Far Too Little, Far Too Late

And now, in "Fox To Guard Henhouse" news, we have this doozy:

Army Probes War Contractor Fraud
By John Heilprin
The Associated Press
Saturday 27 January 2007

From high-dollar fraud to conspiracy to bribery and bid rigging, Army investigators have opened up to 50 criminal probes involving battlefield contractors in the war in Iraq and the U.S. fight against terrorism, The Associated Press has learned.

Really? 50? $750 Billion in a pointless, never-ending, waste-filled war and they've uncovered a whopping 50 prosecutions? Wow, how DOES the Pentagon do it? It's like living in a town with Matlock AND Jessica from Murder She Wrote.

Senior contracting officials, government employees, residents of other countries and, in some cases, U.S. military personnel have been implicated in millions of dollars of fraud allegations.

But... our troops... must blindly support all troops... militarized population conditioned to support all troops, does not compute... does not compute... Oh, what's that? A "Few Bad Apples?" Oh, okay, then.

"All of these involve operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait," Chris Grey, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, confirmed Saturday to the AP. "CID agents will pursue leads and the truth wherever it may take us," Grey said. "We take this very seriously."

Really? Even into the Vice President's office and Halliburton's corporate offices in the Cayman Islands? Who's fooling whom, here? Maybe the AP laps up your bullshit, but no one else is.

Battlefield contractors have been implicated in allegations of fraud and abuse since the war in Iraq began in spring 2003. A special inspector general office that focused solely on reconstruction spending in Iraq developed cases that led to four criminal convictions.

Really? $18,000,000,000 in reconstruction funds TOTALLY WASTED and all you could find was four fucking cases? WOW! Move over C.S.I., the crack financial forensics team of the Pentagon is on the case. Maybe the fact that the electrical grid doesn't work, the phones don't work, the bridges are all still bombed out, the sewage system barely works and the hospitals all lie in ruins should have tipped the Pentagon's investigators off that a FUCKING LOT of Contractors and major Republican-connected firms took $18,000,000,000 from America's taxpayers and built nothing in return? Fuck you, this is clearly a weak attempt to head off Congressional Investigation, and it ain't gonna work. I, for one, cannot WAIT to watch Henry Waxman crawl right up the Pentagon's ass and shake free documentation on all of the people involved with this debacle and where, exactly, their political contributions went.

The problems stem in part from the Pentagon's struggle to get a handle on the unprecedented number of contractors now helping run the nation's wars. Contractors are used in battle zones to do nearly everything but fight. They run cafeterias and laundries for troops, move supplies, run communication systems and repair weapons systems.

Problems created by none other than Vice President Dick Cheney, when he was back in the Bush Sr. White House and recommended that all non-combat aspects of war be outsourced to private companies who supposedly could do the job cheaper and faster and better. Cheney then left public "service" to run the largest of these new military outsourcing contractors. So yeah, first off, I'm unimpressed by the idea that the Pentagon is "getting a handle on the unprecedented number of contractors now helping run the nation's wars" because they eagerly aided and abetted this change.

Also, I love how the article avoids talking about the OTHER set of major contractors in Iraq: the Private Military Contractors who are taking US tax dollars in return for riding roughshod over the country's civilians, thereby making Iraqis hate us all the more. And where do these $5000/week mercenaries come from? Oh, the US Military trains them at the cost of millions of dollars, then loses them to PMC's the second their committments are finished... a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. First, you've paid a fortune to train these mercenaries, then you pay 100x their old military salaries to do the same job. Where's the "savings" in that?

Special agents from the Army's major procurement fraud unit recently were dispatched to Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, where they are "working closely and sharing information with other law enforcement agencies in the region," Grey said.

"Given the billions of dollars in contract dollars that have been and are being spent, it is our experience that our agents will detect millions of dollars in fraud before we are done," Grey said. "And just as likely, we will be instrumental in bringing back to the U.S. government millions of dollars in recoveries."

Wow, bringing back MILLIONS of dollars. Of course, at $18,000,000,000 that means that even if the Pentagon's investigators return $180 Million dollars, it's still only ONE FUCKING PERCENT of the money which was squandered on Iraq's "rebuilding." And that itself is a drop in the bucket compared to the eventual $1-2 TRILLION dollar cost of this war.

One case involves an Army chief warrant officer accused of taking a $50,000 bribe to steer a contract for paper products and plastic flatware away from a government contractor and to a Kuwaiti company, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday in federal court at Rock Island, Ill.

Prosecutors say the officer took the bribe while at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, while he was the Army's food service adviser for Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, according to the indictment. The officer is also accused of trying to smuggle $40,000 in undeclared cash into the United States on a December 2005 flight from Kuwait to Dover, Del.

Sooo... it wasn't so much that investigators caught this guy and investigated him, it's more that he got caught at the border with $40G in cash and then the Pentagon figured it out. Oh, yeah, my confidence IS high.

Other cases involve a government officer manipulating a contract in exchange for large bribes, a contractor making false claims against the government and an official accepting gratuities. The cases range in type, seriousness and complexity and involve contractors both inside and outside the United States.

Other such cases include a former President earning billions off the war that his son started, a sitting Vice President falsifying evidence for this war in order to drive the price of his corporation's stock up by 700% since he entered office, and a stubborn dry drunk of a president unwilling to change course or even admit he's made any mistakes because he's absolutely certain that his benefactors in the Saudi Royal Family will handsomely reward him with lavish "Speaking Fees" for speeches in return for his having demolished Iraq's ability to pump oil. These cases, however, will NEVER be investigated, because to do so would be to expose our country's leadership as a group of Armaments Manufacturers who are simply imitating their great-grandparent's activities in World War One.

The Pentagon has viewed outsourcing a wide variety of military tasks as much more efficient, leaving troops trained in combat to the business of war.

But the Government Accountability Office reported in December that the military has been losing millions of dollars because it cannot monitor industry workers in far-flung locations. The Defense Department's inability to manage contractors effectively has hurt military operations and unit morale and cost the Pentagon money, the GAO said.

Some 150,000 contractors have been supporting the Army in Southwest Asia, which includes Iraq. That compares with 9,200 contractors in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Commanders are often unsure how many contractors use their bases and require food, housing and protection, according to the report. One Army official said the service estimates losing about $43 million each year on free meals provided to contractors who also get a food allowance.

The new Democratic Congress plans to ramp up oversight of the billions of dollars being spent in Iraq, including dollars awarded to contractors. Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has said he plans to target contractor abuse.

The best news of the entire article, but frankly, it's a bit like closing the barn door after the horses have all run away.

Iraqi Government No Show Jobs

Here's a neat dispatch out of Baghdad that amounts to a progress report on the Iraq parliament, where lawmakers are still finding it difficult to convene because, most of the time, there is no quorum. The New York Times reports that "nearly every session since November has been adjourned" because most lawmakers don't show up for work even though they receive salaries and benefits worth about $120,000, which seems like a ridiculously large sum for Iraq.

I'm used to hearing about "No Show" jobs on mob-controlled construction jobs. I'm not used to hearing about them in Government, although the Republican-controlled 109th Congress did its damnedest to not show up and worked as little as possible (Tuesday through Thursday only, out of the building by 6pm). It looks like someone in Iraq was paying attention.

Hey... maybe Bush is exporting American-style Democracy to Iraq, after all!

Pentagon Spying On Americans. AGAIN.

