Bring U.S. Soldiers Home--Let the Mercenaries Stay and Fight




Saw this van parked outside of the Hollywood Casino in Bay St. Louis on Thanksgiving Day. Thought it was a great sentiment, of course and it made me think--why don't we just go ahead and bring U.S. soldiers home and let Bush have his war with the "civilian contractors," i.e. Blackwater and other mercenary groups?

Because these guys have loyalty to nothing but the dollar. And killing people, I suppose. And they're getting to do a lot of that, as the Washington Post points out:

BAGHDAD -- Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in U.S. military and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq, enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives.

And let's wean these "contractors" of the tit of the U.S. taxpayer. Let Iraq pick up the tab for them. There are so many mercenaries in Iraq now that actual U.S. troops are no longer needed--in fact, mercenaries now outnumber U.S. troops in Iraq. So if Iraq really wants or needs help as pro-war types say they do, then let Iraq pay for the mercenaries if they want to.

So let's bring home the U.S. military--the people who volunteered to serve our country. Neither our country nor Iraq is being served by the presence of U.S. troops there. The only people being served are the neocons and their corporate, defense contractor pals who need U.S. troops there to create an excuse for two things: 1)to take away our civil liberties here at home and 2)to create an excuse for endless war and endless profiteering.

SADDAM: THE $1 BILLION OFFER

Saddam offered to leave Iraq in exchange for $1 billion. Bush himself said that Saddam could leave the country and the invasion would be called off (no one took that seriously, but still, he said it).

We've spent over 500 times that on our invasion and killed over a million people and lost tens of thousands in deaths and injuries (the cost of which will be in the billions as time goes on).

9/11 Every Day For Over 10 Years

Many will dispute the 1 million casualty estimate. They will do so because it's a conscience-pricking number. That number of deaths, proportionally speaking, is equivalent to a 9/11 casualty rate EVERY DAY in Iraq for over 10 years.

But suppose you argue that the 1 million casualty figure is impossibly high. OK, let's cut it in half--that's an equivalent 9/11 every day for 5 years in Iraq. Or take a fifth of that--an equivalent 9/11 every day for one year (this illuminating device stolen directly from Arthur Silber).

Support Our Troops--They're Fighting For Our Slavery

So Saddam offered to leave if we'd pay him 1/500 of what we have ended up paying. SO FAR.

But they turned him down. Because the war wasn't about bringing democracy to Iraq. It was about extending the arm of the corporatocracy and using the war as an excuse to increase the power of the government at home while decreasing our civil liberties.

And now that we're in Iraq, we'll be there for decades. They aren't building the largest embassy in the history of the world just for shits and giggles, you know. They're building it to keep us in endless war, which is "patriot" code for endless slavery.

CONFIRMED: BUSH KNEW IRAQ DIDN'T HAVE WMD

In Salon magazine, Sidney Blumenthal reports that on 9-18-02, George Tenet briefed Bush on the fact that the CIA had confirmed that, according to Saddam's foreign minister at the time, Iraq had no WMD.

The foreign minister's name is Naji Sabri, and he turned informant for the CIA prior to the war. The account of the Sabri saga was first told by former CIA operative Tyler Drumheller in 2006 and has now been confirmed by two other former CIA agents:

"Now two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller's account to me and provided the background to the story of how the information that might have stopped the invasion of Iraq was twisted in order to justify it. They described what Tenet said to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded, and noted that Tenet never shared Sabri's intelligence with then Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to the former officers, the intelligence was also never shared with the senior military planning the invasion, which required U.S. soldiers to receive medical shots against the ill effects of WMD and to wear protective uniforms in the desert.

Instead, said the former officials, the information was distorted in a report written to fit the preconception that Saddam did have WMD programs. That false and restructured report was passed to Richard Dearlove, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), who briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair on it as validation of the cause for war."

Again, it's obvious that this war is, was, and will be based on LIES. We must end it now.

MALIKI, IRAN "IN LIMBO," PAKISTAN PERMISSION

Wrote a letter to the editor last night about avoiding war with Iran, even though the House and Senate have each overwhelmingly approved amendments saying that Iran is very, very bad.

Way to go, al-Maliki! I wonder how long he will live now:

BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki shrugged off U.S. doubts about his government's military and political progress yesterday, saying his forces are capable and American troops can leave "any time they want."

One of his top aides accused the United States of embarrassing the Iraqi government by violating human rights and treating his country like an "experiment in a U.S. lab."

