The Countdown Clock

Man, those seconds just can't run out fast enough for me. Or any other of my fine fellow bloggers. The remaining denizens of La Casa de Los Gatos don't seem to care as long as they get their 18 hours of shuteye per day, interspersed with fine kibble, treats, toys, pets, catnip, and the daily constitutional exploration of the hillside, but.


Me, I can't bear waking up to a headline such as this:

Bush 'very pleased' with Iraq war outcome: Report

Is there anything that bothers this pathetic, revolting little man? Does he think for even one minute of the nearly 5,000 coffins in which the remains of his fellow-citizens lie moldering? The tears of their parents? Their spouses and children? The suffering their families and friends endure, having lost a loved one? The estimated 50,000 or so lying in their own piss in military hospitals or suffering quietly at home? Missing a limb or an organ, struggling to get along on disability payments, homeless? Doomed to a lifetime of fighting the mental and emotional impact of what has been seen and lived through?


And what of the Iraqis who have died by the hundreds of thousands? Does he ever think about, see, respond to, the sight of a pool of blood blackening in the desert sun? Filled with the limbs, separated from their erstwhile owners, of children, housewives, cab-drivers, innocent bystanders, stallholders in the marketplace where the latest atrocity occurred? A little more than two years ago, a Lancet study estimated the number of Iraqi dead at 655,000. UNHCR estimates 4.7 million refugees, both inside and outside Iraq, most in dire need of food, shelter, medical aid.

Does the monster-in-chief ever contemplate the children who have seen their parents blown up before their eyes, the fathers who have no jobs but still must feed their children, the mother whose child burned and stuck to her body when our troops opened fire on her car?


Because, in addition to that first heart-wracking headline, in fact, almost immediately below it, I notice this:

Baghdad blasts kill 19

The Green Zone blast splashed blood and seared flesh across the grey concrete barriers at the entrance, according to an AFP correspondent.

Meanwhile, the rotten thing that wears the mantle of this country's leader announced today that he

believes the Iraq war was a success and is "very pleased" with what is happening there.

[He added] ..."remarkable" progress had been made in Iraq since the late dictator [Saddam Hussein] was toppled in 2003.

"People have been able to take their troops out of Iraq because Iraq is becoming successful. I'm very pleased with what is taking place there now," he said, adding there still is "a lot of work" to be done.

"We are bringing troops home because of the success in Iraq. But Iraq is not yet completely safe.

"So there will be a US presence for a while there at the request of the Iraqi government," he said.

"The United States is willing to continue to help. Most countries there within a very broad coalition have come home but we want to help this government," he said without further elaborating.

Of course, without further elaborating. Either he's lying through his teeth or he, as usual, doesn't have the first fucking clue what he's talking about. He doesn't elaborate on his statements because someone, some very malevolent wretch in the bowels of this misadministration, writes these deliberately disingenuous things for him to say, and he parrots them as his "handlers" tell him to. He has nothing to say about the armless, the legless, the blind and insane, those proud wounded heroes of his money-burning war that is crashing and burning our economy around our ears. Jesus, what a fucking blind, limited, self-satisfied pig he is. A thousand, no, a million curses on his empty head.

Crossposted over at ThePoliticalCat

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More Than 8 Million Iraqis Deserve Justice

Cross posted on KOS and Docudharma

Regardless of how you feel about the crimes of George W. Bush and impeachment, there are millions of innocent people asking for justice and who have no voice of their own. Follow me below the fold to hear ONE case for impeachment and justice.

I'm not going to post any of the thousands of pictorials on the horrors in Iraq, no pictures of streets awash with blood, or dead babies, ruined homes or the maimed. You have seen them but your senses aren't overwhelmed by the sights and sounds and smells of death all around you. Is it this luxury of being removed from the reality of life in Iraq that keeps us from the full measure of rage it should produce in us.

The pre Shock and Awe population of Iraq is estimated by UN and other relief agencies at about 23 - 24 million. Hard numbers are impossible to get partially because of the Iraqi government and partially because of the years of the embargo which cost the lives of an estimated 500,000 Iraqi women and children each year from malnutrition and inadequate medical treatment.

