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?"

'I Don't Think This Place Is Worth Another Soldier's Life'

Sobering news about Iraq from this morning's Washington Post:

After 14 months in a Baghdad district torn by mounting sectarian violence, members of one U.S. unit are tired, bitter and skeptical.

Pictured above: "Barriers in Sadiyah are daubed with graffiti about an Iraqi National Police brigade that used to patrol the area and the Iraqi army brigade that replaced it. U.S. soldiers and residents said the police were complicit in Shiite attacks on Sunnis."
- Photo Credit: Joshua Partlow -- The Washington Post

Joshua Partlow reports from Baghdad that hardened troops see the Iraq War as a bitter waste. I wonder if the Bush chickenhawks dare call these guys defeatocrats.

Even as the P.R. flacks and Bush and his cronies talk of the progress and advancement toward democracy as we confront "terrorism," these words ring hollow for the troops doing the fighting in Iraq.

The Post report by Partlow comes as veterans continue to organize group statements against the Iraq war such as the Twelve Former Army Captains Blast Iraq War public letter published earlier this month.

Writes Partlow:

A bomb crater blocks one lane, so they cross to the other side, where houses are blackened by fire, shops crumbled into bricks. The remains of a car bomb serve as hideous public art. Sgt. Victor Alarcon's Humvee rolls into a vast pool of knee-high brown sewage water -- the soldiers call it Lake Havasu, after the Arizona spring-break party spot -- that seeps in the doors of the vehicle and wets his boots.

"When we first got here, all the shops were open. There were women and children walking out on the street," Alarcon said this week. "The women were in Western clothing. It was our favorite street to go down because of all the hot chicks."

That was 14 long months ago, when the soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, arrived in southwestern Baghdad. It was before their partners in the Iraqi National Police became their enemies and before Shiite militiamen, aligned with the police, attempted to exterminate a neighborhood of middle-class Sunni families.

Next month, the U.S. soldiers will complete their tour in Iraq. Their experience in Sadiyah has left many of them deeply discouraged, by both the unabated hatred between rival sectarian fighters and the questionable will of the Iraqi government to work toward peaceful solutions.

Asked if the American endeavor here was worth their sacrifice -- 20 soldiers from the battalion have been killed in Baghdad -- Alarcon said no: "I don't think this place is worth another soldier's life." ...
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McClatchy: New military leaders question Iraq mission

Who are these guys? Defeatocrats?

Nancy A. Youssef and Renee Schoof have the story:

Four and a half years after the nation's top military leaders saluted and fell in behind President Bush's pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, their replacements are beginning to question the mission and sound alarms about the toll the war is taking on the Army and the Marine Corps. The change at the Pentagon is striking but little-noticed, in part because Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a longtime veteran of the CIA, is quiet where his predecessor Donald H. Rumsfeld was not.

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Twenty Retired Generals Blast Iraq War

Via the San Diego Union-Tribune

Our war president whom Karl Rove and Company planned to see swagger and posture his way to leading a Republican majority failed miserably.

Unfortunately, the idiots killed a lot of people in the process.

A lot of the military brass is still speaking out.

Mark Sauer:

The generals acted independently, coming in their own ways to the agonizing decision to defy military tradition and publicly criticize the Bush administration over its conduct of the war in Iraq.

What might be called The Revolt of the Generals has rarely happened in the nation's history.

In op-ed pieces, interviews and TV ads, more than 20 retired U.S. generals have broken ranks with the culture of salute and keep it in the family. Instead, they are criticizing the commander in chief and other top civilian leaders who led the nation into what the generals believe is a misbegotten and tragic war.

The active-duty generals followed procedure, sending reports up the chain of command. The retired generals beseeched old friends in powerful positions to use their influence to bring about a change.
When their warnings were ignored, some came to believe it was their patriotic duty to speak out, even if it meant terminating their careers.
It was a decision none of the men approached cavalierly. Most were political conservatives who had voted for George W. Bush and initially favored his appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary.
But they felt betrayed by Bush and his advisers.

“The ethos is: Give your advice to those in a position to make changes, not the media,” said Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, now retired. “But this administration is immune to good advice.”

More at San Diego Union-Tribune

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Bush Is the New Saddam

Hitler revisited, weapons of mass destruction, al Qaida, attack them before they attack us here; we've heard all of the phrases used over 17 years to describe Saddam Hussein.

Now he's one of us.

