The Empire 366

'It's a Number
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t Columnist
Tuesday 25 March 2008

You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else's life. They're plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress. That's their business. They sound wonderful. Death before dishonor. This ground sanctified by blood. These men who died so gloriously. They shall not have died in vain. Our noble dead. Hmmmm. But what do the dead say?
- Dalton Trumbo, "Johnny Got His Gun"
White House press secretary Tony Snow, the third man to hold that post in the Bush administration since 2001, began the June 15, 2006, noon press briefing with a few prepared remarks before opening the floor to questions from the assembled crowd of reporters. The first to speak noted, "American deaths in Iraq have reached 2,500," before asking, "Is there any response or reaction from the president on that?"
"It's a number," replied Snow, "and every time there's one of these 500 benchmarks people want something."
As of that June day in 2006, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq had reached "one of these 500 benchmarks" for a fifth time since the 2003 invasion. Snow's unabashed dismissal of the grim reality that number represented was as vile as it was predictable, a perfect illustration of the administration's cold indifference and demented priorities. It's a number. It's a benchmark. People want something. Next question.
On Monday, that benchmark was reached for an eighth time. Four US soldiers were killed late Sunday when their vehicle was bombed in south Baghdad, bringing the total number of American troops lost in Iraq to 4,000. It's a number. It's a benchmark. People want something. Next question.
Last year's military escalation in Iraq was touted by the Bush administration as a can't-fail solution to the carnage and chaos of a ferocious sectarian civil war they refused to acknowledge even existed. It was a tough sell from the beginning, or so it seemed back then, as every poll of public opinion on Iraq and all things Bush said a large majority of Americans believed attacking Iraq was a comprehensively bad idea, and the occupation of Iraq needed to end soon so the troops may come home. Those same polls, when crunched in the proper fashion, also had an even larger majority of Americans coming to the conclusion George W. Bush was more popular than contracting shingles while drowning in a vat of lemon juice, but just barely.'

Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032508A.shtml En:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/willpitt.shtml