U.S. forces plan to drop more than 1,500 bombs and missiles across Iraq in the first 24 hours of its "shock and awe" campaign that began Friday, Pentagon officials said.

Precision guided missiles, only military and government targets. Dropping 2,000 pound bombs designed to limit collateral damage in urban areas. But the reality is hundreds of homes destroyed in those initial bombings. Massive civilian casualties, hospitals unable to handle the number of injured. The Lancet reported best estimate of 100,000 dead in the early days of the war, many others have placed the estimate as high as 285,000. Thank god we used precision guided bombs targeting ONLY military and government facilities. 2,000 pound bombs designed to limit collateral damage in urban areas in deed.

From May 2003 Providing clean drinking water to Iraq's 23.3 million citizens is the first priority. U.N. sanctions imposed in 1990 meant that Iraq, which derived 95% of its foreign currency from oil, could sell only that commodity in exchange for food. Thus, it could no longer get enough spare parts to keep all of its water-treatment plants working, according to the UNEP.

From June 2007 Four years after the invasion, rebuilding Iraq is still a huge challenge. Making sure that people have clean water is essential but the infrastructure for this is badly lacking: Iraq's pipes, pumps and purifiers are often old, damaged and unreliable. In Basra, the country's second city, the situation is especially serious.

From Nov. 2007  Despite the fact that Iraq and U.S. officials have made water projects among their top priorities, the percentage of Iraqis without access to decent water supplies has risen from 50 percent to 70 percent since the start of the U.S.-led war, according to an analysis by Oxfam International last summer. The portion of Iraqis lacking decent sanitation was even worse -- 80 percent.

From the same article A recent outbreak of cholera across Iraq has killed at least 14 people and infected 3,300 others with an intestinal ailment spread by dirty water.

Some families with vehicles buy bottled water while in Baghdad. Others wait for the water tanker to deliver free supplies. Bottled water from the U.S. military is too infrequent to be relied upon.

"We go from village to village, when we can," said Capt. Pat Moffett. "We give them water to drink, but we also have to give them water to farm, so they can work."

Villagers confirm the need for full irrigation canals to sprout new crops of watermelon, cucumbers, tomatoes, wheat and rice, which in many areas haven't been farmed in several seasons.

Before the invasion of Iraq access to electricity in Baghdad was nearly continuous, in the rest of Iraq the limit was between 3 - 6 hours a day. Now, electricity in some areas of Baghdad are only on for a few hours. Last summer the grid completely failed and the whole country suffered shortages as bad as the summer of 2003. Billions have been spent and there is little to show for it in terms of making life tolerable for Iraqis. The insurgents have been blamed for sabotage on the transmission lines. Last summer only two of the seventeen going into Baghdad were operational. Summer temperatures reach from 110-120 degrees. Lack of gasoline is also a problem, people can't use small home generators and the large generators used to pump sewage are also unusable. They can't use kerosene heaters in the winter either.

From a Salon Article May 21, 2008 | BAGHDAD, Iraq -- May 20: Trash pickup in most of Baghdad ended with the rule of Saddam Hussein. Now the garbage chokes the capital's streets and clogs the sewage pipes and canals, which overflow and burst. The sewage that leaks out of broken pipes seeps through the dirt of roads that were once paved, but now have mostly turned to dirt because the tracks of American tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles have destroyed the asphalt over five years of war.

From May 2008 Hundreds of houses in Sadr City have been destroyed during the fighting, leaving families more vulnerable than ever in a neighbourhood where basic services have ceased to function. The population remains largely dependent on humanitarian assistance for the provision of water and emergency medical care.

Hospitals are short of medical supplies and they are being provided by relief agencies when possible, as are many of the day to day things the average Iraqi family needs like food. Unfortunately the relief efforts are a small drop in a very big bucket that is now Iraq.

