No shit.

Bush: War in Iraq was longer and more expensive than he had anticipated.

Yelling,"We won!" doesn't make it true

But it does make you look like an idiotic moronic flaccid douchebag.



Just saying.

Just enough time to let Bush

Run for cover in January 2009?

WASHINGTON -- Army Gen. David H. Petraeus has recommended that President Bush postpone sharp troop cuts in Iraq until next year, delaying a large-scale shift of combat forces to Afghanistan and reflecting concerns that widespread violence could return to Iraq.

Bush's War

(Photo from Watertiger at Dependable Renegade)


Update: Bush:

And as you know, my position is clear -- I'm the commander guy.

Ok, then. Here you go. Command this.

Georgie's legacy

Will forever be entangled with his wonderful glorious war in Iraq. Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat says it best:

Your legacy, Mr. Bush? What folly. Your legacy to history is secure: America bankrupted, America's once superb military eviscerated, America's constitutional tradition of equal justice under law trashed like yesterday's cat litter, America's youth dead in the streets of Baghdad fighting a war you started with a lie, America's once sterling international reputation for tough but fair diplomacy replaced with a new reputation as the biggest thugs in the neighborhood (but with a glass jaw), and Americans' own freedoms and liberties bound and gagged by extralegal actions more characteristic of an Orwellian totalitarian state than of the principles of our Founders. Oh yes, Mr. Bush, your legacy is secure.

Murtha gets to the root of the problem

It's Georgie. Murtha:

In short, our military has been forced to do too much with too little. Our military readiness has deteriorated to levels not seen since Vietnam and our ability to fight future threats is severely compromised. Yet the president refuses to address this most vital issue.

In reaction to the disastrous manner in which the president has run the war, Congress passed the Iraq Accountability Act in both houses. This bill provides resources to address the readiness problem, puts the onus on the Iraqi Government to internally solve its own civil war and provides the beginnings of a safe and responsible return of our United States forces from Iraq.

The Constitution expressly places the power 'to raise and support Armies,' and 'to provide and maintain a Navy' with Congress. It is, therefore, Congress' responsibility to raise the revenues for our military and to determine in what manner and by what means they shall be spent.

For four years, the president has been waging a war without end and without accountability. The Iraq Accountability Act expresses the sentiment of the Congress and the majority of the American people who say it's time for a plan to safely and responsibly end the war.

No wonder Preznit Pretzels is pouting. He's not been held accountable for anything his entire life. Why on earth should he start now?

I mean, really! What on earth does the Congress think it's doing?

It's all about who DOESN'T get the oil

Greg Palast: (my bold)

In all the chest-beating about how the war did badly, no one seems to remember how the war did very, very well — for Big Oil.

The war has kept Iraq’s oil production to 2.1 million barrels a day from pre-war, pre-embargo production of over 4 million barrels. In the oil game, that’s a lot to lose. In fact, the loss of Iraq’s 2 million barrels a day is equal to the entire planet’s reserve production capacity.

In other words, the war has caused a hell of a supply squeeze — and Big Oil just loves it. Oil today is $57 a barrel versus the $18 a barrel price under Bill “Love-Not-War” Clinton.

Since the launch of Operation Iraqi Liberation, Halliburton stock has tripled to $64 a share — not, as some believe, because of those Iraq reconstruction contracts — peanuts for Halliburton. Cheney’s former company’s main business is “oil services.” And, as one oilman complained to me, Cheney’s former company has captured a big hunk of the rise in oil prices by jacking up the charges for Halliburton drilling and piping equipment.

But before we shed tears for Big Oil’s having to hand Halliburton its slice, let me note that the value of the reserves of the five biggest oil companies more than doubled during the war to $2.36 trillion.

And that was the plan: putting a new floor under the price of oil. I have that in writing. In 2005, after a two-year battle with the State and Defense Departments, they released to my team at BBC Newsnight the “Options for a Sustainable Iraqi Oil Industry.” Now, you might think our government shouldn’t be writing a plan for another nation’s oil. Well, our government didn’t write it, despite the State Department seal on the cover. In fact, we discovered that the 323-page plan was drafted in Houston by oil industry executives and consultants.

