Disappearing War

The war went away when you weren't looking. That doesn't mean the troops can come home, I'm sorry to say, and that we can start spending the huge losses we're taking on desperate domestic needs. It means the press has lost interest. After all, look at those great shots of swimming pigs and Saudis in costume pinching off little oil for their buddies.

While certain presidential candidates are giving their story of the day about our Victory, otherwise undefined, the death and destruction, and dislocation, continues unabated. Juan Cole persistently presents facts, which persistently are ignored by the media.

Although it is very good news that the number of Iraqis killed in political violence fell in May to 532 according to official sources, the number was twice that in March and April. And,it should be remembered that independent observers
have busted the Pentagon for grossly under-reporting attacks and casualties. If someone shows up dead and they aren't sure exactly why, it isn't counted as political violence, just as an ordinary murder. Attacks per day are measured by whether the mortar shell scratches any US equipment when it explodes. If not, it didn't happen. McClatchy estimated a year and a half ago that attacks were being underestimated by a factor of 10.

By the way, isn't is a little odd that the death rate fell in the month of the Great Mosul Campaign? I conclude that either it can't have been much of a campaign or someone is cooking the death statistics.
(snip)
American commentators peculiarly lack a social dimension to their analyses. So if PM Nuri al-Maliki sends some troops up to Mosul and the guerrillas there lie low for a while, that is "progress" and "good news." Well, maybe it is, I don't know.

I do know that the apocalypse that the United States has unleashed upon Iraq is
among the greatest catastrophes to befall any country in the past 50 years. It is a much worse disaster over time than the Burmese cyclone or the Mississippi floods.

You won't see it on television very much these days.

Even if it gets better, it won't get better very fast for all those millions wounded, widowed, orphaned, and displaced; as for the 1 million dead, as they say in Arabic, God have mercy on them (Allah yarhamhum). Maybe it will get better sooner for the politicians in the Green Zone. They are the sort of people that the think tanks in Washington seem to care about.

The growing hatred of America throughout the world results from this cavalier treatment of the people the occupied White House claims to be helping out of their former bad conditions. Looking at the horrendous conditions we have brought about there is easy from other countries' news media. Ours has turned that blind eye they keep offering to us.

It's heartening that Americans are turning away in droves from the government viewpoint, that this war is worth our while. We are in the course of throwing out those failed policies. Next we will have to turn out their leftover cronies.

211 days (by my estimate)