From Jan. 2008 If you need a blood transfusion at Baghdad's Al Yarmouk hospital, you can get one-so long as someone's there to donate blood on your behalf. If you need an operation, you can have one of those too-though your only anesthetic might be your friends and family holding you down. One big explosion can dry up the hospital's saline supplies for a week, leaving the next explosion's victims without the necessary treatment. And where triage is within a war zone doctors and ambulance drivers are regularly threatened and harassed.

From USA Today Feb 2008 Weakened Iraqi medical system on verge of collapse  Even with the security gains of the past several months across Iraq, it is still dangerous for doctors and their families if they dare step out of heavily guarded hospital compounds.

Drugs supplies are so low that Iraqis hospitalized for illnesses as serious as cancer are asked to track down their own medicine.

"When we need medicine, we go directly to private pharmacies," said Ahmed Khalil, the 38-year-old owner of an auto repair shop in Fallujah. "We know we're not going to get any from Fallujah hospital."

And when pharmacy shelves are bare, Iraqis turn to the black market.

Daily insurgent attacks were 14 in Feb. 2004, 70 in Nov. 2005 and 163 in May of last year. These attacks not only target military but increasingly civilians.

Thanks to DU weapons the cancer rate and birth defect rate has increased dramatically. I point you to this excellent diary It Was Done in Your Name by clammyc.

6.5 million Iraqis are still dependent on food rations. Unemployment is estimated at 70%. An estimated 3.4 million Iraqis have fled their country, relief organizations tell us half are children. Another 2.5 million are refugees in Iraq, 2.1 million of them are children, CHILDREN. UNICEF also tells us displaced children are at the greatest risk for death, not just refugee children, but children displaced in their own country. In fact the burden of this war on Iraq's children is staggering. 70 percent have not attended school except sporatically in the last 5 years and some of them haven't been to school at all. Children who are refugees in Jordan or Syria aren't going to school and in many cases their parents can't work. Now stories of prostitution being one of the only means of earning the money necessary to survive. They risk deportation if caught.

Syria and Jordan have taken the greatest number of refugees. These are countries who a simply unable to cope with a million or more refugees. No means to feed them or provide medical care. This is another humanitarian disaster of epic proportions. Virtually every other country accepting Iraqi refugees have taken more than we have taken. Perhaps 4500 since the war began, of course we say there is no limit and of course there is. You read wild numbers we will accept but in fact it was 1608 for 2007 and less than 500 so far this year.

The first to leave were the wealthy Iraqis who got out by plane and automobile. They aren't the ones in the refugee camps. Now and for sometime, the only people left in Iraq who still wish to leave must in most cases walk out. The trip from Baghdad to the Syrian border is roughly 340 miles thru what is largely waste land. They leave with what they can carry, no papers, often not enough money to sustain them. Their dead along the way, sometimes buried but often simply left at the side of the road. How desperate must you be to make that trek, to leave a loved one, a parent or child. Iraqis are still leaving at the rate of 50-60,000 a month from one hell to another hopefully safer hell.

We have held citizens, men mostly but women and children as well. Held them without trial, tortured them, raped them. We have allowed our soldiers and contractors to rape and murder as well. We have allowed genocide.

The estimated civilian death toll now stands at 1,222,000 men, women and children. There are more than 1.5 million seriously injured, maimed, blinded and burned. We have destroyed the Cradle of Civilization, allowed the looting of their Museums, we have reduced Iraq to hell on earth for years to come while we go about literally liberating them to death.

We are the occupying nation and we have responsibilities to the Iraqi people we have ignored. There are Interational Laws governing our conduct and outlining our responsibilities. Since the onset of the war  Amnesty International has been calling for the UN to authorize human rights monitors be sent to Iraq. Shoot on sight orders are against International Law and yet we know our soldiers have been given those orders. Desecrating their religious objects is forbidden. Raping their women is forbidden, strip searching them is forbidden. We must protect cultural property. We are not to control their natural resources for our gain.