The suspicion is that Bush went to war to get Iraq’s oil. That’s not true. The document, and secret recordings of those in on the scheme, made it clear that the Administration wanted to make certain America did not get the oil. In other words, keep the lid on Iraq’s oil production — and thereby keep the price of oil high.

Where have you guys been?

We were afraid you were hijacked along with your churches!

WASHINGTON - Thousands of Christians prayed for peace at an anti-war service Friday night at the Washington National Cathedral, kicking off a weekend of protests around the country to mark the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq.

As one Christian at the rally mentioned:

"A lot of the rhetoric that we hear coming from Christians has been dominated by the religious right and has been strong advocacy for the war," Pattison said. "That's just not the way I read my Gospel."

If our cowardly politicians are afraid to say it, I'll say it.

This war is a waste.

The wrong war. Misuse of military. Lack of diplomacy. Imperialism. Power grabs. Oil. Wasted good will. Wasted lives. Wasted resources. Wasted treasury.

This war has made us terrorists.

This war is a waste.

And it's too late to fix it or make it right.

Update: Tom Engelhardt says it best.

Our nation is invaded

By a larger more weaponized superpower. Jurassicpork of Pottersville makes us imagine what it would be like:

A great and mighty nation, a proud nation, was attacked on a new day that will last in infamy. Our country, the United States, had nothing to do with it yet the dark storm clouds cloistered over our flags, darkening our soil and there was nothing we could do to disperse them. Not openness, not diplomacy, nothing. Then, four years ago, the bloody rain began falling.

Our nation was bombed for eight months prior to the start of the actual invasion. Some government buildings were demolished, countless innocents were killed.

Our president was chased from power and forced into hiding. The United States military, which once adequately guarded our borders, has been disbanded. The Pentagon is null and void. The invading nation, more powerful than ours, still reeling from its own 9/11, invades and occupies the United States, allowing our enemies to pour in from the now-porous borders.

Cities like New York, Los Angeles and Dallas have only 4 hours of electricity a day while a provisional puppet government is set up seemingly with the sole mission of enriching the occupying nation’s private industry. Cheap and unqualified labor is smuggled in from the Philippines and elsewhere while Americans are starving in the streets.

By using the example of the US under attack instead of Iraq, he brings it home by showing what the numbers mean:

The first set of numbers were mind-numbing and still impossible to imagine, weren’t they? So how can we be expected to double that number and to give it context, we a nation that hasn’t been occupied by a hostile government since the Revolutionary war and hasn’t seen warfare in the streets of America since the Civil War. We are a people who reach for our cell phones and angrily dial our cable or internet providers when our service experiences a blip.

We cannot stand the idea of waiting behind more than one or two people at our safe and climate-controlled supermarkets and banks and feel mortally offended when an overworked clerk or tech support specialist doesn’t kiss our ass every minute.

You want to know what it’s like to be an Iraqi? Take those figures, try to superimpose them, however vainly, over the bloodless, well-swept streets of America.

(Note: I have a hard time looking at Jurassicpork's photo at the beginning of his article... it really wrenches the heart.)

Update: Fixed quote.

The Freeway Blogger strikes!

(Via Rising Hegemon)

Another family destroyed

Another Iraqi writes from the US as he tries to help his family:

Sometimes, my family becomes hopeless and says my father must be dead — otherwise he would have returned by now. Other days, they are more optimistic, saying that he may have been taken by kidnappers and he will be released.

The last time we talked, my younger sister pleaded with me to help her find a way out of Baghdad. She said she would cook and clean for me, if I could just figure out a way to get her out of there. It made my heart sink.

Trying to check on the fate of my father, I called my brother on his cellphone — the only phone in my family’s possession — late last month. That day, bombs had gone off on a Shiite market where he likes to shop for DVDs and CDs. Press reports said there were more than 80 dead. He did not pick up his phone. Not the next day either. I recently reached a friend in Iraq, who said he had seen my brother. But I’m still waiting for him to call back.

The George that helped start our country

And the one that helped finish it off. Georgie tries hard to connect the Iraq quagmire with the Revolutionary War:

MOUNT VERNON, Va. (AP) -- President Bush honored the 275th birthday of the nation's first president on Monday, likening George Washington's long struggle that gave birth to a nation to the war on global terrorism.

"Today, we're fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life," said Bush, standing in front of Washington's home and above a mostly frozen Potomac River.

