Needlenose

I’m sure the wrong-wing pundits are feeling good about themselves, knowing that U.S. troops just ‘liberated’ 14 more Iraqi civilians from Jay Garner’s undemocratic regime. The soldiers apparently took great care in protecting themselves against what the claim was gunfire from a nearby mosque:

“We used controlled, accurate fire,” said Capt. Roger K. Davvid, the company commander.

Apparently, the Captain and his soldiers decided not to fire back at the mosque (“out of respect for their religion) and chose to direct their hot lead at the folks speaking freely in front of them. Good thing too! Otherwise two “newly liberated” 10 year-old boys standing on the street nearby would surely have grown up to become terrorists!

I’d be interested to know the post-occupation liberation toll so far. There were 17 demonstrators back on 4/15/03 who were helped to discover freedom of speech by U.S. Marines:

“Today should be always remembered as a day where Iraqis expressed different opinions and weren’t shot for it.” – Ari Fleischer

And another one in Fallujah:

$80+ billion for the war on Iraq and nothing to rebuild Afghanistan – Dubya is daring history to repeat itself.  Before the war, Dubya inadvertently summarized the Gulf War II succinctly: “As I said, this looks like a rerun of a bad movie and I’m not interested in watching it.” He was in fact criticizing Iraq’s cooperation with the U.N. weapons inspectors (which in hindsight, appears to have been nearly complete).

But like any good Hollywood producer, he’s laid the groundwork for a sequel to the Afghan conflict as well. While lavishing more than $80 billion on the Gulf War II, he has apparently reneged on his promise to rebuild Afghanistan. Although the U.S. maintains a military presence in that country, its activities appear to be focused on a futile and expensive cat & mouse game on the Pakistan border as well as protecting “our” bully, Afghani President Karzai (although apparently the privatization-minded Administration has actually outsourced the latter to the corporate mercenaries at DynCorp).

This neglect of the folks we “liberated” in this last war is causing the same sorts of unrest that led to the original emergence of the Taliban from among the numerous thugs and warlords pillaging Afghanistan following the end of the Soviet occupation. In an eery echo of Dubya, Karzai’s brother recently summarized the current situation: “It’s like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem.”

I’m confident that the Oily Men in the White House won’t neglect Iraq completely. My prediction is that U.S. aid, funded at least in part from Iraqi oil revenues, will go into rebuilding Iraq’s petroleum industry. Oil Slick Bush will “pass the buck” for the remaining reconstruction, if any, to its patsy friends in Europe and the U.N. If Afghanistan is any indication, this won’t be a high priority for Dubya. So expect to see these new blockbuster hits:

Afghan War II and Gulf War III!

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