I feel like Chicken Little and the sky seems to be falling down, painfully slowly but very certainly. When the founding principles of a nation are smudged on a daily basis, disillusionment and despair deepen. And after 9/11 even in what was our insular United States, each day dawns bearing bad news.

The Bush administration clearly has given no thought to the concept of the means to the end, for the end appears to be all-compelling. Saddam had to be removed from power and the WMD blitz was used as the rationalization. Now that David Kay the American that went a’looking for them has come up empty handed the Bush men look dumb. And yet what’s the difference, that comes naturally, especially to the leader of the Free World.

Robert Fisk wrote of “The Secret Slaughter by Night” in The Independent in September. He reports that in Baghdad 70 corpses and in Najaf 20 bodies are brought into mortuaries and cemeteries each day of Iraqis killed by gunfire. Some of these have been in family feuds and looting, but others have been killed by American gunfire at checkpoints, or in the increasingly vicious “raids” carried out by American forces. He calculates and comes to a stomach churning, but supposedly conservative figure of 1,000 Iraqi civilians killed each week.

Since attacks with rocket-propelled-grenades and ambushes occur almost daily with one to two resultant American casualties and since American lives are at a higher premium than Iraqi civilian lives, American forces are now in the practice of pre-emptive killing. When in doubt shoot, appears to be the motto. The commander-in-chief started it as a preemptive war and it continues to be practiced as preemptive strikes on the ground. Perhaps the second Gulf War ought to be christened The Preemptive War, though sadly for Bush the principle of an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure does not apply in war stratagems.

Fisk compares the bad discipline and brutality of American forces to that of the Israeli army in the West Bank and Gaza strip. Twelve and fourteen-year-old children are being killed in firefights by American forces in the “shoot first ask questions later” modus operandi. 5500 Iraqi civilians have been detained without hope for trial and with no contact with their families and lethal raids into civilian homes and shooting on demonstrators occur almost daily.

Reuters reports that 82 American soldiers have been killed in guerilla attacks since Bush declared war, but the CPA or Coalition Provisional Authority, has “no information” about the Iraqi civilian death toll. And here is where the founding principles of this great land are shaken. The bastions of “justice and the pursuit of happiness” engage in an illegal war, with all but Britain against us, use depleted uranium since 1991, and after thoroughly destroying the infrastructure of Iraq in Gulf War II now engage in gunning down its people at many a time minimal or no provocation.

General Ricardo Sanchez the commander of the allied forces in Iraq has said that American soldiers will face no penalties for killing at least a dozen civilians that offered little resistance, for the rules that govern US troops in Iraq allow for the use of overwhelming force on any entity considered hostile, even if it does not represent an immediate threat. Sounds like carte blanche to me. And then again we rule the world and we make the rules.

The great upholders of freedom and peace carry on their conscience the ravaging of generations of Iraqis because of depleted uranium and twelve years of sanctions. Deformed, limbless, blind babies will forever bear testimony to the carnage that America wrought.

And as though in Divine retribution is the report by National Public Radio of twice the incidence of Lou Gehrig’s disease in soldiers from the first Gulf War as compared to soldiers of the same age group that did not go to Iraq. Lou Gehrig’s disease is a neurologic disorder that causes wasting of the muscles and generally death within six to eight years after onset.

Additionally PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder well known to Vietnam veterans is likely to afflict Iraq veterans with the same savagery with which they gun down fourteen year olds in Iraq. For is not “what goes around comes around” such an all-American saying?

After a frigid reception at the UN and with no country willing to commit soldiers to Iraq, America is sending 15,000 more troops and Congress is being asked for $87 billion for Iraq. No small change indeed and yet what is more surprising is how the Bush men are indulging in cronyism of an unprecedented nature. Joe Allbaugh, Bush’s 2000 campaign manager and till March the director of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), now heads a firm New Bridges Strategies, which will function as a consulting firm that will advise all businesses interested in the reconstruction of Iraq effort. The firm of Douglas Feith the Pentagon undersecretary overseeing Iraq reconstruction has now established itself as a consulting firm as well. And third is the firm led by the nephew of Ahmad Chalabi, President of the Iraqi governing council. This is so transparent and so blatant that the phrase conflict of interest does not quite encompass it.

The New York Times reports on how in the reconstruction effort the administration is feverishly blocking all Iraqi business ventures and distributing all the lucrative contracts to companies like Bechtel, which has had more Republican ties than Halliburton, and MCI even after the accounting fraud that the latter perpetrated and knowing that building cellular networks is not its forte.

If Chicken Little is not flattened out it is very disillusioned that cronyism and nepotism is being practiced with such impunity and bravado. As physicians we have to give minute financial detail of any interest that we may have in any lab or X-ray facility that we refer patients to. But the fortune that we might make indulging in this conflict of interest as compared to reconstruction contracts is minuscule. It is very difficult to imagine that this cronyism is legal and cannot be challenged under anti-trust statutes. On a lighter note, perhaps Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld will join the Tycos Chairman and New York Stock Exchange’s Grasso in a searing public investigation.

Many a time Bush appeared on television and decried Saddam the sadist, and flicks of his brutality were graphed to the public. Indeed, there is no contesting that: a psychotic power drunk fiend tortured and murdered his own people. And then again it is reasonable to ask what one should expect of a madman but madness. That Iraqis suffered so much and so long under his rule is not the tragedy. The unfathomable tragedy is that now an entire nation, one that is based on democracy and individual freedom is involved in the wanton killing of a defenseless people. The psychiatric disorder or political leaning of the one that wields the gun is irrelevant to the victim; dictatorial and democratic bullets kill the same way. The magnitude of the tragedy is far greater when the perpetrator kills with one hand and nurtures hypocritical democracy with the other.

Mahjabeen Islam is a physician practicing in Toledo, Ohio. Mahjabeenislam@hotmail.com

Cronyism and Killing: All in the Spirit of Democracy