IEDs, PTSD But No Nudity

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As the Iraqi and Afghan wars continue, the frustration and horror of US GIs on the ground seems to have no bounds. Not only do they have to endure a violent and senseless situation every day, but they have to suffer double and triple for it, even after coming home.

American and Iraqi forces in Baghdad have been targeted with 251 improvised bombs this month — nearly double the monthly average — as fighting in and around Sadr City intensified.
Some of the attacks involved deadly armor-piercing bombs that the U.S. military has linked to Iran, said Army Brig. Gen. Mike Milano, deputy commander of the American division in the capital.
The numbers, provided by the Multi-National Division-Baghdad, include bombs that were detonated or found before they were triggered.
On average, 42% are discovered before they are detonated.
The increase in bombings partly reflects a struggle for control of the roads into Sadr City, a Shiite slum of more than 1 million people in eastern Baghdad.
…
At least 14 of the 33 American combat deaths in Iraq this month have occurred in Baghdad, according to a database maintained by USA TODAY.
– Jim Michaels, USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/news/military, (4/28/08)

Urban warfare warapped in an intense religious insurgency is a horror in which the US has found itself. Stress levels everywhere are always on an extreme-high level.
Sucking on Red Bull and watching the alleyways, US GIs continue to do the job, though, day-after-day for now over five years.
While assholes arrogantly blubber:

“As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
– Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, responding to a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq who asked him why troops had to dig through scrap metal to armor vehicles, Dec. 8, 2004.

And what if the entire GI breaks down, dumb-ass Don?

WASHINGTON — The latest and most comprehensive study of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has concluded that nearly 1 in every 5 veterans is suffering from depression or stress disorders and that many are not getting adequate care.
The study shows that mental disorders are more prevalent and lasting than previously known, surfacing belatedly and lingering after troops have been discharged.
…
An estimated 300,000 veterans among the nearly 1.7 million who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan are battling depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. More than half of these people, according to the study conducted by the Rand Corp., are slipping through the cracks in the bureaucratic system, going without necessary treatment.
The Rand study underscores one of the lessons of modern counterinsurgency conflicts: Such wars may kill fewer troops than traditional fighting but can leave deeper psychological scars.
– Julian E. Barnes, latimes.com/news/science, (4/18/08)

And what kind of shithole awaits returning GIS in the good-old US of A?
One parent got really pissed:

(CNN) — The U.S. military is promising action to address conditions in a barracks at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, after a soldier’s father posted images on YouTube showing a building that he said “should be condemned.”
“This is embarrassing. It’s disgusting. It makes me mad as hell,” Ed Frawley said of the building where his son, Sgt. Jeff Frawley, had to live upon his return this month from a 15-month deployment to Afghanistan.
Frawley said Monday that Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Dick Cody called him to say he shares Frawley’s anger and that “there’s no excuse.” Cody said he would not want his own sons or any troops to return to such conditions, Frawley said.
Frawley’s 10-minute video shows still photos from throughout the building, which appears to be falling apart and filled with mold and rust.
Paint — which Frawley said is lead-based — is chipping. Ceiling tiles are missing. A broken drain pipe allows sewer gas into the building, while another one has tissues stuffed into it in an apparent effort to stop the gas from coming in.
– cnn.com/2006/us/04/28/barracks.bragg, (4/28/08)

And now no more girlie mags.
Conservative Republican and “Pro Family” bozo Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia along with 15 like-minded co-sponsors and propped up by the likes of the Alliance Defense Fund and the American Family Association are pushing legislation that would ban sales of adult-themed publications on military bases.
They have the unmitigated gall to call the bill the Military Honor and Decency Act.

A sample of the ole Dufus Dick Cheney chickenhawkshit bluster (a freakin’ mouthful):

“As a Marine, I am deeply concerned for the welfare of our troops and their mission,” Broun said on April 17. “Allowing the sale of pornography on military bases has harmed military men and women by: escalating the number of violent, sexual crimes; feeding a base addiction; eroding the family as the primary building block of society; and denigrating the moral standing of our troops both here and abroad. Our troops should not see their honor sullied so that the moguls behind magazines like Playboy and Penthouse can profit. The ‘Military Honor and Decency Act’ will right a bureaucratic–and moral–wrong.”
…
“Let me get this straight,” The Carpetbagger Report’s Steve Benen added. “U.S. troops are fighting two wars, neither of which are going well, and the American Family Association’s biggest concern is what kind of magazines the troops can purchase on base?
“Here’s a radical idea: maybe those who wear the uniform and put their lives on the line for their country should be able to read whatever they want.”
– Nick Langewis, raw story.com/news/2008/Bill_seeks_to_jack_soldiers_off, (4/26/08)

Hypocrite bastards!

Original Intent

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Now more than seven-and-a-half years later, the US has been sidelined from pursuing bad guys and instead is on a quagmire-like, downward spiral via a couple of savage sinkholes.
Although a military strike into Afghanistan appeared to be logical move in the fall of 2001, original intent had been Iraq.

“We will definitely have to draw down in Iraq,” he said. But he was reluctant to give a date, saying “the size of our force will come down when the Iraqi Army is capable of defending itself.”
However, he sees no light at the end of the Afghanistan tunnel.
“We have a lot further to go there than in Iraq,” he said. “We’ll be there for the long haul.”
– Gen. George W. Casey Jr., US Army chief of staff, Knight Ridder Newspapers, (4/22/08)

Launched Oct. 7. 2001, the war in Afghanistan has morphed into a long-term nightmare. After all reserved resources of the US military were required to halt the spreading horror of Iraq, the conflict to subdue the Taliban, find Osama bin Laden and put “democracy” in power has slipped backward in time.
Lessons learned in Iraq find pupils in Afghanistan:

A spate of suicide bombings and other attacks on security forces in southern Afghanistan Wednesday left 13 people dead and 24 others wounded, officials said.
In Kandahar province, a suicide bomber blew himself up next to a vehicle carrying intelligence agents in the border town of Spin Boldak, killing three civilians, Kandahar Gov. Assadullah Khalid said.
Two children and three intelligence agents were among the 14 hurt, Khalid said.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the insurgent group was behind the attack and identified the bomber as a man named Gul Mohammad.
A 16-year-old boy who was wounded in the explosion said police shot at the bomber before he detonated explosives.
…
More than 900 policemen were among the 8,000 people killed last year in insurgency-related violence, officials said. The high death toll comes despite some $4 billion the U.S. has spent to train and equip the police in the last three years.
– Noor Khan, Associated Press, (4/23/08)

In the autumn of 2001, Decider George wasn’t Decider George. He was President Bush.
We hadn’t then much of a true inkling of his actual character — we had no idea the man was a complete incompetent, arrogant asshole.

