Telling The Truth

Was it just yesterday? Or the day before? That senile warmonger John McInsane had the big brass balls to tell Barack Obama he was going to instruct Obama about how peaceful Iraq was and how things are going so fucking well in Iraq?

Let's see, here's a few pertinent spittle-fleckings:

[...] McCain added, he [Obama, Ed.] will change his position on the war because of the success the U.S. is having there. “Sen. Obama was driven to his conclusion by ideology, not by the facts on the ground,” McCain said. “Success in Iraq is undeniable.”

The Seattle Times responds with an editorial that basically informs McInsane of what everyone else with a working brain cell already knows: the aged, cranky, nasty old Republican nominee is fuller of shit than a constipated cow. A pertinent snippet:

McCain is having a jolly time pretending he is the only candidate with enough cachet and experience to lead the U.S. on military matters, even offering to squire Obama around Iraq.

McCain's posturing would be silly one-upmanship if the costs of the war in Iraq and at home were not so enormous and never-ending. McCain has the wrong position. He supports continued military involvement in Iraq. Obama, more credibly, vows to end the war and bring troops home.

Kudos to the editorial writer! More than two-thirds of the American electorate is utterly sick and tired of this bogus war. Bombing the helpless populace of a small country that has done nothing to us is nothing less than a war crime. A war crime that has, incidentally, destroyed our economy and is threatening the combined economy of the rest of the world.

Does anybody remember the last time McInsane went to Iraq? March of this year. Protected by about 100 Marines, in full body armour, with helicopter gunships overhead, McInsane was photographed (at taxpayers' expense, of course) strolling about in Baghdad, proclaiming it safe. The old geezer conveniently forgot to mention to anyone during his recent spittle-flecked rant that his army escort would not let him go to the Shorja market where he had his picture taken last year, because it was "too unsafe."

Of course, someone who can't tell Sunni from Shi'a and doesn't even know how many troops we have in Iraq is hardly the authority on the war. If only fate wasn't tempted to give the old man the smackdown every time he opens his mouth and switches feet. Pertinent snippet:

McCain's comments about Mosul being "quiet" have also been criticized. On the day he made them, 30 Iraqis were killed by suicide bombings in the Mosul area.

Meanwhile, the town of Hit, near Baghdad, didn't want to be left out of the rush to smear a little egg on the erstwhile candidate's face. A suicide bomber in that town, no doubt having read or heard McLame's comments, rushed off to glory, taking ten people with him and wounding 12 others.

McLame displayed his usual tin ear on the issue:

McCain, speaking to reporters in Milwaukee, refused to acknowledge a mistake, saying that "I said we have drawn down. And we have drawn down."

Gee, where have we heard that refusal to admit making a mistake before? Oh, yeah, the previous two terms of Gee Dumbya Pumpkinhead.

In an attempt to defend the senile warmonger, his advisers said the flap amounted to nothing more than "nitpicking" about "verb tenses."

"It is the essence of semantics," said a frustrated Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top foreign policy adviser, on a conference call organized by the campaign. "We're having this call about a verb tense."

Wow, they sure have learned their lessons well. They're borrowing from the arsenal of Karl Rove and Bill Clinton. Next they're going to tell us what the definition of "is" is. Good work, kids! No, let's rephrase that: Heckuva Job, Johnny!

In other convincing evidence of the peacefulness of Iraq, thousands of Iraqis turned out to protest the U.S. presence. Intelligence (a quality Mr. McInsane seems dreadfully short on) officials announced today that our progress in Iraq basically sucks wet monkey ass. The scheduled elections are already getting the Sunni mad at each other. Progress! Peace! Missing Limbs! Awakening Councils!

Is there anyone in Iraq that we haven't pissed off yet? Well, maybe McInsane's definition of "progress," "success," "drawdown," and so forth are not exactly the same as Merriam-Webster's or Oxford's OED, or, let's be honest, any fucking body else's.

Tell the truth, Mr. McCain. If you remember how that's defined any more, that is. And don't forget to tell all those American servicemen being blown up in Iraq and Afghanistan why you refuse to sign Jim Webb's GI Bill that would give them better benefits than the pile of steaming crap the Bush misadministration's been trying to feed them for the past X years.

Crossposted over at ThePoliticalCat

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One More Piece of Suffering

Sex is a very important part of an adult's life, don't you think? Intimacy, closeness, love, affection, warmth, appreciation, those things are all important too. But there's something about fucking someone else, preferably someone you love but in a pinch, anyone who wants to make like a bunny with you, that really gets the old happy juices (and other juices) flowing.

And if you've had the pleasure of getting it on with someone, maybe a partner, maybe a spouse, maybe just a Friend With Benefits, it's hard to accept that that part of your life may not exist any more. Or may be changed forever.

