Blue Inkblots

MY NEW ADDRESS--COME VISIT!

2007-03-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

Guys, I have a new address, and I'd like you all to come visit me--I won't be making any more posts over here at blueinkblots.blogspot.com.

I've gotten my own domain name; a suggestion from computer-savvy friends as well as experts in the field. In a few months, I'll be setting up a website over there, but for now, I'm just continuing on with Blue Inkblots, which is now called, "Deanie's Blue Inkblots."

We've already gotten some new friends at the new location, where I've already made four or five new posts, including an explanation as to what the new House bill does and does not say about the war in Iraq, as well as a deeply personal post called, "After Four Years of War, It Doesn't Get Any Easier."

I've also left a provocative post, in which I gave my opinion as to why the (very small minority of) far-left of the Democratic party is wrong, in my opinion, about a quick pull-out, called, "I Want the War to End, Too, But the Troops Are Warriors, Not Children."

Most of my military family, as well as some new folks, have joined me. I'll be making my posts shorter, and as the presidential race swings into gear, I'll be expanding my commentary to include more on politics and less on the war, depending upon how things go in the next few months.

As my readers well know, we've sent both my son and my nephew over to Iraq for a total of FIVE deployments into the bloody Anbar Province with the Marine Corps, and now I would like to ask for your prayers for yet another nephew, who is due to deploy to Baghdad with the Army in a few short weeks for a very long deployment.

Also, one of our Blue Inkblots family-members, Kathy Sweeney, will be sending her son to Iraq with the Marines this month.

And another, Jamie Woodard, needs some serious prayers, because the powers that be have made the decision to release her severely brain-injured Iraq vet Marine son, Ben Hardgrove, from his rehab, with no medical benefits, very soon. She does not know what they are going to do, and as they have five other children, including three pre-schoolers, their situation is fairly desperate.

It was interesting, what Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said about how the "sacrifice" of the war has been worth it.

It seems some of us are doing all the sacrificing. Seems we should be able to decide whether it's "worth it" or not.

Come join me, over at: http://deaniemills.com

I look forward to seeing you guys.

TRUE PATRIOTS

2007-03-02T05:22:00.000-08:00

"Imagine all the people, living life in peace
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one."
--"Imagine," music and lyrics by John Lennon

"My kids went to public school, and one day they came home and said there was going to be a concert. We said…What songs will you be singing? And they said, 'One of them will be, 'Imagine.'

"And we said, 'Fine, then. When it gets to that song, stand there and don't sing.'

"And they didn't."
--G. Gordon Liddy, muscle-man for Richard Nixon, convicted felon, popular conservative talk-radio host, famous for telling survivalists in the 90's to "aim for the head-shot, because they wear body armor" should federal law enforcement officers approach.

"NATALIE MAINES WILL BE SHOT DEAD SUNDAY JULY 6 IN DALLAS, TEXAS"
--Death threat delivered to the Dixie Chicks lead singer before a concert in Dallas in 2003. The F.B.I. revealed to the band's security team that this person--and others--had made other threats against their lives but that the F.B.I. had chosen not to tell their security people.

"I know how scared I am, and I can't imagine how Natalie must feel. Standing up there on stage…you feel so naked."
--Martie Maguire of the Dixie Chicks

I just watched two of the most powerful documentaries I have ever had the privilege to view.

One, The U.S. vs John Lennon, documents the systematic and relentless campaign of the Nixon administration, aided and abetted by J. Edgar Hoover's F.B.I., to silence the globally popular singer/songwriter and his avant-guard artist wife, Yoko Ono--(because of their tireless efforts to work for peace and an end to the Vietnam war, especially after 18-year olds got the vote and presidential primaries were coming up)--and, failing that, to force them out of the country by any means necessary, legal and otherwise.

The second, Shut Up and Sing, chronicles what happened to the most popular female band in the history of recorded music when the lead singer, Natalie Maines, uttered twelve words on-stage in London to protest the pre-emptive war in Iraq: "I'm ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas."

The fact that Maines made the comment because more than one million protesters against the war had flooded London streets that day was irrelevant to what happened after her remarks were quoted on a right-wing website with accompanying vitriol.

What followed was a systematic and overwhelming campaign by conservative activist groups and right-wing radio and television, tacitly encouraged by the White House--and aided and abetted by the CEO of an organization that owned 200 radio stations and ordered them all not to play their records--not just to shut them up, but to destroy them completely.

The over-the-top hatred directed at the band by country fans whipped up into a frenzy by such people as Bill O'Reilly, who called them the "Dixie Twits" and said they, "deserve to be slapped around", which culminated in serious death-threats that forced the young women--all of whom had babies under the age of three--to live in terror as they traveled to do concerts and promotional appearances and eventually forcing them to move from their homes to another state, was so beyond the pale when juxtaposed next to the offense that provoked it in the first place as to defy description.

Forty years ago, when John Lennon and Yoko Ono begged the world to "give peace a chance," Richard Nixon responded by ordering J. Edgar Hoover to start a file on the couple, which means that their phones were tapped, they were openly followed by F.B.I. agents, and a bogus case was opened in the immigration courts to deport Lennon back to England.

Documents released since Lennon's death by the Freedom of Information Act, show a deliberate chain of command going through every major cabinet office in the administration and eventually to the desk of the president.

But John Lennon--like Natalie Maines and the Chicks--WAS NOT READY TO BACK DOWN. He fought the administration in court, appealing every decision, over and over again until he won and was permitted to remain in the United States.

What strikes me is not so much that creative artists are the first--ALWAYS--to speak truth to power, the first to exercise their right to free speech in verse and prose and song and speech. That is a given. Creative artists don't worry so much what people think, are not constrained by polite society, and also feel a sense of responsibility to use their gifts and their celebrity to speak out against injustice and the abuse of power.

No, what strikes me is that, in both cases, we had an administration that ruled by fear and intimidation, creating paranoia among their own followers and accusing dissenters of not just disloyalty, but TREASON, while all along, they were prolonging a war long beyond the point where the majority of the American people even wanted it--

--But THINK ABOUT IT.

The same architects of this war and this administration and this policy of faux patriotism and paranoia and the relentless persecution of dissent in 2006 are the ones who served Richard Nixon in 1968.

Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld both worked in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and Henry Kissinger, who is a close advisor to Bush, was of course, the chief mastermind of the Vietnam war.

Richard Nixon got himself elected by promising that he had a "secret plan" to end the war, and then allowed tens of thousands more boys to die while he dragged out the so-called "plan" until it was politically advantageous to get him re-elected.

With Cheney and Rumsfeld calling the shots, and Kissinger whispering in his ear, Bush deliberately used the run-up to war to whip up his supporters and guarantee a Republican majority in 2002, and then used the weapon of All-Dissent-Is-Disloyalty to get himself re-elected in 2004. His whipping boys fanned out and managed to make a decorated Vietnam war combat vet look like a wimp, while, he, the draft-dodger, came across as a star-spangled hero.

Both presidents used the power of the presidency to paint any opponent as an enemy and to destroy anyone who dared defy them. They both ran secretive, paranoid administrations that sought to pervert Constitutional freedoms in order to garner for themselves more power.

THE BOTTOM LINE IS THIS: We are fighting the Vietnam war all over again because it's the same damn people in power. And they are using the same playbook to silence dissent.

Nixon tried to silence John Lennon. But by the time Bush came around, he and his minions had learned a far more sinister and sophisticated way to manipulate the media (yet come off looking like choir boys) while they tried to destroy the Dixie Chicks and anybody else who dared to defy them.

"They should just strap Natalie Maines to a bomb and drop her on Baghdad."
--caller to right-wing radio program

"They should just shut up and sing."
--host of right-wing radio program

"DIXIE TWITS: WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION."
--sign outside a concert

"If people don't want to buy their records, they shouldn't get their feelings hurt."
--President George W. Bush, in response to a question about the Chicks, giving his tacit permission for the onslaught against them.

"Toby Keith hasn't been banned for that."
--Natalie Maines, referring to the country singer's habit of flashing a gigantic "photo" of her in the arms of Saddam Hussein at his concerts, then singing, "I'll put a boot up your ass."

"The war is going great. The president's ratings are sky-high. Trust me, in two weeks, the looting will be over and the reconstruction of Iraq will be underway."
--Business manager to the Chicks, warning Natalie that her words would haunt her because the war was going so well. She had already apologized for her remarks--the day after--but it was little-reported in the media and drowned out by the howls of protest from such conservative organizations as FreeRepublic.com

Watching these great artists fight for their right to speak out in a free democracy--a right granted to them by the Constitution--watching them struggle to survive the tidal wave of hysteria directed toward them while they continued to create and to care for their families, made me weep.

You can't begin to imagine the stress such courage can cause, the toll it can take, not just on body and soul, but on career and livelihood.

Receiving hate mail and death threats, having radio stations refuse to play their music, watching steamrollers plow over their records and CD's even as the news media knocks each other down for an "exclusive" story--and doing it all while trying to maintain a marriage and care for young children--is a strain that us mere mortals can only, well, IMAGINE.

All of the Dixie Chicks had toddlers and infants underfoot while they were debating whether to require metal detectors to screen fans at concerts in case anyone might be carrying a gun.

John Lennon was a stay-at-home dad to his cherished child, Sean, who was five years old when Lennon was gunned down outside his home in New York City in 1980.

The fear is real. The hatred and the threats are real.

And so is the courage.

And here's the thing that oppressors can never quite GET. People respond to courage.

The WORDS that haters and oppressors try to kill?

People listen. And they hear.

In the midst of the most terrible oppressive tactics of the Nixon Administration to run John Lennon and Yoko Ono out of town on a rail--they released "Power to the People," and "Imagine," songs which not only went on to become the anthems of the peace movement, but which were also multi-million dollar top-forty hits.

After waves of hatred had been directed at the Dixie Chicks, in a concert in front of thousands, Natalie Maines offered the crowd fifteen seconds to boo the band.

And the rafters nearly blew off from the deafening thunder of cheers.

When the Dixie Chicks went back into the recording studio--out in Los Angeles because they'd had to leave Austin due to the threats and atmosphere there--Natalie Maines was asked if they would, in essence, be asking for the forgiveness of their country fans in the words of their songs.

She said, Hell, no.

"I'm not ready to make nice
"I'm not ready to back down
"I'm still mad as hell and I don't have time
"to go round and round and round.

"It's too late to make it right
"I probably wouldn't if I could
"I can't bring myself to do what it is
"You think I should."
--"I'm Not Ready to Make Nice," words and music by Emily Robison, Martie Maguire, Natalie Maines (the Dixie Chicks), and Dan Wilson

"Dixie Chicks: Taking the Long Way," debuted at not only Number One on the Billboard charts, but also Number One on the Country Charts.

And much to the chagrin of the haters, the Dixie Chicks swept the Grammy Awards, winning five, including Best Song, Best Album, and Best Country Entertainers, defeating such industry darlings as Carrie Underwood.

After Richard Nixon was forced to resign following the REAL national shame of Watergate, a reporter asked John Lennon what he thought about that.

He said, "Time wounds all heels."

In 2006, when the Bush administration had finally been revealed to have manipulated intelligence and misled the nation into an endless bloody wasted war, when 75% of the people polled hated the way he and his people had managed this war and a majority of the U.S. military now felt we never should have gone in, when Natallie Maines and the rest of us who disagreed back in 2002 were proven right--the Dixie Chicks returned to the same London arena where Natalie Maines had first uttered the 12 words that nearly destroyed them.

Standing in front of an on-their-feet cheering crowd, she commented that she had often been asked what she was going to say upon her return to, as she called it, "the scene of the crime."

And with a saucy, non-repentant twinkle in her eye, just before launching into their Number One hit to thunderous roars from the crowd, she said, "I'm STILL ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas."

The ultimate irony of those who would silence voices of dissent in a free democracy--particularly in time of war--by calling into question the patriotism of those who question an unjust war, is that the men and women in uniform who bravely march into battle do so to DEFEND that very right.

"John Lennon would be opposed to the Iraq war. He would say, "The war on terror has become the war OF terror."
--Ron Kovic, author of "Born on the Fourth of July," who was paralyzed by a sniper's bullet in the Vietnam War. Tom Cruise was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of the Marine who went on to protest the war.

Again and again, people ask me why I write so obsessively about this war. Is it because my son is a combat Marine who has done two deployments to Iraq? Is it because I come from a proud military family (with yet another young nephew heading into harm's way soon)? Is it because I protested this war from the beginning, and had my OWN patriotism questioned?

I am a writer. A writer is who I am. It is not what I DO. It is WHO I AM.

As a writer, every cell of my being cries out against injustice and against the abuse of power, and protest runs through my veins and out my fingertips onto the computer keys.

It is who I am. I cannot be anything else.

You see, any time a powerful society attempts to crush the creative voice of protest, they fail.

The conservative-run McCarthy era blacklist did not silence Hollywood screenwriters. They just wrote under pseudonyms.

Jewish dissident Elie Wiesel was not silenced by Nazi concentration camps.

Russian dissident Alexander Solzenitzen was not silenced by Soviet Communist gulags.

John Lennon and the Dixie Chicks were not destroyed, and their voices have not been silenced. Even 27 years after Lennon's death, his words and his music live on in protest to war and injustice everywhere.

My one tiny voice is not heard so much as Lennon's or Natalie Maines's. And that's fine.

Those of us out here in the hinterlands will raise our voices together into a mighty chorus, and we will cry out in unison until we can no longer be ignored. We will not be silenced.

It is our duty, our responsibility, and ultimately, our burden.

And we carry it with joy.

"We shouldn't confuse dissent with disloyalty. The dissenters are the true patriots because they are speaking out. Dissent is the only way to correct mistakes."
--John Dean, former chief counsel to Richard Nixon and the first to voluntarily testify against the president during the Watergate hearings.

"Dissent is the essential handmaiden of freedom."
--Gore Vidal, quoted in "The U.S. vs John Lennon"

TOM RICKS IS MY HERO

2007-02-28T21:37:00.000-08:00

Tom Ricks is the Washington Post's military correspondent. He has humped it with the grunts many a time, won the Pulitzer Prize twice, and is the author of the bestselling masterpiece: FIASCO: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.

Nobody, but nobody cuts through the bullshit smoother and quicker than Ricks, and you can trust that his reporting is truth--not something filtered through White House "leaks" to willing stenographers.

He is highly respected by those in the military, at all levels, from the Pentagon to the infantry, and it shows in his reporting.

This is a piece he published in "Tom Ricks's Inbox," for the Washington Post, on February 25, 2007. He literally means that this comes from an e-mail he received. I'm going to publish Ricks's words as well, in full:

Subject: What affects morale?

There has been much debate recently about whether congressional resolution of disapproval for the U.S. troop increase in Iraq would undercut the morale of forces there. Here an officer who has served two combat tours in Iraq reports on what has affected his morale:

Ten Worst:

1. getting blown up
2. buddies getting blown up
3. re-securing a town we secured year before last
4. "Taps"
5. the "catch and release" detainee program
6. colostomy bags
7. civilian young men who won't look me in the eye when I'm in uniform
8. any scene from any shopping mall anywhere in America
9. editorials pointing out that casualties are "light by historical standards"
10. lies

Ten Best

1. Iraqis willing to fight for their country
2. good sergeants
3. clean, dry socks and T-shirts
4. cigarettes and chai without body armor
5. the USO at the DFW airport
6. meeting an Iraqi leader from my last tour who's still alive
7. "nothing significant to report"
8. sleep and KBR macadamia nut cookies (tie)
9. dead generals (this one is hypothetical, at least for the past six years, but Ridgeway said, "It's good for the troops' morale to see a dead general once in a while.")
10. truth
"Tom Ricks's Inbox," Washington Post, February 25, 2007

MUST-WATCH T.V.

2007-02-27T06:56:00.000-08:00

Guys, tonight at ten p.m. eastern time, nine p.m. central, ABC will air, "To Iraq and Back: Bob Woodruff Reports."

Many of you may remember the handsome news anchor who was "blown up"--as the troops call it--by an IED while out searching for good news stories in Iraq to report for ABC Evening News.

Woodruff was gravely injured, with some 200 rocks embedded in his face and skull, his skull crushed, jaw broken, and so on, resulting in Traumatic Brain Injury that kept him in a coma for some 36 days.

When he awoke, he could not remember his children's names or anyone else's, for that matter; could not identify simple pictures of items such as scissors or cup; could not speak except in gibberish. His family was told that he would possibly never talk again, and his ability to walk was also in doubt.

The father of four children, ranging in age from six to fifteen, was taught language by his little girls, and brought back to where he is today by the love of his family, and by--it must be stated--the very best medical care, the cost of which was paid in full by the network.

The reason I think this is so important is that Woodruff came to know, and care for, other "TBI" patients during his recovery period, all of whom were soldiers and Marines. Woodruff points out that, although the official count is more than 23,000 injured in the war in Iraq, there are probably far more who have suffered brain injury that have not been included in the count, simply because their injuries did not appear that bad at the time.

In fact, his cameraman was also bleeding after the bomb, and thought he was all right. He remembers smoking two cigarettes, and then waking up in the hospital after major brain surgery.

It has become a cause dear to Woodruff's heart, and he wants to draw attention to this sub-class of injured war veterans, even as he continues to struggle with short-term memory and other problems from his brain injury. On "Good Morning, America," he could not remember the words for the Vietnam War and had to ask Dianne Sawyer to remind him.

Some years ago, I spent many months researching traumatic brain injury--particularly closed-head brain injury--for a book, "Freefall."

I learned then the insidiousness of this terrible injury. For one thing, in the less serious cases, a patient can walk around and appear to be normal to people who do not understand. They're called the "walking wounded." But the frustrations they face on a daily basis, just trying to recall words, things they knew only a few minutes before, and so on, can severely cripple their ability to work and to support themselves.

Most people are unaware that, say, a simple whiplash, can cause brain bruising when the brain smacks up against the skull. Swelling can result and that is where the problems begin. (In high school, I had a friend who had a fender-bender and banged his forehead against the rear-view mirror. He seemed okay, but told his family that night he was tired and went to bed early. They found him dead in bed the next morning, from the concussion.)

This is why I am so rabid on the subject of seat belts and motorcycle helmets. People just do not understand how easily the brain can be injured and how lifelong problems can result.

One common repercussion, for instance, can be personality changes. The family knows their loved one is "different" but can't explain it to doctors. They may be very irritable and quick-tempered when they never were before. Depression is a very serious concern, as frustrations mount. I studied one case of a minister who came out of his coma cussing like a sailor and could not seem to quit.

In my opinion, it's even possible that some post traumatic stress symptoms are actually, at least in part, the result of brain injury.

These are serious, sometimes crippling problems that people need to understand, especially when we demand that Congress make certain that, as long as they're going to pony up a couple trillion bucks to FIGHT wars ,then they'd better fork over funds to help these returning vets cope with these injuries.

My point is that it has become almost routine for combat soldiers and Marines on patrol in vehicles to get "blown up." My own son survived such an IED explosion during his last deployment. He was medivacced out, checked over, sent back into combat.

Who knows how many soldiers and Marines have suffered long-term problems because of the brain injuries they survived?

And that does not even count the numbers of soldiers and Marines who were horribly, terribly injured and survived, but who languish in hospital and rehab centers, unable to speak or feed themselves.

Woodruff says that science is learning that, whereas the accepted wisdom has been that you can see improvement in patients for eighteen months to two years before a plateau occurs, they now believe it is possible for improvement to go on for years--maybe even life.

Distraught military families who are dealing with the same challenges faced by the Woodruff family must also, at the same time, fight an indifferent bureacracy over the money to treat their loved one's injuries. They must fill out scores of forms and deal with their loved one being transferred from, say, one facility where he or she is receiving good care to one where he is not, simply because it is less expensive. They have to fight and fight for the help that, let's face it, came easily to the Woodruff family. I suspect that, during this entire time, he has been on the ABC News payroll--and while I have absolutely no problem with that at all--my point is that, for soldiers whose families depend upon them for their livelihoods, they may never be able to adequately support their children again due to these problems.

As pointed out in the series of articles published in the Washington Post, many vets with very serious brain injuries--one comes to mind, who had to carry around a pad with him at all times to write down words to remember--are turned down for veteran's benefits. In that soldier's case, the doctors maintained that because he had that little pad, he was okay.

In another case, doctors claimed that one soldier--who had done poorly in high school but not too poorly to be admitted into the Army--was rejected for benefits because they said his severe memory problems were basically caused by his being stupid--not by the truck door that crushed his skull in Iraq.

This is a matter that should concern every single American citizen, not just those of us with loved ones directly affected.

We can't just support our troops with yellow ribbon magnets and care packages while they are at war.

We MUST support them during the long, arduous, journey home.

NEWSPAPER FORCES PENTAGON TO NOTICE NEGLECTED WAR-WOUNDED

2007-02-21T16:02:00.000-08:00

They suffer from brain injuries, severed arms and legs, organ and back damage, and various degrees of post-traumatic stress. Their legions have grown so exponentially--they outnumber hospital patients at Walter Reed 17 to 1--that they take up every available bed on post and spill into dozens of nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army. The average stay is 10 months, but some have been stuck there for as long as two years…

… Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va), who headed the House Government Reform Committee, which investigates problems at Walter Reed and other Army facilities, said, "…There's vast appreciation for soldiers, but there's a lack of focus on what happens to them," when they return. "It's awful."

…One case manager was so disgusted, she brought roach bombs for the rooms. Mouse traps are handed out. It doesn't help that soldiers there subsist on carry-out food because the hospital cafeteria is such a hike on cold nights. They make do with microwaves and hot plates…

…"I hate it," said Spec. George Romero, 25…"There are cockroaches. The elevator doesn't work. The garage door doesn't work. Sometimes there's no heat, no water…I talked to doctors and medical staff. They just said you kind of get used to the outside world…My platoon sergeant said, 'Suck it up.'"
--"Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration at Army's Top Medical Facility," Dana Priest and Anne Hull, Washington Post, February 18, 2007

The conflict in Iraq has hatched a virtual town of desperation and dysfunction, clinging to the pilings of Walter Reed. The wounded are socked away for months and years in random buildings and barracks in and around this military post…

Bomb blasts are the most common cause of injury in Iraq, and nearly 60 percent of the blast victims also suffer from traumatic brain injury, according to Walter Reed's studies, which explains why some at Mologne House wander the hallways trying to remember their room numbers.

Some soldiers and Marines have been here for 18 months or longer. Doctor's appointments and evaluations are routinely dragged out and difficult to get…
--"Hotel Aftermath: Inside Mologne House, the Survivors of War Wrestle with Military Bureaucracy and Personal Demons," Anne Hull and Dana Priest, Washington Post, February 19, 2007

For the past three years, Michael J. Wagner directed the Army's largest effort to help the most vulnerable soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. His office in Room 3E01 of the world-renowned hospital was supposed to match big-hearted donors with thousands of wounded soldiers who could not afford to feed their children, pay mortgages, buy plane tickets or put up visiting families in nearby hotels.

But while he was being paid to provide this vital service to patients, outpatients and their relations, Wagner was also seeking funders and soliciting donations for his own new charity, based in Texas, according to documents and interviews with current and former staff members. Some families also said Wagner treated them callously and made it hard for them to receive assistance.
--"Hospital Investigates Former Aid Chief: Walter Reed Official Had Own Charity," Dana Priest and Anne Hull, Washington Post, February 20, 2007

If you listen to the PR operation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the U.S. military's gleaming flagship hospital offers veterans the best treatment available. What doesn't get mentioned is the bureaucratic contempt and physical squalor that too often await badly injured outpatient soldiers on the Walter Reed campus, the subject of a four-month Post investigation detailed in articles published Sunday and Monday.

Reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull and researcher Julie Tate spent hundreds of hours inspecting conditions and interviewing injured troops and their loved ones at Walter Reed outpatient facilities. Their findings: Veteran's rooms were rank; bureaucratic hassles and paper-pushing make the process of repairing buildings, redressing patient grievances and providing veterans with basic goods depressingly distressing, many veterans leave Walter Reed without the compensation they clearly deserve for their sacrifices.

The walls of one soldier's room were covered with black mold, and the ceiling of his shower had a large hole. Soldiers who lost their uniforms while undergoing emergency treatment on the battlefield have had to present their purple hearts to get replacement clothes. Amputees and patients on taxing drug regimens are required to report for formation early in the morning, even if it means trudging over accumulated ice and snow. ..

Most infuriating are reports of official efforts to deny disability benefits to discharged fighters…lowball settlements may leave soldiers and their families impoverished for life.
--"Rotten Homecoming: This is No Way to Treat a Veteran," editorial, Washington Post, February 21, 2007

First of all, just let me say: GOD BLESS REPORTERS DANA PRIEST, ANNE HULL, AND RESEARCHER JULIE TATE--and the WASHINGTON POST.

I hope they receive the Pulitzer Prize for this groundbreaking--and heartbreaking--story about the TRUE fate that awaits those brave men and women who leave parts of their bodies and brains--as well as blood, sweat, and tears--behind in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not so photo-oppy, is it? But then, reality and truth--as opposed to politics and propaganda--seldom are.

The Washington Post and its fine reporters have done exactly what a free press in a functioning democracy SHOULD do--tear back the pretty-colored government band-aids to reveal the gaping wounds of truth hidden beneath.

When I first started to read this series on conditions for so many of our war-wounded right there within television-camera distance from the White House, it made me, literally, sick to my stomach. I didn't even show the articles to my combat-vet husband because I knew it would upset him too much, nor will I show them to my combat-vet, active-duty Marine son.

There is so much to take in. Printed up, the first two articles, alone, ran nine pages apiece.

Page after page of documented cases--quoted by name and rank--of horrifying neglect, dreary, daily misery, families under almost unimaginable stress, and war-wounded soldiers kicked to the curb with virtually no benefits or protections.

In the Post editorial, the case of Cpl. Dell McLoud was recounted:

The Army tried to deny disability compensation to Cpl. Dell McLoud, who suffered a head injury that left him aimless and unable even to count change at the cafeteria. Army officials' argument: Because he had done poorly in high school, his current mental state might not have been caused by the steel door that smashed his skull in Iraq.

The only way these reporters were able to get this true story was by simply not telling the Army that they were doing it. They knew that if they went through official channels, they'd be sent to the show-case wards at Walter Reed where amputees are first taken--sparkling, state of the art facilities that are nothing less than what our men and women deserve.

But here, as Paul Harvey would say, is the REST OF THE STORY.

After a few weeks, when they are wheelchair-bound but not yet fitted for prosthetics, when their claims are being processed, they are assigned to housing there on the base, in buildings scattered far and wide over the campus.

And there, basically, they are left to rot.

The thing is, the U.S. military was not and has not been, prepared for the FLOOD of wounded from this war. Fully ninety percent of war-injuries are survived, and patients missing as much as three limbs, or half their brains, are sent to U.S. military facilities to recuperate.

Not since the Vietnam war has the system been so overwhelmed, only back then, they had TEN TIMES the staff available to handle it.

Now, it's nothing but a bottle-necked nightmare. Mologne House, which was mentioned in the second article of the series, was built only a few short years ago, primarily as a nice hotel that was to be used to house family members of wounded soldiers and Marines, as well as the disabled vets who were retired.

But Iraq and Afghanistan sent so many waves and waves of grievously wounded troops that soon the hotel was completely given over to house them. At least those who live there don't have to deal with cockroaches and black mold.

However, even though all of them had suffered terrible wounds--some traumatic brain injuries--and all were suffering varying degrees of post traumatic stress, the Army refused to allow psychologists or even social workers on the premises.

Consequently, there have been suicides and cases of drug overdoses and even alcohol poisoning as despairing and desperate war-wounded take their own lives.

At any of dozens of other buildings on the premises, the squalor is horrifying enough, but these guys are still in the Army. They are expected to "fall out" at 5:30 a.m. for formation. They have to make their way over ice-covered sidewalks on crutches and in wheelchairs, zonked out on medication, to report for duty.

When their uniforms are slashed off of them by medics in the battlefield, they then have nothing to wear in the hospital. They manage to make do with sweats and tee shirts, but in at least one case, an amputee was refused permission to attend the memorial service of a good friend who was killed in Iraq because he did not have a uniform to wear to the event.

Others have to prove that they are even IN the Army, especially if their paperwork gets lost, which it frequently does. Some have to bring photographs of their time in combat, or show their medals, in order to have access to basic facilities.

And that does not even approach the vast numbers who are being refused lifetime access to medical care. In an obvious attempt the cut spending, time and time again, the grievously wounded are kicked to the curb.

According to the Army Times, one 20-year old soldier--who has a titanium plate in his skull to replace missing pieces from a bomb blast that also ruptured his spleen, tore out his colon, and tore away the ligaments from his knee--was turned down for medical benefits post-discharge.

One case of thousands.

GEORGE W. BUSH SAYS HE DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS UNTIL THE ARTICLES APPEARED IN THE PAPER, BUT IN HIS PAST THREE BUDGETS--ALL RUBBER-STAMPED BY A REPUBLICAN CONGRESS--THE V.A. BUDGET HAS BEEN SLASHED BY TEN PERCENT--THAT'S A 30-PERCENT CUT IN FUNDS TO THE V.A.--JUST WHEN THE WAR-WOUNDED ARE SWELLING ITS RANKS BY THE THOUSANDS.

When the reporters interviewed Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, commander at Walter Reed, he said that one of the reasons the claims were being dragged out as long as they were, was so that the Army could hold onto soldiers as long as possible, "because this is the first time this country has fought a war for so long with an all-volunteer force since the Revolution."

Bush and the Pentagon are scrambling to cover their asses on this one, and although they all say they HAD NO IDEA UNTIL IT APPEARED IN THE PAPER, the truth is that, as of March, 2006, a Government Accountability Office report documented many of these same outrages, according to the Army Times.

So somebody, somewhere, knew.

Just nobody in the Bush administration.

The outrage and the outcry has been loud and long. As soon as the articles appeared in the Washington Post this past weekend and on through this week, Congressional and White House offices have been flooded with phone calls, e-mails, and press queries.

Television network news crews showed up at the same places mentioned in the articles and put out some B-roll that proves every word to be true.

By first thing Monday morning, the Pentagon was racing to instigate big-time damage control. By the time the news crews had arrived, Army work-crews were already ripping up foul carpeting and removing black mold. Soldiers who'd called those sad quarters "home" for months on end had already been moved--presumably--to better rooms.

Social workers have suddenly been put in place to help with the emotional and mental stresses of the patients

The trouble is, they are expecting a "troop surge" of more and more waves of war-wounded as a result of Bush's big surge plan in Baghdad, and the problems will only be compounded then.

The secretaries of the Army and Navy are launching their own investigations to go along with a Pentagon probe instigated by the news articles, and Congress is falling all over itself to find answers and fix the problems.

Several senators, including presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-Ill) and former presidential candidate John Kerry (D-Mass), announced they are co-sponsoring legislation to simplify the paperwork process for recovering soldiers and increase case managers and psychological counselors. The bill would also require the Army to report more regularly to Congress and the inspector general about the living conditions of injured soldiers.
--"Swift Action Promised at Walter Reed: Investigations Urged as Army Moves to Make Repairs, Improve Staffing," Dana Priest and Anne Hull, Washington Post, February 21, 2007

Tucked away in this president's defense budget are billions that have been allocated for high-tech defense systems, unneeded jet airplanes, and other boondoggles designed to keep K Street and its defense industry lobbyists fat and happy.

Meanwhile, the men and women who are actually doing the FIGHTING in this war, have been horribly mistreated, neglected, and even abused because, basically, the military does not have the money it needs to take care of them.

This is criminal.

Jeff Miller (Fla), the ranking Republican on the House Veteran's Affairs subcommittee on health, said, "The neglect being experienced by some wounded service members is outrageous. The Defense Dept. is never shy about asking for supplemental funds for operations and equipment; I cannot imagine why housing for recuperating wounded would not be a similar high priority."
--ibid

Taped to my computer stack is a post card that I bought at a little independent bookstore in Brooklyn, NY.

It says:

TO READ IS TO EMPOWER
TO EMPOWER IS TO WRITE
TO WRITE IS TO INFLUENCE
TO INFLUENCE IS TO CHANGE
TO CHANGE IS TO LIVE.

What reporters Dana Priest and Anne Hull, and their newspaper, the Washington Post, did is to change the lives of those who have given the most to this country.

This is what good journalism is. It is what good journalism does.

It's just a damn shame that it took a newspaper article to do what this administration should have been doing all along, considering how many elections they won by surrounding themselves with waving flags and cheering troops.

HOPE--& HELP--IS ON THE WAY FOR THE WAR-WEARY

2007-02-18T07:39:00.000-08:00

"All these extra troops start coming into Baghdad, you'll start reducing the anti-American violence. That way, it will show quick results for the Bush administration. And that way, 'Hey, we won the war, let's get out of here,'" said Pfc. Daniel Gomez, 21, a medic. But he said of the forces opposing the Americans: "They're like the Viet Cong, they can wait it out. We're not going to be here forever, and they know that. And then we're gone, and it's all theirs."
--"U.S. Unit Walks 'A Fine Line' in Iraqi Capital," Joshua Partlow, Washington Post, February 6, 2007

"Once more raids start happening, they'll (insurgents) melt away," said Sgt. 1st Class Herbert Gill, 29, of Pulaski, Tenn, who serves in the 1st Infantry Division in east Baghdad. "And then two or three months later, when we leave and say it was a success, they'll come back."

Soldiers interviewed across east Baghdad, home to more than half the city's 8 million people, said the violence is so out of control that while a surge of 21,500 more American troops may momentarily suppress it, the notion that U.S. forces can bring lasting security to Baghdad is misguided.

…"We can go get into a firefight and empty out ammo, but it doesn't accomplish much," said Pvt. 1st Class Zach Clouser, 19, of York, PA. "This isn't our war--we're just in the middle."

Almost every foot soldier interviewed during a week of patrols on the streets and alleys of east Baghdad said that Bush's plan would halt the bloodshed only temporarily. The soldiers cited a variety of reasons, including incompetence or corruption among Iraqi troops, the complexities of Iraq's sectarian violence and the lack of Iraqi public support, a cornerstone of counterinsurgency warfare.

"They can keep sending more and more troops over here, but until the people here start working with us, it's not going to change," said Sgt. Chance Oswalt, 22, of Tulsa, OK.
--"Soldiers in Iraq View Troop Surge as Lost Cause," Tom Lasseter, McClatchy Newspapers, February 3, 2007

Outgoing Army chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker said yesterday that the increase of 17,500 Army combat troops in Iraq represents only the "tip of the iceberg" and will potentially require thousands of additional support troops and trainers, as well as equipment--further eroding the Army's readiness to respond to other world contingencies…

…He could not guarantee the combat units would receive all the translators, civil affairs soldiers and other support troops they request. "We are continuing today to get requests for forces that continue to stress us."
--"Iraq Troop Boost Erodes Readiness, General Says," Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, February 16, 2007

Field upon field of more than 1,000 battered M1 tanks, howitzers and other armored vehicles sit amid weeds here at the 15,000-acre Anniston Army Depot--the idle, hulking formations symbolic of an Army that is wearing out faster than it is being rebuilt.

…the depletion of major equipment such as tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and especially helicopters and armored Humvees has left many military units in the United States without adequate training gear…Many U.S. units are rated "unready" to deploy…

…Despite the work piling up, the Army's depots have been operating at about half their capacity because of a lack of funding for repairs.
--"U.S. Army Battling to Save Equipment: Gear Piles Up at Depots, Awaiting Repair," Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, December 5, 2006

The success of the Bush administration's new Iraq strategy depends on a series of rapid and dramatic political and economic reforms that even the plan's authors have little confidence will work.

…Several sources expressed concern that the administration…has not left itself a fall-back plan in the event of failure.

…Some officials worry that the expanded U.S. presence will repeat the mistakes of the past…undermining the goal of turning the country over to the Iraqis themselves.

"It's the same old problem as in 2003," cautioned one official. "The same impatience that if they can't do it we'll step in and do it. There is a bit of that creeping into this dialogue."
--"Doubts Run Deep on Reforms Crucial to Bush's Iraq Strategy; Even Plan's Authors Say Political, Economic Changes May Fail," Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, February 4, 2007

You know, I wasn't going to do a blog post on all the reasons why this escalation of troops into Baghdad will not work. I'd written some on it before, and I figure those of you who are interested in the subject have already heard a lot of the arguments, pro and con.

And in fact, that is not the subject matter of this post.

