October was the deadliest month in Iraq in two years and it seems like we are headed for a re-creation of Vietnam. Soldiers are the victims of Bush Administration foreign policy and personal agendas. Iraq is in more turmoil than it was before we arrived and Osama bin Laden is still free laughing at it all and sending video tapes to news agencies. President Bush can only offer apologies for the “casualties” of war, but no timetable on when the soldiers can come home. Parents have lost their children, brothers have lost their sisters, sisters have lost their brothers, children have lost their parents and friends have lost their lives over this war. What is more disturbing is President Bush refuses to fire the Secretary of Defense that created this mess. Rumsfeld is arrogant, incompetent, and lacks compassion for the troops that have simply become pawns in a world wide game. He has the nerve to get mad at the press for questioning him about Iraqi in this clip…

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How can you say with a straight face that we are winning in Iraq? How can you say that the Iraqi people are better off? At least under Saddam’s regime they could go to work without having to worry about insurgent attacks. How can he say we are winning when people are being beheaded, captured and killed? Rumsfeld also engages in the public relations strategy of reverting the attention away from himself. How does he do this? He claims that criticisms of the war are based in the political fights to win control of congress. If this were true, there would not be as many Republicans speaking out against the war.

During the month of October, 103 soldiers have lost their lives. Since the war started, 2819 soldiers have been killed in the line of duty, many of them under the age of 30. These numbers were released by the department of defense, so take them “with a grain of salt.” The total number of non mortal casualties is 44, 779–these are the soldiers that have been injured or caught diseases in Iraq. Some researchers say the risk of death by violence for civilians in Iraq is now 58 times higher than it was before the U.S. led invasion. Estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths put the toll at approximately 15,000-30,000. Are we winning in Iraq? I haven’t even listed the number of contractors that have died.

We can not win a war when the country seeks to undermine our assistance. I do not trust the “Iraqi elected” leadership and I do not think this war has anything to do with terrorism. This war, in my opinion, is about oil. Since the war started, oil companies have made tremendous amounts of money with record profits. Over the past couple of months, wall street has posted record numbers on the Dow Jones. Halliburton, the company where Vice-President Chaney was CEO for years, has gained record amounts of income from the war. Who is winning in Iraq?

Donald Rumsfeld was right on one account…”we” are winning in Iraq. He needs to specify what he means by “we”. “We” means that the oil companies, the contractors and all the other connections the Bush administration has to financial gains in Iraq are making tremendous profits. If I was making that kind of money in Iraq, I would say “we” are winning in Iraq too! “We” has nothing to do with the American or Iraqi people. So “we” are winning in Iraq while the rest of “us” remain caught in the crossfire of a world wide Chess match as “casualties” of war. Donald Rumsfeld is an example of what happens when Presidents choose loyalty over competence. Here is an example of who is really “winning” in Iraq….

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