See, THIS is thinking outside the box. If stupid old Congress makes it difficult for the CIA to spy on America's citizens, then you bypass the CIA and instead assign the Military to spy on America's citizens. You know, that same Military which is oh, so hard-pressed in Iraq. Hey! Looks like I found a few surplus units that aren't doing jack shit and can be instead rotated into the Meat Grinder!

Support Our Troops? Not when the motherfuckers are spying on us, we shouldn't.

Military Expands Intelligence Role in U.S.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.

The C.I.A. has also been issuing what are known as national security letters to gain access to financial records from American companies, though it has done so only rarely, intelligence officials say.

Banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions receiving the letters usually have turned over documents voluntarily, allowing investigators to examine the financial assets and transactions of American military personnel and civilians, officials say.

The F.B.I., the lead agency on domestic counterterrorism and espionage, has issued thousands of national security letters since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, provoking criticism and court challenges from civil liberties advocates who see them as unjustified intrusions into Americans’ private lives.

But it was not previously known, even to some senior counterterrorism officials, that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have been using their own “noncompulsory” versions of the letters. Congress has rejected several attempts by the two agencies since 2001 for authority to issue mandatory letters, in part because of concerns about the dangers of expanding their role in domestic spying.

Oh, Don't Worry, Vice-President Cheney says it's not illegal for him to spy on you for being against Halliburton's his war:

Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday the Pentagon and CIA are not violating people's rights by examining the banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage in the United States.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said his panel will be the judge of that.

National security letters permit the executive branch to seek records about people in terrorism and spy investigations without a judge's approval or grand jury subpoena.

"The Defense Department gets involved because we've got hundreds of bases inside the United States that are potential terrorist targets," Cheney said.

"The Department of Defense has legitimate authority in this area. This is an authority that goes back three or four decades. It was reaffirmed in the Patriot Act," he said. "It's perfectly legitimate activity. There's nothing wrong with it or illegal. It doesn't violate people's civil rights."

This entire issue brings a few things to mind. Firstly, a personal note; I first heard of this entire Pentagon-Is-Spying-On-Americans issue a few months ago when I was in Florida, giving a book reading/slideshow at the Wolfsonian Museum. As I mentioned in my blog at the time, there was a creep with a crew-cut in the audience taking notes on a clipboard the entire time. When my talk was over, I ran into him in the hall and asked if he enjoyed the speech and joked that I hoped he didn't work at the Department of Homeland Security. He replied "See you at Gitmo, kid." Gitmo, of course, being mil-speak for our Gulag at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba. The next day there was a report on the radio about the Pentagon's increased spying on anti-war groups and rallies and things sorta fell into place about my odd museum notes-taker.

Having that guy in the audience made me feel creepy. Which it was obviously intended to do as a means of chilling debate and complaint about Beloved Leader Bush's stupid war. Several of the other museum guests complained to me at the book signing after the night's slideshow about Crewcut Clipboard... ALL of them (and we're talking mostly about elderly men & women 50+ who were docents and benefactors of the Museum, mostly) pegged the mid-40's crewcut guy as DHS. Ooops, turns out we were all wrong, he's Pentagon.

That's the personal side, though. On a Macro level this turn by the Pentagon is highly alarming because the fact is that in the entire history of Mankind, whenever a country's military has been turned into a domestic spying force, it has become a dangerously brutal force for repression of the population and extension of the privileges of the Wealthy and Powerful. Nazi Germany, East Germany, the Soviet Union, Spain, Italy, Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina, Chile... mankind's history is littered with so-called civilized countries whose leaders turned the military into an apparatus for oppressing their people... it ALWAYS starts with spying on them. Only after digging up "suspicious" materials do the killings begin.

So what's Bush's end-game here? Because from the seat of History, it looks rather sinister.

Hanging Saddam, Attempt #2

The New York Times leads with news that the head of Saddam Hussein's half-brother was severed from his body during yesterday's early morning execution. Although Iraqi government officials insist the decapitation was accidental, it sparked protests among Sunni loyalists who said it was a deliberate act of revenge by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.

Iraqi officials say the decapitation happened because they made a mistake when they calculated how high the drop had to be in order to snap the prisoner's neck. The NYT notes that at least one United States Army manual reveals that Iraqis used too much rope. It's a tricky business... too much rope and the head pops off, too little rope and the guy chokes to death for 5 minutes, gurgling and struggling all the while, instead of breaking his neck.

By all accounts it seems the Iraqi government took extra measures yesterday to prevent a repeat of the sectarian taunts that met Saddam Hussein before his execution. A video shown to a small group of journalists seems to back the government's assertion that there were no outbursts from those who witnessed these hangings ("Moqtada Moqtada Moqtada!"), but the fact that officials waited almost 13 hours to show the video seems to suggest they were trying to figure out how to deal with the decapitation. The LAT says the video that was shown to Iraqi journalists did not have the entire execution and some have expressed doubts of what actually took place. The NYT, on the other hand, says, "The video showed his head being snapped off as the rope went taut."

Either way, it's gross. And capital punishment is still merely state-sanctioned revenge killing. But, hopefully we'll never have to think about this again.

"Moqtada Moqtada Moqtada!"

What a Flaming Turd

I had just finished blogging about my suspicion that Bush has a pathological inability to admit mistakes, when I strolled over to Salon.com where Sidney Blumenthal confirmed my thoughts:

Informed correspondents of the Washington Post and New York Times related in conversation that Bush furiously called the report "a flaming turd," but his colorful remark was not published. Perhaps it was apocryphal. Nonetheless, it conveyed the intensity of his hostile rejection.

Cheney galvanized his neoconservative allies inside and outside the administration to counter the Iraq Study Group. In order to have their own proposal they put Jack Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff and longtime neocon fellow traveler, in touch with Frederick Kagan, an analyst at the neocon American Enterprise Institute, who urged a massive "surge" of troops into Iraq. Kagan and Keane and a team of neocons at AEI whipped up a PowerPoint presentation, and one week after the ISG report release, on Dec. 11, they were ushered into Bush's presence.

The president had become enraged at the presumption of the Baker-Hamilton Commission even before its members gave him their report. "Although the president was publicly polite," the Washington Post reported, "few of the key Baker-Hamilton recommendations appealed to the administration, which intensified its own deliberations over a new 'way forward' in Iraq. How to look distinctive from the study group became a recurring theme. As described by participants in the administration review, some staff members on the National Security Council became enamored of the idea of sending more troops to Iraq in part because it was not a key feature of Baker-Hamilton."

Donald Rumsfeld had been sacrificed as the secretary of defense, but his replacement, Robert Gates, a former director of the CIA and member of the ISG, turned from skeptic into team player. The Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command; and Gen. George Casey, commander in Iraq, all opposed the "surge" as no answer. Cheney and the neocons saw their opposition as the opening for purging and blaming them. The Joint Chiefs were ignored and sidelined, and Abizaid and Casey forced into retirement. Their dissent, leaked to the Washington Post for appearance in the paper on the day of Bush's "surge" speech, was an extraordinary gesture by the senior military leaders to distance themselves from impending failure.

So, because the Iraq Study Group's report didn't have any mention of a Surge™, Bush and his lackies seized upon a Surge™ as a way to differentiate themselves from the Baker-Hamilton commission?

That's pretty much what I would expect from a man unwilling to admit that he's made mistakes or that other people might have good ideas for fixing the problems he's made. The simple phrase "The president had become enraged at the presumption of the Baker-Hamilton Commission even before its members gave him their report" speaks volumes about the mindset of this man... petty, vindictive, angry at anyone with the temerity to speak out against him.

What a flaming turd.

