Whatever Iraq is, it is not the road that leads to the defeat of the kind of terror attack that America had on 9-11. So when the war-bloggers and woefully unenlightened pundits of the Right insist that Iraq is a war that must be won in order to defeat terror, we ‘re really not having a debate. We’re dealing with people who cannot face reality and who are trying to wiggle out of responsibility for sending an average of 2 Americans a day to their deaths for reasons composed of myths about WMD, connections to al-Queda and some bizarre notions about making over the middle-east in their image. We actually lost the political war in Iraq ( not the military war – we can still kill more Iraqis for what ever that does for the war on terror) the same day Iraq was invaded. Iraq is the weapon the neocons are using to shoot America in the foot – al-Queda in their wildest dreams could not have thought of a better more deadly and useless quagmire. Iraq is now the boogie man, a nebulous cloud of doom that must be defeated for reasons that continue to be defined in nonsense – we must show the jihadists that we’re not weak. There is a very glaring problem with that thinking here as we note the five year anniversary of occupying Iraq – that as many as 600,000 Iraqis may have been killed and despite the incoherent “straight talk” of Senator McCain Iraq is nowhere near being stable and the presence of U.S. troops doesn’t seem to help, The Iraq War In Numbers
DAILY VIOLENCE: Average number of insurgent attacks over four years – 108 per day. Average for August 2005 to January 2006 – 81.1 per day. Average for November 2006 to February 2007 – 148.9 per day. Number of kidnappings of Iraqis – currently 30 to 40 per day. Number of foreign nationals kidnapped in four years – 300, including 54 killed. Estimated number of Iraqi insurgents – 20,000 to 30,000. Estimated number of foreign fighters – 800 to 2,000.
IRAQ OPINION: 38 per cent of Iraqis believe the situation is better now than before the invasion; 50 per cent think it’s worse.
photo by way of DailyKos
The number of insurgent attacks ( most insurgents are not terrorists) thanks to the Right’s great commander-in-deciding is actually increasing. Special Issue: Voices of the Fallen – ‘Any day I’m here could be the day I die,’ wrote Travis Youngblood, Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class
— 2005: Democracy: The White House focused on turning Iraq into a showcase of Middle Eastern democracy. For U.S. troops, mission fatigue began to set in. “There will be heightened security for elections. I expect to be busy around that time, just because these people feel safe whenever we are around. I wonder why?” wrote Marine Cpl. Kyle Grimes. “I usually get so incredibly bored whenever we are working with civilians. But you also can’t trust any of them. I am getting tired of not being able to trust average people. But I really have no choice with this place and an enemy like this. One thing is for sure. I know men that I can trust my life with. That is a great feeling.”
— 2006: Civil War: Soldiers are finding themselves in the middle of a civil war. “[In] Mosul we were bring attacked everyday,” wrote Army Sgt. Kraig Foyteck. “Out here we are not the targets. It’s one religion against another, we are just caught in the middle. However, if we are in the way, they will attempt to get rid of us as well.”
Obviously there are issues at play in regards to tribal and religious affiliations that the U. S. military is ill equipped to deal with. Here we are five years in and now one of the brilliant ideas – a day late and over 3000 lives lost and Secretary Rice wants a middle-eastern summit. Except it will not as of today include Iraq and Iran. ‘War on Terror’?
The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its bottle. It acquires a life of its own — and can become demoralizing. America today is not the self-confident and determined nation that responded to Pearl Harbor; nor is it the America that heard from its leader, at another moment of crisis, the powerful words “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”; nor is it the calm America that waged the Cold War with quiet persistence despite the knowledge that a real war could be initiated abruptly within minutes and prompt the death of 100 million Americans within just a few hours. We are now divided, uncertain and potentially very susceptible to panic in the event of another terrorist act in the United States itself.
That is the result of five years of almost continuous national brainwashing on the subject of terror, quite unlike the more muted reactions of several other nations (Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, to mention just a few) that also have suffered painful terrorist acts. In his latest justification for his war in Iraq, President Bush even claims absurdly that he has to continue waging it lest al-Qaeda cross the Atlantic to launch a war of terror here in the United States.
Such fear-mongering, reinforced by security entrepreneurs, the mass media and the entertainment industry, generates its own momentum. The terror entrepreneurs, usually described as experts on terrorism, are necessarily engaged in competition to justify their existence.
A large part of why we as a nation are still having this non-debate is the Right’s delusional narratives about why we’re still there and dressing it up in meaningless terms like winning and losing – Eumerica
On the other hand, Republican support is contracting to a base of about 25 per cent of the population whose views are getting more extreme, not merely because moderate conservatives are peeling off to become Independents, but also because of the party’s success in constructing a parallel universe of news sources, thinktanks, blogs, pseudo-scientists and so on, which has led to the core becoming more tightly committed to an extremist ideology.
The Right is not in its last throes – for a variety of reasons the Right and its social darwinistic world view will always be appealing to a few, but it is suffering from a kind of public breakdown as it takes on this kind of bunker mentality that the world will just fly into pieces if we stand in the way of their unfocused self-defeating behavior in regards to national security threats real, imagined and provoked.
Poll backs subpoenas of Bush aides
In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday-Sunday, respondents said by nearly 3-to-1 that Congress should issue subpoenas to force White House officials to testify.
I find this a little disappointing. It should be more like 99% favor an immediate investigation and Whitehouse and DOJ staff supeonaed. Seeking A Grand Unified Theory of Wankery; The Rise of the Booboisie
The evidence suggests that McKay and Iglesias, at minimum, were removed from their jobs in large part — and that “in large part” is itself being exceedingly generous to the administration — because they refused to file politically motivated indictments against Democrats intended to help Republicans skew election results.
Despite befuddled mutterings to the contrary, that’s a big deal. Corrupting a foundational principle of our democracy — that the police forces of a state will not be used as political weapons against the opposition? Demanding that prosecutors hound your political rivals or be fired?
Private Joker: “The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.” – Full Metal Jacket (1987)
The Long Goodbye 