When aides of the PM of Iraq say your behavior is embarrassing, you know we're doing some shameful shit over there. And Maliki's quote says it all: the U.S. can leave "any time they want," and that's just it--Bush doesn't want to leave. The majority of the country wants us to leave and believes the war was a mistake, but Bush doesn't want to leave. And Cheney doesn't either. That's why these fuckers must be impeached and removed, impeached and removed.


Letter to editor
Here's the letter, followed by a post I made on the forum on basically the same topic.

The Guardian newspaper has reported that “Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo.” On top of that, the Senate recently passed an amendment stating–with little to no evidence–that Iran is “murdering” our troops in Iraq.

Suppose for a minute that this is true. As Stephen Kinzer has pointed out, Chinese-manufactured weapons killed our troops in Korea but we didn’t invade China. In Vietnam, we knew the North Vietnamese were using weapons from the Soviet Union, but we didn’t invade the USSR. What’s so different about Iran?

What’s happening is that Bush is looking for someone to blame for his failure in Iraq, a war of aggression we should never have started in the first place. Iran fits the bill perfectly, even though Iran has not violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has not invaded any other nation, and is years away from having even one nuclear weapon.

For years now, the Bush administration has demonized Iran, laying the groundwork for war, even though in 2003, Iran offered to start a dialogue with the U.S. with everything on the table–acceptance of Israel, nuclear programs, etc. The Bush administration rejected the offer. After all, you can’t have perpetual war if you go around making friends all the time.

Any U.S. military aggression toward Iran will be unprovoked, immoral and catastrophic, both for the Middle East and for us here in this country. As James Madison said: “If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”

For the sake of innocent people across the Middle East and our own civil liberties here at home, we must demand that the United States stay out of Iran and withdraw immediately from Iraq.

And the forum post:

Blame Bush for Osama/al Qaeda

Just like the CON-serviles around these forums like to blame Clinton for 9/11 because he didn't get Osama when he supposedly had the chance.

Well, why doesn't Bush get Osama now when he has the chance? "Intelligence" officials are saying that al Qaeda is now stronger than they were last year at this time. And these same "intelligence" officials "know" where al Qaeda (and presumably bin Laden) is--in Pakistan.

So why doesn't Bush invade Pakistan rather than Iran? There's a whole lot of noise about invading Iran, but al Qaeda's not in Iran. Tom Fingar, an intelligence official recently testified before Congress that it's Bush's policy not to go into Pakistan without their permission.

Say what? Since when does Mr. "War President" Li'l Bush have to ask permission to go kill people? Apparently, he even has to ask permission from ol' **** Blossom, who recently said "The United States has concerns about taking unilateral action in a sovereign nation without their approval.”

When he said that, the audience laughed, as well they should have.

So if we're in a "war on terror" and our main problem is al Qaeda--according to the Bushies--why won't they go get them? Because that ain't what the "war on terror" is about, don'tcha know. It's about making money and keeping George Bush in power. Oh, and indiscriminately killing brown people. Just like always.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,22065811-601,00.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABP4znt2dzw
(Rove clip starts around 1:22)

LIEBERMAN ON IRAN: THERE AREN'T ENOUGH U.S. CASUALTIES IN IRAQ, SO LET'S DO IRAN

Not an exact quote, obviously...

Lieberman won't hear of pulling out of Iraq despite mounting casualties--over 3,500 dead and 10,000+ wounded. To him, that means we're making "significant progress." At any rate, to the warmongers, the current casualty rate in no way constitutes an argument for stopping the war. In fact, the more casualties we inflict and receive, the longer we need to keep fighting, according to this logic. It's like the "it's only a flesh wound" knight in "The Holy Grail" and we all know what happened to him.

Now Lieberman asserts that Iran may be responsible for the deaths of 200 soldiers and that's why he wants to attack Iran. Rather than suggesting that we move our troops in Iraq out of harm's way so that won't happen anymore, Lieberman wants to send more troops into the meatgrinder. And if and when we do attack Iran and more of our soldiers start dying, that will only be a reason for us to send more to the slaughter, according to Lieberman's logic.

I can't believe Ned Lamont lost to this clown...

ADDENDUM:
I don't think I said exactly what I meant above.

I thought about it more today and what I was trying to say is that Lieberman's logic is so fucked up...because 3,500 dead is not horrific enough for him to want to stop fighting in Iraq, yet 200 dead is so horrific that we have to start another war with Iran in which we'll surely kill more people and have more of our people killed...it makes absolutely no motherfucking sense...it doesn't add up. It's wasteful and sick and murderous, the way this guy has a hard-on for war.