That article also contains this brilliant summary of Bush's Surge™ Logic:

When the U.S. military commanders in Iraq and U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad protested against a rush by the Iraqi government to hang Saddam Hussein, Condoleeza Rice overrode their objections and gave the signal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to proceed.

Maliki's management and subsequent defense of the gruesome circus surrounding Saddam's execution disabused any illusion that he could act in the larger Iraqi national interest rather than as a political representative of Shiite sectarianism. He is to his marrow a creature of the Dawa Party, founded by Muqtada al-Sadr's father, and his alliance with al-Sadr. While the intent of the surge is to revitalize the Maliki government, that government cannot and does not wish to be reformed. The problem is not merely that Maliki is a weak political leader, or that his political coalition wouldn't permit it, or that his Iranian sponsors wouldn't allow repudiation -- all of which are indisputably true. The irreducible reason is that Maliki exists only to achieve Shiite control, and if he did not he would not exist. There is no other Maliki. Nor can Bush invent one.

Bush's "surge," therefore, is a military plan that cannot produce its stated political outcome and will instead further unleash the forces he claims will be controlled. His offensive to subdue the Sunni insurgents, for example, is already accelerating the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad by the Shiite militias, which, rather than being contained, are further empowered.

Yeah... like he said.

Bush has chosen to aid the Shiite militias in their endgoal: the complete elimination of the Sunni minority. I find it highly interesting that this lasst violent two days in Iraq were spent hunting and killing Sunni "insurgents" (which, y'know, some people call old men, women & children) when the Shiite Death Squads outnumber the Sunni Insurgents by a factor of 4 to 1.

Once those Sunni Insurgents are all dead, yes, it WILL be quite peaceful in Iraq... because Iraq will be a graveyard which shames anything that Saddam Hussein could dream up in his most feverish nightmares.

And we will have helped.

-NEW- Saddam Films Appear

It's the Story That Won't Die (unlike the Dictator)!

Yes, amazingly, the dummies responsible for filming Saddam Hussein's wacky last moments on Earth ("Moqtada Moqtada Moqtada!") are at it again. This time, though, the new cell-phone footage is of Saddam's Corpse! Wheee! As if watching him plunge to his death wasn't gruesome enough, now we get to see his dead body.

Naturally, it's turned up on the internet, because some really great stuff you just can't keep to yourself and your hateful religious sect, right?

So now Saddam's officially a martyr and we get footage of Moqtada's boys playing with his corpse. How soon until video shows up of them shitting in his dead mouth?

Incidentally, I've been asked why I give a shit how Saddam died and my answer is twofold: first, the cell-phone video revealed the sectarian nature of his execution and will inflame tensions in Iraq. Second, all of these films being released prove one thing: the first film released had been edited to present a propaganda view of a sedate, solemn execution, something we now know was complete bullshit. If we can't believe how they killed Saddam, then why should we believe anything else that comes out of the Maliki government?

Hey Joe, Whaddya Know?

Ooops, nothing, you're still a rotten fascist apologist...

I'm still catching up on all the super-keen news I missed over the weekend (remember the days before all bad news was dumped during the weekend so the public hopefully wouldn't notice it?), and I came across this article and photo of these two worthless Bush Apologists smugging it up together:Ain't it enough to make you want to vomit?

Anyway, McCain-Lieberman (And what a ticket THAT would be! Sign Me Up!) are on some kind of Surge-Fest 2007 this weekend, speaking out about the desperate need for a SURGE of troops to Iraq. Let's do the numbers for a second... Gen. David Petraeus, the new general in charge of Iraq wrote in the Army's new counter-insurgency manual that stamping out insurgents requires a lot of manpower—at minimum, 20 combat troops for every 1,000 people in the area's population. Baghdad has about 6 million people; so clearing, holding, and building it will require about 120,000 combat troops. Petraeus' writings are what got him the new Top Job in Iraq (a promotion he'll someday come to regret, no doubt, when he's unable to provide the Miracle Victory that Reichschancellor Bush dreams is coming). Petraeus' theories about troop levels are ALSO what created this bullshit "SURGE" talk in and around Washington, where it's finally filtered up to The Decider who decided that it sounded better than "I'm sorry, I wasted $2 Trillion of your dollars on a war to hang Saddam Hussein."

Here's the problem with Surge-Fest 2007: right now, the United States has about 70,000 combat troops in all of Iraq (another 60,000 or so are support troops or headquarters personnel). Even an extra 20,000 or even 30,0000 combat troops would leave the force well short of the minimum required, and that's with every soldier and Marine in Iraq moved to Baghdad. Iraqi security forces would have to make up the deficit.

So, yeah, this Urge To Surge is pointless bullshit and the citizens of America know it. So does the Congress and it remains to be seen if they'll play ball with the President or not.

Which brings us back to Senators Holy Joe Lieberman and John "Maverick" McCain ("that's right, Ice. Man. I -AM- dangerous.") and their pro-surge pro-war tour at the American Enterprise Institute. They were there to speak for a Surge Sensation because they believe only a Gushing Surge can win in Iraq. They insisted their Mighty Surge be open-ended rather than temporary, and that it "must be substantial and it must be sustained."

They evidently haven't read the Army's most recent readiness reports. You know, the ones which say 33% of units aren't ready to be deployed to Iraq with a month's notice?

According to McCain, A Surgeaclypse Now would give the Maliki "government" (if a collection of leather-clad thugs shouting "Moqtada Moqtada Moqtada" can be CALLED a government), "a fighting chance to pursue reconciliation."

Erhm... what "reconciliation" is that, Senator? Maybe you didn't see the cell-phone footage of Saddam's Lynching? Because every Sunni sure as hell did.

In his craven op-ed piece in the Washington Post last week, Lieberman quoted some unnamed colonel who told him in private how he and his men fully support the war. At the American Enterprise Institute, Joementum quoted him again, but this time claimed that Colonel Frank Not Fakealoo also supports a surge, saying that “We need some more troops to... fight to a victorious finish." Weird that this detail wasn't in the op-ed piece... it's almost as if Joe's just putting words into his straw-man colonel's mouth.

Lieberman also expressed unflagging confidence in Bush’s boundless wisdom – "The president of the United States gets this." Strangely, McCain didn’t utter Bush's name once. Man, I wonder why not? Incidentally, watching this phony nice-up to the slime who did all that to him, his wife and his kids has blown all respect for John McCain that I ever had.

Speaking of losing respect, Joe Lieberman never had much of mine to begin with (countless condescending lectures about how Great God Is during the 2000 election ruined it forever), but whatever was left circling the bowl was permanently flushed away when I read about Joe's historical references in his speech at the AEI: You see, to Joe, Iraq is just like the Spanish Civil War, a prelude to an even bigger war.

One hates to mock Joe's loose understanding of historical events, but if one MUST, (and as a student of the Spanish Civil War, I kinda MUST), then the main way that Iraq is like the Spanish Civil War is that while the world community turned its back and sat the war out, it also imposed an arms limit on both sides of the war. Meanwhile, a fascist power that wanted to test its military might against a civilian population broke the rules without penalty, supplied one side of the civil war and committed horrible aerial bombardments which left hundreds of thousands of innocents dead.

Hmmm... now who does THAT sound like? Oh, right, Osama Bin Laden!

McCain, on the other hand, went for the liberal traitor's jugulars, discussing how in the 1940's, there was an "incredible" desire in the USA not to be dragged into another European war, and "some of the most respected Americans in our country -- Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford and many others -- were out and out about isolationists."

