McCain’s “full picture” of Iraq, pure Hollywood!
Ian Brockwell
April 02, 2007
Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain believes that the American people are “not getting the full picture” of what’s happening in Iraq, and was quoted as saying that there had been a drop in murders, the establishment of security outposts, the deployment of additional Iraqi brigades and “other signs of progress”.
McCain was accompanied by a delegation of Republican lawmakers as they took a tour of Baghdad (to observe this progress) with the help of armored Humvees and a heavy military escort.
Progress”, when used by members of the Bush administration, seems to have a different meaning to that found in most dictionaries, and has been quoted many times in the last four years.
Sen. McCain was quoted as saying “things are better and there are encouraging signs”. Surely, the US military death toll in March (81), almost twice that of the Iraqi army, is not one of them. Or the fact that 3,246 US service members have died there since the invasion took place in March 2003.
Iraq is run from the heavily fortified Green Zone, where security was breached just a few days ago, and personnel are required to wear body armor and helmets when in the open. If such precautions are required in what must be considered the safest area in Iraq, it does not require much imagination to guess how things are in the rest of the country.
Unfortunately, the “picture” that McCain and others like to promote, belongs more to some future Hollywood film about the war in Iraq and not the reality of what is actually happening there now.
Will things ever get better in Iraq? Not quickly that’s for sure and not while the US remain there. Iraq’s best chance of a future is to withdraw all the troops and let them find a solution for themselves. Yes, this would result in an increase in killings initially, but that would subside once an internal power structure is formed, and would certainly cost less lives in the long term.
Ironically, the best opportunity of seeing this happen would have been to have left the now hanged former president of Iraq (Saddam Hussein) in power, and maintain the sanctions that were in force. In time, the Iraqi people would have made the changes in their own way and more than three thousand US troops would have been spared (not to mention the many thousands of innocent civilian lives). The only problem with this option is that the oil would have remained in Iraqi hands, and the profits made from war would have been lost.
Sadly, it looks like a new “picture” is about to be released, with Iran playing the leading role this time. I wonder how many lives the “progress” there will cost?
McCain was accompanied by a delegation of Republican lawmakers as they took a tour of Baghdad (to observe this progress) with the help of armored Humvees and a heavy military escort.
Progress”, when used by members of the Bush administration, seems to have a different meaning to that found in most dictionaries, and has been quoted many times in the last four years.
Sen. McCain was quoted as saying “things are better and there are encouraging signs”. Surely, the US military death toll in March (81), almost twice that of the Iraqi army, is not one of them. Or the fact that 3,246 US service members have died there since the invasion took place in March 2003.
Iraq is run from the heavily fortified Green Zone, where security was breached just a few days ago, and personnel are required to wear body armor and helmets when in the open. If such precautions are required in what must be considered the safest area in Iraq, it does not require much imagination to guess how things are in the rest of the country.
Unfortunately, the “picture” that McCain and others like to promote, belongs more to some future Hollywood film about the war in Iraq and not the reality of what is actually happening there now.
Will things ever get better in Iraq? Not quickly that’s for sure and not while the US remain there. Iraq’s best chance of a future is to withdraw all the troops and let them find a solution for themselves. Yes, this would result in an increase in killings initially, but that would subside once an internal power structure is formed, and would certainly cost less lives in the long term.
Ironically, the best opportunity of seeing this happen would have been to have left the now hanged former president of Iraq (Saddam Hussein) in power, and maintain the sanctions that were in force. In time, the Iraqi people would have made the changes in their own way and more than three thousand US troops would have been spared (not to mention the many thousands of innocent civilian lives). The only problem with this option is that the oil would have remained in Iraqi hands, and the profits made from war would have been lost.
Sadly, it looks like a new “picture” is about to be released, with Iran playing the leading role this time. I wonder how many lives the “progress” there will cost?
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