Casualties

One of the early and interesting bits of the Iraq doc dump is the casualty counts. Seems that based on the US military's count, 66K out of 100K deaths were classified as civilian, about 60%.

Time to come home?

Yesterday the NYT ran a cover story about Obama's need for GOP support in the continuation of the Afghanistan occupation. Perhaps it is an ominous omen then even that support is showing signs of ebbing. One of the higher profile conservative columnists, George Will from the Washington Post, just wrote a column making the case for withdrawal; and just as surprisingly also published this week another column making the case for withdrawal from Iraq. At the same time, former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel writes a column in the same paper, a paper not known for its anti-war stance, highlighting the futility of our efforts to bomb the Middle East to peace. No one realistically should expect this to signal an imminent mass shift of the GOP's commitment to our indefinite involvement in these two countries, but if more unelected conservatives find the sense and/or courage to lose the strong on national security schtick and accept the wisdom of disengagement it is definitely an encouraging step in the direction of hastening the day of withdrawal. I thought Will's Iraq piece was especially well written, and while it would have been better had it appeared 5 years ago, it's better late than never.

Happy Anniversary

Deserters

It's starting to get down to the final few believers. People are jumping off the Iraq war bus left and right. Iraq's Prime Minister now publicly wants us to leave. He expressed general agreement to Obama's 16 month exit schedule more than once. In an interview, and then after a meeting between the two. It's about as close as he can come to endorsing BO and dissing Bush as you can get while their country is occupied by us and Bush is president. Now even Blackwater wants to leave, or at least not fight there anymore. Sounds like Iraq is such a moneysink that even with the billion or more dollars they were paid, they still don't like the payback. Proving a strong adherent to the doctrine of preemption, Bush had announced that he would be OK with a 'time horizon' which is entirely something different than an artificial timetable-which would embolden the terrorists to wait us out.

Fine n Dandy

So today McCain said "That's not too important," McCain said, when asked by host Matt Lauer if he could better estimate when U.S. forces would come home. "What's important is the casualties in Iraq," he said. "Americans are in South Korea, Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That's all fine."

So the secret to winning is to just stay there until nobody tries to kill us anymore, at which time it will be ok to stay. Since we have troops stationed in former war zones that means it would be best just to wait this one out and keep this war going until they tolerate us.

He also forgot to mention the other former war zone American troops are still in...Iraq....

Happy 5 Years

Recently we had the 5 year anniversary of Mission Accomplished. Please watch Bill Moyer's piece on the occasion.

Sad but true

I wasn't very angry at anything last night so I thought I would change that by watching a little Glenn Beck show. He did a segment about how the media hasn't been focusing on Iraq very much in '08. He said that there hasn't been as much bad news coming out of the war there lately so the media has ignored it. Then he said that people don't care about it, mainly because it is 'going better now'. His larger point (which was helpfully spelled out for you at the side of the screen in case you are to dull to catch on) was that Americans don't dislike war. In fact they like war, it is only losing wars that Americans don't like. IF only it seemed as though we were winning in Iraq the whole time, then us Americans would luv it sooooo much. The sad thing is, that on this one rare occasion, he is probably right. (but still an idiot)

Would you like some grease with your revolution?

UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter writes about a meeting he had with Chalabi and about inspections and the Clinton sanctions

Iraq article of the day for Tuesday to continue the anniversary celebration

Happy 5 years

This week is the 5th anniversary of the Iraq war. John McCain celebrated by taking a trip over there with his pal Joe Lieberman. Unfortunately the market he had strolled through previously, the one that was just like Indiana, wasn't available for tours. Another celebration was held in the States, by active duty and vets, where they shared some stories.

Sure fooled me

My questions is...how forgetful does Hillary Clinton think we all are? She has a few excuses she has been making regarding her Iraq war vote-She made the best choice she could with the intelligence we had at the time, or it wasn't the war that was a bad idea but the execution of the war. Basically the same arguments that republican war supporters have been making.

The worst though, in my opinion, is when she claims that when she voted to give George Bush the authority to invade, that it was just to provide a credible threat to Saddam to get him to disarm. That George Bush took advantage of that authority and invaded not as a last resort but out of choice. Therefore it is all GW's fault and not all the people who voted to allow him to do it. To be clear, this is partially true. Bush was saying at the time of the vote all those things. That he would only invade as a last resort, and that the 'credible threat of force' is what was needed to get Saddam to disarm.

The problem is that even though those things may have been said, it shouldn't be an excuse. If you had eyes and ears around that time, you knew with absolute certainty that George Bush wanted to invade Iraq, very badly. There is no way that any semi-intelligent being could not have seen that. There was no intention to do anything else than get congressional approval then go balls to the wall to Baghdad after that. You may remember how he ordered the inspectors out shortly after that vote, while they were asking for more time. You may remember his Dirty Harry televised address giving Saddam 24 hours to give himself up or we invade. You may remember a year or more of W's propaganda leading up to the war. The way he talked about it being a bad movie that he didn't want to see again. Saddam is in league with the terrorists. He has nuclear bombs. He has stockpiles of anthrax. You could fill a novel with all his Iraq related rhetoric.

If you listened to W talk at all that preceding year one thing anyone but the most naive was sure of was that he was planning to go to war and was doing everything possible to sell it. If there is one thing that everyone should be able to agree on it is that GW was hell bent on invading Iraq, and was going to do so given any opportunity at all. If Hillary didn't know that and really thought he only wanted a credible threat of force, then I would say she is much to naive to teach 1st grade, much less be president. To say that it was supposed to be just for show and W snookered them all by actually invading, means you're either lying or more gullible than Gilligan.

