Update [2007-5-24 10:38:48 by Steven D]: Never mind. Joe Klein has the story, based on reliable sources (one of them a senior military official!) that things are going just swell in Iraq, and that “effective attacks” have dropped on some days to zero. So everything else you read hereafter just doesn’t matter. Because if Joe Klein says it’s so, well, who am I to argue with him (and his myriad anonymous sources)?
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Nine more US soldiers dead, 100 or more Iraqis dead on Wednessday, as the surge moves onward toward June.
Nine U.S. soldiers and Marines were killed in Iraq on Tuesday, and the military was investigating whether the body of a man found in the Euphrates River early yesterday was that of an American soldier abducted during a deadly ambush south of Baghdad almost two weeks ago, U.S. officials said.
Also yesterday, about 100 Iraqis were killed and 130 injured in mortar attacks, suicide attacks, car bombings, drive-by shootings and other violence nationwide, according to law-enforcement authorities and news-agency accounts.
The military on pace for another 100+ American deaths this month (not counting contractors). We have no idea how many Iraqis are being killed because the Iraq government made an executive decision not to report on those anymore. Not that the dead are concerned if they are counted or not. It’s only the living who pay attention to such matters and mourn their passing. Or not, as the Bush administration has proven.
(cont.)
Meanwhile rice farmers in southern Iraq know a good cash crop when they see one:
Farmers in southern Iraq have started for the first time to grow opium poppies in their fields, sparking fears that Iraq might become a serious drugs producer along the lines of Afghanistan.
Rice farmers in the fertile plain along the Euphrates, just to the west of Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad, have stopped cultivating rice and are instead planting poppies, Iraqi sources familiar with the area say.
Well, maybe poppies won’t grow well in old rice paddies. Let’s hope so.
Meanwhile, Our Dear Leader keeps reminding us that Iraq is still the central front in the War on Terror.
President Bush portrayed the Iraq war as a battle between the United States and al-Qaida yesterday and shared nuggets of intelligence to contend that Osama bin Laden was setting up a terrorist cell in Iraq to strike targets in the U.S. […]
“In the minds of al-Qaida leaders, 9/11 was just a down payment on violence yet to come,” Bush said in a commencement speech at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in which he defended his decision to order a troop buildup in Iraq. “It is tempting to believe that the calm here at home after 9/11 means that the danger to our country has passed.” […]
“Victory in Iraq is important for Osama bin Laden, and victory in Iraq is vital for the United States of America,” Bush told the graduating class.
Something tells me the minds of Al Qaeda leaders are quite satisfied with Bush’ viewpoint about the preeminence of Iraq’s role in The Long War, especially since it has now turned into a “cash cow” for their organization.
WASHINGTON — A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama bin Laden has produced no significant leads on his whereabouts, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of Al Qaeda operatives and money into Pakistan’s tribal territories, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation.
In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda’s command base in Pakistan is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network’s operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the anti-American insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.
And the Democratic Leadership just agreed to keep funding a war that is making us weaker while it helps Al Qaeda grows stronger. Yes, it’s true folks. We have all been transported to an alternate universe where up is down, down is sideways, right is top, left is bottom (and likely to stay there) and a President’s popularity is inversely proportional to his power. Hmmm, I wonder what our Most Holy Wise Man of the Beltway has to say about all this?
History will record that [Blair and Bush] saw the threat to the West posed by terrorism and responded courageously. The wisdom of their policy and the conduct of their governments are not likely to be judged as highly.
Yes, that’s right. David Broder thinks George Bush is a profile in courage. Incompetent courage, perhaps, but courage nonetheless. And you wonder why we are still in Iraq?
Who of significance, who with the weight of authority and power, who with true courage and patriotism is finally going to stand up say, in the words of Yitzhak Rabin, “Enough of blood and tears”?
How much longer can the American people allow this insanity to be carried out? To say I am disappointed in the Democratic leadership for their cowardice on the supplemental is, obviously, an understatement. They have betrayed the trust which was placed in them by the American people to end this war. For Harry Reid to try and paint it as some sort of progress in making this President accountable is, to my mind, a tremendous insult to those of us that were depending on them to stand up for the voices of the vast majority of the American public.
To watch and listen to this bizarro world played out every day in the various media gives one the feeling we are trapped in George Bush’s version of Dante’s Circles of Hell without the luxury of escape afforded to Dante and Virgil.
I don’t believe for one minute that come September anything will have changed for the better. We all know what will happen. There will be vague references to “progress” and allusions to “improvements” towards a political solution within the Iraqi government’s inner workings and all that will need to be done is just “to give a little more time” for things to come together. The can will once again be kicked down the road another Friedman Unit which will result in the unnecessary deaths of another few hundred Americans and few thousand Iraqis.
The only thing that might change this eventuality are significant protestations by the American people to our elected officials. Apparently, the 2006 election wasn’t significant enough in their minds to stand up for what needs to be done. The Democrats claim to have some kind of “strategy” in their capitulation to this President but, honest to God, I can’t see anything in their actions which can pass for rational thought.
This President, likely with one of the weakest political hands imaginable, made the Democrats blink. Is it any wonder that the people like Broder gush about this President’s “courage”. Another embarrassing day to be a Democrat. And worse, a sad and frustrating day to be an American.
They’ve been proclaiming progress in Iraq for 4 long years now, and every day it keeps getting worse. But who cares? Not our media. They treat it as just anoithe r political game, or polish up their armchair general credentials and agree how mistakes were made but the next plan will surely succeed.
It’s a tragic farce and we are witnesses and participants both.
The role of the media has been simply stunning. Throughout they have been a blind propoganda apparatus the like of which Stalin and Goebbels would never have believed possible. Apart from the pure propoganda role the like of which has never ever been seen in the world before there is the total ignorance of the interconnect between war, occupation, politics and economics. They, the politicos and sadly so many of our poorly trained officer corps, seem to think war and subsequent occupation is like some oversized cool video game where having higher body counts then the enemy and cool so called smart weaponry that some failed major can fixate on insures victory. Until the politicians, their pet poodle officers and pre-programmed media airheads are replaced by educated and trained people who have some knowledge of the history and rationale of warfare and how it is an extension of politics that should only ever be used as a last resort and that it should come to a very swift conclusion before the economic dictates a huge punishment on even the winner, there is no way forward for this country. Sadly it may be asking too much for the above conditions to be reached and sadly it may be too late anyway.
As for the poor unfortunates in Iraq – recently a newspaper I read claimed 750,000 dead, and that is without getting into all the destruction and reduction of life expectancies and child mortality etc – sadly they will continue to suffer as we experiment with increasingly bizarre plans supported by increasingly insane generals to defy all logic just so a few mad men who hijacked our so called democratic system dont lose face.
poppies seem to follow the Powell-Armitage-Bush family wherever they go. It’s like clockwork with these people. I thought maybe this time, since Dubya is more Cheney’s boy than his father’s, we’d stick to looting the treasury and lining up juicy energy and arms contracts. Guess I was wrong.
The old Bush Crime Family is back in business. Load up the C-130’s.
In the immortal words of the Wicked Witch of the West:
All in good time, my little pretty-All in good time
I hope this guy is smart enough not to wonder why some refer to him as JoKeline.