But I thought it was essential to point out that military officials from the top down--as well as some administration officials who actually worked on this harebrained scheme--have deep and serious doubts about it.

And in fact, we are already seeing on the ground, in the first raids and sweeps of the Stryker Brigades in Baghdad, the truth of what the troops on the ground predicted--the bad guys "melted away," prior to the beginning of the so-called "surge."

Consequently, newspapers are reporting that many Iraqi families are actually leaving their front doors open for the American troops.

And let us be perfectly clear. AMERICAN TROOPS.

Out of a force 2,500 strong, only 200 were Iraqi Army. So don't kid yourself about any KIND of joint operation.

At any rate, the people open their doors, say, Come on in, look around.

Some who live there and fear their neighbors have complained that the Iraqi Prime Minister made such a big deal, publicly, about the security sweep--giving clear warnings for at least a month in advance--that all the bad guys not only had time to get out of town, but time to pack a bag and make a nice picnic lunch to boot.

This, of course, gives a false reading of the true success of this operation.

On the one hand, here comes the American cavalry, so to speak, riding to the Baghdadi rescue--only to sweep into a town empty of bad guys. They throw their weight around and pull back.

This may give Bush/Cheney time to tout GREAT SUCCESS, just in time for the upcoming elections…but don't be so sure. Because the guy running the show in Baghdad now wants the troops to remain for THREE TO FIVE YEARS, and we just can't do it. Don't have the troops, don't have the equipment, don't have the will.

So, what then? So what do we do? Babysit a civil war for the next TWO GENERATIONS, as my Special Forces Brig. Gen. brother-in-law says it would take?

How long are our guys expected to be the SOLE SUPPORTER of Iraqi security? And when we do pull out--and we will have to pull out--what do you think will happen then? They're going to go back to doing what they do best--killing each other.

No, we come up with a different strategy altogether. Now, later on in the week, I am going to do a serious analysis of what the best minds--other than the Iraq Study Group--have suggested for successful ways we can end the American occupation of Iraq with the least amount of chaos in our wake.

But right now, I want to concentrate on how help, and hope, is on the way, and it starts with Iraq war vets.

In the United States Congress, where decorum usually holds sway, Iraq war veteran Jon Soltz and his small band of veterans are saying things many Democrats would like to express but can't.

…The veterans are selling a blunt message: The Bush strategy on Iraq is a failure, and adding troops sends more young men and women to their deaths. If you care about the military, they told lawmakers, vote against the troop increase. Legislators who are stalling debate on the matter are "cowards," they said…Soltz, chairman of the group, VoteVets.org., called President Bush and Vice President Cheney "draft dodgers."

…"We are not fighting the war on terrorism, we are in the middle of a civil war," he said, referring to Iraq. "Meanwhile, the guy who attacked this country on 9/11 is living in a cave in Afghanistan."

…Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz)…dismissed VoteVets.org as a "handful of veterans" not representative of the military.

But VoteVet.org has 20,000 members, including 1,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan…The veteran's group raised just over $1.3 million in the last election cycle.
--"Veteran's Group Speaks Out on War," Lyndsey Layton and Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, February 8, 2007

VoteVets.org is an organization originally sponsored by Gen. Wesley Clark, who spearheaded the incredible job ending the turmoil in the Balkans in the 90's and who then ran for president on the Democratic ticket. I remember vividly, back in 2002, when war-frenzy was at its peak, Gen. Clark went on national television and insisted that, within days of the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11, he got a phone call from administration officials wanting him to find a way to tie the tragedy with Saddam Hussein.

He refused, and went public.

They accused him of being crazy. Or at the very least, of lying.

We now know, of course, that he was not crazy; he was right. You can draw your own conclusions as to who was really lying or crazy.

So then for the mid-term elections, Gen. Clark went on a crusade of sorts to recruit as many Iraq, Afghanistan, and other vets as he could find who would be willing to run for Congress or the Senate on the Democratic ticket, with the full backing of the Democratic Party. Consequently, a dozen combat veterans ran for office and something like eight of them won. On the Republican side, they could only scrounge up one Iraq vet to run, and he lost.

VoteVets.org was the organization that tirelessly raised funds to help get these veterans in Congress, and over time, the organization grew to include thousands of veterans from all over the country who have been outraged at the manner in which this debacle of a war has been handled, and now, a rotating phalanx of them are haunting the halls of Congress--taking turns as their time allows--lobbying--HARD--for Congress to end this war.

They're pissed, and not being politicians themselves, they speak truth and they don't sugar-coat. Oh, how long I have waited to hear someone actually refer to Bush and Cheney as "draft-dodgers."

And some in Congress are listening.

Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill)…cited news articles that said some of the new troops being sent to Iraq are going without adequate training or equipment. "Now who is standing behind the troops?" he asked.

…Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) asserted that Mr. Bush cannot simply ignore Congressional opposition to his plan to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq.

"I would respectfully suggest to the president that he is not the sole decider," Mr. Specter said…

…Mr. Specter read the results of a survey of service members conducted by the Military Times, which found that only 35 percent of respondents approved of Mr. Bush's handling of the war. The senator suggested that in that light, the military might be "appreciative of questions being raised by Congress."
--"Senators Assert Right to Block Bush on Iraq," John O'Neil, New York Times, January 30, 2007

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) yesterday linked her support for President Bush's war-funding request to strict standards of resting, training, and equipping combat forces, a move that could curtail troop deployments and alter the course of U.S. involvement in Iraq.

…"If we are going to support our troops, we should respect what is considered reasonable for them: their training, their equipment and their time at home," Pelosi said in an interview with a small group of reporters. "What we're trying to say to the president is, you can't send people in who are not trained for urban warfare…who are not prepared to contend with an insurgency."

…Congressman John Murtha, (D-PA), the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, outlined his plan for restricting the administration's use of war funds in an Internet interview released yesterday. Under that legislation, troops would be required to have one year's rest between deployments, combat tours could no longer be extended, and the Pentagon would have to halt its "stop-loss" program, which prohibits some officers from leaving the military when their tour of duty is complete.

The idea is to neutralize political charges that the Democrats plan to starve war funding. The party would still slow the war effort by other means, Murtha said in an interview aired on the new Web site MoveCongress.org.

"What we're saying will be very hard to find fault with," he said. "We're supporting the troops. We're protecting the troops. On the other hand, we're going to stop this surge."
--"Pelosi Backs War Funds Only With Conditions; Equipment, Training for Troops Would Face New Standards," Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray, Washington Post, February 16, 2007

God bless John Murtha. Conservatives like to demonize and vilify him, but by God, he is the FIRST member of either House of Congress to even BRING UP the reprehensible practice of "stop-loss"--preventing retirements when they come due, stopping people from mustering out who have served their full terms and then some, with multiple deployments, and the crusty old ex-Marine and Vietnam combat vet is the ONLY member of either chamber to even MENTION that these so-called "fresh troops" that the media keep touting aren't fresh at all--they are troops like my nephew, whose Army Stryker Brigade company is being shipped out two months in advance, and who was told, "Don't even think about coming home," which meant that they could count on having their deployment extended way beyond the usual one-year hitch.

SO WHO'S REALLY SUPPORTING THE TROOPS?

And just in case Congress continues to hide in the closet and avoid dealing with this, almost half of the states have taken up the cause to goad action from the federal government.

…State legislatures across the country, led by Democrats…are pushing forward with their own resolutions.

Resolutions have passed in chambers of three legislatures, in California, Iowa, and Vermont…Maryland…urged opposition to the increase in troops to Iraq.

Letters or resolutions are being drafted in at least 19 other states. The goal is to embarrass Congress into passing its own resolution and to provide cover for Democrats and Republicans looking for concrete evidence back home that anti-Iraq resolutions enjoy popular support.
--"Democrats in State Capitals Push Antiwar Resolutions," Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times, February 16, 2007

This is not just some lame peace-activist protest going on here, and it's not just some Democratic political maneuvering. THIS IS A SOUNDLESS WAVE OF PROTEST, MOVING FROM STATE TO STATE, ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY, A SILENT NO.

I wrote this on Friday but was unable to post it until Sunday morning, with news programs over my shoulder discussing every single one of these points.

So, what difference does it make? I mean, REALLY? Who cares if the House and/or the Senate pass resolutions that are non-binding anyway? Can't the King--er, the president, I mean--do whatever the hell he wants to? Can't he order up any kind of war action he wants? What does he care whether Congress approves or doesn't approve?

Turns out, contrary to what he may be posturing before the cameras, he DOES care. He HAS to.

And a non-binding resolution is, after all, only the first step.

(a former) Assistant Attorney General, Walter E. Dellinger III (1996), said, "Although it does not become law, how can it possibly be considered meaningless for each house of the Congress to exercise the view in a formal recorded vote that a planned addition to U.S. forces is a mistake?...I think that the framers of the Constitution would be astonished that a president would proceed to increase U.S. involvement in a foreign war over the expressed objection of both houses of Congress."

…Dellinger said there is a "striking consensus" on both the left and the right that Congress has the power to limit the scope and duration of a war--not only through the power of the purse but through other war powers.
--"Bush, Congress Could Face Confrontations on Issue of War Powers," Michael Abramowitz, Washington Post, February 16, 2007

"I think the constitutional scheme does give Congress broad authority to terminate a war," said Bradford Berenson, a Washington lawyer who was a White House associate counsel under Bush from 2001 to 2003.

…the other experts said that while the Constitution makes the president commander-in-chief of U.S. forces, Congress' constitutional power to declare war and fund U.S. forces also gave it the power to stop what it had set in motion.

…Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Judiciary Committee until the Democrats won control from Republicans in November, said, "The decider is a shared and joint responsibility."
--"Congress Can Stop Iraq War, Experts Tell Lawmakers," Susan Cornwell, Reuters, January 30, 2007

The bottom line is this.

George can't run around playing with his toy soldiers until after dark any more without some responsible adult around to tell him it's time to come in.

He can bluster and pout about the "war on terrorism" all he wants, and his minions can yelp about how we're not "supporting the troops"--but at this point, even the TROOPS aren't listening any more.

George Will said on This Week With George Stephanopolous that even if the funding bill passes with Murtha's caveats, Bush can just do one of his famous signing statements, ignoring it.

May be. But with opposition growing more and more vehement, and more and more Republicans in Congress getting pressure from their own constituents and the presidential election looming…there will be some back-door meetings at the White House from Republicans saying to their fearless leader: END IT.

And if not, well, we can do in '08 what we did in '06. Don't think they don't know it, and with primaries running quicker than ever, they're all under pressure to do SOMETHING before the American people revolt.

And in the meantime, although we may not be able to stop the escalation into Iraq, at the very least, we may be able to stop escalating the war into Iran.

At long last, thanks to a message sent loud and clear from voters in November, We the People may be able to stop King George.

A COMBAT MARINE MOM'S OBSESSION

2007-02-15T11:30:00.000-08:00

"It's like living with death, even though he's still alive."
--Susan, a Marine mom, whose son did three combat tours to Iraq

"If this president's two daughters had to be deployed, he'd think twice about sending any more troops to Iraq."
--Kay, a Marine mom, whose son did three combat tours in Iraq

"No one in my family has a child in the military. I would feel better if just someone next door--or even down the block--knew what I was going through."
--Kathy, a Marine mom, whose son is about to deploy for the first time to Iraq

"I'm a therapist by profession, and I am surrounded by caring and supportive professionals who often pull me into their office and encourage me to talk about this. But nothing in my professional training or experience can possibly prepare someone for what this is like, and I can't explain to my good colleagues that they can't help, either--not unless they've been through it."
--Bob, a Marine dad, whose son was on his first combat deployment to Iraq at the time.

I've been accused--many times--of being obsessed by the war in Iraq, by members of my family, and people who think they know me.

I have never, however, been accused by another Marine mom.

It's a helpless feeling, trying to explain to someone, why the way you feel is NORMAL--when compared to others who are going through the same thing.

We are all obsessed--check out any military family support website that allows for back-and-forth commenting--to see that, it doesn't matter whether we have thriving careers or five other children still at home, whether this is our firstborn or the baby of the family, whether we are married to our warrior or related otherwise, whether we come from a military or a civilian background--this war and the toll it takes on our family is all-consuming.

All I can do is point to two women I know, one a progressive and one a conservative, both of whom had sons who served four years active duty in the Marine Corps and both of whose sons served three combat tours to Iraq, and both of whose sons have recently mustered out of the service.

One is a gifted artist who found herself unable to paint for the entire four years her son was in the Marine Corps. Within weeks of his getting out, she went through a creative renaissance--a frenzy of painting--and emerged so profoundly happy she could hardly contain herself. Before long, she was talking about writing a book, and taking up marathon-running again.

Another channeled her energies into USO activities during the years her son was in the Marine Corps, preparing hundreds of care packages and sending off Army troops from DFW airport every Sunday, along with other activities designed to "support the troops." She endured her son's deployments with a sort of manic energy, going into overdrive with the care packages and other coping tactics, festooning her house with Marine Corps paraphernalia and so many bumper stickers and yellow ribbons on the back of her Tahoe that it's almost covered solid. (Her son said that, at one point, she'd sent him so many care packages that he built himself a wall out of the boxes.)

She still spends every Sunday afternoon at the airport and still sends out packages, but now that her son is home and enrolled in college, she has been set free, laughing and chattering around the house like a happy little magpie, out from under--at last--the dreadful anxiety and ongoing resistance to the idea that she could bury her child at any time.

Part of my friend Bob's duties as a therapist is to counsel veterans who are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, and he and I have discussed the idea that, in a sense, the parents of those in the military endure a sort of post traumatic stress of their own.

Survivor's guilt, as well.

Enduring such unmitigated stress for months on end, knowing that friends of your son or daughter have died--sometimes right in front of them--writing letters of condolence to bereaved parents even as your own child is still in terrible danger, knowing that your beloved child is going to be asked to do terrible things and may even kill other human beings--and then live with it--trying to remain strong for that child and keep from them the toll their deployment is taking on you--is a stress that can take months, if not years, to come to terms with.

There is a phenomenon I've noticed among the Marines I've known who've returned alive and in one piece from combat--I've observed it firsthand.

They seem to understand.

My son and my nephew, both, have been quick to hug their moms. Not just when they leave the house, but most any time the two of you are in the same room together, like, say, standing at the kitchen sink. They'll reach over and give us a manly quick-hug, and sometimes say, "I'm glad to be home."

They appreciate, so much, everything that their loved ones do to support them during their deployments, and they know--more than anyone--how close they came, time and time again, to never being able to hug their loved ones again.

This Christmas was the first time in years that my son had been able to be home for the holidays when he was not due to deploy soon or, was actually in Iraq. Every now and then, I would think of the mothers of his buddies who did not make it back, and my breath would catch in my throat, and my eyes would well up, and I'd have to creep out of the room and weep in private so he would not know where my thoughts were.

But I knew that he had similar thoughts.

When I talk about Marine parents--it's not that I don't include Army or Air force or Navy parents in that mix--but I do want to distinguish between COMBAT troops and SUPPORT troops.

In this terrible war, there are no safe havens. There is no "front line." There is no "rear area." Just getting from, say, the Baghdad airport to their bases is fraught with danger.

Even big bases get mortar rounds lobbed into them at random, and I know of troops who've been killed while "inside the wire" by such mortar rounds. We also remember terrible events in the past, in which some Iraqi security personnel within that wire betrayed their American allies and allowed explosives or other attacks to be carried out within the base confines.

These are terrible events, to be sure, but they are random.

But for those troops ensconced in large military bases, let's face it, their lives are different. They have access to e-mail, for instance--some of them can even post their own blogs. They have better living quarters, air conditioning, plenty of water for bathing, a fully-stocked mess hall and PX. On some of the huge sprawling bases, there are even fast food franchises, gift shops, gyms for working out, internet cafes, and other amenities.

Many of those troops are housed in air conditioned storage containers that hold only two, and it becomes a home away from home, a place to put, say, a teddy bear sent by their child. Sometimes they get up base touch football or basketball games or holiday parties.

Now, I must also be fair and state that there are plenty of troops who live on those huge bases who still must go out on daily patrols, and I do not wish to disparage their own dangers and service and sacrifice.

But the simple truth is that, generally speaking in military terms, for every ONE combat troop, there are TEN in support of that troop's work--either in supply, or transportation, or headquarters command, or intelligence interpretation, or tech support, or base security, and so on. And these troops can send daily e-mails home, can even call home every day sometimes.

Their families can be reasonably assured that they will get to come home.

With combat troops, though, and especially for Marine Corps infantry troops, and the Navy medics who hump with them--these young men and women are DAILY exposed to the most bloody and dangerous of jobs in the worst areas of the war zone.

As I've stated before here, the Marines I know, and the parents who e-mail me in our own little support group, live a far different life than those on big bases.

Their "FOBs"--Forward Operating Bases--are often housed in abandoned buildings with no water or power. There is no mess hall and no PX. Once every seven to ten days, they are transported to a real base where they can get a shower and a hot meal, and sometimes, depending upon their CO's, they have hot meals trucked out to them once a day. But for the most part, they live on MRE's and on stuff their folks or spouses send to them in care packages.

As far as phoning home goes, a platoon will lug around a battered satellite phone, and in relatively quiet moments--while up on a rooftop watching for snipers, say, or around a desert campfire--they will pass the phone around so everyone can check in at home. The phones are usually so beat-up that the connection gets cut every two minutes or so, and once the satellite is out of range--so is the phone call. There is only time to tell them we love them, to ask if they need anything and if they've received any of our packages, to tell them we miss them and pray for them daily, to reach out through the cosmos for that quick hug.

It's not the same thing as lining up in an air-conditioned call center for a half-hour conversation with parents or spouses on good phone lines. Not the same thing at all.

Combat parents and spouses do get those types of calls as well, usually once every ten days or so when our guys get to spend a night on a real base, and we cherish them because in those few minutes, we can feel at peace, because they are safe.

For 24 blessed hours, they are alive and well.

Even so, when a combat troop calls home, their loved ones always live with the knowledge that this may be the last time they ever hear their child's voice.

How would you speak to your child or sweetheart if, in every conversation, you knew it could be your last?

What would YOU say?

Usually, combat troops often go out on lengthy patrols that require them to sleep in abandoned houses or out in the desert. And everywhere, wherever they go and whatever they do, they are surrounded by the enemy.

Children playing in the street beg for candy from the troops, then act as scouts, and run in to tell their elders when the American convoys or patrols are coming.

Men who pretend to work with the Americans by day are the same ones who creep out under cover of darkness and set the IED's that they explode with remote controls as soon as the children alert them that the Americans are coming, and then they disappear into the labyrinth of dusty Iraqi streets to try again another day.

So many vehicles are hit by these roadside bombs that it has become commonplace for patrols. Not all of the bombs are lethal. Not all of the bombs kill. They don't even all go off. But enough do to disable many of the vehicles needed for those patrols, and foot patrols are even tougher. In some neighborhoods, such as Ramadi, the troops have to jog down the streets, zigzagging as they do so, because the snipers are so bad.

People die. People get parts of their bodies blown off. People sitting next to them walk away unscathed on the outside and scarred for life within.

Sometimes, your child has to pick up body parts left over from an explosion, and not just of fellow servicemembers, but from children and families caught in vicious sectarian fighting.

It has been thus throughout the history of warfare, but in the past 40 years, whenever a troop has been sent into combat, when his tour was over, he was done.

Not so any more, not in Bush's war.

Now, a combat troop can be sent to the most horrible places in the entire war, come home alive and well, then a few months later, get sent back again, come home, then get sent back…

Every time they get sent back could be the last time. They know it and their families know it.

And every time that they are home, this oppressive dark cloud hangs over their heads with the same question pressing down on them: AM I GOING TO HAVE TO GO BACK? Or…IS MY LOVED ONE GOING TO HAVE TO GO BACK?

I can't tell you the accounts of combat deaths I've read or heard about that occurred two weeks before they were due to come home, after multiple deployments.

We combat parents know it and the combat troops know it. And we have to live with it for the entire time our children or loved ones are in the service. A Marine Corps commitment is four years, and after that, four years in the Reserves.

An overstretched, overstrained, overstressed military trying to fight every war Bush wants to fight, must depend heavily upon its reserve forces.

So for FOUR MORE YEARS, we have to live with the knowledge that our children or loved ones could be yanked out of their civilian lives and sent back to war again, only this time, when they are not at their peak physical condition or training, possibly led by inexperienced superiors.

This war has gotten so deadly, so dangerous, that many of the news media reporters covering it cannot leave the large bases or relatively secure areas where they are housed. Many times, on issues like the congressional debate over the war, they interview those troops who are housed on these large bases, many of whom have not even been on combat patrols. It is these troops who are the ones most likely to comment on-camera that their morale is being hurt by this debate.

But for those intrepid souls who leave those bases and go out in the field on the deadliest of patrols--such as Lara Logan of CBS evening news and Richard Engel of NBC Nightly News--those reporters who have themselves come under fire or experienced an exploding vehicle--those reporters are far more likely to hear from combat troops that they are growing weary of fighting, that they know it is a losing battle, that they think it is time for a complete change in strategy.

Those of us who are combat parents--especially those of us who objected to this war in the first place more than four years ago--know this, and yet we must endure outrageous schemes for "victory" from the so-called commander-in-chief, we must observe close-up and first-hand the futility and frustrations of those schemes for the troops on the ground, and we must live with the terrible good-byes when our precious children leave for war.

For so many thousands of us who do not have access to the support offered on military bases--for the Marines, especially, who are not as large as the army and are a seagoing force--we have no one nearby who can possibly understand our agony. This nation was at peace for an entire generation. Many modern families don't have a single family member past World War II who has served in the military.

They send a cherished child off to war and they have no idea what that means, and whether they watch the news or not, whether they follow political debates and blogs or not, they are alone.

Online support communities can be blessed help, but the fact remains that when you put your child on a plane not knowing if you will ever see them alive again, or welcome them back and see that they are changed forever and there is nothing you can do or say that can take away their pain, and when you know that it's all going to happen again and again while politicians pose and preen in front of the flag your child may die to defend…

How can you NOT be obsessed?

How can you not search, each and every day, for some small glimmer of hope, from any quarter, that somehow, some way, the day will come when we will no longer have to live with this awful anxiety, this daily dread, this terrible terror?

Many of you reading this right now are unaware of the fact that I am a published author. I've had eleven books published by major New York houses--you need only check me out on Amazon.com to see that this is true.

I keep being asked if I am working on another book. Even my own family is impatient to see me back doing what I do best and what has always brought me such joy. They see me pouring my energies into this blog instead, and it worries them. They wonder if I will ever be able to write again. Sometimes I wonder that myself.

But my situation is no different from my friend Susan's--the artist who could not paint. The truth is that the relentless, ongoing, chronic stress of this situation so paralyzes those of us going through it that we can hardly turn our attention to creative pursuits that do not reflect that same anxiety. In those four years that Susan's son was in the Marine Corps and going through three combat deployments to Iraq, she was only able to complete one painting.

It was a peace sign.

PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR BUMPER STICKERS ARE

2007-02-10T05:04:00.000-08:00

Though some claim that all Americans are making sacrifices for the war on terrorism, it's just not true. The few who are sent to fight and those left behind who are an intimate part of their daily lives are the ones whose mental health, finances and relationships are taking the hit.

A universal draft would certainly help spread the sacrifice. But we all know that the privileged will find a way to avoid serving, as they did by paying $300 during the Civil War or claiming college deferments during Vietnam.

What we need is a war tax, dedicated to financing the support services needed by military families and combat veterans. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a long-term costs-of-war tax. Because the tax I'm proposing, like the needs it's intended to meet, will not end when the war does.
--"Your Money at War," Kristen Henderson, New York Times op-ed, February 9, 2007

Kirsten Henderson knows a little something about the toll war takes on military families. She is married to a Navy chaplain who, when in deployments to war, goes where the need takes him, hunkering down with Marines under fire. She wrote a book about the toll war takes on military families, called, While They're at War: The True Story of American Families on the Home Front.

In the op-ed, she captures the stress of deployment beautifully:

Every morning that my husband was in a war zone, whether it was Afghanistan or Iraq, I woke up knowing that today could be the day my world might end…

This takes a toll on the families left behind. "Everyone up here is on Prozak," a wife from Fort Drum, N.Y., told me. We field phone calls from our loved ones on the frontlines. We deal with money shortfalls and anxious children. And then our combat vets come home. In the last few years, divorces among enlisted soldiers shot up 28 percent and the suicide rate of Iraq vets DOUBLED. (emphasis mine)
--ibid

Henderson's proposal for a war tax demands that no matter whether you are a war supporter or a peace activist--this is one way to put your money where your mouth is.

She points out that taxes have paid for wars since the founding of the nation--either through taxing of beverages, tobacco, utilities, income, and more. She mentions a 3 percent tax on long-distance telephone calls that was put into effect to help pay for the Spanish-American war of 1898. It was repealed and reinstated several times.

And although that tax did not hurt the telecommunications industry or the national economy, through the years, it brought in $15 billion to the government.

In the latest budget, the president is pressing for so many billions of dollars to pay for his wars that it will wind up costing this country at least one trillion dollars, if not more over the course of time. TRILLION. Not the $50 billion he and his cohorts insisted the war would cost back in 2002.

She says that, no matter what is taxed to pay for these wars, "then all Americans would wind up shouldering a least a small portion of the burden of our nation's wars. Military families would be exempt."

For peace activists who don't want their dollars to go toward war, she points out that this money would not go to buy bullets and bombs, but to support combat veterans and their families in their long road home:

Unlike the old phone tax, however, this new tax must be dedicated to financing programs that support and heal combat veterans and their families during deployment and afterward--combat trauma counseling, respite child care, part-time jobs for spouses trying to make ends meet, marriage counseling. These programs won't go away as long as America has a military.
ibid

And although she doesn't mention it specifically in this article, the Veteran's Administration is GROANING under all the wounded veterans returning from Iraq--not to mention the thousands and thousands of reported cases of post traumatic stress.

My son says that on base back in the States, signs of that stress are everywhere--domestic violence, bar fights, excessive drinking, drug use, and other problems. Many of those who are suffering have tried to get help, but my son says that the system is so overstretched that guys he knows who need help can only meet with their counselors once a month, rather than the desperately needed once a week sessions.

Never before in the history of this country has a president tried to fight multiple wars overseas on multiple fronts while, at the same time, CUTTING TAXES. The tax cuts rammed through by the Republicans and their fearless leader, combined with hundreds of billions of dollars requested for the war in "emergency spending" measures that aren't even included in the BUDGET, have come close to bankrupting this nation.

It can't go on. Something has to give.

If he is going to continue to pour troops and treasure into this quagmire, then he is going to have to start asking for a little sacrifice from the 300 million people in this country who DON'T have families deploying to war.

I submit, as long as I keep getting these "support our troops" e-mails from well-meaning war supporters, then I want to know, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO SUPPORT THE TROOPS?

HOW ABOUT SHOULDERING SOME OF THE COST FOR THEIR SACRIFICE?

As Kristen Henderson put it so beautifully:

For those who oppose the war and spending any additional money on it, all I can say is that this isn't about financing a war. It's about reducing human suffering. And for everyone who claims to "support the troops"--peace activists and war supporters alike--put your money where your bumper stickers are.
--ibid

I FINALLY LOSE IT WITH A RIGHT-WING FRIEND

2007-02-08T04:42:00.000-08:00

Let me start by saying that I come from a family well-stocked with conservative and moderate Republicans; I'm married to a moderate Republican; and I live in an area that I like to affectionately call the "buckle of the Bush Bible Belt."

We live, in fact, only a hundred miles or so from where George W. Bush likes to claim he grew up--although in more than half a lifetime of living in west Texas, I have never yet met another soul who attended Andover prep school.

But I digress.

For years I've liked to say that I was the only pro-choice feminist for a hundred miles, but I sometimes suspect I might have to travel even further to track one down. Once, in 2004, I drove the hundred miles in another direction to drop in at the Lubbock, Texas Democratic Party headquarters to offer my services as a writer to help with the upcoming campaign. I drove up and down the city streets for hours and could never find it. I learned later that the office was located within another office, and didn't even have so much as a cardboard sign or a bumper sticker stuck in a window to identify it as such.

I hope Howard Dean can change all that by reaching into all the states, but again I digress.

The point is that I am accustomed to biting my tongue for the sake of peace. I can't count the number of dinner parties and other social gatherings where I have sat mute--especially during the nineties--listening to blistering Clinton-hating rhetoric from people who assumed that just because I was present, it meant I agreed. Most of the time I chose not to speak up because it was not the time and place to get into a political rounder, but if I was asked directly, I would answer honestly. (And then deal with the fall-out as I watched people's faces change from friendliness to out and out horror that anybody, anywhere, could possibly feel the way I did.)

But I found such social engagements to be so exhausting that, a few years ago, I withdrew into virtual social isolation, becoming a self-imposed hermit, living in my rural home and communicating with the outside world, for the most part, via the Internet and by phone calls. A writer by trade, anyway, I'm used to solitude and working from a home office.

I just got tired of being the only progressive voice in the room, you know? And I got tired of being mocked for beliefs that I hold dear, and tired of having to explain them to people.

I just got tired, period. And lonesome.

The point is that through the years, I have grown accustomed to being surrounded by people who disagree with me by varying degrees. I've been honest with my family and friends about my beliefs, but I have not been in-your-face or obnoxious with them in any way. I understand, very well, why they feel the way they do, and I completely and utterly respect their beliefs and opinions.

I love my family, dearly. And I love my conservative friends, and I would never, ever do anything to deliberately disrespect them or provoke them or otherwise strain our relationship over something as shallow as politics.

I do wish, sometimes, that they felt the same way in return.

When this war first started, for instance, my e-mail box would be bombarded with forward after forward after forwarded e-mails full of a sort of righteous superiority on the question of Iraq, and equally full of vitriol toward anyone who dared question this president's policies on the war.

Most of the time I did not respond, and when I did, I kept the tone civil, but eventually, I learned to just delete stuff that I knew was going to upset me.

But as the war dragged on…and on…and my son and other family members deployed and deployed again…a change began to occur. As events on the ground bore out--again and again--what I had been predicting all along, and as they grew increasingly frustrated with the horrendous mistakes made by the people they had entrusted to run our government, they started paying a little more attention to me when I commented about the war--especially when our own warriors began to return from Iraq voicing the same frustrations.

Even so, with some of my conservative friends, we have a "deal," that we just don't forward stuff to each other that we KNOW is inflammatory. I don't send them hate-Bush stuff and they don't send me quotes from Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh, and we get along great.

My friend Robby--whom I've written about before--has been a true class act in this respect. Lord knows we've had some heated discussions, but always with respect and love. Recently, when Molly Ivins died, it was Robby, bless his dear heart, who called to tell me how sorry he was, that he knew I'd miss her. And to prove what a gentleman he truly is, he even told funny stories about times she'd made fun of the NRA.

That touched my heart more than he will ever know, God bless him.

But recently, I received a forward from another friend who is so conservative he makes Robby look like a liberal, and that e-mail hit, I guess you'd say, my tipping point.

I simply could not remain silent.

It didn't look like a forward, and said simply, "From a Vet" in the subject area--my friend is a vet--so of course, I opened it. It was a forward that had, supposedly, been written by a Naval vet of WWII, in which he described having been on ships that had been destroyed by the Japanese, and so on, and then went on to say that, through it all, there was one voice that never wavered:

TOKYO ROSE.

The e-mail went on to spell out the kinds of things Tokyo Rose would say.

They were numbered:
1. Put down the president.
2. Find fault with the war strategies and claim they won't work.
3. Urge Americans to bring home the troops.

Then, the e-mail, not content with having made its point thus far, went on to add a list of names: Tokyo Hillary, Tokyo John, Tokyo Nancy…

It was at this point that I hit the "delete" button.

And that's when I lost it. I felt my cheeks go hot and my whole body tingled. My friend, I thought, had gone too far this time. Although he hadn't said it, the implications in the e-mail were clear to me, since he knows that I speak out against the Iraq war in Blue Inkblots.

I knew that it would be best to simply ignore the e-mail, but I was so angry that I just could not go silent any more. I started a new e-mail to my friend, and in the subject title, I put, "Tokyo Deanie."

I said, You know, (friend's name), my husband, brothers-in-law, brother, and father are all Vietnam vets. They know how I feel about this war, and I don't think a single one of them would refer to me as "Tokyo Deanie" because I speak out about it.

To protest the shameful manner in which this war has been managed is NOT the same thing as war propaganda designed to demoralize the enemy.

When my son fought in the Battle of Fallujah, he did not have proper body armor, up-armored vehicles, or even a decent scope for his rifle. He had all of those things when he deployed the second time--THREE YEARS AFTER THE WAR BEGAN. There is no telling how many good men they lost because of that during the first deployment.

If I say that I want troops to be brought home, it could be because many of them are being deployed for the FIFTH AND SIXTH TIMES. They are being deployed months ahead of schedule and forced to remain past their due-home dates--these are not "fresh troops" as the media claims. This is criminal.

There are many ways, I said, to "support the troops."

When Vietnam combat vet Republican Chuck Hagel spoke out against this president's war policies in the Senate, he said, "These are real people."

He meant, real people, as opposed to pawns on a political chess board. In his way, he was supporting the troops.

When Reagan Republican James Webb, a decorated Vietnam vet with a Marine son in Iraq, ran for the Senate on the Democratic ticket, wearing his son's combat boots so that he could get himself into a position of power to help change the course of this war--he was supporting the troops.

I told my friend that if he wanted to preserve our friendship, he would not send me any more inflammatory e-mails of that kind. I knew I had lost it and I knew I had possibly lost a friend over this, but one point of friendship is respecting boundaries. I feel so passionately about this war because, when it comes to war and a military family--POLITICS IS PERSONAL.

In a recent Army Times survey, a full SIXTY-SIX PERCENT of ACTIVE-DUTY MILITARY disagree with the way this war has been managed and more than half of them now doubt the wisdom of even going into Iraq.

To assume that "the troops" somehow march in lock-step and all agree with some kind of company line is an insult to the amazing variety of individuals that make up our armed services.

There are many conservatives in the military and there are just as many progressives. I've even read forwarded e-mails that claim that "most" of the military is conservative, as if somehow only conservatives love their country enough to enlist, and this is patent bullshit.

This may come as a shock to some of my conservative friends, but just because a mess hall full of soldiers is trooped in and draped as a backdrop to yet another presidential photo op does not mean that every single soldier or Marine in that room even wants to BE there.

My cries of outrage about this war never--EVER--call into question that incredible courage, duty, and superb job our fighting men and women do each and every day; and if you think that, you have not read all my posts.

I have, in fact, called for a national draft, because I think everyone should serve their country for at least a year or two out of high school, even if only helping clean up, say, New Orleans. Or working in support capacities back home. And, yes, for some, stepping up to help fight this war and take the burden off the weary shoulders of troops with multiple deployments.

As I've said many times, if this country wants to wave the flag and slap yellow ribbons on their cars and pump up their war-glamour news coverage and sell patriotic country and western songs urging us to go to war, then by God, EVERY family ought to take part in it.

I come from a proud military family. (My father is a retired Marine Corps Master Gunnery Sergeant and Vietnam vet; my brother also served in Vietnam.) I married into a proud military family--my husband and brother-in-law have three combat tours to Vietnam between them--and I have family members, including my own son, serving their country with pride and patriotism as I write these words. They rank from Marine lance corporal to Army Special Forces general--officers and enlisted alike, and every one serving in a combat capacity. I am deeply proud of their service and do everything in my power to support it, as they well know.

In family gatherings, I've had lengthy conversations with my active-duty family members, and gotten a broad perspective on this conflict, from men who know what they're talking about. They know that I respect them and their service, and that I am interested in knowing what THEY think needs to be done. Sometimes, they've been surprised at the depth of my own knowledge, at how I have educated myself on this war--most of the women in my family choose "not to know"--and they respect that my questions are informed and that I'm not just running around slapping peace sign bumper stickers on things.

As one Iraq vet put it, "There's a difference between being anti-war, and anti-THIS war."

You might be surprised, at some of their answers. I don't usually share them here, because this is a public forum, and they are still active-duty. I would never want anything I do or say to cause them any trouble in their careers. There are also security concerns that I must consider.

But as this war has progressed, I have found that we all agree on far more than we disagree on, and that, above all else, they know that all I want for them is for their service and sacrifice to be used with honor--not abused for political gain.

