[Mb-civic] Bob Herbert

[Mike Blaxill]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110705N.shtml

And the War Goes On
    By Bob Herbert
    The New York Times



    Monday 07 November 2005

    The coalition of the clueless that launched
the tragically misguided war in Iraq is in
complete disarray.

    Dick Cheney is simultaneously running from
questions about his role in the Valerie Wilson
affair and fighting like mad to block any measure
that would outlaw torture by the C.I.A. His
former top aide, Scooter Libby, one of the
original Iraq war zealots, is now an accused
felon who is seldom seen in public unaccompanied
by defense counsel.

    Donald Rumsfeld, the high-strutting,
high-profile defense secretary who was supposed
to win this war in a walk, is suddenly on the
down-low. There are people in the witness
protection program who are easier to find than
Rummy.

    As for the president, he went all the way to
South America to get away from the Washington
heat. But even within the luxurious confines of
Air Force One, Mr. Bush found that he couldn't
escape the increasingly corrosive effect of the
fiascos plaguing his administration.

    The ominous news of the president's
plummeting approval ratings followed him like a
dark cloud. A Washington Post-ABC News poll found
that Mr. Bush has never been less popular with
the public. On nearly every important measure of
character and performance, he was given lower
marks than ever before. For the first time,
according to the poll, a majority of Americans
even questioned the president's integrity. And
fully 55 percent of respondents to a new USA
Today/CNN/Gallup poll said they believe the Bush
administration has been a failure.

    The fact that Mr. Bush is struggling in his
own political purgatory (for the sin of
incompetence) is bad news for the soldiers in
Iraq, where the suffering and dying continues
unabated. The administration that was so anxious
to throw scores of thousands of healthy young
Americans into the flames of war, now has no idea
how to get them out.

    Troops are being sent into Iraq for two,
three, even four combat tours by an
administration in which clowns like Scooter Libby
and Karl Rove were playing games with the
identity of a C.I.A. agent, and the vice
president has been obsessed with his twisted
protect-the-torturers campaign.

    Now the Bush crew, which should be focused
like a laser on what to do about the war, is
consumed with damage control - pumping up the
poll numbers, defending its handling of prewar
intelligence, fending off further indictments and
staying out of prison.

    The war? There's no plan for the war. The
architects of this war had no idea what they were
getting into, and they are just as clueless now.
The war just goes on and on, which is not just
tragic - it's criminal.

    Opposition to the war may be mounting. But
the reality of the war, especially the toll of
American dead and wounded, fades in and out of
the public's consciousness.

    There was a rush of articles a couple of
weeks ago when the number of deaths of Americans
serving in Iraq reached 2,000. But those stories
were quickly superseded by Harriet Miers's
withdrawal of her nomination to the Supreme
Court; President Bush's selection of Samuel Alito
to take her place; the indictment of Mr. Libby;
the president's address to the nation on the
possibility of a bird flu pandemic and so on.

    The killing of G.I.'s in Iraq once again took
its place as a relatively minor story, meriting
in most cases just a brief mention on the inside
pages of the major newspapers, and the most
cursory coverage on television newscasts.

    The death toll has now reached at least 2,035
and, of course, it is climbing. More than 15,000
G.I.'s have been wounded in action. Limbs have
been lost. Men and women have been permanently
paralyzed, horribly burned, or blinded. Thousands
more have been injured in nonhostile incidents,
such as accidents, and many have fallen ill.

    If the American public could see the carnage
in Iraq the way television viewers saw the agony
of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina, this war would be over. A solution would
be found. Imagine watching a couple of soldiers
in flames, screaming, as they attempt to escape
the burning wreckage of a vehicle hit by a
roadside bomb or a rocket-propelled grenade.

    For all the talk, neither the administration
nor the public has taken the reality of this war
seriously enough to do something about it. If the
sons and daughters of the privileged were
fighting it, we'd be out of Iraq soon enough. But
they're not fighting it.

    So the war goes on and on.