"I don't think Congress should be running the war; it should be funding the troops."
The inverse, of course, is that Congress can also defund the troops. But apparently that's not an option. Bush's position is that Congress can make one decision - to go to war - and then their role is to pay for it indefinitely, regardless. He'll listen, but he won't hear. He's the decider.
I don't know whether this performance is going to persuade anyone. It seems to me that the report only offers one real sign of success: that the Iraqi government came up with its pledged troops for Baghdad. That's it. It also seems to me, alas, that when the president speaks spontaneously about the war, he reveals vast amounts of ignorance, denial and deception, self and otherwise. The patronizing soundbites stick in the craw at this point. His formulation that we do not know whether the war can succeed but that it nonetheless must succeed is about as disorienting a leadership call as I have heard. The rank condescension toward the American people is also staggering. Look, Mr President, most Americans aren't as dim as you seem to be. Maybe it's time you realized that.
He's just out of his depth, I'm afraid. And others are sinking - and dying - as a consequence.
Bush: "Expect 'heavy fighting' in Iraq this summer"
As Congress was poised to approve money for U.S. forces in Iraq on Thursday, President Bush warned Americans to expect "heavy fighting" this summer during a critical time in his war strategy.
Answering reporters' questions at a White House news conference, Bush said the developments would occur once U.S. military reinforcements are in place in mid-June.
"We can expect more American and Iraqi casualties," Bush said. "We must provide our troops with the funds and resources they need to prevail."
Read on for what he did not say....
The President did not say, but we know he was thinking it....
"No matter how fubar this war is, we will continue to expend American Lives and Treasure, until the Democrats get some BALLS and force us to pull out, or REALLY get some balls and impeach me. Neither of which is likely to happen. So we will continue to send our young to fight in a civil war we created, and yes, they will continue to die. You see, I am like a gambler who will continue to sit at the table as long as the house grants me credit..."
I appreciate the fact that Jay Tea comes over from Wizbang to debate me from time to time...
How he can read stories like these and still rah rah Bush's war, I dont know.
Deployed troops battle for custody of children
She had raised her daughter for six years following the divorce, handled the shuttling to soccer practice and cheerleading, made sure schoolwork was done. Hardly a day went by when the two weren't together. Then Lt. Eva Crouch was mobilized with the Kentucky National Guard, and Sara went to stay with Dad.
A year and a half later, her assignment up, Crouch pulled into her driveway with one thing in mind — bringing home the little girl who shared her smile and blue eyes. She dialed her ex and said she'd be there the next day to pick Sara up, but his response sent her reeling.
"Not without a court order you won't."
Within a month, a judge would decide that Sara should stay with her dad. It was, he said, in "the best interests of the child."
What happened? Crouch was the legal residential caretaker; this was only supposed to be temporary. What had changed? She wasn't a drug addict, or an alcoholic, or an abusive mother.
Her only misstep, it seems, was answering the call to serve her country.
Crouch and an unknown number of others among the 140,000-plus single parents in uniform fight a war on two fronts: For the nation they are sworn to defend, and for the children they are losing because of that duty.
A federal law called the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act is meant to protect them by staying civil court actions and administrative proceedings during military activation. They can't be evicted. Creditors can't seize their property. Civilian health benefits, if suspended during deployment, must be reinstated.
And yet servicemembers' children can be — and are being — taken from them after they are deployed.
Some family court judges say that determining what's best for a child in a custody case is simply not comparable to deciding civil property disputes and the like; they have ruled that family law trumps the federal law protecting servicemembers. And so, in many cases when a soldier deploys, the ex-spouse seeks custody, and temporary changes become lasting.
Even some supporters of the federal law say it should be changed — that soldiers should be assured that they can regain custody of children after they return.
"Now, they've got a great argument when Johnny comes marching home that the child should remain where they are, even though it was a temporary order," says Lt. Col. Steve Elliott, a judge advocate with the Oklahoma National Guard, referring to non-deployed parents.
Military mothers and fathers, meanwhile, speak of birthdays missed. Bonds, once strong, weakened. Returning from duty not to joyful reunions but to endless hearings.
They are people like Marine Cpl. Levi Bradley, helping to fight the insurgency in Fallujah, Iraq, while battling for custody of his son in a Kansas family court.
Like Sgt. Mike Grantham of the Iowa National Guard, whose two kids lived with him until he was mobilized to train troops after 9/11.
Like Army Reserve Capt. Brad Carlson, fighting for custody of his American-born children in a foreign land after his marriage crumbled while he was deployed to the Middle East and his European wife refused to return to the States.
And like Eva Crouch, who spent two years and some $25,000 pushing her case through the Kentucky courts.
"I'd have spent a million," she says. "My child was my life ... I go serve my country, and I come back and have to go through hell and high water."
In the midst of World War II, back in 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the soldiers' relief law should be "liberally construed to protect those who have been obliged to drop their own affairs to take up the burdens of the nation."
Shielding soldiers, after all, would allow them "to devote their entire energy" to the nation's defense, as the law itself states.
But in child custody cases, the opposite often happens.
Battlefield ethics study finds lapses
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a survey of U.S. troops in combat in Iraq, less than half of Marines and a little more than half of Army soldiers said they would report a member of their unit for killing or wounding an innocent civilian.
More than 40% support the idea of torture in some cases, and 10% reported personally abusing Iraqi civilians, the Pentagon said Friday in what it called its first ethics study of troops at the war front. Units exposed to the most combat were chosen for the study, officials said.
"It is disappointing," said analyst John Pike of the Globalsecurity.org think tank. "But anybody who is surprised by it doesn't understand war. ... This is about combat stress."
The military has seen a number of high-profile incidents of alleged abuse in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the killings of 24 civilians by Marines in Haditha, the rape and killing of a 14-year-old girl and the slaying of her family in Iraq and the sexual humiliation of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.