What about injured veterans? Raw Story carries an interesting article today about badly-injured veterans and their sex lives.

You (hell, all of us, except the vets) probably never thought about what injuries might do to a body's sex life. Because, let's face it, most of us go through life not expecting to get so severely injured that we can no longer get it on with our sweet patootie. Right? Who walks around thinking, "Hell, wonder what I'll do if I lose my leg/arm/half my face?" Nobody, that's who. Nobody in their right mind, anyway.

Of all the grievous harms that have come to the people who signed up thinking they would be defending their country, thanks to the lies of a small group of wealthy, powerful, manipulative motherfuckers, this has to be the worst. And you don't even have to lose an arm or a leg to be affected. You could be one of the 600,000 or so vets suffering from TBI (traumatic brain injury) or PTSD, and still find that your sex life might be fucked (so to speak) for a long time.

Psychological and neurological disorders can interfere with behaviors necessary for successful intimacy, such as experiencing and expressing emotion and understanding someone else's needs, the study noted. And anger and aggression, including domestic violence, have been associated with mental disorders.

According to the Veterans Affairs Department's National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, sexual dysfunction tends to be higher in combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder than in those without.

How do we evaluate that kind of stress and pain and suffering and loss? All we can say is, if our sex life got put on hold for reasons not within our control, we'd be one crabby motherfucker, and wherever we lived, they'd better have some damn good gun control laws.


Meanwhile, in other news, that miserable draft-dodging "I had other priorities" POS chickenshit chickenhawk Dick "They call me Dick for a reason" Cheney had the gall to tell Coast Guard graduates today, about the war into which he and his millionaire buddies dragged us:

"The war on terror is a lengthy enterprise, but it does not have to go on forever [,..]".

[...]

"More than that, quitting would be an act of betrayal and dishonor. And it's not going to happen on our watch."

Do these fuckwits have even the first notion of shame?

Crossposted over at ThePoliticalCat

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Iraq: The Needle And The Damage Done

Sgt. Merlin German poses with actress Elizabeth Rohm

Neil Young wrote a song with that title, about what junk was doing to great musicians as he watched them get hooked and OD before his eyes.

We were thinking about that yesterday as we trawled the intarwebs looking for information about Iraq. And the damage done. And damage aplenty it is. From being the nation that stood for economic achievement, honour, dignity, the enshrining of human rights in the very foundation of our existence, we have become a universal pariah, despised, pitied, and shunned. We're like the mad aunt in the attic, fouling ourselves, locked away out of the sight of the children because we're so unpredictable, so damaged, so pitiable.

Our currency has sunk to unheard of lows. Our economy writhes and flails pathetically struggling to rise like a wounded Leviathan even as it bleeds jobs in the tens of thousands, as homes go into foreclosure and families are forced out onto the street, as suburbs and subdivisions lie abandoned, rotting, damaged by those who once lived there or by casual thieves looking for an easy mark. Our infrastructure rots before our eyes, and we have no money to fix our sewage systems, our water systems, our dams and bridges and roads, even as we bleed billions of dollars into a war without a foreseeable end.

Today's reminder of the ongoing multiple wars in which the Bush regime has entangled us, and the continuing damage. Click the preceding link to read the story of Marine Sergeant Merlin German, who died April 11 as the result of injuries sustained from a roadside bomb blast in Iraq. Sgt. German was 22 years old.

He suffered damage to 97 per cent of his body from the bomb. It took him a little over three agonizing years of multiple surgeries and therapies to die. Sgt. German was a saxophonist. The bomb blew off his fingers. He would never be able to play his favourite instrument again. The article talks about how this poor man was "an emblem of resolve." Well, fuck your resolve. Tell us how it took him one and a half agonizing years to learn how to walk again. As a gimp, we can totally understand the torture of having a body that does not like to obey one's wishes and responds with agonizing pain when one does something it doesn't care for.

Tell us how it feels to have 40 surgeries. Each time someone cuts your body open, your chances of infection, fatal complications like clots in your veins and lungs, and, of course, the never-ending pain, increase. And sometimes pains create more, unexplained and inexplicable pains. So that when someone operates on your right knee, two years later you can suffer agonizing pains in your left toe.

They give you gabapentin for that. It's medication for epileptics, but apparently works off-label to cope with nerve-related pain. Unfortunately, it causes your wrist and forearm muscles to behave strangely, and can result in carpal tunnel syndrome.

In related news, a New York state appeals court has held that the New York/New Jersey Port Authority is liable for damages caused by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, because it knew about but chose to ignore “an extreme and potentially catastrophic vulnerability that would have been open and obvious to any terrorist who cared to investigate and exploit it.”