"And as we work to advance the cause of freedom around the world, we remember that the father of our country believed that the freedoms we secured in our revolution were not meant for Americans alone."

Why the mistrial for Lt. Watada's case?

One viewpoint:

But in its zeal to exclude the real meaning of the case, the court tied itself up in procedural knots. Prosecutors wanted the judge to find that Watada had agreed to pretrial stipulations that he had violated his duty when he refused to show up for movement to Iraq. But Watada made clear that he believed his duty, under his oath and military law, was to refuse to participate in an illegal war. As the underlying question of the war's illegality emerged like a family secret in the courtroom, the judge agreed to the prosecutor's motion to declare a mistrial. But Time.com reported that Watada's attorney, Eric Seitz, says he will file an immediate motion to dismiss the case on grounds of double jeopardy if the Army tries to resurrect it.

Watada maintained that his refusal to participate in an illegal war in Iraq was justified, indeed required, under the Army's own Uniform Code of Military Justice. Under Judge Head's rulings, however, there simply would be no way for a soldier to resist an illegal order. Indeed, an American military person could be ordered to commit mass murder or genocide and then be denied the right even to make a case for the lawfulness of his actions. The judge's rulings fly in the face of the Supreme Court's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision, which stood for the principle that all US officials are bound by national and international law not to commit war crimes.

The Army maintained that the duty to refuse an illegal order, established at the Nuremberg Trials and enshrined in the Universal Code of Military Justice, applies only to orders to commit particular criminal acts like executing a prisoner. But in Watada, Resister, a January 27 video by New America Media's Curtis Choy, Watada says that responsibility "doesn't just include individual war crimes. It includes the greatest crime against the peace, which is, as they determined after Nuremberg, wars of aggression, wars that are not out of necessity but out of choice for profit or power or whatever it may be."

Watada's dissent was intended to spark a movement of civil resistance on the part of the American people. As he told the Veterans for Peace annual convention in Seattle recently, the peace movement needs a change of strategy.

Honest! This time it's the truth! Really!

Even though we did not protect the weapons stashes all over Iraq when we first invaded and there was rampant looting, these are not those bombs! The bombs have Iranian writing all over them. See the little sticker? Even though we fired all the translators, we can tell it says "Death to America! Love, Iran" on the sides!

We need to attack Iran! Just a bit...c'mon, that's why we started this war in the first place!

That isn't what Gates actually said, but almost:

MUNICH, Germany (AP) - Serial numbers and other markings on bombs suggest that Iranians are linked to deadly explosives used by Iraqi militants, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday in some of the administration's first public assertions on evidence the military has collected.

While the Bush administration and military officials have repeatedly said Iranians have been tied to terrorist bombings in Iraq, they have said little about evidence to bolster such claims, including any documents and other items collected in recent raids in Iraq.

The assertions have been met with skepticism by some lawmakers still fuming over intelligence reports used by the administration to propel the country to war with Iraq in 2003. Gates' comments came as a new Pentagon inspector general's report criticized prewar Defense Department assertions of al-Qaida connections to Iraq.

Gates told reporters Friday that markings on explosives provide "pretty good" evidence that Iranians are supplying either weapons or technology for Iraqi extremists.

Or maybe somebody else will go ahead and just attack Iran... (I have no idea if this is true or not, but sadly, I wouldn't put it past them.)

A recent strike by nuclear-armed Israeli Air Force fighter-bombers bound for targets in Iran was turned back after being intercepted by U.S. fighters over Iraq, this reporter has learned.

Two sources have independently confirmed the encounter, which took place on January 7, 2007. Though the first informant offered few details beyond an initial tip, a second source long-known by this reporter to have well-placed U.S. and “non-U.S.” military and government contacts provided specific information regarding the raid, which was aimed at the radical religious ayatollahs holding ultimate power in Iran.

Update: NTodd reminds us not to be fooled again ... fool us once, shame on you...

That was fast!

Watada's attorney was against the calling of a mistrial, but... :

FORT LEWIS, Wash. (AP) -- A judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in the court-martial of an Army lieutenant who refused to deploy to Iraq, saying the soldier did not fully understand a document he signed admitting to elements of the charges.