UPWARD INCOME REDISTRIBUTION SCHEME: RECORD GAS PRICE EDITION

So, another record average gas price.

For the last four years--i.e., since we invaded--up to 15% of Iraq's oil has just...poof!...disappeared. And no one knows exactly why.

But we do know that the average price of gas just hit another record high.

Armed Madhouse Theory

Greg Palast has written about the possible reasons why the oil has "disappeared." In his book "Armed Madhouse," he details the plans for Iraq's oil that were argued over by the neocons and the oil industry.

Long story short, the oil companies won the argument and Iraq is producing far below its capacity and now we learn that even some of that is vanishing into thin air. And why would western oil companies want Iraq to produce less oil?

Simple--it's all part of the income redistribution plan for those who want socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. Gas prices are kept artificially high and then, inexplicably, western oil companies have record profits. And the profit records being set are not records for say, this decade, or the last twenty years, or for just the oil industry.

No, that's for chumps--the profits we're talking about are setting records for all time, for all industries, for the entire world.

Iraq "loses" some oil here and there, and ExxonMobil sets records both in profit and gas prices. In the process, more money is extracted from us--i.e., your income, my income, everyone's income is redistributed to the rich.

$60 for a tank of gas

This past Friday, I had to take a long trip and filled up my tank--I got a little over 20 gallons of gas and it cost me almost $59. In late 2001, the average price of gas was around $1.24/gallon.

I have the same job now as I did then and my cost of living raises have not kept pace with this dramatic price increase. What cost approximately $25 in late '01--less than 6 years ago--now costs more than twice that. Good post on this over at Americablog.

Believe me, I could use that extra $25-$35 for, I don't know, an oil change...

(WAR + IRAQ) REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT=RECORD GAS PRICES

So last week the average price of gas reached an all time high:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. average retail gasoline prices rose to an all-time high over the past two weeks, due to a number of refinery outages, according to the latest nationwide Lundberg survey.

The national average price for self-serve regular unleaded gas was $3.0684 a gallon on May 4, an increase of 19.47 cents per gallon in the past two weeks, according to the survey of about 7,000 gas stations.

The prior all-time record was an average price of $3.0256 per gallon, that was reached on August 11, 2006.

Supposedly the price increase is due to "refinery outages" and the source in the story says there have been "at least 12 refinery incidents" in the last two weeks. Anybody know anything about those 12 incidents?

I have definitely felt this:

"So far this year the average price of regular unleaded gasoline has surged more than 88 cents per gallon..."

I'm sure ExxonMobil has felt that "surge" also, but not in the same way as you and I...I'm sure they'll break the all-time quarterly profit record again...

Considering all the people I encounter that cite high gas prices during the Carter administration, I found this part interesting:

"However, the current price is 6.4 cents short of the inflation-adjusted high that was reached in March of 1981, at that time regular grade self serve gasoline was $1.35 per gallon, but on an inflation-adjusted basis today that would translate into $3.13 per gallon."

That was at the beginning of Ronald Reagan's first term...I'll have to file that little factoid away for future use--the inflation-adjusted high for gas prices came under Reagan...

Oh, and one other thing--when that record was reached, there was a conflict involving Iraq going on, just...like...now. So I guess we have more proof of this theorem: (war + Iraq) Republican president =record gas prices.

LOSING THE "WAR ON TERROR"


Happy "Mission Accomplished" Anniversary!

If the goal of the so-called "war on terror" is to REDUCE terrorism, then the U.S. is losing that war.

Compared to 2005, terrorist attacks were UP 25% in 2006, and 40% more people were killed by extremists in 2006. This is coming from the Bush administration's own State Department, which said there were around 14,000 terror attacks in 2006.

Just under half of those were in Iraq!

If on the other hand, the publicly unstated but actual goal of the "war on terror" is to reduce the civil liberties of Americans and give their tax money away in the form of fat government contracts to the military-industrial complex, we're winning the "war on terror" big-time! Go USA!

IRANIAN WEAPONS IN IRAQ? IS BUSH PLAYING THIS CRAPPY TUNE AGAIN?

I thought we had debunked this whole Iran-in-Iraq thing. Maybe the Bushies thought that the Iranian detention of the 15 Brits set the stage for people to buy this bullshit story about Iran "destabilizing" Iraq.

The best post I've read so far about it is here at Americablog. The title of the post gets it just right:

" Iran reportedly training Sunni insurgents. In related news, government is full of it."