From Human Rights Watch An occupying force has a duty to ensure the food and medical supplies of the population, as well as maintain hospitals and other medical services, "to the fullest extent of the means available to it." This includes protecting civilian hospitals, medical personnel, and the wounded and sick. Medical personnel, including recognized Red Cross/Red Crescent societies, shall be allowed to carry out their duties. The occupying power shall make special efforts for children orphaned or separated from their families, and facilitate the exchange of family news.

If any part of the population of an occupied territory is inadequately supplied, the occupying power shall facilitate relief by other states and impartial humanitarian agencies. However, the provision of assistance by others does not relieve the occupying force of its responsibilities to meet the needs of the population. The occupying power shall ensure that relief workers are respected and protected.

These laws have been broken over and over again in Iraq. The Iraqis know it, we know it, the world knows it and now it is time for justice. It is time Bush and his criminal cabinet answer for their indiscretions.

Today the blood of Iraq is on their hands. Should Bush and Cheney and the rest leave Washington next January and pass into history without ever being held accountable, their crimes pass to us. Their crimes will be our crimes because we allowed this to not only happen but sat by and did nothing to stop it.

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When The Violence Is Brought To The Children: It Has Gone Too Far

Photo: Joao Silva/NYTimes

As reported in a story by Michael R. Gordon in the New York Times with the headline "Civilians Suffer in Sadr City's Daily Gun Battles"

BAGHDAD — Ayman, bleeding profusely from his arm, was rushed to Company B’s stronghold in Sadr City late Sunday afternoon.

A bullet had carved a bloody groove near his left elbow as he was going to fetch some bread from a market.

Seven children had been struck by a burst of gunfire from militia fighters who have been roaming through the streets near the American positions, his distraught father said.

But Ayman, 11, was one of the lucky ones. Four of the children, his father said, were dead.

With no functioning police force and the streets a battle zone, it could not be determined if the children had been caught in cross-fire or had been deliberately shot at by militia fighters, as Ayman’s father suggested.

Take a long look at this child's face, it could be the face of any child, of any of our own children.

While it is admirable, and no less than humanitarian of U.S. forces to administer to this civilian child's wound, it would not ever have been necessary, had the the Bushliburton administration not invaded Iraq in the first place, or withdrawn our forces years ago.

When will the United States stand down, bring our people home, and no longer be a reason for the suffering in Iraq and at home?

Ayman's blood, as is the blood of countless others is on our hands, our leaders, our government, our people should all be ashamed of ourselves.

When will all honest, moral Americans decide that enough is enough and we begin the process of reacquiring our moral authority?

Cross posted from BFD Blog!

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Iraq: Teh Success Is Killing Us

The WahPoo reports that yesterday provided further evidence of success in Iraq. In fact, that particular day in Iraq was so successful that we may not have an army left at all, if each day to come is exactly like that one.


Shoot, we may not have any Iraqis, either. Then we can just mosey on in there and suck up all the oil for our Hummers. According to the article,

Two bombings killed nearly 60 people Tuesday in parts of Iraq where U.S. and Iraqi forces have claimed significant success in combating Sunni insurgent groups.

Just imagine what the death toll might have been like if we weren't that successful.

Bombings took place in Baquba (Diyala province), Mosul, Ramadi (Anbar province), and Baghdad. Some 82 people were wounded, and the carnage inspired one Iraqi spokesman to add to our treasury of unforgettable quotes this particular remark:

"Half of the dead people are still at the Baqubah morgue because it is so hard to identify their bodies," Jassem said.

Being cursed with an overactive imagination, we're currently searching for our psychoactive meds while speculating on just why identification appears to be so elusive. Possibly, the difficulty of identifying a knee or a wrist is greater if it is no longer attached to the person one might know and love.

What a terrible thing this war is. Day after day, our purported "leaders" lie to us, until even the tinpot soldier in charge of the current efforts (since all the better men were forced out for daring to tell the truth about this misadventure) is forced to admit that no corners have been turned, there is no light at the end of the tunnel, and the "last throes" of the insurgents have persisted for three too many long, weary years even as the U.S. Army is in its last throes thanks to the throe-er's friends and cronies accumulating wealth by winning no-bid contracts to give our military insufficient arms and equipment and poisoning them with bad food and dirty water.