Patrick Graham of Macleans of Canada has a great piece detailing Bush's constantly changing goals, now reduced to simply running out the clock until 2008 and letting his successor clean up the mess.

It seems that former Sunni extremists, the dead-enders aren't so bad after all.

Writes Graham:

Many of America’s new allies are former insurgents and Saddam Hussein loyalists (Saddam was a Sunni) who only a short while ago were routinely called terrorists, “anti-Iraqi fighters,” and “Baathist dead-enders.” They are suspicious of one another and strongly anti-American, although willing to work, for the moment, with the U.S.

Nothing Bush says ought be taken at face value. But maybe that's obvious.

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Republicans Block Withdrawal

If Republicans are blocking the withdrawal of Iraq, one would expect headlines to state succinctly some version of "Republicans Block Withdrawal from Iraq."

From Yahoo, the headline reads: "Democrats failing to pass anti-war bill."

From Fox, the headline reads: "Senate Blocks Legislation to Cut Money for Troops in Iraq."

The indisputable truth is that the Republicans are self-consciously blocking any attempt at withdrawal from Iraq (or restore Habeas Corpus at home as well).

But if that message reflecting reality reaches far into the American consciousness, Republicans will face a huge electoral defeat in 2008.

So, reflecting much of the mass media's commitment to obscuring what Republicans are doing, we see headlines obfuscating the reality of Republican obstruction.

This morning's NYT headline was about the best that can be read in the corporate mass media: "Partisan Lines Solidify as Republicans Thwart Democrats Again on an Iraq Vote."

But that headline obscures by presenting the Republican action as a mere politcal debate, squabbling between parties.

The Republicans are defying the will of the American people and blocking withdrawal.

Republican obstruction is the fact and considerations of what will happen to the Republicans in 2008 ought not enter into what is reported to the American people.

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Getting Back to Normal in Iraq

Normal. That's how Bush described the wonderful effect of continued U.S. occupation of Iraq, people were just getting back to a normal life, with all its small joys and stability.

Fortunately, this blatant lie was knocked down across even the corporate, broadcast media with an unusual display of disgust.

This morning's NYT has this description of normalcy:

Iraqis have continued to flee their homes throughout the American troop increase, which began early this year, and despite assurances that it is becoming safe to return, uncrossable lines have been left in Iraqi minds and neighborhoods. Schools, hospitals and municipal buildings are quickly losing their diversity, and even moderate Iraqis like the Muhammads say they cannot imagine ever going back. ...

The patterns started to form in 2005, when militants began pushing Iraqis out of their houses, a deeply personal violation that often leaves families jobless and impoverished.
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An Oily and Bloody Fiasco

BuzzFlash nails it:

The Times piece, "Compromise on Oil Law in Iraq Seems to Be Collapsing," epitomizes the "Big Oily and Bloody Fiasco."

Cannot wait for tonight to hear Bush's determination and grit. Wouldn't you like to just deck that prick who calls himself the president?

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Bush League Tonight

The Times reports that tonight's presidential national address to the nation will feature Bush announcing some limited redeployment as a means of uniting the American people.

Absurd, the president is looking to buy some political time in the run-up to the 2008 elections.

"With lawmakers openly skeptical of his troop buildup, Mr. Bush will cast his plan for a gradual, limited withdrawal as a way to bring a divided America together — even as he resists demands from those who want him to move much faster," writes SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and STEVEN LEE MYERS.

Sidney Blumenthal at Salon notes that Bush will also take credit for successes against al-Qaida in Iraq that have enabled this withdrawal.

Al-Qaida in Iraq. Get used to that phrase, you'll hear "al-Qaida in Iraq" repeatedly tonight, though not the fact there was no al-Qaida in Iraq prior to the illegal invasion; the fact that al-Qaida in Iraq would summarily be kicked out when/if we leave, and that al-Qaida in Iraq does not have the capacity to strike America over here, and that al-Qaida is a loose confederation of whackos bearing the mantle of the man who did organize the 9/11 attacks.

And it's not an American withdrawal of any substance. Well over 100,000 troops can be expected to remain in Iraq for years under the Petraeus plan.

So, not counting the one of three Americans who still believe Saddam attacked us on 9/11 (Republican dead-enders), it is up to the public to infuse the Democrats with some spine.

