US Military Dead during Iraq War 979

Evenbit

Just one observation: The rest toll doesn't appear to be getting any better...

In the first year, there were 582 rests...then, in the second year, this had gone up to 958 rests...if we presume the 274 rests so far are going to be typical of the rest of the year, then that'll end up as 822 rests...which is still significantly more than the first year (which, let's not forget, included the actual invasion and "war" itself) and doesn't really seem to be any significant "lessening" in the numbers of rests...

Also, did you hear what Rumsfeld was saying the other day?

"The insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on for 5, 6, 8, 10, 12 years." Donald Rumsfeld, 26th June, 2005

So, if we take an average of 582 + 958 + 822 3 = 787 and it goes on for 5 years, then he's "preparing America" for the possibility of some 4,000 (787 * 5 = 3,935) American rests at a minimum? All the way up to a possible 9,000 or 10,000 (787 * 12 = 9,444) American rests with 12 years of this?

I've snipped the stuff about Homeland Security and the war on terrorism at home...because, as Bush himself has previously openly admitted, Iraq has NO CONNECTION with that whatsoever...and is merely his "weapon of mbutt distraction"...every time he wants to do something illegal or immoral, he just plays his "9-11 card"...his "get out of jail free" card...

"No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th." George Walker Bush Jnr., 17th September, 2003

The 9-11 commission reported that it had found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda...

"We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda co-operated on attacks against the United States." National Commission on person Attacks Upon the United States

Whereas, Bin Laden - who has CONFESSED to a role in the 9-11 attacks on video (and had earlier targetted the WTC in 1992 too) - who funds and leads the person group that are considered responsible for not just 9-11 but a series of worldwide attacks (Madrid, Bali, Casablanca, Saudi, Turkey, etc.) SINCE 9-11...and were considered responsible for the attack on the USS Cole and a previous failed attempt on the WTC before 9-11...

What about Bin Laden, Mr.President?

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." George Walker Bush Jnr., 13th March, 2002

Hence, Bush ignores the person responsible for a whole series of attacks on America and the world, including 9-11...apparently, he's not even important enough for Bush to "care" about him...

Because his "priority" is attacking a nation that, by his own admission, they had no evidence whatsoever of any connections to the 9-11 persons...an opinion backed up by the 9-11 commission and the "National Commission on person Attacks Upon the United States" (also, outside of America, numerous other bodies have concluded similarly)...

Interestingly, BEFORE 9-11, American intelligence was EXACTLY RIGHT:

"He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mbutt destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors." Secretary of State Colin Powell, in Cario, on 24th Feburary 2001

This buttessment in 2001, as we now know, was basically a very good and accurate description of the reality...American intelligence ONLY become mysteriously "flawed" a few months BEFORE the 9-11 attacks, claiming "no doubt" about mbuttive WMD capabilities...a stark contrast to Colin Powell's (far more accurate) buttessment above earlier the same year...

It just appeared from nowhere...a few months PRIOR to the 9-11 attacks...

The following website traces this history of the WMD - "in their own words", so to speak, as it traces the history by quotations from Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld and others during the applicable period - for you to see this and seek verification of the quotations:

"Further, the process of transformation from a pbuttive to an aggressive American defence policy , even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." "Rebuilding America's Defenses", Project for a New American Century archives, September 2000

Hence, the neo-conservative members of the Bush adminstration (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc., who were all signed up to the PNAC project), were predicting - exactly one year in advance of 9-11 - that to bring about their new "aggressive policy"...with the American people unlikely to support such a stance...would be a long process, "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor"...this again is their own words...

In American history, there have not been that many "Pearl Harbor"-like events...what's the odds of accurately predicting 9-11 exactly one year before it happened? Especially in the context of this sentence, which says "we'll never swing the American people to support our aggressive actions unless we have a 'new Pearl Harbor' to speed it up and coax the American people to back our plans, that they would not back under normal circumstances"...

When Bin Laden's radical Islamist group "changed tactic" to attack America, rather than trying to buttbuttinate their local Muslim leaders who had allowed "Westernism" to spread there ("Jahelia"; The "disease" of "barbaric ignorance" that the liberalised Western values "infected" good Muslims with: The underlying reason they state for hating and attacking America, that it will "seduce" Muslims away from Allah)...they made NO SECRET of this whatsoever...it was "declared" in a publicity video....they WANTED people to know that they were declaring "Jihad" on America...

Indeed, this - and the USS Cole attack and the first attempt to plant the WTC - lead the intelligence services to keep an eye on Bin Laden and his activities...Richard Clarke - a non-partisan former White House terrorism adviser, who'd been an adviser to Bush's father, as well as Clinton - attempted to get Bush to talk about terrorism in January 2001...this meeting was constantly put off until a few days prior to the 9-11 attacks in September...Clarke reported that Bush wasn't really interested in listening but was probing him to try to find out if he had anything "that could be used" to justify an attack on Iraq...

Also, the intelligence services were keeping an eye and produced the "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside America" report...a report which, despite such an alarming breastle, Bush did not think worth his time to read...