Prosecutors said 1st Lt. Ehren Watada admitted in the document that he had a duty to go to Iraq with his fellow soldiers. Watada, however, said he admitted only that he did not go to Iraq with his unit, not that he had a duty to go.

Military judge Lt. Col. John Head granted prosecutors' request for a mistrial, which Watada's lawyer opposed. He set a March 12 date for a new trial and dismissed the jurors.

More in this post.

Update:

A date for a new court martial has been set for March 19 but lawyers for Watada said they hoped Wednesday's ruling would mark the end of proceedings.

"The mistrial is very likely to have the consequence of ending this case because double jeopardy may prevent the government from proceeding with a retrial," said Eric Seitz, lead attorney for Watada.

"Although the defense was prepared to proceed with Lt. Watada's testimony, and felt very optimistic about this trial, we view the order declaring a mistrial as a significantly positive event."

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

Check this site.

Make yourself heard

Our elected officials need to be told that you do not support the surge (long-term escalation) of troops.

From skippy's, Russ Feingold:

i am really troubled by the attempt of not only republicans but leading democrats to essentially finesse the situation we’re in right now. this is not a time to finesse the situation, this not a time to slow-walk. this almost reminds me a little bit of the way democrats behaved in october of 2002 which was trying to play it safe, trying to use words such as, “well, we’re going to vote for this resolution but what it really means is that the president should go to the u.n.” that stuff doesn’t fly. and this kind of an attempt to go a little bit of the way just to show you’re on the other side of the president doesn’t fly either.

what we need now is a strong position to get out of this situation. that’s what i have proposed in a bill and we have also offered an amendment to this item that is in theory before the senate now, which would basically strike the provisions that i just talked about, that were harmful. it’s already been cosponsored by two of the most distinguished and senior members of the senate – senator leahy and senator dodd. so the three of us have introduced this amendment that says, look, you can’t have language in this warner thing that says you can’t start withdrawing troops. it says you can’t have language that talks about a surge in al anbar province, and you can’t have language that says we can’t consider reducing the funding. so this is an important moment to see if we’re really going to try to end this war and frankly i’m disappointed that democrats are playing it too safe on this.

Crooks and Liars has the video. Firedoglake has more.

Oh, by the way.... 2.9 TRILLION for the uh... budget and the war in Iraq please...

Bush is sure he can wring just a bit more money out for his cronies before his term is up.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Monday unveiled a $2.9 trillion spending plan that devotes billions more to fighting the war in Iraq but pinches pennies on programs promised to voters by Democrats now running Congress. Democrats widely attacked the plan and even a prominent Republican conceded it faced bleak prospects.

Bush's spending plan would make his first-term tax cuts permanent, at a cost of $1.6 trillion over 10 years. He is seeking $78 billion in savings in the government's big health care programs - Medicare and Medicaid - over the next five years.

Release of the budget in four massive volumes kicks off months of debate in which Democrats, now in control of both the House and Senate for the first time in Bush's presidency, made clear that they have significantly different views on spending and taxes.

"The president's budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality and continues to move America in the wrong direction," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., said, "I doubt that Democrats will support this budget, and frankly, I will be surprised if Republicans rally around it either."

The Christian Science Monitor has a list of links under this article's headline: US audit finds 'spectacular' waste of funds in Iraq.

This article was posted in June of 2004:

WASHINGTON — A comprehensive examination of the U.S.-led agency that oversaw the rebuilding of Iraq has triggered at least 27 criminal investigations and produced evidence of millions of dollars' worth of fraud, waste and abuse, according to a report by the Coalition Provisional Authority's inspector general.

The report is the most sweeping indication yet that some U.S. officials and private contractors repeatedly violated the law in the free-wheeling atmosphere that pervaded the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild the war-torn country.

More than $600 million in cash from Iraqi oil money was spent with insufficient controls. Senior U.S. officials manipulated or misspent contract money. Millions of dollars' worth of equipment could not be located, the report said.

TomPaine.comonsense posted this in December 2006 :

What followed was a U.S. corporate invasion of Iraq.

