Something about the way Helen Thomas asked Bush flack Dana Perino about civilian war deaths seemed to rattled Perino’s usual robotic calm: “Helen, I find it really unfortunate that you use your front row position, bestowed upon you by your colleagues, to make such statements… [To] suggest that we, at the United States, are killing innocent people is just absurd and very offensive.”
In reality, over 600,000 Iraqi babies, children and adults have been killed unnecessarily by U.S. bombs in pursuit of Bush’s misguided invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Transcript from Dana Perino’s press briefing on Fiday, Nov. 30, 2007, follows:
[HELEN THOMAS] Does the President want no troops out from Iraq on his watch? I’m talking about all the troops.
MS. PERINO: Well, 5,700 troops will be home by the end of the year, so that is some troops coming home. The President said that troop levels are going to be made by commanders on the ground, and that we’re going to have to talk about –
[HELEN THOMAS] Why should it be? Why can’t the American people have a say?
MS. PERINO: — return on success. The American people have had a say. They elected a President who is their Commander-in-Chief and is making decisions based on what his commanders on the ground are telling him.
[HELEN THOMAS] And you think that was the vote of the American people?
MS. PERINO: They elected a Commander-in-Chief, and the President is bringing home 5,700 troops, based on the recommendations of his commanders on the ground and based on return on success. Hopefully in the future we can bring home more, but it’s going to depend on what General Petraeus reports and remember he will come back in March.
[HELEN THOMAS] Why should we depend on him?
MS. PERINO: Because he is the commander on the ground, Helen. He’s the one who is making sure that the situation is moving –
[HELEN THOMAS] You mean how many more people we kill?
MS. PERINO: Helen, I find it really unfortunate that you use your front row position, bestowed upon you by your colleagues, to make such statements. This is a — it is an honor and a privilege to be in the briefing room, and to suggest that we, at the United States, are killing innocent people is just absurd and very offensive.
[HELEN THOMAS] Do you know how many we have since the start of this war?
MS. PERINO: How many — we are going after the enemy, Helen. To the extent that any innocent Iraqis have been killed, we have expressed regret for it.
[HELEN THOMAS] Oh, regret. It doesn’t bring back a life.
MS. PERINO: Helen, we are in a war zone, and our military works extremely hard to make sure that everyone has the opportunity for liberty and freedom and democracy, and that is exactly what they are doing.
I’m going to move on.
500,000 dead… but not to worry… we are sending regret cards and flag pins to the families
I hope this witch goes to prison with all the rest of this stupid bunch. She is such a lying heifer.
Did you notice the evil glare to Helen as the next comment came in?
Dana Perino is so corporate-Orwellian here, and the way she tries to talk down to the venerable Helen Thomas is ridiculous.
Perino will become a corporate shill soon, and Helen Thomas is going down in history as a conscientious, truth-telling, pioneer. Perino is foresaking her honor and privilege of facing Helen Thomas, the Press, and the US Public, to ’sell’ a war based on lies and privatized profiteering at the expense of the American and Iraqi public.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s get down and dirty with Perino’s pseudo-MBA-speak, of ‘Return on Success.’ Rounding up for the White House, we are experiencing a return on success rate of 4% over 4 years of war, assuming that ’success return’ equals the number of troops returned home divided by the peak number of troops [6000/150,000]. If we count the private contractors, then the rate goes to 2% over 4-5 years of war.
Would you invest in a risky proposition that only gave you 3% after four or five years? And what about the costs? The higher taxes, the higher oil prices, the lost allies and prestige? And the costs that Helen Thomas mentioned.
Helen brings in from the margins the costs of 650,000 Iraqi innocents killed [The Lancet], which isn’t even factored into the Bush return rate, but should be, and adding to that 30,000 US casualties (severely injured or killed), then this return of 6,000 troops is not a success but an abject failure. Besides the Iraqis that are dead forever, up to 28,000 US veterans are maimed or traumatized forever.
By 1974 the Vietnam War was over, but the US was paying higher interest rates and inflation for that war until the recession of 1983. The Iraq War is on its way to being more expensive, and it may linger on like Korea for another 45 years!
We are going to be paying higher taxes, inflation and interest rates through 2017 if the war ended today, and the Veteran’s injured today will need expensive care through about 2050, if the war ended today. And we are going to be paying these higher costs with stagnating jobs and lowered economic opportunities like the stagnant inflationary 1970s, or stagflation.
Who benefits? Military contractors, oil companies, OPEC, Russia, Oligarchs, Bush’s friends and family, Health Care providers. I project that they are making off with a trillion dollars, a million-million dollars, or a thousand billion dollars of wealth transfer, transforming the US into a Latin-American or Russian style oligarchy with a few rich on top, a tiny middle class, and lots of poor and working-poor.
Who pays and will pay? The dead and surviving Americans and Iraqis. No wonder Dana Perino needed to ‘move on.’ There is no good story for her to tell, and Thomas was calling her on it with heart and a great deal of restraint and forbearance.
Perino is upset that we are not buying ‘black is white,’ ‘freedom is ignorance,’ ‘war leads to peace and democracy.’ She is confusing honor with obedience and compliance, and service with authority.
Kucinich is right. We need to impeach these lying, cheating, profiteering warmongers asap. Let’s limit the damage, and cut our losses. And who knows what these greedy war pigs will pull in the last innings or downs of this game, especially if they feel desperate?
Right on Enzo!! I couldn’t have felt and expressed your logic any better. You must be a financial adviser or somebody like that!
Wow. Sad to say, Dana Perino is a jerk. Scary too. Helen Thomas is what a journalist should be and doing what a journalist should do with a seat in the White House press room: use the position (privilege?) to make sure she finds out the TRUTH for her readers rather than merely accepting Bushite pap.
This needs to be said time and time again lest we forget - what we are doing in Iraq is not war, but invasion. There has been no declaration of war, nor has war been declared against us.
The Iraqmire is the response of Iraqis to an invasion. Certainly there are bad guys on the declared “other side”, but Iraqis have seen both violence from our military and massive unemployment as a result of Bush’s, Cheney’s, and, not least, Paul Bremer’s ignorant country-club buddies. Bremer’s incompetence rivals that of “Brownie”’s.
Heck of a job. Leave. Now.
being in the briefing room is not a privilege but is a right according to our founding fathers. is Dana attempting to rewrite history?
Mel
Honolulu
[…] Via Pensito Review […]
Stephanie Miller on Air America calls Dana the “tiny dancer of deceit”.
Don’t kid yourself. Somebody told Dana to find a moment some time SOON to “take Helen down a notch or two.” She rehearsed and practiced the “an honor to be selected among your peers” line. She was just waiting for a moment to isolate Helen and to try and divide and conquer the usually lame and pathetic White House Press Corp (of lapdogs) before they ever find a backbone and gang up on Dana.
These Rethuglicans in the White House are evil, lying, criminal scum and the mouthpieces for them are soul-less creeps.
Just because you are blindly oblivious and fanatically focussed doesn’t mean the blood of innocents isn’t on your hands.
Was Saddam cruel and inhuman? Yes. But when Iraqis are given a hypothetical, preference question of living under Saddam or the effects of the Bush invasion, they choose Saddam. What does that tell you?