by Charles Coughlin

The Iraqi rebels continue to inflict casualties on collaborators and coalition troops with no end to the violence in sight. One recent article reports “An explosion of insurgent violence killed seven U.S. servicemembers in Iraq over the weekend even as the Shiite-dominated parliament approved four more Sunni Arabs to serve as government ministers. One of the four Sunnis rejected the post on the grounds of tokenism, tarnishing the Shiite premier’s bid to include the disaffected minority believed to be driving Iraq’s deadly insurgency. More than 300 people, including American forces, have been killed in a torrent of attacks since Iraq’s Cabinet was sworn in April 28 with seven positions undecided.” George Bush continues to pretend that a viable democracy is being established in Iraq, but this effort is doomed to fail. Any government created during the US occupation will have no credibility with the Iraqi people.

Since the month of January, the Iraqi rebels appear to have been focusing most of their attention on collaborators. US soldiers seem to have been a secondary target for the last few months. Still, the rebels have killed an average of about 50 US soldiers per month in recent months. Every once in a while, we lose a helicopter and just a few days ago we lost two F18s (and their pilots) in a mid-air collision. Considering that we are occupying the country, why are we still flying F18s over Iraq? This seems another needless loss caused by a lack of thinking by Rumsfeld and company.

Just as reports of a serious increase in car bombings came in, the Bush administration announced that they had captured the #3 man in al Qaeda. This distracted the American public from the worsening situation in Iraq as Bush again pretended to be “winning the war on terror” (while still failing to catch Osama bin Laden). This latest claim by the Bush administration has proven false. An article from the British press reports “THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as ‘a critical victory in the war on terror’. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as ‘among the flotsam and jetsam’ of the organisation.”

American military deaths in Iraq have exceeded 1600. An unknown number of Americans have been killed in Iraq as contractors or CIA mercenaries. All of these deaths were completely avoidable and had absolutely nothing to do with the war on terror. American soldiers will continue to die for no good reason as long as the American public continues to trust criminals from the Bush family and other scoundrels produced by the two party system.