From the Salon
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Dated Thursday June 23
A turning point at home
The more Bush promises a "light at the end of the tunnel," the more the American public grows disillusioned with the war in Iraq.
By Sidney Blumenthal
On Tuesday, network newscasts reported that the Pentagon claimed that 47 enemy fighters had been killed in Operation Spear in western Iraq. Last month, the Pentagon declared 125 insurgents killed in Operation Matador near the Syrian border. "We don't do body counts on other people," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated in November 2003.
On Jan. 29, the day before the Iraqi election, President Bush announced it was the "turning point." On May 2, 2003, he stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln behind a banner reading "Mission Accomplished," and the next day he proclaimed that the "mission is completed." Three weeks ago, on June 2, he declared, "Our mission is clear there, as well, and that is to train the Iraqis so they can do the fighting." Last week, on June 18, Bush retreated to his ultimate justification: that Iraq had been invaded because Saddam Hussein was involved with the terrorists behind the Sept. 11 attacks, a notion believed by a majority of those who voted for him in 2004: "We went to war because we were attacked."
On March 16, 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney had prophesied, "We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators ... I think it will go relatively quickly." Last month, on May 5, Cheney assured us that the insurgency in Iraq is in "the last throes." Yet on June 18, Gen. William Webster, the U.S. commander in Baghdad, said: "Certainly saying anything about 'breaking the back' or 'about to reach the end of the line' or those kinds of things do not apply to the insurgency at this point."
Now the war has reached a turning point -- not in Iraq but in the United States.
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