Informed Comment: Veterans Day, 2008 : Tasks for the Obama Administration

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Glantz: Veterans Day, 2008 : Tasks for the Obama Administration

Aaron Glantz writes in a guest op-ed for IC:

On Veterans Day, we as a nation pause to honor those who have served their country. Problem is the Bush Administration doesn’t want us to know about their sacrifice. From refusing to allow the press to photograph flag-draped coffins of the dead, to covering up the suicides of veterans after they come home, the officials in Washington who lead us to war have done everything they can to hide it’s terrible cost.

This must end in the new Administration of President Barack Obama. As President, he must send a message to the bureaucrats who crunch numbers at the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs that the American people deserve to hear the true costs of the war in Iraq.

This includes:

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*Finally, a new Obama Administration must end the era of obfuscating the number of innocent civilians killed in our occupations. Remember back it was back in 2002, shortly after the fall of the Taliban that General Tommy Franks first brushed off reporters questions with the curt statement “We don’t do body counts.” Six years later, researchers writing in the prestigious British medical journal, the Lancet, estimate as many as a million Iraqis have died in this war. Even if the truth is only half that number the catastrophe is tremendous. The American people deserve a President who’s not afraid to try to quantify the human toll among those we’ve “liberated.”

None of these changes would cost our country any money, and none of them would immediately end the war or make the world a safer place. But being open and honest with the American people would make us all more well informed and, hopefully snap us out of our collective apathy.

Regardless, each of the statistics above represent information we deserve to know as citizens. How can we even begin to honor our veterans, if we don’t even track their sacrifice?

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http://www.juancole.com/2008/11/glantz-veterans-day-2008-tasks-for.html