A little levity: Fiore's parody ad for Halliburton. (markfiore.com) This is far funnier, and far less frightening, than actual military ads that run in the Washington Post routinely and make me shudder.

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The discussion of how to deal with Saddam Hussein's capture shouldn't be limited to passionate, self-interested U.S. government sources. The Washington Post'sWorld Opinion Roundup covers the international press, and asks: will Saddam Hussein's trial be the founding act of justice for the Iraqi people upon which their new government is based, or a hasty ritual to sweep embarassing facts under the rug and rush to the execution chamber?

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"We have captured him and he looks pathetic, but there are still a lot of questions that need to be asked about whether it was necessary to go to war." -- Madeline Albright in the Washington Post

The reaction to Saddam Hussein's capture is still playing out. For those who want to believe that Bush is a great guy, it's a good excuse for them to think so. For those of us who have piles of proof that Bush lied to us, it's not so consoling.

Here's an excerpt from some local commentary by Joan Ryan (sfgate.com) as to why we're not in awe:

"It's kind of a diversion," said Jackie Cabasso... "It doesn't change the basic situation on the ground in Iraq. It doesn't make the U.S. right for going in there. This war was sold on a whole set of lies. Capturing Saddam Hussein doesn't change that."

As popularity of the 'No one died when Clinton lied' sign increases, this sentiment will likely be more widely expressed.

There's also the grammatically irreverent Mark Morford's "Saddam, So Not Worth It" (sfgate.com):

Remember that time? Right about when the U.S. hushed up all those sales of biological weapons and computer technology to Iraq? Right about when all those American corporations, from Bechtel to Kodak to AT&T, from Dow Chemical to Hewlett-Packard to IBM and at least 100 more , decided it might be best to begin shredding their records detailing all their Iraq business deals? Hey, why is Donny Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam and smiling in this photo? Shhh.

And now, long after his political usefulness to us has expired, we up and invade his unhappy nation and lay waste to the entire region for no justifiable reason, and we inflate his global stature into this massive inhuman Hitler-esque monster when in fact he was really just an old, tired, small-time thug, and now finally Saddam Hussein, the brutal pip-squeak dictator/former beloved U.S. ally who had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, has been captured alive. Yay yay go team.

He goes on to bash Clinton for the sanctions that killed civilians, by the way, for those of you who want to be sure that the blame is shared.

Bush is calling for Hussein's execution (BBC), perhaps to spare himself the many embarassing details of friendship Saddam may try to share, and is still undecided about whether or not to follow international law with regard to his treatment, defying Geneva Convention bans yet again, while folks in Iraq still wait for stability and supplies. (BBC) As Morford says, yay yay go team.

I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't read it myself: U.S. newspapers got right down to business about the capture of former dictator Saddam Hussein in their usual, businesslike way: Saddam Rally Fails to Materialize is about how the despot's capture was supposed to have boosted the stock market. (Washingtonpost.com)

Yes, they really are that shallow. The link's shortcut title was "no Saddam rally for markets."

Saddam Hussein Captured!

I worked part of this weekend, and so I fell behind in monitoring the news. I was catching up, reading about how the Bush Administration is cutting more and more veterans' and soldiers' benefits (inthesetimes.com), when I checked my e-mail and heard the big news: Saddam Hussein has been captured!!! (BBC) The former strongman looks terrible after months of hiding in a tiny cellar.

All those of us who have read about the terrible suffering he forced others to endure can feel relieved that he's not torturing and falsely imprisoning anyone anymore.

For those worries, we have to turn to the U.S. government, which is currently torturing and falsely imprisoning people as part of the so-called 'War on Terror.'

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There are several reports on Hussein's capture, the most odd surely being this Associated Press report:

After three decades in power, Saddam was captured without a single shot, hiding in an underground hide-out on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit.

(SFGate). Apparently the AP writer has also been hiding in a cave, because otherwise he would be aware that the bombing of Baghdad was intended to capture or kill this man, and that involved quite a few shots, and quite a few American and Iraqi lives lost.