However, we sure-as-shit should have known.
The following a British look at the US head of state a couple of days after the World Trade Center/Pentagon attacks:

President Bush was still struggling yesterday to come to terms with how to lead and unify the nation.
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, Franklin D Roosevelt struck just the right note when he spoke of a “day of infamy.”
After the Oklahoma bombing six years ago, Bill Clinton’s eloquent and heartfelt response showed that he could rise to the occasion during a national crisis.
…
Mr Bush was not helped by the confusion surrounding him after he left Florida, where he had been about to deliver a speech at an elementary school. “I, unfortunately, will be going back to Washington after my remarks,” he told his audience.
…
In the crucial first hours when the nation began to look to him for reassurance and a sense of unity, Mr Bush appeared stunned and uncertain. There was a sense of panic around him as he was flown across the country instead of being returned to the capital.
…
It was not until the evening that it touched down at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington.
By that time, the lost hours immediately after the biggest national catastrophe for 50 years had made Mr Bush’s task as president all the more difficult, even as Americans joined together to rally around him.
– telegraph.co.uk/news, (Sept. 13, 2001)

And the key phrase, a notion Decider George “appeared stunned and uncertain,” seems about right for the little chickenshit.
Dufus Dick Cheney, Decider George’s able number one, another yellow-bellied, let-the-other-guy-and/or-his-children-die-for-me warrior: He was hunkered down in a deep pit somewhere in Washington, D.C., as the tale of Sept. 11 unfolded across US TV screens.
No one has reported how Dufus Dick appeared, but most-likely piss-his-pants scared.
Dufus Dick, by far, is the brains of this two-muled, trainwreck of a presidency — if brains is the right word, maybe more the ‘asshole soul’ (but that’s a mouthful) — and he started near-immediately building the infrastructure to completly deface the world.

One has to give the boys credit: they moved pretty fast.
Just in his second week, the-then-President Bush created a so-called energy task force, officially known as the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) with Dufus Dick as its boiler head.
Since Dufus Dick had his slick fingers all over big oil and big construction firms like Halliburton, it was only fair all the fat cats get their share.
A near-complete secret operation, though some details were eventually leaked to the press, and via a couple of lawsuits, Dufus Dick and his task force never had to account to anyone and anybody.
According to” the Washington Post, Dufus Dick met in early 2001 with executives from the oil and gas industries, including Anadarko Petroleum’s Robert Allison and then-Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay: All the king’s gold lay at their feet.

Oil and all its subsidiary connections and industries was the goal of the task force.
Iraq had the oil.
A pressing need was to get to the oil in Iraq.

History can be real cute at times, horrifyingly cute. The attacks in New York, Washington and in a quiet Pennsylvania pasture was the linchpin for Iraq.
And like spoiled boys, Decider George and Dufus Dick, aided and abetted by Big Don Rumsfeld, along with a giant host of other incompetent assholes, abandoned Afghanistan for the ultimate toy: Iraq and its oil.

And now a double quagmire when no one in either Afghanistan or Iraq greeted the US as liberators.

“Go fuck yourself.”
– Dufus Dick to Sen. Patrick Leahy during an angry exchange on the US Senate floor. Leahy was asking about profiteering by Halliburton (June 25, 2004)

‘Wild Bill’ and the TV Generals

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A first read and seemingly nothing new. A few minutes, hours and now a couple of days to contemplate. The scenario now sickens us to the bowels.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.
The effort, which began with the buildup to the war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.
…
Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.
…
Five years into the Iraq war, most details of the architecture and execution of the Pentagon’s campaign have never been disclosed. But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation.
These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated.
…
In interviews, participants described a powerfully seductive environment — the uniformed escorts to Mr. Rumsfeld’s private conference room, the best government china laid out, the embossed name cards, the blizzard of PowerPoints, the solicitations of advice and counsel, the appeals to duty and country, the warm thank you notes from the secretary himself.
“Oh, you have no idea,” Mr. Allard said, describing the effect. “You’re back. They listen to you. They listen to what you say on TV.” It was, he said, “psyops on steroids” — a nuanced exercise in influence through flattery and proximity. “It’s not like it’s, ‘We’ll pay you $500 to get our story out,’ ” he said. “It’s more subtle.”
The access came with a condition. Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon.
…
As it happened, the analysts’ news media appearances were being closely monitored. The Pentagon paid a private contractor, Omnitec Solutions, hundreds of thousands of dollars to scour databases for any trace of the analysts, be it a segment on “The O’Reilly Factor” or an interview with The Daily Inter Lake in Montana, circulation 20,000.
Omnitec evaluated their appearances using the same tools as corporate branding experts. One report, assessing the impact of several trips to Iraq in 2005, offered example after example of analysts echoing Pentagon themes on all the networks.
– nytimes.com/2008/04/20/Washington, (4/20/08)

As the US ran hard up to the war and after the invasion, we figured these retired military types were just trying to make some extra money by appearing on every TV news show on the planet. They could give what we’d call an “educated guess” about what was happening, about certain strategies and how situations might play.
We figured at worst, these retired military bozos were just loud-mouthed dumb shits.

We had no idea they were liars, cheats and as a blogger on the liberal dailykos called them: traitors.

Even as the “Generals’ Revolt” in 2006 broke, the Pentagon worked their in-house mouthpieces to dull the outcry from the former officers about Decider George’s totally botched operation in Iraq.

And on the other side of the coin: Gen. William Odom. We like to call him “Wild Bill” Odom because he looks nothing like someone who’d be called “Wild.” The name is similar to “Speedy” — attached to a slow person. He doesn’t look like a “wild” type guy if seen on PBS.
We call Odom “Wild Bill” out of the greatest respect.
He’s been on the mark a long time:

I said before the war in February that if we invade Iraq, this will serve primarily the interests of two people: Osama bin Laden, because it will make Iraq safe for al Qaeda, and it will allow him to have access to kill Americans, which he cannot do in the U.S. very effectively; the second party that would benefit greatly would be the Iranians.
Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, and they fought for eight years, and Iranians hated that regime as much more than we did. Therefore it was very much in their interest, and it is clearer now that a Shiite majority will probably end up in control in Iraq, and it will not be pro-American, and it probably will be an Islamic religious republic.
– democracy now.org/2005/10/4/ret_army_general_William_odom_u, (10/4/05)

Earlier this month, in testimony before the US Senate Committee Foreign Relations On Iraq, Odom again called on the US to leave Iraq quickly: “The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region.”

The operative words now from Odom’s testimony is “in good order.”

Why can’t people listen to words of wisdom from a guy that knows his shit instead of all those TV generals mouthing Decider George’s wayward notions.
Wild Bill is telling the truth.

And soon, however, everyone will acknowledge what Odom’s been saying, but by then the blood of US GIs will be knee-high.

Surging ‘Uptick’

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Just as soon as we think the situation in Iraq is going to get worse, it does.
Business for the new, improved Iraqi version of al-Qaeda is booming. The Iraq central government is farther pushing the country into a wide-open, no-holds-barred, bloody civil war each and every day.
And literally scrambling around in the crosshairs of a shitload of gun barrels are US military personnel.