Isn’t it strange that of all those "many others," (several of whom were powerful Republican Senators, including Senator Prescott Bush) the only isolationists McCain can point to by name were actually Nazi sympathizers? Why, going by that logic, that means anyone against Bush's crazy hijinks in Iraq is probably a Nazi sympathizer, also! Gosh... I'd better shape up!

Oddly, Joe didn't jump in here with a big speech, which he's usually wont to do when Nazis come up.

Oh, but not to fear, Joementum did whip out at least one more nasty piece of hate speech: "If the American people could talk to the American military, as we do regularly, and hear their commitment to this cause, their selfless bravery, their honor, I believe that they would support the troops as we are."

Right. Because Americans don't support Bush's mindless and expensive war, we don't support the troops! Been watching Faux News much, Mister Senator?

In closing, Holy Joe once more threw himself and Congress alike under the treads of Bush's War Machine, demanding that Bush simply ignore Congress if it dares to defy him: "this moment cries out for the kind of courageous leadership that does what can succeed and win in Iraq, not what will command the largest number of political supporters in Congress."

It's not really all that confusing to hear Joe talk this way... after all, he didn't care much that he won the popular vote in 2000 (and Florida besides), so why should we expect the spineless little shitheel to respect the will of America's voters now?

Oh, and one final note... in the transcript of their remarks, John McCain said it all better than anyone else ever could: "On a foreign trip one time, due to the fact we're both losers, Joe described us as a government in exile."

The Path To Hussein's Lynching

The NYT has a lengthy chunk of dictation in-depth report on the long back-door maneuvering between the American government and the Iraqi government in the days leading to the dreadful execution of Saddam Hussein.

Supposedly the U.S., looking to conform to international protocols, wanted to delay Hussein's execution, while the Iraqis, motivated in large part by revenge, wanted to hasten it—a conflict that led to several heated exchanges between the two parties before the U.S. decided to bow to Iraqi sovereignty and hand Hussein over. Right, because we care oh SO much about Iraqi sovereignty. Hey, you think if those soverign Iraqis had acquitted Saddam and wanted to set him free, the Americans would have turned him over so quickly? I mean, y'know, because our respect for Iraqi sovereignty is just sooooo strong?

The best bit in the entire article is a small detail which has never before surfaced: the Americans wanted a written statement from the chief judge of the highest court that the execution was lawful. He refused, so Prime Minister Maliki went instead to a body of Shiite clerics. Because, really, the execution didn’t already look enough like an act of sectarian vengeance.

Still not explained: why Saddam Hussein had to die before his second trial (the one most likely to uncover US collusion in the poison-gassing deaths of 180,000 Kurds) could conclude. We were left with the disgusting spectacle of his judges dropping the case against him. Saddam will go down as officially Not Guilty of what was supposedly his biggest crime against Humanity. Good job, everyone!

Bush Announces Brilliant New Plan For Iraq

Tonight President Bush pledged a "New Way Forward" for America's troubles in Iraq and vowed to somehow find 20,000 troops that aren't already in Iraq and send them there. This Troop Surge will fix Iraq and we will be victorious!

Oh, wait, that's tomorrow night's news.


No, tonight, we just get to sit around and wait for Bush to wheel out his already-tired-before-he-announces-it scheme for Victory in Iraq. A strategy all but already repudiated by the Democratic Leadership in the House and Senate. This brings to mind the question of "What the Hell is wrong with George Bush?" Why is he so stubborn, so unwilling to change ANYTHING that he does?

In the final paragraph of the New York Times' Jan. 2 story about the impending new Iraq strategy, President Bush is quoted as telling members of the Baker-Hamilton commission that "victory" was still his goal in Iraq: "It's a word the American people understand, and if I start to change it, it will look like I'm beginning to change my policy."

So... does Bush not want to change his policy? Or just not LOOK like he's changing his policy? Either way, Bush's obstinacy portends nothing good. It suggests that any reduction of American troops is impossible while he's in charge. Forget a pullout, forget a reduction, and forget even a simple lowering of American troops' profile, nothing in this realm is on this president's agenda. As Bush warned his commanders, "What I want to hear from you is how we're going to win, not how we're going to leave." Good to see you're open to all options, Mr. President.

Bush's obstinacy also suggests that he believes the American people don't want reductions and pullouts to be on his agenda, and that we don't want him to change his rhetoric or his policy. He's wrong, and the November elections should have proven that to him. I expect public reaction to Bush's Iraq Surge™ to be blisteringly nasty.

Besides, it's not like this is the first time we've heard from Bush that he's got some Secret Plan For Victory™. He wheeled this same exact speech out back in January 2006, remember? And 2006 was a BANNER year for America in Iraq, right? Why on Earth would anyone expect that he'd change his mind now when the facts are so clearly on his side that his team knows what they're doing?

I fully expect Bush to be the last man on Earth to admit that he's been wrong about Iraq from word one. His unwillingness to acknowledge mistakes, however profound or trivial, is legendary. Bush has an unwavering commitment to his beliefs, which can be an admirable trait... or it can be the hallmark of the delusional; it depends on the vision. In Bush's case, we can safely expect him to reiterate a new version of the same old plan that's not winning in Iraq.

What I don't expect tomorrow is for America to continue to follow him headlong over his cliff. Just that bothersome 25% who think he can do no wrong.

Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

Take 100,000+ military contractors in Iraq and add that together with a new movement in America to farm out police powers (arrest, shoot to kill, search & seizure) to private firms and what do you get?

I mean, other than the world's most hilarious G.I. Joe doll:


Oh, right, you get a bunch of out-of-control, incompetent, secretive, nutjobs
machine-gunning us down in our homes and on our streets.

America has about 135,000 troops in Iraq right now. Britain has about 10,000 troops in Iraq. The rest of our allies together contribute about another 6000. 151,000 Western troops.

There are over 100,000 military contractors in Iraq right now.

What the fuck do we think these guys are going to do when Halliburton orders Bush to pull out of Iraq? Stay & Fight? For what money? You think these PMCs are going to get the psych evaluations and post-traumatic-stress-treatments that our soldiers can't even get?

Naw, them boys is coming home to America, and they'll be coming home crazy. Maybe they'll become private police for Rich Folks like the one in the article up above. Maybe they'll just become criminals. Who knows? Yet another consequence of Dick Cheney's efforts to privatize war in this country for the profit of secretive corporations.

Sucks To Be Bush

US poll: Bush more hated than Osama Bin Laden

Associated Press/Ipsos Public Affairs/AOL asked Americans to name the biggest villain and biggest hero of 2006, and Bush topped both lists.

Bush ran away with the worst villain title, earning 25 percent of respondents' ire. As if the midterm election outcome wasn't proof enough of unhappiness with the Decider in Chief, the survey's results show Osama bin Laden trailing Bush by 17 points for second place.

Rounding off the top five are some more expected names and faces. Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who was hanged on Saturday after being convicted of war crimes, came in third with 6 percent. The two other "axis of evil" leaders -- Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and North Korea's Kim Jong Il -- earned 5 percent and 2 percent, respectively.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tied with the communist enclave's dictator.

Bush was also cited as the biggest hero of the past year, which just goes to show what total idiots Republicans have become. I'm sorry, but when the ABC/Washington Post poll shows that "80 percent of Republicans pledged their confidence in the president," then Republicans need to seek mental help, because they've lost their minds.

Once more we're back to the concept that 20-30% of Americans are total sheeple who only long to OBEY.

Wanna Watch Saddam Die?

Psst: wanna watch Saddam die?