Heard elsewhere-
Joe Wilson of Valerie Plame fame has come out and written an anti-Obama letter that repeats this lame excuse.
Scarborough too

Propaganda IT style

Someone has created an online searchable database of the many things said about Iraq before the war started.

Buh Bye

Resigning today was Howard 'Cookie' Krongard, the Inspector General of the State Dept. He had been the subject of complaints from State Dept. employees and then had an embarrasing hearing in Congress with some confusion about his brother Alvin 'Buzzy' being on blackwaters board while he was investigating them.

Working from home

More proof that just because Karl Rove physically left Washington doesn't mean he left in spirit. Many strange things have come out of the mouth of Karl Rove over the years, but his recent statements that back in 2002, it was Congress that was in a rush to vote to give Bush authorization to use force in Iraq, not Bush who was in a rush, must be by far the strangest that I have heard.

Especially taking into account Bush's common strategy of pressuring quick votes on dubious things to give lawmakers little time to review them, a fact alluded to in the most recent Democratic debate when Dennis Kucinich answered a question about why he voted against the patriot act by saying 'because I read it'.

One interesting thing is that Rove is actually saying it himself, where more often he'd just delegate the lying or half-truths to give himself plausible (in his mind) deniability (maybe a technique learned from Cheney who is infamous for not keeping written records of anything lest it be used against him at some point). Is it that Rove can't remember what happened and is trying to guess? Is he saying what he actually believes, maybe because of some ideological selective memory that makes him attribute bad things to people he doesn't like? Is he using the 'big lie' strategy again to rewrite history? The world may never know but with his exhaustive list of past dirty tricks it's not a good sign.

Update: Tom Daschle replies, here too.

Victory in Iraq

Cowboy Country

Amateurish raids by immigration, complete with cowboy hats. Shoot-em up mercenaries paid billions in Iraq. Drunken shootings by same mercenaries. Legalised torture secretly justified in secret memos. The list can go on, but I should stop here before I induce vomiting.
The first 'CEO administration' seems to be keeping with that label. Their meetings are punctual, he is 'the decider'; and instant results, lackadaiscal planning and oversight, and profit above all else rule the day. With the largest military budget in the world, we don't have an army large enough to keep the peace in Iraq without heavy reliance on mercenaries like Blackwater. Mercenaries who have conviniently been exempted from US, US military, and Iraqi law by our occupation authority in Iraq, until now. The staggering costs of our occupation are floodling into the pockets of Bush's friends and donors, who our own audits show are overcharging, and not completing work they were paid for.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if a spoiled rich kid from New England who likes to pretend he's a Texas cowboy, who failed in every business venture his daddy paid for him to try, who liked to think he was an airplane fighter but got a stateside post during Vietnam from his papa that he didn't bother showing up for, became president of the US?

3 strikes (wax on, wax off)

The bad news has been coming more and more frequently this summer, with three rather significant events happening this week. Yesterday was Alberto Gonzales' last day at the justice department (please hold your applause till the end). Then later in the day yesterday the Iraqi govt. rejected Blackwater Inc.'s right to operate in Iraq due to an incident in Baghdad where quite a few Iraqis were killed. For the cherry on top, it was announced that the inspector genereal of the State Dept. is under investigation for fraud, abuse, profiteering, and basically doing a shitty job. The man behind it all is Rep. Henry A. Waxman, (D-Calif.)

It just came out the Waxman is going to hold hearings about Blackwater. Though the facts are not yet completely clear, Iraq's govt. is trying to get Blackwater out of the country after a Baghdad incident where between 8 and 20 people were killed by its employees. It's not publicized (or even publically available) how many Blackwater and other mercenaries are in Iraq, Afghanistan, who knows where else, but many estimates have put it near or greater then the number of actual US combat troops. Our wars and occupations are being fought by private soldiers of fortune almost as much as by the military. With huge no-bid contracts, no oversight, no accountability, supposed immunity from any criminal prosecution, and an overstretched US military, Blackwater was living the dream. Little mention was made concerning the wisdom of committing so largely to soldiers-for-hire. Eisenhower talked about the military-industrial complex, and the danger of having such a large permanent group with a large profit motive to fight wars. The same can be said about private warfighting companies...profits will motivate then to fight, start, and prolong conflicts. The Blackwater CEO has certainly made back the money he spent helping Bush get elected.

Three cheers for Bush's privatization of every and all things possible.

What about plan (ii)?

The secretary of Defense said that the pentagon is in the process of creating a plan for leaving Iraq, and apparently it's a priority. Which I am real glad to hear, at least it shows someone is planning for something somewhere. Granted it's not the first plan that was made- being preceded by shock and awe, get Saddam(mission accomplished), find WMD's, build a big wall, and surge- but it's good just knowing there is a plan for something. The broken record was getting old.

The new "cut and run"

The new, well not so new actually, strategy of "blame and run".
Because as any fool can see; the Iraqi people, at least the ones that haven't left the country or died, are clearly not trying hard enough to hold hands and "just get along".
Even the 'blame America first' Democrats are getting in on the action. I think we should start referring to them as the 'blame Iraqis first' crowd instead. Got a good ring to it.

Do the people saying that they are disappointed in the Iraqi people/gov't really think that it is them and not us that dropped the ball? Can we really expect a country with people who have never known peace or anything close to self government to instantly become model citezens, especially while occupied by our military?

I suppose the logic is, after people have the shit bombed out of them, followed by a few months of anarchy, followed by 4 years of continued bombings, lack of basic services/sanitation, living with an occupying army, their advisors mostly incompetents, it must be their fault that there is violence in their country.