Iraq - Then And Now

I'm glad to see the military finally speaking out - or perhaps it's just that people are only now making the channels available to them.

Lemieux said that when he first went to Iraq, the troops were greeted as liberators by Shi'ites who had been oppressed under Saddam, but that during his second tour of duty in the Sunni Triangle "the difference was indescribable. ... It was like human life just lost all meaning. ... The population despised us." He described being in a 12-hour firefight where his section leader and number two man were both killed and the responsibility fell on him to bring everybody else out safely, saying that "solidified my all of my beliefs that the war was just not worth the cost."

This is the Misadministration's idea of progress in this war? Things have gone from bad to worse to worst. And now Iraq is a training ground for terrorists who are going to fight in Afghanistan. And who knows where else. Nearly four thousand American troops killed, nearly one million Iraqi civilians killed, four million "displaced" Iraqis, how many thousands of Americans, Iraqis, "coalition forces" and private security personnel injured and maimed, uncounted numbers of "security contractors" killed, a privatized paramilitary that owes allegiance to no one but its corporate masters, and this is all we have to show for it. A population that hates us and a regime that barely even lives in Iraq and is propped up with U.S. military might.

Read it and weep.

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