2007-06-13

This article belongs to Off the Cuff column.


     I will be the first American to state to the readers that I never did agree with President Bush's ideas about the war in Iraq as far back as before, "Shock and Awe," which I watched on TV: a war that began on ‘live' TV.


     There were, however, certain facts that President Bush and his advisors were correct about, although not to the degree that would have equaled the actions taken. The most outstanding of which would be the reasoning behind the entire attack and or the war: Sodom ‘did' in fact have ‘weapons of mass destruction' (W.M.D.s) as was proven when he gassed to death some 180,000 men, women and children of a remote Shiite tribe long before the rest of the world took notice, including President Bush.


     My opinion is that the world failed those deaths by not taking action the next day.


     I was working in TV-News at the time and recalled very vividly, the video footage of the dead Iraqi bodies hanging out of their mule-drawn carts, plied up in ditches, sprawled out on the road and in the ditches as they were fleeing towards a false freedom in the far away mountains out of Sodom's reach: all dead as they traveled along without a thought of what was about to rain down upon them: death from above.


     Sodom had them all killed with gas bombs that also killed their mules, goats, dogs, chickens and all living creatures, great and small. Remember?


     There was no need for a ‘survey team' from the U.N. to be sent over to Iraq on their ‘fact finding mission,' for the world knew full well of the carnage that most certainly defined ‘weapons of mass destruction,' but the world did nothing about it—at that time.


     Therefore, the U.N. ‘fact-finding mission' was a waste of time, effort and money—tax money at that. The facts were well known: 180,000 dead human beings and their animals, killed by poisonous gas: a weapon of mass-destruction.


     So once the U.N. got involved several years after those poor people were murdered, they doctored up some documents, told some tall tales, lied behind their teeth and found a reason to do war with Iraq: to kill the one dictator and his cronies.


     Have you ever looked into how many innocent people were killed by ‘Shock and Awe?' I haven't been able to find out, but the numbers were surely there.


     There is blood on the hands of all counties who were and still are, involved in the war in Iraq.


     Sodom is dead, which took a courtroom comedy of almost two years to hang him while the fighting and dying continued.


     That was the hard part, or so they all thought. The truth is that the ‘hard part' has yet to begin: leaving Iraq will be the hard part all right.


     The day the ‘Joint Troops' from all of the ‘Allies' leave will be when the real war in Iraq will begin.


     The various Sects and Tribes will begin killing each other off, the car bombings will only increase and get worse, and it will be the innocent who will pay the ultimate price of that horrendous war.


     Of course, it should be understood by all, that it is the American troops who have done most of the fighting and dying in Iraq, and they will be the last to leave.


     England's Prime Minister Tony Blair recently stepped down from his office, it was reported, that he did so as a result of England's involvement in the Iraqi war. His popularity fell sharply by his own people. And yet, we should not forget that he backed the invasion wholeheartedly to begin with.


     In some ways, I must agree with President Bush and his advisors—that at this point in the war, we cannot leave the Iraqis to themselves until some sort of Democracy is concretely set in place—and working. And how long will that take? God only knows.


     One thing that we all should agree upon, is that leaving Iraq will not be easy, for in doing so, we would leave knowing full well that the weak will be crushed under a mightier foot than Sodom's: the other stronger and numerous Sects and Tribes.


     Slavery and deadly carnage will be the rule of the day in Iraq.


     As an American, I can inform you all that most of us (latest poll: 86%) want our troops to come home, not just because we do not now agree with the policies of that war, but we are weary of our men and women being killed daily for what seems to be a war without end in a land where death and war has ruled for ions and we just do not believe that there will ever be an answer to end of that war.


     That's off the cuff. I'm John Deeds.