Massacre at Haditha: How much more blood will we allowed to be spilled?

[Obamarama]

We've read analysis that this is our generation's Mai Lai. We've heard the shock, the outrage. Do we really think Americans will be sufficiently jolted out of their American Idol dependency to even form an intelligible opinion?

Here's an opinion piece I'm sending to my local paper regarding Haditha. I welcome fellow DUer's critiques, suggested edits & changes, and opinions before sending on to the paper.

The monstrous bloodbath at Haditha, Iraq in November 2005, in which 24 Iraqi civilians were brutally murdered by U.S Marines is the latest ugly, repulsive indicator of the moral catastrophe created in Iraq and our own country by neocon hand puppet George Bush.

In Haditha, 24 Iraqi civilians – nearly half of them women and children – were systematically gunned down by Marines upset over the death of a fellow soldier at the hands of an Iraqi insurgent. When the grotesque reality of what transpired there became evident, our government tried to cover up the massacre by giving the families of the murdered Iraqis hush money.

Of course, various media reports indicate this atrocity was known to the White House months ago and was only acknowledged as recent reports of the murders began to surface. We can scarcely expect an administration that can’t bring itself to be forthcoming about the vice president shooting someone in a hunting accident to stand up and take accountability for the cold-blooded murders of innocent Iraqi civilians.

While I mourn the deaths of those massacred, I also mourn for the souls of the Marines involved. I have the highest respect for the men and women that choose to serve our country through military service. That’s why it sickens me to imagine what it must take to demoralize and drive what are likely otherwise decent young soldiers to become murderous war criminals. In addition to the blood of thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians already on this administration’s hands, George Bush’s wretched folly has also snatched the souls of the young men who perpetrated this war crime.

How many more lives and souls are the American people willing to let be destroyed in a war illegally waged by a president who has no comprehension as to what’s happening in Iraq, let alone outside the walls of his own Oval Office? If, as a nation, we cannot collectively bring ourselves to see beyond the Orwellian propaganda used to sell this sham of a war and demand an immediate end to the pointless sacrifice of American and Iraqi lives, then we will have as much blood on our hands as the Bush administration.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Rummy is having a time talking about it, for one and I MEAN ONCE

his hands are not making sweeping magnanimous curvillinear sweeping movements through the fetid air about him.... as well they should not be.