On and On
The Hidden Columnists--Bob Herbert Edition (07 Nov)

Bob takes his time in his column "And the War Goes On" meandering through the low polling numbers for BushCo and the clusterfuck planning for the Iraq war before getting to the salient point of this week, which ends with Veteran's Day on the 11th (here's the link to the full column at Times Select):

The war? There's no plan for the war. The architects of this war had no idea what they were getting into, and they are just as clueless now. The war just goes on and on, which is not just tragic - it's criminal.

Opposition to the war may be mounting. But the reality of the war, especially the toll of American dead and wounded, fades in and out of the public's consciousness.

There was a rush of articles a couple of weeks ago when the number of deaths of Americans serving in Iraq reached 2,000. But those stories were quickly superseded by Harriet Miers's withdrawal of her nomination to the Supreme Court; President Bush's selection of Samuel Alito to take her place; the indictment of Mr. Libby; the president's address to the nation on the possibility of a bird flu pandemic and so on.

The killing of G.I.'s in Iraq once again took its place as a relatively minor story, meriting in most cases just a brief mention on the inside pages of the major newspapers, and the most cursory coverage on television newscasts.

The death toll has now reached at least 2,035 and, of course, it is climbing. More than 15,000 G.I.'s have been wounded in action. Limbs have been lost. Men and women have been permanently paralyzed, horribly burned, or blinded. Thousands more have been injured in nonhostile incidents, such as accidents, and many have fallen ill.

If the American public could see the carnage in Iraq the way television viewers saw the agony of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, this war would be over. A solution would be found. Imagine watching a couple of soldiers in flames, screaming, as they attempt to escape the burning wreckage of a vehicle hit by a roadside bomb or a rocket-propelled grenade.

For all the talk, neither the administration nor the public has taken the reality of this war seriously enough to do something about it. If the sons and daughters of the privileged were fighting it, we'd be out of Iraq soon enough. But they're not fighting it.

So the war goes on and on.