Some VERY Cool Animation

I wish I knew more about this video. All I can really say is that it's based on a book by Colby Buzzell, a former soldier who served in Iraq.

Thanks to Tim for the link

About Those Alleged Photos from Iraqi Prisons....

A couple of weeks ago, President Obama decided to block the release of prisoner abuse photos from Iraq. The decision proved controversial, with some people accusing the President of reneging on campaign promises to release any such images of abuse. Obama, on the other hand, now says that releasing them would only serve to inflame hatred of the United States and therefor further endanger American troops. The specific content of the pictures remained unknown.

Now a British newspaper is reporting that those photos depict scenes of rape and other sexual abuses.

Even if that's true, how do we know those photos are from the inside of an Iraqi prison and NOT from the inside of, say, a Catholic school?

Three Wrongs Make a Right

If the Shoe Flies....

When Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi threw his shoes at President Bush last fall, he instantly became a hero to many of his fellow countrymen. This wasn't surprising, since many Iraqis consider the Americans to be occupiers, not liberators.

Today al-Zeide was sentenced to three years in prison for his actions. Many Iraqis are upset by what they consider to be a surprisingly harsh verdict.

Meanwhile, the man who invaded their country under false pretenses and then lied about the reasons for remaining there, whose reckless actions directly or indirectly caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and who managed to destabilize a strategically vital region of the world, remains scot-free and enjoying a comfortable retirement in Texas.

More Evidence That We Were Lied to

Back in his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush said that Iraq had been trying to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. That statement has since been proven to be false, and the situation has devolved into a classic case of who knew what when.

In 2004, then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez told a Senate committee that the CIA had approved the inclusion of that assertion in Bush's speech. The CIA, on the other hand, said it never did any such thing. In fact, according to the CIA, it repeatedly tried to have that statement withdrawn from the speech because it had been found to be unproven.

Now a different congressional committee looking into the matter has concluded that Gonzalez deliberately misled the Senate in 2004. Even worse, then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice may have also lied when she also said she was unaware about the CIA's doubts.

This is just more proof that when President Bush and his defenders blame the Iraq war on bad intelligence, it's just a flat out lie. They knew full well that their claims about Iraq's WMD's were false.

A mistake is one thing. If a bad decision is at least arrived at in good faith, it can almost be excused.

A deliberate, outright lie is quite a different matter. It can not, under any circumstance, be forgiven.... Especially when the lie leads to the loss of tens of thousands of lives.

He's Got Sole

The Arab world has a new hero: The guy who threw the shoe at President Bush a few days ago. In the middle east, throwing a shoe is considered a major insult, and Muntadar al-Zaidi's act of frustration has made him quite popular. Even in Iraq itself--the country that's supposed to be in love with us for getting rid of Saddam--crowds are demonstrating in the streets demanding that al-Zaidi be released from prison.

This leaves the U.S. backed government in quite a pickle. If they do release him, they risk insulting the Americans. On the other hand, if they leave them man in jail and ultimately put him on trial, they risk pissing off their own citizens. And given the current government's tenuous hold on power, that's something they can ill afford.

D'OH!

In an interview with ABC News' Charlie Gibson, President Bush says that his biggest regret was the intelligence failure over Iraq. He went on to say that while it was unfortunate, there were a lot of people who agreed with the flawed intelligence.

What Bush conveniently forgot to mention, however, that there were also a lot of people in the intelligence communities of both America and Britain that doubted that same information. And rather than listening to them, the Bush administration chose to either ignore them or brand them as unpatriotic. Also, no word on whether Bush "regrets" trying to falsely connect Saddam to the 9/11 attacks.

But hey, that's okay. It's not like any of that caused the deaths of almost 5,000 American service members, the lifelong maimings of thousands more, the deaths tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the destabilization of the entire Middle East, the rise of Iran, and the waste of over a trillion dollars (and counting).

Yeah, it's probably all just a coincidence.

MCain: Ignoring Reality

What planet is John McCain living on?

He has repeatedly slammed Obama's plans for withdrawal from Iraq as being irresponsible. McCain warns that we can't rush things, or we run the risk of setting ourselves up for failure.

Putting aside the minor detail that this entire war was launched on a series of lies, and that every single problem in Iraq today can be traced to our involvement in the first place, the fact remains that any withdrawal timetable is going to be set by the Iraqis. It simply will not be up to the President of the United States. Doesn't matter if it's McCain, or Obama, or Paris Hilton.

The reality is that the U.N. resolution that (more or less) justified our involvement in Iraq expires on December 31st of this year. The only way our forces can legally remain in Iraq after that date is IF a new agreement is reached with the Iraqi government. They have repeatedly made clear that they want us out of their country.

So far no agreement has been finalized, but the Iraqis are pushing for a 16 month timetable. If that is the agreement that is eventually reached, and McCain wants to stay in Iraq longer than that, then he has no business criticizing Vladimer Putin's actions in Georgia.

Did a Forgery Lead Us into War?

I still encounter people who, in defiance of all reality, think that Saddam was somehow behind the 9-11 attacks. Just six months ago I noticed I was getting hits from some site I had never heard of. Upon checking it out, the author had written something along the lines of "Another liberal who's forgotten we were attacked on 9-11." Which, needless to say, I found infuriating for a couple of reasons.

