Armed Forces ignored Again///The Soaring Cost of Iraq 'Peace,' the Soaring Cost of Life in America

[Guest guest]

NOTE THE BOTTOM TWO PARAGRAPHS ON HEALTH CARE AND G.I BENEFITS

 

 

Mondo Washington

by James Ridgeway with Phoebe St John

A Post9-11 Reality Check

The Soaring Cost of Iraq 'Peace,' the Soaring Cost of Life in America

September 10 - 16, 2003

 

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WASHINGTON, D.C.You may think 9-11 is the somber anniversary of a terrible

event in American history, but for the Bush campaign managers it is yet

another opportunity for spin. They are doing their level best to recast the

image of Dubya on 9-11. Instead of a president who skitters around the

country from bunker to bunker, we now see a tough, decisive Texas cowboy.

 

But the spindoctors have their work cut out for them, not only because of

Bush's timid behavior on 9-11, but because of the disastrous effects of his

right-wing policies within the U.S.

 

The remake goes forward full tilt. Bush on the ramparts Sunday: " Enemies of

freedom are making a desperate stand there, and there they must be

defeated. " Ashcroft in the trenches, visiting city after city with his call

to root out the terrorists under the Patriot Act: " We have used these tools

to provide the security that ensures liberty. " Rumsfeld on the ground in

Iraq: " The purpose is . . . there's several. One is to visit the troops and

make sure they understand how important what they're doing is to the people

of Iraq, to the region, and to the world. " Cheney at ground zero. And Tom

Ridge, the man in charge of " homeland security, " with a tear or two for the

9-11 victims: " We do remember them. We remember 3,000 souls . . . "

 

Behind the images, there's a very different story.

 

 

ABROAD

 

Afghanistan: Still no sign of bin Laden. " We don't know where he is, " a

U.S. Army spokesman for American forces in Afghanistan said recently. " And

frankly, it's not about him. " Dead or alive, bin Laden has achieved a new

life. One day there is a report he's dead, the next that the evil one was

hosting a massive terror summit in the Afghan mountains. There have been

fresh waves of violence in Afghanistan, as the Taliban r from its

hidden, outlying strongholds conducting guerrilla attacks against

civilians, Afghan government forces, clerics loyal to the government,

foreign aid workers, and U.S. forces. In the space of 10 days in August, 90

civilians were killed in such attacks. And there's still no sign of the

Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.

 

Iraq: Amid continuing reports of disaster in Iraq, the administration

continues to trumpet our occupation as a victory for freedom-loving

peoples: " It is not a country in chaos, " said L. Paul Bremer, the U.S.

civil chief there, " and Baghdad is not a city in chaos. "

 

Saddam is still on the loose. We haven't yet found the weapons of mass

destruction. But we have discovered efforts by both Bush and Tony Blair to

distort the facts about such weapons' existence to convince both the U.S.

and British public to support the war.

 

Casualties continue to rise. Following Bush's tough-talk appearance Sunday

night, two more GIs were wounded in Baghdad on Monday. So far, at least

6,000 civilians have died, according to Iraqbodycount.net, along with close

to 300 U.S. and coalition soldiers, and Baghdad in general has become much

more lawless and violentthe city's morgue reports a dramatic increase in

gunshot deaths. Parallels to Vietnam are increasingly mentioned because

guerrillas have bombed the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, the UN's Baghdad

office, and the Najaf mosque, where Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim was

killed last week. " Iraq could become a failed state if there isn't enough

security, " Phebe Marr, author of The Modern History of Iraq, told The

Christian Science Monitor. " And nothing attracts terrorists as much as a

failed state. "

 

In the wake of all this, aid groups, including Oxfam and the Red Cross, are

hastily retreating. This leaves Iraqis to suffer the full impact of badly

damaged or unworkable water, power, and sanitation systems, poor

transportation of supplies, and few organizations available to quickly

repair hospitals, most of which have been either shelled or looted, or both.

