Normandy - 65 Years

Update: Obama marks D-Day's 65th anniversary at Omaha Beach, France. "Don't forget ... ."

Today is June 6.

My girlfriend still talks about her late father and his service in World War II to defeat Nazis and fascists.

And from both of our parents (my father was a veteran recruited by the CIA but he went to grad school instead and had me), we grew up hearing of the society-wide, shared sacrifice.

War profiteers, they were a pariah. Not like when they were protected by the Bush administration.

Not like the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Lieberman-Neocon crowd doing their big con as 1o,000s come home dead, wounded, traumatized - different people - all for the lies of the policymakers; and Lieberman crowing for years that Iraq is "...the test of our generation." What a lying coward.

I post some World War II artifacts above that my girlfriend and her family treasure. Somehow, looking at them brings forth the truth of the World War II sacrifice and honor by mostly scared kids, in opposition to the imbecility and cowardice of the crowd of warmakers and liars, mostly but not exclusively in the Republican Party.

No one had the swagger and casualness of George W. Bush when it came time to ask for the ultimate sacrifice of real people and their loved ones.

Iraqi Artist Unveals Golden Shoe to Disgrace Bush

From the Middle East online:

BAGHDAD – When an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at George W. Bush last month at a Baghdad press conference, the attack spawned a flood of Web quips, political satire and street rallies across the Arab world.

Now it's inspired a work of art. A sofa-sized shoe statue was unveiled Thursday in Tikrit, the hometown of the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Baghdad-based artist Laith al-Amari described his fiberglass-and copper work as homage to the pride of the Iraqi people.

The statue also has inscribed a poem honoring Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist.

Al-Zeidi was charged with assaulting a foreign leader, but the trial was postponed after his lawyer sought to reduce the charges.

Cockburn Debunks Iraq Surge Nonsense

Watch.

Lies and Obstruction

It’s no surprise that Bush, Cheney and their supporters are so intent on controlling the images and impressions coming out of their Iraq War catastrophe.

These are the same people who went to war with the swaggering casualness of a young teenager playing a cool video-game system, though teenagers are typically more candid about their rationales and objectives.

Blocking their actions from examination is a full-time job for this administration and its paid liars, who even today are selling the Iraq War alternately as a mistake/unfortunate imperative, and not a colossal lie.

Michael Kamber and Tim Arango’s piece in this morning’s New York Times on the “growing effort by the American military to control graphic images from the war” makes a reader wonder if somehow all this destruction in Iraq could have been prevented by candid discussion in this democracy of what war is during the 2002-03 roll-out of Bush's Iraq propaganda.

Write Kamber and Arango:

“(O)pponents of the war, civil liberties advocates and journalists argue that the public portrayal of the war is being sanitized and that Americans who choose to do so have the right to see — in whatever medium — the human cost of a war that polls consistently show is unpopular with Americans.”

Good to see the New York Times news columns covering a trusim that has been abundantly obvious to any thinking person from the very beginning of this bullshit war.

The American public was not calling for a war with Iraq in 2002-03 or for that matter never was too keen on the idea, but the truth is they/we let it happen, and the war's continuation today, sustained by ever-changing lies, is as tragic now as it was five years ago.

Winning in Iraq

Patrick Cockburn has an insightful analysis from Iraq. See Special Report from the Battlefields, Who's Actually Winning in Iraq?

Bush's best hope for his illegal act of aggression: An Iranian-aligned Shia government tolerating a long-term American presence in Iraq as a bulwark against Sunni and Shia rivals.

...Paradoxically, the Shia governing parties in Baghdad, ISCI and Dawa, have traditionally had closer links with Iran than the Sadrists. ISCI was founded by the Iranians in Tehran in 1982 to be their puppet if they succeeded in defeating Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. It is still heavily influenced by them, but at the end of the day neither ISCI nor the Sadrists want the Americans nor the Iranians to treat Iraq as a client state...

Iraq Horror as Usual

McCain and Bush stress the improvements that our illegal invasion and occupation are bringing to Iraq.

But the facts are leaking out, for those who read Robert Fisk and Juan Cole:

Robert Fisk: Snapshots of life in Baghdad

The Real State of Iraq

Four Americans Killed in Baghdad Explosion

McCain Is a Fool

Asked about American troops remaining in Iraq for decades, Senator John McCain said, "No, but that's not too important. What's important is casualties in Iraq."

Right, so it's not important that we walk across highways at rush hour either, just that we don't sustain casualties.

