War in IraqMost Popular Posts in This Category
11.08.06
OH BEAUTIFUL DAY!!!!!!!!!!Rumsfeld steps down after 2006 Election!
Americans demand accountability at last! 11.03.06
No Accountability, No OversightReally, this summarizes everything about George, Rummy, and Dick’s excellent adventure in Iraq:
Investigations led by a Republican lawyer named Stuart W. Bowen Jr. in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces.
And tucked away in a huge military authorization bill that President Bush signed two weeks ago is what some of Mr. Bowen’s supporters believe is his reward for repeatedly embarrassing the administration: a pink slip. The order comes in the form of an obscure provision that terminates his federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, on Oct. 1, 2007. The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference, and it has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation. I’m sure they’re were shocked, shocked. This is your Republican house leadership in action. This is why the Republicans need to be stopped on November 7th. (just in case you were wondering) 11.01.06
Laying Down the GauntletHere’s an ad from the DCCC that smacks down the Bush Administration over the war in Iraq (via Atrios): What I love about this ad is the way that it takes all the characteristics of Republican attack ads — the ominous narration; the spooky music; the oversized quotations from newspapers — and puts them in service not of false accusations, racist innuendos, or vague fears, but rather the cold, hard facts about the most disastrous war in recent memory. 10.30.06
Shooting Ourselves in the FootFrom The New York Times: U.S. Is Said to Fail in Tracking Arms for Iraqis (via Upyernoz):
The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis, a federal report released Sunday has concluded.
[. . .] The answers came Sunday from the inspector general’s office, which found major discrepancies in American military records on where thousands of 9-millimeter pistols and hundreds of assault rifles and other weapons have ended up. The American military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of nearly half a million weapons provided to Iraqis, the inspector general found, making it impossible to track or identify any that might be in the wrong hands. Exactly where untracked weapons could end up — and whether some have been used against American soldiers — were not examined in the report, although black-market arms dealers thrive on the streets of Baghdad, and official Iraq Army and police uniforms can easily be purchased as well, presumably because government shipments are intercepted or otherwise corrupted. In a written response to the inspector general’s findings, the American military largely conceded the shortcomings. Greeaaat. But it gets even better:
Because the inspector general is charged only with looking at weaponry financed directly by the American taxpayer, the total of lost weapons could end up being higher.
Dig them ditches, boys — on the double! 10.23.06
Up is Down, Black is WhiteAnd truth is black and blue, all over. I didn’t post about Bush’s ridiculous claim, this past weekend, that his administration has never had a “stay the course” policy in Iraq. It just seemed too . . . too obvious a lie, even for this administration, for it to be taken seriously by anyone. The evidence to the contrary is out there, and we’re living in the YouTube age; some industrious teenager has, no doubt, already compiled a series of clips of Bush saying the words “stay the course” over and over again, with “Would I Lie to You?” playing in the background. But Bush’s assertion has, apparently, gone unchallenged by CBS and the AP (via Atrios). This silence on the part of the mainstream press goes way beyond attack-poodle punditry (poodluntrity?). We have arrived at a point when even the most basic, the most obvious, the most bold-faced of lies is allowed to propagate itself, like a virus, throughout the media landscape, without even so much as an antibody in sight. The sad thing is that we reached that point five years ago. Lord, November 7th can’t come soon enough, can it? There is one constituency I worry about, though, in all of this: the Republican pundits. After months — nay, years — of faithfully regurgitating the Republic “stay the course” mantra, these pundits have been left abruptly by the President with no rhetorical ground upon which to stand. The script has been changed at the last minute; all of those perfectly-timed sneers and knowing smiles will now have to be reworked into an entirely new routine. That’s got to be a hard life, being a Republican marionette whose handlers have started to tangle all of the strings. But, I’ll say one thing for them: those suckers sure know how to dance. I just wish they’d tango out of the room, already.