Here's a great quote from the CNN story linked above:

"The death and violence in Iraq are bad enough without this outside interference," Caldwell said. "Iran and all of Iraq's neighbors really need to respect Iraq's sovereignty and allow the people of this country the time and the space to choose their own future."

The sheer fucking arrogance of this is unbelievable--the U.S. is the "outside interference" that did not/does not "respect Iraq's sovereignty!" Who is fooled by this utterly transparent fakery? I guess the piddly one-third of the populace who still clings to Bush and his stupid, horrible war, that's who. Oh, and of course, the media.

From the same story, here's another way you know this shit is fake:

"We know that they are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them," Caldwell said. "We know that training has gone on as recently as this past month from detainees' debriefs."

Iraq and Iran established diplomatic relations in 1990 but still have a lot disputes. Caldwell doesn't given any specifics about the detainees he mentions, but one can imagine that if they're Iraqis and/or being tortured, why the hell wouldn't the Iraqis try to pin something on Iran? After all, these detainees may figure that the U.S. will leave Iraq to go after Iran, which is what people fighting againt the U.S. would like to see. So it's perfectly logical for an Iraqi detainee to blame "EFPs" on Iran.

Also, since it's probably very obvious what the U.S. forces want to hear during "interrogations," detainees--particularly if they're Sunni--are more than happy to blame something on Iran so that we'll go over to Iran and leave the detainees' domestic operations alone.

One more thing

One more quote from the CNN story:

"Munitions from Iran were found in a black Mercedes sedan in Baghdad's Jihad neighborhood on Tuesday after a tip from a civilian, he said. An Iranian-made rocket was found in the back seat and Iranian weapons were found in the trunk and around a nearby house, Caldwell said."

Let's suppose that it's actually true that Iranian weapons were found in Iraq. That does not necessarily mean that it is the stated policy of the current ruling government of Iran to provide Iraqi insurgents with weapons. For all we know, insurgents go into Iran and steal weapons.

Plus, so what if Iran trains Iraqi insurgents? The U.S. doesn't own the world--Iran is a sovereign country and has a right to conduct foreign policy according to international law. Is it anymore illegal under international law for Iran to sell weapons to Iraq than it is for us to rush cluster bombs to Israel in the midst of a conflict (which I guess would mean pretty much at any time)?

R.I.P., JERRY BURGE

A guy from my hometown died in Iraq recently and his funeral is this Thursday. His name was Jerry Burge--he's two years older than me and I'm trying to find pictures of him to see whether I knew him or not. The one picture I found doesn't look like anyone I know.

Another death for "freedom!" Fuck this fucking war and its death and waste and imperialism.

I read a good quote today from the Howard Zinn book I've been slowly going through (it's a collection of essays called "Passionate Declarations" and it's really quite good). Zinn's quoting a WWII veteran that said the following to Studs Terkel:

"It was a useless war, as every war is...How goddamn foolish it is, the war. There's no war in the world that's worth fighting for, I don't care where it is. They can't tell me any different. Money, money is the thing that causes it all. I wouldn't be a bit surprised that the people that start wars and promote them are the men that make the money, make the ammunition, make the clothing and so forth. Just think of the poor kids that are starving to death in Asia and so forth that could be fed with how much you make one big shell out of (p. 104)"

And then there is also this quote from Admiral Gene LaRocque, also speaking to Terkel about WWII:

"...I hate it when they say 'He gave his life for his country.' Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don't die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them (p. 105)."

R.I.P., Jerry Burge. Note to readers who may be considering joining the military--don't.

NEOCON JOE AND SYRIAN HYPOCRISY

On Morning Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Joe implies that we should go after Syria or at least not negotiate with them because they're a "state sponsor" of "terrorism," specifically mentioning Hamas.

Saudi Arabia also supports Hamas and maintains a state of war against Israel.

Joe says “I say this because we’re in a war. We’re in a war against the Islamic terrorists who attacked us on 9-11-01.”

According to the unlikely yet official story, 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and none was from either Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet our president receives Saudi officials at his Texas estate and holds their hands and kisses their cheeks.

But I want to make something clear: by pointing these things out, I am not advocating a war with or an attack on Saudi Arabia. Rather, I am trying to point out the glaring hypocrisy of the neocon/Bush/batshit-crazy hawk position. And not just the hypocrisy, but the wanton disregard for human life that has come about as a result of that hypocrisy.

I would ask the neocons--if our involvement in the Middle East is truly about freedom, democracy, morality, fighting "terrorism" and NOT about oil, then why are we not occupying Mecca? That's the reason I bring this up--because it points out the selective use of the neocon's already tortured (pun intended) logic when it comes to threats to Israel, state sponsorship of "terrorism," democracy, and treatment of women.

