So many things have been hidden from us under the Bush administration, that there is no way of even knowing what all of them are. One fact that stands out is that we really don't know how many Iraqis have died in the war. This fact has been conveniently left out of most newspapers. Have you wondered about this? A British polling organization surveyed over 2400 Iraqi adults in 15 of the 18 provinces in 2007 and found that more than 20% had experienced at least one war related death. Statistically this translates to about 1.2 million Iraqi deaths. This is a rather disgusting figure if I say so myself. Our military testified before Congress that it doesn't keep count of Iraqi deaths. Surprise, surprise. They said that civilian deaths have declined considerably. In 2006, the British medical journal Lancet stated that they counted 655,000 Iraqi dead at the time. There have been guesses that range from about 38,000 to the figure that I mentioned of 1.2 million. Should we have to guess at this? Figuring out the amount of Americans maimed is even harder to do. There are more Americans walking around without an arm or leg every day.

Another under reported story is where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is getting together with the European Union and top military from allied countries to draft a proposal that would allow NATO to consider a “First Strike” nuclear option. There has not been much in any of the papers about this. NATO, which is headed by the US, feels that it is now necessary to have this option to counter all the nuclear development out there by states that are considered rogue states. I guess we all know which countries this is aimed at. They state that they want this option to guard against political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism. Some of the reasons given to nuke someone are pretty weak, especially the reason that was given that stated climate change and energy insecurity might create a contest for resources. What are we talking about here? Are we saying that if we are competing for oil against another 3rd world country and they get it, we will nuke them? I certainly hope not.

We see hardly anything in the news about how much we have increased military aid to Latin America and yet it is by a very significant amount, an amount that seems to be enough to put countries on a war footing. If we look at the amount of aid we were giving Latin America in 2000 and compare it to what we gave in 2005 we find that it had increased by 34 times. We have established something called the International Law Enforcement Academy or ILEA for short in El Salvador and it has a satellite in Peru. It trains 3,000 officers per year and there are provisions of immunity from charges of crimes against humanity. This seems to be a replacement for the School of the Americas that was at Fort Benning, Georgia, that became notorious for teaching things like torture techniques. The school has set up branches in places like Hungary, Thailand, Botswana, Gaborone and in of all places Roswell, New Mexico. The schools operate under a curtain of secrecy and many believe it is a replacement for the former school I mentioned.

Sometimes things go on in the government that we never hear about and that is exactly what happened on July 17, 2007 when President Bush signed two executive orders allowing the Secretary of the Treasury in consultation with the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense to seize the assets of any US citizen or organization that poses a risk to US operations in Iraq. “...there need be no prior notice of listing or determination [of seizure] . . .” Many feel that this order would allow the government to confiscate the assets of anyone who protests against the war. A second order was then signed, only this time it was supporting Lebanon. One news report stated the following, “Vaguely written and dangerously open to broad interpretation, this unconstitutional order allows for the arbitrary targeting of any American for dispossession of all belongings and demands ostracism from society. Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer and former Justice Department official in the Reagan administration says of the order, "This is so sweeping it’s staggering. I have never seen anything so broad. It expands beyond terrorism, beyond seeking to use violence or the threat of violence to cower or intimidate a population.”

Another unsung story is about all the money that seems to have disappeared in Iraq. Everyone knows that we have been pumping US taxpayer money into this country at a phenomenal rate. Much of it has gone to unscrupulous contractors who performed shabby work or just overcharged us. Look at the first year that we were in Iraq. We sent 12 billion in dollars to that country and 9 billion just disappeared. The money was earmarked to be used for construction in Iraq. Another 1.6 billion was given to the Coalition Provisional Authority(CPA) in Iraq. Congress knew nothing about it and it is said that most believed that it was some sort of US Government agency, but it was not. This Iraqi agency had a field day. It listed over 8,000 guards on its payroll, yet there were really only 602. It is said that Halliburton charged the CPA for 42,000 meals for soldiers while in fact serving only 14,000. When whistle blowers exposed a case, the players were found not guilty because even though the fraud was monumental, the CPA was not part of a US government agency and therefore it was said that there was no fraud against the US, even though it was US taxpayers that were being defrauded. Shell companies got involved in the fraud that were registered in the Bahamas. All the vultures were feeding on our money and yet, not much appeared in the news about this and the theft just carried on and is still going on.

A very little known article came out that stated the the timing of the exposure of former New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer was looked into by several researchers and they have come to the conclusion that the Bush administration might have been behind the outing of the Governor for using call girls. One might wonder why this would be, but we have to remember that Spitzer was a dangerous opponent, because he was one of the most vocal critics of Bush. He blamed his administration for the financial crisis and the researchers felt that the Bush administration had the most to gain by his elimination. Spitzer had testified before the US House of Representatives about this and then went on CNBC the same day and again blamed the Bush administration for this. If there is only one thing that holds true for politicians it is the fact that they love to get even.

CARE, one of the biggest charitable world wide organizations and a distributor of food to hungry people, rejected 45 million dollars worth of food aid from the US. Why would they do such a thing? It is because they did some research on the way the US gives food and came to the conclusion that as one article put it, “the current food aid program is motivated by profit rather than altruism. The policy, which dictates that donated money be used to purchase food in the home country, results in a program driven by the export and surplus disposal objectives of the exporting country and not the needs of people in hunger.” If this isn't a disgrace, then what is?