We can't help but wonder if this means Gee Dumbya and his criminal cronies can be held liable for the deaths of the 3,000 who died in the attack on the Twin Towers? Personally liable? For damages? And the 4,000-plus troops who have died so far. And the 620,000 suffering from PTSD and TBI. And the 30-50,000 maimed and wounded?

After all, there's plenty of evidence that Bush and his stooges knew about 9/11 nearly a year before it happened.


Meanwhile, Reuters tells us that on April 19th, "Iraqi government troops" swept into the oil-rich southern Iraqi city of Basra and took the bastions of Hojatoleslam Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, at whose hands they had suffered such a humiliating defeat in the first weeks of April.

Of course, the article fails to mention that the "Iraqi government troops" are, for all intents and purposes, the military arm of puppet prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, a man with so little support among his own people that defections among "his" police troops and "his" army forces number in the thousands. In the event, he required massive air support from British and American forces. Caveat: Registration (free) required.

And if you don't know what happens to "collaborators," consider what you would do assuming your country was invaded by some other occupying power. What would you do to Americans who aided the enemy? Jeez, let some politician make a speech about how things are totally fucked in Iraq and every frothing rightwinger is simultaneously wanking their dicks off while screaming "Treason! Aiding and Abetting! Giving comfort to the enemy! Hang them!"

As far as the rest of Iraq, Sunni and Shi'a, religious or secular, are concerned, al-Maliki's "troops" are collaborators, calling in American and British air power to bomb the living fuck out of their own countrymen and women and children.

So we had to bomb hundreds to death, destroying their homes and hospitals and streets and towns, in order for al-Maliki's so-called "army" to succeed against al-Sadr's militiamen. Remember, if you will, that al-Maliki's "army" gets its uniforms, salaries, training, equipment, and ammunition from our treasury, while al-Sadr's militia, if they're lucky, get an inferior grade of weaponry if they can pay for it either from the black market or from our soldiers and their proxies, the Iraqi army.

Damn, if we're paying them, training them, and giving them top-notch guns and ammo, and they still can't beat a rag-tag bunch of untrained fucking desert dwellers, what the fuck does that say about this "war"? Incidentally, both al-Sadr's and al-Maliki's followers are Shi'a muslims. In other words, this is a civil war. Moreover, many people are saying that this is simply an attempt by al-Maliki's Dawa party to ensure that no other Shi'a politicians can possibly win the coming elections.

Does anyone else get the feeling that this is just a sham, set up for a gullible American electorate that doesn't bother to inform itself? Does anyone want to take a bet that the Iraqi "elections" will be held not too distant from the American elections and steps will be taken by the CheneyBush Misadministration to ensure that they can proclaim a victory, success, a drawdown?

Of course, they'd better pray that the Iraqi units don't flee their posts, as this one did. Caveat: Registration (free) required.

A pertinent snippet:

A company of Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions on Tuesday night in Sadr City, defying American soldiers who implored them to hold the line against Shiite militias.

The retreat left a crucial stretch of road on the front lines undefended for hours and led to a tense series of exchanges between American soldiers and about 50 Iraqi troops who were fleeing.

This occurred in Baghdad around April 16th. Commanders in Iraq are, to the extreme frustration and resentment of their troops, doing their best to paint any success as being led by Iraqi troops when in fact, it is American troops that are doing the dirty work, reaping the death toll, and receiving none of the credit.

Meanwhile, the Sons of Iraq, or the Sons of the Awakening, or the Awakening Council, or whatever they're calling themselves this week &mdash the number, out of the approximately 40 per cent of Iraq's population that is Sunni Muslim, who have decided to cooperate with the U.S. in attempting to expel from Iraq the al-Qaeda in Iraq "turrrrists" who are blowing up people and things &mdash have degenerated into an internecine conflict, the likes of which make the al-Sadr/al-Maliki conflict pale in comparison.

Patrick Cockburn, writing for The Independent, tells us that aQI, as al-Qaeda in Iraq is referred to, is targeting the al-Sahwa, that is, the Awakening Council, or Sunni Awakening, or, as we've been reduced to calling it of late, the Sunni Whatever. Christ. And this, hard on the heels of news that the U.S. has not provided agreed-upon amounts of arms and money to these poor sods who are in the frontline of this battle.

Is it any surprise, then, that U.S. troop deaths are currently at their highest for the past seven months? According to AP, 50 U.S. soldiers died in the month of April. Iraqi civilian deaths are also at a high. 36 people per day.