U.S. troops killed 12 militants during an “uptick” in fighting Sunday, the military said, as fierce clashes broke out in Baghdad’s Sadr City district after radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr warned he will declare war if a crackdown against his followers persists.
…
Sadr City, a sprawling district of some 2.5 million people in eastern Baghdad, has seen daily clashes between U.S.-backed Iraqi forces who have launched a crackdown against Shiite militias led by al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.
But (US military spokesman, Lt. Col. Steve) Stover said the fighting on Sunday was among the fiercest.
“There was an uptick in violence in comparison with the past couple of weeks,” Stover said, although he declined to link it to al-Sadr’s warning, which was broadcast over mosque loudspeakers in the district late Saturday.
“We’re not looking for a fight but what we are doing is protecting the Iraqi people,” Stover said.
– Bushra Juhi, Associated Press, (4/20/08)

According to Sadr, however, protecting the Iraqi people means for the US to get the shit out of Dodge — or Baghdad.
And Col. Stover’s little verbage from the AP story — “uptick” — might be the call sign for the last phase of US involvement in Iraq.
From “Mission Accomplished” to the “surge” and finally to an “uptick,” Decider George’s horrible little war, now officially considered a “major debacle” by his own Pentagon people, could be gearing for a traumatic ending.

In a statement today, Sadr ripped into Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for allowing the fighting to continue against his Mahdi Army.
Maliki said earlier in the day the central Iraq government would not tolerate armed groups, including Sadr’s militia and the country was not going to become the “the new Somalia.”
(Nothing but chaos and turmoil in Somalia since 1991 — tribal factions have continued to slaughter each other — and the US was slightly, but terribly involved, i.e., the ‘Black Hawk Down’ episode in 1993, and on Sunday, news reports indicated 81 civilians were killed in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, during the current fighting between Ethiopian troops and Islamic militants).

And Sadr appears fairly pissed. Just yesterday, he gave a “final warning” to the government to halt a U.S.-Iraqi crackdown against his followers or he would declare “open war until liberation.”

And on Sunday, in response to Maliki, the words got harsh:

“As far as I’m aware, the Iraqi forces supported by the occupation forces attacked some of our believer brothers.
“They killed them in the most gruesome of ways and then burned them, and refused to hand over their pure bodies for burial,” he said, referring to clashes in Nasiriya on Saturday that left 16 militiamen dead and another 22 wounded. Eleven police officers were also wounded in the fighting.
– cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast, (4/20/08)

While Sadr was delivering his “final warning” on Saturday, the real US nemesis, al-Qaeda, also exploded some words out into the riddled air:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — A man claiming to be the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq mocked the death toll of American troops and urged his fighters to launch an offensive against U.S. forces in the next few weeks.
“The reason I give this speech is that the enemy declared — even though it might be lying — that its death toll in Iraq has reached 4,000,” he said.
“So we call upon our heroes … to ask every group within a month from the time it hears this, to offer the head of an American as a gift to the deceitful [President] Bush,” he continued.
As of Saturday, 4,036 U.S. troops had died in the Iraq war.
– cnn.com, (4/19/08)

Talk about a damn uptick! These nasty-assed al-Qaeda boys are booming bombers. Decider George and his follow-up boy, Jackboot John McCain, won’t and can’t bear the understanding there would not be an al-Qaeda in Iraq without the US invasion and subsequent Iraq meltdown.
The best foreign newsman in Iraq gives an assessment:

“God is Great,” screamed a man seconds before he blew himself up, killing 10 people in a restaurant in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province in western Iraq. A series of suicide bombings have shown over the past week that al-Qa’ida in Iraq, though battered by defections over the past year, is striking back remorselessly at Sunni Arab leaders who ally themselves to the US.
In another attack in the village of Albu Mohammed, south of Kirkuk, an elderly man thought by guards to be too old to be a bomber, walked unsearched into a tent filled with mourners attending the funeral of two Sunni tribesmen who had been killed after they joined al-Sahwa, the Awakening Council, as the pro-US Sunni group is called. The man detonated the explosives hidden under his long Arab robes, killing at least 50 people.
A vicious civil war is now being fought within Iraq’s Sunni Arab community between al-Qa’ida in Iraq and al-Sahwa while other groups continue to attack American forces. In Baghdad on a single day the head of al-Sahwa in the southern district of Dora was killed in his car by gunmen and seven others died by bombs and bullets in al-Adhamiya district.
– Patrick Cockburn, independent.co.uk/news/world, (4/19/08)

And last week:

“Where the American invasion stands now, after five years, is failure and defeat,” the voice on the tape — supposedly that of Ayman al-Zawahiri — said in the roughly 16-minute recording, which was posted Thursday on several militant Islamist Web sites.
The tape referenced testimony by David Petraeus, the top U.S. general in Iraq, before Congress this month, when he said that further troop withdrawals in Iraq will have to wait at least another 45 days.
“It is all a silly episode to disguise failure in Iraq and so Bush would avoid making a decision on withdrawing troops — which is considered to be a declaration of crusaders’ defeat in Iraq — and move forward the problem to be the next president’s issue,” he said.
– cnn.com, (4/17/08)

Uptick of the situation is grim indeed.
Decider George has already gone down in history, gone way down, down to a place where there is absolutely no uptick at all.
And the horrible, aching horror of it all is that he’s dragged everybody else down with him.

Especially those mostly-young US peoples having to live and survive in Decider George’s inferno.

War Thunder and the UN

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Authoritative voices in the bright light:

WASHINGTON — The war in Iraq has become “a major debacle” and the outcome “is in doubt” despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon’s premier military educational institute.
The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush ’s projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions
The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins , a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.
It was published by the university’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research center.
“Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle,” says the report’s opening line.
– McClatchy Newspapers, (4/17/08)

And as a major debacle, the ferocious Iraq catastrophe continues to amaze:

BAGHDAD – A suicide bomber struck the funeral of two anti-al-Qaida Sunni tribesmen in a town north of Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 50 people and wounding dozens, police said.
The blast was the latest this week to break a period of relative calm in Sunni areas, raising concerns that Sunni insurgents are reorganizing.
Over the past months, violence has dropped with the increase in U.S. troops and the growth of so-called Awakening Councils, groups of Sunni tribesmen and former insurgents who have joined American forces in fighting al-Qaida-linked militants.
Thursday’s attack took place in the town of Albu Mohammed about 90 miles north of Baghdad, during the funeral of two brothers who belonged to the local Awakening Council and had been killed in an attack a day earlier, police said.
The suicide bomber walked into a tent crowded with mourners in the village and detonated explosives strapped to his body, police in the nearby city of Kirkuk said.
The head of the local Awakening Council, Sheik Omar al-Azawi, was just pulling up at the tent in his car when the blast went off.
“I first heard a thunderous explosion and when I turned my eyes to the tent I saw fire and smoke coming out,” al-Azawi, 51, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
…
He said the bomber, believed in his late 50s, was dressed in traditional Arab robes and that guards in charge of searching mourners allowed him in without a search.
– Associated Press, (4/17/08)

Arming these Sunni groups last year, these so-called Awakening Councils, to do battle against US enemies, other ‘terrorist’ groups, of which al-Aqaeda is only one, may be another strict, shit-fire miscalculation by Decider George’s army.
Not only is it just al-Qaeda, there’s tribesmen, factions, families and all kinds of assorted wads of insurgents, or maybe just common local cutthroats, who’ve found a full-time job butchering people.
And armed to the munitions-teeth by the US in hopes of making Decider George’s “surge” work. Hence, despite the human carnage at the funeral, the most important, terrible but interesting point in the AP story was the council chief’s observation, that guards in charge of searching mourners allowed him (the bomber) in without a search.