Cell-phone video of Saddam's Execution Murder

Saddam Hussein was a brutal murdering scumbag, but I'll give him this: he went to the gallows like a man, and he was the only guy in his dank, squalid execution shed with a single shred of dignity.

I especially love how the hangmen all chant the name of Shiite Fundamentalist Cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr. Because, you know, that's what professionals do. The best part is when Saddam sneers back "Feh. Moqtada" right before they hang him. You can hear the "Blow Me" in his voice.

Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!

Once more, WHY THE FUCK ARE WE BOTHERING? WHY? Why are we bothering? Nothing can fix this country. The people running it are Iranian puppets. We need to get the fuck out RIGHT NOW.

Did U.S. officials know that the designated "executioners" would be the unwashed goons of Muqtada Sadr's "Mahdi Army"—the same group of thugs who killed several American troops after the liberation, the same thugs who murdered Moqtada's moderate religious opposition, and the same murderous thugs who engage in extra-judicial executions and beheadings of innocent Iraqis every day (and night)? Did our government or military ask for any sort of assurances before turning over a prisoner who was being held under the Geneva Conventions?

I ask, because from watching this video, it seems clear that Bush just helped carry out a crude Shiite coup d'état.

The timing —isn't anyone in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad paid to notice this kind of thing?— was explicitly designed to rub every kind of humiliation into Iraqi Sunnis. It profaned their observance of the Sunni Eid ul-Adha holiday (the day of forgiveness, incidentally) while gratifying the Shiite fundamentalists whose ceremonies begin one day later.

To have made Saddam The Butcher into a martyr, to have gratified one religious sect at the expense of another, to have short-changed all modern notions of judicial review, to have forever given up any attempts to retrieve billions of dollars in stolen money that only Saddam knew the whereabouts of, and to have cheated millions of Iraqis and Kurds of the chance for a full accounting of ALL of Saddam's crimes—what a fine day's work for the Bush Administration. Why could they ever have been eager to kill Saddam so quickly? Oh, RIGHT, now I remember...

We HELPED Saddam gas the Kurds and all the other shit he did in the 80's... and a real trial would have shown exactly how much George W. Bush's daddy had to do with all of that. Can't have that, nossirre! Bring in the men with the pleather coats and black ski-masks!

The government America set up in Iraq has been infiltrated by Religious Theocrat Nutjobs who just hung the only guy in the Middle East to ever stand in their way. And we helped them. Far from bringing anything like "closure," this grotesque hanging ensures that the death of Saddam Hussein will serve as a clarion signal that Iraq is fucked. Fucked beyond recovery. For the Sunnis, they now see exactly how "fair" their Judicial System is, and exactly how deeply infiltrated by the Shiite Militias it is, and exactly how little America gives a shit about it. Expect the sectarian violence to continue and expand... not because the Sunnis want to "revenge" Saddam (though there will be a few), but rather because what these black-hooded, leather-coated thugs just did to Saddam happens every night on the streets of Baghdad to innocent Sunnis, and now there's no disguising it.

The shabby, tawdry scene of Moqtada Al-Sadr's riffraff taunting their defenseless former tyrant as he stands silently in his noose is pathetic. While Saddam Hussein was alive, they cringed. Now, they find their lost courage, and meanwhile take the drill and the razor blade and the blowtorch to their fellow Iraqis. To watch this abysmal spectacle is bad enough. To know that the U.S. government had even a silent, shamefaced part in it is to feel something well beyond embarrassment.

Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!

Well, That Didn't Take Long

Bush hung Saddam today. Err... I mean, our puppet state hung our former puppet dictator... no, wait, the Free People Of Iraq have freely hung their former leader and America had nothing to do with any of it! Yeah, that's it! Sorry, I get confused about which version of reality I'm supposed to believe in... I mean, it was supposedly an Iraqi court which carried out an independently arrived-at decision... but he was hung in the Green Zone in an American prison. Huh. Whatever. He's dead and we won the war in Iraq! Right? We can go home now? Please?!

Saddam Hussein Executed
By Sudarsan Raghavan
The Washington Post
Friday 29 December 2006

Former Iraqi leader hanged for crimes against humanity.

Baghdad - Clutching a Quran and refusing a hood, Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein went to the gallows to be executed before sunrise Saturday morning in Baghdad, according to Iraqi state television.

Hussein, 69, who demanded a cultlike devotion from his people and built monuments to proclaim his own greatness, was hung around 6 a.m. local time (10 p.m. Friday EST) in the American-controlled Green Zone in central Baghdad. Hussein was executed before a small group of observers, including some who had been tortured by his regime.

The execution took place three days after Iraq's highest court upheld Hussein's death sentence, a decision that meant the execution should take place within 30 days. On Thursday, he met in his prison cell with his two maternal half brothers and handed them personal messages, according to his lawyers.

The Sunni Arab son of a landless peasant who died before he was born, Hussein was raised by an uncle in the farmlands that surround the northern town of Tikrit. As a young man, he joined the Iraqi Baath Party, which advocated secular pan-Arab nationalism, eventually playing a key role in the 1968 coup that brought the party to power. In July 1979, Hussein become Iraq's president and quickly plunged the nation into a vicious, debilitating eight-year war against Iran. Three years after that war ended, a U.S.-led coalition attacked Iraq in 1991 over Hussein's invasion of Kuwait the year before.

Almost nine months after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Hussein was captured near a small village on the outskirts of Tikrit. The following June, Iraq's interim government took legal custody of the former president and prosecuted him for crimes against humanity.

Many human rights groups criticized the trial as unfair, delivering nothing more than victor's justice, a charge Iraqi officials denied.

Also hanged on Saturday morning were Hussein's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court.

As the noose was placed around his neck, Saddam shouted: "God is great. The nation will be victorious, and Palestine is Arab."

Iraqi TV did not broadcast the moment of Saddam's execution but officials said his death was recorded on video. The television footage included a shaky image of the aftermath: a shot of what appeared to be Saddam's corpse, laid out on a hospital gurney, his head wrenched grotesquely to the right. His neck appeared to be bruised.

Hussein leaves behind a fractured Iraq. Cycles of sectarian violence have deepened the divide between Sunnis and Shiites and paralyzed the government. Sunni insurgents are killing U.S. troops almost every day, with this month's death toll already the second-highest this year. Shiite militias are storming neighborhoods and using power drills and other forms of torture before killing victims. Sunni Arab loyalists have already vowed to take revenge for Hussein's execution.

Well, it was certainly smart of them to simultaneously kill Barzan... that kills the last paternal male blood relation of Saddam. Along with the killings of Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay and his 14-year-old nephew Mustafa, the new Caliphate of Iraq will be safe from challenge by the previous ruler's bloodline! Huzzah! A return to 13th Century politics! Show trials and show executions! This is why we invaded Iraq... to give them American-style freedom!

Take a good look at that official photo of Saddam on the gallows... look at his hangmen. Does that have the look of an official ceremony carried out by a responsible Government? Because to me, it just looks like four fat thugs in ski masks and mis-matching pleather coats hanging an old man... the imagery isn't much different than what we see when the "insurgents" cut the heads off of kidnapped American truck drivers. What, the Iraqi government couldn't whip up four matching police uniforms and some wicked cool hoods?

No doubt George W. Bush will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that Saddam's death sentence was signed on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the last day of the annual Hadj, and the very moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

Ooooops!

This entire trial was designed for one thing: to send the signal to the American taxpayer that George Bush Is Winning The War! The trial just -happened- to end with a death sentence on the eve of the American elections. Now Saddam's execution just -happens- to occur just before the end of the year. Coincidence? Not likely, especially with Bush needing to have a big "Win" in his column before giving his annual State of the Union speech in 3 weeks.