As the Times reports:

When top Democratic leaders visited him at the White House this week, President Bush told them he wanted to “find common ground” on Iraq. But when the president said he planned to “start doing some redeployment,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, cut him off.
“No you’re not, Mr. President,” Ms. Pelosi interjected. “You’re just going back to the presurge level.”

That's a start.

This is all about Republican politics tonight; Iraq has long been irretrievably lost as a client oil state of the United States'. How many American troops and Iraqi civilians die and are maimed for life is not a consideration in Bush's world. We hope that it will be the main consideration with the American people.

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National Review: Stay in Iraq

The chickenhawk caucus wants us to stay in Iraq, forever.

Via ThinkProgress

In its May 9, 2005 issue, the National Review featured a cover proclaiming, “We’re Winning,” accompanied by a breathless cover story by National Review editor Rich Lowry:

It is time to say it unequivocally: We are winning in Iraq.

If current trends continue, our counter-insurgent campaign in Iraq will be fit to be mentioned in the same breath as the British victory over a Communist insurgency in Malaysia in the 1950s, a textbook example of this form of war.

After two years of “winning,” the National Review believes the war can still be won. From its new Sept. 24 issue:

This war can still be won, but only if we have the nerve and the patience to see it through. Recent events on the ground, strategic interest, and morality all point to only one imperative: Stay.
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Cole: Can Gen. Petraeus and Ryan Crocker Save the Next Democratic President?

Cole is simply the best:

Despite what the pundits will say, I fear the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the Hill Monday and Tuesday is not a turning point, does not give Bush breathing room, and is largely irrelevant.

To any extent that what they do in Iraq ends up making a real positive difference, Petraeus and Crocker will likely be doing the Democrats a big favor, not Bush, who won't be in office much longer.

The central question is whether the Democrats can force a significant reduction of troops from Iraq on Bush's watch, so as to avoid Iraq becoming exclusively their headache when they (as is likely) take over the White House in January of 2009. If they could, this drawdown would be the best option. Certainly, that is what a majority of Iraqis thinks, according to the new BBC/ABC poll.

But the answer is: No. The Democrats cannot get the troops out of Iraq because they cannot overturn a Bush veto in the House of Representatives, and because they cannot overcome the need for a consensus of 60 senators in the Senate. Some Democrats, such as Joe Lieberman, oppose a rapid withdrawal. And the likelihood that 11 Republican senators will suddenly become withdrawalniks between now and November, 2008, is negligible.

The testimony of Petraeus and Crocker may marginally reinforce the will of the Republicans to stay the course, but I do not think it is decisive. In all likelihood, the Republican senators would have continued to block their Democratic colleagues from doing anything really dramatic, anyway.

If the Democrats cannot prevail in withdrawing before Bush goes out of office (and they cannot), and if they then rapidly draw down the troops on taking office in 2009, they face the real prospect of a "Gerald Ford meltdown" of the sort that occurred in 1975 when the North Vietnamese and their VC allies took over South Vietnam.

You will note that Ford only served a couple of years as president and lost his election bid to a relative unknown named Jimmy Carter. Although economic stagflation and the stain of Watergate contributed to his defeat, I think the spectacle of the debacle in Indochina harmed Ford a great deal. The United States lost a war, and lost out to its ideological rival in an entire subcontinent of Asia in the midst of the Cold War. That would cause at least some Republicans to stay home in 1976, a sure way for Democrats to win an election.

Could 2010 look for Iraq like 1975 looked in Vietnam? Yes. I just do not see evidence that either the new Iraqi political class or the Iraqi security forces are likely to have the maturity to avoid a conflagration when the US military withdraws.

There are three major wars going on in Iraq: 1) for control of oil-rich Basra, among Shiite militias and tribes; 2) for control of Baghdad and its hinterlands between Sunni Arabs and Shiites; and 3) for control of oil-rich Kirkuk in the north, between Kurds on the one side and Arabs and Turkmen on the other.

Gen. Petraeus believes that the Sunni-Shiite struggle for Baghdad is the central struggle, and that if it cannot be calmed down, nothing can be accomplished. His main energies have been put into reducing violence in Baghdad itself, in which he has succeeded to a limited extent (i.e. getting violence back down to summer, 2006, levels instead of astronomical January 2007 levels).

