Bob Herbert: Driving Blind as the Deaths Pile Up - New York Times
Much of the nation is mourning the more than 2,000 American G.I.'s lost to the war in Iraq. But some of the mindless Washington weasels who sent those brave and healthy warriors to their unnecessary doom have other things on their minds. They're scrambling about the capital, huddling frantically with lawyers, hoping that their habits of deception, which are a way of life with them, don't finally land them in a federal penitentiary.See them sweat. The most powerful of the powerful, the men who gave the president his talking points and his marching orders, are suddenly sending out distress signals: Don't let them send me to prison on a technicality.
This is not, however, about technicalities. You can spin it any way you want, but Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of Karl Rove, Scooter Libby et al. is ultimately about the monumentally conceived and relentlessly disseminated deceit that gave us the war that never should have happened.
Oh, it was heady stuff for a while - nerds and naïfs swapping fantasies of world domination and giddily manipulating the levers of American power. They were oh so arrogant and glib: Weapons of mass destruction. Yellowcake from Niger. The smoking gun morphing into a mushroom cloud.
Now look at what they've wrought. James Dao of The Times began his long article on the 2,000 American dead with a story that was as typical as it was tragic:
“Sgt. Anthony G. Jones, fresh off the plane from Iraq and an impish grin on his face, sauntered unannounced into his wife's hospital room in Georgia just hours after she had given birth to their second son.”
The article described how Sergeant Jones, over a blissful two-week period last May, “cooed over their baby and showered attention on his wife.”“Three weeks later, on June 14,” wrote Mr. Dao, “Sergeant Jones was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on his third tour in a war that is not yet three years old. He was 25.”
Three times Sergeant Jones was sent to Iraq, which tells you all you need to know about the fairness and shared sacrifices of this war. If you roll the dice enough times, they're guaranteed to come up snake eyes.
Sergeant Jones told his wife, Kelly, that he had “a bad feeling” about heading back to Iraq for a third combat tour. After his death, his wife found a message that he had left for her among his letters and journal entries.
“Grieve little and move on,” he wrote. “I shall be looking over you. And you will hear me from time to time on the gentle breeze that sounds at night, and in the rustle of leaves.”
I hate reading the last words of soldiers, especially when they are poetic in a way that Scooter Libby's Aspen clusters can never be. I hate reading it because it makes me angry and bitter that 2000 soldiers have died who shouldn't have. I sincerely, desperately (and without hope) pray that the architects of this misbegotten war do spend some time in jail for their crimes against fellow citizens and against fellow humans. Herbert doesn't even mention the tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed.
his is what happens in war, which is why wars should only be fought when there is utterly and absolutely no alternative. So what's ahead, now that the giddiness in Washington has been replaced by anxiety and the public is turning against the war? Even Richard Nixon's cronies are crawling out of the woodwork to urge the Bush gang to stop the madness. In an article for Foreign Affairs magazine, former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, now 83, says the administration needs to come up with a clearly defined exit strategy, and fast. Said Mr. Laird: “Getting out of a war is still dicier than getting into one, as George W. Bush can attest.” But President Bush, who never gave the country a legitimate reason for going to war, and has never offered a coherent strategy for winning the war, seems in no hurry to figure out a way to exit the war. Soon after the Pentagon confirmed on Tuesday that the American death toll in Iraq had reached 2,000, the president gave a speech in which he said: “This war will require more sacrifice, more time and more resolve. No one should underestimate the difficulties ahead, nor should they overlook the advantages we bring to this fight.” Thousands upon thousands are suffering and dying in Iraq while, in Washington, incompetence continues its macabre marathon dance with incoherence.
Impeachment? Can some Congressman at least draw up the articles of Impeachment?
Tags: Bob_Herbert, /Iraq, /Karl_Rove
Dear Sir:
In regards to your report on "The Death of Sergeant Anthony G. Jones": It would be great if reporters would actually research the articles they print (before they print them). Just because it appears in "The Times" does not mean it is accurate!
Such is the story of Sgt. Jones. Just a few phone calls or even EMails to those who knew him more intimately than anyone else (even his wife and g-ma) would produce a far different report than that which was published in "The Times". The story was based solely on the statements of a BITTER old woman who knew
very little about Sgt. Jones. A story based on literary license rather than fair and accurate reporting.
I have been in contact many times with those whom he served in the U.S., Korea, and in Iraq .
The story from these troops is as different as day and night from the cowardice portrayed in this
article. If Sgt. Jones was the coward the article makes him out to be then o.k., that is fine. If accurate then I would say; exhume his body, rip off his stripes, remove his medals and ribbons rebury him and omit the bronze monument from his grave but, if he was not that coward, then the "Times" and the others who have used his death to foster anti-American sentiment, owe, at the very least, an apology for the needless pain and suffering articles like this cause the families of our soldiers who gave their lives in battle.
It has been nearly (6) six months since Sgt. Jones was blown up just south of Baghdad. The hurt of losing a son, an only son, in battle is tremendous. The pain of having his name
smeared as a coward, before the world, is far more painful. My wife, daughter and I have suffered greatly as a result of this overt indiscretion of the media. Our hearts break again, again and again. But that doesn't really matter, does it.
You have every right as an American journalist to print freely and I would never try to infringe on that right. You should know well that with every freedom comes responsibility. A story like this is designed only to bring political division and turmoil in our country. A fact you know all to well. But, while you print such, you must also consider what it must do to parents, siblings and others who don't share the cowards perspective of war.
Yes, war does many things to a nation. One thing it has always done is, it brings division. I.E.) It divides those of great courage and those of cowardice. Those with courage take up arms and defends that which is right and those of cowardice take up signs and banners and go into the streets or media in protest. My son took up arms and gave his life for what HE has believed all his life. The right to defend when we are attacked (Pearl Harbor, 911) and
the right to free speech (your article). He also believed that we are to be responsible when it comes to the hearts and lives of others, whether American or Iraqi.
By the way, more people died in the 911 attacks than at Pearl Harbor, but I guess that war was not POPULAR either but I'm glad our forefathers fought it!
In God We Trust,
Rev. Glenn M. Jones
(Sgt. Jones' Father)
I don't see anything about Sgt Jones being a coward in the above excerpt. No coward serves three tours.
I think you misread Bob Herbert's point: that the White House sacraficed the lives of soldiers for no good reason. Why is Osama bin Laden still at large? Iraq did not bomb us at Pearl Harbor, nor at the World Trade Center - bin Laden did.