I believe this war was begun for the basest, most craven reasons, and then once we got in, the arrogance and hubris of those sending our men and women into combat--their refusal to seek truth on the ground, the bullying of officers who tried to speak up on behalf of the troops and were fired or shut down because of it, the selective appointment of yes-men to do their bidding, as well as the mad rush into a war for which we were ill-equipped or prepared, not to mention the politicizing of patriotism--is reason enough for those in power to burn in hell.

I have never asked that our troops be yanked out all of a piece and very very few Democrats in power today have asked for that, either. None of us wants to see the bloody savagery of an Iraq uncorked to spill over, but we do want to see this war fought with more brains and less muscle.

But the truth is that our troops are exhausted--their divorce rate has gone up to EIGHTY PERCENT. Our military equipment has been stretched to the breaking point through overuse and abuse; fighting men and women are being asked to take over the responsibilities of State Dept. staffers--doing things they are not trained to do--because the government can't get anybody to volunteer to go to Iraq; and the all-volunteer military has created a situation where ONLY ONE PERCENT OF THE POPULATION OF THIS COUNTRY HAS TO MAKE ANY WAR SACRIFICE AT ALL.

For Bush to claim that the rest of the country has somehow paid a "psychic price" is bullshit.

How about the "psychic price" of being flung back into battle every damn year of your life, of being forced to remain when your time in the service is up, of being lied to about when you're going to get to go home, of being yanked back into the service after you've already served multiple deployments to war and have gone on to build a civilian life--and then sent back in, even as your physical conditioning and training have lapsed?

How about the "psychic price" of not knowing who you can trust or even whether you can drive down the road for half a mile without a rock or dead dog exploding and blowing you and your buddies into oblivion? Or of being shot by a panicky, poorly-trained Iraqi Army soldier or unseen sniper? Of watching a friend die, and wondering…Why wasn't it me?

What about the "psychic price" of helping your 18-year old son write out a will to see who will receive his CDs and comic books "if anything happens to me," of discussing possible funeral arrangements with him, of quickly-snatched phone calls from overseas that, for all you know, may be your last conversation with your child, of living in terror every single day for the entire time your loved one is in a warzone?

And then getting to do it all over again?

And again?

And again?

What about the "psychic price" of helping your child deal with his rage and frustration and grief when he or she comes home? Some of them self-destruct with alcohol or other problems; some are never the same. Some seek help and can't get it because the military has been overwhelmed with returning war vets suffering post traumatic stress. Who pays THAT "psychic price"?

What about the "psychic price" of children growing up without parents--not just those who've been buried or gravely wounded--but those who've been gone and gone and gone again on repeated deployments that grow deadlier each time?

Bush says the American people's "souls have been sapped" by this war.

No, it's not the war. It's this kind of with-us-or-against-us bullshit that has sapped the country's soul, this ripping open of the old wounds left over from Vietnam--that if you oppose a mismanaged war, it then follows that you must hate the troops.

This administration started that kind of insidious sniping when they decided to start a war and use it as a weapon for political purposes. "With us" equals a vote for us, "against us" equals a vote for--not our opponent, but our ENEMY.

Bush even said, just a week before the November elections, that if you voted for a Democrat, you were siding with the terrorists.

This is disgraceful rhetoric from a sitting President of the United States.

As I told my friend in my e-mail, I am sick and tired of being accused of being unpatriotic or of hurting the troops because I am angry with the way they have been used in this war.

Recently, Republican Senator John McCain has begun making that sinister, mean little point that, if you do not support this president's so-called "surge" plan for the war, that you are saying, in effect, that you don't think the troops who are serving or have served have done a very good job, that they have failed in their job and that you are not supporting them.

He knows better than that, and I was disappointed and outraged to hear him start that old tired drumbeat yet again. Just in time for presidential politics, of course.

Other Republican politicians are following White House talking points on talk shows and in interviews, saying that if Democrats really want to end this war, they should vote to cut off funds for the troops. They know good and well that no one wants to do this--all they care about is crucifying Democrats in upcoming elections.

They like to wave the flag and pose and preen, but when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, do THEY really care about the troops?

Among those of us who have been voices crying out in the wilderness about this war--whose number has grown to a chorus--Not one of us has ever said that our troops are not doing the best damn job they could possibly do under impossible circumstances.

All we're saying is that they deserve a far better commander in chief, and something better than civilian leaders and cowardly career-driven top-down generals who have KNOWINGLY sent them into battle underequipped, undermanned, and underplanned because they didn't have the balls to speak up until they thought it was safe to do so and still keep their fat post-retirement defense-contracting jobs.

I'd say that the men and women on the ground have done a magnificent job under those circumstances.

I'm sick of this whole argument. Sick of the name-calling. Sick of the accusations and innuendoes and outright smears against anybody who does not echo White House talking points about this godforsaken war.

If it costs me a friend, well, then so be it. And if it helps in any way to bring these kids home on the date they were promised they'd get to come home, then it will have been worth it.

HOW A CO-DEPENDENT MEDIA ENABLES A WAR-AHOLIC WHITE HOUSE

2007-02-03T13:27:00.000-08:00

Once an independent operator who called herself "Miss Run Amok," (NY Times reporter Judith Miller) disputed what her many critics said was obvious: that Vice President Cheney's former top aide (Scooter Libby) had been trying to manipulate her.

Throughout the afternoon, an unspoken question hung in the air: What do journalists give up when they agree to protect high officials in exchange for juicy information?

…Miller described how her relationship with Libby began: with a bit of flattery…
--"Journalist Forced to Reveal Her Methods," Howard Kurtz, Washington Post, January 31, 2007

Everything about my nine-month stint at cable news channel MSNBC occurred in the context of the ever-intensifying war drums over Iraq. The drums grew louder as D-Day approached, until the din became so deafening that rational journalistic thinking could not occur. Three weeks before the invasion, MSNBC Suits terminated "Donahue," their most-watched program.

For 19 weeks, I had appeared in on-air debates almost every afternoon--the last weeks heavily focused on Iraq. I adamantly opposed an invasion. I warned that it would "undermine our coalition with Muslim and Arab countries that we need to help us fight Al Qaeda" and would lead to "quagmire."

In October 2002, my debate segments were terminated. There was no room for me after MSNBC launched Countdown: Iraq--a daily show that seemed more keen on glamorizing a potential war than scrutinizing or debating it. The show featured retired colonels and generals resembling boys with war toys as they used props, maps and glitzy graphics to spin invasion scenarios. They reminded me of pumped-up ex-football players doing pregame analysis.

It was excruciating to be silenced while myth and misinformation went unchallenged. Military analysts typically appeared unopposed; they were presented as experts, not advocates. But their closeness to the Pentagon often obstructed independent, skeptical analysis….

As the war began, CNN news president Eason Jordan admitted that his network's military analysts were government-approved…It's telling that in the run-up to the war, no American TV network hired any on-air analysts from among the experts who questioned White House WMD claims…

As war neared, MSNBC Suits turned the screws even tighter on "Donahue." They decreed that if we booked one guest who was anti-war on Iraq, we needed two who were pro-war. If we booked two guests on the left, we needed three on the right. At one staff meeting, a producer proposed booking Michael Moore and was told she'd need three right-wingers for political balance…

Many in the media who were the loudest and most dramatically wrong about Iraq have not relinquished their war drums. Today, they target Iran and argue vociferously against withdrawal from Iraq. In corporate media, few are held accountable.
--"Inside TV News: We Were Silenced by the Drums of War," Jeff Cohen, former news commentator for CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, as well as senior producer on MSNBC's "Donahue."

"Four of Six Major Papers Left Out Prescient Warnings in Coverage of the 2002 Iraq War Vote"
--headline, Media Matters for America, mediamatters.com, December 6, 2006. The accompanying article features half a dozen Democratic senators and congressman who rose to the floor to protest the vote, but who were never interviewed, quoted, or even mentioned in any of the nation's major newspapers in the run-up to war. Rather, articles often quoted those Democrats who voted FOR the war, as if it were a consensus.

…The vice president ordered a counteroffensive in parts of the press deemed receptive to whatever the administration wanted to dish out concerning (former diplomat Joseph Wilson, whose wife, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA operative by the White House in an attempt to discredit Wilson's claim that the White House case for war was weak). One of the options…recommended to Cheney was an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," because the program's host, Tim Russert, would allow the vice president to "control the message."

(Former Cheney staffer Catherine Martin) suggested that the vice president "leak" information that seemed to undercut Wilson's claim to carefully selected reporters at the New York Times and Washington Post, arranged a lunch for Cheney with right-wing commentators and advised him to avoid the New York Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Nicholas Kristoff because he had "attacked the administration fairly regularly."…Libby had been assigned to contact selected reporters deemed receptive to information that might discredit Wilson…and to plant with them anonymously sourced stories…

…The Washington Post's Dana Milbank had the best summation of Martin's testimony: "The trial has already pulled back the curtain on the White House's PR techniques and confirmed some of the darkest suspicions of the reporters upon whom they are used. Relatively junior White House aides run roughshod over members of the president's Cabinet. Bush aides charged with speaking to the public and the media are kept out of the loop on some of the most important issues. And bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it."

It's such an amateurish approach to news management, in fact, that you have to wonder how the Bush administration and particularly, Cheney's office, got away with it for as long as they did. If you recall that there always are a certain number of high-level Washington journalists willing to play ball with any form of transparently self-interested deceit for the sake of a Page 1 byline or a few minutes of prime airtime, you don't have to wonder very long.

…There's no particular reason why malfeasant members of the press or those who merely are incompetent should be held in contempt. The news media, after all, are like every American institution, home to its share of idiots, poseurs, slothful time-markers and self-interested time servers. The problem is that Cheney and his former aides aren't simply contemptuous of the individual reporters or even of the press itself. They're contemptuous of the principle under which the free press operates--which is the American people's right to have a reasonable account of what the government does in their name.

The lesson to take away from this week's unintended seminar in contemporary journalism is that the vice president and his staff, acting on behalf of the Bush administration, believe that truth is a malleable adjunct to their ambitions and that they have a well-founded confidence that some members of the Washington press corps will cynically accommodate that belief for the sake of their careers.

It's a sick little arrangement in which the parties clearly have one thing in common: a profound indifference to both the common good and to their obligation to act in its service.
--"Cheney's Staff, and a Useful Press," Tim Rutten in his column, "Regarding Media," L.A. Times, January 27, 2007

There is no way I can top the eloquence and power of Tim Rutten's words, so I won't even try, but it is the absolute best description I have found to describe how a codependent media enables a war-aholic administration.

As American citizens, we not only have a right to the truth, we have an obligation to seek out truth, wherever and whenever we can find it.

That doesn't mean necessarily to read only those publications, listen only to those talk-radio programs, or watch only those cable news commentators who agree with our points of view. It means seeking out FACTS, and making our decisions accordingly.

Boys and girls, I submit to you that it is not merely our obligation, it is our RESPONSIBILITY.

The Bush administration freely and cynically manipulated the media in getting out its war propaganda, and they continue to do so to this day. That the media, as a rule, now feels chastised over their egregious failure to question this war does not in any means insinuate that they have learned from their mistakes and vow never to make them again--as Frank Rich points out:

The most important lies to watch for now are the new ones being reiterated daily by the administration's top brass, from Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney on down. You know fiasco awaits America when everyone in the White House is reading in unison from the same fictional script, as they did back in the day when "mushroom clouds" and "uranium from Africa" were the daily drumbeat.

The latest lies are custom-made to prop up the new "way forward" that is anything but…All of this replays 2003, when the White House refused to consider any plan, including existing ones in the Pentagon and State Department bureaucracies, for coping with a broken post-Saddam Iraq. Then, as at every stage of the war since, the only administration plan was for a propaganda campaign to bamboozle American voters into believing "victory" was just around the corner.

…It's incumbent on all those talking heads who fell for "shock and awe" and "Mission Accomplished" in 2003 to not let history repeat itself in 2007. Facing the truth is the only way forward in Iraq.
--"Lying Like It's 2003," Frank Rich, New York Times, January 21, 2007

And…just so you know…the lies don't stop with Iraq. I won't even get into the attempt by the American Enterprise Institute--a right-wing "think-tank" funded by Exxon Mobile who put Bush in the White House and started this war--offered $10,000 bribes to any scientists who were willing to refute the recent finding of 2000 scientists from all over the globe that global warming not only exists, but has been caused by man and their insatiable appetite for carbon fuels--like the kind enriching and fattening up Exxon Mobile as we speak. (They had the highest profits--over $37 BILLION IN ONE QUARTER --of all time, this year.)

(So far--no takers that we know of.)

Nor am I going to get into all the other flat-out unbelievable whoppers this administration has peddled in every branch of government because I just don't have the gigabyte space.

I'm only going to mention one word: IRAN.

As President Bush and his aides calibrate how directly to confront Iran, they are discovering that both their words and their strategy are haunted by the echoes of four years ago--when their warnings of terrorist activity and nuclear ambitions were clearly a prelude to war.

This time, they insist, it's different.
--"On Iran, Bush Faces Haunting Echoes of Iraq," David E. Sanger, Washington Post, January 28, 2007

There is only one difference I want to see this time: That the media, and by extension, the American people, don't buy it. Not again.

It's time to stage an intervention with this president and his war-mongering buddies. Understand that addicts lie and addicts manipulate. It's time to confront them with the truth.

Otherwise…once an addict…always an addict…looking for their next fix.

ARMY TIMES: MORE BUSH LIES; TRUE "SURGE" MAY REACH 50,000, LAST UP TO A YEAR, TRIPLE COSTS

2007-02-02T08:22:00.000-08:00

A new congressional report says the increase of 21,500 combat troops for Iraq proposed by the Bush administrastino could result in up to 50,000 troops actually being deployed to the region.

The report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office bases that projection on the fact that the Bush plan is unclear about whether the 21,500 troops needed to quell violence are all combat troops or if that number already includes support forces.

"Over the past few yars, DoD's practice has been to deploy a total of about 9,500 per combat brigade to the Iraq theater, including about 4,000 combat troops and about 5,500 supporting troops," says the five-page report requested by Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., the House Budget Committee chairman, and Rep. Ike skelton, D-Mo, the House Armed Services Committee chairman.

Spratt, the budget committee chairman and the second-ranking Democrat on the armed services committee, notes that about $379 billion already has been spent on the war in Iraq and a request for an additional $100 billion is expected next week.

"An average of 170,000 military personnel has been maintained in the Iraq theater of operations, and this high deployment level has taken a toll," he said, noting that last year, the Defense Department cut troops' time at home between deployment from two years to one so it could have enough people to deploy.

Spratt said the report raises the question of whether even one year at home between deployments can be guaranteed. "The Pentagon will probabl y have to relax 'dwell-time' standards even more," Spratt said, using the military phrase to describe time at home between deployments.

Skelton said the report "appears to conflict with the estimate given by the chief of staff of the Army in his testimony. We will want to carefully investigate just how big the president's troop increase really is. Is it 21,500 troops, or is it really closer to 33,000 or 43,000?"

...Under the administration's plan, the force increase--already underway--will reach its peak in May. The plan calls for a three-month buildup with a similarly gradual decline when the mission is done. The report does not try to estimate how long the mission might last...
--"CBO: Iraq Surge Could Actually Total 50,000," Rich Maze, Army Times, February 2, 2007

President Bush and his new military chiefs have been saying for nearly a month that they would "surge" an additonal 21,500 troops to Iraq, in a last, grand push to quell the violence in Baghdad and in Anbar Province. But a new study by the non-partisan congressional Budget Office says the real troop increase could be...more than double what the president initially said, and triple the cost.

That's because the combat units that President Bush wants to send into hostile areas need to be backed up by support troops, "including personnel to staff headquarters, military police, communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other services," the CBO notes.

...According to the study, the costs for the "surge" would also be dramatically different than the president has said. The White House estimated a troop escalation would require about $5.6 billion in additinoal funding for the rest of fiscal year 2007...But that figure appears to be dramatically underestimated. The CBO now believes," that costs would range from $9 billion to $13 billion for a four-month deployment and from $20 billion to $27 billion for a 12-month deployment."
--BREAKING: Double the Troops in "Surge" (updated), defensetech.com, February 2, 2007

Leading members of Congress expressed dismay yesterday at both the cost of the increase and indications that the overall size of the new troop commitment will be more substantial than orginally thought.

...Representative Martin T. Meehan, a Democrat of Lowell who chairs a subcommittee on oversight and investigations looking into the handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, added that the report underscored the need for robust congressional oversight of the administration's Iraq strategy.
--"Support Needs Could Double 'Surge' Forces; Report Pegs Cost at up to $27b," Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, February 2, 2007

I am so angry as I type these words that my hands are shaking; I didn't even bother to compose it offline the way I normally do, so that I could check over my spelling and typos more easily.

I should have paid closer attention; should have been wise to the lying ways of this administration by now, their clever twisting of terminology and use of "code-words" that could be caught by their right-wing constituency.

But this, apparently, caught US ALL by surprise.

When Bush talked about 21,500 "combat troops," everybody automatically assumed that would be the breadth and extent of the so-called "surge," and that was bad enough. But we weren't paying close enough attention to the use of that little word COMBAT.

Turns out a realistic assessment of that number turns up a gigantic glaring discrepency between just how many of those troops are going to be COMBAT. If they are ALL combat--then more support will be needed--much more. And if they are composed of combat as well as support, then the true number of combat forces will be much, much lower, which will put them in even greater danger on the streets of Baghdad and Ramadi.

So, what's Bush going to do now? Shake his head and look befuddled and say, Why, yes, of course we will need support, but you needn't worry your pretty little heads about that important national security stuff.

Or maybe he'll say, Well, don't worry! This surge won't REQUIRE that many support troops!

Which means that they will be understaffed and dependent upon overstressed support personnel in the field already to handle the overflow that more than 20,000 extra troops require. Initial reports are already coming in from officers on the ground that they are woefully unprepared, in terms of supply lines, for additional American troops, much less the Iraqi troops that are supposed to be coming as well.

Or maybe he'll say, Hey, no problem! We'll let Blackwater take care of all that support stuff. They've done a heckuva job already in Iraq!

Or maybe he'll do what he normally does when his lies are confronted by truth: ignore the truth and attack the truth-tellers.

Oh, and don't overlook that little caveat that the troops will remain "until the mission is accomplished."

According to The Liar in Chief, that mission was accomplished in May of 2003. Who knows when it really WILL be?

In order for the military to meet this terrible strain, one of its tactics will be to deploy troops to the war twice as fast, which will cut into their training and destroy more military marriages. That's not to mention those deploying months ahead of schedule and being required to stay months past their home due-dates.

This is criminal.

Meanwhile, over on FOX news, in an unrelated matter...The administration claims about how Iranians were behind the horrible attack on the soldiers who were surprised by Iraqis dressed in U.S. Army uniforms--who made it through all the Iraqi security check points and went on to kidnap four U.S. Army officers, handcuff them, and shoot them in the head--well, that claim is beginning to wear thin as well, know why?

Because it looks as if IRAQI ARMY GENERALS MAY HAVE BEEN BEHIND THE ATTACK.

Investigation ongoing, of course. Who knows what the hell the truth is.

Oh, and the two outstanding embedded New York Times staffers--reporter Damien Cave and Gettyimages photographer Robert Nickelsberg, who did the wrenching story of the Army sergeant who was killed, most likely, by careless fire from Iraqi Army troops in a joint operation in Baghdad, the ones I quoted in "Getting Out of a Deathtrap," from the NYT article, "Man Down: When One Bullet Changes Everything,"--know what happened to those guys?

They were yanked out of the field by the Army and their embed status was suspended.

There is such a top-down aversion to telling the truth in this lying administration that we should just assume, from now on, that especially in matters of this war in Iraq, anything coming out of the White House related to it is a LIE.

THEY LIE. OUR TROOPS DIE.

At least now, with the Democrats in Congress, there will be at long last, accountability. No more covering up of their lies by a rubber-stamp, groveling Republican Congress.

Whether the media will more aggressively pursue the truth remains to be seen.

As of this morning, I had to read about it in the Army Times.

GETTING OUT OF A DEATHTRAP

2007-01-30T18:48:00.000-08:00

"Who the hell is shooting at us?" shouted Sergeant 1st Class Marc Biletski, whose platoon was jammed into a small room off an alley that was being swept by a sniper's bullets. "Who's shooting at us? Do we know who they are?"

Just before the platoon tossed smoke bombs and sprinted through the alley to a more secure position, Biletski had a moment to reflect on this spot, which U.S. Army has now fought to regain from a mysterious enemy at least three times in the past two years. "This place is a failure," he said. "Every time we come here, we have to come back."
--"Baghdad Battle Cry: Who's Shooting at Us?" Damien Cave, International Herald Tribune, January 25, 2007

Together, alone, trapped in a dark room with the blood of their comrade on the floor, they tried to piece together what had happened. Maybe the sniper saw Sergeant Leija's silhouette in the window and fired. Or maybe the shot was accidental, they said, fired from below by Iraqi Army soldiers who had been moving between the buildings.

The Iraqis were not supposed to be there yet…after arriving late at the first building, the Iraqis jumped ahead, leaving the Americans and pushing north without searching dozens of apartments in the area…

But Sergeant Leija's squad had no communications links with their Iraqi counterparts, and because it was an Iraqi operation--as senior officers repeatedly emphasized--the Americans could not order the Iraqis to get back in line. There was nothing they could do.
--"'Man Down': When One Bullet Alters Everything, Damien Cave, New York Times, January 29, 2007

New details also emerged about clashes on Saturday in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, which left five Americans dead. Lt. Col. Scott R. Bleichwehl, an American military spokesman, said the gunmen who stormed the provincial governor's office during a meeting between American and local officials were wearing what appeared to be American military uniforms in an effort to impersonate American soldiers.

The sophisticated attack hinted at what could be a new threat for American troops as they start a fresh security plan centered on small bases in Baghdad's bloodiest neighborhoods, where soldiers will live and work with Iraqi forces. Military officials have said that one of their greatest concerns is that troops will be vulnerable to attack from killers who appear to be colleagues.
--"U.S. Toll in Iraq is 27 for Deadly Weekend," Damien Cave, New York Times, January 22, 2007

Iraqi forces were surprised and nearly overwhelmed by the ferocity of an obscure renegade militia in a weekend battle near the holy city of Najaf and needed far more help from American forces than previously disclosed, American and Iraqi officials said Monday.

They said American ground troops--not just air support as reported Sunday--were mobilized to help the Iraqi soldiers, who appeared to have dangerously underestimated the strength of the militia, which…had amassed hundreds of heavily armed fighters.
--"Missteps by Iraqi Forces in Battle Raise Questions," Marc Santora, New York Times, January 30, 2007

Most of you have probably never heard of an Army captain, a West Pointer, by the name of Brian Freeman, but Senators Christopher Dodd (D-Conn) and John Kerry (D-Mass), certainly have.

On a fact-finding trip to Iraq just before Christmas, as they were waiting on a Green Zone landing zone for the helicopter that would fly them out of Baghdad, the young officer approached them, "almost out of the shadows."

Here is what followed:

Even though he felt nervous, he told his wife later, he delivered his message with urgency. Soldiers were being deployed to do missions that they were utterly untrained to do; Freeman, for example, an armor officer, had been sent to help foster democracy and rebuild an Iraqi civil society. State Department personnel who could do those jobs were restricted in their travel off military bases by regional security officers who said it was unsafe for them to venture out…

Once in Iraq, Freeman was dismayed to find that his training, "had no relation to what they were actually doing," Charlotte Freeman said. "He was appalled," enduring danger but seeing no clear mission, she said. Moreover, he believed that the Iraqis "didn't want us there."

…Freeman, 31, took a short holiday leave to see his 14-month old daughter and 2-year old son, returned to his base in Karbala, Iraq, and less than two weeks ago died in a hail of bullets and grenades. Insurgents, dressed in U.S. military uniforms, speaking English and driving black American SUVs, got through a checkpoint and attacked, kidnapped four soldiers and later shot them. Freeman died in the assault, the fifth casualty of the brazen attack.
--"Soldier's Death Strengthens Senators' Antiwar Resolve: Kerry, Dodd Demand Stronger Challenge to Bush," Jonathan Weisman and Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, January 30, 2007

According to NBC Nightly News tonight, further investigation has revealed that the attack on the soldiers at Karbala was a deliberate betrayal by the Iraqis who were working with the Americans. The news broadcast described how the attackers not only gained entry through numerous checkpoints, but that they were waved through by Iraqi security guards who pointed out where the Americans were. Presumably, it was also the Iraqis who conveniently provided the American uniforms. The claim is being made that the Iranians funded and trained the sophisticated attack, but after all the "proof" about weapons of mass destruction that duped us into war with Iraq in the first place, I am dubious that the Iranians are behind it. Maybe they are; but whether they are or aren't, Bush and his neocon buddies are obviously itching for something to provoke a fight with Iran, and I expect more such "evidence" will come to light in the future.

Whether the Iranians funded the operation or not is beside the point as far as I am concerned. Putting the spotlight on the Iranians only makes us forget that it was the IRAQIS WHO BETRAYED THE AMERICAN SOLDIERS.

In the Haifa street battle described in the opening quotes, we have a situation where American soldiers are ordered to enter into a joint operation with the Iraqi Army. Instead, not only are they forced to do most of the fighting, but their Iraqi counterparts not only skip over searching entire sections of buildings--leaving them all desperately vulnerable--but also fire wildly up into the buildings without waiting to see where the Americans are--hence the tragic, useless, and unneccesary death of Sergeant Leija.

Then there are the risks involved in leaving small groups of U.S. advisers in the hands of underequipped Iraqi Army units of dubious skill and loyalty. Over in Iraq, Lt. Col. Rodrick Arrington, an adviser attached to the First Marine Expeditionary Forces in Ramadi, notes that Iraqi troops he works with answer their cellphones while on patrol. Because of absenteeism and lack of pay, the Iraqi units are usually 50 percent under strength, and Iraqi officers often prove unwilling to conduct risky raids. Some units are infiltrated by militias or insurgents…"We're setting ourselves up for a potential national disaster in which some Iraqi divisions could flip and take five thousand (U.S. troops embedded with Iraqi forces as advisors) hostage…or multiple advisory teams go missing in action," says retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey.
--"The Perils of Partnership," Michael Hirsh, Kevin Peraino, and Sarah Childress, Newsweek, December 18, 2006

The prospect of a more intense battle in the Iraqi capital could put U.S. military commanders in exactly the sort of tough urban fight that war planners strove to avoid during the sprint 2003 invasion of the country…military officials said sustaining it for more than a few months would place a major strain on U.S. forces that already are feeling burdened by an unexpectedly long and difficult war…

…Military experts…wondered, as one said, how a "thin green line" of 17,500 additional soldiers in Baghdad could affect the security situation in a city where many of the 5 million residents are hostile to U.S. presence. "Too little, too late--way too late," said retired Col. Jerry Durrant, who has worked as a trainer of Iraqi forces.
--"Intensified Combat on Streets Likely," Thomas E. Ricks and Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, January 11, 2007

I suppose it could be argued that I am biased, since I want this war to end--never wanted it in the first place, particularly when my own son could be sent back for a third deployment at any time in the next few years, even after he musters out of the Marine Corps. And you could even say that Senators Dodd and Kerry, who were so deeply distraught at the death of Capt. Freeman just weeks after he asked for their help were also biased because they have both opposed this war. You could even say that Gen. McCaffrey has always made his views known on this disastrous war--maybe he's biased, too.

So, fine. I'll let the soldiers who are doing the actual FIGHTING in Iraq speak for themselves. What do THEY think about the president's big plan to send in more troops into the deathtrap of Iraq?

Moments before he stepped into his squad's Stryker…Spec. Daniel Caldwell, 20, echoed a sentiment shared by many in his squad: "They're kicking a dead horse here. The Iraqi Army can't stand up on their own."…

…Apache Company's mission: to search a few houses for weapons caches based on intelligence reports. Caldwell and his soldiers worried about the intelligence they had been given. It had come from an Iraqi Army--or "IA" in U.S. soldier lingo--officer a week ago. They had wondered whether they were being set up for an ambush.

"It's a joke," said Pfc. Drew Merrill, 22, of Jefferson City, Mo, shaking his head and flashing a smile as the Stryker rolled through Baghdad.
--"U.S. Unit Patrolling Baghdad Sees Flaws in Bush Strategy," Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post, January 12, 2007

The Iraqis will accept mediocrity," said Staff Sgt. Luke Alphonso, a U.S. Army medic from Morgan City, La., who's been assigned to train members of Iraq's 5th Army Division for the past six months. "They will let us do everything for them."
--"Soldiers Doubt an Influx of American Troops Will Benefit the Iraqi Army," Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers, January 10, 2007

The American military, once a staunch supporter of President Bush and the Iraq war, has grown increasingly pessimistic about chances for victory. For the first time, more troops disapprove of the president's handling of the war than approve of it, according to a 2006 Military Times Poll.
--"More Troops Unhappy with Bush's Course in Iraq, Poll Finds," Robert Hodlerne, Military Times, December 29, 2006

"It is time for U.S. troops to come home," said Marine Corps Sgt. Liam Madden…"Not one of my brothers should die for a lie. This is my generation's call to conscience."

"We're not anti-war," said Navy Mass Communications Specialist 3rd class Jonathan Hutto, 29…"We're not pacifists. We're anti-Iraq war."

…"I want Congress tomorrow to realize that they are accountable to their citizens," Madden said. "And their service members are on the front line."

…A 2003 Naval Academy graduate now in the individual Ready Reserves used tougher words. "This administration has betrayed our armed forces," said Lt. j.g. Fabian Bouthilette, 26. "I actually believe that the conduct of this administration is more detrimental to the Constitution than anything else. This was begun on an immoral, illegal basis. We were lied to."
--Service Members to Rally Against the War in Iraq," William H. McMichael, Navy Times, January 15, 2007. All the soldiers, sailors, and Marines quoted in the Navy Times article had had at least one deployment to Iraq and several were due to return. They submitted a petition of over a thousand names to Congress on January 15, 2007. Although the event was covered in military publications, with respect, pointing out that their action was legal and that they had suffered no deleterious consequences because of their actions, the presentation of the petition and the accompanying press conference was not covered by any of the three network news broadcasts. I know because I watched all three.

"The story below only appeared on our CBS website and was not aired on CBS. It is a story that is largely being ignored, even though this is taking place every single day in central Baghdad, two blocks from where our office is located.

"Our crew had to be pulled out because we got a call saying they were aobut to be killed, and on their way out, a civilian man was shot dead in front of them as they ran.

"…This is not too gruesome to air, but rather too important to ignore."
--e-mail sent out by CBS war correspondent Lara Logan, asking for friends in the media to campaign her network to get her two-minute segment aired. Lara Logan has placed herself in the deadliest of assignments with Marines and soldiers alike--Once, while on foot patrol in Ramadi with Marines, it was too dangerous for her to take a camera crew, so she carried a handheld video camera and ran down Ramadi streets with the Marine squad, who could not move slowly due to the danger from snipers. I have seen many of her intense and amazing reports--she speaks for the troops, not for CBS news.

While Bush races to step up the deployments of American forces to Iraq--my own nephew will be headed to Baghdad with an army Stryker brigade two months ahead of schedule--and plays Chinese fire drill with American troops he's pulling out of Afghanistan in order to extend their deployments an extra FOUR MONTHS and send them to IRAQ, and thumbs his nose at the Congress, his own joint chiefs, and the American people, saying that, "We've already got the money for the surge," or, as the Puppet Master himself, Dick Cheney, put it, "They can't stop us"--it seems that they are, indeed, stoppable.

"For almost four years, this administration has been saying, 'Just give us another six months. Give us more time. The Iraqis need more help. We need more troops. We need more money.' I am not willing to sacrifice more young men and women for a policy that isn't working…

"There is no strategy. This is a pingpong game with American lives."
--"The Angry One," Wil S. Hylton, GQ Magazine interview of Sen. Chuck Hagel, (R-Neb.), appearing in the January, '07 issue. Sen. Hagel is a combat veteran of Vietnam, having fought bravely during the Tet offensive of 1968, once saving the life of his own brother.

"We've abdicated our responsibilities. That has to do with the fact that the Republican Party controlled the White House, the House, and the Senate. When that happens, you get no probing, no questioning, no oversight. If Bill Clinton had invaded Iraq and after two years he was having the same problems, do you think the Republican Congress would have put up with that? I don't think so.
--ibid

The thing is, there has been much hoopla about these congressional resolutions opposing Bush's so-called "surge" of more than 21,000 troops into Iraq. It has been said that the resolutions are toothless and that, unless Congress is willing to cut off funding of the troops, the president can do whatever he wants. Dick Cheney has flat-out said that. In fact, the president and vice-president seem to be throwing down a challenge to Congress, forcing them to either cut off funds to the troops--which virtually none of them wants to do--or wave their yellow ribbons and get on board the president's train wreck.

They should take a moment, sometime, and read the Constitution.

The Constitution's provision that the president is commander in chief clearly puts him at the top of the military chain of command. Congress would be overstepping if, for example, it passed a law requiring generals in the field to report directly to the speaker of the House.

But the Constitution also gives Congress an array of war powers, including the power to "declare war," "raise and support armies," and "make rules concerning captures on land and water." By "declare war," the Constitution's framers did not mean merely firing off a starting gun…In giving Congress the power to declare war, the Constitution gives it authority to make decisions about the war's scope and duration.

The Founders, including James Madison, who is often called "the father of the Constitution," fully expected Congress to use these powers to rein in the commander in chief. "The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it," Madison cautioned. "It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature."

In the early days of the republic, the Supreme Court made clear that Congress could limit the president's war powers…The court has repeatedly reinforced this principle…

…Past Congresses have enacted just the sort of restrictions the Bush administration is trying to foreclose today…There is little question that Congress…can…pass laws that set the terms of military engagement.
--"Congress, the Constitution, and War: The Limits on Presidential Power," Adam Cohen, New York Times, January 29, 2007

Here's the thing, boys and girls. The men and women who proudly wear the uniform of the United States military are our FAMILY. They are our children and our siblings and our parents and our friends. They go where they are ordered to go and do what they are ordered to do because they are unbelievably brave and valiant. They have no choice but to trust that the civilian leadership who shapes those orders will not do so recklessly, throwing their lives away on a lost cause.

They have to believe that in order to do their jobs.

And yet, they no longer believe it. By a very large majority, quoted in their own Military Times, the troops who are fighting this war no longer trust the word of the people in this administration who keep demanding more and more blood sacrifices from them.

There is not a whole lot they can do to fight that--not legally.

But we can.

Although he may think of himself as Ruler of the Free World, this president is, actually, a plain old civil servant. He works for US.

Our elected representatives in Congress work for US.

And it is up to US to make our voices heard--loud and clear--to every senator and congressperson, that we want this madness stopped.

THEY have the power to stop it.

WE have the power to MAKE THEM.

The brave young men like the soldier who died on Haifa street in Baghdad and the soldier who died at the hands of traitors in the Iraqi Army, and the Marines who can't trust their Iraqi counterparts on even a simple patrol--they are depending upon US to restore accountability to those who would order them to die.

Keep up the pressure. Let the timid in Congress, the angry in Congress, even the misguided in Congress, KNOW THAT WE WILL NOT BE SILENT.

Our own troops in the field have let us know that this whole "strategy" is a deathtrap. The Iraqi Army who betrays those who have tried so patiently to train and arm and support them, has let us know the same thing.

SUPPORT OUR TROOPS. BRING THEM HOME.

One more thing--just in case someone thinks that any Democratic suggestions for peace would only bring down the wrath of hell on the Iraqis themselves…Maybe we ought to listen to what THEY have to say…for a change:

Representatives of Iraq's government are hedging their bets on America's political future…by building ties with the Democratic Party…

…They concluded early that even the most staunchly antiwar Democrats would not abandon Iraq…

…Almost all agree on Democratic Party initiatives, squashed when Republicans controlled Congress, to prevent the building of permanent U.S. bases here. They note news reports of Democrats acknowledging the suffering of the Iraqi population.

"I see that the Democratic ideas are more related to reality," said Ammar Tuma, a lawmaker who serves in Maliki's ruling Shiite coalition. "They talk about the real problems that the Iraqis are facing every day."

To date, government officials said, they've also found Democratic visitors such as Pelosi, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois less parochial, more culturally sensitive and more willing to listen to Iraqi concerns than the Republicans.

