Grave Mistake
Grave Mistake
The "coalition of the willing" will grow smaller by one in the not so distant future. For those keeping score, the newly elected Prime Minister of Italy, Romano Prodi has announced that he will pull Italian troops from Iraq "as soon as possible."
Following his announcement to withdraw his nations troops from Iraq the Prime Minister gave his assessment of George Bush's "war
We consider the war and occupation in Iraq a grave mistake because it has not solved the problems of security, it has complicated them, and opened Pandora's box. Terrorism has found a new base and new excuses for internal and external terrorist action.
It is rather ironic that Mr. Prodi's conclusion about the invasion of Iraq has turned out to be the very thing that The Decider said his war was going to prevent. Remember what he said in November 2002?
Imagine a terrorist network with Iraq as an arsenal and as a training ground, so that a Saddam Hussein could use his shadowy group of people to attack his enemy and leave no fingerprint behind. He's a threat.
Mr. Prodi's assessment of conditions in Iraq is supported by a CIA assessment of the conditions in Iraq written nearly a year ago. (The following might be of importance when considering Mr. Prodi's words.)
A new classified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in Al Qaeda’s early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat.
When the Prime Minister said that the war and occupation of Iraq was a "grave mistake" he wasn't kidding.
Military Fatalities:
Total
US 2454
UK 111
Other* 111
Total 2676
*Other Coalition Countries:
Country Total
Australia 2
Bulgaria 13
Denmark 3
El Salvador 2
Estonia 2
Hungary 1
Italy 31
Kazakhstan 1
Latvia 1
Netherlands 2
Poland 17
Romania 2
Slovakia 3
Spain 11
Thailand 2
Ukraine 18
(Note that of the countries listed, that Italy has suffered the third most casualties behind the UK and the US.)
Of course, I haven't even mentioned the number of "grave mistakes" that have led to Iraqi civilians, police and military deaths since The Decider decided to invade and occupy Iraq. Those statistics can be found here and here.
posted by M A F at 1:35 AM
2 Comments:
Your post makes me think about a recent military death that affects people in my sphere... not in Iraq, but Afgahnistan... Capt. Nichola Goddard, Canada's first woman to be killed in combat in that country, died last week.
She's the daughter of my Ph.D. supervisor. Funeral is next week.
Seeing the numbers is one thing. Attending funerals is another.
Sad thing is... people in so many countries attend funerals because of war...
Sarah, I heard about her and did a little reading about Capt. Goddard at your blog and from an article at CBC. I tossed around the idea of a cartoon, but couldn't settle on anything.
Far to many will never attend the death of those who die in war. (I wonder if Harper will attend the funeral of Capt. Goddard.) Here in the US far to many supporters of the invasion of Iraq will never attend a funeral of a dead soldier (or Iraqi civilian) and this includes Bush. He doesn't want the coffins of the dead soldiers to be seen unless of course the soldier provides the administration with a chance to propagandize their death. The death of Pat Tillman serves as the example.
In the end, the majority of people will only see the numbers. For some this will mean little and offer up comparisons to other wars, and other atrocities to which they will surmise that the ends justify the means. For others, the numbers serve to remind them of what the Bush administration has done in the name of the US and know that the ends (deaths of thousands) do not justify the means (lies about WMD, al Qaeda).
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