We are paying 10s of millions of dollars to former "terrorist" Sunnis not to attack us, millions more to prop up a Shiite government (adding up to about $12 billion/month), among other expenditures, while condemning the most popular movement in Iraq because they, like most Iraqis, want us out.

One has to ask: How seriously dumb is John McCain?

The invasion was illegal, though the resulting occupation ironically has the patina of a UN mandate, though the Bush dreams of a client oil state are gone.

Twelve billion a month? I wonder if families in the United States have any use for that money. How about our veterans sent to war on the basis of lies?

Rev. John Hagee Is a Bigoted Whack Whose Endorsement McCain Sought and Received

How can a complete whack like the Rev. John Hagee whose endorsement of and political relationship with John McCain are a matter of public record not dominate the airwaves?

The apocalyptic-minded and anti-Catholic Rev. John Hagee was pursued by John McCain, and Hagee ultimately endorsed McCain in late February when they appeared together in San Antonio. (picture at right)

Hagee is a bigoted nut, but also a major Republican political player whose specific foreign policy prescriptions are seen by him as preparing the way for the Second Coming, and are identical to the controversial policy positions taken by McCain on Iran and Iraq, now.

Turns out that Hagee, of the let’s-bomb-Iran corner of the rightwing, is also a prominent signer of the Forgotten American Coalition's statement proclaiming that we need to stay in Iraq and that the “… Iraq War must be seen in the broader context of Islamo-fascism's war on America and Western Civilization. It is one front in a global conflict fought from Europe and the Middle East to Africa, the Balkans, the Indian Subcontinent and, finally, to the streets of our cities. ...”

If those words sound familiar, it’s because McCain had been repeating them in substance in his stump speech for months.

What has not been repeated for months is Hagee's venom coming from the Founder and National Chairman of the religious right's Christians United for Israel.

As Frank Rich writes this morning of Hagee:

Wielding a pointer, he pokes at the image of a woman with Pamela Anderson-sized breasts, her hand raising a golden chalice. The woman is 'the Great Whore,' Mr. Hagee explains, and she is drinking 'the blood of the Jewish people.' That’s because the Great Whore represents 'the Roman Church,' which, in his view, has thirsted for Jewish blood throughout history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust.

Have a look at this video and you'll get the picture.

The Iraq Lie

via mal contends

Comes up every once in a while. My girlfriend so proud of her dad talking about what she knew of her late father's service in World War II to defeat some pig NAZIs and fascists.

And from both of our parents (my father was a veteran recruited by the CIA but he went to grad school instead to have me), we hear of the society-wide, shared sacrifice.

War profiteers, they were a pariah. Not like today when they are protected by the Bush DOJ.

It's not like the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Lieberman-Neocon crowd doing their big con as 1o,000s come home dead, wounded, traumatized - different people, all for the lies of the policymakers; and Lieberman has the gall to crow for years that Iraq is "...the test of our generation." What a lying coward.

Makes one pretty sick.

I post some World War II artifacts above that my girlfriend and her family treasure. Somehow, looking at them brings forth the truth of the World War II sacrifice and honor by mostly scared kids, in opposition to the imbecility and cowardice of the crowd of Bush policymakers that we have today.

No one had the swagger and casualness of George W. Bush when it came time to ask for the ultimate sacrifice of real people and their loved ones.

Army Worried by Rising Stress of Return Tours to Iraq

No one is mistaking the Bush-Cheney chickenhawks for people who give a damn, but Bush' idiotic war is taking its toll our serving troops and veterans.

From the NYT:

WASHINGTON — Army leaders are expressing increased alarm about the mental health of soldiers who would be sent back to the front again and again under plans that call for troop numbers to be sustained at high levels in Iraq for this year and beyond.

The Bush-McCain prescription:

- Stay in Iraq for decades,

- Cut and obstruct delivery of VA benefits; and

- Question the patriotism of anyone who disagrees

See also: Iraq War and U.S. Soldiers' Suicides; Every day five U.S. soldiers attempt to take their lives

Horton on Iraq

Good piece by Scott Horton at Harper's.

"... starting with the media’s own framing of the question: “Is the surge working?” The question should be different, namely, what are the U.S. objectives in Iraq and are they being met, or even served, by these developments?"

Zbigniew Brzezinski on Ending the Iraq War

The never-ending but always changing reasons offered by the administration and its political allies why we need to continue the occupation of Iraq are easily dismissed by any serious, honest analysis.

Zbigniew Brzezinski offers a straight-forward analysis in the Washington Post.

