if that was this administration’s deliberate intention.
Pax
On some level, this IS their deliberate intention.
It’s the old “Do it my way or I will FUCK YOU UP” tactic.
That was what Vietnam was about, too.
And it worked.
Prove to someone that you are crazy enough to mess yourself up if that’s what it takes to mess them up even worse, and you are halfway home in the intimidation sweepstakes.
The most feared gangsters are the really crazy ones like Dutch Schultz and Crazy Joey Gallo.
There’s a saying attributed to Sam Goldwyn about show biz. “Sincerity is the most important thing. Once you can fake that, you are in.”
Well…craziness can be faked too. Of course, in a case like this if you are “faking” craziness to the point of taking hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives…remember, these are the spiritual and tactical descendants of the same people who ran Vietnam…you really ARE crazy, but hey…
That’s SHOW BIZ…!!!
“Alright, Mr Rove. am ready for my close up!!!”
AG
And just in case, you know, you aren’t outraged enough – and it’s interesting, because every time I think I can’t possibly get more outraged by the Bush Administration, they manage to top themselves – here are a couple more stories…
Here is a story about the US prison at Bagram, in Afghanistan, where like Guantanamo, detainees are held indefinitely, without charge, under even more squalid conditions.
And here is a story about the massive budget cuts to veterans’ benefits under Bush’s proposed new budget.
But you know what, that petty little sadistic sociopath will never apologize for what he’s done. The deaths and suffering he’s caused mean nothing to him.
Bagram is the best of Afghan prisons. There are worse. There are a whole string of “dark” prisons in Afghanistan where prisoners are kept in subhuman conditions; by the time they get to Guantanamo, they’re willing to sign confessions to anything. Bagram, by all accounts, is being expanded. Gee, do you think it has something to do with Guantanamo inmates getting things like lawyers? Cries and demands for Guantanamo to be permanently closed? Bagram is the new Guantanamo… no rights, no lawyers, no visitors. I’ve been thinking about diarying this whole black prison system.
Now that I’m getting over my fear of posting around here, I have some vocabulary build-up in here dying to get out.
and cross post it “plumb to Tuscaloosa and back to Tulsa.”
I just love being a citizen of the Torture Regime. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy…
Apologize?
The guy is a psychopath with no conscience.
Forgiveness?
He will never ask for it.
Pay the price?
That is up to us.
Impeach!
Apologies are one fantasy I never entertain, because I live in the reality-based world.
Boo, I get annoyed when I can’t find a ‘recommend’ button for you. This is excellent.
What Alice said. 🙂
Well said. For everything he’s done directly or indirectly he has to go, and not just him. Everyone with connections to this administration including the those in charge of the major news media, must be prosectued for treasonoue acts and crimes against humanity. This is the most criminal administration our nation has ever had.
Wasn’t it a Princeton University Middle Eastern studies professor, Lewis, who told Bush to go for it?
Yes. According to Bernie Muslims are just sore losers…so it’s okay to beat them up.
…extravagent wealth to defense contractors and speculators in gold. (especially black gold, I’d add.)
That’s what it’s all about. Everything else is just “externalities” that don’t even figure into the calculation: “You gotta break a few eggs…”
You`ve done it again. Great reminder [albeit, a horrific one] of the callousness of that monster in the white house. The last two paragraphs sum it all up in clear concise terms. As often as possible, I quote powerful statements like this to people still eating the “fruitcake”.
((((Booman)))) I wish I could kiss you for those words. I’ve shared them with my dear friends… I wish you words could get through the idiot box called the news media. But that’s asking for sanity in an insane, corrupt world.
Again, thank you!
Bravo! Bravo!! g-d, you can write.
Your final two paragraphs – absolutely perfect! Thank you.