The successes in Baghdad are ambiguous, not clear-cut. The year 2006 was particularly bloody, so getting to that level is not satisfactory. The reduction in statistics on sectarian violence has not prevented hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs from being ethnically cleansed (mainly displaced) from Baghdad, turning it from a city that was 65 percent Shiite into one that is 75 percent Shiite and rising. The Sunni Arabs of al-Anbar, whether they hate "al-Qaeda" or not, say in interviews that they support the withdrawal of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accord Front from the al-Maliki government, precisely on the grounds that al-Maliki is entangled with the Shiite militias that are displacing the Sunni Arabs from Baghdad.

Further, Gen. Petraeus has frankly admitted that whatever successes he has had in Baghdad militarily (and he has had some there) have not yet translated into solid political gains in Sunni-Shiite reconciliation. He continues to entertain hopes that they will be so translated, but all he can proffer us in this regard is exactly that, hopes.

Petraeus's perspective ignores the over-all rise in civilian deaths in 2007 compared to 2006, and pays no attention to Shiite-Shiite violence in Basra and Karbala. He also codes the Arab attack on Yazidi Kurds as an "al-Qaeda" act of violence. In fact, it was part of an ethnic struggle for control of land and oil in the Iraqi north that is just as destabilizing, potentially, as is the battle for Baghdad. He points to Iraqi security forces policing provinces such as Muthanna and Nasiriya in the Shiite south. It has to be acknowledged, however, that those provincial security forces are dominated by the Badr Corps militia of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which was trained and may still be being partially funded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. And they are in an ongoing struggle with the Mahdi Army militia, also Shiite but more Iraqi nativist.

My own expectation is that unless Iraqi politicians become far more canny and powerful during the next two years, then when the American forces withdraw, the ethnic and sectarian militias will fight the three wars (Basra, Baghdad, Kirkuk) to a conclusion. It will likely be a bloody war similar to that in Afghanistan in the 1990s. With the Americans not around, it is possible that large militia forces will fight set piece battles.

There is also a danger of the neighbors being drawn into a big proxy fight in Iraq (including the Saudis, the Iranians, the Jordanians, the Syrians and the Turks).

Neither outcome is inevitable. If al-Maliki learns how to cultivate the Sunni Arabs as well as Petraeus has been (and if the Sunni Arabs will accept it from al-Maliki, which is not assured), then he might be able to draw them into his orbit just as King Feisal did in the 1920s. Al-Maliki's government is said to have $10 bn. in oil revenue that it refuses to spend; that could buy some loyalty.

Likewise, the US, the Europeans and the Arab League could work hard diplomatically to avoid a proxy war among the neighbors, and it might be avoided. I am heartened that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad of Iran seem intent on continuing to dialogue, and to avoid tensions reaching a fever picth between the two countries. If the US had any sense, it would be warmly encouraging this diplomacy, not trying to get the Arabs and Israelis to gang up on Iran.

But in all likelihood, when the Democratic president pulls US troops out in summer of 2009, all hell is going to break loose. The consequences may include even higher petroleum prices than we have seen recently, which at some point could bring back stagflation or very high rates of inflation.

In other words, the Democratic president risks being Fordized when s/he withdraws from Iraq, by the aftermath. A one-term president associated with humiliation abroad and high inflation at home? Maybe I should say, Carterized. The Republican Party could come back strong in 2012 and then dominate politics for decades, if that happened.

It is all so unfair, of course, since Bush started and prosecuted this disaster in Iraq, and Bush is refusing to accept responsibility for the failure, pushing it off onto his successor.

But life is unfair.

So what can the Dems do to avoid being made the fall guy this way?

They could try to legislate stronger US diplomacy aiming at ensuring peace between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran even if there is sectarian violence on a greater scale in Iraq. They could resist the temptation to demonize Iran or to push it onto a war footing with threats or even bombings.

As for Iraq itself, the best hope for the Dems may be that Gen. Petraeus actually succeeds, over the next year, in significantly reducing ethnic tensions. It is a slim reed to hold onto, as they recognize.

But from the moment Bush went into Iraq, Americans were screwed. And that includes the Democratic Party, which is being set up to take the fall.

I'm a severe skeptic on the likelihood of anything that looks like success in Iraq. But I don't think career public servants such as Ryan Crocker and David Petraeus are acting as partisan Republicans in their Iraq efforts. I think they both are sincere, experienced men attempting to retrieve what they can for America from Bush's catastrophe. They may as well try, since the Democrats can't over-rule Bush and get the troops out, anyway. If the troops are there, they may as well at least be deployed intelligently, which is what Gen. Petraeus is doing. I wish them well in their Herculean labors. Because if they fail, I have a sinking feeling that we are all going down with them, including the next Democratic president. And their success is a long shot.
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Iraq War a Failure: 59 percent to 34 percent

Americans have stopped believing Bush's lies, no matter who is peddling them.

