Iraq, where there is smoke

There is fire. Last week the Clarion Content editorial staff took a hiatus for the Thanksgiving holiday. Many of us took the opportunity to spend time with our families. Some of us were subjected to rants and raves from ardent Bush II supporters about the election. One such rant was the continuing fiction that things in Iraq are all but peaceable. As the horrors of Mumbai sadly blew Iraq off the front pages, the Bush II automons took that as reason to claim all was well in Iraq. After all when was the last time, more than a 100 people had been killed on a single day in Iraq. Orwellian double speak, underreporting in the mainstream media and a mentality of hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil have seeped into the public consciousness. We fear it could be infecting President-elect Obama who is rapidly backpedaling away from his promise to withdraw the troops from Iraq in less than sixteen months, who has kept on King George the II's Secretary of Defense, who has offered the Secretary of State to the notoriously pro-war Senator Clinton.

Of course, no sooner had we returned to work, a mere one day after the Mumbai attacks, there was an outbreak of violence in Iraq big enough to be noticed by the mainstream Western media. Detailed research will alert the studious to the fact that Iraq is in a steady state of civil war, on-going violence, Low-Intensity conflict. Pick your verbiage du jour. December started off with a bang, thirty-four people were killed in bombings in Baghdad and Mosul today according to the LA Times. It also reported that 339 people were killed in the on-going violence in the month of November, after 278 had been killed in October. This supposedly improved situation in recent months is still on pace to see near 7,500 deaths per annum. Non-lethal casualties run at ten times this amount.

See peace in 7,500 deaths and 75,000 wounded per year? Aren't you glad America invaded and removed that brutal dictator and his weapons of mass destruction? We bet the average Iraqi is real thankful for America this holiday season and what we have wrought on their state.