The Bush Legacy – The Butcher Of Thousands

By James Donahue

November 1, 2004

He took us into an unjustified invasion of Iraq, breaking all of the rules of international conduct by what used to be a great nation.

Now that he has alienated the world against us, the truth about just how horrible the acts of President George W. Bush and the military force he unleashed have been is beginning to be told.

Not only have an estimated 1,100 American soldiers died and several thousand other suffered injuries to date, a new report estimates that our guns, bombs and flames left an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead in the 18 months since we launched our attack.

This shocking new assessment of the damage we inflicted on that country is based upon a new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriva University in Baghdad, who used doctors to conduct household interviews.

The results of the study are published in The Lancet medical journal. It claims the majority of the people killed are women and children.

Prior to this, there has been no official number of Iraqis killed since the conflict started, but guesstimates ranged from 10,000 to 30,000.

If this study is correct, it is small wonder that the Iraqi people are reacting as they are to our military presence in their country. We were not liberators. We are destroyers of their culture. While not perfect under the rule of Hussein, at least there was order. And before we brought sanctions a decade ago, the Iraqi’s enjoyed some degree of prosperity.

Today there is rubble, uranium-poisoned ruins, social chaos, and terrorist bombers roaming the land. The harder our tired troops work to keep order, the more disorder we create. All on behalf of big business interests wanting to control the world’s dwindling oil resources.

The situation promises to be a second Vietnam stalemate. The day will come when the US troops will come home in defeat. Or, if China tangles with us, they will be forced to leave Iraq to defend the homeland.

All of this was so unnecessary.

Bush and his administration justified the invasion by assuring the American people, and the United Nations, that they had proof that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction, and that he was on the verge of developing a nuclear bomb.

But Bush would not give the UN weapons inspectors time to search Iraqi and determine if those weapons really existed. Even though a team of inspectors conducted a preliminary search and argued that no trace of such weapons could be found, Bush forced them out of harm’s way as a full-scale assault on that country was set in motion.

Remember “shock and awe?” That was the Bush battle cry. Then we struck the country with a barrage of bunker bombs, block busters, incendiary shells and everything else we had in our armament.

Oh yes, Bush succeeded in forcing Hussein out of power. The man was eventually captured and thrown in prison as a war criminal. He still awaits trial.

But bringing Hussein to justice seems like such a hollow victory. That is because the war in Iraq has not been won. All Bush succeeded in doing was unite the Moslem world against us, set our country up as a target for terrorist attack, and launch a resistance movement in the Middle East that will probably continue forever.

I read a recent editorial by a European editor. This writer wondered how the American people could be so divided in the contest between Bush and Kerry for the presidency. To him, the criminal actions by Mr. Bush during his first four years in office were so blatant that he could not understand why any US voters would consider giving him another term in office.

I think most leaders of the world see it that way.