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Yahoos in the U.S. are already filling their blogs with variations of "Woohoo! Go USA! USA! USA!" The international press has a wider range of government opinions and public comment. (BBC) Sample:

Although Hussein's capture is wonderful news for the Iraqi people, it still does not provide justification for this war and my country's continued Empire building throughout the world - most recently through the seizure of Iraq's oil. Bush has finished what his Daddy started and I'm sure the family will be especially grateful to their Good Lord at this Christmas....

Saddam's trial may well be a mixed blessing for the US. He will undoubtedly (and embarrassingly) reveal how he was helped to power and supplied with WMD by the US government. And if the WMD still fail to turn up, the grounds and legality for the war will be clearly be in doubt....

Ah, the trial. The US has made it clear that it doesn't believe in the International Criminal Court, and there could be some awkwardness about giving the former U.S. ally an open hearing. "...U.S. authorities have not yet determined when -- or whether -- to hand Saddam over to the Iraqis for a war crimes trial or what his status would be." (SF Gate) Another awkward realization from the same article:

But Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, cautioned the capture likely will not end the insurgent attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq. U.S. officials were wary of retaliatory strikes.

"Given the location and circumstances of his capture, it makes it clear that Saddam was not managing the insurgency, and that he had very little control or influence. That is significant and disturbing because it means the insurgents are not fighting for Saddam, they're fighting against the United States," said Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

As my dour and cynical friend Larry remarks, tying in my earlier reading with this news:

So US armed forces captured Saddam. And a trial would be a bad idea because it would remind people that members of the current USA administration aided the gassing of the Kurds. Before the armed forces decide what to do with Saddam, I hope they at least negotiate to get their pensions back.

The story that is most appalling to mothers I know right now is that of the U.S. bombing a group of nine children in Afghanistan. (BBC) Acting on woefully misnamed 'intelligence,' the U.S. bombed an area they thought was occupied by a militant. They think they killed the militant AND the nine children, though locals say the militant had left town days before.

It took the U.S. several days to acknowledge having killed the children. (This article has a sidebar that lists other 'bombing errors' that the U.S. has acknowledged.)

My partner listened to a BBC radio report on this topic, in which a U.S. military spokesperson ceased the interview because the reporter insisted that killing children was inappropriate.

This story exposes a very serious issue that has also arisen repeatedly in Iraq: the U.S. is engaging in extra-judicial killings of both suspects and bystanders based on rumor and suspicion.

The U.S. is supposed to help the Iraqis install a truly fair justice system, but is leading by example in following an entirely different path. Killing 'suspects' without trial, without witness testimony, without evidence, recalls the terrible regime that was recently removed. If there are individuals who should be charged with crimes, they should be charged and tried properly -- both for the sake of their victims and to show that real justice really is possible in the new Iraq. To do otherwise suggests that change isn't possible.

There is also the major issue of inappropriate use of force. If the U.S. is seeking to apprehend or stop one individual, it is inappropriate to bomb entire neighborhoods and innocent bystanders. Bombs are NOT appropriate force against one individual. Especially an individual against whom there is no reliable evidence. U.S. "intelligence" has proven faulty again and again. So far as anyone can tell, informant Iraqis who have been helping the U.S. may be trying to remove their own political rivals. The U.S. should not be a party to such activities. The U.S. should not execute people based on questionable information from questionable allies.

Read this item, look at the photo, and then decide: which is the real turkey? (BBC)

An interesting tidbit: 7 out of 10 Americans don't think attacking Iraq has reduced the threat of terrorism, and a similar number support UN intervention there. (SF Gate)

It's a shame the folks in the White House only read polls when they're favorable.

(There's no chance that anyone in the White House could stand the tiny Retropoll done which revealed that a large percentage of Americans think Bush should be impeached. (Retropoll.org) Something tells me the Bush Administration isn't about to send them a check to expand the survey into some meaningful samples...)

To keep you occupied while I'm out attending political fund raisers: Pantsonfire.net, as in 'liar liar, pants on fire, sitting on top of a telephone wire.' Yes, a catalog of Bush's lies are available, including the big ones about Iraq.

