LET THEM SEE WHAT THEY'VE DONE

Almost from the beginning of his administration, I was scathingly critical of Lyndon Johnson's horrible policies in Vietnam.  Not only was Johnson insensitive to the horrors he was raining down on innocent Vietnamese people who wanted nothing more than a unified nation and the vote that was promised them.  They would have voted overwhelmingly for Ho Chi Minh, but the U.S. broke the agreement.  Today, with U.S. forces out of Vietnam, that nation is rebuilding, not bothering its neighbors, and is fast becoming a vacation destination for Americans, Europeans, etc.  But Johnson, his Secty. of Defense, and his horrible generals did not have to face the effects that Agent Orange had on babies and adults.

On Wednesday, the BBC broke a story about what is happening in Fallujah, Iraq.  The U.S. focused its great might on that Sunni stronghold.  The international community was openly critical of the U.S. for its tactics and its use of depleted uranium shells and white phosphorous.  Today, the BBC filmed and reported from Fallujah's hospital.  As many as 13 times the normal birth defects have been reported.  And these defects are of the most horrible nature.  A baby born with 3 heads, babies born with one eye in the middle of their forehead, babies born with an eye and a nose in the middle of their forehead and struggling to gasp for breath, brain damage, one leg, one arm, three legs, grotesquely distorted spines, and the list goes on.  The doctors at the hospital blame the U.S. weaponry and related attacks.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the leading U.S. military officers in Fallujah should be made to stand in front of these deformed babies.  They chose the barbarous weapons used to cause this tragedy.  Women in that area are told not to have children anymore.  How sad!

Imagine an administration that set up torture sites in strange foreign locations, imprisoning men at Guantanamo with flimsy evidence, and used depleted uranium shells and white phosphorous in Iraq.  What have we become?  What is this America?  Who are we?  How can we justify acting like such monsters?  These are not the war guidelines agreed upon in the Geneva Convention.  But the Geneva accords are beside the point, no civilized nation should conduct itself in such monstrous ways.  We have slid a long, long way as a nation, a people, a culture.  We were despised, even by our allies.  They looked to Obama as a hope for a change, leadership back to civilization.  So far, his delivery is meek.

The United States of America has enough weaponry without depleted uranium and white phosphorous to obliterate any enemy.  Why should we stoop to the low point we have in battle?  Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld should be made to see what they have done.  Get them to that Iraqi hospital where every incubator is full with a disfigured child.  An entire generation of Iraqi women have been told not to have children.  This is our legacy.  Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and our military leaders are war criminals, and of the worst kind.  They have not only obliterated villages in Iraq, they have obliterated the good name of the United States of America.  Shame on us.