So, close to 40 people are dying every day, and what exactly are we supposed to be doing there? Preventing civil war? Too late, it's raging as we speak. Bringing democracy to the nation? How can there be democracy in a nation at war? The conditions don't exist for people to use the ballot box when they have to kill or be killed each day. We can't even successfully steal their fucking oil, which is, let's face it, the real reason that we attacked a small, poor nation that had nothing to do with 9/11. If this was about 9/11, we would have invaded Saudi Arabia which has lots of oil and, apparently, lots of terrorists, having supplied some 15 or so to the effort to bomb the fuck out of the Twin Towers.

Whoever tells us that our effort in Iraq is succeeding is lying through their teeth. This is not success. Watching 22-year-old boys get blown to smithereens is not success. Fomenting civil war in a nation that had absolutely nothing to do with the attack on us is not success. Building a mercenary army is not success.

Fuck, we can't even build a mercenary army properly. Incompetence, dishonesty, and outright idiocy resulting from greed and short-sightedness are the hallmark of what Maru likes to call the Cheney Menstruation. Here, for example, we have a wonderful incident in which mercenaries, most of whom are former military personnel, often U.S. military personnel, get killed because some senior manager used the armored vehicle in which these poor sods were supposed to travel, to &mdash no, really &mdash transport hookers.

Meanwhile, arms and equipment that we, the taxpayers, are paying through the arse for, are showing up for sale on ebay.

And little schoolgirls in Iraq are weeping while celebrating Saddam Hussein's birthday. So much for being greeted with flowers as liberators.

As we used to say when we was a yoof, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth &mdash bugger me blind. What the fuck? Is there anything we're doing that's remotely likely of success? Fuck, no. We keep propping first one, then another foot up while we take potshots at each, each time with a weapon of a greater caliber. Call us when they trundle out the cannon.

Meanwhile, the Red Cross is reporting that health care and clean drinking water in Iraq is less available to the populace, after five fucking years of our presence. The city of Baghdad has overflowing sewers that are visible from Google Earth.

There is no doubt, as Rep. Ike Skelton of MO says, that our continuing engagement in Iraq is preventing us from anticipating and preparing for future acts of terror. We're bogged down, boys 'n girls. Plain and simple.

The Pentagon is claiming that it is cutting funding for the Iraq war even as the Idiot-in-Chief is trying to force through a $70 billion dollar request for funding in Iraq. This is called, "The right hand knoweth not in whose underpants the left hand is sticking a finger." So you cut a twenty-cent purchase out while slipping a two-thousand dollar purchase in. Veddy clever.

And the Senate's Armed Services Committee is asking the GAO to find out where billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenue have gone. Admittedly, the previous, Republican, congress didn't even bother to find out if the taxpayer was being screwed without lube. But, gentlemen, isn't this a bit like closing the barn door long after the horse has embarked on a trip to a different fucking continent?

In other news, the Iraqis prove that they, at least, are not as stupid and befuddled as the American electorate-cum-taxpayer. Even as John McInsane was tootling around those parts, our erstwhile bosom friends and financial dependents of the Iraqi power structure were chortling with glee. Pertinent excerpt:

Many Iraqi politicians are closely monitoring the American presidential race, and some said the visit bolstered their belief that if Mr. McCain, of Arizona, succeeded President Bush in the November election, the American military would have a large presence in Iraq for a very long time.

“This visit confirms that the Republicans believe that the Iraqi war is very important in the fight against terrorism in the Middle East,” said Wael Abdul Latif, an independent Shiite member of the Iraqi Parliament. “It’s a message to Iran that the United States will never leave, even after Bush is gone.”

Never leave? Hah! Why don't we just line up every single American man, woman, and child who has less than one million dollars to their name (which would be most of us, don't kid yourself), and remove half their blood, or half their limbs?

Those of you planning to vote for McInsane? Just join the military already. Take your spouse and sprogs with you. Don't plan on coming back. They'll just foreclose on your home while you're gone, anyway, and if McInsane's in charge, your kid won't be able to afford health care or college, and there won't be any jobs left after you've served. At least in the military they often give you food, plus your housing and clothing and health care is all paid for. Sure, you risk ending up like Marine Sgt. German. But that's a small price to pay to see McInsane in charge, innit?

Meanwhile, since we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, the following has occurred:

• The real, genuine, original al-Qaeda (the one in Iraq has the same name but no links to these big daddies) just tried to kill Afghani President Hamid Karzai;
  
  Bush's old oil buddy Karzai must be wondering how long he can hold on to power.
  
  
• Our own intelligence guys are reporting that al-Qaida is doing just ducky, over in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they started out and continue to grow and thrive;
  
  
• We still don't have the first fucking clue where Osama bin Laden is, but we're willing to bet he's laughing his ass off, even if it's in some cave;
  
  Note to our so-called allies: If you see an ass wandering around sans legs, torso, or any other identifiable part, please turn it over to the U.S. military.
  