Some people are doing something about it. Some very courageous people. Grateful thanks to those of you speaking out against the war.

Crossposted over at ThePoliticalCat

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2008 Elections: McInsane and Iraq

Muhannad Fala'ah /Getty Images

John McCain announced today that Iraq is approaching normalcy. What era is he living in? What drugs is he on?

McCain gave a relatively optimistic appraisal of the situation in Iraq, saying that the recent reductions in violence have returned the country to something "approaching normal political and economic life for the average Iraqi."

Before the invasion in 2003, the average Iraqi suffered from the sanctions that were imposed on Iraq, but as a rule, they could go through an entire day, a week, a month &mdash sometimes even a year &mdash without having to pick up pieces of dead relatives, neighbours, or friends.



And, in fact, The Australian reports that rocket attacks today on the Green Zone in Baghdad and a U.S. military base in Baghdad killed 3 U.S. soldiers and injured 31. Correct us if we're wrong, but we were under the impression that it is not considered "normal" to have rocket and mortar attacks on the Green Zone.

Does the mainstream media even pick up on this shit? Here's this doddering old fool who can't tell a Sunni from a Shi'a after five fucking years of war. He's a fucking Senator, fer crisake, not some shit-shoveler in the George W. Bush Memorial Sewage Plant of San Francisco (no offense to shit-shovelers anywhere, but it's not in your job description to know the warring parties in wars your government starts).

He's accusing Iran of training al Qaeda in Iraq fighters. That would be a handy-dandy thing to do, given that Iran is Shi'a and aQI is Sunni and the two sects are as close to mortal enemies as it gets in the Middle East. Someone ought to let the old fool know that aQI is most likely getting its money, guns, and training from Sunni Saudi Arabia, home of the hardline fundie Wahabi school of Islamic thought and good buddies of McCain's old friend George Dubya.

Meanwhile, Jason Linkins writes in the Huffington Post that ambulatory slimebag Patrick McHenry (Repulsive-Nauseating Conman), who recently made a trip to Iraq on the taxpayer dime and called a serviceman a "two-bit security guard" as a way of showing his support for the troops, may have endangered U.S. troops. No doubt as a way of showing his support. Very supportive fellow, McHenry.

Pam's House Blend notes that Rep. McHenry supports sleepovers at his house involving studly young NOT-GAY college students involved in some sort of voting scandal. There's also plenty of sleaze involving gay prostitution, which resulted in some sort of love triangle murder in Florida.

This blog actively supports gay, bisexual, transgender, lesbian, and all-around QUEER folk. But we wonder why so many Republicans appear to be gayer than larks, yet actively working against LGBTQ rights, and so deeply closeted they're pooping hangers. C'mon, boys and girls, step out of your closet and fucking admit to being who and what you are. No crime, no sin, no shame. It's natural to love whoever your heart tells you to love.

It's not natural to cement the goddamn closet door shut and hate on everyone who refuses to climb in there with you. But his gayishly gay gayness scandals aside, Patrick McHenry may have done a Very Bad Thing, recently. According to Brandon Friedman of VoteVets:

"Only two days after McHenry promoted a video of himself in the Green Zone describing in detail the effectiveness of the rocket attacks on Easter Sunday," Friedman notes, "the area was hit with a barrage that killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded 17 others." Friedman goes on to assert, "The bottom line is that whoever launched that strike could take the information McHenry provided and use it to kill Americans in the Green Zone."

Friedman is far from alone in his concern:

On Saturday, I communicated with one military officer currently in the Green Zone who stated that this was "undoubtedly a violation of OPSEC." On Sunday evening, I spoke with a senior intelligence official in Washington who seemed dumbfounded by McHenry's remarks. Asked whether he considered this a breach of operations security, the official shouted over the phone at me, "Of course! He's helping to dial them in." He meant the people firing the rockets.