…"Now it's different because the Democrats have some decision-making power," said Farooq Abdullah, a Maliki advisor. "Before, we were meeting mostly with Republicans because they were the ones in power. Now we're meeting with both of them."
--"Iraq Cultivates Ties to Democrats," Borzou Dargahi, Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2007

Do I mean to imply that the Democrats have all the answers? Of course not. Clearly, nobody does. And in point of fact, the loudest and angriest voices coming out of Congress today are coming from moderate Republicans, some conservative Republicans, and conservative Democrats as well as liberals.

The point is that George W. Bush does not have all the answers and neither does he any longer have all the power.

There are steps that can be taken by Congress to defy him and to rein in his megalomania. All they need is a push from their constituents.

Call your representative and senators. Sign petitions to his or her office. Write letters and e-mails. MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD.

Together, we can find a way to end this madness and get the hell out of an American deathtrap in Iraq.

Later, I'll write more on HOW.

THE STATE OF IRAQ'S UNION

2007-01-25T13:35:00.000-08:00

(the Iraqi) Parliament in recent months has been at a standstill. Nearly every session since November has been adjourned because as few as 65 members made it to work, even as they and the absentees earned salaries and benefits worth about $120,000.

Part of the problem is security, but Iraqi officials also said they feared that members were losing confidence in the institution and in the country's fragile democracy. As chaos has deepened, Parliament's relevance has gradually receded.

Deals on important legislation, most recently the oil law, now take place largely out of public view, with Parliament--when it meets--rubber-stamping the final decisions. As a result, officials said, vital legislation involving the budget, provincial elections and amendments to the Constitution remain trapped in a legislative process that processes nearly nothing. American officials long hoped that Parliament could help foster dialogue between Iraq's increasingly fractured ethnic and religious groups, but that has not happened, either.
--"Iraq Parliament Finds a Quorum Hard to Come By," Damien Cave, New York Times, January 24, 2007

Over the past six months, Baghdad has been all but isolated electrically, Iraqi officials say, as insurgents have effectively won their battle to bring down critical high-voltage lines and cut off the capital from the major power plants to the north, south, and west.

The battle has been waged in the remotest parts of the open desert, where the great towers that support thousands of miles of exposed lines are frequently felled with explosive charges in increasingly determined and sophisticated attacks, generally at night. Crews that arrive to repair the damage are often attacked and sometimes killed, ensuring that the government falls further and further behind in its attempts to repair the lines.

…Skilled looters often arrive with heavy trucks that pull down more of the towers to steal as much of the valuable aluminum conducting material in the lines as possible…

What amounts to an electrical siege of Baghdad is reflected in constant power failures and disastrously poor service in the capital, with severe consequences for security, governance, health care and the mood of an already weary and angry populace.
--"Iraq Insurgents Starve Capital of Electricity, James Glanz, New York Times, December 19, 2006

About 1,000 British and Iraqi troops raided a police station in the southern city of Basra on Monday, killing seven gunmen and taking custody of more than 100 prisoners who were believed to be marked for execution by a renegade police unit.

Many of the prisoners at the Jamiat police station showed signs of torture, including cigarette and electrical burns, gunshot wounds to their legs and knees, and hands that had been crushed, said Capt. Tane Dunlop, a spokesman for British forces in Iraq. The station, a base for a squad known as the serious crimes unit, was later blown up by British forces.
--British Troops Raid, Raze Station House in Southern Iraq, Nancy Trejos and Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post, December 26, 2006

The United States established the Central Criminal Court of Iraq three years ago, envisioning it as a pillar of new democracy. But like the faltering effort to create effective Iraqi security forces, the system for detaining, charging and trying suspects has instead become another weak link in the rule of law in Iraq, according to an examination of the justice system by the New York Times.

…Almost every aspect of the judicial system is lacking, poorly serving not just detainees but also Iraqi citizens and troops trying to maintain order.

A classified Pentagon assessment completed in June of the American effort to strengthen Iraqi justice found one sign of progress: the prosecution of former senior government officials. Everything else, from training judges to building court capacity to minimizing civil rights abuses by Iraqi security forces, had fallen behind, according to the assessment by the National Security Council.

…"The most fundamental thing we need to do in Iraq is establish the rule of law," said Mark Waller, an Air Force Reserve major and deputy district attorney in Colorado, who spent four months this year in Baghdad helping to prosecute detainees. "It's the cornerstone of a civilization. Without it you have anarchy. And we are falling short."
--"The Legal System in Iraq Staggers Beneath the Weight of War," Michael Moss, New York Times, December 17, 2006

The Bush administration routinely has underreported the level of violence in Iraq in order to disguise its policy failings, the Iraq Study Group report said.

…"The standard for reporting attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases," the report said. "…If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn't hut U.S. personnel doesn't count."

Bush and his top officials have denied the allegations and accused the news media of exaggerating the violence between Iraqi Shiite and Sunni Muslims, minority Kurds and other groups.
--"Study Says Violence in Iraq Has Been Underreported," Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy Newspapers, December 6, 2006

Along with its many other desperate problems, Iraq is in the midst of a housing crises that is worsening by the day.

It began right after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, when many landlords took advantage of the removal of his economic controls and raised rents substantially, forcing out thousands of families who took shelter in abandoned government buildings and military bases. As the chaos in Iraq grew and the ranks of the jobless swelled, even more Iraqis migrated to squalid squatter encampments. Still others constructed crude shantytowns on empty plots where conditions were even worse.

Now, after more than 10 months of brutal sectarian reprisals, many more Iraqis have fled their neighborhoods, only to wind up often in places that are just as wretched in other ways. While 1.8 million Iraqis are living outside the country, 1.6 million more have been displaced within Iraq since the war began. Since February, about 50,000 per month have moved within the country.

…With many families in such encampments or worse, and many others doubled or tripled up in friends' or relatives' homes, the deputy housing minister, Istabraq al-Shouk, puts the shortage at two million dwellings across Iraq.
--"Crises in Housing Adds to Miseries of Iraq Mayhem," Michael Luo, New York Times, December 29, 2006

Iraq is emerging as one of the fastest-growing refugee crises in the world, with an estimated 1.8 million Iraqis displaced from their homes and up to 100,000 fleeing the country to Jordan, Syria, and other nations amid intensifying sectarian violence, U.S. and other officials testified yesterday.

Yet the United States has allowed only 466 Iraqis to immigrate under refugee status since 2003…
--Iraq Refugee Crises Seen Deepening," Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, January 17, 2007

The level of corruption in the Iraq Security Forces is staggering. The Iraq Study Group found that $5 billion to $7 billion is lost annually to different types of corruption…

…The most prominent forms of corruption I saw were Iraqi commanders pocketing the paychecks of nonexistent troops in the Iraqi army and officers in the police forces, and customs officials abetting the smuggling of oil and precious rebuilding supplies across Iraq's porous borders.

A United States interagency panel reported in November that oil smuggling abetted by corrupt Iraqi customs officials is netting insurgents $100 million a year, helping make them financially self-sustaining.
--"Losing Iraq, One Truckload at a Time," Luis Carlos Montalvan, New York Times op-ed, January 14, 2007. Luis Carlos Montalvan is a U.S. Army captain.

The United Nations reported that more than 34,000 Iraqis were killed in violence last year, a figure that represents the first comprehensive annual count of civilian deaths and a vivid measure of the failure of the Iraqi government and the American military to provide security.

The report was the first attempt at hand-counting individual deaths for an entire year. It was compiled using reports from morgues, hospitals and municipal authorities across Iraq, and was nearly three times higher than an estimate for 2006 compiled from Iraqi ministry tallies…

…The violence has expanded to the point of leaving hospitals and morgues overflowing with bodies. The report described the discovery of several recent mass graves.
--"Iraqi Death Toll Exceeded 34,000 in '06, U.N. Says," Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, January 17, 2007

(Wolf Blitzer, CNN "Situation Room") But there is a terrible situation (in Iraq.)

(Vice President Dick Cheney) No, there is not. There is not…

(Blitzer, later in the interview) ...So you're moving forward no matter what the consequences?

(Cheney) We are moving forward.

(Blitzer, returning to the subject later) Here's the problem that you have--the administration--credibility in Congress and with the American public, because of the mistakes, because of the previous statements, the last throes, the comment you made a year-and-a-half ago, the insurgency was in its last throes. How do you build up that credibility because so many of the Democrats, and a lot of Republicans now are saying they don't believe you anymore?

(Cheney) Well, Wolf, if the history books were written by people who have--are so eager to write off this effort, to declare it a failure, including many of our friends in the media, the situation obviously would have been over a long time ago. Bottom line is that we've had enormous success, and we will continue to have enormous successes.
--"Interview of the Vice President by Wolf Blitzer, CNN 'Situation Room', provided by the Vice President's Ceremonial Office, January 24, 2007

SEN. JAMES WEBB'S RESPONSE TO BUSH: FULL TEXT

2007-01-24T08:21:00.000-08:00

Guys, I searched all over the world wide web--including Senator Webb's own official website, to find the full text of his response to the State of the Union. Understand that, normally, party bosses pretty much tell the responder what to say--and they tried it with Webb. But the crusty individualist said, Thanks, but No Thanks. I can handle it.

He wrote these heartfelt remarks himself, and when he said, referring to his family's and his own distinguished military service, and to his son, currently serving in Iraq with the Marine Corps--

"Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country. On the political issues — those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death — we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into harm‘s way. "

--I burst into tears. It was the first voice I have heard out of Washington, D.C., who speaks for US, the longsuffering military families who have paid such a terrible price for this war and who feel so forgotten in any way other than yellow ribbon magnets.

I finally found the full text of his speech in, of all places, the Prescott Herald: The Voice of Rural Arizona. Many thanks to Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo (www.talkingpointsmemo.com), for providing the link.

Here are Senator Webb's full remarks. They were delivered with calm, quiet steadiness. At one point, he held up a photograph of his father, taken in Germany when he was deployed for three years, and said he'd carried it with him for 50 years, that it speaks to him of sacrifice.

I'm not going to comment further on this eloquent and powerful nine-minute speech. I will let it speak for itself.

By The Associated Press 22 minutes ago

Democratic response of Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., to President Bush ‘s State of the Union address Tuesday, as prepared for delivery and provided by his office:

Good evening.

I'm Senator Jim Webb, from Virginia, where this year we will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown an event that marked the first step in the long journey that has made us the greatest and most prosperous nation on earth.

It would not be possible in this short amount of time to actually rebut the president's message, nor would it be useful. Let me simply say that we in the Democratic Party hope that this administration is serious about improving education and health care for all Americans, and addressing such domestic priorities as restoring the vitality of New Orleans.

Further, this is the seventh time the president has mentioned energy independence in his State of the Union message, but for the first time this exchange is taking place in a Congress led by the Democratic Party. We are looking for affirmative solutions that will strengthen our nation by freeing us from our dependence on foreign oil, and spurring a wave of entrepreneurial growth in the form of alternate energy programs. We look forward to working with the president and his party to bring about these changes.

There are two areas where our respective parties have largely stood in contradiction, and I want to take a few minutes to address them tonight. The first relates to how we see the health of our economy, how we measure it, and how we ensure that its benefits are properly shared among all Americans. The second regards our foreign policy, how we might bring the war in Iraq to a proper conclusion that will also allow us to continue to fight the war against international terrorism, and to address other strategic concerns that our country faces around the world.

Economy

When one looks at the health of our economy, it's almost as if we are living in two different countries. Some say that things have never been better. The stock market is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. But these benefits are not being fairly shared. When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it's nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day.

Wages and salaries for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of national wealth, even though the productivity of American workers is the highest in the world. Medical costs have skyrocketed. College tuition rates are off the charts. Our manufacturing base is being dismantled and sent overseas. Good American jobs are being sent along with them.

In short, the middle class of this country, our historic backbone and our best hope for a strong society in the future, is losing its place at the table. Our workers know this, through painful experience. Our white-collar professionals are beginning to understand it, as their jobs start disappearing also. And they expect, rightly, that in this age of globalization, their government has a duty to insist that their concerns be dealt with fairly in the international marketplace.

In the early days of our republic, President Andrew Jackson established an important principle of American-style democracy that we should measure the health of our society not at its apex, but at its base. Not with the numbers that come out of Wall Street, but with the living conditions that exist on Main Street. We must recapture that spirit today.

And under the leadership of the new Democratic Congress, we are on our way to doing so. The House just passed a minimum wage increase, the first in 10 years, and the Senate will soon follow. We've introduced a broad legislative package designed to regain the trust of the American people. We've established a tone of cooperation and consensus that extends beyond party lines. We're working to get the right things done, for the right people and for the right reasons.

International affairs

With respect to foreign policy, this country has patiently endured a mismanaged war for nearly four years. Many, including myself, warned even before the war began that it was unnecessary, that it would take our energy and attention away from the larger war against terrorism, and that invading and occupying Iraq would leave us strategically vulnerable in the most violent and turbulent corner of the world.

I want to share with all of you a picture that I have carried with me for more than 50 years. This is my father, when he was a young Air Force captain, flying cargo planes during the Berlin Airlift. He sent us the picture from Germany, as we waited for him, back here at home. When I was a small boy, I used to take the picture to bed with me every night, because for more than three years my father was deployed, unable to live with us full-time, serving overseas or in bases where there was no family housing. I still keep it, to remind me of the sacrifices that my mother and others had to make, over and over again, as my father gladly served our country. I was proud to follow in his footsteps, serving as a Marine in Vietnam. My brother did as well, serving as a Marine helicopter pilot. My son has joined the tradition, now serving as an infantry Marine in Iraq.

Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country. On the political issues, those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death, we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into harm's way.

We owed them our loyalty, as Americans, and we gave it. But they owed us sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a guarantee that the threat to our country was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay in defending it.

Iraq

The president took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command, whose jurisdiction includes Iraq, the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable and predicted disarray that has followed.

The war's costs to our nation have been staggering. Financially. The damage to our reputation around the world. The lost opportunities to defeat the forces of international terrorism. And especially the precious blood of our citizens who have stepped forward to serve.

The majority of the nation no longer supports the way this war is being fought; nor does the majority of our military. We need a new direction. Not one step back from the war against international terrorism. Not a precipitous withdrawal that ignores the possibility of further chaos. But an immediate shift toward strong regionally based diplomacy, a policy that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq's cities, and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq.

On both of these vital issues, our economy and our national security, it falls upon those of us in elected office to take action.

Regarding the economic imbalance in our country, I am reminded of the situation President Theodore Roosevelt faced in the early days of the 20th century. America was then, as now, drifting apart along class lines. The so-called robber barons were unapologetically raking in a huge percentage of the national wealth. The dispossessed workers at the bottom were threatening revolt.

Roosevelt spoke strongly against these divisions. He told his fellow Republicans that they must set themselves as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other. And he did something about it.

As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be President Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had fallen into a bloody stalemate. "When comes the end?" asked the general who had commanded our forces in Europe during World War II. And as soon as he became president, he brought the Korean War to an end.

These presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight we are calling on this president to take similar action, in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way.

Thank you for listening. And God bless America.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

AMAZING, WHAT YOU CAN GET DONE IN 100 HOURS

2007-01-21T13:45:00.000-08:00

House Democrats crossed the finished line Thursday in their race to pass a six-bill agenda in the first 100 hours of the new Congress--getting there 13 hours ahead of schedule.

…"We have delivered on our promise," Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a news conference…
--"House Democrats Beat 100-Hour Clock," Kasie Hunt, Associated Press, January 19, 2007

…The House has now approved legislation directly addressing public concerns: raising minimum wage, ethics reform, interest rate reductions on subsidized college loans and expanded federal support for stem cell research. It has put in place rule changes to promote fiscal responsibility and adopted recommendations from the 9/11 commission. Today, the House is expected to repeal tax breaks for oil companies…These achievements constitute a modest start toward a saleable centrist agenda for a party too often in the past labeled as extreme.
--"Happy Hours," Thomas B. Edsall, conservative columnist for the New York Times, January 18, 2007

House Rolls Back Oil company Subsidies
--headline, Associated Press, January 18, 2007

House Approves Page Program Reforms
--headline, Yahoo! News, Janaury 19, 2007

Senate Passes Vast Ethics Overhaul
--headline, New York Times, January 19, 2007

The final package is the strongest ethics legislation to emerge from Congress yet. Like the rules changes the House adopted this month, it would bar lawmakers from taking free gifts, meals and entertainment. No longer would lobbyists and private interests be allowed to throw lavish parties honoring lawmakers at political conventions. Travel paid for by private interests would be dramatically curtailed. Lawmakers' cut-rate corporate jet flights would be grounded. The revolving door would be slowed, with lawmakers having to wait two years, not the current one year, before lobbying their former colleagues.

…Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, along with Sens. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill), deserves credit for assembling and passing this package.
--"Real Ethics Reform," editorial, Washington Post, January 20, 2997

Calling it, "common sense legislation that helps to return money to the pockets of the American people and invests in our future and America's future," House majority leader Steny Hoyer announced the sweeping and historical passage of more than six major pieces of legislation passed by the new Democratic House and Senate, delivering on promises made by newly elected Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the day Democrats returned to power last November.

One of the most striking things about this amazing accomplishment is the new rush of emboldened moderate Republicans, who did not bend to pressures put on them by their conservative leadership to block or gum up the works of the legislation, but instead, joined their Democratic counterparts in bipartisan cooperation that has not been seen since George W. Bush assumed the imperial presidency, aided and abetted by a rubber-stamp Republican Congress six long years ago.

As pointed out by Bob Schieffer on CBS's "Face the Nation," today, one of the reasons Congress might start getting things done now is that, for the past Republican years, that rubber-stamp Congress and their non-veto president managed to pretend to govern this nation by only working two or three days a week.

That's right. Congress was only in session two or three days a week the whole past six years.

So the Democrats took over, and the first thing their leadership did was state that, from now on, Congress was going to have to behave like the rest of the country and work five days a week.

One outraged conservative Republican congressman stood up and loudly accused the Democrats of "hating the American family" because they were expecting him to work five days a week.

I'm sure that struck a real chord among all those hard-working American families with two-income households or single parents struggling to juggle job and children.

Speaker Pelosi set this goal for the new congress months ago, but then, the day the new Congress convened, Bush suddenly releases this so-called big new war strategy he has supposedly been thinking about for two whole months, which automatically dominates news coverage and threatens to overwhelm the new Congress with public demands that they deal with it.

I'm sure he and his handlers thought that this would effectively shut down the new Congress, thus presenting Republican opponents in '08 with an opportunity to claim that the Democrats reneged on their 100-hour promise.

Go ahead. Mess with a mom who had five babies in five years and raised them while being an active political volunteer. See where it gets ya.

The new congress is actively involved in dealing with the president's unpopular scheme to escalate the war. But that has not stopped them from getting the job done that the American people elected them to do.

Speaker Pelosi has done an outstanding job in her first 100 hours, as have all the Democrats who worked so hard--AND all those moderate Republicans who were willing, finally, to break out of the Nazi lock-step forced on them by Tom DeLay and his ilk during six miserable do-nothing years--who have also gotten serious about finally getting things done.

They say Bush's State of the Union address is going to be much shorter then usual, and that he is going to discuss things like global warming and health care.

Gee. I wonder why.

It's amazing what you can accomplish in 100 hours with drive, determination, hard work, and the integrity to listen to your constituents and deliver on promises, rather than using that same period of time for personal partisan attacks, power grabs, and the politicizing of life and death issues that effect all Americans.

When Republicans were the opposition party, they used their platform to practice politics of personal destruction, trying to bring down a president who had been elected twice and who enjoyed great popularity in the country. They wasted countless thousands of hours in hearings about the minutia of his sex life, baseless investigations of anyone who worked with or for him, and more than $70 million of taxpayer money and untold numbers of federal agents trying to ferret out any dirt whatsoever they could use in their hateful campaign. (I must say that one of the indirect strengths of Hillary Clinton now is that their tactics have bitten them in the ass--because no candidate ever in the history of our government has ever been more thoroughly investigated and vetted and found to be clean by a Congress bent on his or her ruination.)

When the Republican party then took over the White House, they spent the next six years squandering American treasure in pet projects, shutting down any substantive debate on any issue that could effect their constituents and those of the other half of Congress represented by the opposition party, forcing gridlock in the government, using the power of Congress to stick its nose where it did not belong--the name "Terry Schiavo" comes to mind--never once investigating or even questioning any policy coming out of the White House, no matter how misguided or dangerous, (kowtowing so completely that in six years their fearless leader has only used his veto once), creating a culture of corruption so crooked it sent several members to prison, whipping up war-frenzy that threatened to consume any opponent who questioned it without ever seriously investigating the claims being handed to them on a Rovian platter, and running up a $9 trillion debt while wasting a solid surplus and dragging the government so deep into the red its budget may never be balanced again.

Don't even talk to me about FOUR YEARS of war in Iraq, more than 3,000 American dead and tens of thousands wounded and no end in sight.

(Did you know, by the way, that part of this big "surge" is going to come from pulling AN ENTIRE BATTALION OF DESPERATELY NEEDED TROOPS OUT OF AFGHANISTAN SO THEY CAN BE SENT TO IRAQ? JUST WHEN THE SPRING THAW SETS THE TALIBAN FREE TO LAUNCH NEW ATTACKS ON A COUNTRY THAT IS FAR FROM SECURE? Where is THAT in the so-called "liberal media"? It's a fact. And the only people in congress who think this is a good idea are conservative Republicans and one pseudo-independent.)

But I digress.

There is no doubt that, all things considered, the Democrats in congress--new and old--are also politicians, and we will be able to learn much about them by how they choose to wield power, and how effectively they are able to govern.

But from what we have seen so far, the indications are that they do not wish to repeat mistakes of the past from either party; they are listening to the people who put them in office, and they are going about first, trying to clean up the terrible mess left by their predecessors, and second, starting a brand-new day of solving the country's problems in pragmatic, common sense ways we can all appreciate.

I lift my glass to you all--Democrats and common-sense non-ideological Republicans alike. For the first time in more than a decade--I can't wait to see what happens next.

MUTINY!

2007-01-16T14:46:00.000-08:00

The Appeal for Redress of Grievances, which relies on whistleblower protection laws, calls for "the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq" and represents the first organized active-duty military movement to oppose the war and occupation of Iraq since Vietnam. To date, over 1,000 active-duty members of the US military have signed it. While signers of the appeal span the ranks from private to rear admiral, the average signatory is a corporal or sergeant and has completed at least one tour of duty in Iraq.
--"Breaking Ranks: Troops Call for Iraq Withdrawal," Charles E. Anderson, truthout.org Guest Contributor, January 15, 2007. Mr. Anderson served in Iraq with the Marine Corps' Second Tank Battalion during the invasion of Iraq. During his nine-year career, he served in infantry, armor, and medical units.

Seaman Jonathan Hutto, co-founder of the Appeals for Redress…and co-founder Sergeant Liam Madden (USMC), joined by sailors, Marines, airmen, soldiers, and veterans of at least one tour of Iraq…will deliver a copy of the signed document to Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio)…

Marine Sergeant Madden calls it "completely legal." The Military Whistle-Blower Protection Act (DOD directive 7050.6) allows active-duty military, National Guard and Reservists, while out of uniform and off duty, to file and send a protected communication to a member of Congress regarding any subject without reprisal…

Madden spent seven months in the thick of it in Haditha, time that he initially refused to talk about, claiming "it has nothing to do with the Appeal for Redress." But then he said that he was one of the "lucky ones, I didn't come home with any physical or mental problems." When asked what his plans are for the future, Sgt. Madden replies, "To keep on with this struggle until this illegal, immoral war is over."
--"Iraq Vets Call on Congress to End War," Stacy Bannerman, January 15, 2007. Bannerman is the author of When the War Came Home: The Inside Story of Reservists and the Families They Leave Behind (Continuum Publishing, 2005). She is a member of Military Families Speak Out.

Majority Democrats are already working on texts designed to attract maximum Republican support. The Senate vote will be especially telling, since Democrats need to find 10 votes among their opponents to gather the 60 needed to defeat the filibuster promised by minority leader Mitch McConnell, a loyal backer of the President. If they succeed, it will be seen as further proof that Mr. Bush has lost control of the Capitol Hill wing of his party, as Republican congressmen and senators facing re-election in 2008 run for cover from a war that sent the party to defeat in November's mid-term vote. "Everybody is scared spitless," John Thune, the South Dakota Republican, told the New York Times.
--"Bush Faces Mutiny Over Extra Troops in Iraq," Rupert Cornwell in Washington, for the British newspaper, The Independent, January 15, 2007.

Back in 1846, President James K. Polk saw a golden opportunity to seize thousands of square miles of land--roughly Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona--from Mexico.

So he trumped up a fake "attack" by Mexican soldiers on American troops stationed on the border and declared war on Mexico.

There were plenty of politicians in Congress who saw right away the bogus ploy, and they had two choices: try to shout down the warmongers, or back Polk's war.

Those who tried to oppose Polk soon found themselves the brunt of furious accusations in the press of not being patriotic enough, of not loving their country, and of withholding support from our brave fighting men. Most of them were cowed by such attacks and backed down.

One young congressman would not be deterred. In a series of rousing speeches, he claimed that, "from beginning to end, this war is the sheerest deception…" and stoutly maintained that, "The president had hoped to escape public scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory…that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy."

When the flag-wavers turned vicious, the freshman congressman still held his ground, likening the president's message to, "the half-insane mumbling of a fever-dream…a war of conquest brought into existence to catch votes."

But that war-fever had already been whipped into a frenzy, and not only was the courageous young congressman ignored, but his passion for peace cost him his job. He was soundly defeated for re-election after serving just one two-year term, and returned to private law practice to live a quiet life away from the public eye.

History, however, had different plans for him.

While most of us have no idea of the names of the politicians and newspaper editors who vilified the scrawny young congressman, we do, however, remember HIS.

It was Abraham Lincoln.

Throughout the years, there have been other congressmen and women of principle, who risked their work and their careers to fight for the fighters. Listen to the words of the first presidential candidate I ever voted for:

"Every senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave…This chamber reeks of blood."
--Senator George McGovern, on the floor of the Senate on Sept. 1, 1970, quoted in the article, "Mustering the Courage to End War," Robert Mann, Boston Globe, January 15, 2007. When McGovern was ridiculed for his dissent as a "cut and run" policy, the decorated WWII bomber pilot replied, "Do not talk to the wounded about bugging out or national honor or courage. It does not take any courage at all for a congressman or a senator or a president to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam, because it is not our blood that is being shed."

There are all different kinds of courage in this world. We all know the kind of courage it takes for a young Marine or soldier to strap on a hundred pounds of gear, body armor, and helmet, pick up an M-16, and head out into the blazing sun or the cold dark of night in a country filled with people who want nothing more than to kill him or her before the end of the day. If their best friend is blown apart in front of their eyes, and they race that friend to the field hospital, and wait and pray, and find that it is too late, and kiss their buddy good-bye forever--the very next thing they do is pick up that rifle and head back out into the line of fire again.

They do this even when they KNOW the cause is lost, and not because they are stupid or blindly obedient, but because this is their LIFE, it is their WORK, and they hope against hope that no matter how bad things get, that somehow, some way, what they do will matter in this world.

It takes the most craven kind of cowardice in the world to keep sending these brave young troops back out into that heat over and over and over again just because you are afraid what will happen to your career or your place in history if you call them back.

And it takes a whole other kind of courage to fight those who would destroy you for no other reason than that you have opposed them.

Although the thousand-plus active-duty troops and officers who have signed the Redress petition did so under a Whistle-Blower's law, we all know the kinds of underhanded things that can be done to destroy a military career by even so much as one superior officer who finds such an action offensive. To put your name on the dotted line, to stand in front of television cameras and speak out, knowing full well that you will most likely be sent back into that very war to fight again before you ever get out of that uniform takes a kind of courage that most people can't even begin to imagine in their lives--most especially, politicians.

They say that wars are fought not for God and country and mom and apple pie, and not for politics, but for, as my son said during his time in the Battle of Fallujah, "for the guy in front of me and the guy behind me and the guys on either side of me."

Guys fight, quite simply, to get their buddies home. They fight to accomplish a mission, yes, but their primary concern is getting home alive with all their buddies.

The men and women who signed the petition for Redress are also doing so for their buddies, believe me.

My son called to tell me that one of his buddies was scheduled to deploy in April but will now be leaving in February, and rather than a seven-month combat deployment--and believe me, no one sees tougher wartime combat conditions than Marine Corps grunts, especially the NCO's like my son and his buddy--rather than seven months of hell, he'll be required to put in the better part of a year.

If he lives that long, of course. And this is his third deployment.

My son also told me how, on base, there are increasing signs of mental and emotional strain among the troops--not just incidents of post traumatic stress and suicide, but domestic violence and divorce.

Bush can feel as brave as he wants to feel as he "stands alone" with his miserable failure of a plan, but he does not know the MEANING of the word, "bravery."

Those who signed that petition have already done their time in hell and know they will most likely be forced to return. They also know that by signing that petition, they may be opening themselves up to all manner of harassment.

Somehow though, this time, I don’t think so.

My son wanted to know how on earth the president could get away with forcing wartime policy on a country where seventy percent of the American people oppose him. He wanted to know how the president could get away with forcing wartime policy on a country when the entire joint chiefs of staff oppose him. He wanted to know how the president could get away with forcing wartime policy on a Congress where the majority are opposed to the plan. He wanted to know how the president could get away with forcing wartime policy on commanders on the ground who do not think this policy will work. He wanted to know how the president could get away with ordering the military into another failed policy plan when a large majority of the military is opposed to the plan.

My active-duty Marine Corps son who has served two deployments to Iraq actually said, "He's acting like Saddam."

My son wanted to know what Congress was doing to stop Bush. I told him that, technically, there was not much they could do under the Constitution to stop the president other than cut off funds to the troops, which no one wanted to do, but that they were working on it.

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa), chairman of the House appropriations defense subcommittee, said he would not limit funds for the troops already in Iraq but would try to put language in the bill carrying supplemental funds for the war that could prevent the final two U.S. brigades from going over in April and May.

His vehicle would be roughly $100 billion in supplemental funds for the war that the White House has said it would send Congress in February. Murtha said he would use hearings on that legislation to show there are no reserve U.S. troops available in case of conflicts with Iran or North Korea.

Describing limitations he might put on the supplemental bill, Murtha said, "I'm going to build a case that says we're in danger because we don't have a strategic reserve" and that troops would not be sent back if they haven't finished their training cycle. He also said, "I don't know how many troops they can get in the field before we get our bill up and passed in Congress."
--"Democrats Differ on Iraq Bill's Bite; Some See It as a Powerful Statement, but Murtha Would Give It Fiscal Teeth," Walter Pincus, Washington Post, January 15, 2007

Already there are signs that this is a cluster-you-know-what every bit as botched as the initial invasion, in that it is being rushed so fast in order to bypass Congress and any stopgap measures they might put forth, that conditions on the ground are chaotic. For one thing, the plan calls for "twinning" and "partnering" Americans with Iraqi troops and nobody knows what the hell that means. Also, there are no plans for the implementation of supply lines for fuel and ammunition and so on, not just for the added American troops, but for the added Iraqi troops, and that is just the start of the problems….

The signs so far have unnerved some American s working on the plan, who have described a web of problems--ranging from a contested chain of command to how to protect American troops deployed in some of Baghdad's most dangerous districts--that some fear could hobble the effort before it begins.

…"We are implementing a strategy to embolden a government that is actually part of the problem," said an American military official in Baghdad involved in talks over the plan. "We are being played like a pawn."

…The new command structure seemed rife with potential for conflect. An American military official said that the arrangements appeared unwieldy, and at odds with military doctrine calling for a clear chain of command. "There's no military definition for 'partnered,' he said.

…Another concern is that the target of the new Baghdad plan--Sunni and Shiite extremists--may replicate the pattern American troops have seen before when they have embarked on major offensives--of "melting away" only to return later.
--"U.S. and Iraqis Are Wrangling Over War Plans," John F. Burns, New York Times, January 15, 2007

You will hear the plan's proponents raise up the Holy Grail of Tal Afar, and how successful this type of plan was there two years ago. However, Tal Afar was not a mixed neighborhood like Baghdad, and it only had a population of 60,000. Further, American troops basically built a wall around the city to protect it. None of those options are available now in Baghdad, which holds one-quarter of the population of the entire country, in violently segregated neighborhoods at war with one another and ethnic cleansing fully underway.

The bottom line is this: Every single military decision made by this administration since before the invasion has proved to be WRONG WRONG WRONG. Every time they are opposed from within the ranks, they replaced those who opposed them with yes-men who would go along with yet another failed plan.

It's different, now.

Yes, Bush has replaced those who opposed him in his command structure, and muzzled the joint chiefs.

But he hasn't got an eighty percent approval rate now like he did in the beginning, and he no longer has a rubber-stamp Republican congress willing to go along with any travesty in order to please their lord and master. He no longer has the overwhelming support of the American people, and he no longer has the unequivocal backing of the military itself.

By racing to bypass Congress and thrust troops into action before their training is complete, into a ground situation that is not ready for them, he will only find himself caught in his own trap. Even those preening parrots of the punditry who babble whatever they are told by the White House will find themselves speaking in tongues before very much more time goes by. Watch and see.

And the Democrats and moderate Republicans in congress who will receive--TODAY--a Redress petition to end the war signed by brave troops who have already paid a terrible price--those men and women of Congress and the Senate are getting sick and tired of serving in a chamber that reeks of blood.

I hope that all the men and women who are bravely clamboring into their suits of armor before riding off--yet again--to fight the savage dragon…I hope they know that back home, their buddies have their backs, military families who are fighting for them to come home have their backs, and even politicians in power who now have the wherewithal to go into battle on their behalf are also fighting to get them home. We've all got their backs.

We will not forget. We will not give up. We will not be swift-boated. We will not back down.

Abraham Lincoln would be proud.

THE NEW KICK-ASS CONGRESS

2007-01-13T08:38:00.000-08:00

"Who pays the price for your decisions? I won't. My kids are too old and my grandkids are too young. You won't. You don't have any children. Nobody in this administration has any children who are fighting in this war. What I want to know is, what is the human impact for these decisions? The cost is too high."
--Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, questioning Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice at hearings on the president's new plan for Iraq, called by Democratic Senator Joe Biden, who is the new chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"We are not going to babysit a civil war."
--Democratic Senator and potential presidential candidate, Barack Obama

"I've gone along with the president on this, and I bought into his dream. And at this stage of the game, I don't think it's going to happen."
--Republican Senator George V. Voinovich, to Secretary Rice

(interrupting Rice, who was making the argument that we are "making progress" in Iraq) "You sit there and say that, and that's just not true."
--Republican Senator and potential presidential candidate Chuck Hagel

"I have supported you and the administration on the war, and I cannot continue to support the administration's position. I have not been told the truth over and over again by administration witnesses, and the American people have not been told the truth."
--Democratic Senator Bill Nelson

"I just want the record to show and I would like to have a legal response from the State Department if they think they have authority to pursue networks or anything else across the border into Iran and Iraq that will generate a constitutional confrontation here in the Senate, I predict to you."
--Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Joe Biden

"We will not be swift-boated on this issue."
--new Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, in a conference call to ranking political bloggers following Bush's speech

It's not very often that I literally jump to my feet, pump my fist, shout "YES!" and let out a maniacal laugh while watching the evening news, as I did a couple of days ago, and let me tell you, boys and girls, it felt GREAT.

What prompted my mini-celebration was a simple statement by NBC Nightly News's political commentator, Tim Russert who, following the confrontation between Sen. Barbara Boxer and a stunned Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, were two words: "PERSONAL PRICE".

He didn't just say them, he repeated them. "The question put to the administration by the Congress today is, quite simply, WHO PAYS THE PERSONAL PRICE FOR THEIR DECISIONS? Only half a dozen congressmen have a son or daughter serving in Iraq, and no one in the administration. The question being asked is, Who makes the sacrifice the president is asking for? Who pays the personal price?" (Forgive me if I paraphrase a bit--I didn't have paper and pen in front of me and was too busy shouting and cheering to write down his comments verbatim.)

What caused my joy was the simple fact that, for six miserable years--really longer, going back to the presidential campaign of 2000, this administration has CONTROLLED THE FRAMEWORK OF MEDIA DEBATE on this war (on everything, really), and Democrats and moderate Republicans have been put ON THE DEFENSIVE. Meanwhile, whatever choice of terminology or framework Karl Rove could think up in his diabolical little mind was automatically picked up by the mainstream media and trumpeted until the hapless opposition was forced to lay back their ears, tuck their tails between their legs, and leave the room whining.