[My apologies that some of my 11/03 archives disappeared. I've republished all the pages, and they've all returned. Sorry for any inconvenience.]

Speaking of the US abandoning the rule of law and acting like a rogue nation: Assassins R Us by Chalmers Johnson points out that the US plans to expand efforts to conduct international assassinations without the consent of the sovereign governments in whose borders the assassinations will (and now have) take(n) place. (Commondreams.org)

If we do this to others, others will do this to us...

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This item was published in the worthwhile blog Tom Dispatch (nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch), which has items of concern such as this one about the militarization of the U.S., in which former generals predict our Constitution will be unraveled in the event of another attack against the US, even while the US makes such attacks more likely by bombing civilians and leaving nuclear materials unguarded, providing looters and others with the ingredients to dirty bombs (telegraph.co.uk).

(That last item, the idea of the US leaving multiple nuclear facilities unguarded, is still the most bizarre aspect of the invasion of Iraq's aftermath. Why on earth would anyone secure the oil facilities, but not the nuclear facilities??? Even if the government secretly believed that Iraq was defenseless, and even if the main purpose of the war was to acquire control of oil resources, any reasonable person or organization would know that nuclear materials require security, if only for our own sakes. Why the huge, gaping lapse on this?)

As the month of November 2003 sets records as the most fatal for U.S. troops occupying Iraq (SFGate.com), the costs of war in terms of the freedoms we cherish are still mounting. Algierian Benamar Benatta was locked in U.S. prisons for 26 months, even after being cleared of terrorist associations in November of 2001. (Washington Post) Judges chastised the government for trumping up charges, keeping him hidden beyond legal deadlines, and other abuses. The government didn't blink. He was 'disappeared,' kept in solitary confinement, harassed while sleeping, hassled while in shackles. The government does not plan to apologize. Now, in fact, the government hopes to deport Benatta to Algeria, a country he was seeking asylum to avoid returning to, as he could be imprisoned or executed for leaving his military duty. That suits the U.S. government just fine.

Democratic, freedom-loving governments do not 'disappear' visitors, do not hold people without charges, do not abuse people who are shackled. The U.S. government is crossing into the territory of despotic, rogue regimes that we used to mock. It's so bad that a senior judge of our ally, Britain, has declared that the US is engaging in a 'monstrous failure of justice' and compares US military tribunals to kangaroo courts. (Commondreams.org)

The U.S. government's human rights crimes don't just hurt those imprisoned: they hurt all of us. As WWII veteran Peter Cohen writes for Commondreams:

The question is not whether Guantanamo is part of the U.S. and covered by the Constitution; the question is whether the reputation and honor of the U.S. can be sacrificed on the altar of fear. How can we profess to teach democracy to others when this illegal and cruel imprisonment violates every principle of the rule of law? Holding the Guantanamo "detainees" is a dark stain on our nation¹s history that will not be removed by anything that we may accomplish elsewhere.

There have been over 1,500 "excess" violent civilian deaths in Baghdad during the 'protective' U.S. occupation, according to iraqbodycount.net.

From April 14th to 31st August, 2,846 violent deaths were recorded by the Baghdad city morgue. When corrected for pre-war death rates in the city a total of at least 1,519 excess violent deaths in Baghdad emerges from reports based on the morgue's records.

IBC's latest study is the first comprehensive count to adjust for the comparable "background level" of deaths in Baghdad in recent pre-war times. It is therefore an estimate of additional deaths in the city directly attributable to the breakdown of law and order following the US takeover and occupation of Baghdad....

IBC researcher Hamit Dardagan said "The US may be effective at waging war but the descent of Iraq's capital city into lawlessness under US occupation shows that it is incompetent at maintaining public order and providing security for the civilian population. The US has toppled Saddam and discovered that it won't be discovering any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So why is it still there? And if the US military can't ensure the safety of Iraqi civilians and itself poses a danger to them, what is its role in that country?

Iraqbodycount.net also had a good article back in August about the injured civilian population called Adding Indifference to Injury, which tabulates reports of Iraqis who were wounded, though that information has been hard to come by. It's bad enough that the U.S. forces have made a concerted effort not to keep any record of the number of civilians they kill, but to deny assistance to the wounded surely makes more enemies than friends.

