3,000 Dead Americans in Iraq

Commentary ~ December 31, 2006: Despite President George Bush’s attempt to overshadow the grim milestone with a political execution, the 3,000th dead American soldier was sent home today in a body bag. The soldier fell on the last day of 2006, ringing in the New Year with a march towards 4,000.

As meticulously recorded on the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count website, the 3,000th dead American was also the 111th for December – the highest U.S. body count since November 2004.

Meanwhile, the political lynching of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein after a mock trial in a kangaroo court went off without a hitch in the Green Zone — Iraq’s equivalent of Guatanamo Bay. The Americans wanted the hanging to take place on their soil and under their control, for fear that he might escape if his killing was left up to the Iraqis.

Ironic though it is that 43 years ago the United States put Saddam Hussein into power through a CIA-orchestrated coup. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

The New York-based International Action Center said in a statement faxed to the Associated Press that Hussein’s hanging was part of a plan by President Bush to escalate the war. "The execution of Saddam Hussein is a clear sign that the Bush administration is looking not to negotiate a way for the U.S. to leave Iraq, but is instead sending a signal that it will continue the war and escalate it despite the impending disaster," the Center said in a written statement.

Back in the United States, President Bush declared January 2 a day of national mourning for former president Gerald Ford. Then, in a rebuke to Bush from the grave, Ford cried out in an embargoed interview (from July 2004) that the Iraq war was not justified. “I don’t think I would have gone to war,” he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion.

In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney (who used to be Ford’s chief of staff) and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford’s chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief. “Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction,” Ford said. “And now, I’ve never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do.”

That is probably no consolation to the family of the 3,000th dead American now being flown home in a body bag.

http://www.whywehatebush.com/news/06_12_3000Dead.html