Well, the Bushies ought to be just tickled pink...because their god says that "it's worth it."


American death toll in Iraq occupation hits 4,000

97% of those coming after "Mission Accomplished".

[url=http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080324_the_next_4000/]The Next 4,000
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...Dick Cheney, who long ago told us that the insurgency was “in the last throes, if you will,” was asked last week about polls showing that two-thirds of Americans don’t think the fight in Iraq is worth it. Cheney’s response: “So?”

At least Cheney was being candid, if breathtakingly arrogant. He and George W. Bush have never cared what the American people might think about this elective war. A little bamboozling was necessary at the beginning—overblown claims about weapons of mass destruction, mushroom clouds and being “greeted as liberators” by smiling Iraqi children. Once that hurdle was surmounted, and once Saddam Hussein’s government had been destroyed, there was essentially nothing anyone could do to force the Bush administration to bring the war to an end.

Let me revise that, since on three counts it’s not quite accurate. First, the war did end once, an occasion Bush marked nearly five years ago in his “Mission Accomplished” speech; according to Agence France-Presse, 97 percent of the 4,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq came after Bush stood on the deck of that aircraft carrier and declared major combat operations over. Second, we keep calling this conflict a war but it’s really an occupation, though the Bush administration doesn’t like to use that word; it must not test well with focus groups. Third, the American people did what they could by snatching control of Congress from the Republicans. But even if Democrats in the House had the political will to end the occupation by cutting off funding, they don’t have the 60 votes they would need in the Senate.

That’s how we arrived at 4,000. And from the way John McCain talks, there’s no telling what round-number milestones we’d have to mark if he were to become president.

Being Dick Cheney Means Never Having to Say, "I'm Wrong":

It's been much discussed that when Raddatz said that two-thirds of the American people don't think the war's worth it, Cheney answered, "So?" But that and his follow-up explanation- in answer to "You don't care what the American people think?"- of "No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls," were not the only "Fuck you, America" statements Cheney made.

A little later in the interview, Raddatz asked, "One of the things that troops have said to me, and their families, in talking to a lot of them, is that they are the only ones sacrificing. They look at the rest of the country, and say, no sacrifice was really made. Was it a mistake not to involve the country to a greater degree?"

Cheney, for whom the notion of "sacrifice" generally means, "virgin Sunni girl to the oil gods every full moon," answered as if he'd never heard of such a thing: "Well, I think -- I'm not sure how you would have involved them to a greater degree. We've made this probably the most important priority of our administration. We talk about it all the time." You got that? The administration didn't want to worry your pretty little heads about this war. And yet they take up your valuable listening time with it.

Raddatz pressed Cheney for "What sacrifice have most Americans made?" and Cheney said, really, "Well, I think they've been asked to support the effort and the enterprise." Then he did a little shuffle-step on how there shouldn't be a draft before, at last, giving a semi-real answer: "I think in terms of sacrifice, obviously we've expended considerable public funds on this enterprise, and those are funds that could have been used for some other purpose." Then he said how the war was more important than all those other things. And, in the real fuck you to all those sayers of nay, "The country has, in fact, supported financially the endeavors we've been involved in."

So do you understand, now, from Dick Cheney, carping Americans? You can't have your roads, your schools, your precious Social Security, your safe environment, and all that other shit you might have wanted 'cause you had to pay for the war. It's too bad there's not things like, well, fuck, tax cuts for the wealthy that, had they not been passed, might have allowed the government to pay for it all, but then, of course, you would have made the economy go into the shitter and...oh, fuck, wait.