While some 150 U.S. companies received contracts for work in Iraq following the invasion, the big reconstruction winners (after Halliburton) were: Parsons Corporation of Pasadena, Calif. ($5.3 billion); Fluor Corporation of Aliso Viejo, Calif. ($3.75 billion); Washington Group International of Boise, Idaho ($3.1 billion); Shaw Group of Baton Rouge, Louisiana ($3 billion); Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco, Calif. ($2.8 billion); Perini Corporation of Framingham, Mass. ($2.5 billion); and Contrack International, Inc. of Arlington, Va. ($2.3 billion).

These seven companies are responsible for virtually all reconstruction in Iraq, including water, electricity, bridges, roads, hospitals and sewers. One reason for their failure was that companies, such as Bechtel, came to Iraq with the hopes of ultimately winning contracts to privatize the services they were hired to rebuild. Because many U.S. contracts guaranteed that all of the companies’ costs would be covered, plus a set rate of profit—known as “cost-plus contracts”—they took their time, built expensive new facilities that showcased their skills and would serve their own needs were they to run the systems one day.

The American companies were hired instead of Iraqi companies that had successfully rebuilt Iraq after the previous U.S. invasion. And, because the Americans did not have to hire Iraqis, many imported foreign workers instead. The Iraqis were of course well aware that American firms had received billions of dollars for reconstruction, that Iraqi companies and workers had been rejected and that the country was still without basic services. The result was increasing hostility, acts of sabotage targeted directly at foreign contractors and their work and a rising insurgency.

In the end, Iraq has not emerged as the wealthy free-market haven these companies and others waiting on the horizon had hoped for, at least not yet (the economic policies put in place by the Bush administration remain and the work is ongoing to turn Iraq into a corporate-friendly Middle East Mecca). Therefore, several U.S. companies are preparing to follow Bechtel’s lead by packing up, heading home, and taking their billions of dollars with them, while leaving their work in Iraq undone.

Awash literally with money, businesses came to Iraq to do work. They will be leaving without completing what they were paid to do, and they will keep their money. Tell me again what the definition of insanity is?

So... tell me again. Why should the US taxpayer support this war?

Because after a point...


We should notice....


The people running this war....


Are in it only for the money....

.

First Lieutenant Ehren Watada on trial for refusing to fight in an illegal war

From Wikipedia:

Ehren Watada (born 1978) is a First Lieutenant in the United States Army, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division Stryker Brigade Combat Team, who in June 2006 publicly refused to deploy to Iraq for the Iraq War, saying that he believed the war to be illegal and that it would make him party to war crimes. The first and only commissioned officer in the U.S. armed forces to publicly refuse deployment to Iraq,^[1] Watada will face a court-martial set to begin February 5, 2007.^[2]

AlJazeera:

Watada, the first commissioned officer to refuse specifically to serve in Iraq, has spoken out against US military involvement in Iraq, calling it morally wrong and a breach of American law.

In a video statement in June, Watada said: "As the order to take part in an illegal act is ultimately unlawful as well, I must as an officer of honour and integrity refuse that order."

Despite having already been charged, he spoke out again in August, at a Veterans for Peace rally in Seattle.

Watada said: "Though the American soldier wants to do right, the illegitimacy of the occupation itself, the policies of this administration, and the rules of engagement of desperate field commanders will ultimately force them to be party to war crime."

Democracy Now and the interview with Amy Goodman:

1ST LT. EHREN WATADA: When I learned that I was going to be deployed last year, I thought it was my responsibility as an officer to learn everything I could about war in general -- its effects on people, its effects on the soldiers, and also specifically why we were there, what was occurring at that time, what had occurred in the past -- in order to get a better understanding, as was my job.

And the more I read different articles by international and constitutional law experts, and the reports coming out from government agencies and non-governmental agencies, and the reports and the revelations from independent journalists and the Iraqi people themselves and the soldiers coming home, I came to the conclusion that the war and what we're doing over there is illegal. And so, being so, I felt it was my duty to morally, and also legally, refuse any orders to participate in it.

TruthOut.org and the statement by Debbie Clark:

Military veterans can especially understand how hard a path it is that Lt. Watada has taken, because, whether we served in war or during peacetime, we know what it means to live and serve under military authority.

However hard it may be to stand up, any active duty service members today whose consciences have been moved by what they know in their hearts to be wrong can also take strength in knowing that the very same military authority that requires them to obey all lawful orders, also, if it is true to its own code, imposes upon them the obligation to disobey all unlawful orders.