- Politeness aside, it's pretty clear to nearly every Canadian
who isn't a flake that the war in Iraq was a big mistake and our absence
from it a blessing.
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- I've never been particularly terrified of numbers, but
here are some that should startle you: 22,353 -- the minimum total number
of dead Iraqi civilians since the war began in 2003; 12,896 -- the number
of American and allied troops injured in Iraq since 2003. And 1,724 --
the number of American teenagers and young adults (many of whom were poor
and joined the military to pay for college) who will be returning home
in caskets.
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- The most telling number in the Iraq saga however is one
I haven't mentioned. It's the number zero -- that's the number of weapons
of mass destruction that have been found, or will ever be, within Iraq's
borders.
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- To most Canadians this is all old news. What isn't old
new news however, and I've cleverly titled "new news" are the
secret transcripts collectively named the Downing Street memos that were
leaked last month to the press on the Internet.
-
- The memos shed light onto the processes occurring behind
the scenes at the highest levels of government that convinced two of the
world's wealthiest nations into invading one of its poorest.
-
- The first initial paper to be called the Downing Street
memo was published in the Sunday Times of London last month. The memo summarized
a July 23, 2002, meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top
advisers.
-
- A British official, an entire year before the war in
Iraq, when commenting on discussions with the Bush administration stated
that, "There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action
was now seen as inevitable."
-
- The memo contradicts what President Bush was saying right
up to the onset of the war, that military action was a last resort. Bush
claimed that it was Saddam (who's apparently been giving relationship advice
to his guards in an Iraq jail) who forced the hand of his administration
and caused the war.
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- The leaked memo also reveals the cavalier manner in which
the Bush administration treated safeguarding a post-war Iraq. A British
intelligence officer states, "In particular, little thought has been
given to creating the political conditions for military action, or the
aftermath and how to shape it."
-
- The results of this lack of planning are put on display
for us each day on CNN and other news programs; near incessant car bombings,
kidnappings, religiously motivated murders and foreign fighters with AK-47s
as common as rice at a Greek wedding.
-
- In summary, the memos make clear what most already know:
That the Bush Administration was disproportionately and disturbingly inclined
toward war.
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- In addition however, they show that the British government
mistakenly believed it could exert more influence on the president than
in the end it could.
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- The British repeatedly warned the Americans, a year before
the invasion in 2002, that steps had to be taken to prepare for post-war
Iraq. American troops and Iraqi civilians are now paying with their lives
for the U.S. government's mistake. The memos also state that the Bush Administration,
a year before the war in Iraq, was dismissive of the need for UN Security
Council approval for an Iraq war.
-
- The implication given is that final push for a UN stamp
of approval, the display in which Colin Powell embarrassed himself, was
likely the result of pressure from London.
-
- Over 20,000 of the planet's poorest people have paid
with their lives for the incompetence of the planet's richest 300 million.
Numbers generally don't scare me, but to most of you, that should be disturbing.
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- http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Ottawa/Ike_
Awgu/2005/06/22/1098577.html
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