An opening was created last August to at least possibly bring an US conclusion to Decider George’s horrifying Iraq misadventure, but the offer went by the wayside in a summer’s crowded news cycle.

The seemingly real center of the upswing in violence and turmoil in Iraq this past month is the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Although the Sunni insurgency does have some bad boys, it does not have the popular appeal of Sadr, who has played Decider George and his dipwad lackey Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki like a concert violinist — or maybe like Eddie Van Halen on ‘Eruption.’

Sadr’s Mahdi militia withstood Maliki’s govenment forces in Basra and Baghdad during the coordinated assaults at the end of last month. Only a US GI military bail-out kept the government forces from completely falling apart.
And many government fighters, maybe up to 1,300 soldiers, deserted or swapped sides during the heavy fighting, a trend that continues as earlier this week an entire Iraqi unit left a battle site on the outskirts of Sadr City, creating a gap in street defences, which then put US troops in even-more jeopardy.
The Mahdi army is more disciplined with better equipment:

“After clashes that continued for hours between us and the Mahdi Army militiamen, I became positive that I could not go on fighting.
“I found out that it was a lost unequal battle. The Mahdi armament was much stronger than the Iraqi army’s. We had no heavy mortars while the Mahdi fighters had mortars of all calibers, not to mention the improvised explosive devices they planted everywhere,” the 35-year-old officer told VOI.
– Voices of Iraq, aswataliraq.info/look/English/article, (4/15/08)

Sadr’s rapidly-growing impact, however, is not in guns, but in bread:

BAGHDAD – For Um Wissam, a small office packed with food aid in Shiite-dominated Sadr City is a lifeline. With her son killed two years ago, the widow has nowhere else to turn for support.
“They’re really great,” she said. “They give us whatever they possibly can.”
‘They’ are fervent anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army.
– Ned Colt, NBC News, worldblog.MSNBC.com, (4/16/08)

As the price of oil climbs, so does the Iraq national treasury — last reported to be $30 billion in reserves — but because of bickering political alliances, massive corruption and incompetence in the Iraq government there is no help for ordinary Iraqis.
A report released Tuesday from Washington, D.C.-based Refugees International, titled ‘Uprooted and Unstable: Meeting Urgent Humanitarian Needs in Iraq,’ reveals the problem in not getting real-life, real-survival help to a good-sized chunk of the population will eventually boil over into a grave security situation.
According to the preamble to the report, the chaos has already formed:

…a vacuum of humanitarian assistance created by the failure of the Iraqi government and the international community to administer aid to civilians.
During a mission inside Iraq, researchers for Refugees International found that Iraqi militias are creating a Hezbollah-like dynamic by becoming major humanitarian providers of food, clothing, oil and other basic resources.
As a result, militias are recruiting civilians, including displaced Iraqis, at a rapid pace.
Refugees International cautions that failure to address this problem will have dire consequences for the humanitarian and security situation in Iraq.
The report recommends that aid organizations, including the UN, navigate the complex landscape by partnering with local groups inside Iraq, and discourages refugee returns until more effective aid channels are established.
– refugeesinternational.org, (4/15/08)

The UN hasn’t had much of a presence in Iraq since August 2004 when its Baghdad headquarters was blown up, killing 22 people. A skeleton crew of 35 are currently on duty there.
A opening for the UN to return to Iraq was offered last August by Sadr.

In an interview with the UK-based newspaper, The Guardian, in August, 2007, Sadr proved he’s a more-able politician than his counterparts in Baghdad and Washington.
Although he and Maliki were once good buddies, not any longer.
He told the Guardian: “Al-Maliki’s government will not survive because he has proven that he will not work with important elements of the Iraqi people.
“The prime minister is a tool for the Americans, and people see that clearly. It will probably be the Americans who decide to change him when they realize he has failed. We don’t have a democracy here, we have a foreign occupation.”

Most of the news reports highlighted Sadr’s bad mouthing of Maliki, but skipped the most important part: “If the UN comes here to truly help the Iraqi people, they will receive our help in their work. I would ask my followers to support the UN as long as it is here to help us rebuild our country.
(Adding an ominous note): “They must not just be another face of the American occupation.”

Attitudes such as from Ned Colt’s story above about Sadr being “fervent anti-American” will keep the US from having anything to do with the cleric and not responded to his offer — last August Decider George would have scoffed at Sadr’s proposal (if he had known, most-likely didn’t), but now with his war officially a ‘debacle’ a rational person might think twice.
But then, we have to remember who we’re dealing with here.

Sadr fright will keep Decider George away from the man.
Although Sadr is just being natural — he wants his country for his countrymen.

Occupier Beware!

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Yesterday, car bombs in Baghdad and in a couple of other places in Iraq continue to explode-open a war which has become so confused and unfettered by the day.
Fifty (at the minimum, probably more) people killed on Tuesday, another 18 on Monday in similiar attacks, which displayed another side of the horror of Iraq: the Sunni insurgency and the never-say-die al-Qaeda In Iraq.

“I was on my way to the government office when a big explosion occurred near site,” said the witness, who would only identify himself by his nickname Abu Ali. “As I approached the site, I saw cars on fire, burned bodies and damaged shops damaged with shattered glass everywhere.”
– wiredispatch.com/news, (4/15/08)

This coupled with the overwhelming controversy of the Shia militia of Moqtada al-Sadr, whom US GIs are fighting in the streets of Baghdad at this moment, creates a sinkhole, quagmire of which there is really no return.
Except withdraw quickly and in good order as the good and wise Gen. William Odom keeps repeating.

