About one hundred Iraqi civilians are killed everyday. Iraq civilians killed to date is estimated at between 36,980 and 41,446 by Iraq Body Count. According to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count United States casualties approach 2600. In private, and sometimes publicly United States and United Kingdom officials are pessimistic about the outcome in Iraq. See “Private pessimism on Iraq Grows,” from the BBC news. The United States recently sent more troops to Iraq. Even so, there aren’t enough troops to cover the war. Thus, a desperate Pentagon has begun to move troops from one hot spot to another allowing terrorists to disrupt pacified areas once again. Additionally, the Pentagon's plan doesn't seem to be very successful. See the BBC, "Bagdad Blasts Kill 19."

These days I rarely see news covering Iraq on the networks, CNN, or FOX. Instead, I see Anderson Cooper and others ducking as Hezbollah bombs and missiles land in Israeli cities. In order to find current updates on Iraq, I have to go to the BBC. At the same time, a recent Harris Poll shows that fifty percent of Americans still believe that Iraq possessed WMD in 2002 an increase of fourteen percent above last year.

The reality in this case is that after a 16-month, $900-million-plus investigation, the U.S. weapons hunters known as the Iraq Survey Group declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight. That finding in 2004 reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors who in 2002-03 found no trace of banned arsenals in Iraq.*

What on earth is going on?

Have Americans and our news media become mental?

The President has only partially admitted to the mistake. Conservative talk show radio has still to admit the mistake. FOX News purposefully obfuscates the situation by reporting hypotheses as news. Quite probably guilt is one of the culprits, and those who favored the Neocon / Bush plan of preemptive warfare and the subsequent invasion of Iraq four years ago are now refusing to accept reality. Additionally, the news media gets to track the Israeli versus Hezbollah war and doesn’t have to feel badly about not reporting a more balanced approach to the Iraq war in the present or past, one that, for instance, included Iraqi civilian deaths along with American, and contrary political views concerning preemptive warfare.

If possible, the war in Iraq is more frightening than one might suspect because of the purposeful and sometimes subliminal obfuscation of our government, the news media, and the people of this nation. Today, an informed American democracy and its citizenry look like the impossible dream.


*Hanley, Charles J. (AP Special Correspondent). “Half of U.S. Still Believes Iraq Had WMD,” in ABC News, U.S., http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2279553. Sunday, August 6, 2006. Viewed Sunday, August 6, 2006, 3:41 PM EDT.