 

 

AT HOME

 

As it now turns out, both the Clinton and Bush administrations had been

warned repeatedly since 1997 of the possibility of an attack on Washington

and New York by terrorists using airliners as missiles, according to

morsels of a congressional report released this summer. Given these

warnings, it is hard to believe that on September 11, 2001, there was not

one military jet aloft patrolling the Eastern Seaboard.

 

The Bush administration's answer to the actual 9-11 carnage was the

creation of the $35 billion-a-year Department of Homeland Security, with

160,000 employees and a projected huge federal police presence provided for

under the Patriot Act. Prisoners are being held incommunicado and without

other basic rights at Guantánamo Bay and in military lockups within the

U.S. Racial-profiling systems are being used to round up supposed

terrorists. The ACLU notes that under the Patriot Act a person's library,

medical, or other records, as well as their private property, may be

secretly searched. To date, the new department, perhaps fortunately for all

of us, barely functions in some areas.

 

The economy: Bush's proposed Iraq spending might be a bit easier to take if

there were an economic recovery at home. The all-inclusive unemployment

figure released by the Labor Department for August was 10 percent. The

Economic Policy Institute reports: " In terms of employment growth, the

current recovery is the worst on record since the Bureau of Labor

Statistics began tracking employment in 1939. Employment is down over one

million since the recovery began . . . and the decline in employment

opportunities has actually been greater for college graduates than for high

school dropouts. " As for Bush's claims of recovery, the Financial Times

reported Monday that Asian investors are preparing to bail on their massive

holdings of U.S. treasury securities. Since most of the government's

securities are held by owners outside the U.S., this could be a severe

blow. Among Americans, personal bankruptcies are expected to rise 7 percent

this year, hitting a record highjust from April through June this year,

440,257 personal bankruptcies were recorded nationwide by the court system.

 

Homelessness and poverty: The worsening unemployment situation is reflected

in a 19 percent increase in requests for emergency shelter, in a survey by

the U.S. Conference of Mayors that covers the 2001-2002 period. The fastest

growing segment of the homeless population? Families with children, making

up 41 percent of all the homeless, according to the National Coalition for

the Homeless. More than 3.5 million Americans experience homelessness every

year. In 2002, the number of Americans living in poverty increased for the

first time in eight years. The Census Bureau's new America Community Survey

shows that the total proportion of people in the U.S. living in poverty

jumped to 12.4 percentthat's some 34.8 million people.

 

Education: With state governments broke, education is one of the first

casualties. Says the National Education Association, " States and local

communities are struggling with the worst budget shortfalls since World War

II, and many have cut back on instruction time or laid off quality teachers

and school staff. Parents and students are holding bake sales to pay

teachers and save music, art and other student activities. "

 

Health care: As Congress fiddles with a lame prescription-drug bill, health

care costs go up, and there are more and more people without insurance. The

usual figure is 41 million Americans without health insurance. But earlier

this year the consumer group Families U.S.A. released a study showing that

75 million Americans lacked health insurance sometime in the past two

years. Bush's answer: Last week the administration began to cut costs by

relaxing rules governing hospital management of emergency rooms so as to

let them in certain circumstances turn away people who can't pay.

 

Energy: Fuel oil and natural gas costs are at all-time highs and set to go

even higher. The federal Energy Information Administration reported in late

August that retail gasoline costs are up more than one-third over a year

ago, with a gallon of gas on average costing $1.74. The cost of electricity

is set to go up in the wake of the big blackout, as consumers shell out at

least $8 billion for transmission improvements.

 

Military: Even harassing the U.S.'s own troops, the administration wants to

reduce the amounts of money paid to military families and cut combat pay

for our soldiers and sailors. In the scramble to meet Iraq costs, the

Pentagon has said it can't sustain pay raises instituted in April for the

very troops that are doing its dirty work: The $75 a month in " imminent

danger pay " for battlefront troops and $150 a month in " family separation

allowances " will be scrapped, come the end of this month, if the Pentagon

has its way and Congress votes against extending them.

 

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