The Detroit Free Press is maintaining a link to the AP’s database of the casualties in Iraq, searchable by name or home state (US)/region(UK). I opposed the war from the beginning because I did not believe it would make us any safer and because I knew it would bring us many stories like this:
Sgt. Michael E. Bitz was a father of four especially eager to see his youngest children, twins born a month after he was sent overseas. Bitz joined the Marines in 1995 at the urging of his mother, who said her son drifted from job to job after graduating from Hueneme High School. “He loved the service. He found direction and purpose in his life,” Donna Bellman said. His wife, Janina, gave birth to twins just weeks after her husband received his orders. He had two other children, ages 2 and 7. “I had this terrible feeling since he shipped out in January,” Bellman said. “I kept trying to picture a white bubble around him to keep him safe. But it didn’t work.”
Yes, we went to war. Yes, we “won” the war. Yes, a bad man has been removed from his seat of power. But, in true Machiavellian style, the Prince — George W. Bush — wants us to accept these ends as justification for the reason we went to war. He wants us to “move on”, to forget the lies he told which brought us to that war. To make us forget his lies, he has brought a parade of scapegoats before us. As Democratic National Committee spokesman Tony Welch says:
“First they blamed the Brits. Then, CIA Director George Tenet walked the plank. Now, the Bush White House is dragging former Cheney aide and deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley forward to take the fall for the president’s bogus claim in this year’s State of the Union address.”
Hadley admitted yesterday that he had forgotten the contents of two memos and a phone call from CIA director Tenet back in October, which advised him to remove the claim of Iraqi uranium purchases from Africa from a Presidential speech. The memos, missing from his files* and from his memory “turned up” yesterday. According to the Washington Post, in those memos, the CIA warned the White House
…that the charge, based on an allegation that Iraq sought 500 tons of uranium in Niger, relied on weak evidence, was not particularly significant and assumed Iraq was pursuing an acquisition that was arguably not possible and of questionable value because Iraq had its own supplies…
So, we are supposed to “move on” and accept that a request like that can be forgotten about by a person whose job it is not to forget information related to our national security. We are supposed to accept that George Tenet should take the blame for the inclusion of the uranium claim in the State of the Union address, even though he “told members of Congress in a closed-door session that he had never actually read [the speech.]” We are supposed to accept that National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who, according to NPR White House correspondent Don Gonyea, was also a listed as a recipient of the memos, also bears no blame for the “misstatement.” We’re also supposed to forget this whole flap, even though, according to the WaPo “Hadley said the issue is not necessarily resolved. ‘There is always the likelihood we will find additional information,’ he said.”
What information might that be? And what will it take for President Bush to accept the responsibility for the words that came out of his own mouth?
* Missing documents… turning up months later… hmmm… where have I heard that before? If I recall correctly the Republicans called for indictments…
