Dave Lindorff: Through the Looking Glass in Iraq

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_dave_lin_070308_through_the_looking_.htm

March 8, 2007 at 08:51:45

Through the Looking Glass in Iraq

by Dave Lindorff

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No doubt Vice thinks that the upsurge in violence in Baghdad and in western Iraq (what the US Marines refer to now as “Marineland”), is evidence that the U.S. is winning, too.

It must be heartening to the U.S. troops who see their buddies being cut down, and to the families of the dead, to know that we are winning over there. If we win any more, though, the president may have to reinstate the draft to keep enough targets, er I mean boots, on the ground.

It's a bad sign that the "surge"--a word that was meant to imply a brief, dramatic increase in troop numbers, followed by a drawdown--now appears likely to last well into 2008, meaning a year or more, which sounds more like an escalation of the war than a "surge." But hey, we're talking semantics here, right, not lives.

While we’re still inside the mirror, how about the support this administration has been giving those troops?

You go over to Iraq or Afghanistan, give your all, get chewed up by an AK-47 or a roadside bomb, or all too often by friendly fire from your own side, and then come home, often missing some body parts, to rat-infested quarters and a military/Veterans Administration bureaucracy that works tirelessly to deny you treatment and a disability rating.

In Bush/Cheney Land, I guess that’s called “supporting the troops.”

It is this altered reality which the Democrats, now in control of Congress, are talking about bringing to a merciful conclusion…at the end of 2008.

And that’s what they call taking a stand against the war.

Clearly it’s not just Bush and Cheney who have gone through the mirror.