Before-and-after photos of Iraqis killed by the U.S. military were supposed to make Iraqis feel warm and fuzzy toward U.S. troops. For some strange, unforeseeable reason, it hasn't worked. (Above are Uday and Qusay Hussein, whom the U.S. military killed on Tuesday because they killed people, and killing is wrong.)
Assassinations worsen attacks on U.S. troops
The illegal and immoral assassinations of Saddam Hussein's two sons on Tuesday have made conditions worse, not better, for U.S. troops in Iraq, according to the Associated Press.
The AP reports today that "nine [U.S. troops] have died since U.S. forces killed Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay on Tuesday in what American officials hope will prove a devastating blow to the morale of Iraqi guerrillas prowling the 'Sunni triangle' west and north of Baghdad."
Forty-eight troops have been killed by hostile fire since the Bush regime declared major combat over on May 1, the AP notes. Reports the AP today:
"Things are worse now," said Staff Sergeant Kenneth Maxwell, nervously fingering the trigger of his machine gun on an armored vehicle in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit.
"They used to just attack us, mostly at night. But now they are attacking us during the day with AK-47s and RPGs [rocket- propelled grenades], at any American soldiers they can find," Maxwell said, eyes alert under the baking sun....
U.S. officials blame Saddam loyalists for the attacks on American troops, and masked men have appeared on Arab television networks vowing revenge for the deaths of Uday and Qusay.
But many Iraqis resent the U.S. occupation and link the violence to anger over the way U.S. troops behave. Between 6,000 and 7,800 Iraqi civilians are believed to have been killed since the war began on March 20, though no precise toll is available.
It's clear that the Bush regime has no fucking idea whatsoever what it is doing in Iraq, and the situation is looking more and more Vietnam-like day by day.
Bush regime officials told us before they launched their invasion of Iraq in March that the Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops as "liberators," even though fundamentalist Muslims believe that it is their duty to expel nonbelievers, or infidels, from Muslim land -- a fact that an elementary-school student can find in an almanac. It was the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia -- infidels in Muslim land -- that inspired Osama bin Laden to coordinate the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. So U.S. troops are sitting ducks in an arid land where they are the infidels and fundamentalist Muslims want them out.
Not that the Bush regime gives a fuck about our troops.
The AP reported yesterday:
L. Paul Bremer, the top civilian administrator of Iraq, said the deaths of Saddam's sons will help efforts to stop attacks against American forces.
"In the short run, we may see a slight uptick in attacks on American forces but in the long run it's very good news," Bremer said Friday on NBC's Today. "It does begin to convince people that those days (of Saddam) are over. Secondly, it's going to encourage people to start giving us more intelligence. In the long run, the level of violence is sure to go down."
Bremer's message is clear: Our troops are expendable. "A slight uptick" in U.S. casualties is acceptable, just as the thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths are considered acceptable. The United States has a Plan -- although the Bush regime hasn't shared it with the rest of us -- and if several thousand people get in the way, oh, well; the Plan -- whatever the hell it is -- is much more important than these people's lives.
Not than any of these people will retaliate against the United States in the future in the form of terrorist attacks from which the Bush regime claims it is protecting us. Of course, the Bush regime takes full credit for supposedly protecting us from the terrorist attacks that its own actions are making more likely. Nice gig if you can get it: Score political brownie points for protecting the electorate from the enemies you are creating.
And how easy it is for someone like Bremer, who is unlikely to ever be a casualty in Iraq, to so casually write off the deaths of U.S. troops as "a slight uptick."
Those who truly support our troops should advocate that we bring them home. And if Ann Coulter wants to ferret out the traitors among us, she'll find plenty of them among the members of the Bush regime, who are making young American men and women pay with their lives for the regime's incredible stupidity.
Update (Sunday, July 27, 2003): A story from Reuters further illustrates the stunning cluelessness of the Bush regime. According to Reuters, the facial reconstruction on the bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein that the U.S. performed "is unheard of in the Arab world." Further, Reuters reports, "The [U.S.] officials said the bodies would be refrigerated to slow decomposition but their fate thereafter remains unknown. Muslim tradition demands that they be buried as soon as possible."
Many, perhaps even most, Iraqis might be glad to have the Hussein brothers out of the picture, but they can't be too happy about U.S. officials flagrantly violating their belief system. (I have to wonder: Even if U.S. officials had bothered to educate themselves about Islamic beliefs, would they cockily do whatever the fuck they want to do anyway? They probably would.)
Smart-ass, superior, disrespectful comments by U.S. officials don't help, either. Reports Reuters:
A member of the fledgling Iraqi self-rule body, the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, told Reuters it had recommended handing the bodies back to elders of Saddam's clan, in order to satisfy Muslim religious observance on burial rites.
The leader of the Abul Nasr tribes, Sheikh Mahmoud Nada, said he had asked the U.S. military for the bodies for burial but was not yet sure if or when that would happen.
"(A U.S. official) told me Saddam Hussein can come get them," he told Reuters in Saddam's home village of Awja, outside Tikrit. "This talk is undesirable."
Are these things just trifles?
Sure, they're just trifles that are going to get even more U.S. troops killed.
10:45:36 PM 
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