The United States has created a prison on Guantanamo Bay that operates entirely outside the law.

Within the walls of this prison, foreign nationals may be held indefinitely, without charges or evidence of wrongdoing, without access to family, friends or legal counsel, and with no opportunity to establish their innocence.

Attorneys representing Britons, Australians, and Kuwaitis earlier this month had one positive piece of news: the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case determining whether or not the US' prisoners have any legal rights. (BBC) Under the Bush Administration's policy, the U.S. can abduct anyone, anywhere, and so long as they do not touch U.S. soil, they have no human or legal rights of any kind.

Under this theory, any American traveling anywhere in the world can be abducted and held forever by agents of any other nation, so long as they don't touch the soil of the home country of their captors.

This is a bad policy. Especially if others do unto us as we do unto them. Yet the Bush Administration is convinced this policy is making the world safer for Americans. Clearly, there are some unique thought processes going on there, which may not apply to earth.

Two little updates on the protests in London:

-Here are more BBC reporters' blog reports on the happenings of the day, including comments on the successful conclusion of the peace march, the protesters' collective success in making Bush hide for his entire visit, and the way that anything on the Bush/Blair agenda has been drowned out by the explosions in Turkey this morning. Unfortunately, one of the reporters may be right in suggesting that nearly anything can be politically justified during times of such duress, including the Bush/Blair agenda.

-My personal favorite update, the story of the Bush effigy being toppled in parody of the fall of Baghdad (SF Gate). This article has some serious discussion and a counterpoint to the suggestions of the BBC reporter in the previous item.

"There have been more and more bombings since the action in Iraq and more terrorism," said Mischa Gorris, a 37-year-old London lawyer. "You will never change the hearts and minds of terrorists by bombing them. This is what you will get."

I don't think Bush or Blair really care about the underlying causes of terrorism, though, so I don't think they can understand this line of reasoning. They are all about (mis)treating the symptoms. Unfortunately for all of us who wish to live in peace, it's darned unlikely that such an approach will ever cure 'the disease' for which terrorism is just one outward sign.

(Yes, Virginia, there are reasons that the wealthy and comfortable never seem to become terrorists, while the dispossessed and abused sometimes do...)

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Speaking of the dispossessed: protests against the proposed Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA) in Miami are resulting in some scary, police-state style images. (Many more at ftaaimc.org)

There is a good collection of blog-style reports from BBC reporters as to the early events surrounding Bush's visit to London, including Bush's meeting with the queen and the modest early protests (BBC). They give a sense that this is a very sterile, strange way to have pomp and circumstance. Example:

The focus of the ceremony was inside the gates of the Palace so the great British public never felt invited and, with the exception of a hundred or so hardy souls, they didn't show up. A few people jogging in the park across the road or hurrying to work paused for a moment but most just rushed on by.

This was a glittering spectacle without an audience. It was a film-set, not a theatre.

There was an alternative ceremony performed by protesters and their own versions of the Queen and Bush. (BBC - photos) Highlight from the captions:

At Trafalgar Square, the alternative president said how delighted he was to be in the UK: "Your little country makes a great runway - I'm just looking forward to two days of protests against myself and my policies. Yee ha!"

Meanwhile, the BBC has an amusing fixation with Bush's armored car.

In a video report on the protests (BBC), a reporter notes that images of people screaming and being pulled away by police are not the sort of image that Bush wants the folks back home to see. But really, there isn't much risk of that: the corporate media in our country pretends that things that don't suit its interests don't exist. So few will know.

I enjoy this article about the British press' commentary on Bush's visit to London for its great quotes. (Washington Post) There aren't many U.S. publications that are this direct:

Bush is "about the least welcome visitor to these shores since Mr. Bubonic Plague jumped ship with his rat-pack back in the 1350s," writes the Mirror columnist Brian Reade.

