McCain’s “100 Years of War in Iraq”
John McCain has said he can see us still being at war in Iraq in 100 years – here’s how that could happen.
links for 2008-04-05
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Another case of an American woman working in Iraq being attacked by American soldiers. The government has done nothing about other cases, and is trying to cover this one up, too.
What the liberal hawks got wrong
Slate has an interesting series of articles posted by several liberals who supported the Iraq war in its early stages, entitled “Why Did We Get It Wrong?” I applaud their willingness to recognize that they were indeed wrong, but I wonder why they’re not asking the other question — why didn’t they listen to the people who had it right? There certainly were a lot of them who did have the right answers, but they were pretty much shit on and ignored by Slate and lots of other liberal hawks.
Reading each of the essays is an exercise in skepticism, because none of their arguments really ring all that true. They sound like excuse-making after the fact. Among the cheap rationalizations, Richard Cohen’s argument stands out in my mind as particularly pathetic:
Anthrax. Remember anthrax? It seems no one does anymore–at least it’s never mentioned. But right after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, letters laced with anthrax were received at the New York Post and Tom Brokaw’s office at NBC. In the following days, more anthrax-contaminated letters were received by other news organizations–CBS News and, presumably, ABC, where traces of anthrax were found in the newsroom. Weirdly, even the Sun, a supermarket tabloid, also got a letter, and a photo editor, Bob Stevens, was fatally infected. Other letters were sent to Sen. Tom Daschle’s Capitol Hill office, and in Washington, D.C., a postal worker, Thomas L. Morris Jr., died. There was ample reason to be afraid.
…
For this and other reasons, the anthrax letters appeared linked to the awful events of Sept. 11. It all seemed one and the same.
Anthrax is never mentioned because people on the right want it swept under the rug. I said it at the time and still believe it — the Anthrax letters were sent by a domestic, right-wing Christian terrorist. It’s the only explanation that makes sense, given the targets of the attacks — liberal politicians, the figures prominently labeled as “liberal” media. Notice no one from Fox News got a letter.
Another telling clue is that false Anthrax scares had been directed at abortion clinics country-wide, including here in Indianapolis, for months and years before the real ones took place in 2001 and 2002.
(In fact, that’s where I first met the late Julia Carson — at a candlelight vigil on the Circle to call attention to the threats here in Indianapolis, sometime in 1998 or 1999. No one had called her and asked her to speak; she just showed up because she heard about the vigil and wanted to light a candle and stand with a group of women. I had a long conversation with her about Planned Parenthood, women’s rights, gay marriage and a number of other topics. She was funny, articulate and very kind.)
But back to the point — Anyone with eyeballs could see that the two threats had nothing to do with one another. I can’t imagine why Cohen is making the excuse that they’re linked. He suggests Saddam had “messed with anthrax” but I never heard any evidence of that. It was clear from news accounts the source was from inside the United States; that it wasn’t smuggled into the country, there wasn’t any evidence that any foreign-born person could have gotten close to getting ahold of the substance; all the links to the strain used were domestic, and people with right-wing Christian beliefs. His excuse is just silly, and strains credulity.
Former Top General in Iraq Faults Bush Administration
From the New York Times (presented to you without comment on my part):
WASHINGTON, Oct. 12— In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top American commander called the Bush administration’s handling of the war incompetent and warned that the United States was “living a nightmare with no end in sight.”
In one of his first major public speeches since leaving the Army in late 2006, retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez blamed the administration for a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan” and denounced the current “surge” strategy as a “desperate” move that will not achieve long-term stability.
“After more than fours years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism,” Mr. Sanchez said, at a gathering here of military reporters and editors.
General Sanchez is the most senior in a string of retired generals to harshly criticize the administration’s conduct of the war. Asked following his remarks why he waited nearly a year after his retirement to outline his views, he responded that that it was not the place of active duty officers to challenge lawful orders from civilian authorities. General Sanchez, who is said to be considering a book, promised further public statements criticizing officials by name.
“There was been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding later in his remarks that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”
The White House had no initial comment.
Okay, I gave in and highlighted things.
Iraq Vets Describe Common Civilian Casualties
The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness:
“I’ll tell you the point where I really turned,” said Spc. Michael Harmon, 24, a medic from Brooklyn. He served a thirteen-month tour beginning in April 2003 with the 167th Armor Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division, in Al-Rashidiya, a small town near Baghdad. “I go out to the scene and [there was] this little, you know, pudgy little 2-year-old child with the cute little pudgy legs, and I look and she has a bullet through her leg…. An IED [improvised explosive device] went off, the gun-happy soldiers just started shooting anywhere and the baby got hit. And this baby looked at me, wasn’t crying, wasn’t anything, it just looked at me like–I know she couldn’t speak. It might sound crazy, but she was like asking me why. You know, Why do I have a bullet in my leg?… I was just like, This is–this is it. This is ridiculous.”
Bush publishes info on how to build a Nuke
From the New York Times:
Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.
But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”
Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency, according to European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures.
Early this morning, a spokesman for Gregory L. Schulte, the American ambassador, denied that anyone from the agency had approached Mr. Schulte about the Web site.
The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.
“For the U.S. to toss a match into this flammable area is very irresponsible,” said A. Bryan Siebert, a former director of classification at the federal Department of Energy, which runs the nation’s nuclear arms program. “There’s a lot of things about nuclear weapons that are secret and should remain so.”
The government had received earlier warnings about the contents of the Web site. Last spring, after the site began posting old Iraqi documents about chemical weapons, United Nations arms-control officials in New York won the withdrawal of a report that gave information on how to make tabun and sarin, nerve agents that kill by causing respiratory failure.