In other words, what George W. Bush and the neocons are saying to Saudi Arabia is the following:

"If you play our game, i.e., you don't try to get out from under the petrodollar and buy lots of weapons from us and let us have military bases there and invest in the U.S. and specifically with the family business of the President, then the following facts do not matter to us: that you are not a democracy, you're a state sponsor of terror, you oppress women, 15 of the 19 hijackers were from your country, and so forth."

That's just realpolitik, man--calm down!

That may in fact be realpolitik, but for George W. Bush to pretend to advocate democracy for the Middle East and send Americans to die in Iraq in a war of choice which he says will achieve a democratic Middle East while he chooses to have Saudi leaders to his ranch instead of bombing them, is a sign of a very sick man.

And here's my main point: why can't other state sponsors of terror be dealt with like Bush deals with Saudi Arabia, a state sponsor of terror? Why can't we negotiate with them like we do with Saudi Arabia? Why can't we avoid sending our soldiers to die in the countries of state sponsors of terror--that's what we are currently doing with Saudi Arabia?

I'm not sure I'm being entirely clear, so I'll rephrase what I'm trying to say: George W. Bush, supposedly the great slayer of terrorists and benevolent bringer of democracy to the Middle East, has taken very different approaches to the same problem in the cases of Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Iraq--a state sponsor of terror which was no threat to its neighbors, was a secular regime and had no WMD--was invaded, resulting in an ongoing bloodbath which consumes American lives all but daily.

However, Saudi Arabia, not only a state sponsor of terror but also a threat to our main ally in the region (they maintain a state of war with Israel), an Islamic fundamentalist dictatorship, and the breeding ground for the head of al Qaeda and 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers--gets to send its leaders to hold hands with our leader and is not subject to invasion.

Therefore, Bush has put the lie to his own rhetoric about the "war on terror" and the price Americans must pay. He's proven that state sponsors of terror do not have to be invaded and subjugated and the lives of our soldiers sacrificed.


My final point

My final point, then, is not to ask why we haven't invaded Saudi Arabia, but rather to ask why we have invaded Iraq, given the strikingly similar track records of the two countries. Or to say it another way--and taking Bush's own rhetoric to its logical conclusion--since we don't have to invade Saudi Arabia, we never had to invade Iraq (which I've already said a million times, but not with Saudi Arabia as a comparison).

Why aren't more people angry about this?

NO PRE-WAR LINKS TO AL QAEDA; MORE ON SAUDI ARABIA

I've been doing a lot of writing on the forum this week...

No al Qaeda links

Here's an article published today that indicates Saddam had no links to al Qaeda:

Coincidentally (or perhaps not), Dick Cheney was on Rush Limbaugh yesterday contradicting these Defense Department findings, which were:

"(AP) Saddam Hussein's government did not cooperate with al Qaeda prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the U.S. Defense Department said in a report based on interrogations of the deposed leader and two of his former aides."

This was something I had hoped would be done before Saddam's execution--simply ask him whether he had ties with al Qaeda and if he had WMD. Now we see that they asked him about al Qaeda; I wonder if a Defense Department report will be released any time in the near future indicating that they asked Saddam about WMD.

More on Saudi Arabia

I found out something the other day that I was not aware of, namely that Saudi Arabia maintains a state of war with Israel. The Saudis are also known funders of Hamas and Hezbollah, and if one believes the official 9/11 story, 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. None of the hijackers were from Iraq or Afghanistan.

I am not advocating that we go to war with Saudi Arabia, but I am curious why Bush chose to invade Iraq instead of Saudi Arabia. I am curious why Bush holds hands with Saudi princes when they come to his villa in Crawford for cordial visits. After all, there is no doubt that Saudi Arabia had/has "al Qaeda connections" (Osama bin Laden is a Saudi, after all) and that they fund groups that are at odds with Israel and that they consider themselves to be in a state of war with Israel. Also, Saudi Arabia is a fundamentalist Islamic monarchy that tramples on the rights of women.

These are all arguments used to justify invading Iraq and Afghanistan, but somehow Bush is willing to overlook them in Saudi Arabia's case. What I'm trying to say is that, in light of these facts, Bush's claim to be fighting a "global war on terror" while simultaneously considering Saudi Arabia an ally is completely absurd.