It looks like the Republican definition of "support the troops" is "Encourage the dumb fucks to sign up and put their bodies on the line if Der Leader starts a war. Cut vet benefits; if soldiers get injured in the line of duty, force them to pay back any signup bonuses; give military contracts to your buddies so they get rich giving the troops inferior gear; buy lots of yellow plastic magnets made in China or Kazakhstan; yell loudly anytime anyone points out that you're not really helping the troops at all." Very supportive.

Oh, yeah, and work hard to get some senile warmonger elected even as your own country is falling apart because all the money is being funneled into some tiny poor country that never did anything to you and your'n.

We gotta make sure that John McCain doesn't come with an arm's-length of the Presidency; and we gotta kick out of office all these liars, thugs, crooks, and thieves who purport to support while actively harming the military.

In other exciting news, USA Toady (no typo) is reporting that the number of military recruits requiring "conduct" waivers has tripled in the past four years. Great. Find a felon, sign them up, give them weapons training, teach them might is right. Expose them to ongoing physical and psychological trauma, then bring them home and let them loose on the population.

Oh, yeah, most of these people are guilty of "misdemeanors." That means that they were merely setting markers on the road to more disturbed conduct. So it's OK. Just like Pfc Greene, who raped and murdered Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi, killed her entire family, and set all their bodies on fire to destroy the evidence of his criminal acts.

Crossposted over at ThePoliticalCat

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There Goes The Neighbourhood

I'm using this map to try and illustrate something about the situation of U.S. troops in Iraq that makes me very uncomfortable (deity alone knows how it makes them feel). This could probably have been done better by Steve Gilliard, but he's no longer here to do it. Perhaps someone else has said this before, in which case, please point me to it.

Observe the map above. Now consider what happens if Al-Sayyid Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army joins with the Sunni, who have been taking our money to build their own forces and hate our guts. What if they decide to attack in force? How will our troops escape them?

Can they withdraw to the west? al-Anbar province, to the west of Baghdad, has been the site of many difficult battles. al-Anbar borders on Jordan, which would not welcome our troops, assuming the troops could successfully traverse this hostile territory in an attempt to withdraw from the charnel house that Baghdad will become in the event of an all-out assault.

To the east? Diyala province, to the east of Baghdad, capital Baquba, is "a source of problems" according to General Petraeus. It borders Iran, which also would not accept a retreat of the U.S. military, should our troops withdraw in that direction. Assuming they survive attacks as they try to withdraw through that province, they would face a much larger army in Iran.

North? Salahuddin province, immediately north of Baghdad, is the site of deadly insurgent activity. Assuming U.S. troops tried to withdraw north, they would have to traverse this province, which is largely Turkomen, and several other hostile provinces to reach Turkey — which might not offer sanctuary, despite our generosity in providing them military intelligence about PKK targets they can safely bomb. The Arab Times tells us that Salahuddin province is in turmoil right now. How much of that can be attributed to al-Qaeda and how much to the Turkish incursion into Kurdish Iraqi territory is anyone's guess.

Can they withdraw southwards? Babil province, immediately south of Baghdad, is supposedly currently under the control of an Iraqi brigade. However, note that the gunmen who staged a daring raid and kidnapped several American military personnel, apparently fled into Babil province when pursued, according to the International Herald Tribune.

Mr. Khazaali said the identities of the gunmen were unknown. Other Iraqi officials said the clues pointed to Sunni groups based in Elbu Alwan, a Sunni stronghold about 25 miles north of Karbala in Babil Province. Four of the vehicles were found there early Sunday morning, the police said.

Further southwest, Karbala province appears to be relatively peaceful, barring attacks on the Shi'a pilgrims, though unable to defend itself from violence spilling over from the nearby al-Anbar province. Further south, Qadisiya province is reeling from attacks by Shia factions. In Dhi Qar province, the Italian military has formally handed off responsibility for security to the Iraqi army as of September of 2006. Sometime around then, responsibility for security in Muthanna province, south of Dhi Qar, was handed off to the Iraqi army. This past August, the governor of the province was killed.

