"Packing
It In"
By Dahr Jamail
11 July, 2006
Truthout
Surprise,
surprise. In an interview with John King from CNN last Thursday, Dick
Cheney said that withdrawing US forces from Iraq would be the "worst
possible thing we could do."
Doing his best to stoke the always simmering fears of so many US residents
(let us be careful how we use the word "citizen"), Cheney
said of the terrorist groups in Iraq, "If we pull out, they'll
follow us."
Because according to Cheney,
"This is a global conflict. We've seen them attack in London and
Madrid and Casablanca and Istanbul and Mombasa and East Africa. They've
been, on a global basis, involved in this conflict. And it will continue
- whether we complete the job or not in Iraq - only it'll get worse.
Iraq will become a safe haven for terrorists. They'll use it in order
to launch attacks against our friends and allies in that part of the
world."
Lovely to watch how people like Cheney, and the minions who support
his ilk, conveniently forget that there was no terrorism in Iraq prior
to the US invasion/occupation. And one must love his "logic."
For according to Cheney, "whether we complete the job or not in
Iraq" his beloved "terrorism" will "continue"
... "only it'll get worse."
Then why stay in Iraq, Dick?
Because when Dick said, "only
it'll get worse," if he'd been referring to the situation on the
ground in Iraq, he'd have been 100% accurate.
For starters, things for
the US military continue to disintegrate. With raping and pillaging
being carried out by soldiers who have long since surrendered the war
for "hearts and minds," other lesser reported developments
underscore the trajectory of the military in Iraq.
According to the Arabic al-Sharqiyah
Television channel, on July 6th : "Gunmen shot down two US Apaches
in al-Zur village, north of al-Miqdadiyah in Diyala Governorate, northeast
of Baghdad. Security sources and local residents said that both gunships
were seen crashing in one of the village's farms, and reported that
a US APC carrying 15 US soldiers was destroyed in clashes that raged
in the cities and villages located north of al-Miqdadiyah. The US Army
is yet to comment on the incident, which comes at a time when US and
Iraqi forces are besieging areas north of al-Miqdadiyah, including al-Zur
village."
This comes at a time when
the US military are once again aggressively attacking the forces of
Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr - an action which threatens to spread violence
deeper into southern Iraq as well as unifying Shia and Sunni against
the occupation forces. Think March and April, 2004 - a time when Shia
and Sunni were, at times, literally fighting side by side against US
soldiers in places like Najaf and Fallujah.
While the military futilely
spins its giant wheels in the bloody sands of Iraq, it continues to
be the Iraqi people who are suffering the most.
Here is a recent email from
an Iraqi friend:
Dear Dahr,
How are you doing? I
hope you are fine. I'm sorry for not keeping in touch with you, but
as you know the situation is bad here and it gets so much worse and
worse that words cannot describe it.
I really want you to
remember someone named Abdul Razak who you met one day here. He was
responsible for the corpses' freezer at one of the hospitals where you
visited. This was the man who helped you as you nearly fainted when
you tried to enter the freezer. This man, unfortunately, was found killed
and his body thrown away on a street on the 4th of April of this year.
I met his wife and his five children. The oldest child is a girl who
is 20 years old and the youngest is 6 years old. They live in a rented
house. The father's salary was the only source of money for the whole
family. Now, as he is dead, they have no source of money. I tried to
help them by getting some donations for them from the staff working
in the hospital where he used to work, but it seems that it is not enough.
Of course for a big family like his, this makes it more difficult. But
I hope we can ease their pain and help them manage their life by finding
someone who can donate some money. I am wondering if you can get some
donations for this family to start a new life and construct a small
project to help them manage their life. Thank you in advance ...
I get these regularly, and
several of my colleagues who have also worked in Iraq are telling me
that they too are receiving requests for help nowadays.
Here is another email I received
the day before the aforementioned, from another friend in Baghdad:
Dear friend,
Maybe this is the last
message I am going to send ... really I don't have anyone here. I am
like a foreigner in my own country. I am really feeling very afraid.
I am living next to Al Sadr City and the Al Sadr militia is killing
anyone who is Sunni, especially when any explosion attacks the Shia.
They come to our zone and take Sunni people from their houses and kill
them. They killed one of my relatives. They killed my neighbor, who
was only 26 years old. My friend, the situation now in Baghdad is very
bad. Do you know that there is no work and no safety, even in my own
house? I'm very sad to tell you that I am very tired from changing my
house. My family and I leave the house every month for three weeks and
we run away like some one who did a crime. What is our crime?
We are in a very bad
situation. It is so bad now. Please help, is all that I ask as we need
help now. We are living, just waiting for our turn to die ... Please
help us if you can ... I don't have any one to ask but you.
So while Iraqis are being
killed or fearing death as they suffer through the daily hell that is
the US occupation, Cheney, the real force behind this "administration,"
tells CNN, "No matter how you carve it - you can call it anything
you want - but basically, it is packing it in, going home, persuading
and convincing and validating the theory that the Americans don't have
the stomach for this fight."
Guess what, Dick - moral
and sane Americans "don't have the stomach for this fight"
because this fight should have never taken place. And anyone with a
soul, let alone a conscience, should be more than happy to see US troops
in Iraq "packing it in."