Now I can think of a couple reasons why it wouldn't be a good idea to go to war with Saudi Arabia--namely, Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities in Islam. Arguing that we are not at war with Islam would be very difficult while bombing and/or occupying Mecca.
But also, the Bush family has been very cozy with the Saudis for decades now. Saudis helped George W. out of a couple jams in his business dealings. Also, the price of oil would be even more outrageous than it is now if we were to attack Saudi Arabia.

Consequences of not playing the game by our rules

But I think the real reason we don't attack Saudi Arabia is because they have bought into our system. They have invested heavily in the U.S., they've let the U.S. have military bases there, they aren't threatening the hegemony of the petrodollar, etc.

In other words, they're playing our game and they benefit from it. The U.S. has never liked countries that don't play our game, i.e., Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, Iraq, etc. We don't mind dictators as long as they know and remain in their place in the international system over which we rule--Saudi Arabia being a prime example of that principle. China is another example--they're a Communist country that violates human rights but since our biggest retailer Wal-Mart benefits so greatly from trade with China, we give them a pass.
However, we maintain a crippling embargo against Cuba supposedly because it is a Communist country. The real reason, however, is that Castro doesn't play our game.

LIE BY LIE, or THIS WAR IS OLDER THAN MY SON

I've been doing battle on the forums today, so I'll post something from there. I can't let the 4th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war go by without comment, so here is one of my posts from today in response to a poster who said that Democrats also said Iraq was a threat:

"Bush pulled a fast one on the Congress and on America--he kept saying that Saddam must disarm while UNMOVIC was simultaneously demonstrating that Saddam had in fact disarmed.

The Blix report on March 7, 2003 contained these statements (interestingly enough, that was also the day that the head of the IAEA announced that the documents alleging Iraq's dealing with Niger were forgeries and that no Iraqi nuclear weapons or program had been found):

"No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found." (This was in reference to the accusation that WMD were moved around on trucks.)

"No underground facilities for chemical or biological production or storage were found so far."

"There is a significant Iraqi effort underway to clarify a major source of uncertainty as to the quantities of biological and chemical weapons, which were unilaterally destroyed in 1991."

"In this [verifying the destruction of chem/bio weapons], as in other matters, inspection work is moving on and may yield results."

And the part Bush least wanted to hear:

"While cooperation can and is to be immediate, disarmament and at any rate the verification of it cannot be instant. Even with a proactive Iraqi attitude, induced by continued outside pressure, it would still take some time to verify sites and items, analyse documents, interview relevant persons, and draw conclusions. It would not take years, nor weeks, but months."

------------------------------
So Blix was saying that the Iraqis were cooperating, the inspectors weren't finding anything, and that they'd need more time to actually verify disarmament (inspections had only restarted on 11/27/02).

And that's what Bush didn't want to happen--after all, he'd already cooked up the war, put the troops in place, put his con job over on the Congress and the public--the last thing he wanted was for UNMOVIC to confirm what Kay and Duelfer later found, which was that Iraq had in fact disarmed after the Gulf War and had no WMD or programs to produce them.

HOWEVER, even as late as March 16, 2003, Bush was still suggesting that military action against Iraq was not a given when asked point-blank, "Aren't we going to war?":

"Tomorrow is the day that we will determine whether or not diplomacy can work."

And the 17th was the day that the US, UK and Spain abandoned the attempt to get the UN to ratify the war. It was, surely by sheer coincidence, also the day that Bush announced that Saddam had 48 hours to leave Iraq.

Bush pulled a fast one, implying to the very end that war wasn't inevitable. Very good Iraq war timeline called "Lie By Lie" here."

FISHY POLL FROM REPUBLIC FIRM

So the Republics (yes, that is intentional as long as the President and the other Republics in Congress insist on referring to the Democratic Party as the "Democrat party") and their various media mouthpieces (i.e. Drudge) are touting a new poll from Public Opinion Strategies as proof that "Americans Want To Win In Iraq."

However, there are findings in the poll that would seem to be at odds with such happy talk. Here is a post I put up at the forum of my local paper:

Public Opinion Strategies is, by its own admission, a Republican polling firm.

The same poll found that 67% feel the country is headed in the wrong direction, and that 60% of people disapprove of the job Bush is doing (with 47% strongly disapproving).

It also found that, of four statements regarding Iraq, this was the one most preferred: "Whether Iraq is stable or not, the U.S. should set and hold to a strict timetable for withdrawing troops."

Why didn't the New York Post or Drudge trumpet that finding?

Furthermore, 60% of respondents said that the U.S. should "hold talks" with Iran.

Interestingly, most of the respondents were 65 years old or older and had not graduated from college. And 49% of the respondents voted for Bush in 2004.