More times than I can count or care to admit to anyone who is not a trained psychotherapist, I have screamed at the television news or the computer screen where I was reading various newspapers, so filled with utter frustration and rage that I could barely function. Not on every single outrage, mind you--I'd be committed to the looney bin by now--but the kinds of outrages that directly affect the men and women who are fighting his endless horror of a war.

I must admit to you that, after these last elections, when ranking Democrats took over control of powerful committees in both houses for the first time in 12 long miserable years, I have come to a point where I have been able to forgive the Democrats and moderate Republicans who, as I crudely pointed out in the early days of the Bush administration, "laid back and spread their legs for Bush."

They just sat there and let him and the Tom Delays of the world, fueled and financed and promoted and empowered by the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters and Rupert Murdochs on the world--get away, literally, with murder.

I wanted sane minds to prevail. I wanted them to FIGHT.

But if there is one pet peeve I have--just in a general standpoint--it is revisionist history. It's real easy now, in this political climate, to wonder WHY they didn't fight harder, but you have got to remember the bilious, poisonous atmosphere brought by the right wing of the Republican party to their reign of terror in the Congress.

I mean, really, when you've got a fine, honorable, brave, and experienced man like Max Cleland, who left half his body in the bloody jungles of Vietnam, when you stand by in horror and watch him get run out of office for not being patriotic enough, just because he had the balls to question this war, then that is all you need to know about the nightmare of the last 12 years.

The reason I've come to forgive the Democrats and moderate voices for remaining silent is that I've matured politically. I've come to understand that, for experienced political hands, when they see such a poisonous political fog settle in over Washington, they know that they have two choices: (1) fight themselves right out of office or (2) wait.

Have you ever seen a cat stalk a mouse? Have you seen how patient they are, how still and silent? How they watch, wait, coil their muscles, prepare to pounce and then WHAM!

A cat knows that, quite likely, this might be its only shot at dinner. I have a big fluffy yellow and white cat I adore named Max, and he likes to try--and try--to catch birds who come up to eat the chicken scratch birdseed I sprinkle around outside our country home. I've seen him choose all sorts of hiding places, but he always pounces too soon, and they always fly away. I am absolutely convinced that some of them, like, say, the flashy cardinals, actually mock him and see if they can provoke him to attack. Then they just casually flutter off, laughing.

My daughter's cat, Annabelle, is far more patient. I've seen her bring down field rats almost as big as she is. She will sit in one prime location for hours, perfectly still, until they are fooled into venturing forth. Then she gets 'em.

I'm seeing now, how seasoned veterans who KNOW how to weild power, NOW HAVE THEIR SHOT, because they were patient, with a kind of patience I can not even begin to imagine, since the day Newt Gingrich first smirked for the cameras.

Had they stood and fought, as I naively wanted them to do for many years, they would now be out of office, and inexperienced rookies would have their jobs.

Just as some things are well worth fighting for, so are some things worth waiting for.

In the beginning, I have always said that the American people were suffering from post traumatic stress from 9-11, and this reptilian administration knew just how to prey on the nation's fears, how to make them worse, how to symbolically set themselves up as saviors, how to befuddle the issues, how to, not just annihilate any opposition, but destroy it.

Karl Rove and Tom Delay and their ilk were never satisfied with ruining someone's career. They wanted to ruin their lives.

By setting up standard opponents as enemies, they created an atmosphere of the worst repression I have ever seen in all my many years of being a political junkie. People who worked in Washington for a lifetime said they had never seen anything like it.

By iron-fisted talking-point rule, they forced robotic obedience of not just their party, but their media hacks as well, which means they controlled the information that was put before the American people, and by controlling what the American people were told, they controlled the world.

I'm not sure when the citizenry first began to see through the fog and begin to realize that the emperor had no clothes. God knows it wasn't this debacle of a war. It was, I think, the birthday-cake photo op of Bush and McCain hamming it up for the cameras in Arizona, while Katrina was busy slaughtering a great American city.

Remember Saddam's spokesman, Tarik Aziz, in the first week of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, claiming that Saddam's forces were clearly winning, when the whole world could see otherwise? Well, I think the whole "heckuva job, Brownie," was the first in-your-face proof to the American people that they had been and were being manipulated.

That they were, in fact, being lied to.

Or maybe it was that whole weapons of mass destruction thing. There not being any, I mean.

It was an accumulative effect, but once it got started, it became an avalanche.

By the time the election season of '06 rolled around, when a smug and swaggering Rove/Bush tried all their old bullshit tactics and were SO SURE those tactics would work and SO SHOCKED when they didn't--by then the public had become like a man or woman who has stayed too long with a lover who is so bad for them that all their friends and family can see it, but they seem blind, putting up with abuses and slurs and disappointments for far too long, and then some precipitating event occurs--sometimes it's small and seemingly insignificant, and sometimes it's huge--but in any event, suddenly, THEY'VE HAD ENOUGH.

After that, it's over.

Bush and his minions are claiming that by escalating the troops now, we can bring them home sooner. But people aren't buying Bush Snake Oil any more, and there's a good reason for that.

"A majority of the American people, a majority of you listening to me, are for the withdrawal of our forces…The action I have taken tonight is indispensable for the continuing success of the withdrawal program."
--President Richard M. Nixon, in a televised speech about Vietnam in 1970, after he had expanded the war into Cambodia

Bush tried all his old PR tactics after his big speech, like presenting a Medal of Honor to a grieving family in the Oval Office--which his sadistic handlers knew would bring forth tears for the cameras--and then traveling to a military base to preen for more cameras with the troops he was getting ready to send into hell for their third deployment, two months early, who had just learned they'd be staying four months longer than originally scheduled.

Only this time, not even the longsuffering soldiers bought the dog-and-pony show. For one thing, his half-hour long speech was only interrupted by a smattering of polite applause three times, and that was when he mentioned things like a former Medal of Honor winner from that unit. So there were no smiling cheering GIs to mug for the cameras with their fearless leader.

Then--and even more telling--the base general refused to let any of them speak to the press, and ushered the press out IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING the speech. Later, when the press howled about that, he offered to present them with a few "select soldiers" for a preprogrammed interview, but by then, even the media was no longer fooled.

What does that tell you?

Polls the day following Bush's Last Stand showed that seventy percent of the people polled were not impressed by the so-called "new strategy" and do not approve of Bush's policies in this war, overall.

Although Bush likes to compare himself to Harry Truman, and to think he's actually brave to "go it alone" the way he is, and that eventually, he will be vindicated by history, like dear old Harry, well, the American people aren't buying that, either.

We knew Harry Truman. Harry Truman was a friend of ours. And you, sir, are no Harry Truman.

They say the White House was stunned by the vigorous opposition presented by not just Congress, but by THEIR OWN PARTY. The fact that they are surprised at all is yet more weary proof of just how out of touch this bubble-administration really is.

Even their favorite conservative columnists are abandoning ship, much to the bubble-boys' surprise:

The enemy in Iraq is not some discrete group of killers. It's the maelstrom of violence and hatred that infects every institution, including the government and the military. Instead of facing up to this core reality, the Bush administration has papered over it with salesmanship and spin.
"The Fog Over Iraq," David Brooks, conservative columnist for the New York Times, January 11, 2007

If Bush and the bubble-boys were surprised at the political push-back from Congress and the American people…Well baby, they ain't seen nothin' yet.

"I think what occurred her today was fairly profound, in the sense that you heard 21 members, with one or two notable exceptions, expressing outright hostility, disagreement, and or overwhelming concern with the president's proposal."
--Democratic Senator Joe Biden, following Rice's appearance.

Our new Democratic Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, said that he not only had the votes to pass a resolution that amounts to, basically, a vote of no confidence on this new Bush folly, but he even had the votes to override a threatened right-wing filibuster as well. "It will mark the beginning of the end of the war," he said.

There's blood in the water, folks, and for once, it's not that of American men and women in Iraq.

It's Bush's blood. And the sharks are circling, biding their time.

THE BATTLE OF LITTLE BIG BUSH

2007-01-10T07:28:00.000-08:00

"A great war leaves the country with three armies--an army
of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves."
--German proverb
President Bush will unleash the latest formula of folly in Iraq: the "surge" doctrine, embroidered with a theme of "sacrifice." Voices of the dead scream in silent sorrow, and the world watches aghast at the fiery failure…The coming speech matters little…The words will be nothing more than the rush of wind and the tinkling of brass, because in the end this is the ghoulish price of the Iraq War.

Three thousand dead--plus one gaping hole in the heart of New York City and America. It is an abyss deep enough to bury truth and sanity in the ink-stained darkness of fear, with the echoes of hollow men who seek to capitalize from such catastrophic pain.
--"Three Thousand Plus One," John Cory, truthout.org, January 10, 2006

This war is not worth fighting. And if there were ever serious talk about enacting a draft or raising taxes to fight it, you'd see quickly enough that the vast majority of Americans would not find it worth fighting.

There must be a leader somewhere who can shake the U.S. out of this tragic hypnotic state, who can see that it is beyond crazy to continue our involvement in this war indefinitely, to sacrifice another 1,000 young lives, and then another thousand after that.

All of the tortured, twisted rationales for this war--all of the fatuous intellectual pyrotechnics dreamed up to justify it--have vaporized, and we're left with just the mad , mindless, meaningless and apparently endless slaughter.

Shakespeare, in "Henry VI" said, "now thou art come unto a feast of death."
--"Another Thousand Lives," Bob Herbert, New York Times, January 4, 2007

According to the BBC and a rather gushing series of carefully choreographed White House leaks, the president's speech tonight is supposedly going to state as its centerpiece that Americans should be prepared to continue making greater sacrifice for the global war on terror--(read, Iraq)--for the sake of our nation's security. He's going to talk about a temporary "surge" of troops--(read, escalation of more than 20,000 troops for up to two years, just before the next elections)-- to secure Baghdad so that the baby government there can survive and go on to build a thriving democracy that will protect American interests--(read, oil)-- in the Middle East.

He's going to say that "victory" is still possible (he says that's "a word Americans understand," as opposed to, say, "quagmire" or "stalemate"), and that this time it's going to be different because he has a whole new bunch of generals to fight this war and because he will be implementing all these great new ideas to stabilize the country politically--expect him to use such words as "microloan," which recently drew worldwide media attention when a Nobel-prize-winning economist implemented microloans in Indonesia, to great success.

Expect him to make a big deal of enumerating all the experts he has met with in his "listening tour," (which, by the way, was a term coined by Hillary Clinton when she first went around upstate New York, listening to potential constituents at places like county fairs and coffee shops, prior to her first election as a U.S. Senator in 2000.)

Expect him NOT to mention that, in spite of all the people he supposedly "listened to," the only ones he actually HEARD were the same neocons who got us into this debacle in the first place, but I'll get into that later.

Expect him to sing the praises of the new command structure he has put in place to run the war; expect him NOT to mention that, although their retirements were due, he hastened the departure of generals who publicly disagreed with him on escalating the war, and put in their place generals and an admiral who like the idea. Sound familiar?

I've spent the past several weeks reading everything I could get my hands on about the so-called new strategy. I've read stuff by such neoconservative voices as William Krystol, Frederick Kagan, and General Jack Keane, moderates like Democratic Senator Joe Biden, and some liberals, such as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert.

I have deliberately avoided even READING things by such inflammatory liberals as Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore, because I wanted my consideration to be fair and even-handed. I was looking for facts, not emotional rhetoric--on either side.

As I have stated soooo many times on Blue Inkblots; I have my opinions about this war, and I keep hoping and praying that I might be proved WRONG.

My son fought with honor and bravery in that bloody desert country; once during the now-famous Battle of Fallujah in November of '04, and again more recently, in locations scattered throughout the Anbar province. He saw one friend get both legs and an arm blown off, another lose a hand, another get killed by a bullet to the head, and more horrors than he would be comfortable knowing I was writing about in such a public place. He also once drove a Humvee over an improvised explosive device that blew up beneath him. He was medivacced out, checked over, and sent back into combat.

Now, he's finding out that Marines like him who are "short-timers," completing their final year in the service, are being badgered and harassed and downright threatened in an attempt to force them to go back to Iraq, even if their own unit is not scheduled to do so. Marines in Dustin's unit, for instance, are being told that if they don't re-enlist in order to deploy with their own units (which aren't scheduled to go back until they are out of the Marines), then they must actually join other units that are scheduled to return soon.

Younger, more vulnerable Marines succumb to such pressures, and now, due to the new "surge" policy, those Marines will be deploying a full month ahead of time and held over for FIVE MONTHS longer than their usual tours. (If, of course, they survive that long.) And they won't even be with their buddies they served with before and upon whom they have come to rely for their lives, because they were pressed into another unit that was due to deploy soon.

This is happening because the Marines are being pressured to come up with thousands of troops THEY DON'T HAVE for this so-called, politely-worded "surge."

I don't blame the Marines. I blame their commander in chief.

When Rumsfeld finally left, when the Iraq Study Group came out with their recommendations, when the Democratic party was returned to power in a clear voter mandate of protest against the way this war has been prosecuted, I even felt a few days of peaceful hope that maybe, at long last, we could come to some sort of resolution over there that would make it all worthwhile.

For instance, when I first read of the proposals for such measures at the microloans, I felt even a glimmer of hope that maybe Bush was, at long last, onto something. I'm sure many folks listening to his words tonight will think the same thing.

This is why I chose to write now, before the speech, to let you know ahead of time that (a) there is nothing new here (b) it's all been tried--IN IRAQ--before and (c) it's too little, too late.

I am not trying to be obstructionist here just because I don't like George W. Bush.

I am trying to point out what needs to be known, for anybody out there who cares to educate themselves, because my son's life hangs in the balance, and the lives of his buddies, and all the other buddies and all the other sons and daughters who have been forced to sacrifice so much more than they ever dreamed when they took their oaths.

There isn't a whole lot Americans can do to stop a commander-in-chief if he is bound and determined to fight a war of ego. One need only to look back at a Democratic president--Lyndon Johnson--to know that. There isn't a whole lot Americans can do when a president chooses to fight a war for political purposes--just look toward Richard Nixon. There isn't a whole lot Congress can do, frankly, and they know it.

But I will not stand silently by while he lays on platitudes and patriotism and layers the sugar-coated frosting over a stale and rotting cake, and watch while Americans get hypnotized into going along once more.

All we can do, in the long run, is raise our voices to the rafters, and create such a howl and such a noise that those craven slavering politicians who will say or do anything to get elected will realize that they're not GOING to get elected until they stand up to the madness.

It starts with us.

I am going to divide this blog post into five sections: Surge, Sacrifice, Strategy, Surrounding & Stopping Bush, and Bush's Last Stand. You can scan down and read what interest you, or study the whole thing. It represents weeks of research and the best information I can find.

You can agree or disagree with my conclusions. The facts, well, they stand alone.

SURGE

Those who've sacrificed the most--America's Army and Marine ground forces and their families--will be asked to continue bearing the burden and paying an even higher price in dead and wounded for a president's ego and intransigence.

The very troops who will make up the temporary bump in U.S. forces in Iraq are those who've already paid that price over and over. They'll be found by a sleight-of-hand maneuver: ordering units already tapped to return to Iraq to go there earlier than scheduled.

That isn't even robbing Peter to pay Paul. It's robbing Peter to pay Peter.

George W. Bush believes that he can buy another couple of years of violent stalemate so he can hand off the disaster to whoever succeeds him in the White House on January 20, 2009.
--"More Troops for Iraq--Bush's Next Flight from Reality," Joseph L. Galloway, editorandpublisher.com, January 6, 2007. Joseph Galloway was awarded the Bronze Star for actions in Vietnam, and was co-author of the book, "We Were Soldiers Once…and Young."

The report calls for accelerating the arrival of four Army brigades and two Marine regiments that are already preparing to go to Iraq in early 2007 and delaying the departure of the 15 brigades now in Iraq by three months each. That is not a surge of new troops. That is a three-month overlap of scheduled troop departures and arrivals.

The report…has no concrete plan for 2008 and beyond. Only then will the real damage from the American Enterprise Institute proposal surface…

If the AEI recommendations become reality, the balance will tip, readiness will spiral downward, and the cost and time to reset units will spiral upward. In exchange for one last rush at the objective, this proposal risks our ability to fight the long war necessary for success in the region. The report suffers from THE SAME CASUAL DISMISSAL OF UNDESIRABLE OUTCOMES THAT CHARACTERIZED POST-COMBAT, RECONSTRUCTION PLANNING IN IRAQ. (emphasis mine)
--"The Troop Surge that Isn't," Kevin Ryan, Boston Globe, January 6, 2007. Kevin Ryan is a retired Army brigadier general and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Under the plan, for instance, Army brigades would leave for Iraq sooner than planned, meaning soldiers would have less than 12 months at home to train and rebuild between tours--a "red line" that outgoing Army chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker said he did not want to cross, according to a senior military official.
--"Critics say 'Surge' is More of the Same; Past Troops Buildups Have not Quelled Iraq," Michael Abramowitz, Robin Wright, and Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, January 7, 2007.

The bottom line, here, is that, once again, the White House has dominated the terminology in use for the media, and once again, most of the media has trotted along like loyal lap dogs, providing the frame for the administration's latest pretty picture.

This is no SURGE. Get that idea out of your head. Even Senator Harry Reid, the new Democratic majority leader, said a couple of weeks ago that he was okay with a surge if it just lasted "a couple of months or so."

It's not going to be a "couple of months." It is going to be AT LEAST 18 MONTHS TO TWO YEARS.

The strongest proponents of troop escalations to Iraq, such as Sen.. John McCain and Sen. Joe Lieberman, as well as the neocons at the American Enterprise Institute who dreamed up this war in the first place and still have the president's ear--all say that the escalation SHOULD BE LONG AND SUSTAINED.

Understand. They want MANY MORE THAN 20,000 TROOPS. IT'S JUST THAT WE DON'T HAVE THE TROOPS TO GIVE THEM. John McCain has said he wants 100,000 additional troops. General Keane, who has planted this seed in Bush's mind, wants 75,000.

The only reason Bush is asking for slightly more than 20,000 is that we still haven't filled the slots left from the LAST 20,000 we sent to Baghdad, just last summer. The military doesn't have them. So they have to send over early the ones already slated to deploy and keep others in-country when they are scheduled to go home, like they did to the army's Stryker Brigade last summer.

Army troops, told they'd be deployed a year, are now going to be deployed fifteen months. And Marines, who typically are only deployed for seven months because their deployments are so grueling and are under almost constant combat conditions, will now be asked to remain in those combat conditions for a full year. This, on top of multiple deployments most all of them have had already.

So there is no surge. There is an escalation of the war. And the only people making sacrifices are the very same people who have had to make the sacrifices all along.

The bottom line is this, and it is a crucial one: HE HAS TO ASK FOR MORE TROOPS FOR BAGHDAD BECAUSE THE IRAQI ARMY FAILED TO SEND FOUR WHOLE BRIGADES OF IRAQI ARMY TROOPS THAT WERE REQUESTED WHEN WE ESCALATED INTO BAGHDAD THE FIRST TIME, LAST SUMMER.

WE HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO "CLEAR AND HOLD" BECAUSE THE IRAQI ARMY REFUSES TO DO THE HOLDING.

SO WE HAVE TO COME IN AFTER THEM AND DO THEIR JOB FOR THEM.

HENCE, THE "SURGE."

My question is this: If we are fighting their war for them now, then what happens when we do leave? And if the same thing is going to happen now or five years from now, when we do leave, then how many more Americans have to die for us to admit that and just get the hell out?

SACRIFICE

"The fatal flaw was when, right after September 11, the president asked everyone to go on with their lives. That set the stage for no one sacrificing," said a Special Forces team sergeant who recently served in Iraq. "That's why they aren't behind it, because they don't have a stake in this war. They aren't losing or gaining anything. If you don't see it, smell it, feel it, how are you connected?"
--"With Iraq War Come Layers of Loss: As Troops Lives are Forever Changed, Much of U.S. is Largely Unaffected," Ann Scott Tyson and Josh White, Washington Post, January 2, 2007.

The only real question about the planned "surge" in Iraq--which is better described as a Vietnam-style escalation---is whether is proponents are cynical or delusional.

Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, thinks they're cynical. He recently told the Washington Post that administration officials are simply running out the clock, so that the next president will be "the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof."

Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science for his research on irrationality in decision-making, thinks they're delusional. Mr. Kahneman and Johnathan Renshon recently argued in Foreign Policy magazine that the administrations unwillingness to face reality in Iraq reflects a basic human aversion to cutting one's losses--the same instinct that makes gamblers stay at the table, hoping to break even.

Of course, such gambling is easier when the lives at stake are those of other people's children.

…Iraq has become a quagmire of the vanities--a place where America is spending blood and treasure to protect the egos of men who won't admit they are wrong.
"Quagmire of the Vanities," Paul Krugman, New York Times, January 8, 2007

It has gotten many of us used to the idea--the virtual "white noise"--of conflict far away, of the deaths of young Americans, of vague "sacrifice" for some fluid cause too complicated to be interpreted except in terms of the very important-sounding but ultimately meaningless phrase, the "war on terror."

And the war's second accomplishment--your second accomplishment, Mr. President--is to have taken money out of the pockets of every American, even out of the pockets of the dead soldiers on the battlefield, and their families, and to have given that money to the war profiteers.

Because if you sell the Army a thousand Humvees, you can't sell them any more until the first thousand have been destroyed.
--"Countdown with Keith Olbermann: Special Comment about 'Sacrifice,'" Keith Olbermann, msnbc.com, January 4, 2007

A recent very revealing poll in the military's own Army Times, showed that, for the first time, an overwhelming majority of active-duty American troops now believe that this war was fought for all the wrong reasons, that this administration has completely screwed up the fighting of it, and that it's time for them to come home.

When I hear anybody from the White House DARE to use the word "sacrifice," when not a single damned one of them has the faintest notion of the meaning of the word, I get almost hysterically angry. I have to literally take deep breaths and calm myself down.

NOBODY is making ANY sacrifices for this war, except the SAME FAMILIES, OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

If you don't think that is true, just compare the state of college campuses during the Vietnam war and now. Yes, the country was on fire as college campuses erupted into massive war protests, culminating in the National Guard shooting of unarmed kids at Kent State in 1970, killing four students.

But there was a draft, then. Every young male who turned eighteen was notified by their draft boards that they were being considered for military service. Yes, students had deferments--which Dick Cheney took full advantage of--FIVE TIMES--but should their grades ever dip below passing, they were snatched up and almost always sent off to war, where 58,000 of them died. When my husband was deployed as a young lieutenant combat platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division in 1970, the death rate of lieutenants was 50 percent.

But there is no draft, now. Now, all most college kids care about is the latest kegger or whether or not this ipod is better than that one. They say they care about the war but they really don't. It just does not affect their lives one way or the other.

Yes, this is a volunteer military, but the vast overwhelming majority of enlistees come from impoverished backgrounds; most of them are from patriotic red-state rural areas. MANY of them signed up after 9-11, thinking they'd be fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Nobody volunteers to be sent over to Iraq again and again and again. If you don't think that is true, consider the Marine Corps' own policy. Any Marine who actually VOLUNTEERS to return to Iraq for a fourth deployment is immediately ordered to get a psychiatric evaluation.

In other words, even the Marines think you are crazy if you volunteer to return again and again to Iraq.

Taking battle-exhausted troops who are due to go home and force them to remain in-country for months and months longer is CRIMINAL. Yanking them out of training early to send them to war is CRIMINAL.

It is not a "surge" of fresh troops. It's the same worn-out ones.

That is not patriotic. It's criminal.

Here's a sacrifice for you from the family values people who brought us this war:

More than 56,000 marriages have been broken by the Iraq war, according to a 2005 Defense Dept. report, which does not include Marines, Navy sailors, or Air Force airmen.

Divorce rates have skyrocketed since the Iraq war began, with a 28 percent increase in enlisted, and a whopping 80 percent increase among officers…Experts estimate that there will be at least 100,000 war-related divorces by the time this war ends.

The cost, in taxpayer dollars, to the American people, of disability claims from wounded soldiers and Marines over the course of time will bring the cost of this war to ONE TRILLION DOLLARS.

How's that for sacrifice?

STRATEGY

Some administration officials consider the economic package the most important of the three components. But, even if it's not too late, it seems clear that projects of this type will be largely useless without security and political reconciliation. And the al-Maliki government seems paralyzed to confront these realities.

As to the nature of the economic initiatives themselves, there is certainly nothing new or innovative here. These kinds of projects have been used by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) virtually since the agency was founded more than 40 years ago.

Short-term work programs that would follow up a military sweep by immediately hiring people in the neighborhood to clear up trash or do other small civil-affairs jobs…might prevent some Iraqis from joining armed gangs, but it is unlikely to change the allegiances of the thousands who have already made that bloody decision.

…Will microlending, for instance, work in war zones, where vendors are afraid to take their handicrafts and other wares to the markets that are prime targets for suicide bombers and IEDs? Will it work in towns where there is no electricity to, say, power the sewing machines needed to turn out the inexpensive T-shirts and other garments that are traditional products made with microloans?

……Most of these initiatives--and many others--have been tried before, only to go down in flames under supervision of the inexperienced, ideologically driven political appointees sent to Iraq to supervise the "reconstruction" of the country--at a cost well in excess of $20 billion.
--"This Strategy is New?" William Fisher, truthout.org, January 3, 20007. William Fisher has worked for many years in international aid programs worldwide.

Many officials at the State and Defense departments also doubt that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is capable of making the necessary reforms, given its track record of promising but not delivering…and despite Maliki's assurances in a speech yesterday that he would hold Iraqis accountable for implementing a new Baghdad security plan.
--"Critics say 'Surge' is More of the Same," Michael Abramowitz, Robin Wright, and Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, January 7, 2007

Mr. Bush has previously promised to remake American reconstruction efforts in Iraq, most notably in December 2005, when he said that the United States had learned from the failure of efforts to rebuild major infrastructure, mostly run by American companies. But subsequent efforts to focus on programs that would bring more immediate benefits to Iraqis have also faltered.
--"Bush Plan for Iraq Requests More Troops and More Jobs," David Sanger, New York Times, January 9, 2007

At first, when I heard about the microloans and the small work-crews coming in after the military to clean up after battle, and the reopening of former state-run factories in Iraq to employ some of the hundreds of thousands of angry young Iraqi men, I thought, now THIS makes sense.

That was before I started digging deeply into it, and discovered that every single one of these ideas has been tried, and has failed, in Iraq.

Now, in fact, the security situation is so dire that if anybody DARES to work for anything that remotely smacks of American involvement, they are kidnapped, tortured, and killed, and their families are threatened.

The truth is that Maliki does not want more American troops, and when he heard that Bush was sending more, he presented a "plan" of his own, which basically calls on Americans to help the Iraqi army fight the Sunnis around Baghdad--which is just what they did in an eleven-hour pitched battle in the Haifa area of Baghdad yesterday.

Which means, of course, that we are choosing sides in the civil war.

Watch for Bush to say that he is pressuring Maliki to meet certain "benchmarks" of things they've been talking about for many months, namely, reworking the constitution to be more fair to Sunnis, involving more Sunnis in the government, and spelling out how much oil the oil-poor Sunnis will get in the new government.

Maliki has been promising to do that for more than a year. He will no doubt keep promising.

Meanwhile, when American troops TRY to enforce any kind of justice or discipline or law on Shiite areas--particularly those controlled by Moktada al-Sadr, their archenemy but a Maliki ally, Maliki shuts them down.

The Shiite prime minister turns out Shiite prisoners who have been captured, runs off American army troops from Shiite neighborhoods, and even sent some Shiite Iranian terrorists back home rather than let the Americans deal with them.

Expect him not only to manipulate any troop "surge" to benefit the Shiites and kill off Sunnis, but know that any money that the Americans pour into these reconstruction projects will disappear into the boiling cauldron that is Iraqi graft and corruption.

And Bush wants $8 billion now, but utlimately, he's going to need up to $100 billion more for his war. And that is by no means the total of what will be needed on top of what has already been spent. And at risk of sounding like a flaming liberal in this instance, I have to ask--have you really checked recently to see how many Katrina victims are still waiting for help from FEMA, are still processing claims, still living in trailers, still fighting with homeowners insurance policies that refuse to pay claims? Have you seen how many schools they lost? I'm no isolationist, and I understand all about winning hearts and minds in the Middle East, but the money being flushed down the toilet of Iraq as we speak could damn sure help out here at home.

And don't even get me started on the woeful losses in the REAL war on terror--in Afghanistan--boots on the ground and treasure siphoned off and squandered in Iraq. The Taliban is already moving back in, and the opium trade is stronger than ever. Think what Afghanistan might have looked like by now if we'd stayed the course there instead of chasing after a fool's dream in Iraq.

"Strategy."

"Sacrifice."

They're all just rosy-sounding words, meant to placate a restless American people that there really is a new strategy, when really, it's a do-over. A mulligan. A repeat.

And you know what they say about somebody who does the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

They say that person is crazy.

SURROUNDING AND STOPPING BUSH

Democratic leaders who had hoped to emphasize their domestic agenda in the opening weeks of Congress have concluded that Iraq will share top billing, and they plan on aggressively confronting administration officials this week in a series of hearings.
--"Democrats Revise Agenda to Deal With War in Iraq," Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, January 8, 2007

This is a political decision, not a military strategy," said Representative Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat of Hawaii who is set to chair a key House subcommittee on the military.

"Bush appears to be taking advice from the very same people who advised him in 2002 and 2003," said Chris Preble, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.
"Top Democrats Balk at Troop Surge," Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, January 6, 2007

There isn't a whole lot anybody can do. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid sent a strong letter, signaling that they did not back a troop surge. On "Face the Nation," Pelosi even said that they would separate funding in Congress, sending all the money the troops in-country need, but not funding any new troops. This isn't possible, not the way the "surge" is being conducted, by keeping troops in who are already in. In any event, he will have deployed them before Congress will even have time to discuss it.

And, by the way, do you THINK it's any accident that after weeks of supposedly conferring and thinking about this, Bush ACCIDENTALLY picked the VERY DAY TO MAKE HIS BIG SPEECH THAT THE DEMOCRATS WERE PLANNING TO LAUNCH THEIR 100-HOUR DOMESTIC P0LICY INITIATIVE?

It is positively diabolical. Sure, it knocks the Democrats' agenda off the front pages, forces them to debate Iraq rather than take care of the business they promised the American people, which then gives Bush and his minions ammunition to taunt them in '08, saying that they did not do what they'd promised in their first 100 hours.

It's brilliant, really. Talk about a strategy. What I want to know is how many boys and girls died waiting for Bush's perfect political timing for his speech?

Senator Ted Kennedy wants to pass a resolution that would require all of Congress to sign on their support or opposition to this course, a stinging political pill to swallow for those worried about getting re-elected. Again, that would be symbolic, not anything with real punch behind it.

Withholding money for the war would work, and has been done before, but nobody really wants to do it in this war.

All that can be done is that the American people rise up and ignore Bush when he blames THEM for the war going badly, by saying things like, We will achieve victory in Iraq if the American people just have enough will to stick it out.

Look for the word "will" to be used as often as "sacrifice." And don't buy either one.

As I was updating this post, my son called and said that he was getting frustrated because, if it was true that the American people really did not want a surge, and every news source from Time to Newsweek (which he reads) maintained that it was not a good idea, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and most of the Pentagon was opposed, then why weren't the Democrats fighting harder to prevent it? "I'm getting frustrated with the Democrats," he said.

I explained that there wasn't much they could do, and I explained what they WERE doing. But he indicated to me that he would not mind if they howled in outrage until the cows came home. This is an active-duty service member who actually wants the Democrats to do whatever they can to stop this.

I say this to make it clear: THERE ARE ALL SORTS OF WAYS TO SUPPORT THE TROOPS, AND THEY DON'T ALL INVOLVE YELLOW RIBBONS AND ROBOTIC SUPPORT OF BAD POLICY.

Fight for the troops. Fight for them to be treated fairly and honestly. And let your representatives know they will be held accountable for their actions.

There isn't a whole lot else we can do, frankly. Just don't fall for the lies. Not again.

BUSH'S LAST STAND

But given that nothing in Iraq has gone according to plan, it seems more likely that it won't. That's why many in the military assume privately that a muscular-sounding surge now is chiefly designed to give Bush the political cover to execute a partial withdrawal on his own terms later.

…A retired colonel who served in Baghdad put it more bluntly, "We don't know whether this is a plan for victory or just to signal to Americans that we did our damnedest before pulling out."

There is one more scenario to consider: it may be that Bush won't pull out of Iraq as long as he is president. Whether it works or not, a surge of 18 to 24 months would carry Bush to the virtual end of his term. After that, Iraq becomes someone else's problem. Bush's real exit strategy in Iraq may just be to exit the presidency first.
--"What a Surge Really Means: Can a couple more divisions in Iraq really make a difference? Or is Bush's idea too little, too late?" Michael Duffy, TIME Magazine, January 15, 2007

At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new "hydrocarbon law" essentially drawn up by the Bush administration…the new law will give Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell and other carbon cronies of the White House unprecedented sweetheart deals, allowing them to pump gargantuan profits from Iraq's nominally state-owned oilfields for decades to come. This law has been in the works…since before the invasion…

Bush and his inner circle, including his chief adviser, old oilman Dick Cheney, believe that a bigger dose of blood and iron in Iraq will produce a sufficient level of stability to allow the oil majors to cash in on the…chips that more than 3,000 American soldiers have purchased for them with their lives.
--"New Oil Law Means Victory in Iraq for Bush," Chris Floyd, truthout.org, January 9, 2007. The original article reporting the new oil law was published in a British newspaper, the Independent, last week. So far I have seen nothing about it in the American mainstream media.

War Could Last Years, Commander Says
--Headline story by John F. Burns, New York Times, January 8, 2007
The article goes on to state that the new operational commander in Iraq thinks we may need to stay there for at least five more years. Five. More years.

Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in '06, Bush Team Says
--Headline story by David E. Sanger, Michael R. Gordon, and Jon F. Burns, New York Times, January 2, 2007
The article was the first to begin subtle finger-pointing at outgoing generals Casey and Abizaid, blaming them for failures in Iraq and setting up the media scenario for the new generals to come in and save the day. In truth, the generals were doing what they were commanded to do by the administration.

So it was when the British tried to rule Iraq by giving the country a king, Faisal ibn Husain, who had helped them in the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks in World War I…

Sir Percy Cox put it, "The Iraqi government must be allowed to make mistakes and learn by them during this probationary period, provided that such mistakes are not of a nature to lead to disaster, and that British troops and officers are not forced to be instruments of misgovernment."

…At what point are Americans going to be seen as instruments of misgovernment? When does resentment of military occupation trump any good foreign troops can achieve? And how, as Sir Henry Dobbs wondered in the '20's, do we guard that our man is not seen as "a puppet king propped up by our bayonets?"

…When the military tried to appoint a British commander-in-chief of Iraqi forces, the colonial office vetoed it by saying it would run contrary to the goal of "disembarrassing ourselves of Iraq as soon as possible."

So we now have a new cast of characters and a change in strategy for dealing with not only an insurgency, but a civil war in which we risk fighting both sides at once. Unfortunately, a lot more people will have to die before we can disembarrass ourselves of this tragic failure.
--"A Classic Imperial Predicament," H.D. S. Greenway, Boston Globe, January 9, 2007

General George Custer was a man of towering ego and petty vanities who refused to listen to moderate voices that warned him of growing Indian unrest at Little Big Horn. He refused to listen to his own Indian scouts. He trusted in his own brilliance and arrogant sense of father-knows-best when he led a sadly outnumbered Cavalry unit into a massacre that was so overwhelming for United States forces that, to this day, the Battle of Little Big Horn is a term known to most Americans that smacks of the dangers of untrammeled ego in command.

Perhaps if, instead of the politically correct and polite terms like "surge" and "strategy," or the stirring patriotic calls to "sacrifice," the media would simply do us all a great favor if they would refer to this latest Bush ploy as the Battle of Little Big Bush.

People would get it right away. They would understand in one term what took me weeks of research and many hours of writing to get down.

This is not a troop "surge." It is an escalation that will be permanent as long as we've got the troops to supply, and Bush is, as we speak, requesting that the Army and Marines undergo a major expansion in forces, which should be ready to go about the time these exhausted troops are finally free to come home.