However, there’s this paradox:

“On April 14, 2008, the Under Secretary for Management signed the Certificate of Occupancy,” for the new embassy, AFP quoted the State Department spokesman Tom Casey as saying Tuesday.
The certificate gives the United States ownership of the heavily fortified embassy compound and personnel can now move into 27 buildings located inside the Green Zone.
The Construction of the embassy has cost the American tax-payers almost 700 million dollars and with a staff of 1000 people, its operating costs are projected to be totaling $1.2 billion a year.
It is a 104-acre complex, which is the size of approximately 80 football fields. It includes two office buildings, one of them designed for future use as a school, six apartment buildings, a gym, a pool, a food court and its own power generation and water-treatment plants.
Last May, Sen. Patrick Leahy criticized the ballooning size and cost of the embassy in a hearing with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“Now, having said over and over again that we don’t want to be seen as an occupying force in Iraq, we’re building the largest embassy that we have -probably the largest in the world- in Baghdad. And it just seems to grow and grow and grow,” said Leahy.
The US embassy is likely to create even greater Iraqi resentment toward the US occupation.
While Americans will be living in posh quarters, the citizens of Baghdad are forced to survive with just 5.6 hours of electricity a day. Baghdad was also recently rated the world’s worst city in which to live.
– presstv.ir, (4/16/08)

Although taking occupancy is six months behind schedule, two years ago almost to the day, the project was coming up roses on the Euphrates:

Three years after a U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, only one major U.S. building project in Iraq is on schedule and within budget: the massive new American embassy compound.
The $592 million facility is being built inside the heavily fortified Green Zone by 900 non-Iraqi foreign workers who are housed nearby and under the supervision of a Kuwaiti contractor, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report. Construction materials have been stockpiled to avoid the dangers and delays on Iraq’s roads.
We are confident the embassy will be completed according to schedule (by June 2007) and on budget,” said Justin Higgins, a State Department spokesman.
– Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY, (4/19/06)

Then the reality of misbegotten war consumed everything. The embassy is riddled with huge complaints of shoddy workmanship by the main contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting Co., just one of a laundry list of crap that was supposed to be investigated by the US Justice Department. But who knows? The ‘justice’ of the US Justice Department leaves a lot to be desired.

Same item over at State: Richard Shinnick, the State Department’s buildings chief, told McClatchy Newspapers on Monday the problems that caused the delay in the opening of the new embassy have been repaired, or rebuilt.
He told the news service that numerous small “punch list” items remain to be rectified.
“But they are not vital. … They are not life-safety issues,” he said.

Infamous last words.
Spoken seemingly long, long ago:

“The embassy is going to have a thousand people hunkered behind sandbags. I don’t know how you can conduct diplomacy in that way.”
- Edward L. Peck, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq from 1977 to 1980; cited in the Boston Globe, June 26, 2004 (courtesy commondreams.org, (7/8/04)

And so it goes:

WASHINGTON — The State Department has instructed all personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad not to leave reinforced structures due to incoming insurgent rocket fire that has killed two American government workers this week.
In a memo sent Thursday to embassy staff and obtained by The Associated Press, the department says employees are required to wear helmets, body armor and other protective gear if they must venture outside and strongly advises them to sleep in blast-resistant locations instead of the less secure trailers that most occupy.
– Associated Press, (3/27/08)

Some kind of flight insurance should be issued to all US personnel in Iraq.

Til Death Do Us Part

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Decider George’s illegal and immoral war has an even uglier underbelly:

April 10 (Bloomberg) — Current and former military personnel accounted for about 20 percent of U.S. suicides in 2005, according to a government study.
About 1,821 current or former soldiers committed suicide in 16 states in 2005, the most recent year of available data, according to the report published today by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost half were diagnosed with depression and a third left suicide notes.
A rise in suicides among soldiers serving in the military has alarmed Pentagon planners and members of Congress as the war in Iraq enters its sixth year.
An Army report produced last year found the rate of suicides among soldiers deployed in Iraq from 2003 to 2006 was almost 40 percent higher than the military’s average suicide rate. An update of the Army’s Mental Health Advisory Team report released in March found suicide rates for soldiers in 2007 remained “above normal Army rates.”
“The frequency and the length of deployments are stretching people to the limit and they can’t tolerate it,” Charles Figley, a psychologist who directs the Traumatology Institute at Florida State University, said in a telephone interview today. “They’re taking risks, taking alcohol and taking their own lives because they want to extinguish their pain.”
While 38 percent of the soldiers who took their own lives had a diagnosed mental health condition, only 27 percent were receiving mental health care, according to the CDC report.
…
Each year 30,000 Americans commit suicide, according to the CDC. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for people ages 25 to 34, after accidental injury, according to today’s report, the first from an electronic tracking system meant to help researchers better understand and prevent violent death. The U.S. plans to expand the system to all states, the CDC said.
– Bloomberg.com, (4/10/08)

Young men and women in the US are not stupid. They can see the mortor-round writing on the walls of the crypt:

The military services face the toughest recruiting environment in a generation, as the most recent data shows interest in military service at its lowest level in more than 25 years.
Internal Defense Department surveys tracking the opinions of potential recruits — mostly young men ages 16 to 21 — show the inclination toward military service has fallen dramatically since the end of the Cold War, with an exceptionally rapid nose dive since 2004.
A long-term downward trend reversed briefly after Sept. 11, 2001, up until the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But that bump has disappeared, as young men are less drawn to serve in uniform than at any time since the earliest days of the volunteer force a generation ago.
Surveys also show a precipitous decline in interest among black youths, who for years comprised one of the demographic groups most receptive to military service. The 2007 survey marked the first time in decades that young black men were less interested in service than young white men, Defense Department data show.
– marinecorpstimes.com/news, (4/12/08)

And from the slaughter of the flesh to the death of the financial:

The Cost of War
- More than $508 billion so far, according to the National Priorities Project.
- $1.3 trillion for total economic costs of Iraq war from 2002 to 2008, including interest costs of borrowing funds, lost investment, long-term veterans’ health care and oil market disruptions, according to a November 2007 report from Congress’ Joint Economic Committee.
Original Estimates
- $100 billion to $200 billion, estimated in September 2002 by then-White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey. The White House openly contradicted him, saying that figure was far too high.
- $50 to 60 billion, estimated in late 2002 by then-White House budget director Mitch Daniels.
- $100 billion and three years to get “the country up and running again,” projected in 2003 by L. Paul Bremer, then-chief of the U.S. occupation government in Iraq.
Long-range estimates
- Beyond 2008, between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion — or more — by 2017 for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupation — and estimate Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard University public finance expert Linda Bilmes.
- A cumulative cost of $1.2 trillion to $1.7 trillion for Iraq and Afghanistan wars by 2017, with Iraq generally accounting for three-quarters of the costs, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
– Associated Press, (4/9/08)

And the “surge” is working, folks.
If you believe that, we’ve a bridge in Brooklyn for sale, cheap.