And 81% were white.

MY 'NAY'

Well, not that it matters because the non-binding resolution passed today, but one of the two Democratic nays was my Congressman, Gene Taylor. So here's the email I sent him today:

Mr. Taylor, I am very disappointed with your vote against the non-binding resolution concerning President Bush's surge in Iraq. I have always voted for you and have been pleased with your recent efforts to rein in the insurance industry.

But the war in Iraq is both immoral and illegal. We had no business invading that country in the first place, and it is certainly well past time we completely withdrew our troops (including those meant to stay in the giant embassy compound we're building). Like it or not, the war in Iraq was sold to us on a pack of lies--there were no WMD and no connections to al Qaeda or 9/11.

And now the administration is attempting to railroad us into some sort of military confrontation with Iran, which I vehemently oppose. I can only hope that you voted against the non-binding resolution because it didn't go far enough, but I know that's not how you felt about it.

Please reconsider your position on Iraq when any future votes come up about cutting off funds or troop withdrawals or even ending the war altogether. The so-called war on terror is really a war on our freedoms and the Iraq war only gives Bush an excuse to continue breaking laws and bringing this country that much closer to ruin.

I wouldn't vote for the guy at all, but he is a Democrat even if it's in name only. And frankly, there aren't gonna be many--if any--true progressives elected from South Mississippi any time soon. So I look at voting for him as a way to at least get one person closer to a Democratic majority if nothing else.

Now that I think about it

But now that I think about it, why in the hell didn't he just vote in favor of the resolution? It doesn't do anything but draw a line in the sand, and everyone knew it was gonna pass anyway. So for him to vote against a resolution that has only symbolic effect that was assured of passage, he's basically telling the warmongers that he's their boy. And he's telling the antiwar peeps to fuck off--basically, he's saying "I spit on the idea of even symbolically supporting my party or of acknowledging the feelings of the majority of the country."

I mean, this resolution isn't gonna end the war--it's only against escalation of it...and it doesn't even stop the escalation. The resolution is completely meaningless except as a gesture, as an acknowledgment that, hey this Iraq shit is fucked up and let's at least try to sorta say so, y'know...like maybe, I don't know, it's not such a great idea to send more people over there, but oh no, we're not gonna actually stop it from happening...

I--I don't even know how adequately to express my frustration at the...stubbornness of the attitude in this district that the Iraq war is a good thing and that we have to "win" and that Muslims are bad and that Bush is a good man, and on and on. And I'm sure that's the kind of crap that Taylor's hearing from most of his constituents and he may even feel that way himself.

But whatever. I'm glad the resolution passed, even if it is only symbolic. It's something. It's a start.

Hopefully it's the beginning of the end of this nightmare in Iraq...

WATADA: THEN WHERE CAN THE LEGALITY BE SETTLED?

So the Watada trial ends in mistrial, sending this brave hero back to the brig for another month? For Pete's sake, this is crazy. Watada's defense has been that since the war is illegal, he's in the right by refusing an illegal order, i.e., to fight in Iraq:

"At the center of the dispute between the judge and the defense is Watada’s intent when he did not deploy with his unit to Iraq. The defense has consistently tried to call into question the legality of the war, because Watada said the war is illegal and a command to fight in Iraq is also illegal. But the judge has said the argument over the legality of the war is not a matter that can be settled in military court."

If the legality of the war can't be settled in military court and the new Republican minority won't let it be debated, where in the hell can the legality of the war be settled?

"DE-ESCALATION"--I LIKE, I LIKE

Obama introduces the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007. I'm still a Kucinich man, but Obama gets some serious press...Was Obama "warning" against Iran in Herzliya the other day? No, I see that he declined to address the Herzliya conference...Too bad John Edwards didn't do the same thing...yeesh!

It's still January, less than a month after the Democrats have taken control, and already we've got Democrats introducing bills for "de-escalation!" Of course the bill won't pass--or if it does, it'll be vetoed by Dear Leader--but that's not the point. The point is to end this war and to be on record as being against this foul war.

Whatever...I'll say this, though...I never gave a fuck about an Obama candidacy until I saw the following video posted at Americablog (maybe a lot of other Democrats feel the same way):

NOTHING CHANGES ON NEW YEAR'S DAY...

...like the fact that the situation in Iraq just keeps getting worse. Circumstances may be a little different--Saddam being hung, for instance--but what you can count on always staying the same is that Iraq will never get better and will always get worse.

Like for instance, the fact that we've now lost over 3,000 soldiers. That's different--yet exactly the same.

