Happy Birthday Operation Iraqi Freedom

Today is the fifth anniversary of the invasion of the sovereign country of Iraq, code named "Operation Iraqi Freedom", by the military forces of the United States of America. Since that day, the United States has lost 3,990 members of it's armed forces and had 29,314 more wounded. I thought about posting gruesome photos of the war to show what we as American citizens have authorized our troops to do through our system of representative government, but I didn't want to look at the photos either. But suffice to say, over 1 million Iraqi civilians have been killed, many women and children, and over 4 million more displaced. The country's infrastructure is in a shambles that will take years to repair and they are being occupied by a country they don't want there. Hint: "occupied" is not a positive term!!

Instead, I thought I would look ahead to March 19, 2009, to the sixth anniversary of the invasion. If things continue as they have in 2007, we will have lost another 900 more members of our armed forces and had another 6,000 more wounded. Simple math will tell you that our grand totals will then be 4,890 killed and 35,314 wounded. To many these are just numbers. I am the father of two sons ages 20 and 22 so I can very easily put representative faces to those numbers. These are young men and women in the prime of their lives. Men and women who have dreams for their future.

What makes me make this wild prediction? It's rather simple really. President Bush will be in office until the end of this year and nothing will change during his reign. (We can only hope he doesn't invade Iran, since Iraq has been such an astounding victory for democracy) Senator McCain has already said he won't bring the troops home, and neither Senator Clinton or Senator Obama will have done anything substantial by March of 2009. Add to that, our Congress seems to be in some sort of shell shock and frozen in place when it comes to arguing against the war.

As for me, I'm going to continue to be vocal against the war. I will be attending an anti-war demonstration this afternoon in Claremont at the intersection of Arrow Hwy, & Indian Hill blvd. Maybe I'll see ya there!!!