Mouth of the Bush

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Decider George gave his big speech yesterday and it’s more of the same twisted logic and a demand on the US peoples for even more patience, even after more than five years (Associated Press transcript):

Serious and complex challenges remain in Iraq, from the presence of al-Qaida to the destructive influence of Iran to hard compromises needed for further political progress.
Yet, with the surge, a major strategic shift has occurred. Fifteen months ago, America and the Iraqi government were on the defensive. Today, we have the initiative.
Fifteen months ago, extremists were sowing sectarian violence. Today, many mainstream Sunni and Shia are actively confronting the extremists.
Fifteen months ago, al-Qaida had bases in Iraq that it was using to kill our troops and terrorize the Iraqi people. Today, we have put al-Qaida on the defensive in Iraq and we’re now working to deliver a crippling blow.
Fifteen months ago, Americans were worried about the prospect of failure in Iraq. Today, thanks to the surge, we’ve renewed and revived the prospect of success.
…
On the security front, thanks to the significant progress Gen. Petraeus reported this week, it is clear that we’re on the right track.
In the period ahead we will stay on the offense against the enemy. As we speak, U.S. special forces are launching multiple operations every night to capture or kill al-Qaida leaders in Iraq.
Coalition and Iraqi forces are also stepping up conventional operations against al-Qaida in northern Iraq where terrorists have concentrated after being largely pushed from central and western Iraq.
And Prime Minister Maliki’s government launched operations in Basra that make clear a free Iraq will no longer tolerate the lawlessness by Iranian-backed militants.
…
I want to say a word to our troops and civilians in Iraq.
You’ve performed with incredible skill under demanding circumstances. The turnaround you have made possible in Iraq is a brilliant achievement in American history.
And while this war is difficult, it is not endless. And we expect that as conditions on the ground continue to improve, they will permit us to continue the policy of return on success.
The day will come when Iraq is a capable partner of the United States. The day will come when Iraq’s a stable democracy that helps fight our common enemies and promote our common interests in the Middle East.
And when that day arrives, you’ll come home with pride in your success and the gratitude of your whole nation.

However, that whole nation wants out.

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) – Two-in-five adults in the United States believe the coalition effort should be over in 2009, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports. Thirty-nine percent of respondents think the United States should bring all troops home from Iraq within a year, up two points since February.
In addition, 26 per cent of respondents would withdraw all soldiers immediately, and 31 percent want them to remain in Iraq until the mission is complete.
–angus-reid.com/polls, (4/10/08)

Decider George makes one wonder if he’s not gone completly daff. We can only conjure up that he really just doesn’t give a shit, blubbering words HE think everyone wants to hear.
Iraq is getting hotter with each passing day, and it’s not just the oncoming summer season.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s disaster in Basra a couple of weeks ago lays open the horrible truth of the failed mission in Iraq.
The “endgame,” as Secretary of Defense Bob Gates so aptly put it, is there is no endgame. The US will be in Iraq, and dying in Iraq, for decades.
No matter the president next January, US GIs will still be fighting an insurgent war in a place where no one wants US.
Instead of an end:

The myth of the “calm” – a scant 600 innocent lives ended violently in a month – in Iraq was shattered two weeks ago when an intra-Shia power struggle turned bloody, exposing Bush’s strategy as a mere Band-Aid covering up the festering wounds of Iraqi societal strife.
“That’s essentially where we are right now. Violence is down on the surface, but a lot is boiling underneath,” Michael Ware, a correspondent for CNN who reports extensively from inside Iraq, said at a forum on Iraq at the Center for American Progress last week.
While Bush claims that his Iraq policy is not beholden to public opinion polls in the US, it is increasingly difficult to view the respective aspects of the US strategy as doing anything more than reducing violence now to quell domestic dissent against the war at the cost of deferring further strife until a new administration takes power in Washington next January – giving Bush political cover to disown more widespread fighting that could destabilize what little order has been imposed since the aftermath of Iraq’s invasion in 2003.
…
“The fundamental problem in Iraq was the militias,” said journalist Nir Rosen, speaking at the same event. “The Americans have now created more militias, or at least backed them and allowed them to arm themselves and control territory. Obviously, that is a very frightening scenario.”
– Ali Gharib, Inter Press Service, (4/11/08)

Decider George has created this “frightening scenario,” which he will hand off to a new president next year.
The Bush mouth, big ranch-no cattle, destroyer of nations, will just simply retire to Crawford and spend out his days with his feet up.
And nothing it seems, absolutely nothing, will change that course of events.
Bad news on the doorstep.

‘blood of our children’

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According to the Associated Press, as of this morning 17 mostly-young US service people have been killed since Sunday. Five on Wednesday.
The mortality rate has started to increase.
While politicians fiddle, Iraq burns.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Twenty-three people were killed and 83 injured in Baghdad’s Shi’ite slum of Sadr City Wednesday, security sources said, despite vehicle bans aimed at preventing unrest from spreading on the fifth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.
Up to 73 people have died in Sadr City since Sunday in battles between black-masked militia loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and U.S. and Iraqi troops.
The upsurge in fighting comes as the top U.S. officials in Iraq testified in Washington that they opposed setting a timetable to withdraw troops from the 5-year-old war.
…
“The floor of the hospital is covered with the blood of children,” said Dr Qasim al-Mudalla, manager of the Imam Ali hospital in Sadr City, where he said four children and two women were among 11 dead bodies brought in Wednesday.
“What is the world doing? They have seen the blood of our children and are doing nothing.”
Other parts of Baghdad were quiet, with streets clear of traffic because of a one-day vehicle ban in the capital for the anniversary of the day U.S. troops rolled into the capital, deposing President Saddam Hussein.
– Ahmed Rasheed and Wisam Mohammed, Reuters North American News Service, (4/9/08)

Also in that same news report was this about how the rank-and-file Iraqis feel about the situation. Retired army officer Salim Hussein eloquently (and pointedly) summed it up: The past five years had yielded nothing but, “blood, bombs, curfews and in-fighting.”

Caught in the middle is the overstretched US military, which for the first time in a generation are putting non-combat personnel, such as sailors and airmen, in harms way — and with miminal re-training, if any at all — to man the war zone of Iraq.
This week, Iraq Main Man, Gen. David Petraeus, and his nerd-with-power, second-in-command Ryan Crocker, supposedly testified before a US Senate committee about how concerns in country are different than the concerns in Washington, D.C.
The slaughter has a spin.

Although Petraeus couldn’t offer any definite answers to anything tossed at him by the publicly-elected village idiots, the underlying sense of his presentation was of defeat, a concept he and his boss, Decider George, would never, ever recognize — a mob of crazed, armed zoombies would have to force feed the concept down their cold, dead throats.
And he used a choke-hold series of analogies to get the point across: “We haven’t turned any corners, we haven’t seen any lights at the end of the tunnel. The champagne bottle has been pushed to the back of the refrigerator. And the progress, while real, is fragile and is reversible.”
Couple that with the good general’s continous use of “conditions-based” references when he discussed troop withdrawals.
And the strong emphasis placed on the meaning of “while real” in regards to any progress in Iraq — backass backwards.
In other words: The US peoples are fucked!