"I don't want to, for a minute, second-guess the behavior of any person in the military — look at the kind of moral dilemma you are putting people in," Christopher Preble of the libertarian Cato Institute think tank, said of the mission in Iraq. "There's a real tension between using too much force, which generally means using force to protect yourself, and using too little and therefore exposing yourself to greater risk."
But I am sure Jay will find the silver lining in this cloud...
Published: May 01, 2007 10:25 AM ET
NEW YORK Tuesday marked the fourth anniversary of President Bush’s jet landing on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and his speech declaring major fighting in Iraq over, all in front of a giant “Mission Accomplished” banner.
At the time, it was heralded by much of the mainstream media as a fitting moment of triumph. "He won the war," boomed MSNBC's Chris Matthews. "He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics."
Since then, it has become -- during four more years of death and war -- a symbol of American hubris and setbacks in Iraq. Today it is often lampooned as a tragic “photo op.” Rock singer Neil Young, in a song referencing the event, sings, "History is a cruel judge of overconfidence."
When Bush spoke, the U.S. had 150,000 troops in Iraq; the number now stands at 160,000 or more. American casualties at the time were 139 killed and 542 wounded. A year ago they stood at 2,400 killed and now it's 3,350 dead.
With that in mind, here are excerpts revealing how one newspaper, The New York Times, covered the event and aftermath four years ago. They include this nugget: "The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior allied officials said today."
*
By Elisabeth Bumiller
WASHINGTON, May 1 -- President Bush's made-for-television address tonight on the carrier Abraham Lincoln was a powerful, Reaganesque finale to a six-week war. But beneath the golden images of a president steaming home with his troops toward the California coast lay the cold political and military realities that drove Mr. Bush's advisers to create the moment.
The president declared an end to major combat operations, White House, Pentagon and State Department officials said, for three crucial reasons: to signify the shift of American soldiers from the role of conquerors to police, to open the way for aid from countries that refused to help militarily and -- above all -- to signal to voters that Mr. Bush is shifting his focus from Baghdad to concerns at home….
''This is the formalization that tells everybody we're not engaged in combat anymore, we're prepared for getting out,'' a senior administration official said….
*
From published transcript of President Bush's speech on aircraft carrier, May 1:
"The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of Al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding.
"And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because that regime is no more.
"In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused, and deliberate, and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September 11th -- the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got."
*
By Judith Miller
Believe it or not, I take no pleasure in Bush's failure. It is a failure that will impact all of us for years to come, but it is time, once and for all, for the last hard line Bush Supporters to get their heads out of the sand and understand that we are at best in a desperate situation, and at worst in a DISASTER that there is no way to recover from.
We may have just created a POST SOVIET Afghanistan, right in the middle of the Middle East....
Pat Tillman's brother's testimony was devastating...
Pat Tillman's brother accused the military Tuesday of "intentional falsehoods" and "deliberate and careful misrepresentations" in portraying the football star's death in Afghanistan as the result of heroic engagement with the enemy instead of friendly fire.
"We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public," Kevin Tillman told a hearing of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. "Pat's death was clearly the result of fratricide," he said.
"Revealing that Pat's death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster in a month of political disasters ... so the truth needed to be suppressed," said Tillman, who was in a convoy behind his brother when the incident happened three years ago but didn't see it.
He said the Tillman family has sought for years to get at the truth about Pat Tillman's death.
"We have now concluded that our efforts are being actively thwarted by powers that are more interested in protecting a narrative than getting at the truth and seeing justice is served," he said.
Tillman was killed on April 22, 2004, after his Army Ranger comrades were ambushed in eastern Afghanistan. Rangers in a convoy trailing Tillman's group had just emerged from a canyon where they had been fired upon. They saw Tillman and mistakenly fired on him.
Committee chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., contended that the federal government invented "sensational details and stories" about the death of Pat Tillman and the rescue of Jessica Lynch from Iraq.
"The government violated its most basic responsibility," said Waxman.
Jessica Lynch is up now... And the Hollywood storty is being ripped apart... You know, Jessica deserves a medal, for being brave enough to cut through the propaganda and bullshit and to acknowledge the real heroes.
In the meantime, our young people continue to die in Iraq, and there is no end in sight.
Funny how this is the biggest story of the day, and the Right's biggest blog is ignoring it.
Word of the extension arrived almost by accident here at the rambling villa in the countryside east of Ramadi that the men from Company B, First Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment of the First Infantry Division, have turned into an American-Iraqi military base.
Shortly after midnight, First Sgt. Jody Heikkinen spotted an article about it on the Internet, and the company officers were caught off guard. “We’re trying to figure out what it means,” said Capt. Chris Calihan, 31, the company commander.
The soldiers had been scheduled to return home in June, but the announcement appeared to extend their stay until September.
Among those soldiers who were still awake, there were muffled outbursts of anger and frustration laced with dark humor.
“If I get malaria, I get to leave, right?” Specialist Rodney Lawson, 30, said to no one in particular.
The soldiers wondered if their relationships back home could weather an extension and predicted that divorce rates in the military would spike. They muttered about three additional months of forced celibacy and fretted half jokingly about impatient wives and girlfriends. “Now a lot of cheating be going on,” said Sgt. Jonathan Wilson, 29. “I’m serious.”
Specialist Lawson had planned to take a vacation with his former wife, with whom he has two daughters, after he got back to the division’s home base in Schweinfurt, Germany. They were going to give the relationship another try.
“This has totally wrecked everything I had planned,” he said as he slumped on an empty explosives crate.
“Now I’m never going to get together with my ex-wife,” he said. “I’m scared that the longer it takes, more things could happen.”
The soldiers also worried about the extra months of dodging snipers’ bullets and roadside bombs.