First, I'm only a liberal if you also believe Barry Goldwater was a liberal. I consider myself a conservative, but a conservative who favors a smaller Federal government. George W. Bush and the Republican party of the last 20 years have forgotten their conservative roots, and done more to destroy the movement than any number of gay weddings ever could. There is nothing "conservative" about increasing the power of government to control our daily lives. Chipping away at people's personal freedoms is NOT what the conservative movement used to stand for.

Secondly, what do the 9-11 attacks have to do with Iraq? Not a damn thing. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, which is an American ally. The group's leader was from Egypt, also a friendly nation. Two more were from the United Arab Emirates, also an ally. The remaining one was from Lebanon, which at the time was largely under the control of Syria. If the 41% of Americans who continue to believe Saddam was somehow behind the attacks would simply take their heads out of their asses long enough to look for themselves, they might finally realize they were duped into this war.

It remains to be seen what effect--if any--the new book from Ron Suskind will have on public opinion. Unfortunately, I'm guessing none.

Suskind, a Pulitzer winning investigative journalist, alleges in The Way of the World, that the Bush White House ordered the CIA to forge a letter linking Saddam's government to Al Qaeda in order to justify the attack on Iraq. If true, this is nothing short of a criminal action that justifies impeachment.

The existence of this letter has been known for years. It first surfaced in late 2003 and treated as a genuine article at the time. Over the coming months it soon became apparent that the letter was actually a fake, but its origins remained unknown.... Until now.

But does it really matter at this point? No, and don't look for Congress to suddenly grow balls and seriously pursue these allegations. Besides, in another six months Bush will be gone, and by then he will have pardoned pretty much everyone in his administration--including himself.

War? What War?

The Rand Corporation, a nonpartisan private think tank, has come out with an interesting new study. Bottom line: The so-called "War on Terror" is a failure because it has failed to significantly hurt Al-Qaeda's capabilities.

However, it has failed not because of any particular lack of military strategy. Rather, according to the report, it has failed because combating terrorism can't be done by the military. In other words, terrorism needs to be thought of as a law enforcement issue. "Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors," according to the report's authors.

This is not that far-fetched. Keep in mind that the terrorist plot to bomb airliners in 2006 was thwarted not by brilliant military tactics on a battlefield, but rather by good old fashioned police work by Scotland Yard.

The report goes on to suggest that especially in Muslim countries, there should be a "light U.S. military footprint or none at all" since the presence of American troops serves to increase terrorist recruitment.

Amen to That

So Funny It's Painful

When I was a wee little lad, one lesson my mother taught me was that if I made a mess, I had to clean it up before I could go outside and play. It was my "responsibility," she said, and a sense of responsibility was something all adults needed.

Obviously my mother never met George W. Bush.

For the last several weeks the Bush administration has been working to reach some sort of long term security deal with Iraq. This new agreement was needed for two reasons.

First, the current United Nations resolution allowing the presence of American troops in Iraq expires on December 31st. Even the U.S. Congress' authorization for Bush's Iraq adventure is tied to that U.N. resolution. So unless a new, separate agreement is reached with the Iraqi government, the continued presence of American troops in Iraq would become illegal under both international AND American law.

Secondly, with Bush leaving office in January, he has been increasingly desperate to come up with some sort of lasting legacy. A long term security agreement with Iraq, allowing for several large, permanent American military bases in that nation, looked to be his last hope.

Unfortunately, the Iraqis have not been cooperating. They apparently feel that the presence of foreign troops only continues to further aggravate the situation in Iraq--something many war opponents on OUR side of the Atlantic have been saying for the last several years.

Consequently Al-Maliki's government has demanded a concrete timetable for the departure of American troops as part of any long term security agreement. The Bush people, in their eternal wisdom, have not been willing to grant them that.

Any hope for that long term deal is now officially dead. The Bush administration has now decided to settle for some sort of temporary "bridge" document that will allow U.S. forces to remain in Iraq beyond the end of the year. But any long term agreement will now have to be negotiated by whoever takes office on January 20.

Translation: Let the next President clean up Bush's mess.

So after five years of war, after wasting the lives of 4118 (and counting) American soldiers, after causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, after destabilizing the entire Middle East, after fueling the rage of anti-American Islamic militants worldwide, after pissing away a trillion dollars, and after leaving our nation's credibility among the international community in tatters, Bush won't have a single goddamn thing to show for it.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Time for a Timetable?

Anytime anyone opposed to the Iraq war has suggested setting a timetable for withdrawal, the Bush administration has condemned them as being irresponsible, or unpatriotic, or caving in to the enemy, or being a pussy. Setting such a timetable would only embolden the terrorists, according to our fearless leader.

Well, now there's yet someone else saying the U.S. should set a timetable for withdrawal. So who is this latest wuss who dares challenge the wizard--er, I mean, who dares challenge President Bush? Well, no, it's not Obama. And it's certainly not John McCain. For that matter, it's not any American political figure.

Rather, it's none other than Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki suggesting that a timetable is necessary. His comment came during a meeting with ambassadors from other Arab nations, and is tied to the current negotiations about what role the U.S. military will have in Iraq once the current United Nations mandate expires on December 31.

Maybe We Should 'Harshly Interrogate' Him