My Letter to the Tampa Tribune Last Week

The country has been misled -- again -- this time by General Petraeus as well as the Bush Administration.

President Bush has counseled the country to have patience, that he would 'listen to the general' when it came time to 'make a decision' regarding bringing the troops home or staying in Iraq.
President Bush was able to say all this with confidence because he knew ahead of time what 'General Betrayus' report would consist of.

Petraeus stated that his report is his alone. However he and his staff phoned the White House politicos daily to coordinate their messages. He used what the Washington Post has called, 'Funny Math' to compile his figures. For instance, car bombs didn't count as acts of war and such deaths are not counted among the war dead. Bullets to the back of the head count as assassinations, however bullets to the front of the head
do not.
This sounds like the games I used to play when I was seven years old and the playground echoed with shouts of, 'No fair! Didn't count!
Do over!'
But Iraq, tragically, is not an elementary school playground.

Here is some math that is not funny:
On September 11, 2001, Osama bin Ladin killed 2,974 US citizens. Twenty four people went missing that day and are presumed dead. One person, so far, died of lung disease which has been attributed to breathing the dust at Ground Zero. The total official number dead due to bin Ladin’s actions: 2,999.
Since then, the war in Iraq, a country which had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no stockpiled WMD's, has killed 3,842 US citizens and approximately 1,099,372 Iraqis while thoroughly destabilizing the region.

Therefore, I respectfully ask, ‘Who are the terrorists?’