What a way to ring in the new year!

Why is 1938 always analogous?

I had a conversation with a family member recently and I asked him what he thought about a troop "surge" in Iraq. He said that we should either get out completely or nuke the place. I suggested that given those two options, we should leave.

He elaborated further and said that well, the situation is more complicated than that, that we might be able to fix our mess with more troops, etc. I pointed out that similar logic drove thousands to their deaths in Vietnam and we now agree that Vietnam wasn't worth the sacrifice.

Oh, but that wasn't the preferred analogy for this reciter of conventional wisdom. We can't just pull out and pretend that all is well and that pacification is complete. Isn't that what Chamberlain did at Munich--pretend that all was well?

It occurred to me during this conversation that even the lessons of history cannot dissuade people if they have their mind set on something. Oh, they will speak as though history has taught them even if there is a more recent and contradictory example. I just marvelled at the logic that always accepts Munich as analogous to every situation that we face, while Vietnam holds virtually no lessons for the present (except, as Bush averred recently, that we only lose if we leave).

It's official...and quite telling

Reading in a post about Robert Novak at Americablog, I learned that Novak had this to say about the GOP and an escalation of Iraq:

Even in Mississippi, the reddest of red states, where Bush's approval rating has just inched above 50 percent, Republicans see no public support for more troops.

It's official--Mississippi is the reddest of the red states. Now is that a good thing? I think not. Mississippi leads or nearly leads the country in almost everything bad and trails the country in everything good. For example:

-Mississippi is number 2 in infant mortality
-Mississippi is number 49 in median household income
-Mississippi was tied for 2nd place in number of citizens below the poverty level
-Mississippi is dead fucking last in number of people 25 and older who have completed high school

And so forth and so on. I think therefore that a strong argument can be made that being a "red state" is a bad thing. If you want your state to be poor and uneducated, then be a red state--that's the message that not many people in this state seem to get. Is that because they're poor and uneducated? Hmmm...just asking.

Happy New Year!

ARE WE EVEN YET?

The death toll of American soldiers in Iraq just surpassed the death toll of American civilians on 9/11 and to hear the right-wingers in these parts tell it, we're ruining Iraq to avenge 9/11.

Some vengeance--we've now lost more Americans in Iraq than we did on 9/11 and we've been waging what Bush called the "battle of Iraq" for longer than we were involved in WWII.

We're wasting both money and lives. And some Democrats are saying that they could be persuaded to go along with the proposed troop surge? How in God's name are we going to bring this ever-worsening nightmare to an end?

65 ACTIVE DUTY TROOPS TO ASK FOR END OF OCCUPATION...Fleming-Lott Mock Debate Idea

Don't have much to say today that I haven't already said in the forum of
the Hattiesburg American.

I am curious to see how this story of 65 active duty soldiers will play out:

"Active troops ask congress to end Iraqi occupation
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sixty five active duty service members are officially asking Congress to end the war in Iraq -- the first time active troops have done so since U.S. invasion began in 2003.

Three of the service members will hold a press conference Wednesday explaining their decision to send "Appeals for Redress" under the Military Whistleblower Protection Act to their members of Congress. Under the act, National Guard and Reservists can send communications about any subject to their member of Congress without punishment."

Also interesting in that little tidbit is that it was written by "ticker producer" Alexander Mooney. I never gave much thought to the production of the ticker or crawl at the bottom of the screen in a lot of newscasts, but there you go--the ticker has its own producer.

Here's a forum exchange I found interesting, in which a fellow poster accuses me and another poster of not having "new" views that are supported by facts. Then he doesn't give any facts, protesting that he, unlike anyone else on the forum, must work for a living.

Fleming-Lott Mock Debate

I also wrote to Erik Fleming to suggest that he film mock debates with Trent Lott (who has refused to debate Fleming) in which a Lott stand-in reads from Lott's voting record or floor statements or transcripts of his appearances on cable shows or his "Herding Cats" book, etc. Then he should put that film up on YouTube and have the Jackson Free Press and others hype it up. The effect is twofold, I guess--1) let Lott know that he will be debated, whether he's there in person or not, and 2) call attention to the fact that he's a big pussy for not debating Fleming. And then maybe Lott will actually agree to appear in person with Fleming.

And maybe a Lott stand-in wouldn't be as effective as actual video of Lott saying things on these cable shows, but I have a feeling that securing the rights to that footage and tracking it down would be time-consuming and possibly expensive. But Lott would be easy to spoof--big, sprayed hair, wire-framed glasses, and a drawl from hell...