Does Bush or anyone in his cabal care about the mounting death toll? I think not! After all, as we keep being told, we are at war and people die in wars. And the dead keep growing in numbers. True to form as head of the “American Empire,” Bush ignores the mounting death toll and the enormous number of wounded and medical evacuations (534 dead, 26,000 evacuated… this is all in the public domain and all over my web site). His mouthpiece, in the form of corporate media, has taken instructions well: no footage or photos of returning coffins. Out of sight, out of mind… this in and of itself is disrespectful, an outrage and a betrayal of the fallen! Bush could care less how many of our young people are killed or wounded. Twice he has been asked about the mounting death toll and both times he glibly dismissed the question.

When Tim Russert interviewed Bush on Meet the Press he asked him, “Now looking back, in your mind, is it worth the loss of 530 American lives and 3,000 injuries and woundings simply to remove Saddam Hussein, even though there were no weapons of mass destruction?” Did Bush show any signs of understanding, compassion, sympathy or loss about the dead and dying? Not by any stretch of the imagination. Instead, he went into one of the most obscene diatribes, an “instruction” for the families of the fallen, about Saddam being a “bad” man. So What?! We knew he was a “bad” man; the entire 20-plus years he was our bad man… it didn’t seem to matter much when Rumsfeld was having “tea” with him back in the 80’s and giving him the things necessary to manufacture bio/chem weapons. Or when Cheney’s Halliburton was doing business with him in 1998!

As an American, a former Marine (if there is such an animal... former that is), as a disabled Vietnam veteran, I am outraged over the glib, cavalier and dismissive attitude of Bush and his cabal when it comes to the wholesale slaughter of our young men and women, which is being done only to further their quest for empire. Bush talks of the “sacrifices” that “we” must make. After all we are at war, he tells us. D**m it! The only people doing the sacrificing are the poor, people of color, and what is left of an ever decreasing middle class. He does not care! If he did, even just a little, he would show some sign of respect for the dead, the wounded and their families. Instead, he goes into a ten-minute “lecture,” attempting to convince us and the families of the fallen that he, Bush, is making the world a safer place; after all didn’t he get rid of that bad man Saddam? And the dead keep growing in numbers.

To Bush and his cabal we are just numbers on paper, pieces on a chessboard to be moved around at his “pleasure.” In the meantime, the dead keep growing in numbers.

Bush stated he is a “war president,” that his “policy” decisions are made with “war in mind.” Welcome to militarism and the “American Empire.” And the dead keep piling up. Empire and its accompanying “might makes right” dogma, by any of the Orwellian double-speak terms or the euphemisms currently in vogue, is still “empire.”

While Bush keeps beating his chest about being a “war president,” the pile of bodies, arms, legs and other assorted body parts of our young people in uniform keeps getting larger and larger. While he tells us “the American people have got to know they got a president who sees the world the way it is,” I wonder how much of what he sees is left-over brain rot from the years of cocaine and alcohol abuse. And the number of dead keeps growing.