  
• No matter how much we grovel and beg, nobody wants to give us more pennies or bodies for our war in Afghanistan.

So what do we do about this? Do we keep making "support the troops" noises and buying flag pins made in China while leaving the men and women who do our dirty deeds for us to rot and die in body, mind, and soul?

Libby, over at TheImpolitic, tells us about some of the horrifying things our troops have gone through. Jesus, we're fucking outraged and disgusted.

One soldier's father was so disgusted by the treatment of his son's comrades, he videotaped it and posted it on YouTube. All on a sudden, the brass are putting away their balls which they've been playing with for ages, and leaping up to "address the issue" of the appalling conditions at Fort Bragg.

The good folk of Vermont continue to protest the war with all their might and main. Thanks, people! You give us hope!

Meanwhile, we ask, when are the Young Republicans going to step up and volunteer in droves? Because they're sitting around in school leeching off the taxpayer teat or the parental teat, the military has had to lower its standards to the point where people such as this eminent worthy get to disgrace the service.

And, to leave you all with something other than the bitter taste of ashes, here's a sweet story about service members who have to leave their four-footed friends behind, and the kind folks who help them out by taking their little beastlies in.

Crossposted over at ThePoliticalCat

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The Invisible Cost of War

It appears, according to a RAND study as reported in Raw Story, that we can look forward to over 600,000 military personnel suffering TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) or PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) or both, as a result of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to the article, fewer than half have ever had head injuries evaluated by a doctor, and only slightly more than half have sought help for PTSD.

Of course, the TBI numbers (currently 300,000) might be much lower if the Bush Misadministration hadn't sourced inferior helmets to protect the brains of the people it sent into harm's way. Caveat: Requires login.

The article states, regarding the study:

The report is titled "Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery." It was sponsored by a grant from the California Community Foundation and done by 25 researchers from RAND Health and the RAND National Security Research Division, which also has done does work under contracts with the Pentagon and other defense agencies as well as allied foreign governments and foundations.

Over a year ago, we noticed that the TBI numbers were high, and blogged it. As most people know, TBI comes in two flavours, mild and severe, and both have serious long-term implications and painful costs. Here, a description of mild TBI:

the individual has cognitive problems such as headache, difficulty thinking, memory problems, attention deficits, mood swings and frustration. These injuries are commonly overlooked. Even though this type of TBI is called "mild", the effect on the family and the injured person can be devastating.

Symptoms include:

* Fatigue
* Headaches
* Visual disturbances
* Memory loss
* Poor attention/concentration
* Sleep disturbances
* Dizziness/loss of balance
* Irritability-emotional disturbances
* Feelings of depression
* Seizures
* Nausea
* Loss of smell
* Sensitivity to light and sounds
* Mood changes
* Getting lost or confused
* Slowness in thinking

These symptoms may not be present or noticed at the time of injury. They may be delayed days or weeks before they appear. The symptoms are often subtle and are often missed by the injured person, family and doctors.

The person looks normal and often moves normal in spite of not feeling or thinking normal. This makes the diagnosis easy to miss. Family and friends often notice changes in behavior before the injured person realizes there is a problem. Frustration at work or when performing household tasks may bring the person to seek medical care.

For symptoms of severe TBI, look here.

These symptoms do not bode well for the 300,000 or so Americans who are suffering them. Especially as Boy George continues to gut the VA. When you have a significant number of people in the population who are trained to view problems as amenable to the application of force, and these people are suffering symptoms that include irritability, inability to concentrate, memory loss, and the like, their prospects for long-term gainful employment are, necessarily, small. Their ability to provide for themselves, whether in the sense of basic necessities such as grocery shopping, cooking, making and keeping medical appointments, and the like, or in more sophisticated ways such as undertaking job training or further education, meeting goals, career planning, are affected.

Goodness knows there have been many days over the past eight years when those of us with uninjured brains and untraumatized spirits have wanted to choke the living shit out of all and sundry as we watch our jobs disappear, our wages fall, our homes foreclosed, our bank and retirement accounts and benefits shrink, and the dollar sink to new and terrifying lows.

Imagine you're a newly returned injured and traumatized veteran of a war you still can't figure out, except that you know it was based on lies. And all these things that are happening to the general populace are also happening to you, except thanks to your newly damaged bits, they're harder for you to deal with. And you have no job or no job prospects, and the VA denies your health care and contests your disability. And you don't want to tell anyone that you're having all these problems because you might not be able to get a job, which you need in order to stay alive. And you probably don't want to tell the military about your problems because what if you can't get a job and have to re-enlist?