To the west, Najaf province is relatively peaceful and controlled by Iraqi security forces, although Asia Times informs us that it contains a large number of the "internally displaced," i.e., refugees from other, more militarily disrupted zones. If the troops can cross safely, they can get to Saudi Arabia and withdraw from there. However, Najaf was also the site, in January of 2007, of some mysterious warlike activity that indicates the potential for powerful resistance. I don't entirely trust this particular story, for example, but there isn't much information available on this mysterious army of "Soldiers of Heaven."

At any rate, it is possible for the U.S. military to safely retreat south, apparently, and down through Basra province and into Kuwait and home free, right? Not quite, apparently, now that the British troops in Iraq have withdrawn to the safety of the Basra airport, leaving the rest of Basra in Iraqi hands. Given that the immediate result has been armed conflict among various factions, as is, apparently, the case in most of the rest of Iraq, what this bodes for U.S. troops attempting to withdraw through the area is anyone's guess. As of today, a British hostage held by some faction of the warring Iraqi troops in Basrah is pleading for the release of various members of that faction who are apparently being held by the Iraqi government.

As for Baghdad itself, it is a city at the confluence of two large rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Such a city would be hard to evacuate in a war, because withdrawal would have to take place via bridges over water. All the insurgents have to do is cut enough of the bridges to trap our military like rats.

According to Al-Jazeera, these bridges have already been destroyed:

• old Diyala bridge
• new Diyala bridge
• Sarafiya bridge

Does anybody know how we're going to get out if we need to?

There's more: "There Goes The Neighbourhood" >>

In Iraq, hundreds of thousands are without water as the electric grid teeters on the brink of collapse

When a delusional halfwit like Pollack or O'Hanlon, or someone idiotic enough
to tout those fools as credible, insists it's looking up in Iraq,
show them this picture of Iraqi's gathered for Friday prayers in West Baghdad.

As temperatures in Baghdad soared to 120º Fahrenheit, the electric grid wheezed and strained and sputtered, leaving western Baghdad without water. It simply can’t deliver the electricity to operate water purification plants and pumping stations.

The electric grid is on the brink of collapse, unable to meet rising demand. Compounding the problems, provinces are taking local generating stations off the national grid. Coalition bombing runs and insurgent attacks have destroyed the infrastructure of the grid, while fuel shortages inhibit electricity production. Of 17 high-tension lines running into Baghdad, only two were operational at the time the AP filed their story.

Power supplies in Baghdad have been sporadic all summer and now are down to just a few hours a day, if that. The water supply in the capital has also been severely curtailed by power blackouts and cuts that have affected pumping and filtration stations.

Karbala province south of Baghdad has been without power for three days, causing water mains to go dry in the provincial capital, the Shiite holy city of Karbala.

"We no longer need television documentaries about the Stone Age. We are actually living in it. We are in constant danger because of the filthy water and rotten food we are having," said Hazim Obeid, who sells clothing at a stall in the Karbala market.

Electricity shortages are a perennial problem in Iraq, even though it sits atop one of the world's largest crude oil reserves. The national power grid became decrepit under Saddam Hussein because his regime was under U.N. sanctions after the Gulf War and had trouble buying spare parts or equipment to upgrade the system.

The power problems are only adding to the misery of Iraqis, already suffering from the effects of more than four years of war and sectarian violence. Outages make life almost unbearable in the summer months, when average daily temperatures reach between 110 and 120 degrees.

Water is a necessity of life. In fact, it makes more sense to fight wars over water than it does over oil…(and even as I write that I get a chill up my spine, knowing that that day is coming, possibly in my lifetime, and certainly in the lifetime of my grandchildren.)

None-the-less, it activates my irony meter that this war over oil – and an arrogant determination to keep squandering a precious and dwindling resource foolishly – has stolen that necessity of life away from hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people.

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Some free advice to Lindsey Graham, et al - saying it doesn't make it so

Three Blind Lice

There seems to be a tremendous disconnect between the die-hard war supporters and reality.

