Wednesday, April 14, 2004

Pres. Bush's third press conference in his 3.5 year reign in office "lived down to my expectations," as a friend of mine put it. Bush rambled, complained, mouthed the same platitudes over and over in response to almost every question, whined about being put on the spot, and demonstrated once again his complete inability to pronounce words, put a sentence together, or remember that Donald Rumsfeld is the Secretary of Defense. The closest he came to admitting a mistake was telling a reporter, "Maybe I'm not quick, as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one." And despite the daily reports coming from Iraq of hundreds of civilian casualties in Fallujah and rising resistance to the U.S. Occupation all over Iraq, Bush insisted that he would send more troops and give the military authorities free reign to put down the uprising in any way necessary. It was a "scary performance, and a signal for slaughter" says Matthew Rothschild in The Progressive.

That slaughter is already happening in Fallujah, as Aaron Glantz reported on April 13 on Democracy Now!

Those who support the invasion and occupation of Iraq like to say that the civilians being killed are actually terrorist insurgents, that the U.S. military never intentionally or knowingly kills civilians, that the opposition to the Occupaton is a small minority of "thugs" and "criminals," and that most Iraqis want the United States to stay in Iraq, at least for the time being. I have even heard it suggested that the civilian killings were committed by Iraqi or Arab terrorists who wanted to make America look bad. The truth is less comforting. In truth, Naomi Klein reports in the (UK) Guardian, U.S. soldiers in Humvees are firing on ambulances filled with wounded Iraqis, including a pregnant woman who lost her child as a result of her injuries.



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