This is not a new "strategy." It is recycled old ideas that have been massive failures in the past, and what ideas are good ones--General Petraeus has some good ideas on counterinsurgency that he hopes to implement--are no longer practicable because we don't have the manpower to put the boots on the ground required, and as my Special Forces brigadier general of a brother-in-law made clear, even if we COULD put hundreds of thousands of special forces troops in place in a classic counterinsurgency war, it would take two generations to fully succeed.

This is Bush's Last Stand, and he is not doing it to stabilize the Iraqi government but to SECURE THE OIL FIELDS for Halliburton and others of its ilk. Let's be perfectly clear about that. Will we need the oil in the future? Quite possibly, but we've bungled the job so badly now that in order to TRULY secure it, we are going to need REAL sacrifice--a national draft, hundreds of billions more in treasure, tens of thousands more flag-draped coffins, and blind allegiance to the idiots who caused this problem in the first place.

This is Bush's Last Stand, and he is not doing it to promote democracy and freedom in the Middle East but to preserve his own miserable legacy and place in history and to position the Republican party in a place where, in the next presidential election, they can throw around grenade-words like "cut and run" and "defeat" and "surrender" in order to make themselves look all manly and macho while they frighten the American people with images of blood-eyed al Qaeda terrorists catching a plane in Baghdad for the U.S., and attacking kindergartens in small-town America.

He can say whatever he wants to, but what he will really be saying tonight is, stay the course. I'm sure Custer said much the same thing when wave after wave of Lakota Sioux came pouring over the Black Hills.

This is the Battle of Little Big Bush, and when he goes down, he's taking all the rest of us with him.

Rise up. Fight back. Pay attention. And don't be fooled again.

YOU GO, GIRL

2007-01-06T14:18:00.000-08:00

She was the real mom McCoy, the cupcake-baking, jeep-driving, school-trip mother who made the pink and silver angel costume that her youngest daughter still has. When she first ran for Congress against 13 other candidates, she had to face billboards aimed snidely at that resume, asking whether she was "a legislator or a dilettante?"

Now, a grandmother of six and leader of 233 Democrats, Pelosi brags about her first career rather than burying it in her resume. So she may end up as one of the success stories that changes the way people think about "opting out" and "opting in."

…I'm not saying Nancy Pelosi is Everywoman's role model unless Everywoman can live on four hours of sleep and a diet of chocolate. But she's a reminder to women that life is longer than you expect and 47 is younger than you think. She's a reminder to companies and the country that we have a lot to gain from welcoming parents into the second act.
--"Nancy Pelosi's Powerful First Act," Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe, January 5, 2007

When the phone rang on the afternoon of the day that the new Democratic Congress and Senate was sworn in, I glanced at the caller I.D. and immediately smiled. It was my friend, Ludie.

Ludie is a sweet and feisty lady of a certain age who lives alone now that her beloved husband Buddy is no longer with us and her cherished son Robby lives far away, in the big city, with his wife and young family. Her health's not the greatest now, and she no longer has the busy life she once had as a rancher's wife, but like me, Ludie is a political junkie. She doesn't have access to the Internet, so I print up copies of my blog posts and send 'em to her the old-fashioned way, by snail mail, and Ludie reads and rereads every one.

It was Ludie who called me at 5:30 on the morning of day following the elections of '06, to say simply, "Whoo-eee, I think we've done it! It's lookin' pretty good for the Democrats!"

So when my phone rang on Friday and I picked it up, the first thing she said was, "Well, what do you think about our girl?"

And I didn't have to ask Ludie, WHAT girl?

I said, "I'm pretty dadgum proud, Ludie, I'll tell ya that."

She said she'd been watching the festivities all day long, and I told her my favorite quote of the day, which came from an article in the New York Times, which stated simply that Dennis Hastert, the right-wing Republican who had been the previous Speaker of the House, was standing, quote, "hunched and hulking in the rear of the House."

(Did you catch a glimpse of it on the news? No kidding--he WAS hunched and hulking!)

We didn't talk long, Ludie and I, because she never wants to bother me, although it is always a sheer pleasure, talking to her. Her son Robby is a veeery conservative Republican, and it is a source of great mystical marvelment to her that she could have somehow raised such a creature.

But I have proof that bipartisanship is indeed possible, because when my son Dustin was deployed, Robby never failed to call me, NOT ONCE, each and every week, to check and see how I was doing. He sent Dustin care packages, and listened to my howls of outrage over this war, and was unfailingly kind.

I remember, back in 2004, when Dustin was in a very deadly deployment, fighting in the now-historic Battle of Fallujah, and election day came and Bush was re-elected, Robby told me how his little mama called him up and scolded him in no uncertain terms that he was not to call me and make fun or otherwise give me a hard time about the elections, because I was going through too much at the time.

And bless his dear heart, he wouldn't have, anyway. He's been my adopted little brother for many years now, and we've learned to love one another in spite of his glaring faults HA HA JUST KIDDING ROBBY. (I am referring, of course, to the fact that his heroes are Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Ted Nugent.)

But I digress.

When Ludie asked me, What do you think about our girl? she really wasn't talking about politics or about liberals or conservatives or about Democrats or Republicans.

She was talking about how, when she was a young woman, women weren't hardly expected to have their own opinions, much less even THINK they could one day be Speaker of the House. Had anyone suggested it, they would have been laughed out of the room.

It's not just that Pelosi played the power game with the balls of the best of 'em and bulled her way to the top like any man, or that she skillfully played their own game against her opponents and bested them at it.

It's that she married, kept her marriage strong over the long haul, had a family, raised them, and entered politics at an age when our culture and society, basically, erases women.

It's the first thing I noticed when I got well into my forties--that women my age were disappearing, both as movie and television heroines, and as figures of power. Whenever a woman did compete in a man's world with intelligence and fierce gamesmanship, like, for example, Hillary Clinton, then a sizeable chunk of Americans positively demonized her, making her out to be Satan incarnate.

(One of the things that surprised most conservatives in the Senate when Hillary was elected, was how skillfully she managed herself, how she worked vigorously across the aisle with the very people who'd tried to destroy her husband, in order to get legislation passed that was important not just to her constituents, but to the country. Even Newt Gingrich says now that she is the hardest working senator he has ever seen, and that she would be a formidable candidate for president, should she get her party's nomination.)

Back to Pelosi--what makes her accomplishment particularly important to women everywhere is the rather sad controversy right now in the business world, about whether young women can "opt out" of their careers for a few short years to bear children and stay at home a little while with them and then re-enter their careers without being completely derailed.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows an uptick of about 8 percent in the number of married woman at home with infants from 1997 to 2004. The biggest increase was among mothers with college degrees…For many, the "option" in opting-out may feel like a lack of options--poor childcare or inflexible work hours.

…The make-it-or-break-it years coincide famously with the have-children-or-forget-it years. When they try to get back in, says Ann Crittenden, who wrote "The Price of Motherhood," many women still feel like they're wearing a scarlet letter. "Only the letter is not an A. It's an M."
--ibid

In her fine article, Ellen Goodman points out that certain high-profile CEOs are starting to change that equation, leaving glass-ceiling-breaking positions to spend time with family, then re-entering--at the same level at another company.

Also, various well-known companies are starting to figure out that this rich labor pool is ignored at their peril, and are deliberately recruiting women who fit that profile.

It's ridiculous not to, anymore, with the advances in technology that enable anyone to work at home and be in complete touch with their professions through the Internet, FAX machines, conference calls, and other innovations that keep them connected.

Staying at home no longer means being isolated. Ask Karen Hughes--Bush's closest personal advisor, who left him and Washington, D.C. in order to spend her son's last two years of high school in Texas with him. When her son went off to college, she went right back to work in the Bush administration. She was never really out of touch.

Pelosi did it, herself. From the beginning, she volunteered for her party, as a fund-raiser and other activities, kids in tow, "no matter how little my babies were, if I was wheeling them in a carriage or carrying them in my stomach," she said.

Another fine aspect of Pelosi's ascendance is the fact that she went into politics in her late forties and hit her power-stride in her mid-sixties. This also sends a clear signal that there is no reason women can't start whole new lives once their kids leave home; either going back to school, starting businesses, whatever they can make happen for themselves.

Having women in visible positions in power, not just in government, but in business, medicine, scientific research, and the rest, has a collective, cumulative effect on the nation's consciousness. They get used to it. They're not threatened any more.

Remember how, when women were first permitted to fly fighter jets, there was a massive whispering campaign by male pilots--particularly those of the old school--accusing them of being poor pilots and other hateful things, especially if there happened to be a crash?

You don't hear that bullshit any more. Women have been heroically piloting everything from fighter jets to Blackhawk helicopters in Iraq and Afghanistan, earning their hero-stripes right next to the men.

And remember that big debate about whether women should be allowed in combat zones? Iraq changed all that. Women are now manning .50 caliber guns and saving the asses of the guys in their units, and have done such a good job that the Army created a whole new medal just to recognize that heroism, even though, technically, women are still not supposed to be in combat zones. (This is because there is no "front line" in Iraq. It's ALL front line.) In fact, more women have been killed fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan than in all previous wars of the 20th century, combined.

The United States has lagged behind other Western and even some Eastern nations in putting women front and center in positions of power, and there are still some Neanderthals who are frightened like quivering little boys when women assume power, like Rush Limbaugh, who nastily snarled, as Pelosi took the oath as Speaker of the House, "She's a real multi-tasker. She can breast-feed, clip her toenails, and be Speaker of the House."

Hide in your cave, Rush. Your days are numbered. Male members of your own party--who may disagree straight down the line with Pelosi on political matters--nonetheless eagerly brought their own daughters to the House on that day, so that their little girls could see that they, too, one day, could achieve such a position of power.

So…what do I think of our girl, Ludie?

I think, By God, YOU GO, GIRL.

HOW WE'RE FIGHTING IRAQ'S CIVIL WAR; WHY MORE TROOPS WON'T HELP NOW

2006-12-29T11:47:00.000-08:00

The car parked outside was almost certainly a tool of the Sunni insurgency. It was pocked with bullet holes and bore fake license plates. The trunk had cases of unused sniper bullets and a notice to a Shiite family telling them to abandon their home.

"Otherwise, your rotten heads will be cut off," the note read.

The soldiers who came upon the car in a Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad were part of a joint American and Iraqi patrol, and the Americans were ready to take action. The Iraqi commander, however, taking orders by cellphone from the office of a top Sunni politician, said to back off: the car's owner was known and protected at a high level.

For Maj. William Voorhies, the American commander of the military training unit at the scene, the moment encapsulated his increasingly frustrating task--trying to build up Iraqi security forces who themselves are being used as proxies in a spreading sectarian war. This time it was a Sunni politician--vice Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie--but the more powerful Shiites interfered even more often.

"I have come to the conclusion that this is no longer America's war in Iraq, but the Iraqi civil war where America is fighting," Major Voorhies said.

…For the American soldiers, it was just another morning in Baghdad, where Americans are trying to protect people on both sides while being attacked by people on both sides, trying not to take a side themselves.

…"Sometimes I feel like I work for the Iraqi government," Voorhies said.
--"Sectarian Ties Weaken Duty's Call for Iraqi Forces," Marc Santora, New York Times, December 28, 2006

The Great Decider should have gotten a clue, a couple of months ago, when a joint American-Iraqi task force captured two high-ranking Death Squad perpetrators in Sadr City, who had been personally responsible for possibly hundreds of torture-murders of innocent Sunnis who lived in adjoining neighborhoods of Baghdad.

This was a big capture and made all the news announcements.

Two days later, the prime minister of Iraq let the men go.

This should have been a red-letter CLUE that no matter how many American troops we send in to "secure" Baghdad--and hence, Iraq--the war is completely out of our hands now. It is a civil war, and right now, the Shiites have the power and they are perpetrating ethnic cleansing on the Sunnis, who are retaliating with massive car bombs in Shiite areas.

The second clue to the Great Decider should have come when, after three months of keeping army brigades past their home-deployment dates and funneling desperately needed Marines out of the Anbar into Baghdad to buck up Green Zone security, the killings were not only WORSE, but ground commanders made a point of saying that the insurgents and militias had adjusted their tactics to what the Americans were doing and thus, getting away with murder.

The third clue to the Great Decider should have come when the Shi'ite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who is known to be beholden to and loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, whose militias control most of the death squads and a third of government ministries, submitted his own plan to newly-minted secretary of defense, Robert Gates, in which more American troops would be welcomed, all right, but only if they remained on the outskirts of Baghdad, where it would be their job to root out and kill Sunni insurgents, while Iraqi "security forces" would be free to roam unmolested around inner Baghdad, rooting out and killing more Sunnis.

Which means, of course, that we would be siding with the Shiites against the Sunnis in their civil war.

Make no mistake about it. All this time that White House press releases state that the president and his closest advisors are seriously considering a new strategy for Iraq, what it really means is that they are, once again, digging up justifications and rationalizations for a disastrous course they have already made up their minds to follow.

This is about presidential ego and the administration's obsession with proving themselves to be right, at any cost, not just to the American and Iraqi people, but to the soldiers and Marines who are being forced to stay in that hellhole past their time to go home because that's how you "surge" troops.

As we speak, the fifth and seventh Marine Corps regiments have already been notified that there is a very good chance that, should the "surge" option be used by the Great Decider, they will not be going home in February when their deployment time has ended, and the army's Third Brigade, Third Infantry, scheduled to deploy this spring, will likely be sent much sooner than originally planned.

There is no such thing as a "surge" of new troops.

I don't know about the army troops, but the combat unit Marines I have been familiar with in my family, do not get to stay in the kinds of facilities you see on TV, with separate trailers and air conditioning and big mess halls and PX's and daily e-mail and access to videophones to call home.

They sleep in abandoned houses, go weeks without a shower, live on MRE's for months, and have no access to e-mail. They don't wait in line to call home at nice bases. They pass around a satellite phone from a rooftop vantage point where they're watching for snipers, or around a campfire out in the desert.

What I'm trying to say is that for the Marines at least, these deployments are extremely difficult with much privation, and every single day, they are exposed to the highest levels of violence and bloodshed and combat conditions possible.

So extending the deployments of the Marines for longer than they are supposed to stay, means keeping them in terrible danger and forcing them to live in primitive conditions that is nothing like what you see on the evening news. For the Marines in Ramadi, they can't even walk on patrol, they have to run, because the snipers are so bad. When they try to duck into a relatively safe building where they've set up an F.O.B., or Forward Operating Base, they have to throw down smoke bombs to cover themselves before they can even cross the street.

This is what your SURGE is. It's keeping our brave men and women in the worse possible conditions, and dooming many to mangling and death, for a policy decision that is absolutely USELESS.

The Sunni forces are being bolstered by support from insurgent strongholds in the West. The Shiite militias are using neighborhoods in the north, specifically Shuala and Sadr City, as bases of operation. There is also increasing evidence that militia members from southern cities like Basra are coming to Baghdad to join the fight…

Shiites, led by militia forces and often aided by the local police, are clearly ascendant, says Lt. Col. Steven Miska, the deputy commander for the Dagger Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, who oversees combat operations in a wide swath of western Baghdad. "These politicians are connected with either militias or Sunni insurgents…It seems very controlled and deliberate and concentrated on expanding an area they control."

…Col. Miska noted just how many forces, each answering to different bosses, currently occupied the battlefield.

"Who would design this mess?" he said. "It is like an orchestra where everybody is playing a different song."
--ibid

The Iraqi police and military answer to different ministries, who are often controlled by leaders of warring tribes or sects, and the bureaucracy is divided even further between regular police and national police, and a protection detail 140,000 strong assigned to protect mosques, but is much better known for being particularly savage and bloody in its ethnic cleansing.

The American forces are caught in the middle of this tangled mess, which is further complicated by the complicity and direct participation of government ministries.

It is not uncommon for American forces to find, and rescue, say, a hundred or so hapless Sunni's who've been slated for torture and murder by Shiite death squads, only to face those same men the next day when they fight insurgents.

Or, as I pointed out earlier, to arrest vicious ringleaders of violence and bloodshed, only to be ordered to set them free by the Iraqi government.

And let's be clear about one more thing. This "surge" is not going to last for a month or two. More and more, I'm hearing numbers like eighteen months to two years, which sounds suspiciously close to the elections of 2008.

Sending more troops into Baghdad may--POSSIBLY--cause a temporary dip in the sheer numbers of dead Iraqis, while, at the same time, killing and maiming more Americans, but no matter when we pull out, whether it's tomorrow or ten years from now, you can bet that chaos will ensue because you can't force democracy and freedom on people who don't want it for themselves.

Senator Joe Biden, Democrat from Delaware and now chairman of the powerful armed services committee, has made it clear that if the president insists on this troop surge as his big "new" strategy, that the senator will hold hearings in the Senate on that plan.

On the surface, that may sound lame. Hearings? Who cares? What difference could more blathering talking heads possibly make?

I'll tell you what difference it makes: PUBLICITY. You have a running string of military spokesmen and administration hacks sitting down in front of the TV cameras being grilled by skeptical senators and sweating under the lights, you have soundbites for the evening news, and you draw attention away from the bully pulpit of the White House and its iron will to stay the course right over the cliff.

You show the American people, up close and personal, what this White House won't admit even to itself: that enough American men and women have died for a people who never wanted us there in the first place, and who want only to be left alone so that they can destroy themselves.

Putting our troops into this boiling cauldron of a civil war does nothing but force them to choose sides each and every day and then pay for those choices the next day, when whichever side they had to choose the day before avenges itself on the Americans.

"I fully understand it's important to have both Republicans and Democrats understanding the importance of this mission," Mr. Bush said, speaking to reporters after a three-hour meeting. "It's important for the American people to understand success in Iraq is vital for our own security."
--"Bush Considers Up to 20,000 More Troops for Iraq," David S. Cloud and Jeff Zeleny, New York Times, December 29, 2006

Ahhh, yes, that old bugaboo. The idea that al-Qaeda will set up a stronghold in Iraq from which to launch terrorist attacks on the U.S. Funny story. They've already done that--over in a corner of Pakistan that is protected by the Pakistani government. All they have to do is cross over into Afghanistan and blow up as many people as they want, and fan out wherever they want--London, Madrid, wherever.

As far as al Qaeda terrorists setting up shop in Iraq, well, al Qaeda is Sunni. The Shiites of Iraq hate al Qaeda. Don't count on a Shiite government to tolerate a Pakistani-type arrangement with Sunni terrorists responsible for the destruction of the holiest Shiite religious site in Iraq, not to mention the deaths of countless Shiite people. The only reason they haven't destroyed al Qaeda in Iraq yet is the presence of the Americans, who protect innocent Sunni citizens when they go out looking for terrorists. The Iraqis would not be so merciful.

I'm just saying. Educate yourself into the realities of Iraqi culture and society before accepting any blanket statements out of this White House as they continue to pursue a failed course in a war they started and mismanaged from the beginning. Iraq did not have to be invaded, but since it was, it did not have to be lost. This administration has nobody to blame but themselves and their own disastrous policies.

Don't expect anything new from them any time soon.

BUSH'S WAR

2006-12-26T05:25:00.000-08:00

"Roadside Bombs Kill Troops at Highest Rate of Iraq War"
--headline, Boston Globe, December 17, 2006

"Attacks in Iraq at Record High, Pentagon Says"
--headline, New York Times, December 19, 2006

"Pentagon Sites Success of Anti-American Forces in Iraq"
--headline, Washington Post, December 19, 2006

"On the War, Determined to Go His Own Way"
--headline, Washington Post, December 20, 2006

"White House, Joint Chiefs at Odds on Adding Troops"
--headline, Washington Post, December 19, 2006

"Bush No Longer Listening to Commanders on Troop Levels in Iraq"
--headline, Buzzflash.com, December 21, 2006

"Troop 'Surge' for Iraq Meets Growing Opposition in US"
--headline, Yahoo! News, December 25, 2006

According to a CNN poll conducted in mid-December, ONLY 11 PERCENT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SUPPORT A TROOP "SURGE" INTO IRAQ.

Even more telling, perhaps, than the flat-out opposition of the American people to an escalation of the war in Iraq is that the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as two generals on the ground in Iraq--not to mention, the Iraq Study Group--OPPOSE troop escalation.

As late as October of '06, right about the time that Bush stated, "absolutely, we're winning," the war he started in Iraq, he repeated what he has said over and over again, that he would depend upon the generals on the ground to tell him whether more troops were needed.

Then, right about the time that he admitted, murkily, that, "we're not winning, but we're not losing, either," Bush started to ignore not only what his Joint Chiefs of Staff--right down to the last man--were telling him, but what the generals on the ground were saying, as well.

Then there came the usual tell-tale White House PR push to "roll out" a new marketing product, in this case, Bush's new war plan to escalate the war by not only sending more troops to Baghdad--which he will get by keeping troops who are already there in-country after they are supposed to go home, as well as rushing the deployments of those scheduled to depart later--but by building up the armed forces, altogether.

Some have suggested that he has even used the "building up the army" plan as a BRIBE to get reluctant commanders to go along with his scheme to secure Baghdad by sending in more troops.

I don't know about that. I do know that the two main generals on the ground who have opposed this plan will be "retiring" in a couple of months, and that after a hasty, three-day visit by the new secretary of defense, they are now mumbling garbled sentax about how, okay, it might be all right to send more troops into Baghdad IF there is a good strategy for their use.

So of course, Bush, the master strategy-manipulator who has, so far, trotted out six different reasons for unseating Saddam, coming up with a new war-rationale every time the old one is proven to be a lie or at least a massive miscalculation, will only be too obliging to provide a new "strategy" to effect his latest plan which is, after all, more of the same. A do-over, basically.

It's like saying, Okay, you said we didn't have enough troops. So, fine, we'll send more troops!

Of course, it's too late, now. In the beginning, those who were in-country fighting the war in '03 say that, as soon as the looting began, if we'd had enough troops at the time, as generals had been requesting from the beginning, we could have curtailed it and brought order and made the Iraqi people feel secure.

But our recently-feted secretary of defense said only, "Stuff happens." And ordered our troops to stand by and watch, which was the first clear signal to the Iraqis that they were on their own, and thus, caused the birth of the death-squad militias to "protect" the people. Meanwhile, when American troop commanders on the ground warned Rumsfeld about a growing insurgency, he dismissed them as "dead-enders."

As far as sending more troops into Baghdad, we already sent more troops into Baghdad, several months ago, and the Pentagon's own report stated that the troop escalation was a huge flop and that, rather than cutting down the violence in the capitol, it merely caused it to go UP.

So Bush says he's "listening" now. But those who have met with him, who have tried to present the unvarnished truth--which he claims he wants to hear--have been met with respectful but stony silence and brief meetings of a half-hour or so. No questions or follow-up to their presentations.

But Bush can state--unequivocally--that he did, indeed, "listen" to them.

Yet those hawks--the same neocon geniuses who pushed us into this miserable war in the first place and who, to this day, refuse to admit that they were wrong, preferring instead to blame Bush for screwing up their glorious little war--those who have all sorts of great plans for fixing it--like, say, escalating the troops--get a long meeting of two hours or more, peppered with questions.

In other words, Bush already knows what he wants to do and is, yet again, pretending to consider all options while, really, cherry-picking those arguments that fit his predisposed ideas, so that he can present his plan with a great flourish to the American people complete with more flags than you can count.

Expect his big speech to be full of praise for the ideas of those who opposed him, and small concessions to them, as if he really did care what they had to say. But don't expect him to actually change his disastrous policy in a war that is, increasingly, his own personal war.

"There's something much worse than being accused of 'flip-flopping': refusing to flip when it's obvious that your course of action is a flop…

"Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial died after America's leaders knew that our strategy in that war was not working. Was then-secretary of defense Robert McNamara steadfast as he continued to send American troops to die for a war he knew privately could not be won? History does not remember his resolve--it remembers his refusal to confront reality."
--"When Resolve Turns to Recklessness," Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass), Washington Post, December 24, 2006

Remember when Donald Rumsfeld made his victory lap around Iraq the week before he left office, telling the longsuffering troops that, "History will show that I am right"?

If we really wanted to be shown--and not told--Bush's attitude toward Bush's War, we need only turn our attention to the obscene and tasteless display of egotism and arrogance put on by the White House to honor outgoing secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who, it could be argued, single-handedly caused the destruction of a nation, unparalleled war-profiteering at the hands of administration cronies, and horrendous losses of precious American blood and treasure in a war one Republican senator called, "misunderstood, misread, misplanned, and mismanaged…with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam." (Sen. Chuck Hagel, Neb.)

Here's a glimpse of all the toy-soldier pomp and circumstance, in which Maureen Dowd described Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld--the true "architects" of the Iraq war:

"The Defiant Ones came striding from the Pentagon yesterday, the troika of wayward warriors marching abreast in their dark suits and power ties. W., Rummy and Dick Cheney were so full of quick-draw confidence that they might have been sauntering down the main drag of Deadwood."

She goes on to describe the ceremony accurately, for I saw it, over and over again, on the evening news B-Roll they are so enamored of:

Yesterday's tribute had full military honors, a color guard, a 19-gun salute, an Old Guard performance with marching musicians--including piccolo players--in Revolutionary War costumes, John Philip Sousa music and the chuckleheaded neocons and ex-Rummy deputies who helped screw up the occupation, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, cheering in the audience.

It was surreal: the septuagenarian who arrogantly dismissed initial advice to send more troops to secure Iraq, being praised as "the finest secretary of defense this nation has ever had," by his pal, the vice president, even as a desperate White House drafted ways to reinvade Iraq by sending more troops in a grasping-at-straws effort to reverse the chaos caused by Rummy's mistakes.
--"Farewell, Dense Prince," Maureen Dowd, New York Times op-ed, December 19, 2006

This is as clear an indication of how Bush really feels about the way the war is going as fifty flag-draped speeches to the contrary. If Bush really felt that Rumsfeld had screwed up his war, he'd have not only fired him years ago, but he would have sent him packing in ignoble defeat.

You know, like what happened to Colin Powell, who was the only Cabinet member to oppose the war to Bush's face, back in 2002, the one who famously told the president the "Pottery Barn" policy, that, "You break it, you own it."

Never forget that this man was also, at one time, secretary of defense, one who actually WON a war in Iraq, one who had served his country in combat and with honor and distinction--a Republican, by the way--who did not get marching bands in Revolutionary War costumes when he was run out of office and replaced as secretary of state. And here is what Gen. Powell had to say about the latest "plan for victory" in Bush's War:

Speaking on CBS's "Face the Nation," former secretary of state, Colin Powell, seemed to draw as much from his 35-year Army career, including four years as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as from his more recent and difficult tenure as Bush's chief diplomat.

The summer's surge of U.S. troops to try to stabilize Baghdad failed, he said, and any new attempt is unlikely to succeed. "If somebody proposes that additional troops be sent, if I was still chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff, my first question… is what mission is it these troops are supposed to accomplish?...Is it something that is really accomplishable?...Do we have enough troops to accomplish it?

…"Sooner or later you have to begin the baton pass, passing it off to the Iraqis for their security and to begin the drawdown of U.S forces. I think that's got to happen sometime before the middle of next year."

Before any decision to increase troops, he said, "I'd want to have a clear understanding of what it is they're going for, how long they're going for. And let's be clear about something else…THERE REALLY ARE NO ADDITIONAL TROOPS. ALL WE WOULD BE DOING IS KEEPING SOME OF THE TROOPS WHO WERE THERE, THERE LONGER AND ESCALATING OR ACCELERATING THE ARRIVAL OF OTHER TROOPS."

He added, "THAT'S HOW YOU SURGE. AND THAT SURGE CANNOT BE SUSTAINED." (emphasis mine)
--"Powell Says U.S. Losing in Iraq, Calls for Drawdown by Mid-2007," Karen deYoung, Washington Post, December 18, 2006

Recent polls show that, even as only a stunning eleven percent of the American people support Bush's War the way Bush wants to run it, fewer than half of all Republicans and only one-third of conservatives approve of his war strategy.

One of the staunchest hawks on Capitol Hill, a conservative Republican who supported Bush all the way, said in a speech in the Senate chambers, "I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal." (Sen. Gordon Smith, Ore.)

The only supporters left of Bush's war, are, as Cokie Roberts referred to them in the Austin American-Statesman, "GOP hardliners--like Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney, who don't have to stand for office, or send their own children to war--are still telling Bush to ignore the 'surrender monkeys,' as one headline put it."

Ms. Roberts puts Bush's War--and all its tragic implications--into half a dozen succinct sentences that require no explanation:

This is Bush's War. He broke Iraq and now he owns it.

The nation is facing an enormous tragedy. Bush can't or won't leave Iraq, but staying means Pflugerville, TX (and Cheektowaga, NY, and Westerville, OH, and Oxford, AL, and Redding, CA) will keep burying its children. Only a new president will be able to stop the dying.
--"America Wakes Up to Dying Dreams, Dead Soldiers," Cokie Roberts and Steven V. Roberts, Newspaper Enterprise Assn., reprinted Austin American-Statesman, December 18, 2006

Now, as the mother of a two-time Marine combat vet of Iraq who may yet be shipped back, and the aunt of one Marine who's been there three times in combat deployments and could be sent back even though he is now out of the Marine Corps--but still has his reserve commitment--and the aunt of another due to deploy in May…I have to say, that when I consider the fact that we may have AT LEAST TWO MORE YEARS OF BLOODSHED IN BUSH'S WAR, it makes me despair to the heavens. (By 2009, we will have been at war in Iraq for SIX YEARS. As of this date, we have already been at war longer than it took to whip the Nazis and have lost more soldiers and Marines than all the deaths from the 9-11 attacks.)

But, even though this man is "commander-in-chief"--this is still, the last time I checked, a representative democracy. And we will have a whole new batch of representatives sitting in congress and the senate, come January 4. Those people--Republicans and Democrats--must answer to the 89 percent of constituents who do not want to see this war escalated.

And there is only so much a president can do, at war, in a constitutional government before he must seek the help and support of that representative congress.

It is our duty, as citizens of the United States of America, to make our voices heard--loud and clear--not just in voting booths, but on editorial pages and in e-mails and letters and petitions and blogs and phone calls to the halls of congress--it is our civic duty and personal responsibility to lift our voices into a howl and a cry of outrage that WILL BE HEARD.

Bush cannot fight his war alone.

Not without our support.

He has got to be held accountable for his disastrous decisions.

DO NOT FALL FOR the marketing ploy that will begin to saturate the newsprint and airwaves in the days leading up to and following his big address to the nation, when administration puppets will fan out, pushing Bush's policies and justifying his cock-eyed rationale.

Make it your business to educate yourself. And speak out. Speak out to your congressperson and your senator. Speak out in letters to the editor. Speak out to the White House.

Let it be known that you will not support for election or re-election anyone who accepts without question yet another disastrous, arrogant, and egotistical war-plan out of this White House.

WE HAVE THE POWER. WE ARE THE PEOPLE. IT IS UP TO US.

We shouldn't have to wait two more long bloody years, until there is another president, to see a real and serious course-reversal in Iraq.

This month is inching up toward the bloodiest month since the Battle of Fallujah. We are losing 100 men and women every month in this quagmire. Ten times as many are being grievously wounded. At that rate, our losses will run more than 5,000--with 50,000 wounded--by January of '09, when a new president is finally sworn in.

This is a hemorrhage of American blood. What can we do to stop it?

We can pay attention.

If, for example, Bush and his minions tout a "temporary surge"--HOLD HIM TO IT. Give it two to three months. Then start watching and reading news accounts carefully. See if, in fact, that "surge" becomes permanent.

Listen for administration puppets to keep saying that "the next six months will be crucial." We've been hearing that for three years.

Don't let them slip things past you. Be alert. Be involved. Be aware.

We can fight for our fighters. We can go to war here on the homeland on behalf of our warriors.

Like Rep. John Murtha said, they have done everything we have asked of them, and so much more. They deserve not to live with the constant dread of having to return to the same battlefield over and over again, with their odds of making it home in one piece shrinking every time.

(And I'm not even going to go into the psychologically crippling aspects of this, or of the destructiveness to young military families. Nor am I going to go into the terribly sad loss to the United States military of fine officers and enlisted men who--but for this godforsaken war--would have made a career out of the military but who now can't get out fast enough. Or of those who have served their full enlistments but, due to stop-loss dirty tricks, are being forced to remain in the service against their will and are then redeployed to Iraq.)

As we go into the fourth year of this insane war, many, many soldiers and Marines are returning for their FOURTH deployments.

This has to stop.

WE CAN MAKE THE TOY SOLDIERS--WHO LOVE TO MARCH TO REVOLUTONARY WAR PICCOLOS AND GIVE STIRRING SPEECHES CONGRATULATING THEMSELVES--LISTEN TO THE REAL SOLDIERS WHO HAVE BRAVED REAL BATTLE.

Like the generals and the joint chiefs and the Pentagon, we can demand common sense strategies and solutions from our civilian leadership.

Our warriors are sinking down into the quicksand, but it's not too late.

Line up, dig in, grab the end of this rope, here--and help to pull them out.

FORGOTTEN TROOPS WHO COULD USE CARE PACKAGES--AND THEY'RE NOT IN IRAQ

2006-12-14T05:45:00.000-08:00

Every year at this time, thousands upon thousands of care packages are shipped to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know that the men and women who receive those packages at this difficult time are deeply grateful for the care and concern sent to them by strangers at the holidays.

My sister-in-law, Kay Hale, is one hero who never fought in a war but has made life so much better for so many who do. Not only does she greet and send off troops with mini-care packages every single Sunday at DFW airport, and not only is she the mother of a Marine who deployed three times to the Anbar province in Iraq, but through the USO, she has personally overseen the shipping of thousands of care packages overseas.

This year, along with 150 that she personally helped to send to our troops overseas, she also helped ship dozens of decorated Christmas trees. On Christmas Day this year, she will not be home with her cherished granddaughter--she'll be at the USO in Dallas, Texas, spreading cheer to a bunch of homesick GI's.

Our fighting men and women are called heroes so often, but I don't think they could do what they do without those of us here at home who are watching their backs.

I know during my son's last deployment, their FOB didn't even have a mess hall or a PX. They lived off of MRE's for weeks. So every week we'd send him potted meat, packages of fruit, beef jerky, pouches of tuna and chicken, cans of ravioli, hard candies, been dip and chips--you name it; if it was edible and would withstand 125-degree heat, we sent it to him and his buddies.

My sister, Jeanne Re, is an Air Force veteran herself who has been an activist in veteran's causes for many years, and it was she who drew my attention to another group of troops who could sure use our help, not just here at the holidays, but year round.

I know I would not have thought of this on my own. It is my privilege to do my own little part, by drawing attention to it here on Blue Inkblots.

According to the website, www.Military.com, a report from Stars and Stripes mentions that donations are needed for wounded troops who are patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. I will quote the piece in its entirety:

The hospitals's Family Assistance Center is seeking shoes, gloves, and winter jackets, postage stamps, prepaid phone cards, weightlifting gloves (for wheelchair patients), trousers with snaps or zips along the legs, razors, and prepaid gas or grocery cards. The Center requests that no cash or used items be donated. Donations can be sent to: Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Medical Family Assistance Center; Bldg. 2, 3rd Floor, Room 3E01, 6900 Georgia Ave., N.W.; Washington, D.C. 20307-5001.

Looking for ways to support and honor U.S. military servicemembers and veterans who protect our security and freedom? Go to the Military.com Support Our Troops webpage to learn more.

I checked out that webpage. If you would like to learn more, you may contact:

Walter Reed Medical Family Assistance Center (MEDFAC) at:
(202) 782-2071 or toll free 1-866-546-1310

I would also like to point out that there are seriously wounded troops recovering all over the country. They start out at Walter Reed and then are sent to hospitals closer to home for more recovery. San Antonio, for example, has a world-renowned burn center where troops who have been "blown up"--as the guys call getting hit by an IED--recuperate.

So I would suggest that you can send your care packages to Walter Reed, but also, you might check out hospitals close to your area. See if any guys there could use phone cards and other items. Or maybe a visit and a smile.

Keep in mind that so many of our wounded troops are young men and women with young spouses who are trying to cope with, not just this horrific stress of the injury and having to visit their spouses hundreds of miles from their own homes, and the financial hardships that entails, but they usually have little children at home as well. So gift cards from places like Wal-Mart would be a tremendous help.

This kind of assistance requires taking a bit more trouble than just sending a check someplace, and Christmas is, indeed, just around the corner. But these brave and mostly-forgotten men and women are going to need those phone cards and Wal-Mart and gas gift cards for a very long time. Most UPS offices and private mail centers will wrap stuff and ship it for you.

Or, just stuff a handful of gift cards in an envelope.