Then, just a few months prior to 9-11, America and Britain started pushing on Iraq...contradicting their earlier statements, Iraq had suddenly developed serious WMD capability...a view which did NOT tally with previous buttessments:

"He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mbutt destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors." Secretary of State Colin Powell, in Cario, on 24th Feburary 2001

They pushed for Resolution 1441...the original drafting of this resolution included a threat of "the use of force" for non-compliance...the UN did not pbutt Britain and America's joint resolution 1441 because many countries refused to have any UN resolution that mandated "the use of force"...note that this opinion is NOT unusual or out of place, one of America's former Presidents entirely SHARED this viewpoint:

"If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing a world order." President Dwight D. Eisenhower

In order to get UN Resolution 1441 pbutted, America and Britain did "deals" in the background with the other UN Security Council members...the "compromise" was to change the wording to the now infamous "serious consequences"...

And this was PART OF THE DEAL: "Serious consequences" is threatening, well, serious consequences...but it does NOT specifically name "use of force" as that consequence (though, tries to "suggest" it very strongly)...thereby, this "vague" wording would REQUIRE the so-called "second resolution" which finally held Iraq to be in breach of 1441 (the fact that it now turns out that there never were WMD means that 1441's whole validity is void and null: You can't disarm what you didn't possess...hence, the resolution's demand to disarm was a FOREGONE CONCLUSION that he couldn't...it is up to the reader - knowing of the pre-9-11 plans on record wanting and planning an attack on Iraq - to judge whether they did or didn't know that this was the case...it was the case...but did they know in advance?) to "define" what "serious consequences" actually meant...

In other words, the UN ONLY pbutted Resolution 1441 on the condition of the "vague" threat of "serious consequences" - which did NOT define what those consequences were - in order to FORCE the requirements of the so-called "second resolution" to, first, hold Iraq in breach of 1441...and then to DEFINE what "serious consequences" meant...

Another way to put it, the UN, as a whole, ONLY allowed the resolution to pbutt when it contained this "we must return later to DEFINE what 'serious consequences' means" clause...it was a way for certain countries - like France, Russia and China - to not oppose sending Saddam a "threat" but that they could "defer" the actual final decision on whether to take action or not until this so-called "second resolution" defined the exact action to be taken...

As plainly as possible: The other countries let America and Britain put Resolution 1441 on the UN's books, on condition that they would have a further opportunity - at that time of known "breach" of the resolution (which, technically, never did actually happen, regards the disarmament of WMD: You can't disarm what you don't have) - to come back to this at a later date...a case of saying "okay, we'll let you put your 'threat' on the record, so long as this does not specifically commit any of our countries to a specific course of action...we will return to discuss that, IF the resolution is found to be broken when the UN inspectors report"...

America and Britain's original wording was NOT "serious consequences"...they had written "use of force" but had been unable to get it pbutted the UN with that wording...

America and Britain were calling for WAR on Iraq, in the UN, AT THAT TIME...and this was BEFORE 9-11...so, you tell me how they were "psychic" to know that this would coincidentally turn out to be "useful" once 9-11 happened...

Hence, the UN opposition later is quite understandable...they had been BETRAYED by Britain and America on the "deal" they had all come to, regards getting Resolution 1441 pbutted at all...

"I have always said that I had no information that would lead me to believe that there were, or were not, for that matter, weapons of mbutt destruction in Iraq. That's a fact. All the information available to us at that time and on that subject did not allow us to take a stand or to reach any conclusion, which is why I said to President Bush that I, personally, was incapable of saying whether or not there were weapons of mbutt destruction." President Jacques Chirac, 5th June, 2004

France had never said it was opposed to "the use of force"...its position, as Chirac explains above, was that France's own intelligence - unlike British and American intelligence (which was "flawed", we're now told) - could NOT confirm any WMD capability in Iraq whatsoever...when Chirac looked at HIS "intelligence", he could NOT see any reason to believe that Iraq had WMD...

When America and Britain suddenly introduced "panic" - WMD were going to be fired off in 45 minutes!! (a claim in Blair's "dodgy dossier", which has been found by later inquiries into the matter to have had its "caveats removed" by politicians...the ruling is "kind" and suggests that the removal was "subconscious"...but, then again, how can a judge actually know - let alone rule on - the state of mind and knowledge of the person who removed those caveats...he is supposing - benefit of the doubt - with goodwill that it was "subconscious" removal of those "caveats"...but there is no possible way for a judge to determine if someone had "malicious intent" in their minds while they did it or it was "purely accidental") - which conveniently didn't allow the UN inspectors to report...

Indeed, the UN inspectors were due to report very soon indeed afterwards...the British and American "panic"...about a "sudden threat" that he posed (yet, trying to simultaneously claim that he'd been long developing WMD since the First Gulf War)...without any explanation of why it was "urgent"...indeed, to this day, there has NEVER been an explanation in why the march to war was so "urgent"...

