Bush Administration Lies Still Haunting Lives

On November 6th, the long-running CBS news magazine “60 Minutes” featured a segment called ‘”Operation Proper Exit”. It was about a program to return soldiers to Iraq who have experienced profound psychological problems caused by their deployment(s) to Iraq. The reasoning behind this program is that many of the soldiers were medevacked out of Iraq and either in shock or under anesthesia and they never had a chance to mentally sort things out. Many Iraq vets in the throes of post-traumatic stress flashbacks are unable to let go of their anxieties. It is believed that returning to Iraq will alleviate these agonies.

One of the soldiers interviewed was Cpl Steven Cornford who went to Iraq when he was 18 in 2007. He is now 22. He wept during the whole interview and was clearly still having severe problems due to his time in Iraq. His depression and distress was caused by his witnessing the death of his friend—a death he says he should have been able to prevent. He returned to Iraq under the “Operation Proper Exit” and feels it has been helpful. He said he is not as angry, not as “snappish”, more kindly to his wife and family, and not as furious with those around him that he sees as “complainers”.

The worst part of watching this young man who is still so horrifyingly damaged by his stint in Iraq was hearing him say that he gets mad at people in the United States who complain about their lot because, he said, “They just go about their daily lives, while there's still people dyin' every day. For them.”

And this young man obviously believes that the reason the United States inserted itself in the affairs of Iraq was in order to protect Americans in the United States from the threat posed by Iraq.

Perhaps it is necessary for severely damaged veterans to believe that the reason they lost limbs, eyesight, and are not in their right mind is because they were fighting a predator that was intent on crushing the American way of life…a predator like Hitler’s Third Reich.

But this, of course, is not true.

Can these vets allow themselves to realize that they were in Iraq so that Vice President Dick Cheney could enrich himself by selling equipment of war through his Halliburton Company? Can they allow themselves to realize that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went along with the lies about weapons of mass destruction in order to once again feel the testosterone surge of being involved in the glories of WAR? Can they let themselves understand that George W. Bush and all the neocons were in Iraq in order to steal Iraq’s oil resources for the benefit of the United States and in order to gain a foothold in the Middle East? Can these vets allow themselves to know they ruined their lives for nothing more than to make little men feel powerful and to get rich?

Can these vets allow themselves to know that the war in Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with protecting Americans or protecting the United States?

Both Cheney and Rumsfeld have recently come out with books about their time in the Bush administrations. “In My Time” has been written by the insane and sick warmonger Dick Cheney with the help of his daughter Liz. And “Known and Unknown” is the product of the war-loving but ultimately bumbling, past-his-prime Donald Rumsfeld. If these two men are able to justify and even glorify the fact that they and George W. Bush killed, maimed and ruined the lives of thousands and thousands of young men and women for no good reason, then they are luckier than men like Steven Cornford, who live every day with the horrors they wrought.