Presumably we all know by now about the infamous exchange that took place in 1996 on CBS between Leslie Stahl and Madeline Albright. Referring to the sanctions on Iraq, Stahl said:
Stahl: We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And you know, is the price worth it?
Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it.
Last week General Franks indicated that he feels much the same way, this time with regard to the death of American troops.
Adequate words are lacking to describe the depths to which our leadership has sunk.
Ret. Gen. Tommy Franks says 50,000 American dead would be
OK
Date: Friday, February 27 @ 04:06:55 EST
Topic: Iraq War
by Stan Cox
http://www.mapj.org/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=5
Retired General Tommy Franks spoke at the annual Chamber of Commerce banquet here in Salina, Kansas, last Thursday night. Not being a Chamber-of-Commerce kind of guy, I wasn't in the audience. So I eagerly checked Friday's Salina Journal to learn whether General Franks, who led the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, had reflected on the human costs of those wars and weighed those costs against the results.
According to our local paper, the General "delivered a relaxed, folksy presentation, spiced with plenty of light-hearted and humorous stories." He warned those present that he doesn't like it when people walk out of his talks early, pointing out that Secret Service personnel were in the room.
"`It's not a big deal,' he said. `If you try to leave when I'm talking, they'll just kill you.'"
Having established a rapport of sorts with the audience, he described how he answers reporters who want to know whether the number of American lives lost in Iraq has been too high: "If it costs 500, that's OK, or 5000, OK, or 50,000, that's OK with me."
"I, for one, will do whatever has to be done in order to be damn sure that our grandchildren and their grandchildren and their grandchildren and generations far from being born have the same rights as you and me."
I wish General Franks had explained, in practical terms, which of the Iraq war's achievements has helped ensure your or my rights, let alone those of our descendants all the way up to around the year 2150. He did give a clue to his thinking during a much-discussed interview last November, in which he worried that a terrorist attack involving unconventional weapons could lead to the gutting of the U.S. Constitution and even military rule.