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Bush and Rumsfeld have made it chillingly clear that they do not care how many human lives are extinguished in their quest to conquer Iraq and the resources of the Middle East. The death toll in Iraq is climbing and it is climbing rapidly. Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed in heavy fighting in the last 72-hours alone adding to the staggering number of 37,000 Iraqis who have already been killed by the U.S. invasion (according to a recently released detailed study carried out across the cities and villages of Iraq documenting deaths between March 2003 and October 2003). The number of U.S. soldiers killed has now passed the 1,000 mark.
As the White House and Pentagon brass order new deadly assaults to break the back of those resisting the occupation, the heavy-handed military tactics only result in the opposite outcome. The U.S. is bombing homes, killing families, laying siege to neighborhoods, and shooting Iraqis day in and day out on their own streets, in their own land. The intensity and breadth of the insurgency is dramatically increasing and it is gathering ever-new support, energy and recruits from the Iraqi population who are repelled by the tactics ordered by Rumsfeld and company. Rumsfeld boasts that as many 2,500 Iraqis have been killed in the last month. Rumsfeld arrogantly believes that his "Iraqi body count" braggadocio can conceal that the administration’s strategy in Iraq is badly failing. Attacks on U.S. forces "rose to 2,700 in August, from 700 in March" (NY Times September 8.) The parallels with Vietnam become more haunting every day.
As more than 1,000 US soldiers have now been killed in Iraq, the number of wounded, many maimed with horrible and permanent injuries, spirals every day. The official Pentagon count is over 7,000. Who knows the real number? "About 1,100 U.S. soldiers and marines were wounded in Iraq during August, by far the highest combat injury toll for any month since the war began and an indication of the intensity of battles flaring in urban areas," reports the Washington Post on September 5. The Post also reports a huge increase in the number of life-altering brain injuries to U.S. troops.
The people of this country are angry and they should be. The were lied to by the President. In spite of mass antiwar sentiment, the Democrats and Congress (including John Kerry) gave Bush a blank check to go to war when they voted overwhelmingly on October 12, 2002 to illegally hand over their constitutionally mandated authority to Bush so that he could pursue the war against Iraq.
When thousands of people are being killed in Iraq and elsewhere the people must act, as they did during the Vietnam era, making it clear that they cannot be silent in the face of U.S. government atrocities.
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