Scott McLellan rats out Bush in his book

(story rewritten 5/29/08…)

They smile in your face
All the time they wanna take your place
The backstabbers
Backstabbers…

I don’t know…this song came to mind when I kept hearing the McClellan story pon de replay this morning…

How dumb does our national “leadership” think we really are? It does not take a rocket scientist to know that the war waged in Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. It was comical to hear the news outlet this morning reporting about former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s revelations in his new book “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception”. It’s definitely rough times for Republicans when even they sound confused about this war. McClellan himself is guilty as charged, and in my opinion, the media at large pushes the same propaganda to feed the emotions of the people.

Rather than give McClellan free publicity for his book, I’d rather see more info on the affects of real people who have been affected by the war in Iraq. The news media reports soldier casualties so casually if at all these days. Look at http://icasualties.org/oif/. There are some interesting statistics on there like the percent of casualties by race or the percent of casualties by city, state. The state I reside in now, Ohio, has one of the largest at 169 (at time of this post) of the approx 4,000 fallen soldiers to date.

Honestly, our US casualty count was not as alarming to me as I expected to be. However, what is alarming is the number of Iraqi’s who have been killed since this war started. For example, roughly 42,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since 2005 vs approximately 7,000 Iraqi Security Forces. How can I believe in America’s leaders who managed to stand together for a photo opp and denounce the genocide in Darfur when we are killing so many innocent people ourselves? Why are we being so reckless? How smart are our smart bombs?

What have we gained?

I now pay 70 bucks to fill up my 10 year old fuel efficient Honda Accord.

I, and many other women in particular, now have to stuff all of our toiletries into a stupid 1 quart bag or have to choose to check my bags and wait forever for them at my destination…if they arrive.

Not to mention the countless errors with the above statement. Just a week ago, I made it through good old Columbus airport security with several bottles of lotion that I had inadvertently left in my carry-on bag (not the first time I might add and I’ve seen major airports make the same mistake). I have been refused entry through the security checkpoint only once for a misspelling of my name (one extra letter is on my license…I have been too lazy and quite honestly annoyed that I have to pay to get the DMV’s stupid error fixed…that’s what I get for not double checking after waiting in lines for 4 hours…). I was just as annoyed as I was impressed to see a TSA agent pay that much attention to something that minor. Or the time that I made it to the gate with the wrong boarding pass (it didn’t even have me departing from the city I was in) accompanied by TSA signatures. It was so infuriating that the gate agent for the airline asked to keep it to turn in (as a complaint I guess).

I have been humiliated by the “frisking” of me and my belongings. They have made me take of my doo rag sometimes (don’t ask a black girl to take off her doo rag! that’s just not cute). Not to mention those security people with latex gloves fondling my underwear and rifling through my tampon stash. Uggh! There were days in my consulting years where I was literally fighting back tears because I felt so violated by the process…And it was worse when they would comment on my stuff (I had one guy try to have small talk with me about a cd I owned).

Need I go on?…And that’s just the small stuff.

Check out http://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/. This MIT managed site looks at the human cost of the war in Iraq (the photos are amazing…I got the one above from that site). Beyond my little inconveniences in the name of national security are way more deep affects of people who have been directly impacted by the war. You’ll see info on the Iraqi children who aren’t able to go to school or get clean drinking water. Where’s our humanitarian aid for that?

Who wages a war on evil? That’s some shit for comic book characters.

Well, Scottie, I hope you get some good publicity for your book while you hypocritically finger point at Bush and clutter our airwaves with your own propaganda. There are countless news articles on Scott McClellan’s assertions in his book like the one linked to this phrase.