The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative publications and politicians, who said that the nation’s spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion. With the public increasingly skeptical about the rationale and conduct of the war, the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees argued that wide analysis and translation of the documents — most of them in Arabic — would reinvigorate the search for clues that Mr. Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the invasion. American search teams never found such evidence.
First stages of the Draft are now in motion
If you think it’s not coming, you’re crazy. This guy has been out of the army 13 years… and he’s being called back.
David M. Miyasato enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve in 1987, served three years of active duty during the first Gulf War and received an honorable discharge in 1991. He remained on inactive status for five more years, until 1996. Since then, the Kaua’i resident has married, started an Auto Sun tint business and this year, he and his wife had their first child.
But in September, Miyasato received a letter from the Army recalling him to active duty and directing him to report to a military facility in South Carolina on Tuesday.
“I was shocked,” Miyasato said yesterday. “I never expected to see something like that after being out of the service for 13 years.”
Miyasato is now suing the Secretary of the Army, asking a court to prevent the Army from ordering him to active duty. He is also asking for a court judgment declaring that he fulfilled all his obligations to the military.
Eminem – Mosh Lyrics
See the Video: Real Player, Windows Media
[I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
And to the Republic for which it stands
One nation under God
Indivisible
It feels so good to be back..]
Scrutinize every word, memorize every line
I spit it once, refuel, reenergize, and rewind
I give sight to the blind, mind sight through the mind
I ostracize my right to express when I feel it’s time
It’s just all in your mind, what you interpret it as
I say to fight you take it as I gonna whip someone’s ass
If you don’t understand don’t even bother to ask
A father who has grown up with a fatherless past
Who has blown up now to rap phenomenon that has
Or at least shows no difficulty multi task
And juggling both, perhaps mastered his craft slash
Entrepreneur who has held long too few more rap acts
Who has had a few obstacles thrown his way through the last half
Of his career typical manure moving past that
Mister kiss his ass crack, he’s a class act
Rubber band man, yea he just snaps back
Come along, follow me as I lead through the darkness
As I provide just enough spark, that we need to proceed
Carry on, give me hope, give me strength,
Come with me, and I won’t steer you wrong
Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog
Till the light, at the end, of the tunnel, we gonna fight,
We gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march through the swamp
We gonna mosh through the marsh, take us right through the doors
To the people up top, on the side and the middle,
Come together, let’s all bomb and swamp just a little
Just let it gradually build, from the front to the back
All you can see is a sea of people, some white and some black
Don’t matter what color, all that matters is we gathered together
To celebrate for the same cause, no matter the weather
If it rains let it rain, yea the wetter the better
They ain’t gonna stop us, they can’t, we’re stronger now more then ever,
They tell us no we say yea, they tell us stop we say go,
Rebel with a rebel yell, raise hell we gonna let em know
Stomp, push up, mush, fuck Bush, until they bring our troops home come on just . . .
Come along, follow me as I lead through the darkness
As I provide just enough spark, that we need to proceed
Carry on, give me hope, give me strength,
Come with me, and I won’t stear you wrong
Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog
Till the light, at the end, of the tunnel, we gonna fight,
We gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march through the swamp
We gonna mosh through the marsh, take us right through the doors, come on
Imagine it pouring, it’s raining down on us,
Mosh pits outside the oval office
Someone’s trying to tell us something, maybe this is God just saying
we’re responsible for this monster, this coward, that we have empowered
This is Bin Laden, look at his head nodding,
How could we allow something like this, Without pumping our fist
Now this is our, final hour
Let me be the voice, and your strength, and your choice
Let me simplify the rhyme, just to amplify the noise
Try to amplify the times it, and multiply it by six
Teen million people are equal of this high pitch
Maybe we can reach Al Quaida through my speech
Let the President answer on high anarchy
Strap him with AK-47, let him go
Fight his own war, let him impress daddy that way
No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our soil
No more psychological warfare to trick us to think that we ain’t loyal
If we don’t serve our own country we’re patronizing a hero
Look in his eyes, it’s all lies, the stars and stripes
They’ve been swiped, washed out and wiped,
And Replaced with his own face, mosh now or die
If I get sniped tonight you’ll know why, because I told you to fight
So come along, follow me as I lead through the darkness
As I provide just enough spark, that we need to proceed
Carry on, give me hope, give me strength,
Come with me, and I won’t stear you wrong
Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog
Till the light, at the end, of the tunnel, we gonna fight,
We gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march through the swamp
We gonna mosh through the marsh, take us right through the doors
[Eminem speaking angrily]
And as we proceed, to mosh through this desert storm, in these closing statements, if they should argue, let us beg to differ, as we set aside our differences, and assemble our own army, to disarm this weapon of mass destruction that we call our president, for the present, and mosh for the future of our next generation, to speak and be heard, Mr. President, Mr. Senator, can they hear us?
Dude, you’re getting drafted
Really. Despite what Bush says. Enjoy the Draft. Spring Break Fallujah.
Bush Team Lost 380 Tons of Explosives, endangers troops and US citizens
Wonder where the insurgents are getting all the weapons they are using to kill our American troops? Yeah, they got them from us, and Bush & Co. didn’t know about it until last month.
Some 380 tons of explosives, powerful enough to detonate nuclear warheads, are missing from a former Iraqi military facility that was supposed to be under American control, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog says.
Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told CNN the Iraqi interim government reported several days ago that the explosives were missing from the Al Qaqaa complex, south of Baghdad.
But a senior administration official told CNN that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was notified about the missing weapons about a month ago. Iraq Survey Group inspectors are investigating, the official said.