Wake Up Home

Wake Up Cape Cod
Convened as a Committee of Correspondence
to Reawaken Americans to the Cause of Liberty.

Commentary by Stephanie G. Wall .......

Thoughts On Iraq

This week, President Bush expressed regret for his remarks "Bring 'em on!" and (on wanting to capture Osama bin Laden) "...dead or alive". Like the Sherlock Holmesian dog which didn't bark, what he didn't apologize for is important to note.

He didn't apologize for starting the war in the first place.

He didn't apologize for misleading Congress and us all about the illusory weapons of mass destruction.

He didn't apologize for telling us that there was a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda; no such link was ever proven.

He didn't apologize for his and Vice-President Cheney's mantra to sell the war (and ever since to keep us buying) which inferred that Iraq was responsible for 9/11; no evidence of this has ever been produced by the administration or by the press.

One wonders if this oft-repeated false link is implicated, as revenge for 9/11, in the lately revealed multiple incidents of Iraqi civilian killings, allegedly by American soldiers.

In most of the incidents, eyewitnesses (one a Marine) reported soldiers entering Iraqi homes and shooting families, old and young, women and children including babies at point blank range. A child survivor of the Haditha massacre identified those who killed her parents and siblings as American soldiers.

The more immediate reason for the Haditha event was reportedly the death of a Marine comrade by a roadside bomb.

Still other motives might include redeployment to an awful field of battle wherein one can't easily recognize the enemy, the intense desert heat endured while wearing heavy protective clothing and gear, the frustration, the pain and loneliness of separation from loved ones, the hell of war itself.

But killing civilians in their homes is against all the treaties we as a country have signed on to, including the Geneva Conventions which our Attorney General Roberto Gonzales calls "quaint rules" by which our country no longer (in the war on terrorism) need abide. Killing civilians in their homes is a crime against humanity. It is murder.

One hopes that these killings, like the tortures of Abu Ghraib, are not resolved by throwing a few lower stratum soldiers alone to the wolves while the true policy makers, leaders and high level officers hide behind them.

President Bush, as Commander-in-Chief, is ultimately responsible. The buck stops on his desk. Might not all the falsehoods about Iraq and its alleged connection to 9/11, the talk of war as a (Christian) "crusade", the swaggering righteousness of the speeches, and the suspension of the rules as law and convention are disregarded, might not all this have contributed to a milieu wherein torture and civilian killing are OK? (Just don't ask. Just don't tell.)

Isn't it time to consider impeachment of Bush and Cheney?

Isn't it time to end this war, to bring the troops home right now, to let the new Iraqi government run its own show, perhaps with help from neighbor states or the UN if they request it?

Isn't it time for us and our elected officials to stand up and be counted on what's going on?

Not in my name!