Truth or Propaganda

President George W. Bush accused Saddam Hussein on Monday of using civilians as human shields to protect his military forces so the Iraqi leader could blame the United States should there be civilian casualties in the event of war.

I know I'm becoming exceptionally cynical when I read the above statement and my first thought is "Yeah, or Bush is just telling us this so that if there are a large number of civilian casualties, he can claim that - just as he said Saddam would - Iraqi civilians were used by their government as a means to try and prevent the US from attacking Iraqi military targets."

I have no evidence that this is the case, and I am not aware of any information that would indicate any of it is true - but I have so little faith in my government right now that I can more easily see them making up a story like this - so that they don't necessarily have to be quite so careful when selecting what targets to go after (or so that targets that are already in a location where civilian casualties might be high can still be used as targets, with the civilian casualties chalked up to Saddam using them as meat shields rather than admitting that we felt the target was so important that the lives of Iraqis living near it were irrevelvent.