Ronald E. Runge

Alas, Iraq Ronald E. Runge

A writer wanting to pen a classic tragedy could find no better subject than the centuries' old, sad tale of Iraq. The last chapters in such a story, unfortunately, would also involve America, whose very presence in Iraq has no rational bearing.

Iraq, invaded in 2003, by neo-con lies, all of which have destroyed America's military, and bankrupted its economy. Yet America's people, month after month, year after year, fail to demand an accounting, and an end to this debacle in a sort of death wish.

The story features an Iowa National Guardsman, Ian Otto von Bismarck, now First Sergeant of the American 7th Stryker Squadron. Bis, as he is called, is deployed with his Brigade operating out of a barracks in Badhdad's notorious Green Zone.

Bis' many adventures, and daring heroic exploits, with his Stryker group forms the underlying basis of the book, and also the opportunity to find criticism, and fault with a brainless President George W. Bush, and those neo-con insiders, who lead him around by the nose.

Bis' greatest concern is of the fate of his squadron, not as a result of military deployment, but by being put into an impossible trap by the Shi'ite dominated Maliki Iraqi government, plus an armed reconstituted Sunni control over Anbar Province, a formed Saddam Hussein stronghold, confounding the reasons America was lied into the war into the first place.

A more, without rhyme or reason, rationale for our being in this senseless war could not be made up in the wildest imagination, of any story writer.

It proves Menken's quote: "Many Americans love those who lie to them, while condemning those who tell them the truth.."