Of course, no one on both sides of the aisle even hinted at defeat and getting the shit out of Iraq. No one in that Senate chamber even discussed how the Iraqi war was wrong, immoral and just plain, freakin’ stupid from its inception.
Jackboot John McCain has described the run-up and start of the war as “what’s past is past,” and supposedly now, is like, now. And Jackboot John will have the US in Iraq until the job is done — no matter if that job was dumb and illegal from the get-go.
And only the innocence of babies, ‘tards and way-naive US peoples would except that accommodation of the Iraq war to end when a different president takes office next year.
None of the so-called presidential hopefuls has called for an immediate get-out of Iraq.

Not to be left out of the Senate hearings lime/spot/light was US Ambassador to Iraq Crocker, who for once probably told the absolute truth on the Iraq war crock/spin:

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The White House on Wednesday distanced itself from the US ambassador to Iraq’s statement that Al-Qaeda on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border is a greater threat than Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
“The president is concerned about both, but I have not heard him describe it as prioritizing one or the other. Al-Qaeda is dangerous, full stop,” said spokeswoman Dana Perino.
Perino had been asked about a comment from the US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, who told US lawmakers Tuesday that the group was more of a threat to US interests along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border than inside Iraq.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, a Democrat, had asked the diplomat to say which Al-Qaeda wing he would choose if granted the power to wish one of them out of existence.
Crocker cited “the progress that has been made against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the significant decrease in its capabilities and the fact it is solidly on the defensive” and, when Biden pressed him, declared: “I would therefore pick Al-Qaeda in the Pakistan/Afghanistan border area.”
At the same time, Crocker said that the group was “a strategic threat to the United States wherever it is.”
Some foes of the war in Iraq say that the unpopular conflict has siphoned off military and financial resources better used going after the architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Osama bin Laden, who is thought to be in a remote area of the Afghan-Pakistan border.
– Agence France-Presse, (4/9/08)

‘Full stop!’ What the hell is that? Where does Decider George drag up these people that work for him, which supposedly then in turn work for the US peoples? If these people aren’t being indicted, or under some kind of scrutiny, they’re dumber-than-living shit and say way-stupid shit.
And Perino is right there.

In most polls taken of the Iraq people the last few years, a very-good majority want the US to leave. The horror inflicted can never now be regained.
The blood of many nations are dying in Iraq.
The US, however, can save some of its best and brightest by leaving the scene of the crime as quick as possible.
The end of the abyss is worst than its beginning.

Un-reality TV

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During the Senate hearing segment yesterday of the long-running horror-opus, ‘Decider George and The War,’ nothing new and nothing blue was blubbered into the ether.
In fact, after digging at the entire proceedings, CNN’s Baghdad Bureau Chief Michael Ware gave an accurate synposis of the plot: “I just see a lot of oxygen being wasted here.”
Ware, who appeared wired-for-sound, told Wolf Blitzer the whole show was politics.
Duh!

Iraq is hard?

Asked repeatedly yesterday what “conditions” he is looking for to begin substantial U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq after this summer’s scheduled drawdown, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus said he will know them when he sees them. For frustrated lawmakers, it was not enough.
“A year ago, the president said we couldn’t withdraw because there was too much violence,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). “Now he says we can’t afford to withdraw because violence is down.” Asked Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.): “Where do we go from here?”
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said: “I think people want a sense of what the end is going to look like.”
But the bottom line was that there was no bottom line. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, Petraeus, the top US military commander in Iraq, and US Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker echoed what they said seven months ago in their last update to Congress — often using similar words. Iraq’s armed forces continue to improve, overall levels of violence are lower than they were last year, and political reconciliation is happening, albeit still more slowly than they would like.
“Iraq is hard, and reconciliation is hard,” Crocker said in September. Yesterday, he added: “Almost everything about Iraq is hard.”
In eight hours of testimony, the two men danced around the question of what constitutes success in Iraq. “As I’ve explained, again, from a military perspective,” Petraeus said wearily as the day drew to a close, “. . . what we want to do is to look at conditions and determine where it is without taking undue risks. This is all about risk.”
“We’ll look at the circumstances and assess,” Crocker said, as he and Petraeus spoke of “battlefield geometry” and “political-military calculus.”
– washingtonpost.com, (4/9/08)

Even with all the math, neither one of the assholes could give a straight answer with a ruler:

BAGHDAD — Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were critical of Iran when they testified Tuesday before the Senate, barely giving credit for an Iranian-brokered cease-fire that curbed the killing after a week of Shiite-on-Shiite bloodshed in southern Iraq and Baghdad .
As they spoke, firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr threatened to unleash his Mahdi Army militia against U.S. and Iraqi forces. Once again, it was Iran that stepped into the political vacuum and urged a halt to militia attacks into the heavily fortified Green Zone, where U.S. and Iraqi officials, including Petraeus and Crocker, have their offices.
This week, it transformed into a conflict largely between the Mahdi Army and U.S. forces. Twelve U.S. troops were killed since Sunday, at least eight of them in the capital, several of them from rocket and mortar attacks into the Green Zone.
Tuesday was the last day of Maliki’s ultimatum for militias, mainly the Mahdi Army, to turn in weapons for cash or face a battle. Far from disarming itself and handing its weapons to forces dominated by Shiites in Maliki’s Dawa party, Sadr threatened to end the ceasefire he declared in August.
“If it is required to lift the freeze (cease-fire) in order to carry out our goals, objectives, doctrines and religious principles and patriotism, we will do that later and in a separate statement,” he said in a statement read by his aide, Salah al Obaidi.
Sadr also postponed his planned million-man march in Baghdad to protest the U.S. occupation on the five-year anniversary of the fall of the capital. The march was expected to bring more violence.
– McClatchy Newspapers, (4/8/08)

What’s become of al-Qeada? Osama and his boys were once the main bad guys (after Iran), but the horror-house in Iraq has seemed to have diverted attention from the real chase.
After much badgering during the Senate hearing Tuesday, Crack-head Crocker finally had to acknowledge the biggest threat is not al-Qeada In Iraq, whom Decider George and his lackeys have been crowing about, but the al-Aqeada in Afghanistan.

Also during the hearings, John McCain displayed his So-Like Decider George pose: He argued that “much more needs to be done” on security, political and economic fronts, but that “we are no longer staring into the abyss of defeat, and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuori al-Maliki, however, is indeed staring into the abyss. And if the US doesn’t make a move soon to withdraw all it’s troops and hardware, Decider George will drag everybody down with him.

Bio-Degradable Jackboot John

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As Jackboot John McCain launched his weeklong ‘Biography Tour’ in an attempt to showcase his long, storied relationship with the US military and started what Reuters news service tagged as a “trip down memory lane,” the war in Iraq, a humid, horrid place where Jackboot John would keep US GIs 10, 20, a hundred years, continued a slow meltdown.