Let's let them know that we are STILL grateful for their blood sacrifices, that we will NEVER forget them, and that we still have their backs.

God bless them all, and God bless those at home who remember.

WHY I'M SO ANGRY

2006-12-11T17:43:00.000-08:00

It seems my last post has drawn some private comments from family members and friends who wonder why I am so angry about this war; why, in fact, I seem angrier than usual.

I explained that I had reached a tipping point--for lack of a better word--in my studies about the war.

First of all, I felt an intense frustration when it became apparent that no matter what the Iraq Study Group came up with, this president was not going to heed any of their suggestions and was, in fact, trying to come up with alternatives and ass-covering before they had even completed their report.

Then, when the report finally was released, well, the good news is that at least it finally opened up a real debate on the war, which should have been conducted back in 2002, but wasn't, because for anyone to have asked any of the questions which are now being asked every day, was to result in them consequently being attacked for such supposed crimes as hating the military, not supporting the troops, not being a patriot, and worse.

So, we're finally asking honest questions about the war. That's the good news.

The bad news is that the suggestions which are being taken the most seriously in the media are already moot.

Training Iraqi troops is, to quote Bob Herbert of the New York Times, "sheer fantasy." We've BEEN training the troops, and arming them, and supplying them, and supporting them, for THREE YEARS and nothing has come of it. They loot their own barracks, sell their own weapons on the street, stand by while atrocities are commited by their own people in front of their eyes, and even join in the ethnic genocide on occasion. If they are thrust into combat, they freeze and panic, endangering any Americans in the area.

Embedding more Americans to train more Iraqis is pointless.

The truth is that we can't get out and we can't stay, and every day that we debate back and forth, another blue sedan drives slowly up to another house, and two uniformed officers knock on another door. Last Wednesday, there were eleven such visits, in that one day alone, and since then, ten more.

Every day that we debate, another soldier or Marine gets his legs blown off or her hands blown off or his head turned to cantaloupe by a sniper. And we are averaging TEN TIMES the number of critically wounded to the number who perish.

From the very beginning, those of us who have made a business of studying not just politics, but military history, have known that this would happen, and we endured the most outrageous attacks on our character and persons for simply speaking the truth.

You see a train coming. A car straddles the track. You scream and yell at the driver and passengers to get off the track. Instead, they roll down the car windows and shout insults at you, mocking you, while the train barrells down on them.

Then your own son climbs into the car, just before the train hits.

That's how it felt to be me in 2002.

But once this country committed and sent our troops into harm's way, it should have thrown the full power of its resources into the fray, backing our troops in every sense of the word. Building barricades, so to speak, around that car sitting on the track.

It didn't. To quote our secretary of defense, "You go to war with the army you have," not, apparently, the army you desperately need to complete the mission.

Still, I have held back on advocating complete pull-out for the exact same reason I chose not to protest the Vietnam war when my brother, father, future husband and brother-in-law fought; even after bright handsome young soldiers who kissed me good-night on my front porch lost their lives over there--I did not protest the war because I did not want their sacrifices to have been in vain.

So I did not advocate pulling out of Iraq because I wanted so desperately for my son's sacrifices and those of his buddies to have COUNTED for something.

For three years I read everything I could get my hands on from every source imaginable, questioned every troop I knew personally about his impressions when he returned, listened respectfully to their horror stories, prayed for them nightly, and when they were deployed, did everything in my power to let them know that they were not forgotten, with care packages, letters, cards, and constant reminders that they were supported.

I always kept my thoughts about this war to myself with them, because I thought they deserved the respect they had earned with their service, and I would never have ever done anything to make them feel bad, since soldiers and Marines go where they are ordered and serve with honor, even if they harbor their own doubts. And believe me, they had doubts.

I tried and tried to find hope about this war somewhere. I searched for "good news" stories that the conservatives swore were out there; I did my best to ferret out information that would prove me wrong.

If only I could have been proven wrong, it would have been so much easier. If somehow I could have been convinced that that train was going to apply the brakes just in time.

But over the course of time, the onslaught of truth about what was really happening just swept over any good that had been accomplished, and it has been like watching that train plow through the car, killing some of the occupants, crippling some, and endangering my own loved ones.

I would pray and cry in despair about what it meant for men and women like my son who kept getting sent back and back and back again to this war, and every time they returned, it was worse, and every time they were deployed, they knew they were playing Russian Roulette with their lives.

And I looked around, and I saw how this country was not being asked to sacrifice for its own war. I saw how they hit the remote rather than watch more war news, how they had no idea where "Fallujah" was, how their lives were never affected by this ongoing relentless tragedy. How the young men would buy video games that made them feel as if they were RIGHT THERE, except, of course, that they weren't, and the danger was only a game.

I watched how good people, well-meaning people, thought that if they just hung that flag outside the front door, slapped yellow ribbon magnets on their cars, donated a little money for care packages at Christmastime, forwarded e-mail prayers and sentimental soldier-stories, why, they were SUPPORTING THE TROOPS.

Nice gestures. Really. But it would mean so much more if, for instance, they backed a national draft and infused the armed forces with thousands more troops who could take the pressure off the current all-volunteer force.

But that's not going to happen. Nobody wants to sacrifice THAT much.

So, I saw the same families shouldering this terrible burden time and time and time again, and young families being pulled apart, and children growing up without their mamas and daddies, and troops being asked to fight without proper equipment or back-up.

I saw what repeated deployments did to my loved ones who served, and served, and served again. I saw how angry they became each successive time. Other Marine parents and I had lengthy phone conversations and passed long e-mails, wondering how in the world are we going to be able to help our boys???

What could we SAY to them? What could we possibly SAY?

And I wrote condolence letters to the moms who would never have a chance to say another word to their boys, and did what I could to support those mothers whose sons were so gravely wounded that they would never, ever, be the same again.

And something happened to me inside. Call it a tipping point. Call it a breaking point.

Call it rage. Call it despair. Call it whatever you want.

But the truth of the matter is this:

The young men and women who put on their uniforms or cammies and go out to serve this nation are the bravest, the best, and the brightest this country has to offer.

They work harder than anybody else in this great nation, and they do it for little pay and no rewards other than the service itself.

Their patriotism and sense of duty is a sacred trust.

And you better think long and hard before you send them off to die.

If you do it for any reason other than the most noble, honorable, and utterly, absolutely neccessary...then you have betrayed that sacred trust.

These idealistic young men and women like my son who enlisted after 9-11 did so because they thought they would be fighting terrorists in Afghanistan.

Instead, they were sent into a swamp and left to rot.

Now, while the politicians scramble to find the best way to preserve their legacies, these men and women are dying. Every day.

They are dying.

They are dying.

I cry out for them, and for their families, because this war is PERSONAL, not just to me, but to all who gave this country that sacred trust.

How can you NOT feel rage?

How can you not want to DO something, at least to SAY SOMETHING, to speak truth to power, to shout out a protest loud and long in the hopes that somewhere, somehow, you will be heard.

If enough of us shout long enough and loud enough, then somebody, somewhere will finally move that car off the railroad tracks, and troops that might have gone home in a body bag will instead get to spend a Christmas at home with their families.

And then, it will all have been worth it.

HOW WE ARE ARMING THE ENEMY

2006-12-11T08:51:00.000-08:00

Every type of gun that the Americans give comes to the market," said Brig. Hassan Nouri, chief of the political investigations bureau for the Sulaimaniya district. "They go from the U.S. Army to the Iraqi Army to the smugglers. I have captured many of these guns that the terrorists bought."

…"In the south, if the Americans give the Iraqis weapons, the next day you can buy them here," said one dealer, who sold groceries in the front of his kiosk and offered weapons in the back.

"The Iraqi Army, the Iraqi police--they all sell them right away…Almost all of the weapons come from the Iraqi police and army," he said. "They are our best suppliers."
--"Black-Market Weapons Prices Surge in Iraq Chaos," C.J. Chivers, New York Times, December 10, 2006.

THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENS:

We pour valuable energy and unlimited treasure and time into training the much-exalted Iraqi army and police forces so they can stand up and we can stand down. It is the centerpiece of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations (which are already DOA on the Beltway), and it is the major thrust of all the mumblings coming from the White House.

I've already written about how even the best-trained Iraqi army units--(those who haven't deserted or refused to fight)--freeze and run at the first sign of combat and beg the Americans to rescue them.

Now I'm going to demonstrate what happens to the arms provided to them by the Americans.

They sell them--some of them still in their boxes--to smugglers, who deal them openly and not-so-openly in every street-corner and back-alley bazaar in Iraq. Sunni insurgent groups, Shi'ite paramilitary units, and criminals who were released from prison by Saddam Hussein before the war make up most of the customers, but more and more terrified households are also stocking up.

This rising demand has pushed up the prices of these almost-new weapons, which means that an Iraqi army soldier can desert his unit--which almost half of them do--and then sell his weapons, thus bringing home pay equal to several months' salary.

These are not just nine-millimeter Glocks, which are flooding the Iraqi markets as fast as the Americans can provide them. They are also grenade launchers, assault rifles, and other high-powered weapons, most of them brand-new--and incredibly, even police cars with police labels and lights still on them.

The weapons were paid for with the $133 million from the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, according to the confidential report put out by the Pentagon.

Not everyone who sells his weapon has quit the police or deserted from the army. Many of them walk in and claim that their weapons were stolen. They are promptly issued new ones.

These guns have been proliferating in Iraq since the war began, simply because the U.S. army did not write down the serial numbers on weapons issued, thus making it impossible to trace the lost, stolen, or sold firearms and grenade launchers that have then been used against our own troops.

Bush can crow all he wants to about how the Iranians and Syrians are meddling in Iraq, but the truth is that they really don't have to. Terrorist activities and insurgent raids and militia massacres are already well-funded by smuggled oil which was not secured by the U.S. after the invasion, and armed by stockpiles of weapons that were also not secured--as per Rumsfeld's orders--and by OUR OWN WEAPONS WHICH WE HAVE PROVIDED THEM AND THEY HAVE SOLD IN THE BLACK MARKET, TO BE USED TO KILL AMERICANS.

We are talking thousands.

And it's taking its toll.

The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda's rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report that set off debate in recent months about the military's mission in the Anbar province.

…Between al-Qaeda's violence, Iran's influence and an expected U.S. drawdown, "the social and political situation has deteriorated to a point" that U.S. and Iraqi troops "are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar," the assessment found. In Anbar province alone, more than 100 troops have died since Sept. 1.

…The report notes that illicit oil trading is providing millions of dollars to al-Qaeda while "official profits appear to feed Sh'ite cronyism in Baghdad."…The Iraqi government, dominated by Iranian-backed Shi'ites, has not paid salaries for Anbar officials and Iraqi forces stationed there.

…Without a deployment of an additional U.S. military division--15,000 to 20,000 troops--plus billions of dollars in aid to the province, "there is nothing U.S. troops can do to influence the insurgency."
--"Anbar Picture Grows Clearer, and Bleaker," Dafna Linzer and Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, November 28, 2006.

Here are the cold, hard facts, which are already outdated because so many Marines are dying in the Anbar:

As of the end of November, more than 1,055 Marines have been killed in the Anbar province, a whopping 37% of all U.S. casualties, even though the Marine Corps provides only a third of the troops currently stationed in Iraq.

In other words, the smallest segment of American armed forces serving in Iraq has provided more than a third of all U.S. deaths--and this does not count horrific non-fatal injuries from IED's. The Marines are THREE TIMES MORE LIKELY TO BE KILLED IN THE ANBAR than troops in Baghdad or anywhere else, and many of the weapons used against them were provided by the U.S. military.

And even the White House wants to give up the Anbar. SO DON'T LET THEM TALK ABOUT HONORING ANYBODY'S SACRIFICE. ALL THEY CARE ABOUT IS THEIR OWN POLITICAL SACRIFICE.

The Bush administration is deliberating whether to abandon U.S. reconciliation efforts with Sunni insurgents and instead give priority to Shi'ites and Kurds, who won elections and now dominate the government…U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that their reconciliation efforts may even have backfired, alienating the Shi'tite majority and leaving the U.S. vulnerable to having no allies in Iraq, according to sources familiar with the State Dept. proposal.
--"U.S. Considers Ending Outreach to Insurgents," Robin Wright, Washington Post, December 1, 2006.

Yeah, look to hear a lot from the White House in coming weeks about this 80-20, or "eighty-percent solution." So called because supposedly, 80% of the Iraqi population is Shi'ite and Kurd and only 20% are Sunni.

Of course, this does not take into account our own allies, like, oh, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which are Sunni.

I'm not going to get into all that. Suffice it to say that the Marines have fought valiantly, died and come home blown to pieces, in a failed policy that has accomplished NOTHING, according to the Marines' own assessment.

And I think it's a safe bet that many of the Sunnis they have battled have been fighting back with weapons provided by the good old U.S. military.

This is insane. I'm sick of White House doublespeak and bullshit. I'm sick of their lies and bait-and-switch sloganeering, their concerted media-drenching of talk-radio and FOX news and neocon publications, which then gets quoted in the mainstream media.

I'm sick of this administration using the soundbite and photo op to peddle their lies and manipulations about this war--which they have been doing since 2002--to the American people.

I'm sick of Marines dying in the Anbar for NOTHING.

I'm sick of the White House completely ignoring the Anbar, claiming that the whole war will be fought and won in Baghdad. They've even gone so far as to draw desperately needed Marines out of the Anbar and sent them into Baghdad, leaving those left behind even more vulnerable and exposed.

Bait and switch, baby.

How many Marines will die today because of THAT lie?

I'm sick of news like these black-market weapons flooding the market as fast as Americans can provide them NEVER MAKING IT TO THE EVENING NEWS BROADCASTS, while Bush does his soundbite photo-op dog-and-pony show for the cameras.

Rumsfeld has the unmitigated gall to visit the troops in Iraq ostensibly to "say good-bye" but really to preen for the cameras and get one last soundbite on the evening news, to wit, "HISTORY WILL PROVE THAT I AM RIGHT."

WE'VE LOST MORE THAN 45 TROOPS IN THE FIRST TEN DAYS OF THIS MONTH IN IRAQ ALREADY. I'M SURE THOSE STRUGGLING, HOMESICK TROOPS FOUND HIS WORDS COMFORTING AND REASSURING AND INSPIRING HERE AT CHRISTMASTIME as they went out to fight AGAINST WEAPONS WE PROVIDED TO THE ENEMY.

I'm sick of watching Bush's fandango when we all know that all he intends to do is wallow in self-pity and languish in Iraq while men and women die just so he can hand the whole thing over to the next president and then go around at high-dollar fund-raisers making millions for Republicans and throwing rocks at the new president for whatever decisions he or she makes to end this wasted war.

I'm sick of it all.

I'm sick of this war.

I'm done waiting to see if anything anywhere can make any of this worth the horrific blood-sacrifice made by our bravest and best.

Jesus died on the cross for the sins of mankind.

OUR MEN AND WOMEN ARE DYING ON THE CROSS OF ONE MAN'S TOWERING EGO AND ONE SLENDER SEGMENT OF IDEOLOGUES WHO NEVER FOUGHT AND NEVER SENT THEIR OWN CHILDREN OFF TO DIE ON SOMEONE ELSE'S CROSS.

They talk about "temporary surge" of troops. Trust me. It won't be temporary.

So far, 2,934 have been killed in the Iraq war.

BY THE END OF THIS MONTH, MARK MY WORDS, WE WILL CROSS THE TERRIBLE LINE OF MORE THAN 3,000 DEAD IN IRAQ, WITH NO END IN SIGHT.

By the time George W. Bush and his minions leave office in 2009, American deaths in Iraq could very well number more than 5,000.

We are currently losing 100 a month. (Amputations and brain injuries not included.)

Bush fiddles while Iraq burns. And here at home…WE SHOP.

It is time to stop this outrage. It is time to fight for our fighters and go to war for our warriors. Nothing "supports our troops" better than bringing them home and saving their lives.

DECLARE "VICTORY." TURN IRAQ OVER TO THE IRAQIS. LET THEM GET THEIR ARMS FROM SOMEPLACE OTHER THAN OUR OWN TROOPS.

THEN GET THE HELL OUT.

There is not much a Democratic congress and senate can do to stop the madness when a madman is commander-in-chief. But there is a great deal that the American people can do to rise up and shout down the walls of the White House.

I do not support cutting off funding to the troops. I understand the rationale behind it but it only hurts the ones trying to survive in an impossible place.

But we can apply pressure to our legislature on both sides of the aisle and we can make it clear that we aren't listening to Rush Limbaugh and FOX news and all the rest of the far-right manics like the New York Post, which featured James Baker and Lee Hamilton as "surrender monkeys."

We can refuse to listen when grenade-words are thrown like surrender, defeat, retreat, win-or-lose, and "victory."

We can let the surviving Republicans and hawk Democrats know that as long as they continue to support failed policies with this kind of talking-point nonsense, then their days are numbered in their present jobs.

The Bush administration has lost all of its credibility on the war. what is needed now are leaders with the courage to insist, perhaps at the risk of their reputations and careers, that it is wrong to continue sending fresh bodies after those already lost, to continue asking young, healthy Amnerican troops to head into the combat zone, perhaps for their third or fourth tour, to fight in a war the public no longer supports.

In a forward to "The Best and the Brightest," David Halberstam's chronicle of the Vietnam fiasco, Senator John McCain wrote:

"It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn't support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay.

"No other national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war. If the nation and the government lack that resolve, IT IS CRIMINAL TO EXPECT MEN IN THE FIELD TO CARRY IT ALONE." (emphasis mine)
--"The Time is Now," Bob Herbert, New York Times, December 11, 2006.

We can stop debating and dithering while our soldiers and Marines die.

WE CAN STAND UP TO THIS WHITE HOUSE UNTIL THEY STAND DOWN.

God bless our boys and girls in uniform who fight so far away from home this Christmas. They and their families--and those who will never be home for the holidays again--are in my heart every moment of every day.

It is our job, here at home, to stand up for them so that they can stand down. There is no better way to support the troops.

"GOD GET ME OUT OF THIS BECAUSE THESE GUYS ARE GOING TO GET ME KILLED"

2006-12-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

…During Operation Lion Strike…the goal was to capture insurgents in the Fadhil district of central Baghdad. It was the first time the Iraqi army's 9th Division was to be in complete control of an operation in the two years it has been training under the Americans. Teams of U.S. advisers remained close, but planned to leave the fighting to the Iraqis.

"It started out that way. But about five minutes into it, we had to take over," Staff Sgt. Michael Baxter, 35, said…

…U.S. military leaders had called it an "outstanding" example of Iraqi forces taking charge…But interviews the following day with U.S. and Iraqi soldiers at Camp al-Rashid in Rustimayah, where they are based, painted a more complex picture…

…While some soldiers froze in indecision, others fired wildly (at friendly and insurgent targets alike) as they ran across streets…

"I'm just thinking to myself, oh God, get me out of this because these guys are going to get me killed if we stay here," said Staff Sgt. Baxter.
--"'About Five Minutes Into It, We Had to Take Over': U.S. Military Advisers Step In As Iraqi Army Mission Falters," Nancy Trejos, Washington Post, December 3, 2006

"Fear took over," among Iraqis, said Staff Sgt. Michael Baxter.

"They refused to move. We were yelling at them to move," he said. "I grabbed one guy and shoved him into a building…"

…"I had to throw bullet casings at them to get their attention," said Army 1st Sgt. Agustin Mendoza, another U.S. trainer who manned a Humvee gun-turret during battle…

No count was taken of the number of civilians killed in the densely populated neighborhood, but U.S. and Iraqi soldiers acknowledged significant "collateral damage…"

The offensive…initially was billed by U.S. officials in Baghdad as an Iraqi-led success and a case study in support of the Pentagon's increasing reliance on military advisers to shift security responsibilities to Iraqi soldiers.
--"An Ambush Erupted, Then, 'Fear Took Over': U.S. Officials Called the Offensive a Success, but Military Advisers Say Iraq's Elite troops Wilted," Solomon Moore, Chicago Tribune, December 5, 2006.

The risks to American troops of working as trainers away from the security of larger American units were underscored early last month, when a staff sergeant and two team leaders--a lieutenant colonel and his replacement--were killed in a single attack in Baghdad.

Another risk is that operations carried out with Iraqi security forces in the lead may be less effective and result in more casualties among Iraqi security forces and civilians than with the better-trained American troops.
--"U.S. Troops in Iraq shifting to Advisory Roles," Thom Shanker and Edward Wong, New York Times, December 5, 2006.

You know, there are only a few dogged reporters who are actually telling the unvarnished truth about what is going on in Iraq. And there is a good reason why.

It's called wishful thinking.

The White House is a master of it, and after six years of semantic obfuscation and euphemisms galore planted by the administration in press conferences and daily media "talking points," the truth is that so many in the mainstream media--particularly in the television news biz, just don't seem to realize that they have started speaking in Bush-talk dialects themselves.

A case in point is the nonsense about the glorious Iraqi army and about how all we have to do is train them better and then they can stand up and we can stand down.

Makes ya just wanna leap to your feet and place your hand over your heart, doesn't it?

Even Democrats think this sounds like common sense.

Not too many politicians, however, have gone out on maneuvers with this much-vaunted Iraqi army, nor have they taken the time to talk to troops on the ground, like my son, who would be only too happy to share with them the REALITY--(that's Bush's favorite new word--see how often he uses it so that he can fool people into believing he really IS thinking in terms of actual real true reality rather than simply parroting the word so it will sound good)--anyway--the REALITY of training these bozos.

Even those in congress, like my favorite, Duncan Hunter, are making grandiose claims about how if only more Iraqi army troops would move to Baghdad, why, by God, we'd clean that sucker up!

The U.S. military is ramping up its training program to add 30,000 more Iraqi troops by mid-2007…The new recruits will add to the small number of Iraqi forces willing to travel away from their home bases…

"In August, when we started Operation Together Forward to secure Baghdad, we called on a bunch of units to assist," said Army Col. Douglass Heckman, commander for the 9th Division Military Transition team. "This division was the only one that moved into operation. The others balked."
--"An Ambush Erupted, Then 'Fear Took Over'", Solomon Moore, Chicago Tribune, December 5, 2006.

Here's the REALITY, guys.

*only 65 % of the weapons and equipment allotted by the U.S. has made it to the Iraqi troops

*The Iraqi Defense Ministry refuses to provide necessary funding, preferring to depend upon the U.S. to do it

*Even with only a few hours advance warning to the Iraqis, as in this particular instance, they were still ambushed by RPGs, snipers, and AK-47 fire from every direction, which not only resulted in wide-scale panic among the Iraqi troops, but caught the Americans in a deadly crossfire that went on for 11 hours. We can--quite literally--TRUST NO ONE.

*At any one time, liberal leave policies and desertions keep barely half of any Iraqi brigade functioning; the rest are absent with and without leave

*90% of the Iraqi army refuses to deploy to areas in Iraq other than their home bases; and even then, Shi'ites refuse to fight Shi'ites and Sunnis refuse to fight Sunnis

*We are currently in the process of QUADRUPLING American troops as advisers in the Iraqi army to speed up training, in the theory that the more troops are trained, the quicker we can leave. But according to the New York Times, the 9th Division was the U.S.-led flagship, the Iraqi division considered "the best hope for U.S. troop withdrawal."

The best hope? Here is our best hope:

Confusion reigned as insurgents pummeled dismounted Iraqi troops and American advisers. American radio jammers blocked Iraqi soldiers' walkie-talkies, forcing them to use unreliable cell phone signals to stay in contact. Voice commands were lost amid the explosions and gunfire echoing off the looming walls. At one point, U.S. and Iraqi troops piled into a Humvee to escape the hail of insurgent bullets pinging off the armor cladding.

"I was pulling people in," Army Sgt. 1st Class Kent McQueen said. "We were all bunched in there together with the gunner. It was like a game of Twister."
--"An Ambush Erupted, Then 'Fear Took Over'", Solomon Moore, Chicago Tribune, December 5, 2006.

The thing is, the more American troops we embed with the Iraqis, the greater the danger to them, not of just being pinned down with their hapless trainees, as was the case here, but how long, then, before we see some American trainer-soldier kidnapped and beheaded on al-Jazeera?

Recently, we had a visit from my husband's brother, who just retired from the U.S. Army Special Forces, where he reached the rank of Brigadier General.

Counter-terrorism is what my brother-in-law has spent 27 years doing, with successes in such diverse places as Bosnia and Afghanistan. And he said that, in order for the U.S. to succeed in Iraq, we would need to stay there--ideally, using counter-terrorism tactics--for two full generations.

Let me repeat that in case you are scan-reading. Wouldn't want you to miss this:

In order for the U.S. to succeed in Iraq, it needs to be practicing intensive counter-terrorism techniques for as much as TWO FULL GENERATIONS of time before we can claim anything like a "victory." This is because, thanks to colossal Rumsfeldian blunders and Bushian lies, there is no way the current American troops can possibly win over the Iraqi insurgents or have any real influence on Iraq's current divided government.

Of course, this is the suggestion of a counter-terrorism expert. And although the U.S. military is doing its damndest to revise its tactics into those of classic counter-terrorism methods, the truth is that a behemoth like the U.S. Army is not built for small teams of counter-terrorist groups to move into a desert village or teeming urban neighborhood and slowly win over the people there by gaining their trust.

It is built to crush.

(And the U.S. Marine Corps was not even created to mount a sustained ground war or anything like nation-building. It is a rapid-reactionary force, meant to go in hot, secure an area, and turn it over to the Army before moving on to the next hot spot. Like the army, it's better at crushing than at winning-over.)

So, after four years of attempting to CRUSH an insurgency, we're left with chaos.

Therefore, the only idea remaining to the pundits and politicians and policy-makers for them to be able to claim "victory" is to train train train those Iraqi troops to take over for themselves and restore some semblance of order to their crumbling country.

Boys and girls, let's get one thing perfectly straight.

There are no good solutions for "winning" in Iraq.

In fact, there are no solutions at all, and everybody--even the much-heralded Iraq Study Group--knows this.

What we have now is this: What is the best way to LOOK like we are accomplishing anything LIKE a definitive goal in Iraq, so that we can get the hell out of there before the next presidential elections?

Training Iraqis looks like the way to go.

LOOKS like it.

But the truth is that our longsuffering American troops can train their butts off, but if the Iraqis don't wanna be trained, they will "fight" like the Keystone Kops and beg the Americans to rescue them. And the worst thing of it all is that, in the process of rescuing them, we're getting MORE Americans killed.

I guess what the pundits and politicians and policy-makers have to do now is convince the American people that the Iraqis really are standing up and we really are standing down. Takes a few good slogans tossed around in on-camera interviews and "leaked" memos sounding all official-like to select reporters.

Of course, those reporters who are willing to speak truth to power can expose the lie pretty quick, to those who are paying attention, like moi.

On the other hand, maybe we should ALL play a game of Twister.

Let's just all pretend that the Iraqis have been trained, just like they said, and then God get us out of there before they get us killed.

THAT is the truth.

GOTTA READ BETWEEN THE LINES OF THOSE "LEAKED MEMOS"

2006-11-30T07:58:00.000-08:00

While Democrats have advocated beginning troop withdrawals as a means of putting pressure on Mr. Maliki, the memo suggests that such tactics may backfire by stirring up opposition against a politically vulnerable leader.

"Pushing Maliki to take these steps without augmenting his capabilities could force him to failure--if the Parliament removes him from office with a majority vote or if action against the Mahdi militia (JAM) causes elements of the Iraqi Security forces to fracture and leads to major Shia disturbances in southern Iraq," the memo says.
--"Bush Advisor's Memo Cites Doubts About Iraqi Leader," Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, November 29, 2006

Television news, by its very nature, is driven by the scoop. Even when the scoop is provided by the print media, TV news rushes to package it into wham-bam soundbites for Americans to snack on just before dinner.

Naturally, that soundbite gets more attention if it highlights controversy of some kind, and so, taking its cue from the NY Times headline, the news media made a big deal about the fact that a notoriously locked-down White House somehow "leaked" a top-secret memo from Bush's National Security Advisor that cast doubt on Maliki's ability to hold the crumbling Iraqi government together.

But that's not the story. Ya gotta read between the lines.

Remember Judith Miller?

She was another crackerjack NY Times journalist who, like Michael Gordon, had won the Pulitzer Prize and wrote about the war. Her seduction by the inner ring of the White House, masterminded by Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney, was a lesson in truly brilliant media manipulation.

The White House knew that the Times was, arguably, the most powerful newspaper in the country and they feared what they perceived as a liberal bias, so as they made their plans to invade Iraq, they knew they'd have trouble getting the rest of the country to get onboard the wartrain, so they set about to seduce one of the country's top foreign affairs journalists.

The seduction works like this: Offer access. Offer exclusivity. Offer secrecy. Stroke their egos while, at the same time, giving them the chance to break big stories before anybody else in the country. Let them do their own imagining of more Pulitzers.

Then, leak whatever lies, distortions, misinformation, or propaganda you want, only do it in a highly secretive, official way.

Offer access. Offer exclusivity. Offer secrecy.

And wait for the headlines.

It worked. The New York Times surprised everybody with its pro-war stance, and made all kinds of history with its leaked documents and inside-access.

It made Judith Miller a star.

Remember Bob Woodward? The most powerful and successful Washington Post reporter on the masthead. And he wanted to write a book about the war.

Offer access. Offer exclusivity. Offer secrecy.

His first two books about the war were chock-full of interviews with the very highest echelons of the Bush White House, from Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld on down. He was given complete cooperation.

His first two books, consequently, were highly flattering of the Bush White House and their handling of the war.

This, I suppose, is a terrible thing to suggest: that Woodward might have been overly attentive to the president's soaring approval ratings, and to what was then considered the likelihood that we'd get out of this Iraq war with some efficiency; that he might have seen a picture of illogic and disarray in the White House (the picture, based at least in part on reporting he did while writing the previous book, that he is painting now), but instead rendered a picture of conviction and even occasional sagacity, because THAT WAS THE CANNY AND COMMERCIAL WAY TO TELL A STORY, AND BECAUSE THESE WERE THE TERMS ON WHICH HE GOT HIS INTIMATE ACCESS. But now, suddenly, like everybody else, including his great cast of highly placed characters, he sees it all going south, and smells the blood…hmmm. (emphasis mine)
--"Survivor: the White House Edition," Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair, December, 2006 issue

In other words, Wolff outright lays it on the line in this month's Vanity Fair that Bob Woodward might have actually KNOWN how bad things were months and months before he said anything, but told the story the way the White House wanted it told because they offered access, exclusivity, and secrecy.

AND IT SOLD BOOKS. MILLIONS OF THEM.

Remember Michael Gordon? He is currently the New York Times's chief war correspondent, and co-author of the groundbreaking, bestselling book: Cobra II: the Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.

His was one of the first books to expose just how badly botched this invasion was, just how egotistical and arrogant were the top Pentagon officials and the ranking general who managed the invasion.

He sold millions of books and continues to write for the Times.

I respect Michael Gordon enormously. He didn't just interview generals for his book; he talked to the troops on the ground and put himself in harm's way many times with the soldiers and Marines.

He was one of the first ranking journalists to speak truth to power.

So, now we've got all this feeding frenzy over the Iraq Study Group and over the Democratic take-over of Congress and the Senate, and this White House feels its back up against the wall to start pulling out of Iraq.

Bush keeps saying he's going to stay the course until the mission is accomplished (his words not mine), but nobody seems to be listening to him.

They do, however, listen to Michael Gordon.

Offer access. Offer exclusivity. Offer secrecy.

If you read carefully the most recent articles by Michael Gordon, every single one of them seems to spell out the same theme: We can't get out of Iraq. To pull out now would be chaos. We need more troops, not less.

Remember Lyndon Johnson? Remember how, when this country was torn apart over the Vietnam war, his response was to escalate and send thousands more troops to Vietnam?

THE WAR DRAGGED ON FOR SIX MORE YEARS AND TENS OF THOUSANDS MORE DIED.

Remember Richard Nixon? Remember how he got himself elected president by promising a "secret plan to end the war"?

And how the war dragged on THREE MORE YEARS, UNTIL JUST BEFORE THE NEXT ELECTIONS?

The big news of the "leaked memos" coming out of the White House, being written up by Michael Gordon/Judith Miller/Bob Woodward, et al, all really say the same thing: We must stay the course. We must accomplish the mission.

And they're all coming out just in time to act as counterparts to the Iraq Study Group recommendations, which will ask for a troop "pullout" of FIFTEEN combat brigades.

This, while the White House is planning to deploy FOUR MORE BATTALIONS to Iraq.

I'm not sure the Vanity Fair columnist was right that a journalist of Bob Woodward's stature could actually be compromised by access, exclusivity and secrecy, to the point that he deliberately misrepresented what was really happening in order to stay on the good side of his gravy train.

I just don't know.

And I do think that Michael Gordon cares a great deal for the troops and this terrible mess.

But when you are talking about access to the highest rings of power in a time of great historic turmoil, and you, and you alone, can break the story…Who can say how long you can remain objective?

Judith Miller flat-out crossed over the line. Who knows how many other ranking journalists with intimate White House access have? But I will give the final dose of REAL reality that comes from Thomas Friedman, the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times. He writes opinion, and he doesn't ask for White House access to do it. He bases his opinion on many years of experience with, travels to, and education about the Middle East.

This is the truth.

And it didn't come from a White House memo.

This is what the American people have GOT to realize, RIGHT NOW, no matter how many memos leak from a White House struggling to maintain its own course while paddling upstream against a tsunami of events on the ground and public outrage:

Here is the simple truth about Iraq today: This country is so broken it can't even have a proper civil war…Iraq is in so many pieces now, divided among warlords, foreign terrorists, gangs, militias, parties, the police, and the army, that nobody seems able to deliver anybody. Iraq has entered a stage beyond civil war--it's gone from breaking apart to breaking down. This is not the Arab Yugoslavia anymore. It's Hobbes's jungle.

Given this, we need to face our real choices in Iraq, which are: TEN MONTHS OR TEN YEARS. Either we just get out of Iraq in a phased withdrawal over ten months, and try to stabilize it some other way, or we accept the fact that the only way it will not be a failed state is if WE START OVER AND REBUILD IT FROM THE GROUND UP, WHICH COULD TAKE TEN YEARS. THIS WOULD REQUIRE REINVADING IRAQ, WITH AT LEAST 150,000 MORE TROOPS, CRUSHING THE SUNNI AND SHIITE MILITIAS, CONTROLLING THE BORDERS, AND BUILDING IRAQ'S INSTITUTIONS AND POLITICAL CULTURE FROM SCRATCH.

Anyone who tells you that we can just train a few more Iraqi troops and police officers and then slip out in two or three years is either lying or a fool…

This has left us with two impossible choices. If we're not ready to do what is necessary to crush the dark forces in Iraq and properly rebuild it, then we need to leave--BECAUSE TO JUST KEEP STUMBLING ALONG AS WE HAVE BEEN MAKES NO SENSE. IT WILL ONLY MEAN THROWING MORE GOOD LIVES AFTER GOOD LIVES INTO A DEEPER AND DEEPER HOLE FILLED WITH MORE AND MORE BROKEN PIECES. (emphasis mine)
--"Ten Months or Ten Years," Thomas Friedman, New York Times, November 29, 2006

DUNCAN HUNTER IS A MORON

2006-11-27T09:22:00.000-08:00

Rep. Duncan Hunter (Rep.-Calif.), said that 33 trained Iraqi battalions, now serving in provinces that are relatively peaceful, should be moved into Baghdad or other areas where there is fighting. "Saddle those guys up, move them into the fight," Hunter said on NBC's "Meet the Press." He added, "Nothing trains a combat unit better than actually being in military operations."
--"Lawmakers Criticize Training and Deployment of Iraqi Forces (Report Casts Doubt on Ability to Replace U.S. Troops), Walter Pincus, Washington Post, November 27, 2006

You remember who Duncan Hunter is, don'tcha?

Yeah, he was the right-wing Republican congressman who tried to pass a law last year banning American women troops from combat zones.

This provoked a hue and cry of outrage from none other than the Pentagon, who politely informed Duncan Hunter of two little factoids: first of all, female troops comprise no less than 30% of all our armed forces in Iraq, and that, second, THERE IS NO COMBAT ZONE IN IRAQ; IT'S ALL COMBAT ZONES--so to take all the women soldiers and Marines out of Iraq would, effectively, cripple American fighting forces there.

Then, Duncan Hunter did one more little act as a congressman the week before the elections that was, basically, overlooked by the media: He fired Stuart Bowen.