On the one hand, you have Lindsey Graham drinking deep from the Raspberry Red and stepping up to the mike to declare that things in Iraq are definitely looking up. “The military part of the surge is working beyond my expectations,” Graham said. “We literally have the enemy on the run. The Sunni part of Iraq has really rejected al-Qaida all over the country. We’re getting more information about al-Qaida operations than we’ve ever received.”

It’s hard to tell, the way objectives shift and goalposts get moved, but I seem to recall that the purpose of the escalation was to secure Baghdad, and on that point the numbers do not lie. Violence in Baghdad is not appreciably down. In fact, 2% is a mere blip, and certainly not statistically significant. Between 20 June and 5 July, 472 civilians died in attacks in Baghdad. This represents a whopping 2 percent drop in civilian casualties from the previous 16-day period, according to a tally collected by the Associated Press from daily reports by Iraqi security and hospital officials.”

Just a brief perusal of the major news outlets would indicate that Graham is either delusional at best, or flat-out lying at worst. I’m going with the lying until proof is submitted to the contrary.

From Reuters:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Car bombs and mortar attacks killed 50 people in Iraq, police and local officials said on Saturday, while the U.S. military said six of its soldiers had been killed in the past two days.

One British soldier was also killed in the south.

The fresh violence follows a lull in Iraq, where tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops are on the offensive against insurgents in a bid to halt a slide into sectarian civil war.

And the Washington Post:

BAGHDAD, July 7 -- Suicide bombings across Iraq killed nearly 150 and injured scores, including a massive truck assault in a northern Shiite village that ripped through a crowded market, officials said Saturday.

The violence came as the U.S. military on Saturday reported the deaths of eight American soldiers over the past two days, all killed in combat or by roadside bombs in Baghdad and the western province of Anbar. A British soldier was reported killed in fighting in southern Iraq.

The worst carnage unfolded in the Shiite Turkoman village of Amarly, 50 miles south of Kirkuk, when a suicide bomber rammed a truck laden with explosives into the central market, which is near a police station, officials said. The attack killed at least 115 people and wounded at least 210, according to district and hospital officials, adding that they expected the death toll to rise.

And finally, from the New York Times:

BAGHDAD, July 7 — Suicide bombers killed at least 122 people in two attacks north of Baghdad, officials said Saturday, and the strikes raised questions about whether insurgents who had fled intense military operations in Baghdad and Diyala are turning to more vulnerable targets nearby.

In the worst blast, a truck loaded with explosives demolished dozens of fragile clay-built houses and shops on Saturday in Amerli, a village of poor Shiite Turkmen about 15 miles south of Tuz Khurmato. The Iraqi police said the blast killed 1o5 people and wounded 210 more.

The American military also reported Saturday the deaths of nine soldiers and marines on Thursday and Friday, eight of them during combat or from roadside bomb attacks.

Witnesses in Amerli described a horrific scene of people running while on fire, and others shrieking for rescuers to pull them free from beneath scores of buildings that were turned into rubble by the blast.

Perhaps Lindsey will do us all a favor and next time he visits Iraq and conduct one of his patented pep-rallies outside the Green Zone, in the middle of Baghdad – without two Apache gunships, three Blackhawks, an entire company of U.S. soldiers surrounding him – and enough body armor to pass himself off as a body double for RoboCop.

If he did that, I might, for a couple of minutes, stop bitching about the stupidity of these dog-and-pony-shows when potentates visit the “troops in the field” to “get the real story” – oh please! You can take my first-hand account on this – any “troop in the field” who might be inclined to say something the potentates don’t want to hear, doesn’t get anywhere near the potentates. These trips are a waste of taxpayer money, and for what just one of these junkets costs, at least ten teachers could be trained for placement in inner city schools, and a couple of doctors for inner-city hospitals, too.

And I can tell you something else first-hand…when the word comes down from on high that a dignitary is coming, the cursing is voluble and eye-rolling is blatant...even from the commanders making the announcement, in a lot of cases. I can only imagine the reaction of troops in a war zone.

[Cross-posted from Blue Girl, Red State and Watching Those We Chose]

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