To all those Conservatives who are living in a fantasy world of these guys all having wonderful morale and wanting to be over there.... Time to fucking suit up and do your part.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Bombings in Karbala and the Baghdad area killed at least 56 people and wounded scores of others Saturday morning, police and medical officials said.
A car bomb blast in a crowded shopping area of central Karbala, a holy Shiite city about 70 miles southwest of Baghdad, killed at least 43 people and wounded 55, according to an official at Hussein Hospital in Karbala.
The explosion went off near a bus station and just 200 yards from the Imam Hussein shrine. (Watch chaos as rescuers try to evacuate bomb victims Video)
Video of the scene broadcast on Iraqi television showed hundreds of people crowded around the bomb site as emergency workers placed victims in ambulances.
A short time later, a car bomb exploded on the Jadriya bridge, which spans the Tigris River in southern Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and wounding 15 others, Iraqi police said. It was not immediately clear how badly the bridge was damaged.
The Jadriya bridge attack came two days after a suicide car bomb detonated on the Sarafiya bridge, which crosses the Tigris in northern Baghdad, also killing 10 people. Two large sections of the bridge collapsed into the river.
Eleven major bridges cross the Tigris River in Baghdad.
In other violence Saturday morning, a roadside bomb blast that targeted a police patrol in Madaan killed two Iraqi police officers and one civilian. Madaan is about 12 miles southeast of Baghdad. Four police officers and four civilians were also hurt.
Also, gunmen attacked the home of a Sunni member of Iraq's parliament Saturday morning. Five guards were wounded in the half-hour battle at the western Baghdad residence of Adnan al-Dulaimi, the head of the Sunni political party known as the General Conference of People of Iraq.
Five other Iraqis were wounded in two separate roadside bomb explosions in Baghdad.
British soldiers killed eight insurgents who were planting roadside bombs on the outskirts of the southern Iraqi city of Basra Friday night, a statement from the British military said.
Schools, hospitals and parks continue to be built by Halliburton in Iraq, as conservative supporters of the administration debate the EXACT location of the Iraqi parliament building.
In spite of the media's overwhelmingly negative reporting on Iraq, the left's rooting for failure, and the characterization that Bush's war is a quagmire and we need to get out fast, the American people, according to this poll done by a respectable polling company, want to win in Iraq and believe we can win in Iraq. They apparently have not bought into the Bush is Hitler mentality as the left has hoped.
This poll also supports what conservatives have argued about the significance of the November 2006 elections: that the Democrats weren't given control of Congress because the American people agreed with their position that we should pull out of Iraq but because they were ticked off at Republicans.
Well, the fact that the so called poll results appeared first on Drudge should give you an idea of it's credibility.... But it did not take long for a reader to point out just how RESPECTABLE and non partisan this polling company really is...
A partisan pollster? What a shock. Chances we'll get to see the data?
Seems the conservative types are really starting to show their truecolors when it comes to Barak Obama. How many lives have been lost in Baghdad in the last week, month, six months? Does the electricity run 24/7? Is Iraq safer than when we entered the war? How do YOU define wasted. I am sorry, but I take nothing away from the sacrifice of our troops when I say, "This war has been a disaster unparalleled in the history of our country, and if return for sacrifice is any measure of whether our soldiers lives were, "wasted," or not, I would say they were wasted, and all the spin and Conservative Bullshitista rhetoric in the world, will not change that fact...
Looks like the conservatives are jumping all over the Australian PM's recent comments about Senator Obama.
In a strongly worded foray into US politics today, Mr Howard said an Obama victory in the presidential election would be disastrous for the war on terrorism.
"I think he's wrong. I think that will just encourage those who want to completely destabilise and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and a victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for an Obama victory," Mr Howard said on Channel 9.
"If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats."
"If he's ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and send them to Iraq," Mr. Obama said. "Otherwise, it's just a bunch of empty rhetoric."
Eh, last time I checked, the Aussies were not feeling the pain in Iraq as we are, so I would agree with Obama. aside from that, this guy has his head so far up Bush's ass, he can tell what he had for breakfast. To use a British term, "Piss off Mr. Prime Minister," no one other than the Fringe Right, gives a rats ass about what you think, and if you dont know by now, Obama just jumped in the polls as a result of your drivel, so thanks. You see, Americans don't take too kindly to politicians from other countries telling us how we should feel about our own...
Over the past months and years, those on the left have gone to great effort to paint the mission in Iraq as "failed," "doomed" and a "disaster." They have failed to acknowledge the accomplishments of the U.S. military in Iraq, but have been quick to talk about those in our armed forces as child victims of a failed policy or (worse) as bloodthirsty thugs engaging in torture and terror.
It is certainly not a pleasant thing to accuse fellow Americans, particularly ones entrusted by the citizenry with the nation’s well being, of playing politics with American lives or of providing moral support to her enemies, but I think it is time to ask some hard questions.
Why have so many critics of the war spent more time talking about alleged abuses at Gitmo than they have talking about the new freedoms being enjoyed by those in Afghanistan and Iraq as a result of actions taken by the U.S. military?
Why is it that many war critics seem to believe the U.S. is capable of addressing the conflict and genocide in Darfur, but that they are not capable of achieving victory in Iraq?”
Why is it that when generals, or more frequently former generals, express a lack of confidence in the President, the Secretary of Defense, or our policy and mission in Iraq, their word is not only accepted without question, but their opinions are treated as absolute fact, but when other generals say that it is still possible to win in Iraq, and that condemnations of the President and his policies encourage the enemy, they are ignored?
Why, when given a choice between defeat through surrender or the possibility to pursue victory, there are so many so eager to choose the former?
I happen to agree that it is time to ask some questions. Though my questions are probably not what she or Rob expect. First some background.