I also enjoyed the perspective about those on the right and left who want to flee Iraq as-is, leaving the country in a disarray that may be worse than the nasty former-ally-now-badguy regime that was displaced. At the same time, it's not exactly a list of suggestions as to how to make things go more smoothly, and so still leaves much to be desired. But I like the recognition of the obligation to set things to rights, even if the means by which that can be done seems to have already slipped from the grasp of U.S. forces (assuming purely for the sake of argument that it could ever have been in the grasp of an invading force...).

For those of you who haven't worried about the plight of the recently 'liberated' people of Afghanistan, please do.

I never imagined that I would live in a time where the President of the United States was reviled around the world.

I'm not saying that inspiring millions of people on earth to unify to protest your war plans simultaneously isn't an impressive achievement. It's just that it's not an intentional, positive achievement.

The least popular president is visiting London right now, and one of the odd aspects of the visit is that Bush has to stay more or less in hiding because of the unpopularity of the Iraq war. (Ironically, Bush's people have pointed to polls, yes polls, showing some support for his visit. Selective about what they read, don't you think?) Here are a few choice snippets:

London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who on Monday called Bush "the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen," urged anti-Bush demonstrators to remain peaceful.

"You are protesting against an illegal war and occupation, and the world will be watching you," he said.

(Washington Post)

The official embrace of the American president belies deep suspicions among ordinary Britons about the war in Iraq, and hostility toward Bush.

Some 1 million Britons protested in a single day in February, before the war. Fifty-two Britons have died in Iraq.

Demonstrators plan to pull down a statue of Bush made of papier mache and chicken wire, to parody the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad.

... Bush will not address Parliament during his visit. Such a speech could invite the kind of heckling the president received when he spoke to the Australian Parliament last month.

(Also Washington Post) Here's another one about security concerns and the disruption his visit is causing:

He denied reports that police were considering shutting mobile phone masts during protests against the president's visit....

During his visit, Mr Bush will also be protected by hundreds of armed guards from the US....They will not be granted diplomatic immunity, and will be subject to the British legal system if they shoot anybody, the Home Office has promised.

...London Mayor Ken Livingstone is holding a peace party in City Hall on Wednesday, attended by many groups opposed to the war in Iraq.

(BBC). Yes, the violent Americans and their violent President is coming, surrounded by violent men! Another comment from a UK elected official:

Glenda Jackson MP, who opposed the war, told BBC One's Politics Show the visit was the "Dumb and Dumber show".

While she said Britain was "America's closest ally for a variety of reasons," she did not agree that the government "should demonstrate that closeness by - as it seems to me - we are at the moment being permanently on our knees."

Here are some comments compiled by the BBC from international sources:

Blair can live with the mockery of newspapers writing that Bush is coming to "check up on his poodle"... What is worse is how Bush's visit is limiting Blair's domestic room for manoeuvre. When parliament votes on his health reforms, many Labour MPs will be voting so enthusiastically against because they think he is already mortally wounded.

Handelsblatt - Germany

---

This week's agenda is likely to be overshadowed by concerns of the rich and powerful... Blair must ask Bush to use his clout for good of the poor and the weak [and] urge Bush to help restart the WTO talks which collapsed in Cancun... The success of the talks is key to addressing some of the reasons for global terrorism.

Sowetan - South Africa

(BBC again) Unlike in American papers, other countries (even South Africa!) are able to have discussions of the root causes of terrorism. Unlike us. Because our President tells us that terrorism, which has been around for years, is suddenly caused only by people who 'hate freedom.'

They used me as a way to symbolise all this stuff. It's wrong." -- Jessica Lynch, on the Pentagon's misinformation about her rescue (BBC)

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It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about. They did not know whether I did that or not. Only I would have been able to know that, because the other four people on my vehicle aren't here to tell that story. So I would have been the only one able to say, 'Yeah, I went down shooting.' But I didn't. I did not....
--Jessica Lynch on ABC

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Iraqometer's first graphic, the one listing the number of days since a member of the coalition forces was killed, doesn't have to be updated often. The answer is invariably zero.

"The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War". (truthout.org) 17 soldiers died today in a two-helicopter collision (washington post).

