Editorial: Bush’s Third Quarter

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Editorial: The Third Quarter
October 04, 2005

While President George W. Bush’s debacle in Iraq has largely been pushed off the front pages by a pair of Gulf Coast hurricanes and, prior to that, a missing young white girl on the Caribbean island of Aruba, brave American men and women have been needlessly dying there each and every day.

Over the past three months, a total of 188 have been killed in action, and another 1,595 have been maimed, with many of those losing arms, legs and eyes. To date, 1,933 Americans have died and 14,755 have been wounded in a war that even some of its supporters now concede didn’t have to be fought.

There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no conspiracy between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Iraq had nothing to do with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington and posed no threat, either immediate or looming, to the United States. Yet we’re fighting and dying over there now for ... what reason is it this week?

Right. To establish democracy in the Middle East. Bush says this is a noble cause, and tells the mothers of dead soldiers that their children died in pursuit of this righteous aim.

But it’s apparently not so noble that he’s been able to convince his own two multiply arrested daughters to sign on, or his recently arrested nephew and niece. Nor is it so noble that Dick Cheney or Paul Wolfowitz or Donald Rumsfeld or any of the other scoundrels who dragged us into Iraq have had any of their military service eligible relatives enlist either.

Nope, it’s only you and your children who are expected to make this "noble sacrifice." Funny how that works, no? And you get to pay for it too. Since Bush’s massive tax cuts primarily benefited the wealthy, the cost of the war will fall on hardworking Americans for generations to come.

The tally of 188 who died in the third quarter of the year compares to 210 killed in the second and 201 killed in the first. We’ll be back in January with the fourth quarter results.

It’s not something we take any pleasure in.

It’s just that we believe that every day we all ought to think about those who are dying in our name.

And ask why.