Walt Auvil is the Chairman of the Wood County Democrat Executive Committee, which the News conveniently omitted. The time for hand holding and singing in Wood County is over, we need ACTION. We on the Wood County Republican Executive Committee need to wake up, before we measure our losses at the ballot box in a few short months.
On Sept. 10, Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, began delivering his much-ballyhooed report to Congress and the nation of the state of the “surge” in Iraq and his view of the way forward there. Except—as usual with this administration—the whole thing was a stage-managed fraud, cooked up by the Bush PR machine. A fraud most major media outlets echo and perpetuate.
If only Bush’s opponents in Iraq were as spineless, toothless and gullible as the major U.S. media we would have achieved “mission accomplished” there long ago. Iraqis—and our troops—however have the misfortune to largely be in Iraq—outside the convenient bubble of unreality surrounding the U.S.
The Iraq they live in has lost 2.5 million of its citizens—refugees from the violence, of whom less than a thousand have been accepted into the U.S. Two million more have been “internally displaced,” which means driven from their homes by ethnic cleansing and/or U.S. attacks, but lacking the means to escape the country. Thirty percent of equipment the U.S. has issued to Iraqi “security forces” is unaccounted for, including 110,000 AK47 assault rifles and 80,000 pistols. And, 655,000 Iraqis are dead due to the violence as of mid-summer 2007.
Despite the fact one in every $10 spent by the U.S. government is spent on Iraq (approximate total projected bill of $1 trillion; $200,000 a minute) Baghdad “enjoys” approximately 1-2 hours a day of electricity (with heat not less than 100 degrees during the summer). There were four complete nationwide blackouts during July. Of 17 major power lines to Baghdad, two are operating. Two-thirds of all Iraqis have no access to clean drinking water.
No amount of PR can alter the facts for those living in Iraq. The cost of deploying a U.S. soldier in Iraq is $390,000 a year. The cost in human suffering for our troops, Iraqis and the families of both is incalculable. And one more: The cost of bringing a U.S. soldier home is $627.80.
Walt Auvil -- Parkersburg
*My thoughts: I'm actually disappointed with Walter. This diatribe could have been concocted from any Moveon.org piece of propaganda. Walt is beginning to sound like a George Soros clone.
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