"We cannot take any of this administration's assertions on Iraq at face value anymore," said Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., a war foe and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee. "And no amount of charts or statistics will improve its credibility."

Underscoring the public's negativity, four times as many predicted the war in Iraq would be judged as a complete U.S. failure as the number who see a complete success, 28 percent to 7 percent.

Bush's new Iraq policy is an exercise of kicking the can down the road-the Post.

Bush policy to bequeath Iraq to successor-LA Times
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Nixon's Killer '68 Speech on War We Should Echo

Via Buzzflash:

Go to Buzzflash and hit the arrow icon next to "Play."

"An unpopular president [Johnson] was prosecuting an unpopular war, which was despised by more than half the American people. His political opponent [Nixon, although Nixon actually ran against Humphrey, Johnson's Vice-President] knew that the best way to take him down - and ultimately to take down his entire Party - was to simply say out loud what everybody knew to be true. To call out the President. To declare him and his war a failure. To call on the American people for truth and honesty in government, and an end to war. Here's a quick clip composite, sent along to us by a listener (I'm sorry, I don't remember whom) a year or so ago, of Richard Nixon at the 1968 Republican National Convention..."

-- Thom Hartmann
Go to Buzzflash and hit the arrow icon next to "Play."

The Times blasts Petraeus

Editorial
Empty Calories
For months, President Bush has been promising an honest accounting of the situation in Iraq, a fresh look at the war strategy and a new plan for how to extricate the United States from the death spiral of the Iraqi civil war. The nation got none of that yesterday from the Congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. It got more excuses for delaying serious decisions for many more months, keeping the war going into 2008 and probably well beyond.

It was just another of the broken promises and false claims of success that we’ve heard from Mr. Bush for years, from shock and awe, to bouquets of roses, to mission accomplished and, most recently, to a major escalation that was supposed to buy Iraqi leaders time to unify their nation. We hope Congress is not fooled by the silver stars, charts and rhetoric of yesterday’s hearing. Even if the so-called surge had created breathing room, Iraq’s sectarian leaders show neither the ability nor the intent to take advantage of it.

The headline out of General Petraeus’s testimony was a prediction that the United States should be able to reduce its forces from 160,000 to 130,000 by next summer. That sounds like a big number, but it would only bring American troops to the level that were in Iraq when Mr. Bush announced his “surge” last January. And it’s the rough equivalent of dropping an object and taking credit for gravity. The military does not have the troops to sustain these high levels without further weakening the overstretched Army and denying soldiers their 15 months of home leave before going back to war.

The general claimed a significant and steady decline in killings and deaths in the past three months, but even he admitted that the number of attacks is still too high. Recent independent studies are much more skeptical about the decrease in violence. The main success General Petraeus cited was in the previously all-but-lost Anbar Province where local sheiks, having decided that they hate Al Qaeda more than they hate the United States, have joined forces with American troops to combat insurgents. That development — which may be ephemeral — was not a goal of the surge and surprised American officials. To claim it as a success of the troop buildup is, to be generous, disingenuous.

The chief objective of the surge was to reduce violence enough that political leaders in Iraq could learn to work together, build a viable government and take decisions to improve Iraqi society, including sharing oil resources. Congress set benchmarks that Mr. Bush accepted. But after independent investigators last week said that Baghdad had failed to meet most of those markers, Mr. Crocker dismissed them. The biggest achievement he had to trumpet was a communiqué in which Iraqi leaders promised to talk more.

General Petraeus admitted success in Iraq would be neither quick nor easy. Mr. Crocker claimed that success is attainable, but made no guarantee. With that much wiggle room in the prognosis, one would think American leaders would start looking at serious alternative strategies — like the early, prudent withdrawal of troops that we favor. The American people deserve more than what the general and the diplomat offered them yesterday.

For that matter, they deserve more than what was offered by Representative Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. When protesters interrupted the hearing, Mr. Skelton ordered them removed from the room, which is understandable. But then he said that they would be prosecuted. That seemed like an unnecessarily authoritarian response to people who just wanted to be heard.