Hussein was a scumbag who needed to be held to account... but even scumbags deserve fair trials, honest judgments and justly-applied punishments. The former dictator got none of these.

The test of a government's commitment to human rights is measured by the way it treats its worst offenders... and this new Iraqi government has essentially proven itself no different in method or means than the previous head of government whom they just executed. State-sponsored execution is the tool of the Chinese and Iranians (and Governor George W. Bush). The vast majority of the world's nations have eliminated the "death penalty" because it's an irreversible punishment which deters no one, is commonly misapplied, and reduces the government to the moral status of murderer. But Iraq isn't Vermont and George Bush has never met a criminal (or brain-damaged retard) that he didn't want to execute, so why should we expect anything better from his hand-picked puppet government?

But don't take MY word for it... last month Human Rights Watch, issued a niney-seven-page report detailing the severe problems with the trial. Human Rights Watch, incidentally, has been baying for Saddam's head on a pike for 20+ years... but in keeping with their group's stated principles that EVERYONE deserves a fair trial, they wanted the former dictator prosecuted properly. Instead, their report, based on close monitoring of the prosecution of the former president, found that:

•"(The) Iraqi High Tribunal was undermined from the outset by Iraqi government actions that threatened the independence and perceived impartiality of the court."

• The Iraqi administrators, judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers lacked sufficient training and expertise "to fairly and effectively try crimes of this magnitude."

• The government did not protect defense lawyers--three of whom were killed during the trial--or key witnesses.

• "(There were) serious flaws in the trial, including failures to disclose key evidence to the defense, violations of the defendants' right to question prosecution witnesses, and the presiding judge's demonstrations of bias."

• "Hussein's defense lawyers had 30 days to file an appeal from the November 5 verdict. However, the trial judgment was only made available to them on November 22, leaving just two weeks to respond."<

The report did not study the appeals process, but the speed with which the tribunal's verdict and sentence were confirmed suggests that the Iraqi Appeals Chamber failed to seriously consider the legal arguments advanced by Hussein's legal team. It defies imagination that any independent Appeals Chamber could have thoroughly reviewed the 300-page judgment and the defense's written arguments in less than two weeks time.

Most importantly, the terms of Saddam's "Fair Trial" were dictated to the Iraqi Government by George W. Bush. Ill-mannered questions like "WHO encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980?" (surely the greatest of Saddam's war crimes because it led to the deaths of a million and a half people) or "WHO sold Saddam the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds?" were strictly forbidden to be raised by prosecutors because the answers would also expose America's culpability in Saddam's war crimes.

There will, of course, be those Right Wingers who counter criticism of this unfair trial's processes by pointing out that Saddam Hussein himself did not give his victims fair trials or just sentences. That is certainly true, but such statements don't defend... instead they stand as a stinging indictment of the new Iraqi government and its judiciary. With all the support of the United States government, with massive resources and access to the best legal advice in the world, with all the lessons of the past, Iraq has a legal system that delivers no better justice than that of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. Congratulations. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

This is the ugly legacy of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq: An awful mess of a country that cannot even get the trial and punishment of a deposed dictator right, a justice system that schedules the taking of life for political and propaganda purposes, a thuggishly brutal state that executes according to whim rather than legal standard and due process. The crude lawlessness of Saddam Hussein has been officially replaced... by the calculated lawlessness of the new regime.

Finally, as the head of Iraq's deposed Baath party lies on a gurney with his neck broken (awaiting, no doubt, some type of humiliating cremation and ignominious disposal rather than a proper Muslim burial--something else for the Sunni rebels to revenge themselves upon), we should look at the political state that Saddam built with truly open eyes free of our leaders' recent propaganda.

While it's fun to sit around after the fact and despise Saddam's Baath Party and everyone who belonged to it, let's remember for a second the founding principles of the Iraqi Baath Party: it advocated secular pan-Arab nationalism, unlike the exclusionary, explicitly-religious, sectarian Shiite-only Dawa Party which America helped the Baathists depose in 1968. Yes, the same Dawa Party which was until recently officially listed as a terrorist group, the same Dawa Party which set off car bombs all across Iraq during Saddam's reign killing thousands of innocent Iraqis, the exact same terrorist Dawa Party which dumbfuck George W. Bush has now put back in charge of Iraq.

Moreover, until America's invasion, the Baath Party was open to ALL Iraqis and had kept the lid on religious fundamentalism and Iraq's tribal and religious tensions by uniting the various parties as Iraqis, not Kurds or Shiites or Sunnis. Saddam's secularized Iraq was also the BEST Middle Eastern country in which to be a woman... there was no formal dress requirement and women were allowed to work in any job and even to drive (shock! horror!). Not so in today's increasingly fundamentalist Iraq.

When Saddam was captured in December of 2003, the insurgency against American troops increased in ferocity. Now, after his state-sponsored murder, it will redouble in intensity again. Worse, freed from the remotest possibility of Saddam's return by his execution, the West's enemies in Iraq have no reason to fear the return of Saddam's Baathist secular regime. Osama bin Laden will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair... and there's a thought to chill the blood.

Four years into a messy occupation which has cost 3,000 American soldiers their lives, and one year into an increasingly violent religious civil war, and with no end or exit in sight, America may soon find ourselves wishing for another secular Iraqi strongman fierce enough to make the country's warring parties subvert their fanatical religious hatreds to secular politics. Too bad we're probably going to get a pro-Iranian religious zealot like Moqtada Al Sadr instead.
###

Addendum: as I predicted, Bush has already weighed in with his Official Response, and it's almost exactly as I predicted it would be, including the already-hoary "Fair Trial which he denied others" excuse:

Today, Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial -- the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime.

Fair trials were unimaginable under Saddam Hussein's tyrannical rule. It is a testament to the Iraqi people's resolve to move forward after decades of oppression that, despite his terrible crimes against his own people, Saddam Hussein received a fair trial. This would not have been possible without the Iraqi people's determination to create a society governed by the rule of law.

Saddam Hussein's execution comes at the end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops. Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and be an ally in the War on Terror.

We are reminded today of how far the Iraqi people have come since the end of Saddam Hussein's rule - and that the progress they have made would not have been possible without the continued service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform.

Many difficult choices and further sacrifices lie ahead. Yet the safety and security of the American people require that we not relent in ensuring that Iraq's young democracy continues to progress.
###

Ehhrr... great! Saddam got a Fair Trial! We managed to America's complicity in his gassing of the Kurds and Iranians out of his Fair Trial! Saddam's Death is an important milestone towards Democracy! The Iraqis have come far! Support Our Troops! Don't Relent... Stay The Course! We're Winning The War In Iraq!

What a bunch of bullshit.

Additional Reading:
How George Bush Created a Theocracy in Iraq by Professor Juan Cole
U.S. tolerated, then Villified Saddam

Some Ye Olde Saddam Captured Propaganda Unraveled:
Republican Lawmaker Predicts Saddam Capture "Within Days"
How We Got Saddam
Democratic Lawmaker Claims Saddam Capture Story Phony
Kurds Say They Captured Saddam, Not Americans
Was Saddam actually captured on December 13?
Former Marine Admits Saddam Capture Fabricated
Pentagon Denies Marine's Version of Saddam's Capture
Indications Imply Saddam Not Captured, But Rescued From Captors By US

And finally, the REAL Story that Saddam's "Capture" was designed to obscure:
Bush Grabs New Power for FBI while Nation Distracted
President Signs Key Section of "Withdrawn" Patriot Act II

And the real stories that Saddam's execution is most likely timed to obscure today:
Pentagon to Request $100 Billion More in War Money
Bush's Guantánamo "Review Boards" Fail To Deliver Due Process

We live in a Propaganda State. Government by Propaganda. Culture™ by Propaganda. Finance by Propaganda. And now, History by Propaganda. Enjoy!

