"The Surge is Working!"

Five years ago this evening I stood in silent candlelight vigil with my Iraqi exile brothers and sisters on the Museumplein across from the Van Gogh and Rijksmuseum in the shadows of the US Embassy in Amsterdam.

For 6-weeks we marched shoulder to shoulder against this war begging for the UN weapons inspectors to be given time to complete their work to see if there really were WMD's.

On Valentine's Day, 2003, instead of taking my wife to a nice dinner, Faisel Nasser, head of the the group representing 50,000 Iraqis repatriated to The Netherlands and I (as leader of a group of 400 American ex-pats against the war) were on every television and radio proram in Holland following Hans Blix' report speaking both passionately and rationally against this war. To this day, people still remember and say "thank you for trying, I am glad not all Americans are like Bush" in Schiphol Airport or along the streets of Amsterdam.

On 15 February we joined 21 million people in 665 cities around the globe marching with one message, "do not start this war until you are VERY sure of the cause and the consequences." Most of us had never marched before and it was so heartening to see parents and grandparents out there in bitterly cold Amsterdam with 120,000 others wondering and praying for the world they leave behind for their kids. Until you have looked up and seen before you every square inch of the Dam Palace Square filled with people, you cannot fathom the level of resistance against this war.

The Bush Administration's Ari Fleischer called this historic coming together of millions who had never marched before against anything "a focus group and we don't listen to focus groups."

We shared a quiet Eid feast together two evenings before as brothers and sisters. I wish every American could see the face of our so-called enemy and understand the true human cost of this effort. If you could have seen the faces of those most affected, those watching bombs rain on CNN and wondering if their relatives were safe... you would know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that neither the surge nor the war are working and nothing i worst the cost in human suffering we all bear. We all have blood on our hands here for not stopping this. because it was over there, we are insulated.

P.S. I've filed a Freedom of Information Act request to see my CIA and DIA file, something I did not have until then. I'll let you know when or if I see it.

P.P.S. Images are screen shots from telly thus the strange pixels but you get the idea.....

The 'surge' isn't working. It was intended to facilitate Iraqi political progress, of which very little has occurred.

I often wonder what reality G W Bush and his accomplices inhabit. They only thing he has truly accomplished is dashing whatever Presidential aspirations his brother Jeb may have had. Otherwise his administration is a total failure, unless of course you're one of the 1% that his tax cuts were intended to help.

You can find reliable info regarding the mideast at www.juancole.com.

It is the REALITY of some corporations (among whom Haliburton is one (check Cheney's connections) ) making LOTS of money at the expense of human lives and the economy. Oh sure "The Surge is Working" for the corporations and oil company's. It is a SURGE of profits for them and an economic downturn for the average US citizen.(oh NO sorry, I keep forgetting about the "spin" put on that one). Oh and SURE we must spread democracy at all costs. If we really had a democracy, McCain wouldnt stand a chance.

I am sure I will be attacked now by the "Upper Middle" and rich class repubs now.

On that same day in 2003, I was marching in London where a million marched against the Iraq war. (Didn't I tell you I was one in a million?)

The thing that impressed me as the various marches came together in Hyde Park was that I found myself walking along beside a group of people whose banners proclaimed they were "Jewish and Palestinian Mothers unite against the Iraq War".

As we shuffled along together, they told me that unless the US treated all Middle East Countries equally, there was never going to be a solution in the Middle East.

The Jewish women told me that the US carefully avoided mentioning the sanctions against Israel and the Palestinian women told me the sanctions against some Arab nations were not worth the paper on which they were written.

As the whole world knows now, the war was illegal so it turns out that both groups were right. I was so pleased to be walking arm in arm with those women that bitterly cold day.

24 hours later, I was in the US. No-one I met had even known the biggest protest march ever in London had taken place. American Newscasters chose to ignore it.

As a footnote, I supported going to search for Bin Laden in Afghanistan, but there was no reason to invade Iraq AT THAT TIME.

Unless, of course, it was for the oil...

I agree with whitemanitou, due to Bushes insane policies there has been a massive transfer of wealth in the nature of debt owed by the majority of Americans to corporate interests.

Since their other major accomplishment has been to ruin the US economy and drive the nation massively into debt, I sometimes wonder if they did it on purpose.

Briscot, check out this article at the London Review of Books titled "It's the Oil": http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n20/holt01_.html

Thanks cjines! I've got the book!

But thank you for the review of it. This might help some of your compatriots.

It puts a whole new view-point on the real reason. Saddam's WMD were a convenient distraction - evil as though the bastard was. There were other ways of taking him out.