Update: Think Progress has a nice collection of “stay the course” clips (second video on that page). Sadly, The Eurythmics do not make an appearance. Update 2: Awesome (via Atrios):
10.16.06
The Swiftboating of an American SoldierI spent this past weekend buried in an avalanche of student papers (I’m still picking a few dangling modifiers out of my hair). When I did take a break to watch some Eagles football, my enjoyment was marred not only by the inability of the Eagles coaching staff to count to twelve, but also by a number of Republican attack ads. More than one of them came from the campaign of Mike Fitzpatrick, a loathsome Bucks-county congressman trying to hold on to his seat against the wildy popular campaign of Patrick Murphy. Faced with increasingly disturbing poll numbers, Fitzpatrick has taken the ultimate low road: he has attempted to “swiftboat” Patrick Murphy’s military service. Have they no shame? Don’t answer that. Patrick is not one to take such insults lying down. On his blog, he responds:
There is nothing that I hold more pride in than my service to our country. From the halls of West Point to the streets of Baghdad, I served honorably, and my record reflects my service. There is camaraderie among veterans - we understand that everyone who wears the uniform of the United States military has sacrificed, some much more so than others. That is why I was so shocked that Congressman Fitzpatrick, who never wore a military uniform, would hold a press conference to question my service.
Murphy’s campaign has just released a new commercial that manages to convey Patrick’s positive, winning attitude, while also condemning Fitzpatrick’s slimy tactics:
As John Kerry, who knows a thing or two about swiftboating, said when he defended Murphy against these charges:
I won’t stand for the “swift boating” of Patrick Murphy. It disgusts me that a congressman who has never worn the uniform of our country stands there in silence as a veteran home from Iraq has his service disparaged. . . . What is it these Republicans who never served have against Democrats who did? . . . .
You know why Mike Fitzpatrick is engaged in the lowest form of smear and fear politics? Because he’s afraid of actually debating Patrick Murphy about the disastrous war in Iraq. He’s afraid to debate a veteran who lives and breathes the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor. He’s terrified of actually leveling with the American people about the way the administration misled America into war, and admitting their stay the course slogans just guarantee more Americans die for a stand still and lose strategy. It’s time to kick out of office the kind of lowlifes who smear the honor of our nation’s soldiers. You can help by donating to Patrick Murphy’s campaign today. Or, if you’re low on cash, donate your time. Previously: Patrick Murphy: my kind of peeps. 10.13.06
Facing Death in Iraq and Truth in AmericaToday, I watched Oprah interview Frank Rich, the New York Times Op-Ed columnist, on her show; Rich is on tour promoting his new book, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina. It was a cultural moment whose significance (like Oprah’s influence) should not be underestimated. You can read excerpted transcripts from the show on Oprah’s site, which includes a primer on developing critical literacy. Rich, who was, as always, an astute, eloquent, and observant speaker, described the deceptive selling of the War in Iraq and the ways in which those initial untruths have haunted the war (and the Bush Administration) ever since. Speaking about media coverage of the war, Rich said:
The problem in Iraq is that it is so unsafe. A very brave war correspondent for the Times said two weeks ago that 98 percent of the country—and in Baghdad in particular—reporters can’t go to because it’s just too dangerous. More reporters have been killed in this war than any modern war. At a certain point, a place like the New York Times or ABC News has to say, you cannot get killed for the story. That in itself tells us something that the country is so unsafe that we can’t cover it. We rely on Iraqis to cover it and the Iraqis often are so frightened of being seen working for Americans that they won’t reveal their identities to their own families as journalists.
Oprah’s show was telecast only a day after a new report in The Lancet (free registration required) revealed just how superficial our knowledge of the war in Iraq really is. The Lancet study estimated that 665,000 “excess deaths” (see Majikthise’s post on the methodology) have occurred in Iraq since the U.S. invasion:
We estimate that, as a consequence of the coalition invasion of March 18, 2003, about 655 000 Iraqis have died above the number that would be expected in a non-conflict situation, which is equivalent to about 2·5% of the population in the study area. About 601 000 of these excess deaths were due to violent causes. Our estimate of the post-invasion crude mortality rate represents a doubling of the baseline mortality rate, which, by the Sphere standards, constitutes a humanitarian emergency.