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Petraeus Says U.S. Will Stay

In sum, the word from (the P.R. President) Petraeus: No end in sight.

Petraeus did testify that military objectives are being met, progress is being made, ... but troop force will not come down for years to come.

The Post paints Petraeus' testimony as follows:
The long-awaited testimony this afternoon of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, once seen as a potential turning point in war policy, seemed more like an exercise of kicking the can down the road.


Let's hope Petraeus doesn't get injured over there in Iraq, and come home and have to deal with the VA.

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Iraq-Vietnam Speech Reflects Desperation

George W. Bush's invoking the Vietnam withdrawal and post-World War II American occupation of Japan to support the continued occupation of Iraq is of-course laughable on its academic merits. [Via the Poltico, see one Bush-cited historian's knocking down such a comparison in November 2002.]

To the anti-intellectual and authoritarian Bush administration, facts and history are malleable instruments that can be changed to fit whatever ideological and political objective is on the administration docket.

But the well-crafted and politically risky speech is revealing of the desperate situation in which the anxious administration fabulists and fantasists find themselves.

They well know that if the invasion and occupation were to continue into the 2008 elections and be perceived by the electorate in anything resembling reality, the war party would face losses approaching the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater election.

So now, Bush attempts to once again reinvent reality, create his own history, and have his talking points bounce around the rightwing echo chamber, while proclaiming that the administration cannot be held accountable by the American public today but rather can be judged only by history.

Nothing to lose at this point for the Bushies, might as well try setting the record straight (by their lights) on Vietnam for which one segment of the Bushies' base still maintains a vague I-bet-we-coulda-won-that-one-too feeling. [The Watergate-Vietnam reforms making the executive branch constitutionally accountable to the people's representatives could use some reworking too, the Bushies feel.]

And war frightens the hell out of democrats.

It's like the 1970s movie, The Longest Yard, in which the quarterback Burt Reynolds repeatedly rifles a football into the most vulnerable part of the male anatomy, killing a man (Packers great Ray Nitschke) though no one really wants to find out for sure.

It worked once, it ought to work again, said Reynolds, to the giggles of his teammates in the huddle.

Bush is throwing war at the democrats again. And the typical democrat today is no Ray Nitschke.

The Vietnam-Japan gambit meant to capture or at least confuse the imaginations of one depoliticized segment of the public was predictably ridiculed by those for whom some semblance of reality is still necessary.

But the Bushies don’t care what a bunch of historians and intellectuals think; the Bushies can spin their own history just fine.

Even as the specter of another grand, foolish military venture dances around Washington scaring many of the testicularally-challenged democrats who appeased Bush on Iraq, Bush knows in his heart most Americans believe him to be wrong.

But when the rain falls, one ought to truly hold his head up high.

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Ari Fleischer Returns to Lie Some More

If you need someone who is still willing to sell the Iraq war, how about Ari Fleischer? Ari LieSure: Perfect.

Via ThinkProgress:

Beginning today, Freedom’s Watch, a new right-wing front group for the White House, “will unveil a month-long, $15 million television, radio and grass-roots campaign” to pressure Congress to continue supporting President Bush’s disastrous Iraq strategy.

The group, which is “funded by high-profile Republicans who were aides and supporters of President Bush,” is headed by a familiar face from the Bush war effort: former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.

The privately-funded ad campaign will run in 20 states, featuring Iraq war vets and families of fallen soldiers arguing that the war should continue. The four ads produced so far by Fleischer’s Freedom’s Watch group contain little more than fear-mongering about an Iraq pullout. “They attacked us and they will again. They won’t stop in Iraq,” one ad says. “It will mean more attacks in America,” says another. Yet another ad warns, “We’ve already had one 9/11, we don’t need another.”

Likening himself to a battlefield general, Fleischer said, “For people who believe in peace through strength, the cavalry is coming.”

