Derailed

By John Young
September 24, 2006

Opinion editor of the Waco Tribune-HeraldWACO -

A train derailed in Crawford Tuesday, spilling many gallons of the toxic whitewash used to portray Bush policy.Maybe whitewash isn't what it was. The official word was ethanolamine. That's the chemical term for ''not salad dressing.''
I debated going out to see if the good-haired TV guys were getting the straight skinny. My wife had a veto on that. She even wanted to bring in the dogs. Fumes can travel 15 miles, she said. Ask any smokestack.
I settled back. It was just another peaceful night in the state of fear.We ought to be able to believe official reports about something related to our safety.We ought to be able to believe, for instance, that when sons and daughters are sent to war it's over a real, certifiable, verifiable threat to us.
If it's about nation-building, Middle East restructuring or the ever-poetic ''freedom marching.'' If that's your war pretext, say it in advance. Of course, we'll probably say, ''Thanks, but no thanks.''We ought to be able to depend on the words of the people who represent us in halls of government or theaters of battle.We can't right now.
Take the recent report from the Pentagon that violence was down markedly in Baghdad because of intensified U.S. patrols. That was slightly off. The morgues showed three times as many Iraqis killed in this so-called period of pacification as U.S. spokesmen were saying.
Next consider the difference between the official count of America's wounded in Iraq, roughly 19,000, and the 62,800 that PBS's McLaughlin Group attributes to the number removed from the battlefield because of physical or mental wounds.The first number, alarming though it ought to be, still appears tailored to the other big lie underlying pre-2003 designs on Iraq: That war could be low-cost, low-imprint, sort of like, um, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
No, war is a deathly endeavor. A nation had better believe in it fiercely to make it worth the investment of lives, including innocents.And a nation that so invests had better be prepared to give the stockholders some truth about gains and losses.
Consider the family of Cpl. Pat Tillman, who left the NFL's Arizona Cardinals to enlist after 9/11. For more than a month after he was killed in Afghanistan in 2004, Tillman's family and countrymen were fed a lie about his death, which came from friendly fire. Five inquiries have yet to clear up events.Ironically, Tillman was in on another much-trumpeted story that wasn't the truth. In a tour of duty in Iraq, he was with the squad that recovered America's most famous POW in Iraq, Pfc. Jessica Lynch. Americans were told she was rescued in a blaze of gunfire. Actually, Lynch's captors had fled when the U.S. troops arrived.Gary Smith, in a penetrating portrait of Tillman in the Sept. 11 Sports Illustrated, writes of ''how wars and soldiers get marketed by government and media alike, and how you can find yourself cast in the commercial whether you auditioned for it or not.''In an eerie passage, Tillman, who enlisted to go get the bad guys behind 9/11, watches battles rage in the Iraqi desert and calls the U.S. invasion ''f--- illegal.''
Go market that.A friend who is a disabled Vietnam veteran and who has grimaced throughout the Iraqi mission thinks of what awaits the many individuals who come home with terrible wounds and mental disabilities. With as many as one in three Iraqi veterans reportedly suffering mental illness, including post-traumatic stress disorder, he notes a recent initiative by the Department of Veterans Affairs to tighten up the definition of PTSD. This comes at a time when Waco's VA hospital, psychiatric care as its chief mission, looks to an uncertain future.
Can we trust this government to fulfill its obligation to people who've sacrificed so much? I can't believe I'm even asking that question.

John Young is opinion editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald.
E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib. com .
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