Puerto Ricans in the 'War in Iraq'

Last Tuesday night, November 4, 2003, Bush talked about the ‘casualties’ in Iraq. Well why not say it out loud, the soldiers that have died. I don’t know if my ears were fine, but did he say this was necessary?

Know let’s look closely. El Nuevo Día reported today that since the war began 390 soldiers have died. Looking at the numbers a little closely we have:

390 divided by 50 states gives us about 8 (7.8 to be exact) per state. Doesn’t seem much, huh?

Reality check: there are many soldiers in Iraq that come from Puerto Rico, one of its territories, or should we politely say the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Pardon me, but I’ll count Puerto Rico in:

390 divided by 51 gives us about 8 (7.65 to be exact), very close to the average presented before. Well, that doesn’t seem that bad!!! But this is just a statistic and you know how they can obscure reality.

In fact El Nuevo Día (November 8, 2003) reports, 11 Puerto Ricans have died already. Two died in the helicopter crash during last weekend, and two more died during the week.

11 not 8; that’s 37.5% more than any other state and please take into concern that there are only a handful of states with less population than Puerto Rico.

Maybe Bush doesn’t care about the real people. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a son or a daughter in Iraq, nor a relative or a friend. Besides, he is not going to be president too long – he wasn’t even elected by the people -- and when he retires he will have a whole bunch of people serving him, protecting him.

He is not going to care for anybody, even less our children, relatives and friends that will come wounded, emotionally and physically sick, addicted to drugs because they could not take it any more, out of their mind, not being able to sleep because of the horrific memories!

Anyway, have you thought about how many soldiers are already wounded? Where are those statistics? They can’t hide the dead, but are they hiding the wounded?

Finally, there will be a 40th anniversary coming soon. It makes me wonder if we are repeating ourselves.

References:

Caen ocho militares más. (2003, November 8). El Nuevo Día. http://www.endi.com.

Delgado, J.A. (2003, November 8). Creciente combatividad armada. El Nuevo Día. http://www.endi.com.