Behind” bogus program and one can see that children and parents are being misled and abused in abnormal and deceptive ways.

Last night, I watched as the reserves from Sheldon, Iowa were trundled off to their deaths as truck-drivers in Iraq. The young man, a Mr. Crockett and his wife, are in the same unit and are being shipped off together. In his innocence, he said, “I’ll go over there, serve my time and the come home and things will be back again like normal.” But later, when he and his wife were departing the depot in Sheldon, he and his wife were both crying.

I fear that he and possibly his wife will never get back home to Sheldon because the roadside bombings are going to intensify, not only with bombs but with RPGs and with new rockets that will filter into the country and others that will be stolen or bought from the U.S. One must never forget what I saw in Korea where some of our aviation fuel was shipped up to North Korea in order to fuel the communist jets; the same will happen in Iraq because of greedy officers or others. These men are like looters who come in after a disaster and prey upon their fellow citizens for profit at any cost.

So it is that our American youth, and even grandfathers are being called up, not to defend our country as it says in their contracts, but to fight a colonial war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Alas, this is a war that America will lose, not only in terms of its goals of occupying Iraq, but in terms of its children who will lose parents, security, and the health of those who go to Iraq. Scientists have estimated that there is 10 times the amount of radioactivity in Iraq as there was in Hiroshima because of the “depleted uranium” we are using on a daily basis. It will be Agent Orange all over again. Many of us have lost friends to cancer from Agent Orange—and just remember how many years it took for the federal government and the military to admit that Agent Orange had been a factor in the birth deformations of babies born to Agent Orange exposed parents, the number of cancer deaths which is inordinately high compared to the average population. None of this would have come out if it had not been for Admiral Zumwalt, who lost a son to Agent Orange. Until he came out publicly about it, none of our media wanted to cover it. It will take the same type of thing to get the story out about the depleted uranium as well.

And remember this,depleted uranium has a half-life of a thousand years.

So we come to this.

We have a president who lies about “progress” in Iraq toward “democracy” and “freedom” while bombing the residents of the major cities of Iraq; in most cases, women and children are the victims while the U.S. military keeps saying they killed “insurgents,” or “terrorists.” But how can they tell who they killed when rocketing and bombing from an F16 or an Apache gunship? The doctors in the hospitals dispute the military everyday—but our news media and GW Bush keep the lies alive by saying, “Our military attacked and killed terrorists today in Fallujah and Baghdad,” etc.

We come back now to the humanity of the Crockett’s of Sheldon, Iowa. We come back now to the un-named Iraqis who want America to leave, but will find that they will die in an air-raid or rocket attack from one of our American planes. Our pilots will be told they did a good job, just as our pilots and the British pilots were told they did a good job when they fire-bombed and destroyed Dresden and its innocent civilians, as the Brits did when they destroyed dams in Germany and drowned thousands of women and children who were asleep in their beds.

I hope the Crocketts get home, in one piece, to Sheldon, Iowa and don’t end up in body bags with flags draped over them that Bush and Rumsfeld do not want you to see. I hope they come home in one piece, not injured psychologically or physically. I hope the same for the Iraqis and their families. Sadly, in both cases, I am pessimistic.

My only hope now is that the guilt for these deaths will be put where it belongs, at the feet of George W. Bush and his cronies such as Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice and Rumsfeld. Finally, as Harry Truman put it, “The buck stops here.” In the case of Bush, he’ll lie and do everything he can to bug out of that responsibility. I call upon the people of Sheldon, Iowa and the Iraqis both alive and dead to pray that this carnage stops. But if it doesn’t, then the man who must be judged guilty of crimes against humanity is none other than our president, George W. Bush.

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Professor Sam Hamod is an expert on world affairs. He is a former advisor to the State Department; former editor of 3rd World News (Wash, DC);former Director of The Islamic Center of Washington, DC; he edits, www.todaysalternativenews.com. Watch for his new book in early 2005, ESSAYS IN TIMES OF WAR. He may be reached at shamod@cox.net.

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