'Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.' -- Eugene V. Debs

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Charley Reese Is Also Perplexed 

Recently, I began to inquire as to why US troops remain in Iraq. Beyond indiscriminately killing Iraqis, as they have been doing since March 2003, answers are elusive. Charley Reese is likewise confused:

President Bush teared up on Memorial Day and said we must complete the mission in Iraq to honor the 18,000 wounded and 2,400-plus dead.

Well, I have a question. What is the mission?

Is it to overthrow Saddam Hussein? He's been overthrown and is awaiting execution by a kangaroo court we selected to do the hit.

Is it to allow the Iraqi people to hold elections? They've held three elections – one for an interim government, one for a Constitution, and one for a permanent government, which is now in place except for two Cabinet positions.

Oh, I forgot that when the president was selling this war, he said the mission was to disarm Saddam because he had all those awful weapons of mass destruction. Well, of course, they didn't exist, and now the president doesn't talk about them.

Go here for Reese's attempt to overcome the confusion. Meanwhile, with investigations ungoing into three additional incidents, the new Iraqi Prime Minister is outraged at the conduct of US troops:

Iraq's new prime minister yesterday accused American forces of killing civilians "just on suspicion".

Nouri al-Maliki said violence against civilians had become a "daily phenomenon".

"They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion," he said. "This is completely unacceptable."

Of course, given that he's Iraqi, his comments just can't be credible, as they haven't yet been confirmed by US military statements to embedded journalists.

Meanwhile, accounts of other, potentially equally disturbing incidents are coming to light:

The BBC broadcast footage Thursday that it said came from an incident in March in which U.S. Soldiers were accused of executing 11 Iraqis, including four children, near the town of Ishaqi north of the capital.

The Americans say they were hunting an al-Qaeda suspect, but an Iraqi police report says American soldiers rounded up and executed an entire family in a house which they then demolished.

Chris Floyd is skeptical of the US account of the incident, and the Iraqi government has rejected it. One gets the impression that this can't continue much longer, that the Iraqis have had enough. But, for now, those unanswerable questions remain, what is the mission? Why are US troops still in Iraq?

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