The case for U.S. disengagement from combat is compelling in its own right. But it must be matched by a comprehensive political and diplomatic effort to mitigate the destabilizing regional consequences of a war that the outgoing Bush administration started deliberately, justified demagogically and waged badly. ...

Nonetheless, if the American people had been asked more than five years ago whether Bush's obsessions with the removal of Saddam Hussein were worth 4,000 American lives, almost 30,000 wounded Americans and several trillion dollars -- not to mention the less precisely measurable damage to the United States' world-wide credibility, legitimacy and moral standing -- the answer would have been an unequivocal "no."

Iraq Surge Architects Are No ‘Vince Lombardis’

So when does incompetent, lying, and cowardly behavior make one a Vince Lombardi?

Having lied their way to war, and disgraced the sacrifice and courage of American troops in the field, now the war cheerleaders are saying that the chickenhawks are Vince Lombardi incarnate.

Hey fella, if you want to lie and cheat your way to a war and a disastrous occupation, that's not fine. But don't drag Lombardi's name into it.

You're out of your depth, so crawl back to the Brookings Institution and American Enterprise Institute, and posture about war from these safe and comfortable confines.

"I want to call them the Lombardis of this war," said Brookings analyst Michael O’Hanlon, who seems to know even less about football than war. O'Hanlon is referring to the Surge architects who have, he claims, achieved their objective of bringing about Iraqi political reconciliation through the escalation of American troops.

See the video at ThinkProgress of these chickenhawks congratulating themselves.

Corporate Genocide

Imagine the audacity of Al Jazeera and other Middle Eastern media to object to being invaded and occupied.

Here's an uppity Al Jazeera's piece by Nofa Khadduri on Iraq's corporate genocide.

And pay no mind to that big Basra Oil Terminal in the picture above; we invaded Iraq to bring democracy and protect the world from weapons of mass destruction and terrorists, and whatever else we decide to say in the future.

The Invasion of Iraq - Five Years in Disgrace

Update: Obama Delivers Speech on 5th Anniversary of Iraq War

Listening to Bush at the Pentagon this morning on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, one would be generous to brand this callow and disingenuous performance as that of a braying ass.

The truth is that this war has shattered the lives of 100,000s of Americans and millions of Iraqis, in a calculated set of lies with consequences so grave that one struggles to find the appropriate words of condemnation.

Juan Cole gives us a start in Salon. How President Bush and his advisors have spent each year of the war peddling mendacious tales about a mission accomplished

Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, who retired in late 2002, is the "three-star Marine Corps general who was the military's top operations officer before the invasion," has "urged active-duty officers to speak out now if they had doubts about the war." [NYT, April 10, 2006] Wrote Newbold:

Bush's decision to invade Iraq "was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions —or bury the results."

There is no way for us to understand the Bush regime's willingness to lie and sacrifice fellow human beings, as they speak about freedom and liberty—rights and inherent dignity of human beings that Bush and his minions neither understand nor appreciate.

What we do know is that Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney and everyone who played along with these people, and that includes Senators Clinton, Biden, Kerry, Edwards, Kohl, the whole lot of them, ought to begin to make reparations by actively resisting the continuation of this obscenity.

Five years of Iraq lies

Juan Cole has good piece in Salon.

How President Bush and his advisors have spent each year of the war peddling mendacious tales about a mission accomplished

Top U.S. Middle East Commander Resigns, Citing Esquire Article

From ABC News:

Admiral William Fallon, the top U.S. military commander for the Middle East, is resigning, citing a magazine article in which (he) appeared to criticize President George W. Bush's policy toward Iran.

So the top military commander in the most volatile region in the world resigns because a magazine article? I'm guessing there is something more substantive going on here.

For background, see Esquire: Concern Bush May Ax Admiral 'Fox' Fallon. Fallon said attack on Iran 'will not happen on my watch'.

See also Breaking: CentCom Chief Admiral Fallon Resigns.

See also National Security Network: Adm. Fallon's Dissenting Voice: Views on Iraq Strategy More in Line With American Mainstream than Bush Administration.

The Surge and the Bush Lie

by Nir Rosen in Rolling Stone

It's a cold, gray day in December, and I'm walking down Sixtieth Street in the Dora district of Baghdad, one of the most violent and fearsome of the city's no-go zones. Devastated by five years of clashes between American forces, Shiite militias, Sunni resistance groups and Al Qaeda, much of Dora is now a ghost town. This is what "victory" looks like in a once upscale neighborhood of Iraq: Lakes of mud and sewage fill the streets. Mountains of trash stagnate in the pungent liquid. Most of the windows in the sand-colored homes are broken, and the wind blows through them, whistling eerily. House after house is deserted, bullet holes pockmarking their walls, their doors open and unguarded, many emptied of furniture. What few furnishings remain are covered by a thick layer of the fine dust that invades every space in Iraq. Looming over the homes are twelve-foot-high security walls built by the Americans to separate warring factions and confine people to their own neighborhood. Emptied and destroyed by civil war, walled off by President Bush's much-heralded "surge," Dora feels more like a desolate, post-apocalyptic maze of concrete tunnels than a living, inhabited neighborhood. Apart from our footsteps, there is complete silence....