I was against this war from day one. I honestly believe that we should have utilized the resources we commited to Iraq to DESTROYING AQ in Afghanistan, and routing the Taliban completely. I also believe we were decieved about the war and that it was poorly planned. We now have a situation where Afghanistan and even Pakistan remain a haven for those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and we have literally destroyed Iraq. Putting aside the horrendous violence that is taking place in Iraq every day, it laughable to talk about freedom in Iraq, when people dont even have sufficient water and electricity, and when college students are being blown to bits, and people can not leave their homes or go to work without fear of being slaughtered. And yes, we have committed atrocities in Iraq. Unspeakable atrocities, made even more heinous by the fact that our mission was supposed to eliminate such horrors. Over 2000 of our young men and women are dead, thousands more wounded, some so badly that their lives will never be the same... And it has now become clear to anyone but the most hardened partisan, that this war was a misguided one, run poorly and has created instability in the region...
Having said all of that, I still would not vote for a withdrawal. Because the one area where I agree with my conservative brethren is that if we withdraw now, we will simply create another Afghanistan. We will also do something that I think is more immoral than the invasion. We will leave that country in a state of chaos, with destroyed infrastructure and in a state of civil war. As Collin Powell once said, "We broke it, we own it."
But I regress... What are my questions?
1. Why do some conservatives feel that we should not challenge and question a failed strategy.
2. If a Democratic President had led us into Iraq under the same circumstances and with the same results, would conservatives be singing the same song?
3. What are the positives you keep talking about? And how do those positives weigh against the negatives.
4. Do conservatives think we should ignore the negatives in Iraq? Do they think that no one should be held accountable for the poor planning and for the failures to stabilize the country?
5. How much more should we spend in blood and treasure?
6. When is enough, enough?
7. Do they really believe that 20,000 more troops will solve the problem? If so, why aren't they upset that the additional troops.... something many have called for for over a year, was not done before.
Those are my questions. I have many more. But I doubt they will be addressed. Based on the Vice President's comments yesterday, it seems that many on the Right are simply delusional. I am still looking for evidence that they are not.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday dismissed as "hogwash" the suggestion that blunders may have hurt the administration's credibility on Iraq.
In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, conducted a day after Bush delivered his State of the Union address, Cheney was asked to respond to some Republicans in Congress who "are now seriously questioning your credibility, because of the blunders and the failures."
To that, Cheney answered, "Wolf, Wolf, I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash."
What kind of drugs is Cheney taking... Or what kind does he think WE are taking. This guy is so arrogant, and so out of touch, that NO credible news operation should be polluting the airwaves with this man's drivel. But the fact that he is indifferent to the impact of the war is understandable, he had "more important things," to do during the Vietnam conflict, his opportunity to serve.... The only "Hogwash," here Mr. Vice President, is your own arrogant, self serving state of denial. But then again, who want to admit how stupid they have been? I havent checked, but I imagine that most of the conservative blogs are making hay today about Wolf Blitzer asking about Cheney's pregnant Lesbian daughter... Oh the outrage!
The "Jamil Hussein" story is one important item on our agenda, but not the only one. As Curt and other bloggers on this story have noted from the beginning, Jamilgate isn't just about "Jamil Hussein." Bryan and I plan to do as much on-the-ground reporting as we can to nail down unresolved questions--not only about Jamil Hussein and the Hurriya six burning Sunnis allegations, but also about the AP four burning mosque story discrepancies and the many other AP sources that our military has publicly challenged--including "Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq" and more than a dozen police officers listed by U.S. military spokesman Navy Lt. Michael Dean. There's also the issue of detained AP photographer Bilal Hussein. And we are looking forward to reporting first-hand on the security situation in Iraq outside the so-called "Green Zone" (International Zone) and talking to as many American and Iraqi Army troops with insights on these and other broader matters.
I am really interested in following this story. If Michelle actually does leave the security of the Green Zone and goes out to meet with ordinary Iraqi's and troops and whatnot, she will get kudos from me. But I don't believe it will happen beyond a few staged events...
The conservatives all said that the Democrats had no plan for Iraq?
I am still waiting for one from Bush... I guess I could get behind this whole "Troop Surge," thing, if I thought it would work. At this point I dont...
But then again, that seems to be the only plan they have... That and Bashing the Democrats about not wanting to send more troops to Iraq to be killed, without a plan for what to do with them once they get there... I guess it is easy to second guess when you aint a "surger," yourself?
I dont know ONE singe progressive blogger who is mourning the death of Saddam Hussien. Not one. The man was a cold hearted killer, with balls the size of Watermellons who went to his grave without a tinge of remorse, or apparently fear, which was every WIngnuts fantasy, that the man would break down crying or something... Well he didn't, which I am sure pissed off Bush to no end. I mean how sweet can revenge be when the guy you are revenging on is more fucking heroic than you... It also also probably backfired on a lot of the wingnuts who saw this as a propaganda opportunity... It was, for the Jihadist, who will promptly canonize a psychopath, and write songs and poems about how in the face of death, Saddam taunted his captors....
Apparently, Hussien went to his grave thinking he was right, and arguing with his executioners, hell even making fun of them. Like I said, BALLS LIKE WATERMELLONS... An image the Iraqi Security officials tried unsuccessfully to deny and twist. Whatever...
He's dead, May God have mercy on his soul. Now, where are the people who actually attacked America? 3000 dead service men and women, a destroyed country, Gazillions of dollars down the toilette, and these pathetic idiots want to fantasize that some of us are mourning Saddam's death? Tell me it has not come to that.
Eh guys, where the hell is Ossama? You want to talk about bleeding heart Liberals? I tell you what, you heroes go find him, and I will volunteer to pull the switch... Until then, I realize you need something to gloat about. Even going so far as to post the Saddam Snuff video.... I can understand, I really can. It's been a tough couple of months for ya. But lets try to maintain SOME semblance of reality.... 'Kay?