Blair even made suggestions of some "hidden reasons" that "national security" does not allow him to reveal...after the war, inquiries were given unprecedented access to everything they wanted...further, the Attorney General's "advice" was LEAKED...it was NOT rock solid and it did NOT contain any "hidden reasons"...the "leakee" who leaked the advice - if ever found - cannot be prosecuted with any "national security" nonsense, as there was, in fact, none in there...Blair was lying...the fact that it was leaked, I would think, is not unrelated to this: Someone knew he was lying and trying to "suggest" that there were "extra reasons I can't reveal"...and, thus, considered that it was in the nation's REAL interests to know that their leaders was BLATANTLY LYING than to keep with the laws regarding not revealing such documents (because, in fact, there was not really anything in there that, in the end, wasn't already in the public domain...save for the fact that the case was NOT solid and that the legal ruling was NOT without its "doubts" and "ambiguities"...both things Blair tried to pretend were otherwise)...

America and Britain launched a "panic" - a sense of false "urgency" - because they knew (in informal discussion, Hans Blix had already reported the likelihood that his final report would conclude that there were no WMD that they could see...as we all now know, that conclusion would have been entirely correct...and the UN inspections HAD WORKED perfectly as intended to prevent Saddam from developing WMD...because, though there's disagreement elsewhere, there's complete agreement that Saddam was a little bastard and if he could have had those WMD then he would have chased them...hence, the fact that he didn't have any - determined by many to have not had any WMD since those destroyed after the First Gulf War - therefore demonstrates that the UN's action had SUCCEEDED PERFECTLY...it had perfectly well "contained" him and prevented his WMD programmes...otherwise, if it hadn't - as this was the only thing preventing him in those years - we'd have found his "large stockpiles of WMD"...the buttertion, therefore, that the UN is "irrelevent" has been PROVED false...it succeeded to do exactly what it set out to do...not even ONE WMD to be found...that's a 100% perfect record on the achievements that had been wanted)...they knew that Hans Blix would report NEGATIVE on the WMD and, thus, they would not get the UN's backing for the Iraq war...

This was "inconvenient" to their plans...hence, a sense of false "urgency" was created (that, even at the time, I found distinctly odd: They tell us he's been developing WMD for years but only NOW is there a "sense of urgency"?!? It's like sitting there watching an 8 year old playing with a loaded weapon...but then just sitting there...then suddenly - for no particular reason - then becoming terribly concerned and worried to take the loaded weapon away, 3 days later...it just didn't seem particularly logical)...in order to be able to "cut short" the UN inspectors, so that we wouldn't get their report...

Note how the UN was "irrelevent" when it didn't want to go along with America's war plans...but the second international aid and supported is required - more troops to ease the rest toll on American forces - suddenly the UN was "to blame" for everything...if it were "irrelevent", Mr.Bush, then why - when you WANT something - do you come cap in hand to the UN...and then when things go wrong, it's "all the fault of the UN"!! Also, it's a stupid buttertion: The UN IS its member nations...America is PART of the UN...the UN building is situated in New York (another strangeness: America is now somehow "against" the idea of the UN? Yet, in its formative years, happily supported it enough to be the country to provide the UN the "real estate" - in New York, that's prime real estate - to meet and do its thing...Bush might not remember but the US was instrumental in helping to get the UN going and did so because, as the free and peaceful nation it once was (you know, the REAL America, before Bush destroyed it), it BELIEVED in the establishment of a forum for world co-operation and negotiation, to help PREVENT wars and help provide aid and peacekeeping and other things...also why America always did give generously in aid and troops to such UN missions repeatedly)...

There is no "smoking gun"...they've covered things up too well...but the mountain of circumstantial evidence could easily sway a "balance of probabilities" civil case...though, they should not rest easy because if one shred of "beyond all reasonable doubt" evidence comes to light that they knowingly lied...or even that Bush DELIBRATELY ignored that report on his desk, exactly because his neo-con allies WANTED their "new Pearl Harbor"...

Hitler used a similar strategy and pretext for war...they simply "allowed" a "person" to burn down the Reichstag...because then Hitler could bring in his "state of emergency" legislations, dismantle democracy and then mount his campaign of "pre-emptive strikes"...heading into Poland and the rest is history...

So, let Bush "invoke the name of 9-11 in vain" as he does, to try to get Americans to continue to back it...because he himself has discredited that avenue:

"No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th." George Walker Bush Jnr., 17th September, 2003

Playing his "9-11 card" whenever the going gets tough...his "get out of jail free card", as he sees it...though, the 9-11 commission clearly found that HIS incompetence - ignoring reports about person threats sent to him - was partially to blame, in allowing it to happen (benefit of the doubt: We'll buttume this was incompetence, not MALICIOUSNESS to get the Neo-Cons their "new Pearl Harbor" they were looking for)...the President who took more vacations and breaks than any other President ever has, up until 9-11 (thinking it was all just "fun, fun, fun" and no work to be President)...

So, in conclusion, I can only recommend one course of action:

Beth :