But loyalty that can be purchased is by its very nature fickle. Only months ago, members of the Awakening were planting IEDs and ambushing U.S. soldiers. They were snipers and assassins, singing songs in honor of Fallujah and fighting what they viewed as a war of national liberation against the foreign occupiers. These are men the Americans described as terrorists, Saddam loyalists, dead-enders, evildoers, Baathists, insurgents. There is little doubt what will happen when the massive influx of American money stops: Unless the new Iraqi state continues to operate as a vast bribing machine, the insurgent Sunnis who have joined the new militias will likely revert to fighting the ruling Shiites, who still refuse to share power.
"We are essentially supporting a quasi-feudal devolution of authority to armed enclaves, which exist at the expense of central government authority," says Chas Freeman, who served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the first President Bush. "Those we are arming and training are arming and training themselves not to facilitate our objectives but to pursue their own objectives vis-a-vis other Iraqis. It means that the sectarian and ethnic conflicts that are now suppressed are likely to burst out with even greater ferocity in the future." ...

Macaca Man and Sen. Coburn Introduce McCain to CPAC

Yuck. McCain is desperate to portray himself as a bigoted, fear-mongering know-nothing, someone CPAC and the Council for National Policy can be proud of.

McCain receives first boos at the mention of "illegal immigration," but seconds later backtracks on his previous position in favor of stressing border security and dedication to the rule of law.

McCain's writers know the racist code words, and McCain will play along.

McCain is now attacking the Feingold FISA amendments protecting civil liberties and fidelity to federal statute and the Fourth Amendment, quickly forgetting that rule-of-law thing he BSed about moments ago.

Biggest applause line yet: Make the Bush tax cuts permanent.

Hitting rightwing health care, rightwing legal doctrine, escalating the Iraq War, yada, yada.

I think the right will like this guy.

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Bush Is a Sad Joke

Update: Barack Obama's video response to Bush.

No one expected George W. Bush to burst forth with a candid speech last night.

And Bush met these low expectations well.

From the Times:

Monday night, after six years of promises unkept or insincerely made and blunders of historic proportions, the United States is now fighting two wars, the economy is veering toward recession and the civilized world still faces horrifying dangers — and it has far less sympathy and respect for the United States. …

Monday night’s address made us think what a different speech it might have been if Mr. Bush had capitalized on the unity that followed the 9/11 attacks to draw the nation together, rather than to arrogate ever more power and launch his misadventure in Iraq. How different it might have been if Mr. Bush meant what he said about compassionate conservatism or even followed the fiscal discipline of old-fashioned conservatism. How different if he had made a real effort to reach for the bipartisanship he promised in 2002 and so many times since.

Then he could have used last night’s speech to celebrate a balanced budget, one in which taxes produce enough money to pay for the nation’s genuine needs, including health care for poor children and a rebuilt New Orleans. Instead, Mr. Bush called — again — for his tax cuts to be permanent and threatened to veto bills that contained excessive pork-barrel spending, an idea absent from his agenda when Republicans held Congress.

Had Mr. Bush been doing his job right just in the last few weeks, he could have used this speech to celebrate a genuinely bipartisan agreement on a sound economic stimulus plan. In addition to the tax rebates agreed on already between the White House and the House, Mr. Bush could have announced sensible proposals for extending unemployment benefits and a temporary increase in food stamps for the most vulnerable citizens. …

If Mr. Bush had let compassion and good sense trump ideology, he would have been able to use last night’s speech to celebrate the expansion of health insurance to tens of millions of children with working parents. Mr. Bush vetoed an expansion of the S-chip program, and he did not even agree to pay for all of the existing coverage because he thought a relative handful of parents might switch from private to public insurance if they were offered government assistance to buy it. …

In the end, when it comes to Iraq, Mr. Bush’s annual addresses will be remembered most for his false claims — the fictitious “axis of evil,” nonexistent aluminum tubes and African uranium, dangerous weapons that did not exist. No president can want that as his legacy.

See also ThinkProgress for more analysis and fact checking.

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