Happy New Year, Time To Die

Happy New Year, Saddam, it's time for us to kill you!

Saddam Hanging Ordered in Iraq
Execution must occur within 30 days
USA TODAY

BAGHDAD — Iraq's highest court said Tuesday that Saddam Hussein must be hanged within 30 days. The decision generated uncertainty about the timing of an execution and concern over whether his death could spark more violence. The court rejected an appeal by the former Iraqi dictator, who was convicted and sentenced to death Nov. 5 for ordering the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims in the town of Dujail in 1982. "From tomorrow, any day could be the day" for the execution, said Aref al-Shahin, the court's chief judge.

The Iraqi government has not announced any details of plans to send Saddam to the gallows. There were no announcements Tuesday of plans for curfews in Baghdad. Curfews would probably be imposed for an event as politically sensitive as Saddam's execution.

The White House called the decision a milestone in Iraq's efforts "to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law."

"Saddam Hussein has received due process and legal rights that he denied the Iraqi people for so long. So this is an important day for the Iraqi people," said deputy White House press secretary Scott Stanzel.

Some, however, such as Human Rights Watch, condemned the sentence as unfair because of alleged interference by the Shiite-dominated government in Saddam's trial.

Basam Ridha, an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said the presidency council cannot delay or alter Saddam's sentence under Iraqi law. Ridha said Iraqi officials will meet in the next few days to discuss when to send Saddam to hang. "We're anxious to do it as soon as we can," he said. "We want to put an end to it."

A prompt execution would short-circuit an ongoing trial in which Saddam and former top aides are accused of killing tens of thousands in a genocidal campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s. That trial is in recess until Jan. 8. Some Iraqi politicians said Saddam's execution would aggravate efforts at a political reconciliation between Iraq's Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions — and could intensify the Sunni-led insurgency.

It's like some sort of pulse-pounding mystery! When will our puppet government execute our former puppet dictator? Oh, it's so exciting!

Let's reflect on the fact, for a moment, that few people deserve death as much as Saddam Hussein does. Likewise, those who aided and abbetted his murders should also pay for those crimes, no? Too bad that includes several members and ex-members of President Bush's administration (i.e. Donald Rumsfeld and all the other 80's-leftovers who helped arm Saddam to help him kill the Iranians).

For all the discussion of Saddam's murders, let's also reflect on the fact that killing him only legitimizes the use of state-sanctified murder as a principle of a modern government -- this, in a country which NEEDS to shed itself of government-by-murder.

Likewise, since killing a deposed and pathetic Saddam now can ONLY serve to strenghten the insurgency, the best thing to do would be to sentence Saddam rot in jail forever... but that doesn't fit President Bush's need for a "WIN" on the books, does it?
###

Added: 3:48pm

Sigh, THIS didn't take long, did it?

Baath Party Threatens to Retaliate
By Shafika Mattar
The Associated Press
Wednesday 27 December 2006

Amman, Jordan - Saddam Hussein's Baath Party threatened Wednesday to retaliate if the ousted Iraqi leader is executed, warning in an Internet posting it would target U.S. interests anywhere.

The statement appeared on a Web site known to represent the party, which was disbanded after U.S.-led forces overthrew Saddam in 2003. The site is believed to be run from Yemen, where several exiled Baathists are based.

On Tuesday, Iraq's highest court rejected Saddam's appeal against a conviction and death sentence for the killing of 148 people who were detained after an attempt to assassinate in Dujail, northern Iraq, in 1982. The court said the former president should be hanged within 30 days.

"Our party warns again of the consequences of executing Mr. President and his comrades," the statement said. "The Baath and the resistance are determined to retaliate, with all means and everywhere, to harm America and its interests if it commits this crime," the statement added, referring to Baath fighters as "the resistance."

"The American administration will be held responsible for any harm inflicted on the president because the United States is the decision-maker (in Iraq) and not the puppet Iraqi government."

The statement said that if the execution takes place, it would be impossible for the Baath to take part in any prospective negotiations with U.S. and Iraqi officials to reduce the violence in Iraq.

Merry Christmas, You're Drafted

SURPRISE!

Perfectly timed to coincide with the news cycle downturn at Christmas comes this stealth announcment from the Bush Administration. I've been saying this for years: we don't have enough troops to keep 130-150,000 combat troops in Iraq full-time for the 10-20 years that it's going to take to pacify the country. It appears that someone in the Bush Administration understands this finally and is seeking an "alternative" to the current system... OR you can choose to believe their protestations that they don't want a draft and would never accept a draft and blah blah blah. Considering their record on other important topics of the day (WMDs, War is Final Option, Saddam = Osama, etc.), I'm going with a new draft.

Military Draft System To Be Tested
Friday 22 December 2006

Washington - The Selective Service System is making plans to test its draft machinery in case Congress and President Bush need it, even though the White House says it doesn't want to bring back the draft.

The agency is planning a comprehensive test - not run since 1998 - of its military draft systems, a Selective Service official said. The test itself would not likely occur until 2009.

At the direction of the White House, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson is making it clear he is not advocating the reinstatement of a military draft. He told a news conference that society would benefit from a return to the draft, but a few hours later, after the White House disavowed the remark, Nicholson issued a statement in line with administration policy. He said he strongly supports the all-volunteer military and does not support returning to a draft.

President Bush has repeatedly stated that the all-volunteer army would remain all-volunteer. The administration has for years forcefully opposed bringing back the draft, and the White House said Thursday that policy has not changed and no proposal to reinstate the draft is being considered.

The "readiness exercise" would test the system that randomly chooses draftees by birth date and its network of appeal boards that decide how to deal with conscientious objectors and others who want to delay reporting for duty, Campbell said. The Selective Service will start planning for the 2009 tests next June or July, although budget cuts could force the agency to cancel them, Campbell said.

President Bush said this week he is considering sending more troops to Iraq and has asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to look into adding more troops to the nearly 1.4 million uniformed personnel on active duty.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, increasing the Army by 40,000 troops would cost as much as $2.6 billion the first year and $4 billion after that. Military officials have said the Army and Marine Corps want to add as many as 35,000 more troops.

Recruiting new forces and retaining current troops is more complicated because of the unpopular war in Iraq. In recent years, the Army has accepted recruits with lower aptitude test scores.

In remarks to reporters, Nicholson recalled his own experience as a company commander in an infantry unit that brought together soldiers of different backgrounds and education levels "in the common purpose of serving."
###

Ohhh, it's Okay... it's ONLY a "Readiness Test." Go back to sleep, America...

Let's Just Stay In Iraq Forever, Then...

In the NYT's op-ed page, Ben Connable, a major in the Marine Corps who is no stranger to writing for the papers, says any talk of withdrawal from Iraq should take into account how that would affect the people on the ground. U.S. troops have withdrawn from Anbar Province twice, and each time, insurgents were quick to take over and proceeded to kill and torture many of those who were seen as friendly to U.S. interests.

