Impeccable in every way.

A Final Verdict on the Presidential Salute

*edited to correct spelling which I'm sure I did right so obviously the gremlins did it.

Making future terrorists

One child at a time.

Ending the ceasefire?

And making the casualties go up?

BAGHDAD —

Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will call on his fighters to maintain a cease-fire against American troops but may lift the order if a planned Iraq-U.S. security agreement lacks a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces, a spokesman said Thursday.

The statement by Sheik Salah al-Obeidi comes as al-Sadr plans to reveal details of a formula to reorganize his Mahdi Army militia by separating it into an unarmed cultural organization and elite fighting cells.

The announcement is expected during weekly Islamic prayer services on Friday.

Several cease-fires by al-Sadr have been key to a sharp decline in violence over the past year, but American officials still consider his militiamen a threat and have backed the Iraqi military in operations to try to oust them from their power bases in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.

And here:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called off a mass demonstration set for Wednesday in Baghdad and threatened to formally end the seven-month cease-fire of his Mehdi Army militia.

In fighting Tuesday in al-Sadr's Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City, 12 people were killed and 27 wounded. At least 48 people have been killed and 176 wounded since Sunday, an Interior Ministry official said.

Eight of the 11 U.S. troops killed in Iraq on Sunday and Monday died in fighting in Baghdad.

Four U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in the capital, the U.S. military said.

One soldier was killed by a roadside bomb, two by a rocket-propelled grenade and one by small-arms fire after a roadside bomb detonated near his vehicle during a patrol in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

The deaths bring the U.S. death toll in the Iraq war to 4,024, including eight civilian Defense Department contractors.

[snip]

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, speaking Tuesday afternoon to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, said that "U.S. forces will remain in Iraq beyond December 31, 2008." At that time, he said, the U.N. resolution that allows U.S. troops to operate in Iraq will expire and be replaced by a status of forces agreement, commonly called a SOFA, requested by the Iraqis.

Crocker said it would cover the "basic authorizations and protections" to allow troops to continue operations but will not specify troop levels or establish permanent bases.

"We anticipate that it will expressly forswear them ... and it will not tie the hands of the next administration," he said.

Crocker also said Congress will be "kept fully informed," but he has previously made clear that the administration sees no role for Congress in the agreement's final approval.

Off topic but interesting are the article's number of deaths cited because this is what I get on the Iraq Casualties site:

U.S. Confirmed Deaths
Reported Deaths: 4134
Confirmed Deaths: 4134
Pending Confirmation: 0
DoD Confirmation List

And that's not even listing the defense contractors' deaths.

So what will the Bush administration do?

Bomb Iran probably.

Afghanistan

(euphemism) inadvertent casualties and destruction inflicted on civilians in the course of military operations

It's not a small price

When it's your life that's lost.

Think Progress:

Americans United for Change launched this ad today, criticizing Rep. John Boehner’s (R-OH) recent remarks that the U.S. troop casualties would be a “small price to pay” to stay in Iraq over the long-term.

Are the Democrats able to support the troops

By bringing them home like we asked?

Via jurassicpork at Welcome to Pottersville,

Paul Krugman:

There are five things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember.

First, no independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq is down. On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital and police records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths is almost twice its average pace from last year. And a recent assessment by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found no decline in the average number of daily attacks.

So how can the military be claiming otherwise? Apparently, the Pentagon has a double super secret formula that it uses to distinguish sectarian killings (bad) from other deaths (not important); according to press reports, all deaths from car bombs are excluded, and one intelligence analyst told The Washington Post that “if a bullet went through the back of the head, it’s sectarian. If it went through the front, it’s criminal.” So the number of dead is down, as long as you only count certain kinds of dead people.

Oh, and by the way: Baghdad is undergoing ethnic cleansing, with Shiite militias driving Sunnis out of much of the city. And guess what? When a Sunni enclave is eliminated and the death toll in that district falls because there’s nobody left to kill, that counts as progress by the Pentagon’s metric.

Second, Gen. Petraeus has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters.

I’ve written before about the op-ed article Gen. Petraeus published six weeks before the 2004 election, claiming “tangible progress” in Iraq. Specifically, he declared that “Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt,” that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward” and that “there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.” A year later, he declared that “there has been enormous progress with the Iraqi security forces.”

But now two more years have passed, and the independent commission of retired military officers appointed by Congress to assess Iraqi security forces has recommended that the national police force, which is riddled with corruption and sectarian influence, be disbanded, while Iraqi military forces “will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months.”

Third, any plan that depends on the White House recognizing reality is an idle fantasy. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, on Tuesday Mr. Bush told Australia’s deputy prime minister that “we’re kicking ass” in Iraq. Enough said.

Fourth, the lesson of the past six years is that Republicans will accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic no matter what the Democrats do. Democrats gave Mr. Bush everything he wanted in 2002; their reward was an ad attacking Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, that featured images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Finally, the public hates this war and wants to see it ended. Voters are exasperated with the Democrats, not because they think Congressional leaders are too liberal, but because they don’t see Congress doing anything to stop the war.

In light of all this, you have to wonder what Democrats, who according to The New York Times are considering a compromise that sets a “goal” for withdrawal rather than a timetable, are thinking. All such a compromise would accomplish would be to give Republicans who like to sound moderate — but who always vote with the Bush administration when it matters — political cover.

And six or seven months from now it will be the same thing all over again. Mr. Bush will stage another photo op at Camp Cupcake, the Marine nickname for the giant air base he never left on his recent visit to Iraq. The administration will move the goal posts again, and the military will come up with new ways to cook the books and claim success.