The Left has tried very hard to deny that truth. The mainstream media revels in showing video of bombings and reporting kidnappings, never noting the stability and economic growth in many parts of Iraq. Kevin McCullough has written a compelling article to show that Iraq is, by any reasonable standard, a clear success. The notion that Iraq is becoming a foothold for democratic republicanism is terrifying for the Left. Enough so that they will denounce even its possibility, much less the growing evidence for it.
Durbin said he challenged Bush's analogy, reminding him that Truman had the NATO alliance behind him and negotiated with his enemies at the United Nations. Durbin said that's what the Iraq Study Group is recommending that Bush do now - work more with allies and negotiate with adversaries on Iraq.
Bush, Durbin said, "reacted very strongly. He got very animated in his response" and emphasized that he is "the commander in chief."
I can just imagine him pouting and stomping his feet!
I understand why so many conservatives, especially bloggers, just keep defending this guy. He is just too much of an embarrassment for them to acknowledge how monumentally wrong they were... This guy has been playing Generalisimo for the last six years, spent hundreds of billions of our dollars, sent thousands of our young people to Iraq to die, while it appears that NO ONE in his family has come close to serving in "Bush's war." A civil war rages in Iraq... The situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating daily. The World hates America. Our President is considered a buffoon at best... And conservative bloggers focus on whether an Iraqi Police Captain is REAL OR NOT? I mean whether some people were set on fire outside a Mosque may or may not be true... But the reality is that dozens die daily in Iraq, including our soldiers. Where is the outrage about that...
I guess for people who have been writing about how much "better" things are in Iraq for the last two years, it's hard to pass up dissecting some bad news, that may not have happened. I mean, they all want the Media to write "smoke rings up your ass stories," about hospitals and schools, and how many Iraqis love the Invasion. Or maybe, with the devastating loss in November, they are longing for the days of Rathergate, Cigars champaign and, "taunting the Liberals." Sorry dude, it will be two years before you can even THINK about taunting a Liberal again. Every day looks worse, and the Frat Boy YOU elected President has done more damage to our international prestige... And our wallet:
And even if we're able to constrain discretionary spending for the next ten years to the rate of inflation, which we haven't for a long time, we still face large and growing structural deficits in the years ahead. Bottom line? The status quo is unacceptable and unsustainable. We're on an imprudent and unsustainable fiscal path. Tough choices are required. We will not be able to grow our way out of this problem. Anybody who says that suffers from two problems. Number one, they have not studied economic history adequately; and number two; they probably wouldn't do real well at math. Because the numbers just don't add up.
Than generations can hope to fix...
Well, at least somepeople came to their senses, or maybe it's not that at all... Maybe it's just that some people have integrity and don't march in lockstep when the people in front of them are all farting... I don't know. But I am glad there are people out there who put principle before political party.
I would like to ask Dean, and all the other war supporters out there, a simple question...
Let me preface it by saying as I have said before, I dont want to see us leave Iraq in a state of Civil War either....
But running stories like this one... I just don't get it. You talk about a STATE OF DENIAL! For every post Dean and others run about soldiers who are indignant about the coverage of the war, there are others who are and have, stated that the situation is FUBAR.
So my question to Dean is simple, how many have to die. Iraqis and Americans, before you are ready to stop hawking smoke rings up the collective asses of Americans. I would have a lot more respect for Dean and others if they would just admit the obvious. We are losing the "second," war in Iraq. We won military victory and lost war for hearts and minds.
The news media are not propagandist. They may have been for a long time, but even they can no longer ignore the stench of a failed policy, a failed war, and the gross incompetence that got us into both. So spare us the patriotic Sargent Slaughter stories. I frankly don't give a rats ass. We need to start focusing on reality, and figure out how to turn this around, before the sheer weight of public opinion, forces a withdrawal, not down lanes paved with "flowers and candy," but more like the American Embassy in Saigon...
The Iraq Study Group report released yesterday might well be titled "The Realist Manifesto."
From the very first page, in which co-chairmen James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton scold that "our leaders must be candid and forthright with the American people," the bipartisan report is nothing less than a repudiation of the Bush administration's diplomatic and military approach to Iraq and to the whole region.
Throughout its pages, the report reflects the foreign policy establishment's disdain for the "neoconservative" policies long espoused by President Bush and his aides. But while many of its recommendations stem from the "realist" school of foreign policy, it is unclear at this point whether a radically different approach would make much difference nearly four years after the invasion of Iraq.
The administration's effort to spread democracy to Arab lands is not mentioned in the report, except to note briefly that most countries in the region are wary of it. The report urges direct talks with Iran and Syria, both of which the administration has largely shunned. It also calls for placing new emphasis on resolving the Israel-Arab conflict, including pressing Israel to reach a peace deal with Syria, on the grounds that the issue shapes regional attitudes about U.S. involvement in Iraq. Overall, it strongly suggests that Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have bungled diplomacy in the region with unrealistic objectives and narrow strategies.
"We took a very pragmatic approach because all of these people up here are pragmatic public officials," Hamilton told reporters, referring to the five Democrats and five Republicans who unanimously endorsed the report's conclusions and recommendations. The bipartisan nature of the report -- and the fact that Baker was secretary of state for Bush's father -- will make it difficult for the White House to ignore. By endorsing the critics' view of the war, the report will also help incoming Democratic congressional leaders frame the debate over Iraq as a disaster largely of the administration's making.
In a lengthy preamble to the recommendations titled "Assessment," the report gives a dispassionate account of the "grave and deteriorating" situation in Iraq, echoing books and news reports that the administration had previously criticized as one-sided or overly negative. The report's description of the violence in Iraq, which amounts to an attack on the administration's understanding of the facts on the ground, will likely set the new baseline for how the Iraq conflict is portrayed.
"The ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing," the report warns.