Well, what are we to do, then? Connable (and whoever at the White House agreed to let him write opinion pieces for the Times) doesn't have an answer, but he DOES have a warning:

The confusion caused by withdrawal would be compounded as religious, militia and political loyalties divided inadequately prepared military and police units. Full-scale ethnic killing would become a very real possibility.

For some, the collapse of Iraqi society into Hobbesian mayhem is inevitable no matter how many American troops remain on the ground. A few argue that disintegration of the Iraqi state actually would bring about the national catharsis that seems so elusive today — that absolute civil war would be a greater good.

This cold calculus ignores the very real impact of an American withdrawal on the people we now protect. Any debate that does not consider the bloody reality we would leave in our wake does a disservice to the people of Iraq and the troops who have fought so hard to defend them.

Okay, so I guess you can put me into the "some" and "few" categories: I feel that Hobbesian mayhem is inevitable, a vicious round of ethnic cleansing unstoppable and the division of the country into three hostile territories inescapable and probably for the better.

The good major seems to think our first allegiance, however, is to the "people on the ground" in Iraq and to the "disservice... to the troops who have fought so hard to defend them." Here are my rebuttals to the good major: First, Abu Ghraib, Second, Haditha, Third, 200,000 dead Iraqi Civilians since we invaded and Fourth, "disservice" to the troops? IT'S YOUR FUCKING JOB TO DO WHATEVER YOU'RE ORDERED TO DO. If we order you to defend those Iraqis, you do it. If we order you to pull out, you do it. I'll tell you something that every single Social Worker, Teacher, Ambulance Driver, Cop, Fireman, and Doctor has hammered home to them in their early training on the job: Don't Get Attached. Fuck you and your "disservice" to the troops.

Let me get this straight, Major:
(1) The Bush Administration lied to the American people to falsify a case for war,
(2) The Bush Administration fatally screwed up the post-election planning,
(3) The Bush Administration deliberately ignored the State Department who tried to war everyone that Civil War was sure to follow after Saddam was deposed,
(4) The Bush Administration fucked up every opportunity to fix Iraq and instead concentrated assisting their rich friends in the looting of the $18 Billion "rebuilding" funds,
(5) Now, one invasion and failed rebuilding later, Bush says we can't leave or a civil war will break out?

Tough.

At this point, its exceptionally clear that Bush could give a rat's ass about the poor people of Iraq... he's reputedly killed between 50,000 and 200,000 of them by this point.

All this talk of staying "until the job is done" is to ignore the fact that the job will NEVER be "done." These people HATE each other. It's just like Yugoslavia... Tito kept that country together with an iron fist and when he died, poof... here comes the ethnic cleansing and wholesale slaughter. The same thing was clearly what was going to happen when Saddam was deposed, those of us on the Commie Traitor Left said so at the time, but stupid-ass Bush didn't even know there were three different kinds of Iraqis until 2 weeks before the invasion began.

The reason the Republicans don't want America out of Iraq now is because they don't want the inevitable civil war & genocide to happen on their watch. Once Bush is out of office, they will blame this entire war on the Democrats, they will blame the failure of Iraq on the Iraqis and they will make a deal with the genocidal Shiite victors for the oil.

It's clear now that this war was always about two things: (1) getting Bush relected as a heroic War President, and (2) The Oil. Nothing else ever mattered to these people, nothing else ever will.

Meanwhile, estimates have this war costing the taxpayers of America $2 Trillion dollars. That number goes up for every single day we're in Iraq. Bush has racked up an additional $4 Trillion in national debt since he took office. Soon there will be no money left for anything in our budget except for Social Security and paying interest on our debt.

This is the penalty we pay for our current system of Military Keynesyiaism. Until we are willing to stop the war spending, we will increasingly go broke paying for these wars until our foreign debtors (China: $825 Billion in US savings bonds and Japan $850 Billion in US savings bonds) close the books on our country and we find ourselves in the position of a third-world banana republic: broke & with a despotic ruler.

At some point America needs to look deep into its gut and ask itself: do the lives of foreigners (80% of whom want us to leave the country immediately) count more than the entire future of this country? Are the lives of these foreigners who want us gone worth more than our Constitution? More than our own children & grandchildren? More than our jobs and way of life? Because THOSE are the opportunity costs to America if we stay in Iraq and if we continue on our permanent war economy path.

This war is the straw which will break the camel's back: America is already headed towards becoming an impoverished debtor nation with no industry, no economy and a warped authoritarian government. Staying in Iraq means hastening that end.

The good major (and his Republican backers) want to stay in Iraq to protect the Iraqis from one another at the cost of bankrupting our nation. I think we should leave and let them fight it out amongst themselves and attempt to preserve our Republic from the debt and dictatorship which are both accumulating under this war. It's an easy choice for me... but then, my job doesn't require there to be an American Empire.

Colin Powell = Surrendermonkey

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell broke his long-held silence on the issue of Bush's handling of the military when he declared yesterday that the U.S. Army "is about broken" and he doubts an increase in the number of troops in Iraq would help resolve the current situation. Instead, he said the United States should work to transfer security responsibilities to Iraqi forces and American troops should begin withdrawing next year.

One is tempted to call him a coward for advocating a withdrawal from Iraq, but I'd have to say that he's a coward for not having the guts to go directly to the media about the fact that Bush's entire case against Iraq was bullshit from word one. Colin Powell was too cowardly to go behind George Bush's back before the war and now that Bush has fucked it up, I'm supposed to think Powell's some sort of hero for speaking out? F--- that and F--- him for being a coward.

The Incredible Shrinking Presidency

Americans are overwhelmingly resigned to something less than clear-cut victory in Iraq and growing numbers doubt the country will achieve a stable, democratic government no matter how the U.S. gets out, according to an AP poll.

At the same time, dissatisfaction with President Bush's handling of Iraq has climbed to an all-time high of 71 percent. The latest AP-Ipsos poll, taken as a bipartisan commission was releasing its recommendations for a new course in Iraq, found that just 27 percent of Americans approved of Bush's handling of Iraq, down from his previous low of 31 percent in November.

Still... that's 27% approval which still seems high to me. What's his bottom number? And how many soldiers have to die before he gets there? I read once that hardcore Right-Wing Theocratical Evangelicals are 18% of the population (and therefore an astonishing 36% of that party... no wonder they can't nominate good candidates). I'm assuming that 18% of Americans is Bush's ground-floor... where everyone of every stripe except those who think BTK Bush is the second coming of Christ has abandoned him.

What will it take for that last 9% of non-nutso-Evangelicals to peel away from Bush's War On Iraq? And who are these people?

11 Troops In One Day

Wednesday's Toll for U.S. Troops in Iraq Rises to 11
BAGHDAD, Dec. 7 -- The U.S. military raised the number of service members killed Wednesday to 11, making it one of the deadliest days for U.S. troops this year.

Also, a soldier died Thursday from wounds suffered the day before in a battle in the volatile western province of Anbar.

The deaths bring to at least 31 the number of U.S. troops killed in the first week of December.

Why is it the people shouting "Support Our Troops" can't see that shoving them into a meat grinder for tour after tour of the same old tactics which ARE NOT WORKING is the exact opposite of "support"?

I -do- support our troops, but I can't understand this idea that to criticize their mission is to criticize the people tasked with carrying out that poorly-planned "mission."

I don't blame the Army for not securing Iraq... they haven't been given the proper orders to enable them to do so (not that those orders have EVER existed and not that the slim window of opportunity for those orders to work hasn't slammed shut a long time ago). Firing Rumsfeld is the equivalent of putting a band-aid on a sucking chest wound and praying for Jesus to heal you.