U.S. military in Iraq can’t even count

It’s no wonder things are going so bad in Iraq. The U.S. military can’t even count.

Images taken from drones flying over the recent massive pro-Hezbollah rally in Baghdad supposedly showed that 14,000 people attended the demonstration.

The organizer of the march, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army, said the crowd totaled one million.

So who are you going to believe? I’d say, “none of the above.”

An Iraqi working for the Los Angeles Times estimated there were at least 100,000 demonstrators. Tellingly, the story in which this estimate appeared said, “American military officials, eager to play down support for Hezbollah, put the figure at 14,000.”

USA Today reported hundreds of thousands. ABC News reported hundreds of thousands. Local police reported hundreds of thousands. The NY Times reported tens of thousands, noting that the protestors filled twenty blocks of a wide boulevard and dozens of side streets.

This is a small sidebar to the increasingly nasty Middle East situation. But once again it indicates how Bush administration policy either is disturbingly incompetent, or disturbingly dishonest. Or, both.

Bush doesn’t like facts. He wants the world to be how he wants the world to be, not how it is. It’d be nice if only 14,000 Iraqis turned out for al-Sadr’s rally. So that’s how the U.S. military made the count turn out. Wrong.

Just like so many other Bush administration policies. When you aren’t willing to see what’s really going on, it’s tough to change reality to your liking.

Comments

[Mark Joseph]

Jim Jones Lives On

Iraq, so many questions, some answered and others can never be answered. Do not make the mistake of reading this and thinking that I am merely a basher against the Bush administration with these peeves, this problem is deep in the bowels of our American cultural fabric and it has been a long road to bring us to the point we are currently at.

The world was overwhelmingly behind the US with an outpouring of support when going into Afghanistan after 9/11. We took that overwhelming support and unity among nations and completely turned the momentum against us by invading Iraq while using 9/11 as the reason. As it turned out the original reasons for going into Iraq, WMD's, chemical weapons programs, Saddam's links to Al Qaeda and his evil designs toward the USA have proved to be little more than conjecture. If the nation as a whole would have discussed the evidence, pro and con, we as a nation, may not have come to the conclusion we did about Iraq but we were never given the opportunity for the discussion. Now think back a moment about this administration's insistence that we wage war and invade Iraq. Why did they want this all to seem so urgent when it wasn't? The solution for the Bush administration after the invasion and in an attempt to save face when no condemning evidence could be found, was to call it a mission "to free the Iraqi people" from the brutal dictator Saddam. Did the administration intentionally mislead the nation into Iraq by spreading there own brand of fear, hatred and deceit while omitting evidence and expert opinions in order to paint a lopsided picture of what the administration wanted us all to believe? I think the evidence says overwhelmingly that they did. One clear demonstration of how desperately they wanted to have the evidence stacked in their favor, while silencing any critics, became clear when some members of the administration's inner circle hatched a spiteful plot to expose a CIA operative. Well, anyone who's paying attention knows the relevant story of Valery Plame and her husband Joseph Wilson. Joseph Wilson, who after investigating on behalf of the US government, reported to the Bush administration that he found no substantiating facts to support the administrations claim that Iraq was trying to purchase yellow cake uranium from Nigeria in order to make nuclear weapons. Make no mistake about it, exposing a CIA operative for any reason is an act of high treason, a capital offense punishable by execution if I'm not mistaken. As it turned out the evidence supporting the administrations claim of an Iraqi Nigerian uranium connection turned out to be a poorly forged document that originated in Italy, I believe the reports had stated. This one story of those inside the White House exposing a CIA operative should also leave one asking where is the public and the media outcry for accountability and why is America walking around with blinders on making excuses and simply going along with anything, and I do mean anything, this administration does? There are credible reports the administration was planning to invade Iraq before 9/11 to implement the Wolfowitz doctrine circa 1990's and simply needed an excuse to carry out those plans. It becomes more apparent with time that the administration did have it in their mind all along to force transformation on the entire region into what Condoleeza Rice is now calling the "New Middle East." Just read Tony Blair's speech to the World Affairs Council from Aug 1 2006 and he'll explain further the real intentions and goals he shares along with the Bush administration. However I must admit I'm at somewhat of a loss as to the conflict between the stated methodology verses the actual methodology which is currently being practiced and defended by Tony Blair along with what seems to be a bunch of "good ole boys" plus Condi in the White House and of course anyone else who wants to support and take credit for the good we are doing in the Middle East. When deception is needed to promote what is perceived as a worthy cause, the deceiver(s) in most cases end up deceiving themselves about the final good which will come out in the end. If what they were doing was so obviously for the betterment of all then why were all the deceptions necessary? In this case it is our nation, by allowing these actions, which has been deceived and betrayed. Making this all even more disastrous is the fact that these deceptions have involved and been presented to the entire world. It now appears that our actions may be in the process of setting the Middle East and world peace back a good twenty-five years and beyond, possibly to where we've never been before and never will return. Good Liars never back down and never change course, could it be that is why those in power now insist that we continue to "stay the course?"