You remember Stuart Bowen, don'tcha?

Yeah, he was the Republican lawyer whose job it was to expose rampant corruption in the private contracting of Iraqi reconstruction, and who had revealed all sorts of horrors while doing so.

So of course, Duncan Hunter fired him. Then he announced he was going to run for president on the Republican ticket in 2008.

But his firing of Bowen raised a hue and cry of outrage from none other than fellow Republican senators and congressmen--powerful Republicans--who vowed to REHIRE Bowen as soon as possible so that he could continue doing his utterly essential job without fear of being fired by morons.

And so now, the moron is at it again.

And I wouldn't mind so much if those Sunday morning talk shows didn't give him generous sound-bite time without showing him what a moron he is.

This legitimizes yet another idiotic idea from Duncan Hunter.

Because, the main, very simple point that nobody reminds him of is that General Casey DID request SIX BATTALIONS of Iraqi Army forces to help settle the chaos in Baghdad, AND ONLY TWO SHOWED UP. Nobody in the Iraqi government, I might add, attempted to force them to deploy to Baghdad.

And it is the job of the Iraqi Army--not Americans--to move their soldiers around. Only two out of six requested, however, deigned to meet the request. So HOW, PRECISELY, DUNCAN HUNTER, ARE WE SUPPOSED TO "SADDLE UP" THOSE IRAQI TROOPS IF THEY DON'T WANT TO RIDE?

But don't take my word for it.

…the latest study by Anthony H. Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. A Pentagon official in the Reagan administration and a specialist in Middle East intelligence and military matters, Cordesman just returned from Iraq, where he received briefings from military and civilian officials.

One of Cordesman's central issues is that PUBLIC STATEMENTS BY THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT "SEVERELY DISTORTED THE TRUE NATURE OF IRAQI FORCE DEVELOPMENT IN WAYS THAT GROSSLY EXAGGERATE IRAQI READINESS AND CAPABILITY TO ASSUME SECURITY TASKS AND REPLACE U.S. FORCES." He also writes that "U.S. official reporting is so misleading that there is no way to determine just how serious the problem is, and what resources will be required." (emphasis mine)

Cordesman says the Pentagon's Aug. 21 status report, which was sent to Congress, lists 312,400 men "trained and equipped" among the Iraqi army and national and regular police. But it adds that "no one knows how many…are actually still in service." At the same time, he writes, "ALL UNCLASSIFIED REPORTING ON UNIT EFFECTIVENESS HAS BEEN CANCELLED." (emphasis mine)

Criticizing statements about how many Iraqi army units are "in the lead," Cordesman notes that the Iraqi army "lacks armor, heavy firepower, tactical mobility and an Iraqi Air Force capable of providing combat support."

"No administration official has presented any plan to properly equip the Iraqi forces to stand on their own or give them the necessary funding to phase out U.S. combat and air support in 12 to 18 months," Cordesman says. He writes that the IRAQI ARMY COULD NEED U.S. SUPPORT THROUGH 2010. (emphasis mine)

…Cordesman described the situation as "far worse" with the regular police, where "desertion rates are far higher than with the regular Army forces and National Police. He cites the Pentagon report as saying, "there is currently no screening process to ascertain militia allegiance" and "no method exists to track the success rate of these or other police officers."
--"Lawmakers Criticize Training and Deployment of Iraqi Forces (Report Casts Doubt on Ability to Replace U.S. Troops), Walter Pincus, Washington Post, November 27, 2006

I'm sick of this, guys.

I'm sick and tired of flashy politicians with a gift for the soundbite giving credence to Pentagon lies and distortions.

This is how we got into this war and this why we're still stuck in it.

There can be no amount of studies and panels and commissions to examine this terrible situation until everybody involved speaks truth to power. And that has to include the media, whose job it is to INVESTIGATE these statements for their veracity rather than just moving on to the next question.

My Republican husband, a Vietnam combat veteran who supported the war in Iraq for a very long time, said something last night that resonates with me. He said, "What's happening now is exactly what happened with Vietnam. While all these politicians dither around and make media statements, our troops are still dying. They're dying every day while people argue."

I told him that this is because nobody in power really WANTS a solution.

All the want is to COVER THEIR ASS.

So go ahead, Duncan Hunter. Get your little self out there to the Anbar, where, contrary to administration reports, MORE MARINES HAVE DIED IN THE PAST THREE MONTHS THAN ANY AMERICAN TROOPS IN BAGHDAD.

Go on out there, buddy, and saddle up that Iraqi army.

See if you get any further than the Marines have, you moron.

FEEL SAFE, AMERICA! THE PENTAGON & THE DEPT. OF HOMELAND SECURITY ARE PROTECTING US FROM DANGEROUS CELLS OF PEACE ACTIVISTS!

2006-11-26T09:22:00.000-08:00

A year ago, an NBC News investigation revealed the existence of a secret Pentagon database that included information on antiwar protests and American peace activists.

Now, newly disclosed documents reveal new details on who was targeted and which other governmental agencies may have helped monitor Americans. At universities across the country, an antiwar group called Veterans for Peace has staged protests by setting up crosses for soldiers killed in Iraq. In New Mexico last year, the local paper described the event as a display of honor.

But a previously secret Pentagon intelligence report labeled that same event a "threat to military installations"…

"No, we are not a threat to military installations," says Michael McPhearson, the leader of Veterans for Peace and a former Army captain whose son recently returned from Iraq. "We're not trying to blow up anything or anything of that nature.

"It angers me that the rights I'm supposed to be protecting I can't exercise without the government looking at me and calling me the enemy," McPhearson says.

Pentagon documents…provide new details on how even Quakers and churches came to be labeled "threats" worthy of attention of the military…The documents also suggest…that agents of the Dept. of Homeland Security played a role in monitoring antiwar activities.
--"Democrats want to See Citizen-Monitoring Databases," Lisa Myers, NBC News, November 22, 2006

You know, we've seen this before, guys.

Remember how Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover salted all the antiwar movements with FBI agents because they were soooo sure that the movement was not run by angry students who faced the draft and eventual deployment to an unwinnable war, and peace activist clergy, but by Communists determined to take over our country?

Documents released years later showed an appalling amount of not just spying on American citizens suspected of antiwar activities, but outright harassment. There is an extensive file on John Lennon, alone, because of his antiwar activities.

This is the very reason that reasonable people want to see judicial oversight on governmental wiretapping of so-called "terrorists." Under this administration's paranoia, ANYBODY can be classified "terrorist."

Even veterans and Quakers.

IT HAS HAPPENED TO ME.

A friend who was traveling overseas accessed "Blue Inkblots" on a computer available at a military base in Germany. He printed up a couple of posts to read later, and the next day, he returned to the base to use the computer.

But "Blue Inkblots" had been BLOCKED by the State Department!

Later, I read that this is routine for any online sentiments that are expressed against the war on computers available at government facilities of all kinds. However, those commentators and bloggers who support administration policies ARE NOT BLOCKED on the same computers!

This is not what freedom and democracy is.

But I'll let someone else speak to the issue. I believe he should have the final word:

Different men often see the same subject in different lights…For my own part I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason toward my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly Kings.

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past…

Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusion of phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?

The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, and the brave.
--"Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" Patrick Henry, (excerpts from) Speech delivered March 23, 1775, at historic St. John's Church, Richmond, Virginia before the Virginia Convention of 1775

THE "AWFUL EMPTY CHAIR" AT THE TABLE

2006-11-23T08:24:00.000-08:00

Grief is magnified during the holidays, and with the toll in Iraq steadily mounting, there are now thousands of families across the U.S. who are faced, like Sergeant Baker's relatives, with an awful empty space at their Thanksgiving tables.

…"For everybody, it's the same horrible loss. It's the same tragedy. It doesn't make any difference whether someone was for or against the war…The pain is the same."
--"The Empty Chair at the Table," Bob Herbert, New York Times, November 23, 2006

Rex told his dad that he had "seen more and done more than any 21-year old ought to have to in an entire lifetime!" That was about a month before his death. Rex no longer has the nightmares and sleepless nights, he no longer has to worry about shooting women and children or losing his "nerve". God has removed the fear and wiped the tears away for Rex. A sniper took his life, but God has the capacity to infuse suffering with purpose.
--Personal letter from Edie Page, mother of Pfc. Rex Page, to me, in response to a letter of condolence I sent to her when Rex, who was a member of my son's platoon, was killed in the Anbar province of Iraq on June 28, 2006

I've been told I am obsessed with the war in Iraq. From those who do not understand the nature of that obsession, I have been criticized, even mocked, for my passionate beliefs concerning this war.

It does not help that I held those beliefs long before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. It does not help that every single thing I said--or shouted--before that invasion has now come to pass. It does not even help that the majority of the American public finally came around three years, eight months, and 2, 869 American deaths in Iraq and 351 American dead in Afghanistan, and 21,485 maimings and mutilations of American soldiers and Marines later to realizing that it just might not have been worth it.

It sounds very patriotic to refer to brave women like Edie Page as GOLD STAR MOTHERS. A gold star is, after all, a good thing. It's what kindergarten teachers sometimes put on the papers of their students who have done well.

It's a way to soothe ourselves and make ourselves feel better. We hold them up to heroic standards and give stirring speeches about their patriotic and noble sacrifices for their country.

It doesn't feel very patriotic, however, when the box arrives a couple months after the dead are buried. The one full of their things from the war: their letters from home and their CD's and their pictures of their kids or their wives or girlfriends or moms and dads, and their Bibles and their teddy bears and their favorite mementoes that remind them of home and their combat boots.

Did you know that the Army unit who is tasked with sorting through those things and packing them up for the families has to limit their rotations to three months?

This is because the stress is so terrible for them, so awful, that the human psyche just can't bear it for any longer than that without suffering symptoms of severe post traumatic stress.

You sit there all day long, for three months, sorting through those treasures and lovingly packing them up for grieving families, and see how well you hold up. Though they take their jobs very seriously and are very proud of what they do, when it gets right down to it, most of them who do this would rather get shot at.

And then the box gets home and families often put up makeshift shrines to their beloved soldier or Marine. They put up the posthumous Purple Heart and the other medals, and the snapshots, and the high school sports trophies, and the horse show ribbons, and the tri-cornered flag.

This is all they have left.

Some mothers, like Celeste Zappala, the mother of Sherwood Baker, the soldier who was written about so eloquently in Bob Herbert's piece, become peace activists. They join organizations like Gold Star Families for Peace or Military Families Speak Out. They protest the bloodbath.

That doesn't help either, really.

"Where's the comfort in being right?" Mrs. Zappala asked. "Everything we said was right. Sherwood died looking for weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist. All the nonsense about the al Qaeda connections and Sept. 11th. They were all lies. It was all wrong. But none of that brings Sherwood back to the table."
--"The Empty Chair at the Table," Bob Herbert, New York Times, November 23, 2006

Others, like my son's buddy Rex's mom, search for meaning in their personal religious faith, and cling to that to get them through the harrowing nights and endless days.

We have now lost just about as many soldiers and Marines to the Iraq war as we lost in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9/11.

In Iraq, IN ONE MONTH ALONE, they lost--and continue to lose--at least that many--probably many more. Every month. And while they do most of it to themselves, it was this administration who used American troops as if they were, say, a big bodyguard, ordered by the CEO to take a baseball bat to smash a gigantic hornet's nest. They're now being asked to stand still while the hornets swarm around their head and sting their eyes, nose, and mouth because nobody seems to know what else to do. The CEO of course, will never get stung.

Those who insist that what we must continue standing by the hornet's nest, that it's the right and true thing, use twisted statistics to back up their case.

Like the one about how re-enlistments are at an all-time high.

I saw one Republican congressman refer to this as, "The men and women fighting this war know they have a real mission to accomplish. That's why their re-enlistments are higher than ever."

Sounds great, until you talk to the actual soldiers and Marines. You find out then that many of them are forced to remain in the service EVEN WHEN IT IS TIME TO RETIRE.

The most common tactic being used by the military service right now to ensure re-enlistment is to threaten that if they do not re-enlist, that they will be sent back to the war, and then promised that, if they do re-enlist, they will not have to go back for at least two years. The confused--usually young--troops then sign the papers--and are promptly sent back to war.

This is the truth. This is what is happening. It's called the back-door draft.

That doesn't even count those who muster out, then get married, start a family, maybe sign up for college only to be called back in and sent back to war.

It's the dirty little secret behind all the yellow ribbons, waving flags, and anti-draft debates.

"This is why so many are getting out, even though they intended to spend a career in the military. They're being treated dirty. That's not right. Just because we're at war doesn't mean you can't be treated right."
--the wife of a retired Brigadier General, in an e-mail to me

Today, Thanksgiving Day, three more Marines died in the Anbar. That means that on Thanksgiving Day, maybe just as the families were about to sit down to dinner, they got the dreaded knock on the door and their lives were stripped bare to the bone.

Today, Thanksgiving Day, thousands of American troops are serving in a war for the second, third, or fourth family holiday in the past four or five years.

Their children are growing up without them, and there is still an awful empty chair at the table, even though they will--hopefully--return one day to take their seats. I can tell you, from experience, that it is a horrible way to spend a holiday. You don't just miss them, you are terrified for them. And they try so hard to be brave when all they want is just to come home.

But Edie Page's boy will not be among the number who gets to come home. Not now. Not ever. He was a big, sweet, goofy, funny, kind-hearted Marine who was utterly dependable in battle and a friend to all who knew him. He was cherished by his family and beloved by his buddies.

He lived 21 years on this earth.

It's not enough.

People say I'm obsessed by this war.

Until all those Thanksgiving tables are full again, you're damn right I'll be obsessed.

GOD BLESS YOU, MEN AND WOMEN OF OUR ARMED FORCES WHO FIGHT SO VERY FAR FROM HOME ON THIS DAY.

YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN.

SHOUTING DOWN THE WALLS OF THE WHITE HOUSE

2006-11-21T07:28:00.000-08:00

Attempting to describe the enemy, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, the DIA director, listed "Iraqi nationalists, ex-Baathists, former military, angry Sunni, jihadists, foreign fighters and al-Qaeda," who create an "overlapping, complex, and multi-polar Sunni insurgent and terrorist environment." He added that "Shia militias and Shia militants, some Kurdish pesh merga, and extensive criminal activity further contribute to violence, instability and insecurity."
--"Violence in Iraq Called Increasingly Complex," Walter Pincus, Washington Post, November 17, 2006.

In the predominantly Shi'ite south of the country, rival militias conduct their own version of gang warfare. In the Sunni Arab areas of western Iraq, there is mushrooming mayhem among foreign jihadists, local insurgents, criminal bands, and tribal fighters…

Because the resistance against foreign occupation has largely been transformed into a sectarian vendetta that hides a struggle for power, there is little chance that an increase in U.S. troop levels or more aggressive tactics could defeat the insurgents or even produce a tolerable level of security.
--"Lost Illusions in Iraq," editorial, Boston Globe, November 19, 2006

What has changed, military experts and intelligence officials say, is that the insurgency of Baathists and foreign jihadists is no longer the greatest enemy the United States faces in Iraq.
--"A Shifting Enemy: U.S. Generals Say Civil War, Not Insurgency, is Greatest Threat," Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, November 18, 2006

Contrary to all the cute White House slogans about how if we "quit" in Iraq and bring the troops home, that the terrorists will follow them to our front yards, the vast overwhelming majority of violence that we are seeing in Iraq right now has nothing to do with terrorists. It has to do with a country--brutally held together by a maniacal dictator for 30 years--coming completely apart.

In order to understand what is happening in Iraq today, you have to imagine a jigsaw puzzle--say it pictures a map of Iraq--that is alive, and each one of the pieces is busy attacking the other pieces. With the possible exception of the Kurdish area, which has been its own little country ever since the Gulf War anyway--the whole puzzle is pretty much on fire.

Areas that the White House has touted as great success stories--Basra, to the south, for instance, in which the Brits handed over control to the Iraqi army some months ago--is a cauldron of mayhem now. In fact, the least-reported story of this war is that the day after the big ceremony just before the British soldiers pulled out of Basra, the post where they had been living and which had been turned over to the Iraqis, was looted and stripped while Iraqi forces stood by impassively.

So the whole fear-mongering election-year tactic of this war-mongering administration, that catchy little slogan that the terrorists would follow us home if we left Iraq and, as that genius-in-his-own-mind Bill O'Reilly rather hysterically pointed out, "would be fighting us on every street in America"--that mushroom-cloud hype was just so much bologney.

Here's the thing about the Anbar. If we pulled out, what would happen is that the new majority, the Shi'ites, who dominate the Iraqi army and outnumber Sunnis by an 80% to 20% margin, would swarm into the Anbar and massacre the Sunnis, who they've long hated even before they were called terrorists. They think the reason the Sunnis have gotten away with the insurgency is that the Americans have not been as bloodthirsty as they should have in getting rid of them.

(Of course, if the Americans HAD annihilated the Sunni insurgency like the Shi'ites want, the bloodshed would have been spilled all over al-Jazeera television 24/7. So we can't win for losing.)

In the used-to-be calm south, rival factions WITHIN the Shi'ites are jockeying for power, invading one another's towns, kidnapping and murdering at will without any interference from all those well-trained Iraqi army and police forces. On one day, one Shi'ite government ministry invaded another government ministry that happened to be mostly Sunni, kidnapped all the men in broad daylight, and drove straight through "police" checkpoints.

When prime minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the Americans out after they had secured a violent neighborhood of Baghdad--because it was a stronghold for Muqtada al-Sadr, whose support Maliki needs--as soon as the Americans left, bombings, kidnappings, torture, and murder of mostly-Sunni neighborhoods returned with a vengeance.

What did the Sunnis do?

Blame the Americans because we actually LISTENED to the prime minister.

In Baghdad, the Sunnis beg the Americans for protection. They say, flat-out, that if they must be arrested, please God let it be the Americans who arrest them. They figure if they are arrested by Baghdad police, they will be tortured to death.

But in Fallujah and Ramadi, the Sunnis can't kill Americans fast enough. I guess they don't talk to each other much on the cellphones they use to set off IEDs.

If we protect Sunnis, it means killing Shi'ites. If we protect Shi'ites, it means killing Sunnis.

Do we pick sides? Right now, we're trying really really hard not to, by rounding up Shi'ite death squads (until the prime minister lets them go) and by going after the Sunnis in the Anbar.

Our troops are walking a tightrope stretched across the Grand Canyon in a high wind without a pole or a lead wire.

So our sloganeering and clueless president says we will "stand up" the Iraqi police and army so we can stand down. Ahhh, sounds so stirring, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, the most recent military strategies put forth seem to say one thing: that we JUST NEED TO TRAIN MORE IRAQIS.

Nobody much asks…What happens to those troops who have been trained? DO they "stand up"? CAN they stand up?

For that answer, we need to ask the soldiers and Marines on the ground who are directly involved in that training. Like this one:

(According to Capt. Stephanie A. Bagley, who commands a military police company in Baghdad):

The local police force in her region, as in much of Iraq, remains undertrained, poorly equipped and unable to stand up to the rigors of this conflict. It offers little resistance to the relentless Sunni Arab-led insurgency and has at least partly come under the sway of wily Shi'ite militias. Casualties are high, morale is low, and many police officers do not show up for work….

"I just want to get everyone home," she said. In the past several weeks, Captain Bagley, 30, barred her troops from foot patrols in the most violent neighborhoods and eliminated all nonessential travel. "I'm just not willing to lose another soldier," she said.
--"A Captain's Journey from Hope to Just Getting Her Unit Home," Kirk Semple, New York Times, November 19, 2006

The article goes on to describe how the Iraqis beg the Americans not to make them go out on patrol, how high the desertion rates are, and so on. This is a company of American military police who are EMBEDDED with the Iraqi police they are training. And it has gotten so dangerous for them--for the Americans, that is--that they don't even go out on foot patrols any more. When they do, the Iraqis beg them not to make them go along.

I am sick and tired unto death of hearing these kinds of "solutions" put forth as if nobody has the slightest idea of what the reality on the ground really is. Ask any military family who's had a loved one deployed to Iraq. Ask them what they think about the well-trained Iraqis. Well, for one thing, they can't tell them where they're going on patrol each day because IT COULD GET THEM BLOWN UP.

This would be a joke if it weren't a nightmare.

And I haven't even touched on the fleeing Iraqi middle class who are leaving the country in droves. Professors, doctors, lawyers and other professionals who have not yet been killed are getting out because they can afford to. The poor pack up what they can carry and hurry by the hundreds of thousands to congregate with their own tribes and sects.

This, my friends, IS A FULL-BLOWN CIVIL WAR. We have not prevented it. We have only been caught in the crossfire.

So if we pull out gradually, then what?

Hardliners all say that a terrible regional war will break out between Sunni nations like Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite nations like Iran.

Haven't we heard this doomsday scenario somewhere before?

Oh yeah. Back during the Vietnam war. That old domino theory. Vietnam falls to communism and all of Indonesia and then Asia follow.

How soon before Hawaii, eh?

So, here we are. Thirty years later.

And the President of the United States is where?

In Vietnam. (His very first visit! How apropos, eh, Vietnam vets?)

Making trade agreements.

So the truth is that if we pull out of Iraq, Iraqis will be so busy killing other Iraqis that they won't really have much time to set up a terrorist stronghold and launch attacks on American soil.

Will other nations rush to finance their factions in the civil war?

They already are.

There is no solution, boys and girls, that is without cost.

And I think the United States and her allies have paid enough.

It's not just me and a few wacky liberal Democrats who feel this way. Here is commentary from two retired army generals, Barry McCaffrey and William Odom, as quoted by Josh Marshall on Talking Points Memo on November 21, 2006:

The quotes were taken from an Army Times interview. (That liberal rag, don'tcha know.)

"The country is not at war. The United States armed forces and the CIA are at war. So we are asking our military to sustain a level of effort that we have not resourced," General McCaffrey told Army Times.

"Our leaders do not act because their reputations are at stake," said General Odom. "The public does not force them to act because it is blinded by the president's conjured set of illusions: that we are reducing terrorism by fighting in Iraq, creating democracy there, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, making Israel more secure, not allowing our fallen soldiers to have died in vain, and others.

But reality no longer can be avoided. It is beyond U.S. power to prevent sectarian violence in Iraq, the growing influence of Iran throughout the region, the probable spread of Sunni-Shi'ite strife to neighboring Arab states, the eventual rise to power of the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr or some other anti-American leader in Baghdad, and the spread of instability beyond Iraq.

These realities get worse every day that our forces remain in Iraq. They can't be wished away by clever diplomacy or by leaving our forces in Iraq for several more years."

This election sent a message, loud and clear, to this administration that the American people have had enough. But the White House still holds the lives of our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan in their blood-stained hands--there is only so much an oppositional Congress can do. They can pass all the laws they want, and Bush can sign statements setting himself free from whatever the law requires. They can appoint commissions to perform investigations, but if he does not have to heed the recommendations. They can even demand accountability with subpoenas, all of which can be tied up in legal wrestling matches until the day he leaves office. Dick Cheney has already stated, flat-out, that he will absolutely not testify before Congress, for any reason.

So what do we do?

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, contrary to what they may believe, do not work for themselves, boys and girls. THEY WORK FOR US.

Remember that old Bible story about the impenetrable walls of the city of Jericho? How impossible it was to scale them and take the city in battle? Joshua, Moses's brother, prayed to God and heard the answer.

Remember how the city fell?

So the people shouted, and the priests blew the trumpets and it came about, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, that the people shouted with a great shout and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up to the city, every man straight ahead, and they took the city.

--Joshua 6:20, New American Standard Bible

I say, for all of us--not just those of us with a vested stake in what happens with this terrible war--

SHOUT. LIFT UP A MIGHTY ROAR TO THE HEAVENS OR AT LEAST CNN AND FOX NEWS. BRING DOWN THE WALLS OF THE WHITE HOUSE WITH OUR COLLECTIVE VOICES.

If you've got a trumpet, blow it. When the walls of the White House finally fall down, even the Oval office will be forced to listen.

WHY THROWING MORE TROOPS AT IRAQ ISN'T THE ANSWER

2006-11-17T16:08:00.000-08:00

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), set to become the Senate Armed Service Committee's ranking minority member, made it clear that he vehemently opposes a time table for withdrawing troops and instead favors a substantial increase in U.S. ground forces in Iraq.
--"U.S. Commander in Iraq to Face Democrats Eager for Troop Cuts," Ann Tyson, Washington Post, November 15, 2006

McCain proposed "sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq, which means "expanding the Army and Marine Corps by as much as 100,000 people."
--NBC's "Meet the Press," with Tim Russert, November 12, 2006.

General Abizaid did not rule out a larger troop increase, but he said the American military was stretched too thin to make such a step possible over the long term. And he said such an expansion might dissuade the Iraqis from making more of an effort to provide for their own security.

"We can put in 20,000 more Americans tomorrow and achieve a temporary effect," he said. "But when you look at the overall American force pool that's available out there, the ability to sustain that commitment is simply not something that we have right now with the size of the Army and Marine Corps…"

"General Shinseki was right that a greater international force contribution, U.S. force contribution and Iraqi force contribution should have been available immediately aft4er major combat operations," General Abizaid said. "I think you can look back and say that more American troops would have been advisable in the early stages of May, June, July."
--"General Warns of Risks in Iraq if G.I.'s Are Cut," Michael Gordon and Mark Mazzetti, "New York Times," November 16, 2006.

"…to imagine more troops, more people and overwhelming force, can still salvage an Iraqi effort, is also wrong. Throwing more resources at Iraq ignores that the country is beyond the tipping point and outside of our ability to influence how it will go (other than to get out and get out of the way.)
--"The Gates Agenda and the Public Demand," William Arkin on National and Homeland Security blog for the Washington Post, November 16, 2006.

It took a general to finally tell the truth to Senator John McCain about his big idea to send MORE troops to Iraq to end this thing than less.

God bless John McCain. He has served our nation with dignity and courage, and he--unlike the vast overwhelming majority of senators and congresspeople and administration warmongers--has a son in the Marine Corps who is soon to deploy to the Anbar province.

I know he has agonized over this question and I know that he has insisted on more troops from the very beginning of this war. I give him credit for that. And if--as General Abizaid pointed out--if General Shinseki had been listened to in 2003 rather than FIRED for speaking truth, we might not even be having this discussion.

But it's too late now. The truth is, we don't HAVE all those troops Sen. McCain wants, and we won't have them unless there is a national draft.

I've been watching news anchors and commentators and media pundits tossing McCain all kinds of softballs on this issue, and I've been watching him continue to assert that more troops is the answer now in Iraq, and not a single one that I have seen has EVER asked him…WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO GET THEM?

Finally, when he had a chance to try out his theory in front of the cameras by putting the question to the general in charge of making such decisions, he was quickly shot down by the simple, raw, unpleasant and uncomfortable truth that the military has been stretched too thin by two wars bravely fought but badly managed.

There's one more little factoid that nobody is mentioning: If even Gen. Abizaid calls for 20,000 more troops, guess where they will have to come from?

BY EXTENDING THE TOURS OF THOSE ALREADY IN-COUNTRY.

Just so that is perfectly clear to everybody.

I've been mulling this over and feeling fretful and frustrated over this issue because nobody has really been ferreting out the truth or even ASKING people like McCain what he means.

But it took a brand-new column by Fareed Zakaria, the foreign-affairs columnist for Newsweek, to absolutely hit the bull's-eye on this topic. For those of you who don't know, Mr. Zakaria was fully in favor of the war in Iraq and supported the administration for the first couple of years, until things had deteriorated to the progressively alarming levels that we see now. He says:

This is not our chessboard. The Iraqi government has authority over all the political issues in the country…There is a desperate neoconservative plea for more troops to try one more time in Iraq. But a new military strategy, even with adequate forces, cannot work without political moves to reinforce it. The opposite is happening today. American military efforts are actually being undermined by Iraq's government. The stark truth is, we do not have an Iraqi partner willing to make the hard decisions. Wishing otherwise is, well, wishful thinking…

Time is not on America's side. Month by month, U.S. influence in Iraq is waning. Deals that we could have imposed on Iraq's rival factions in 2003 are now impossible…

…America's only real leverage is the threat of withdrawal. Many outsiders fail to grasp how much political power the United States has handed over in Iraq…Washington can warn the ruling coalition that unless certain conditions are met, U.S. troops will begin a substantial drawdown, quit providing basic security on the streets of Iraq and instead take on a narrower role, akin to the Special Forces mission in Afghanistan.

And one last thing: for such a threat to be meaningful, we must be prepared to carry it out.
"Don't Punt on the Troops Issue," Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria, November 20, 2006.

As I have stated many times, I really hate these extremist either-or arguments, like the only people we can trust to figure out what to do in Iraq is Ann Coulter and Michael Moore.

For Republicans to continually spread the mythology that all Democrats want only to cut-and-run, to pull out every last troop tomorrow and tuck our tails between our legs is not only A LIE but it does not help in meaningful discourse over what to do next in this impossible situation.

But it is the responsibility of the news media which disseminates facts--not entertainment--to analyze and dissect all the ideas that are on the table.

If partitioning the country won't work, let's have an honest dialogue about WHY.

And when a popular and experienced senator appears on just about every news outlet insisting that more troops will solve this thing, somebody somewhere needs to ask him the hard questions.

And when well-meaning and patriotic Americans everywhere talk about how terribly important it is for us to stay in Iraq IN FORCE, for as long as ten more years, which is something I've heard repeatedly…

Then they need to ask…Am I ready to send my OWN son or daughter or young husband or young wife or young mother or young father to the war in Iraq?

Do I embrace a NATIONAL DRAFT in order to provide the military with the extra troops such a plan would necessitate?

Am I ready to admit that the current policy of sending the same troops back and back and back again for repeated deployments--three in three or four years--IS NOT GOING TO WORK INDEFINITELY?

Am I ready to FACE THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BACK-DOOR DRAFT--those troops who are forced to remain in the armed forces after they have served their country honorably and bravely, by being refused retirement or being threatened into re-enlisting or stopped from returning home after a whole year in combat or yanked back in, as one Marine I know of--before he's even been out of the service for one month, and sent BACK TO IRAQ?

How about, if their unit is due to deploy to the war just as they are due to get out of the service, they are forced into ANOTHER UNIT which is DEPLOYING SOONER so that they STILL HAVE TO RETURN TO WAR?

This is happening, boys and girls, as I write.

For those of you so certain our staying indefinitely is the only answer, are you ready to admit THIS IS NOT FAIR, and to do something about it?

Are you willing to make the same sacrifice? Bear the same burden?

This president has been only too happy to use this war for political rabble-rousing, but strangely, has asked of no sacrifice from the American people at large for a war that has dragged on now, longer than World War II.

Did you know that only approximately ten percent of Americans currently serve in the armed forces?

That's ten percent fighting the same war, year after year, over and over.

Are you aware that, recently, the U.S. Army extended its enlistment age to 42, and started allowing in high-school drop-outs and those with criminal records because they can't make their enlistment goals?

Sen. McCain means well, and I give him credit for that. He is advocating what he thinks would serve the greatest purpose to protect his own boy and all of our men and women overseas. I am not arguing the fact--on the face of it--that more troops might work temporarily. (Although, we need only observe what happened in Yugoslavia 30 years after the Russian troops came in. As soon as they left, the country turned into a boiling cauldron of sectarian conflict and ethnic cleansing. So more troops can only work for as long as more troops stay.)

After all, WE SENT MORE TROOPS TO BAGHDAD. WE SHUT DOWN A NEIGHBORHOOD. THE PRIME MINISTER ASKED US TO LEAVE. WE DID. AFTERWARD, DOZENS MORE IRAQIS DIED.

Even more significantly, ONE GOVERNMENT MINISTRY INVADED ANOTHER MINISTRY WITH TROOPS AND CARRIED OUT EVERY MALE ON THE PREMISES AND DROVE THEM AWAY IN OFFICIAL VEHICLES, A MASSIVE KIDNAPPING IN BROAD DAYLIGHT BETWEEN GOVERNMENT FACTIONS.

Is that a civil war, mommy?

But what I'm saying, bottom line--and what Gen. Abizaid is saying, is that, it's too late to send hundreds of thousands more troops. We haven't got unlimited troops for an extended deployment and we haven't got the equipment.

There are hundreds of IED attacks on American troops every single day in Iraq, and every time a humvee or other vehicle hits an IED, it is either destroyed or in need of major repairs.

So let's stop thinking about HOW WE WOULD LIKE THINGS TO BE and start looking at THINGS THE WAY THEY REALLY ARE.

And let's stop pretending that all Democrats are Michael Moore and all Republicans are Ann Coulter and let's roll up our sleeves and come up with something workable to get our exhausted and overworked troops out of hell.

What happens to Iraq afterward is up to Iraq.

BUSH'S SECRET PLAN TO IGNORE THE IRAQ STUDY GROUP

2006-11-15T14:32:00.000-08:00

The initiative, begun after Bush met at the White House with his foreign policy team, parallels the effort by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group…the White House wants to complete the process before mid-December, about the time the Iraq Study Group's final report is expected…But the administration is basically trying to do in one month what the ISG has done over eight months…

… In a measure of the suddenness and importance of the review, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice this week postponed a long-planned trip to an Asia-Pacific conference in Vietnam to take part in discussions about Iraq…

The White House's decision CHANGES THE DYNAMICS OF WHAT HAPPENS NEXT TO U.S. POLICY DELIBERATIONS. The administration will have IT'S OWN WORKING DOCUMENT as well as recommendations from an independent bipartisan commission to consider as it struggles to prevent further deterioration in Iraq… (emphasis mine)

THE WHITE HOUSE REVIEW COULD GIVE THE ADMINISTRATION ALTERNATIVES SO THAT IT FEELS LESS PRESSURE TO FULLY IMPLEMENT THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE IRAQ STUDY GROUP REPORT, FOREIGN POLICTY EXPERTS SAID. (emphasis mine)

Bush made the decision after his national security team held secret meetings Friday and Saturday to discuss…implications for Iraq after the Republican defeat in midterm elections. Further meetings were held Monday…
--"Bush Initiates Iraq Policy Review Separate from Baker's Group's," Robin Wright, Washington Post, November 15, 2006

"The president indicated Monday that he was interested in hearing interesting ideas…" a White House official said.
--ibid

I really hate being right all the time.

I told this to my husband and he did not argue with me. My Republican husband did not argue with me. Not when it comes to the war.

I said, all along, that the big deal being made about the Iraq Study Group by the chattering class would not amount to a small hill of beans if this president chose not to listen, and he said, himself, and I saw him say it, "I don't have to do what the Iraq Study Group suggests. It's just suggestions."

And then along came the midterm elections--which his brain, Karl Rove, assured him was in the bag for Republicans.

As I stated before, the Iraq Study Group was absolutely NOT Bush's idea, and he would not have gone along with it if Congress had not taken the matter out of his hands. He was going along, patting the ISG on their collective heads and saying, "That's nice, guys," while diddly-bopping along his merry Rummy/Cheney-directed path.

Then the American people took a baseball bat to his head and forced him to realize that they were not going to stand for same-old same-old any more just because their fearless leader said, "Trust me."

I think he was just as stunned by that as he was by the uproar caused by the Harriet Myers nomination, when basically, he told Congress, "Trust me. She'd make a great Supreme Court justice."

He just can't get it through his head that he has to be accountable to the American people for the war he forced them to fight.

So now, here we are. He's backed up against the wall with this ISG coming closer and closer and all the pundits saying it was HIS idea all along to bring in Daddy to help WHEN IT WASN'T!!!!

So what does he do? How does he make it so that he can cover his ass and at the same time, ignore the careful deliberations of this nonpartisan group of experts?

Well, first he calls a secret meeting of his secret guys, and tells them, "I want my own study group. I want the results the same time theirs are ready. And it better say what I want it to say if you know what I mean."

No, I wasn't there and no, I can't prove that's what he said, but considering the kinds of things he's been saying for years and years now, it's a good bet. There isn't enough time, anyway, for this to be any kind of across-the-board study that carefully examines all options, the way the ISG is doing. It was thrown together so fast that Rice had to postpone an important trip to make the meeting. It's got to be a classic CYAC--Cover Your Ass Commission.

This way, when the ISG makes its highly public release of its findings, and it says things he does not want to hear and puts forth ideas for things he does not want to do, he will have his rebuttal argument all ready; his own personal facts and figures, so he can say,

"Thank you for your wonderful work. Really. This is so interesting. I am always interested in interesting ideas."