Zogby: Troops think Iraq was retaliation for 9/11 Another propaganda tactic is referring to Iraq war veterans as "heroes" as if they somehow saved us all from a state that collapsed within 1 week of foreign invasion. All the U.S. military did was take out an enemy of Al Qaeda - the 9/11 terrorists - which resulted in hundreds of thousands of people killed by "shock and awe", the occupation forces and their "special police commandos" (SPCs), and "foreign fighters" i.e. ISIS, millions of refugees, and an unknown number of deformed newborns, affected by depleted uranium from U.S. bombs. Do we refer to Russian veterans of their invasion of Afghanistan as "heroes"? Even if the Iraqi regime possessed WMDs they wouldn't have been a threat to "national security." From the 2002 NIE:
I will agree to the extent that the word hero is grossly overused these days, remember Jessica Lynch? She was a hero because she got captured by the enemy. John McCain is a hero because he got captured by the enemy. The stories of real heroes are under played as a consequence of this. I remember reading a story about an actual hero who had already been shot several times and kept rushing back onto the battlefield shooting enemy soldiers and dragging other wounded troops off the battlefield, now that is a real hero. But since getting caught by the enemy seems to be the new definition of the word hero perhaps we should have a special medal that we can award to troops who get caught by the enemy, then they can show it off at cocktail parties and say "look at me I totally screwed up and got captured, I'm a hero!"
