Nation: USA Today (via Stars and Stripes) reports that according to Air Force Col. Kenneth Cox, “The Pentagon delayed screening troops returning from Iraq for mild brain injuries for more than two years because officials feared veterans would blame vague ailments on the little-understood wound caused by exposure to bomb blasts.” Cox added “the Pentagon wanted to avoid another controversy such as the Gulf War syndrome. About 10,000 veterans blamed medical conditions on their service.”
Journalism: Editor & Publisher looks back five years to discuss which major newspapers did not support the war in Iraq — “at least one-third.” The Buffalo News editorial was prescient: “”The road to imminent war has been a bumpy one, clumsily traveled by the Bush administration. The global coalition against terror forged after the atrocities of 9/11 is virtually shattered. The explanation as to why Iraq presents an imminent threat requiring immediate action has not been clear and compelling.”
World: The Guardian wrestles with an inconvenient truth: just how many Iraqis have been killed since the war began five years ago today? After analyzing several reports, The Guardian found “The results range from just under 100,000 dead to well over a million.”
Nation: The New York Times reports that estimates of the cost of the Iraq War “were not close to ballpark” figures. Initially, the Bush administration thought it “would cost $50 billion to $60 billion to oust Saddam Hussein, restore order and install a new government.” The reality? “Five years in, the Pentagon tags the cost of the Iraq war at roughly $600 billion and counting. Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and critic of the war, pegs the long-term cost at more than $4 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office and other analysts say that $1 trillion to $2 trillion is more realistic, depending on troop levels and on how long the American occupation continues.”
Nation: Bloomberg.com reports on President Bush’s speech today marking the fifth anniversary. The president “said today the extra forces he ordered into Iraq last year have increased security in the country and paved the way for a ‘major strategic victory’ in the war against terrorism. That progress has made the ‘high cost in lives and treasure” in Iraq worthwhile…”
O P I N I O N
Five years by the numbers, according to Iraq Coalition Casualties:
3,990:
Number of reported U.S. military deaths
175:
Number of reported UK military deaths
40,229:
Number of reported U.S. wounded and medical evacuations
145:
Number of reported U.S. service personnel who took their own lives
4:
Number of reported U.S. service personnel missing or captured
155:
Number of reported world journalists killed/dead of other causes covering the war
426:
Number of reported U.S. dead in California alone — the highest tally of any state
1,001:
Number of reported worldwide contractor deaths in Iraq, as of June 30, 2007
74.73%, 10.72% and 9.4%:
The percent of reported deaths that are, respectively, white, Latino or Hispanic, and black.
102:
Number of reported female service personnel deaths among Coalition Forces
82,249 – 89,760:
Number of reported Iraqi deaths, according to http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
On April 6, 2007, the Christian Science Monitor reported that despite Pentagon official Douglas Feith’s pre-war assertion that there was a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida (Feith called it a “mature, symbiotic” relationship), a de-classified Department of Defense report showed “the Intelligence Community never found an operational relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda; the report specifically states that,” and “the CIA and DIA disavowed any ‘mature, symbiotic’ relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida.”
At the time, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sen. Carl Levin said in a statement that accompanied the document’s release, “It is important for the public to see why the Pentagon’s Inspector General concluded that Secretary Feith’s office ‘developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship,’ which included ‘conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community.’ “
In a report issued last week by the Department of Defense after gleaning through 600,000 of Saddam Hussein’s archives, it said that although the deposed dictator did had connections with terrorsit organizations, there was no “direct connection” with al-Qaida.
There were lies upon lies upon lies that dragged us into this war. To date, few who disseminated them have faced any repercussions for their deeds. As many who left the Bush administration have said, war in Iraq was on the table from day one, months before the attacks of Sept. 11 that are given as the impetus for this war, to protect the homefront. The neocons were lusting after this fight before Bush was even elected. As a person who lost a friend in the attacks on New York City, I take umbrage with using his death as an excuse to protect our oil interests in the Middle East.
What’s the most important thing to ponder on this anniversary? It is simply that the numbers above represent human life lost or altered terribly. Those numbers stand for:
Spc. Lori Ann Piestewa, 23, of Arizona, U.S. Army, 3/23/03
Enzo Baldoni, Italian freelance journalist, 8/26/04
Spc. Jonathan A. Hughes, 21, of Kentucky, U.S. Army National Guard, 3/19/05
Cpl. Marcus A. Cain, 20, of Louisiana, U.S. Army, 9/14/06
Sgt. Bryan J. Tutten, 33, of Florida, U.S. Army, 12/25/07
Cpl. William D. O’Brien, 19 of Texas, U.S. Army, 3/15/08
Let us all pause for a moment to reflect upon their lives as well as all lost through this conflict.
Feed me 5 Under the Radar