One thing is for sure: like 2004, 2008 will be a “khaki election” in which Republicans insist that a vote for the Democrats is a vote against the troops. The only question is whether they can also, once again, claim that the Democrats are flip-floppers who can’t make up their minds.

Stats on Iraq

By the numbers.

They keep on getting in the way.....

US forces kill Afghani citizens:

An incident described by US forces in Afghanistan as a "complex ambush" has left 16 civilians dead.

The incident occurred on the road from the eastern city of Jalalabad to Pakistan when a suicide bomber targeted a convoy, sparking a fire fight.

Thousands of local people took to the streets, accusing the Americans of deliberately firing on the civilians.

Update: Journalist threatened and made to delete his photos:

Following a suicide bombing and ensuing gunfight between Afghan militants and American soldiers on Sunday, a US soldier demanded that an Associated Press photographer delete his photos. The photographer, Rahmat Gul, did not witness the suicide attack or the gun battle, reports the AP, but was in the vicinity.

Gul and a video cameraman working for AP Television News were taking pictures of a vehicle inside which four people had been shot to death when a US soldier demanded that Gul delete his photos.

The report continues, "Gul said he later received permission to take photos from another soldier, but that the first soldier came back and angrily told him to delete the photos again. Gul said the soldier then raised his fist as if he was going to strike Gul."

The US military did not comment on the matter.

Don't forget to count the contractors in the Iraqi War casualties

Even though we don't know how many are over there, in what capacity, and who they are working for. Even though there is no oversight and no accountability.

As cookie jill over at skippy, the bush kangaroo's site says:

sure they're making up to $10,000 month tax-free but they're getting killed over in iraq just like our much lower paid and taxed armed forces. there have been up to 800 civilian contractor deaths...but, their lives lost aren't counted by the government's "statistics".

Another one of Bush and Cheney's little problems...

Gutting the heartland

Town by small town:

“Across the nation, small towns are quietly bearing a disproportionate burden of war. Nearly half of the more than 3,100 U.S. military casualties in Iraq have come from towns…where fewer than 25,000 people live, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. One in five hailed from hometowns of less than 5,000. … The AP analysis found that nearly three quarters of those killed in Iraq came from towns where the per capita income was below the national average.”

If you want to know how it's actually going in Iraq

Check this site.

"Casualties" in the military sense is the total number made unavailable for duty from all causes

...so when you say it that way, the number is 50,000.

The melt down

If you want to know how it is on the ground in Iraq, listen to Michael Ware.

Rook cites Mercury News:
"With Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki relegated to the sidelines, brazen Sunni-Shiite attacks continue unchecked despite a 24-hour curfew over Baghdad. Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia now controls wide swaths of the capital, his politicians are the backbone of the Cabinet, and his followers deeply entrenched in the Iraqi security forces. Sectarian violence has spun so rapidly out of control since the Sadr City blasts, however, that it's not clear whether even al-Sadr has the authority - or the will - to stop the cycle of bloodshed."

Garbled information about casualities, the burning alive of civilians.

Josh Marshall quotes the NYTimes saying that:
"....one of the secret report's more surprising conclusions, according to The Times, is "that terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq.” It seems counterintuitive that the armed Shiite and Sunni militias battling for control of Iraq would be financing terrorists outside of Iraq while the battle inside of Iraq still hangs in the balance.

In fairness, The Times makes clear that the secret report may be flawed: "Some terrorism experts outside the government who were given an outline of the report by The Times, criticized it for a lack of precision and a reliance on speculation."

The overwhelming impression I'm left with from the piece is that more than three and half years after ostensibly seizing control of Iraq, the U.S. government is still largely ignorant of the armed groups arrayed against its efforts there."

Everyone seems to be hoping the Baker-Hamilton Commission's report will give us some way out of Iraq, but apparently Bush wants options, like never having to say he's sorry.

Glenn Greenwald notes the bizarre first condition of the Commission:
"There is nothing "centrist" about a Commission which decides in advance that it will not remove our troops from a war which is an unmitigated disaster and getting worse every day. It just goes without saying that if you invade and occupy a country and are achieving nothing good by staying, withdrawal must be one of the primary options considered when deciding what to do about the disaster.

Even if that is not the option ultimately chosen, a categorical refusal in advance to consider that option -- or to listen to experts who advocate it -- is not the work of a "centrist" body devoted to finding a solution to this war. If the Commission begins with the premise that we have to stay in Iraq and then only considers proposals for how to modify our strategy on the margins, that is anything but centrist. To the contrary, that is a close-minded -- and rather extremist -- commitment to the continuation of a war which most Americans have come to despise and want to see brought to an end."

Some are not impressed:
"Today on CNN, Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski issued a strong, preemptive criticism of the Baker Commission studying alternatives for Iraq. Brzezinski said that while the commission “will probably come out with some sound advice on dealing with the neighborhood,” it essentially “will offer some procrastination ideas for dealing with the crisis.”"

NTodd spells it out to an idiot thinking it would be good for us to bring back Saddam:
"I'll explain: it's not fucking up to us.

No, really, the Iraqis want us out--they don't want us to put Saddam or anybody else in power. They know we fucked things up for them and they still just want us to get the hell out of their country and stop helping further destroy it.

The Iraqis' destiny was always really in their own hands even before we decided to take on the mantle of White Man's Burden and "liberate" them. Now that we've been so gracious as to get rid of their old murderous thug so a thousand new murderous thugs can bloom, it's time for us to make a gracious exit.

So long and thanks for all the IEDs. Sorry about the mess. Send the cleaning bill to us--we're good for it."