There have been several reports in the past few days by multiple media sources [1] [2] [3] quoting official U.S. military figures that "45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% from North Africa" and that "nearly half of all foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis".
Last week Kevin Bergner, spokesman for Multi-National Force in Iraq, declared 'Al Qaeda in Iraq' as the country's No. 1 threat and released a profile of a thwarted suicide bomber who was later identified as a Saudi national by a senior military officer. One may ask what is our government and our commander-in-chief doing about these reports. Well the answer is nothing other than placing the blame for anything and everything that has gone wrong in Iraq on its eastern neighbor.
During the mid-term elections last November, a majority of Americans recognized the true deadly and costly face of this dreadful “war of choice” and demanded an immediate change of course in Iraq and a major shift in U.S. foreign policy in ways that reflect their values and those of this nation's great forefathers. Instead, what they got was more of the same.
Last Wednesday, when Joe Lieberman [4] the Senator from Connecticut who earlier this month called for bombing strikes against Iran [5], introduced an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill [6] in support of the White House's uncorroborated accusations that "Iran is funding, training, and arming Iraqi militias who are contributing to the destabilization of Iraq and responsible for the murder of the members of the United States Armed Forces", not a single Senator rose to challenge those allegations, and the amendment passed unanimously on a 97-0 vote. It is now clear that most of the newly-elected members of Congress have abandoned the antiwar platforms on which they ran their election campaigns on and have willingly joined the bandwagon of lies, half-truths and disinformation which will prepare the ground for and inevitably lead to a new military adventure against yet another sovereign nation that has not posed a threat to the United States.
Aside from the now-known facts that there never were any weapons of mass destruction nor an Al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization in Iraq; and dismissing the belief by a majority of their own constituents that most of the current chaos in Iraq is a direct result of an ill-conceived and poorly-executed invasion, our representatives in Congress, rather than correcting the half-a-trillion-dollar colossal error that has cost the lives of over 3,600 Americans and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, are instead moving us all closer to the brink of a far more serious catastrophe.
[3] http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22081262-23109,00.html
[4] http://lieberman.senate.gov/
[5] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/10/ftn/main2908476.shtml
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