At least five American soldiers were killed and another 31 were wounded in three separate attacks in Iraq today. Iraqis did not fare any better, with 81 Iraqis killed and 126 more wounded as well. Clashes in Baghdad were the cause of most of the casualties. Also, 42 college students were kidnapped then released near Mosul.
Two US soldiers were killed and 17 more were wounded during a rocket or mortar attack on the Green Zone in Baghdad. In the southeastern neighborhood of Rustimiyah, another attack left one GI dead and 14 more injured. One American soldier was killed today during a roadside bombing in Diyala province. Also,one American soldier died from a non-combat incident.
Clashes between gunmen, U.S. forces, and Iraqi security in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City left 25 dead and 98 wounded. A helicopter strike caused nine more deaths. The U.S. Army had been staging operations near Sadr City in hopes of reducing rocket and mortar attacks on the international Green Zone.
These attacks escalated after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki implemented a crackdown on the Mahdi Army ahead of elections. In a separate event, mortars injured two policemen.
– antiwar.com/updates, (4/6/08)

The five killed on Sunday brings the death toll of US troops in Iraq to 4,024 with another near 30,000 wounded in action.

Intense is most-likely the best term to describe the shaping power struggle between Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has called for a massive strike this Wednesday — if that day comes: Maliki called yesterday for the disbanding of Sadr’s Mehdi Army, which has just finished putting a hard ass-kicking on government troops.
And Maliki continued blubbering that if Sadr doesn’t break-up his militia, the cleric’s followers could be banned from participating in upcoming elections.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch: Jackboot John blurred reality as he blubbered on Fox News Sunday that the Iraqi government troops did a bang-up, swell job against the ragtag Mehdi Army during the fighting in Basra, and Baghdad and in just every little town in the country.
Seemingly, all the news reports coming out of Iraq during the fighting and afterward gave Maliki’s army a fierce thumbs down for performance, and amid stories of mass desertions, one in which a 1,000 government GIs switched over to join Sadr’s boys, including a couple of commanders.
Even the US Army was taken aback on how well the Mehdi army handled itself.
Jackboot also put a big Arizona-sized boot in his mouth on how a ceasefire was achieved last week to end the flare-up.

“It was al-Sadr that declared the ceasefire, not Maliki. With respect, I don’t think Sadr would have declared the ceasefire if he thought he was winning. Most times in history, military engagements, the winning side doesn’t declare the ceasefire. The second point is, overall, the Iraqi military performed pretty well. … The military is functioning very effectively.”
–Fox News Sunday, (4/6/08)

It’s been published and verified some Iraqi lawmakers went to Qom, one of Iran’s most-holy cities, apparently after the offense in Basra started, as the conflict widen, and it appeared government forces were getting pounded, to get the commander of Iran’s Qods brigades to broker a ceasefire.
If that had not happened, a full-blown civil war would have erupted.
Of course, that civil war is still coming, but will take place after the US has pulled itself out of the mess.

And what about old Jackboot John?
This entire bio-tour has been about a Jackboot being a man of the people — a war-like man of the people.
The operation kicked off Monday in Meridian, Miss., where his slave-owning relations and his war-obsessed kin got their start.
Not unlike Forrest Gump’s Lt. Dan, Jackboot John’s family has donned some kind of war uniform since day one, and although maybe they didn’t die in every war, they snatched and rattled the saber on a moment’s notice.

McCain, the son and grandson of admirals and a decorated Navy pilot and prisoner of war and who served 27 years in the Navy, has deep connections to the military. His ancestors have served in every U.S. war except the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict. One of his sons, a Marine, served in Iraq; a second is at the Naval Academy, which McCain, his father and grandfather also attended.
–bloomberg.com, (3/31/08)

Jackboot John, however, has had his bio tour take some detours this week:

On Tuesday, McCain’s return to his old high school in Alexandria, Virginia, was not welcomed by all.
A student in the crowd asked him, “We’re told this isn’t a political event, so what exactly is your purpose in being here?”
McCain shot back, “I knew I should have cut this thing off. This meeting is over.”
– cnn.com, (4/6/08)

The US military needs to be over and gone from Iraq. And soon, as a withdrawal in good order only has a short window of opportunity.

Historic Reality

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As the dust settles gently over the Tigris and Euphrates, Decider George’s war in Iraq has moved into its final stages — the US military should at least now have plans (or plans in the immediate works) for an ‘Eagle Pull.’
The last time was in Saigon, 1975, a disaster: Photos of helicopters lifting off from the roof of the US embassy captured Vietnam’s complete failure.
In Iraq, however, if an Eagle Pull isn’t planned out to the smallest detail could bring on a horrible, death-struck situation, one which would make Napoleon’s Russian retreat looked like a cakewalk.

Last week’s collision bewteen Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr could be the defining moment for the US as the fiasco became Moqtada’s Moment.
The jarring impact of Sadr’s Mehdi Army against the Iraqi government forces was immediate: Sadr came out of the blood-letting stronger and more potent — His main Shiite rivals, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim’s Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and Maliki’s own Dawa party have been cowered, proven to be nothing more than lap dogs for the US occupiers and greatly weakened.
Decider George has really fouled the waters. Iraq suffers from a multi, many-split personality disorder and no amount of time or number of US GIs on the ground can change the future.

Sadr is an ardent nationalist and has repeadedly crowed for withdrawal of all US troops. He’s called for a nationwide strike April 8 and the rest of the story could be history — a horrifying history.

“The time has come to express your rejections and raise your voices loud against the unjust occupier and enemy of nations and humanity, and against the horrible massacres committed by the occupier against our honourable people,” said a statement released by Sadr’s office in the holy city of Najaf.
– Reuters, (4/3/08)

Into this meat grinder come the US kids, who must fight a fight coming at them from all sides. The Iraqi central government is a sham and according to published reports, the Sunni minority refer to Maliki’s operation as the “traitor government.”
So, the US could end up fighting not only Shia Sadr’s Mehdi militia, but the Sunni malcontents as well.

The only option for the US is to get the shit out of Dodge:

“At the same time, Prime Minister Maliki’s military actions in Basra and Baghdad, indicate even wider political and military fragmentation. We are witnessing is more accurately described as the road to the Balkanization of Iraq, that is, political fragmentation. We are being asked by the president to believe that this shift of so much power and finance to so many local chieftains is the road to political centralization. He describes the process as building the state from the bottom up.
I challenge you to press the administration’s witnesses this week to explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of feudal Europe’s transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War. It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on what is now the English-Scottish border. And it is the source of violence in Bosnia and Kosovo.
The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region.”
– Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William E. Odom, Testimony US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq, (4/2/08)

Odom, who has been around the military block, has called Decider George’s Iraq war the greatest blunder, “strategic disaster” in US history. General Odom is being generous: In all of history.

And who will listen?
The historic reality is a mind-blowing slaughter as the US removes itself like a festered boil from Iraq.