Funny how this assesment seems to jibe with the MSM's. Don't see many conservative bloggers commenting on that. Not that I expected them to. I have some good friends on the Right who must wince when they go back and read their "schools and hospitals are opening every day, and things are getting better," memes. Some have been regular cheerleaders for this war since day one.... It will be interesting to see how long, if EVER, it takes them to recognize that the situation if FUBAR in Iraq, and that the reason for it is gross incompetence on the part of the people who led us into it.
With Rick Moran, but I must agree with most of what he writes in this post (Please read it all):
I don’t know if there is a way to “victory” in Iraq. Clearly the rest of the world has already made up its mind (not to mention the American media) that we have lost so that no matter what we do in Iraq, how we leave it, what we accomplish from here on out, the onus of defeat will accompany our withdrawal.
Is the ISG simply acknowledging this fact? Or are they encouraging it?
Both, probably. But in the end, it comes down to doing the best we can to bring some kind of definitive denouement to our Iraqi adventure. And it appears that at least some Democrats – whether chastened by victory or freed from having to engage in partisan sniping to differentiate themselves from Republicans – are realizing that Iraq is not Viet Nam and that simply walking away now would be catastrophic:
Collin Powell once said that if we invaded Iraq, "we own it."
My position on the war in Iraq has been consistent from day one, I was against the war, and always will feel that we made a big mistake by invading Iraq. I felt that our focus should have been on capturing Ossama Bin Laden. Instead we focused on Bush's pet hard-on with Saddam Hussien. Well, Saddam is facing death, his country is in a ruinous civil war, and we have accomplished little there except to defeat a half assed army and create chaos.
I have said, and will say again. We can NOT pull out of Iraq and leave it in a state of civil war. Not only is that immoral, but impractical. By doing so, we have simply replaced Afghanistan as a Jihadi training ground, with Iraq. The Iraq Study group has just released its report. I have not yet read it, but the excerpts I have seen are not pleasant. It seems that the Secretary of Defense's analysis of the war being
"lost," is shared by the Iraq Study Group.
I am not a military strategist. And I don't have any solutions. I only know that pulling out of Iraq and leaving it Balkanized is NOT the solution. It is absolutely criminal what the Bush administration did in Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld's memo on changing the strategy in Iraq, is a footnote on a shame filled chapter of American History. A chapter where an Administration was allowed to run amok, while supporters and conservative bloggers cheered on the dissaster with idiotic commentary about new schools and hospitals opening, while terror and chaos spiraled out of control.
There may have been a time when we could have won this war. There may have been a time when we could have helped the Iraqi people to create a new democracy in the Middle East. That time may be passed, but one thing is for certain... Whether our high goals of a beautiful new Democracy in the Middle East are met or not, we CAN not leave chaos... Too much blood has been spilled.
Do we really want the world to remember Iraq by images of torture (Not the Saddam kind, but our own), of Iraqis, and a daily flood of casualty figures from the Civil War we left behind?
How many innocent deaths will there have to be, before conservative commentators can stop using Saddam's carnage, to justify that which WE created?
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - A soldier was sentenced Thursday to 90 years in prison with the possibility of parole for conspiring to rape a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and kill her and her family.
Spc. James P. Barker, one of four Fort Campbell soldiers accused in the March 12 rape and killings, pleaded guilty Wednesday and agreed to testify against the others to avoid the death penalty.
"This court sentences you to be confined for the length of your natural life, with the eligibility of parole," said Lt. Col. Richard Anderson, the military judge presiding over the court-martial.
Under the plea agreement, Barker got a life sentence but will not serve more than 90 years in prison, Anderson said. He will be eligible for parole in 20 years.
Put up against a wall and shot. And yeah I support the troops, yada yada, And yeah I realize that 99% of them are doing/did and honorable job in Iraq, yada, fucking yada. Maybe it is just my perception, or maybe it is modern news reporting, or what the fuck ever, but this war has produced more disgusting filth, on both sides, than any I can remember since arriving on this big green ball 46 years ago.
The Redstaters love to talk about Rape Rooms, torture, murder, etc., I guess they just don't consider it to be as heinous when WE DO IT! As a father, as an American, hell on a lot of levels, this just disgusts me... On second thought, save the bullet and give him a space next to Saddam, and a hemp necktie to match!
I remember sitting with Richard Perle in his suite at London's Grosvenor House hotel and receiving a private lecture on the importance of securing victory in Iraq. "Iraq is a very good candidate for democratic reform," he said. "It won't be Westminster overnight, but the great democracies of the world didn't achieve the full, rich structure of democratic governance overnight. The Iraqis have a decent chance of succeeding." Perle seemed to exude the scent of liberation, as well as a whiff of gunpowder. It was February 2003, and Operation Iraqi Freedom, the culmination of his long campaign on behalf of regime change in Iraq, was less than a month away.
Three years later, Perle and I meet again at his home outside Washington, D.C. It is October, the worst month for U.S. casualties in Iraq in almost two years, and Republicans are bracing for losses in the upcoming midterm elections. As he looks into my eyes, speaking slowly and with obvious deliberation, Perle is unrecognizable as the confident hawk who, as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, had invited the exiled Iraqi dissident Ahmad Chalabi to its first meeting after 9/11. "The levels of brutality that we've seen are truly horrifying, and I have to say, I underestimated the depravity," Perle says now, adding that total defeat—an American withdrawal that leaves Iraq as an anarchic "failed state"—is not yet inevitable but is becoming more likely. "And then," says Perle, "you'll get all the mayhem that the world is capable of creating."
According to Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President George W. Bush. Perle says, "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.… At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.… I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty."
Perle goes so far as to say that, if he had his time over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.' … I don't say that because I no longer believe that Saddam had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, or that he was not in contact with terrorists. I believe those two premises were both correct. Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."
Having spoken with Perle, I wonder: What do the rest of the pro-war neoconservatives think? If the much caricatured "Prince of Darkness" is now plagued with doubt, how do his comrades-in-arms feel? I am particularly interested in finding out because I interviewed many neocons before the invasion and, like many people, found much to admire in their vision of spreading democracy in the Middle East.