Mounting casualties in Iraq have prompted the Bush administration to speed up plans to turn over authority to Iraqi leaders and technically end the occupation by next summer. However, there are no proposals for U.S. troops to abandon Iraq, even when an Iraqi government is in place.

William Rivers Pitt compares the attacks at the beginning of Ramadan to the Tet Offensive of Vietnam. (truthout.org)

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Just after the invasion, 43 per cent saw the U.S.-led Allies as 'liberating forces.' A poll earlier this month showed that 15 per cent now see the Americans as liberators. Iraqis who see them as occupiers have risen from 46 per cent to 67 per cent.
--Cockburn in The Independent

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The war is making life difficult within the U.S. Iraq war spending is increasing the largest federal budget deficit in U.S. history. (BBC) Corruption appears rife: the Center for Public Integrity reports that

More than 70 American companies and individuals have won up to $8 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two years... [which had] donated more money to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush - a little over $500,000 - than to any other politician over the last dozen years... Nearly 60 percent of the companies had employees or board members who either served in or had close ties to the executive branch for Republican and Democratic administrations, for members of Congress of both parties, or at the highest levels of the military.

We are losing the very civil liberties that our leaders are sworn to defend.

President Bush is claiming the unilateral right to do that to any American citizen he believes is an "enemy combatant." Those are the magic words. If the President alone decides that those two words accurately describe someone, then that person can be immediately locked up and held incommunicado for as long as the President wants, with no court having the right to determine whether the facts actually justify his imprisonment.

Now if the President makes a mistake, or is given faulty information by somebody working for him, and locks up the wrong person, then it’s almost impossible for that person to prove his innocence - because he can’t talk to a lawyer or his family or anyone else and he doesn’t even have the right to know what specific crime he is accused of committing. So a constitutional right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness that we used to think of in an old-fashioned way as "inalienable" can now be instantly stripped from any American by the President with no meaningful review by any other branch of government.
--Al Gore speaking on Freedom and Security (moveon.org)

Abroad, Bush is so unpopular, that his security people want to shut down central London so Bush can avoid protesters. (BBC video)

This is an interesting time historically, but not a very happy one.

The occupation of Iraq keeps taking such dramatic turns for the worse, it’s hard to even think about without wanting to cry. As of late October, more troops have died during the occupation than during major combat -- it’s only gotten worse since. (washingtonpost.com)

The people of Iraq are falling into a deep despair, fearing they have no future. (Washingtonpost.com)

Attacks on U.S. forces escalated, culminating in large-target attacks such as downing a Chinook helicopter, killing 16 soldiers and injuring 20 more. (sfgate.com) A black hawk helicopter went down next, and attacks on the US are occurring all over Iraq. (BBC) ”In October, 33 U.S. soldiers were killed in hostile fire, double the number killed in September.” (truthout.org)

85,000 additional troops are being called up to staff the occupation, without any overt changes in the failed logic of the plan. (sfgate.com)

Meanwhile, on the home front, our democracy is crumbling under the weight of the war. The US is abducting suspected terror suspects and taking them to allies who torture them for information (Washingtonpost.com), such as the Canadian whose abduction so upset Canada that our neighbor to the north issued a travel advisory AGAINST VISITING THE U.S. at that time. This may be part of a plan for the U.S. to use torture more often. (the Nation)

It is being widely reported that Iraq tried to make numerous attempts to prevent war by offering various deals to intermediaries to the US Government, which were rebuffed. (Washingtonpost.com) As the New York Times observes, “Administration supporters were fond of saying at the time that there were things Bush officials knew but could not share with the public. Little did we imagine that among those things was an offer that might have provided a way to avoid the war.” (truthout.org)

Long serving, loyal military officers are being persecuted for airing “liberal views”. (theitem.com) Some of our own

Administration’s officials, meanwhile, are denying that they ever claimed the Iraqis would welcome us, even though their earlier comments were transcribed (starbanner.com).

Truth is just one of many casualties of this war. If this is the cost, then we must ask ourselves if it is the terrorists, or merely the opportunists in our own government, who have already won.