OpEdNews - Page 5 of Article: Bush's My Lai

Bush 's rhetorical excesses, though primarily designed to build and maintain a political consensus behind the war at home, had the predictable effect of turning loose a thoroughly propagandized and heavily armed U.S. military force on the Iraqi population.

Pumped-up by Bush 's false claims linking Iraq to 9/11 and his later warnings about al-Qaeda's scheme for a global terrorist empire, U.S. soldiers have charged into Iraqi towns and cities with revenge on their minds.

Bush thus put both American soldiers and the Iraqi people in harm 's way. In the three-plus years of war, nearly 2,500 U.S. soldiers have died along with tens of thousands of Iraqis. Thousands more have been grievously maimed.

As the laws of war require the punishment of any individual soldier who murders civilians, international principles also call for holding accountable their superiors both military and political who contribute to the crime.

In that sense, the atrocity at Haditha and the tens of thousands of other unnecessary deaths in Iraq can be laid at the door of official Washington, where some Democrats and nearly all Republicans voted to authorize the invasion and where leading news organizations uncritically transmitted administration propaganda to the American people.

But the principal blame must rest at the feet of George W. Bush, the self-proclaimed "war president " who considers himself beyond the bounds of any law. In that larger sense, Haditha and all the other carnage in Iraq can be viewed as Bush 's My Lai.

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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at http://secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Originally published at www.consortiumnews.com

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