There's a light at the end of the tunnel, folks. Unfortunately, it's starting to look like a speeding train. And it's headed for us.

Crossposted over at ThePoliticalCat

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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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Politics: The Drumbeat For War in Iran

Persian Gulf regional map

Attention, people! The Bush/Cheney Misadministration is starting the drums beating for a war with Iran. Seymour Hersh warned us about this two years ago. Now that the elections are only six months away, what better present could the crooks and thugs in power deliver to John McInsane's presidential ambitions than to start yet another war?

Here's the evidence: Yesterday (April 11th, 2008), the Times told us that "new satellite photographs" have uncovered a secret launch site in Iran for long-range missiles. Iran has always claimed that this site and the launches therefrom are part of their civilian space program, by the way.

Yesterday (April 11th, 2008), AP informed us that a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Typhoon, trespassing in Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf (in order to access which body of water, vessels must first pass through the Straits of Hormuz, Iranian waters) "encountered"

... a small Iranian high-speed boat in the central Persian Gulf and warned it away by firing a flare, the Pentagon said Friday.

Two other similar Iranian boats in the area did not come as close.

The USS Typhoon tried unsuccessfully to establish radio contact with the Iranian boat after it came within an estimated 200 yards of the Typhoon on Thursday, outside Iranian territorial waters. A Navy official said the ship then fired the flare and continued on its way without incident.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said there were no signs any boat was armed.

Question: How exactly did the USS Typhoon "try unsuccessfully" to establish radio contact? Do they have Farsi speakers on board? Or was it the old tourist stratagem of "If they don't speak English just shout louder and slower"?

The Iranian authorities are claiming that there was no incident.

Today (April 12th, 2008), in the WahPoo, Staff Writer Karen deYoung tells us that Robert Gates, General Betrayus, and Ambassador Ryan Crockoshit have determined that Iran is the biggest threat to Iraq.

Consider this: Iraq is majority Shi'a. Iran is majority Shi'a. They are two of the very few majority Shi'a nations in the Islamic world.

The Sunni tribes of Iraq form the backbone of the "insurgency," about which not word one has been said of late. Saudi Arabia, home of Gee Dumbya's good friends, is Sunni. The Saudis follow the fundamentalist Wahhabiya flavour of Islam. Most of the hijackers who destroyed the twin towers were Saudi nationals.

Which of these players poses a greater threat to the U.S.?

We're fairly confident that, if asked, the Shi'a majority in Iraq would gladly embrace Iran as good friends and allies. It wasn't that long ago that Iranian President Ahmedi Nejad was greeted with flowers on an official visit to his good friend Nouri al-Maliki.

Don't let Gee Dumbya and his gang of thugs lie us into another war.

Crossposted over at ThePoliticalCat

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Iraq: Interesting Juxtaposition

Seen this morning over at Huffpo:

First headline: Poll: Majority Of Americans Say War Not Worth It

Second headline: Bush: Iraq War Worth It

In other news, although why call it "news" when it's not new and should come as no surprise to anyone, Drunky McStaggers once again attempts to tie 9/11 and his old friend Osama bin Laden (hey, where is Osama, anyway?) to Iraq.

"The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around -- it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror. For the terrorists, Iraq was supposed to be the place where al-Qaeda rallied Arab masses to drive America out. Instead, Iraq has become the place where Arabs joined with Americans to drive al-Qaeda out. In Iraq, we are witnessing the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden, his grim ideology, and his murderous network. The significance of this development cannot be overstated."

No, you pathetic dry drunk drug-addled brainless idiot. Iraq was the proverbial innocent bystander here. Your friends the Saudis who won't increase oil production no matter how much you beg and grovel and publicly fellate them sent 15 of their citizens in a well-funded plot directed by a mastermind your Daddy's hunchmen trained, to damage America. That mastermind, Osama bin Laden, is believed to be hiding out in Afghanistan, where we're losing yet another war, thanks to your failed concepts of military strategy. Or he might be in Pakistan, where your good buddy Musharraf is soon to join the ranks of ex-dictators of Pakistan (notorious mainly for being assassinated).

Remember that picture? Five years ago, this idiot told us the war was over. Since then, 4,000 American troops have died; over one million Iraqis have died, men, women, children, old people, sick people, blind, deaf, and otherwise disabled people; between 3 and 5 million Iraqis are refugees, either in neighbouring nations, or internally displaced, because Shrinky McBrainless hasn't done squat to have the U.S. take in those Iraqis who worked with us and are now targeted by death squads; over 30,000 U.S. servicemen are maimed, injured, and disabled; and who knows how many Iraqis we have left wounded.

For a little perspective on how much this war is costing us and a comparison of timelines, drop by Gordon and Fixer's. Take a bucket, you'll need to puke.