Think about that number for a minute. Or, devote a second to thinking about each one of those deaths. What, you don’t have 655,000 seconds to spare? According to this site, a city with a population of 655,000 people would rank as the eighteenth largest city in the U.S. — above Baltimore. And to George W. Bush, it’s all just a comma. 655,000 excess deaths. A city bigger than Baltimore. It boggles the mind. Rich didn’t mention the Lancet study, which was mostly likely published after the show was taped. But he did talk about the television coverage of the war. He noted that the networks presented us with long shots of bombs exploding, but that we never saw the street-level effects of those bombs. It was like a fireworks display, he said. Another guest, Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute, added that no country would be able to sustain war if citizens were able to see its real consequences. One woman got up and said that she had never thought about the television coverage in that way — that she had never considered the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and babies who died in those attacks. 655,000 excess deaths: it’s long past time for Americans to start thinking about that.
Postscript: It’s exactly the type of person who hasn’t thought much about the Iraq War that Oprah’s show is able to reach. Oprah mentioned during the broadcast that when she did a show, before the beginning of the Iraq War, that asked “Is War the Only Answer,” she got the worst hate-mail of her entire career in television. One correspondent called her an “incredible treasonous bitch.” Another said, “I wish you would choke on the ashes of 9/11.” One person told her to “take your hairy black ass back to Africa.” I think it’s important that readers of this site thank Oprah for doing this show. In one hour of broadcast television, she brought Frank Rich’s analysis of “truthiness” into more living rooms than most bloggers could ever hope to reach. Please write to her here. 10.11.06
The WoundedFrom The All-Spin Zone:
The National Security Archive at George Washington University has uncovered a dirty little secret of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts: one of every four veterans of the of the Bush regime’s global war on terror has filed a disability claim with the Veteran’s Administration. Perhaps just as importantly, the VA stonewalled the NSA’s FOIA request for nearly nine months.
Richard goes on to look at the disability classifications used by the VA; “stunning” really is the only word I can find for this: Sec. 4.68 Amputation rule.
The combined rating for disabilities of an extremity shall not exceed the rating for the amputation at the elective level, were amputation to be performed. For example, the combined evaluations for disabilities below the knee shall not exceed the 40 percent evaluation, diagnostic code 5165. This 40 percent rating may be further combined with evaluation for disabilities above the knee but not to exceed the above the knee amputation elective level. Painful neuroma of a stump after amputation shall be assigned the evaluation for the elective site of reamputation. So, that gives you an idea of how the sliding scale works - lose a leg, you’re 40% disabled. I think this guidance paints the VA statistics in even sharper relief, because imagine the trauma required for a 60% or 80% disability rating. Like I said, we’re not talking about bandaids and boo-boo’s. 32,240 GI’s have suffered an injury / disability that’s as bad or worse than an amputated leg. 10.10.06
Bass-AckwardsThe New York Times: For U.S., a Strategic Jolt After North Korea’s Test
As Democrats were quick to note on Monday, four weeks before a critical national election, President Bush and his aides never gave as much priority to countering a new era of proliferation as they did to overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Bush and his aides contend that Iraq was the more urgent threat, in a volatile neighborhood. But the North’s reported nuclear test now raises the question of whether it is too late for the president to make good on his promise that he would never let the world’s “worst dictators” obtain the world’s most dangerous weapons. “What it tells you is that we started at the wrong end of the ‘axis of evil,’ ” former Senator Sam Nunn, the Georgia Democrat who has spent his post-Congressional career trying to halt a new age of proliferation, said in an interview. “We started with the least dangerous of the countries, Iraq, and we knew it at the time. And now we have to deal with that.” It’s time to put the adults back in charge. 09.16.06
ClusterfuckRead it and weep (via Memeorandum):
After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans — restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O’Beirne’s office in the Pentagon.
[. . .] O’Beirne’s staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade . Many of those chosen by O’Beirne’s office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq’s government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance — but had applied for a White House job — was sent to reopen Baghdad’s stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion budget, even though they didn’t have a background in accounting. No wonder we’re now digging trenches around Baghdad. . . Or, as Digby puts it:
But the way the administration went about creating the CPA illustrates everything you need to know about the childlike sciolism of these so-called grown-ups. They insisted on invading a well contained country of 25 million people, ripped its society to shreds, and then put a bunch of low level cronies and inexperienced schoolkids in charge of creating a Club for Growth wet dream in the desert. And they spent billions and billions of dollars failing to do anything but lay the groundwork for civil war. I don’t know if it’s possible to screw up on a grander scale than that.
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