The Cost Of Saving Face As Measured In American Military Deaths

By BlackJack

In addressing the sad number of 4000 American military deaths today, Vice President Dick Cheney was sure to mention the fact that our armed forces are an all-volunteer force. The unwelcome truth is that American men and women have been dying at a rate of 2.175 per day since the beginning of the war and current occupation of Iraq.

By referring several times to the volunteer force, and of course not mentioning that by creating a stop-loss policy in Iraq that keep soldiers in country months beyond their normal duty would end, Cheney seemed to be moving blame for the deaths away from the administration and onto the shoulders of the military members themselves. It is clear that, barring a sudden come-to-Jesus moment, members of the Bush administration will at no point admit that they are in any way responsible for the death of these brave men and women.

It's understandably hard for the families and friends of the fallen to accept that their loved ones may have died without cause, but for the President and Vice President to reiterate the fact that the dead had volunteered, in order to avoid responsibility, is a slap in the face and does nothing to honor their service. No President or Vice President in history, it would seem, had so callously wasted the lives of so many Americans and no administration before had started a preemptive war - no less one based on trumped-up intelligence and all-out lies.

Cheney said. "For example, 9/11 stimulated a lot of folks to volunteer for the military because they wanted to be involved in defending the country." Unfortunately, we attacked a nation without just cause and the administration did, perhaps, unrepairable harm to our foreign policy. Our standing as the beacon of freedom has been tarnished and it will take more than the next administration to repair that damage.

We, as a nation, have been manipulated for the corporate financial gain of the administrations friends and family - and in turn our families have been torn apart by the huge mistake we made in trusting them to act in our best interest.

Now the sabre-rattling has escalated towards Iran and John McCain mentioned, incorrectly, that Iran is training al Qaeda in Iraq members and sending them back to Iraq to fight. The chain of lies continues and the number of deaths will surely grow.