Drunky's liege lord, Senior Puppetmaster and professional impersonator of human life, Snarly McCrashcart, meanwhile, flew his wife and daughter on a junket to the middle-east, that tinderbox of explosive politics. What are they doing, you ask, you humble American taxpayer whose dollars are financing that junket, even as you work your ass off without an inflation-matching raise for a decade? Goin' fishing. No, no kidding. Even as the reptilian bastard snarls in public about the nonexistent links between al Qaeda and Iraq.

When informed that two-thirds of the American people don't support the illegal, immoral war of occupation in Iraq, Snarly gave the American public the rigid digit. See the video clip for yourself.

So, you the two-thirds of the American Public who are against this war? Better get off yer asses and do something about it. And no, electing John McInsane is not the answer, because he can't tell his al Qaeda from a hole in the ground, and wants to start another war &mdash in Iran &mdash so the economy can go even further into the hole than it is already.

Crossposted over at La Casa de Los Gatos

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Bring The Troops Home NOW!

Well. Isn't that just ducky? Raw Story tells us that, after reviewing hundreds of thousands of captured Iraqi documents, the Pentagon has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein had any connection at al with al-Qaeda.

Apparently, the only links between Saddam and any terrorist groups were just like ours. Just as we funded and armed Osama bin Laden to wage Islamic Jihad against the Russians when they invaded Afghanistan in support of Babrak Kamal's government, Saddam Hussein funded and armed groups to attack "Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime."

The study is due to Congress and for general release by midweek.



The article, penned by Warren Strobel of McClatchy's Washington Bureau, states, in part:

[...] the upcoming Pentagon report promises to be a particularly stark and thorough refutation of one of the primary Bush administration arguments for the invasion of Iraq [i.e., that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaeda. Another Bush Misadministration argument, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, has already been thoroughly refuted.] The subsequent war has come at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, nearly 4,000 US troop deaths, and some half a trillion US dollars and counting.

Mr. Strobel's math skills are poor &mdash or perhaps McClatchy prefers to err on the cautious side of the balance ledger. Current wisdom has it that the total cost of Shrubya's Little Misadventure will run to over three trillion dollars. These costs do not address the Iraqis we've maimed and wounded, or the bills that other countries foolish enough to join in the "coalition of the willing" face. Britain, for example, announced today that their estimated cost will total approximately ten billion pounds sterling.

The article adds that the Bush Misadministration continues to lie about Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda, despite previously released documents and reports indicating the same findings as the forthcoming extensive review. As recently as last April, Vice President Dick Cheney again asserted a link between the Iraqi dictator and the terror network. So, if you know anyone stupid enough to listen to them and believe, please buy a copy of the review when it is released and use it to beat some sense into them.

The study is entitled "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents." Although it has been essentially complete since last year, it has been undergoing what one U.S. intelligence official described as a "painful" declassification review.

The article notes, in a painful aside, that "In fact, al Qaida in Iraq didn't emerge until 2004, a year after the invasion." Was that before or after Commander Codpiece was strutting around on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a uniform before a banner that screamed "Mission Accomplished," to the collective spooging of the shameless press corps?

Photo montage from grupo-utopia.com with the request that you spread it around

Meanwhile, we note that almost exactly a month ago, Auntie Beeb published a piece about the "reverse surge" that appears to be grimly prophetic. That article was pointing out the increase in violent incidents, many of which seemed to be targeting the Sunnis that the U.S. has been wooing with large sums of money:

US commanders on the ground [...] have pumped money into local economies by employing tens of thousands of young Sunni men as local auxiliaries - now re-named "Sons of Iraq" after several unhappier titles such as "Concerned Local Citizens" - to act as the eyes and ears of the US and Iraqi troops in the struggle against the militants.

They are also trying to encourage the Baghdad government to be more proactive in providing services and job-creation schemes in areas where the insurgents have been driven out.

But as we, and many others, have pointed out, the war has been going on for five years at this point. It's a bit late to start trying to win "hearts and minds." What's more, as the U.S. military strategy in Vietnam might suggest, the buying over of the "Sons of Iraq" sounds suspiciously like Tricky Dick's "changing the color of the corpses."

Al-Qaeda, and those Iraqis who are fighting the U.S. military will treat as traitors any Iraqis who side with the U.S. military. The U.S. is not going to stay in Iraq forever, John McCain or no John McCain. We simply cannot afford to. Sooner or later, our internal economic straits will be so dire, as a result of siphoning money out of the country to fund a prolonged war, that our economy will collapse. The U.S. is not willing to accept Iraqi refugees in any significant number. Despite the fact that more than 4 million Iraqis are now refugees, either in their own country or in Syria, Jordan, and other neighbouring nations, only approximately 7,000 have been accepted into the U.S. to date, and the original target of 25,000 has been lowered to 7,000.

