Meanwhile, in Iraq

9 Comments

1. 

   Kilgore Trout on July 7, 2007 at 12:57 pm

   And if Paris Hilton should happen to overdose on heroin or trimspa we would hear a lot more about her than the American troops who are getting killed over there.

2. 

   rba on July 7, 2007 at 1:39 pm

   Here’s your follow-on:

   AP:  377 tons small part of absent Iraq explosives (31 Oct ’04)  “Missing prewar stockpiles may total 250,000 tons . . . Among the sites that don’t appear to have been secured was a cache of hundreds of surface-to-surface warheads at the 2nd Military College in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Each warhead is believed to have contained 57 pounds of high explosives.“

3. 

   Connecticut Man1 on July 7, 2007 at 1:57 pm

   Via Tparty at MLN:

   Two weeks ago, on June 25th, U.S. Army Pfc. Andre Craig Jr. of New Haven was killed in Baghdad as the Humvee he was riding in was hit by an improvised explosive device, leaving behind a wife and a six-month old daughter who he had met for the first – and last – time just this past May.

   The funeral was yesterday. And Sen. Lieberman, he who “grieves for every casualty of this war” so much that he is doing everything in his power to keep our soldiers in harm’s way, wasn’t there:

   Among those not in attendance was U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman. He sent a representative in his place. That angered some of the mourners like the Rev. Anthony Brown Sr., as well as the curious who gathered in the small park across the street just in front of Dwight Elementary School.

   “Sen. Lieberman voted for the war. But he wasn’t here to pay his respects to a young man who lost his life,” Brown said. “Lieberman should be ashamed of himself. But that’s what politicians do. They send someone else to do the job. They send someone else’s kids to die for their wars.”

   While he who “grieves for every casualty of this war” more than anyone else didn’t have time to pay his respects to a fallen soldier from his own state yesterday, Sen. Lieberman did somehow find the time to do a radio interview on WNPR, and have an insane warmongering op-ed placed in the Wall Street Journal calling for even more of our troops to have their lives endangered by invading Iran.

4. 

   dada on July 7, 2007 at 2:42 pm

   the GL[a]M  trio of iraq thinks otherwise:

   

   fresh from a triumphant tour of the green zone, it’s spokesman lindsey “5 rugs for 5 bucks”  graham declared:

   …“The military part of the surge is working beyond my expectations,” Graham said. “We literally have the enemy on the run…”

   linkage

   and it’s going so well in fact that american diplomats aren’t allowed to go outside anymore, and not just in the green zone… and many postings now include danger pay:

   Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the number of posts deemed too dangerous for U.S. diplomats to bring families has doubled, from 10 to 21. And since the 1980s, the number of missions where employees receive danger pay has soared from two — Colombia and Lebanon — to 26.

   […]

   “The policy we have for diplomatic security actually makes us less secure as a nation because it limits our ability to carry out our mission in critical environments,” said Patrick Fine, a former senior Foreign Service officer who ran the U.S. Agency for International Development’s mission in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005.

    

   List of countries
   Countries and where the State Department has imposed full or partial restrictions on travel by U.S. diplomats:
   Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Burundi, Colombia, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Ivory Coast, Laos, Lebanon, Mali, Nepal, Pakistan, The Palestinian territories, Peru, The Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Yemen

   linkage

   winning the war on terror from within the fortresses….

   and what’s all this costing?….don’t ask, chimpy might get upset and throw his feces at the glass..as BushCo™ cranks up the attack on the D led congress over the budget, the costs of the misadventure are surging as well:

   …It’s not just the troops that are surging. War costs are up for American operations in Iraq — way up, more than a third higher than last year. In the first half of this fiscal year, the Defense Department’s “average monthly obligations for contracts and pay is running about $12 billion per month, well above the $8.7 billion in FY2006,” says a new report, obtained by DANGER ROOM, from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service:

   “Additional war costs for the next 10 years could total about $472 billion if troop levels fall to 30,000 by 2010, or $919 billion if troop levels fall to 70,000 by about 2013. If these estimates are added to already appropriated amounts, total funding about $980 billion to $1.4 trillion by 2017“…

   linkage

   reality is apparantely just a far away spot on the banks of de-nile…

   lTMF’sA

   

   • 

     dada on July 7, 2007 at 2:47 pm

     shorter link to #3 C&L Blood and Treasue

     lTMF’sA

     

     • 

       KNUCKLEHEAD on July 7, 2007 at 4:23 pm

       dada,
       That`s a must read link. I hope the Chinese don`t get too pissed off at the reports here of tainted food from CHINA. When they decide to ask for their money the US owes them, having a car will mean, you have an extra spot to store your shit you bought at Target, because no one will be able to put oil in the engine, gas in the tank, nor even water in the radiator. Tires will be also priced out of our reach.
       We should start breeding horses & sparrows. That way, three can eat for the price of one. We`ll be feeding the horse, so the sparrow can pick through it`s shit, then we eat the sparrows. But I forgot, a bale of hay will be $897.56, even when the price of a horse will be $6.00.
       That is, unless you get a quarter horse, they`re 4 for a buck.
       A nice assortment of links you offer, especially for”Live Earth Day”.
       Sundance is showing all the concerts, I think.

     • 

       chocolate ink on July 7, 2007 at 5:13 pm

       I hadn’t realized that the monthly bill for this travesty had ballooned from 8 Billion a month to 12 Billion monthly…yet we have troops whose families are on food stamps and they still don’t have body armor or humvees that are protected and that’s just a starter list.

       • 

         dada on July 7, 2007 at 11:01 pm

         the numbers are staggering CI

         $12,000,000,000 mon. / 4.3 wks. per mon. = $2,790,697,674 per wk.

         divided by 7 = $398, 671, 096 per day

         divided by 24 = $16,611,296 per hr.

         divided by 60 = $276, 855 per minute

         so in the 4 minutes it took me to compose this, iraq cost $1,107,420

         per you sig….how many better ways are there that could this money be spent?

         lTMF’sA

         

         • 

           chocolate ink on July 8, 2007 at 5:29 pm

           It’s beyond obscene isn’t it that so many here are homeless-including children, without insurance or the many many millions living on the edge paycheck to paycheck, the mentally ill with no help or no place to go and bush has put the country in hock to China for monumental travesty he calls war.

           Yes poverty is the worst form of violence-nothing good comes from it only death, bloodshed and heartache and despair.