THE WAR TALLY
Bodies. Dead ones. Dead bodies are the harsh, horrifying, riveting realties of war.
That’s why those who make war don’t want you seeing the bodies, don’t want you counting them, and don’t want you thinking about them. If you see, count, or think, you’ll quickly question the war itself.
Thus, from the start of George W.’s disastrous Iraq war, the White House and Pentagon decreed that there could be no cameras witnessing the return of America’s dead from Iraq. The bodies arrive in the dark of night at a cordoned-off Air Force base. The media establishment has cravenly submitted to this censorship of truth. Also, even though nearly 2,800 Americans have died in Iraq, Bush has not honored a single one of them by attending his or her funeral, for to do so would call attention to the bodies … and the real cost of his war.
Of course, Iraqi civilians constitute most of the dead, including a startling number of innocent children and old folks. Morgues and other sources report that the number of dead civilians has now topped 40,000, with the rate of deaths increasing in recent months. This is an unpleasant and politically volatile count – so Iraq’s central government has now decreed that only it can release civilian death counts to the media.
But it seems that even 40,000 is a gross undercount. An independent statistical analysis, conducted by a team of American and Iraqi researchers connected to Johns Hopkins University’s School of Public Health, now estimates that more than 600,000 Iraqi civilians have died violently since Bush’s 2003 invasion and occupation. The sight of dead bodies – in the streets, in rivers, next door, on TV – has come to be an everyday occurrence for Iraqis. This is a major reason that 82% of the people there want U.S. troops to leave.
Don’t avert your eyes from the bodies. Silently, the thousands and ever more thousands of dead bodies are telling us the truth about Bush’s war.
STATE SECRETS
In repressive regimes, it’s common for the authorities to run closed governments – and it’s also common for them to crack down hard on people who dare to try shining a little light on the government’s actions.
Take China. On May 28, it was reported that authorities there were prosecuting a newspaper researcher for revealing in a published report that a certain Chinese official was about to resign as chief of the military. The researcher’s crime? Divulging “state secrets.”
Thank goodness we don’t live in such a repressive state, right? Yet, on this same day, it was also reported that the Bushites were trying to prevent two civil liberties groups from challenging the legality of Bush’s ongoing program of spying on millions of Americans. In an extraordinary move, the government asked two federal judges to block these watchdog groups from exercising their constitutional right to go to court. Why? The Bushites claimed that merely defending the legality of their sweeping spy program could divulge “state secrets.”
Then, the next day, it was reported that Bush’s lapdog of an attorney general, Alberto “See No Evil” Gonzales, was warning journalists that they could be prosecuted just for reporting on big stories such as Bush’s secret spy program. Gonzales menacingly declared, “There are some statutes on the books which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that [prosecution] is a possibility.” What would be the charge against reporters? Divulging “state secrets.”
So, let’s review: The Bushites secretly run an illegal and unconstitutional spy program against their own people. Then, when it’s uncovered by reporters and challenged in court, the Bush-Cheney regime goes after the reporters and challengers, trying to hide its autocratic act behind the curtain of “state secrets.” How different are they from China’s repressive regime?
This article appears in November 17 • 2006.