Besides, the "hearts and minds" that the U.S. military is trying to win are deeply split even among themselves. We've said this repeatedly: Iraq has always been a fractured, heterogenous nation, with many different ethnic and religious groups, divided loyalties, in many ways still adhering to family, clan, tribe and feudal notions of society.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that Auntie Beeb once again informed us just yesterday that a woman had detonated her explosive vest when she came calling on another "leader" of the Sons of Iraq. Chances are that, just like the Issawi celebrants mentioned in the previous link, the woman was either a member of the tribe of the slain "Son of Iraq," Thaer Ghadban al-Karkhi.

According to Auntie Beeb, al Karkhi was the head of one of the majority-Sunni Arab Awakening Councils, allied with the US military against al-Qaeda in Iraq. How true that is, we have to wonder, since the same piece identified "Sheikh" Abdul Sattar Abu Risha as the head of the Awakening Council in Anbar, a key US ally who was widely credited with having defeated al-Qaeda in much of western Iraq. Greg Palast can give you the lowdown on the "Sheikh."

We ourselves have blogged about the "Sheikh's" mysterious trips with U.S. money. $75 million worth, fellow-taxpayers.

Meanwhile, to add further credence to Auntie Beeb's prognostications, Raw Story is telling us that forty-two people died in Iraq today as the result of violence. Forty-two. Do you know forty-two people? Add up your family members. You might have to include a few neighbours or colleagues.

Now imagine that these people who you, maybe, love, or like, or just know, were blown to smithereens. An assemblage of body parts, bloody meat, barely recognizable as human. Now imagine that happens to you every day. You probably don't know enough people to sustain that kind of loss every day for a year, probably not even a month. Well, for the Iraqis, this has been going on for five long years. And some days, it's a lot more than forty-two people.

In other news, eight U.S. servicemen were also killed. When are we going to bring our troops home? Because this has gone on too damned long. The troops did the job they were sent there to do. An army's job is to fight. They fought. The other stuff has to be done by non-military qualified and experienced civilian personnel. But Boy George wanted to send his friends and cronies out there to bilk the taxpayer, and because they're the friends and cronies of an incompetent boob, to no one's surprise they too are incompetent boobs. So now we have a failed state, in which people are being killed every day in large numbers. And it's too dangerous to send qualified experienced civilian personnel out there to help to fix the mess we made.

Every day that the soldiers stay there is one more day that they present a target to a people furious that their country has been invaded, their jobs are gone, their economy is faltering, they don't have power or light or working telephones, their streets are unsafe, and their wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters are being raped and beaten and killed, while their sons, brothers, fathers, and husbands are kidnapped, tortured, and killed.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, articles like this are just beginning to show up on the radar. The article states that railcars due to ease congestion in Philadelphia will be delayed. See if you can guess why.

New SEPTA Regional Rail cars will be at least four months late, delaying relief for riders on the increasingly crowded rail lines, SEPTA officials said yesterday.

[...] delivery of the rest of the 120-car order will also be pushed back at least four months, Nowakowski said. Final delivery of all the railcars is now scheduled for October 2010.

Rotem [the company building the cars, Ed.] was unable to procure enough of the type of steel specified in the SEPTA contract because the U.S. government has cornered the market; it is using the steel for armoring vehicles bound for Iraq, Nowakowski said.

For the sake of the dying, dead, maimed and wounded, in Iraq and at home; for the sake of the faltering economy, the people losing their homes, the people without health care, or with inadequate care; for the sake of the families that are being fractured by the stresses of this war; for the sake of the nation that is tottering under the accumulation of debt and the loss of its sons and daughters &mdash bring them home. End the war now.

Cross-posted over at La Casa de Los Gatos.

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Spinning Right Into the Ground

Another month of missed benchmarks, another "surprise" visit from Il Douche'™, ("surprise" as in if we announced beforehand, too many people would try to kill us, so "shhh!") into Iraq. What's running through the spin cycle this time around? "The Surge is Working, The Surge is Working!" To illustrate how well the "Surge" is working, he landed in Al-Anbar province, which not only was not part of the surge, but has been largely handed back over to local Sunni leaders to pacify. In fact, Bush met with a number of local Sunni leaders, to thank them for their help in beginning to stabilize the region. Yeah, just one problem with all that; these leaders may have American blood on their hands.

But, seriously, ya gotta do what ya gotta do, right? Otherwise, you know the "terrists" will follow us home (yeah, he's still saying that).

Crossposted at Welcome to the Revolution and Watching Those We Chose

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