What have we actually accomplished by going into Iraq? Saddam is gone but there was and still is a price to be paid. For those who say "if you don't support this war then you would rather have Saddam still in power;" well that is exactly the kind of perverted rationalization Americans have been lapping up which has lead us into Iraq. US credibility around the world has been basically destroyed. In-spite of the administrations incessant claims of progress in Iraq and the idea that through Iraq the middle east will follow, becoming a region of peaceful and peace loving democracies; by any measure, whether tangible or by a sense of psychological well being, the net result of invading and trying to take control of Iraq (Iraq is out of control just in case you don't know it) will add up to a negative at this point. There is now a greater sense of uncertainty in this country and the entire world than ever before. Countless lives have been laid to waste and disrupted in so many ways because of our actions in Iraq and not all of those lives have been terrorist's lives. Iraq and it's people have suffered immeasurably because of our campaign and we deserve our own fate, whatever it may be, for our own mistakes. Our nation and the world has become divided like no time in my recollection and possibly since our own civil war. We have traded our moral standing in the world for the use of torture (which has led to outright murder in several cases) as the administration threw out the Geneva Conventions; it seems as though the torture grew out of an act of desperation on the administrations part to gain intelligence first on Iraq's phantom WMD's and then on an insurgency which understandably came as a response to our own arrogance and heavy handed tactics. We're trying any and everything to make the people of the Middle East into what we think they should be. It seems as though it is all some sort of an game for those in power who make and implemented the policies, a game at which they wanted to win at any cost. Many of those labeled as terrorists and insurgents by the administration turned out to be ordinary patriotic Iraqi citizens who just didn't (and still don't) like the USA coming over there and tearing up their country and their civilization, shooting their citizens on the roads, breaking down their doors and forcing them out of their homes and off to prison while we shout orders at them in a language they do not understand. What folly for us to attempt to "impose democracy" with the very definition of those two words used in conjunction being an oxymoron. I saw a clip on CNN today and our military is beginning, after more than three years, to realize that breaking down peoples doors has a negative effect on the overall mission and has been turning the Iraqi people against us. Imagine that, universal human nature understood by all is part of the Iraqi psyche! There was a possibility we could have won the real battle which began as soon as the opening shock and awe campaign subsided and we were briefly in control of Baghdad as every one waited to see what would happen next but we had nothing planned to display the professed benevolence and good will of our intentions. It is absolutely absurd that we put our troops in the impossible situation they are now in, with no plan of action to win other than what we've been doing up to this point and so far that has only manufactured more and more chaos and hatred as time goes by. Other than what was sanctioned by Saddam there was no terrorism in Iraq immediately before the US invasion and if we were going in to get Saddam, just for being Saddam, we should have been forthright about it from the beginning. Things aren't going exactly as the administration had hoped but somehow they still think they can pull this off to their liking and vindicate themselves (and us) from all the bad policies and tactical decisions. The administration sure is bound and determined, perhaps "bound and determined to do the wrong thing" is the correct phrase to apply. Patriotism does not mean sticking by and supporting your government's or your party's bad policies after they have made obvious and enormous blunders, unless of course they or you don't have the grace or the backbone to admit when mistakes are made. Undoubtedly the modern world is more dangerous than it has ever been. With the level of technology today any human being alive is a potential threat to the good "old" as well as the "new" preemptive United States. I would venture to say that person for person there may be more raw hatred seething through peoples veins today than at any other time in the history of this planet. It seems as though the Jim Jones suicide mentality lives on today through religious fanatics who long for the apocalypse and an unknown freedom that only death will bring. The hardcore who continue to back the presidents polcies and agenda seem blind to the reality and the causes of the situation we are in. It is almost as though they blame terrorists for the bad decisions that have been made in response to 9/11. If the terrorist are so smart that they can predict our reactions to events and thus control us causing us to turn the world against us and ourselves against eachother, then make no mistake about it, we are going to lose this war. We are losing on the home front also as more of the freedoms and privacy issues we take for granted are being stripped away, the terrorists aren't making those decisions, we are. Our political system was designed with checks and balances to keep rampant power from running amok. This administration, through our flawed political system, became intoxicated with the power it was granted as a result of 9/11. Our politicians and indeed our entire electoral system is no longer loyal to the principles under which this country was founded. What about all those lives that have been sacrificed and given over the past two hundred and thirty years to create and uphold the principles of what was once the good "old" United States of America? Are we now willing to let the lives of all those who died and sacrificed for this country become meaningless as our politicians stand in loyalty to the two party political system that puts loyalty to their respective parties and their campaign contributors ahead of loyalty to the nation? The very fact our political system can put into power the likes of those who are currently in power is rather condemning. There are traitors among us and they are not being held accountable, we are failing those who entrusted this nation and the principles under which it was founded, if we fail them we will fail those who come behind us. We, as a nation took the positive energy which resulted from an act of barbarism and our political system, somehow, continued to support this abhorrent neoconservative religious crusade which is trying to force their belief system on the rest of us at home and the entire world. One more question that can never be answerd: what could the world have accomplished if the positive momentum generated after 9/11 had continued to move in a positive direction? Shame, shame on us all.

[Rain]

Good essay, Brian and too true. The American people who still support Bush want him to do exactly what he does-- not tell them the truth and then they can keep on living in their fantasy world. If he told the truth, they'd turn on him. We can never forget that this is not just about Bush but also about a part of America that only cares about being entertained and kept dumb and happy and another part on some kind of holy crusade-- as they see holy. The whole thing ends up mystifying to the part of America that does care and can't believe what has been happening.