Bush is the Button

Recently the number of deaths of US soldiers in Iraq surpassed one hundred since Mr. Bush dressed up like a soldier and announced the end of combat operations in Iraq on May 1, 2003. And yet no weapons of mass destruction, the purported reason for the war in Iraq, have been found.

Total deaths of US soldiers in Iraq now exceed 300. The number of Iraqi deaths is uncertain since the US occupying force in Iraq does not release these figures. Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated at between 7,390 and 9,193 by the website iraqbodycount.net. These figures, based on reported deaths, are two to three times the number of civilian deaths on September 11, 2001. The same website places Iraqi civilian injuries at over 20,000. One of these civilian injuries was Ali Ismail Abbas, a 12 year old boy who lost 16 family members and both arms. And yet, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.

There are no reports on the number of Iraqi soldiers killed during what Mr. Bush described as the “combat phase” of the war, but based upon the “shock and awe” bombing strategy employed by US forces, these could have been several tens of thousands. And yet, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq despite the efforts first of UN inspectors and then of some 1,400 specially trained US-led inspectors to find such weapons.

There is actually a fairly simple explanation for this. The weapons of mass destruction are not in Iraq. They have been in plain sight in Washington all the while. We were just looking in the wrong place. Mr. Bush himself is a weapon of mass destruction and so are many of his advisors such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle and Powell, all individuals who were bold-faced in their lies to instigate war.

Mr. Bush and his administration have destroyed not only thousands of American and Iraqi lives, but they are destroying America’s good name, its integrity and its honor. They are destroying the fabric of international law built up over the decades following the Second World War. They are destroying our basic liberties as they keep prisoners locked up like animals in Guantanamo without right of representation and as they restrict our civil liberties at home. And they are destroying our economy to pay for endless war.

As they have pushed their doctrine of preemptive war, Bush and his advisors have set in motion the possibility of a chain reaction of preemptive wars by stronger countries against weaker ones, wars without sanction by the United Nations based only on unilateral decisions to proceed to war. In the process, they have undermined our relations with friends and foes alike. They have shown only disdain for our heritage, set forth in the Declaration of Independence, of demonstrating “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.”

Mr. Bush not only has his finger on the button, he is the button. He is a biological weapon shaped by ignorance and arrogance. He is a weapon of mass destruction lacking in effective safeguards. Like all weapons of mass destruction, he cannot discriminate between soldiers and civilians, between the innocent and the guilty. He lacks precision guidance, in fact, he seems to lack any reasonable guidance at all. As he has brought death and destruction to Iraq and Afghanistan, he is destroying what is good and decent in America.

He is forcing Americans to choose. Will we accept weapons of mass destruction in control of our country, or will we reclaim control of our country and set aside our reliance on such weapons — nuclear, chemical, biological and human? We have found the infamous weapons of mass destruction. Now, we must act to end this danger to our republic and to the world.

DAVID KRIEGER is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He is the editor of Hope in a Dark Time (Capra Press, 2003), and author of Choose Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age (Middleway Press, 2002).

He can be contacted at: dkrieger@napf.org.

 

David Krieger is president emeritus of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).