Below are some examples of Fleischer’s well-established record of propagating false assertions and rosy predictions about Iraq:

“[T]here’s no question that if force is used, it will achieve the objective of preserving the peace far faster than the current path that we’re on.” [2/14/03]

“[G]iven the chance to throw off a brutal dictator like Saddam Hussein, people will rejoice.” [3/21/03]

“[W]hen you take a look at the level of violence inside of Iraq, it is impossible to argue anything other than violence has, indeed, come down as a result of America’s military operations.” [6/25/03]

“My point is, the likelihood is much more like Afghanistan, where the people who live right now under a brutal dictator will view America as liberators, not conquerors.” [10/11/02]

“There have been contacts between senior members of — senior Iraqi officials and members of the al Qaeda organization, going back for quite a long time. … Iraq provided some training to al Qaeda in chemical weapons development. There are contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda.” [1/27/03]

“There is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly. … And all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.” [3/21/03]

“The fact of the matter is, one of the reasons the Iraqi people are supportive of the efforts we’ve had there is because of the effort that’s been done in the reconstruction phase.” [7/1/03]

“I think that if you look at the Iraqi people, the Iraqi people are overwhelmingly pleased with the fact the United States has helped them to get rid of the Saddam Hussein regime. That was clear from their dancing in the streets, from the way they tore down the statues. And I think that is the viewpoint of the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people.” [7/1/03]

“[N]o, I don’t think there’s any chance of losing the peace, but it is going to be a battle to continue to win the peace.” [5/19/03]

Not content having misled the nation into war, Fleischer and his White House front group are now set to argue that the bloodiest summer of the war yet is a sign that “that the buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq is working.”

UPDATE: Joe Sudbay at Americablog notes that “Iraq has always been a political issue for the Bush team.”

UPDATE II: Tom Matzzie, the campaign manager of Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, has written an open letter to Fleischer, complete with a chart of where the ads are targeted.

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Saturday in Iraq

Just another day.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Kirkuk Car Bomb Kills 11 UN to Up Involvement in Iraq Wave of Killings, Death Threats in Najaf

The United Nations Security Council voted to get more involve in Iraq on Friday. The increase of staffers involved, however, is minuscule, and the vote is more important for its symbolism than for its likely effective impact. The staffers will have a special charge to help in promoting national reconciliation among Sunnis and Shiites. Some observers are cynically commenting that the Bush administration is trying to push the Iraq problem off onto the UN now that it has become so dire, though when he thought the Iraq Occupation would be a success, Bush tried desperatedly to sideline the UN.

Al-Hayat writing in Arabic reports that the top religious leaders in the Shiite holy city of Najaf have given their seminary students permission to leave the country in the wake of a wave of assassinations and death threats that have provoked consternation among security and religious officials alike. There appears to be a secret organization behind the killings and threats, which possesses a high degree of competence, that is stalking persons with a close connection to the top religious leaders, especially associates of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.Hazim al-A`raji, an aide to Muqtada al-Sadr, said that police officers who had interrogated members of the millenarian Soldiers of Heaven cult had been targeted for assassination. But, he said, the situation was so murky that it was impossible to assign exact blame. The son of Grand Ayatollah Bashir Najafi (from Karachi, Pakistan) said that dozens of seminarians and aides had been sent to Syria or Lebanon after receiving death threats, and that the indiscriminate character of the threats had made it difficult to identify the perpetrator. A Sadr spokesman in Najaf denied a US military allegation that Muqtada al-Sadr had departed to Iran and was not in control of the Mahdi Army. The spokesman said that Muqtada is present in Najaf. He was last seen in public on 25 May.In al-Qurnah, north of Basra, the son of the sheikh of the Banu Malik tribe, Wissam al-Maliki, was cut down by assassins. This is the tribe from which PM Nuri al-Maliki derives.

Guerrillas deployed a car bomb in the northern oil city of Kirkuk on Friday, killing at least 11 persons and wounding 45.

Swopa on al-Maliki and Ahmadinejad: Your tax dollars at work.

On the new documentary, "No end in Sight."

posted by Juan Cole @ 8/11/2007 06:31:00 AM 0 comments
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Iraq Surge Is a Failure

Patrick Coburn continues his typically sober reporting from Iraq and knocks down the propaganda about the array of successes made in the occupation through the surge.

Bush and company are lying again.

On January 10 this year President Bush announced that he too now believed he had the formula for victory. In an address to the American nation he announced a new strategy for Iraq that became known as “the surge”. He said he was sending a further 20,000 US troops to Iraq. ...

The surge is now joining a host of discredited formulae for success and fake turning points that the US has promoted in Iraq over the last 52 months. In December 2003 there was the capture of Saddam Hussein. Six months later in June 2004 there was the return of Iraqi sovereignty to Iraq. “Let freedom reign,” said Mr Bush in a highly-publicised response though the present Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki claims he cannot move a company of soldiers without American permission.

See CounterPunch for more.
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