I expect to encounter disappointment. What I find instead is despair, and fury at the incompetence of the Bush administration the neoconservatives once saw as their brightest hope.
It is pretty easy to see at this point... No matter what happens on November 7th, this administration has lost credibility... Even with those who supported it...
An editorial scheduled to appear on Monday in Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times, calls for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
The papers are sold to American servicemen and women. They are published by the Military Times Media Group, which is a subsidiary of Gannett Co., Inc.
Here is the text of the editorial, an advance copy of which we received this afternoon.
----------------
Time for Rumsfeld to go
"So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion ... it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth."
That statement was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Marguerite Higgins more than a half-century ago during the Korean War.
But until recently, the "hard bruising" truth about the Iraq war has been difficult to come by from leaders in Washington. One rosy reassurance after another has been handed down by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "mission accomplished," the insurgency is "in its last throes," and "back off," we know what we're doing, are a few choice examples.
Military leaders generally toed the line, although a few retired generals eventually spoke out from the safety of the sidelines, inciting criticism equally from anti-war types, who thought they should have spoken out while still in uniform, and pro-war foes, who thought the generals should have kept their critiques behind closed doors.
Now, however, a new chorus of criticism is beginning to resonate. Active-duty military leaders are starting to voice misgivings about the war's planning, execution and dimming prospects for success.
Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, told a Senate Armed Services Committee in September: "I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it ... and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war."
Last week, someone leaked to The New York Times a Central Command briefing slide showing an assessment that the civil conflict in Iraq now borders on "critical" and has been sliding toward "chaos" for most of the past year. The strategy in Iraq has been to train an Iraqi army and police force that could gradually take over for U.S. troops in providing for the security of their new government and their nation.
But despite the best efforts of American trainers, the problem of molding a viciously sectarian population into anything resembling a force for national unity has become a losing proposition.
For two years, American sergeants, captains and majors training the Iraqis have told their bosses that Iraqi troops have no sense of national identity, are only in it for the money, don't show up for duty and cannot sustain themselves.
Meanwhile, colonels and generals have asked their bosses for more troops. Service chiefs have asked for more money.
And all along, Rumsfeld has assured us that things are well in hand.
Now, the president says he'll stick with Rumsfeld for the balance of his term in the White House.
This is a mistake.
Read the entire thing...
It sort of wipes the conservative fantasy about Iraq completely off the map, doesn't it. No, not really, you see, it's all about the elections.
While the media is obsessed parsing the ad libs of someone on no ballot this fall, something truly ominous has just happened in Iraq. The commander-in-chief has abandoned an American soldier to the tender mercies of a Shiite militia. Yes, there are nuances here, and the NYT fleshes out the story today. But the essential fact is clear. In a showdown for control of Baghdad, the Iraqi prime minister took orders from Moqtada al-Sadr, and instructed the U.S. military to withdraw from Sadr City. The American forces were trying both to stabilize the city but also to find a missing American serviceman. He is still missing. Money quote from the WaPo:
The move lifted a near siege that had stood at least since last Wednesday. U.S. military police imposed the blockade after the kidnapping of an American soldier of Iraqi descent. The soldier's Iraqi in-laws said they believed he had been abducted by the Mahdi Army as he visited his wife at her home in the Karrada area of Baghdad, where U.S. military checkpoints were also removed as a result of Maliki's action.
The crackdown on Sadr City had a second motive, U.S. officers said: the search for Abu Deraa, a man considered one of the most notorious death squad leaders. The soldier and Abu Deraa both were believed by the U.S. military to be in Sadr City.
The U.S. military does not have a tradition of abandoning its own soldiers to foreign militias, or of taking orders from foreign governments. No commander-in-chief who actually walks the walk, rather than swaggering the swagger, would acquiesce to such a thing.
Maybe it's because the trooper has Iraqi roots, I mean we all know how much this government cares about Iraqis!
Does that qualify as understatement of the year... or what? I think the situation in Iraq has BEEN chaos for a LONG time!
WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 - A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict.
A one-page slide shown at the Oct. 18 briefing provides a rare glimpse into how the military command that oversees the war is trying to track its trajectory, particularly in terms of sectarian fighting.
The slide includes a color-coded bar chart that is used to illustrate an “Index of Civil Conflict.” It shows a sharp escalation in sectarian violence since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, and tracks a further worsening this month despite a concerted American push to tamp down the violence in Baghdad.
In fashioning the index, the military is weighing factors like the ineffectual Iraqi police and the dwindling influence of moderate religious and political figures, rather than more traditional military measures such as the enemy’s fighting strength and the control of territory.
The conclusions the Central Command has drawn from these trends are not encouraging, according to a copy of the slide that was obtained by The New York Times. The slide shows Iraq as moving sharply away from “peace,” an ideal on the far left side of the chart, to a point much closer to the right side of the spectrum, a red zone marked “chaos.” As depicted in the command’s chart, the needle has been moving steadily toward the far right of the chart.
An intelligence summary at the bottom of the slide reads “urban areas experiencing ‘ethnic cleansing’ campaigns to consolidate control” and “violence at all-time high, spreading geographically.” According to a Central Command official, the index on civil strife has been a staple of internal command briefings for most of this year. The analysis was prepared by the command’s intelligence directorate, which is overseen by Brig. Gen. John M. Custer.
The number of Iraqi civilians killed in violence may have jumped to another record high in October, data from the Iraqi government indicated on Wednesday.
Statistics issued by the Interior Ministry for Iraqis killed in political violence put civilian deaths last month at 1,289, nearly 42 a day and up 18 percent from the 1,089 seen in September, itself a record for this particular series of data.
Bloodshed intensified in the holy month of Ramadan, which ended last week, as rival Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim communities vied for power in a continuing cycle of sectarian reprisals.
