Well, the update is in place thankfully. I honestly wasn't sure if I'd wake up and have to restart it manually… But it's there in place, and I'll get the rest of it online later today I hope.
As most of you know, one of the things US troops “discovered” (it was a known target so “discovered” isn't really the right word) was a chemical plant that was “bunkered” and slightly hidden. The suspicion was that it was a chemical weapons plant (although any idiot can tell you that if you're building even a legitimate factory in Iraq you should probably shield/hide it to protect it from US attacks). I saw the following post:
I heard about some warehouse possibly had chem weapons in it....then my mom said a neigbor said it was FILLED and blah blah blah, now I cant find ANYTHING about it. weird. i dont beleive that there were WMD, but i find it weird that i cant even find it now.
I think that pretty much typifies how “information” comes out in this war. The US makes some outlandish statement and then it turns out to a lie, and we never hear about it again — it just gets back page coverage so unless you actually read the news, you don't always hear about it. That chemical plant turned out to be clean for example. A couple other examples:
I can list these on and on. Unfortunately most people just hear the first part of the statement since it's aid ten times as loud. The Bush administration has told Americans that the “victory” will come with a price in American blood. But let's look at what price that victory comes at for the Iraqis… What regime-legacy is being left for them?.
Saddam, even if you believe he's an “evil man” with a “rape room” that “eats babies” and may even breathe fire, is far less “evil” than many of the alternatives. And we do seem to be playing a game of choosing the “lesser” evil, right? To oversimplify, there are two major theo-political forces in Iraq — extremist Muslims, and then moderates like Saddam.
The extremists have been clear: “If you want to kill Saddam for us, fine, but when you're done with that, get the hell out or we'll massacre every soldier you leave here, and then we start on your citizens.” Seriously, this is right up there with when the US put the Taliban in power in Afghanistan.
Here are some guarantees. Everything else is up for debate. All of these are true even if the war magically ends fifteen minutes from now:
- Billions of dollars of damage to Iraq
- Billions of dollars of American tax money wasted
- Thousands of Iraqis killed, if not more
- Hundreds of American soldiers killed
- Religious extremists (aka potential terrorists) empowered
I could expand that list almost indefinitely, and it gets worse every minute this goes on. There is no payback for the Iraqi people. All that'll happen for them is one dictator gets replaced with a far worse one and a lot of people get killed. All that'll happen for the American people is economic crisis and terrorist attacks… Some US companies might get right in the process.
But you will suffer for them.
But keep your head high, the flag of freedom will soon fly over Iraq, right? Either that or by the time Bush is through, the image of the US flag will be so tarnished that America will have to design a new flag out of shame.
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