Such figures have become increasingly controversial, notably since the United Nations put the monthly civilian toll at over 3,000 this summer and a group of medical statisticians estimated that over 650,000 may have died since the U.S. invasion of 2003.
U.S. officials, mindful that dismay over violence in Iraq could cost President George W. Bush's Republicans control of Congress in elections on Tuesday, question the U.N. estimate.
Bush and Iraq's prime minister dismissed the statisticians' survey in the medical journal The Lancet last month.
Calls for a U.S. troop withdrawal have also strengthened with the deaths of 104 U.S. soldiers in Iraq in October, the bloodiest month for Americans in nearly two years.
Evidence of civilian casualties is scarce and collecting data fraught with danger. The Iraqi government has also tightened rules to prevent officials outside the prime minister's office releasing figures.
Reuters typically reports between a dozen and several dozen killings a day in Iraq, most of them of civilians.
The Interior Ministry data is a nationwide compilation of reports from its officials as well as the Defense and Health ministries, the official who provides the statistics said.
It does not include all violent deaths but those judged the result of political, sectarian or ethnic killings, as opposed to criminal murder, the Interior Ministry official added. He would give no further detail on how the distinctions are drawn.
The figures also showed 139 Iraqi soldiers and police were killed in October -- substantially fewer than the more than 300 that the U.S. military commander in Iraq said were killed in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ended a week ago.
TRENDS
Nonetheless, the Interior Ministry figures have matched trends reported by other officials, both Iraqi and U.S., this year -- notably a sharp increase in killings after the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in February and a decline in deaths at the start of a major military operation in Baghdad in August.
The Interior Ministry said 582 civilians were killed in political violence in January, rising to 782 in March. It said 889 died in June, 1,065 in July and 769 in August.
Officials at Baghdad morgue, which has routinely taken in over 1,000 bodies a month this year, many suffering from gunshot and torture wounds, say they have been told not to release data.
Emphasis mine....
But not to worry, my Conservative friends assure me that the Iraqis remain grateful... That is the ones who are not yet dead...
"If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don't have one. Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, yet they don't have a plan for victory."
This is one of the most profound... saddest... thing I have ever read...
Written last month, this straightforward account of life in Iraq by a Marine officer was initially sent just to a small group of family and friends. His honest but wry narration and unusually frank dissection of the mission contrasts sharply with the story presented by both sides of the Iraq war debate, the Pentagon spin masters and fierce critics. Perhaps inevitably, the "Letter from Iraq" moved quickly beyond the small group of acquantainaces and hit the inboxes of retired generals, officers in the Pentagon, and staffers on Capitol Hill. TIME's Sally B. Donnelly first received a copy three weeks ago but only this week was able to track down the author and verify the document's authenticity. The author wishes to remain anonymous but has allowed us to publish it here — with a few judicious omissions.
All: I haven't written very much from Iraq. There's really not much to write about. More exactly, there's not much I can write about because practically everything I do, read or hear is classified military information or is depressing to the point that I'd rather just forget about it, never mind write about it. The gaps in between all of that are filled with the pure tedium of daily life in an armed camp. So it's a bit of a struggle to think of anything to put into a letter that's worth reading. Worse, this place just consumes you. I work 18-20-hour days, every day. The quest to draw a clear picture of what the insurgents are up to never ends. Problems and frictions crop up faster than solutions. Every challenge demands a response. It's like this every day. Before I know it, I can't see straight, because it's 0400 and I've been at work for 20 hours straight, somehow missing dinner again in the process. And once again I haven't written to anyone. It starts all over again four hours later. It's not really like Ground Hog Day, it's more like a level from Dante's Inferno.
Rather than attempting to sum up the last seven months, I figured I'd just hit the record-setting highlights of 2006 in Iraq. These are among the events and experiences I'll remember best.
Worst Case of Deja Vu — I thought I was familiar with the feeling of deja vu until I arrived back here in Fallujah in February. The moment I stepped off of the helicopter, just as dawn broke, and saw the camp just as I had left it ten months before — that was deja vu. Kind of unnerving. It was as if I had never left. Same work area, same busted desk, same chair, same computer, same room, same creaky rack, same... everything. Same everything for the next year. It was like entering a parallel universe. Home wasn't 10,000 miles away, it was a different lifetime.
Most Surreal Moment — Watching Marines arrive at my detention facility and unload a truck load of flex-cuffed midgets. 26 to be exact. We had put the word out earlier in the day to the Marines in Fallujah that we were looking for Bad Guy X, who was described as a midget. Little did I know that Fallujah was home to a small community of midgets, who banded together for support since they were considered as social outcasts. The Marines were anxious to get back to the midget colony to bring in the rest of the midget suspects, but I called off the search, figuring Bad Guy X was long gone on his short legs after seeing his companions rounded up by the giant infidels.
Most Profound Man in Iraq — an unidentified farmer in a fairly remote area who, after being asked by Reconnaissance Marines if he had seen any foreign fighters in the area replied "Yes, you."
Worst City in al-Anbar Province — Ramadi, hands down. The provincial capital of 400,000 people. Lots and lots of insurgents killed in there since we arrived in February. Every day is a nasty gun battle. They blast us with giant bombs in the road, snipers, mortars and small arms. We blast them with tanks, attack helicopters, artillery, our snipers (much better than theirs), and every weapon that an infantryman can carry. Every day. Incredibly, I rarely see Ramadi in the news. We have as many attacks out here in the west as Baghdad. Yet, Baghdad has 7 million people, we have just 1.2 million. Per capita, al-Anbar province is the most violent place in Iraq by several orders of magnitude. I suppose it was no accident that the Marines were assigned this area in 2003.
Bravest Guy in al-Anbar Province — Any Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician (EOD Tech). How'd you like a job that required you to defuse bombs in a hole in the middle of the road that very likely are booby-trapped or connected by wire to a bad guy who's just waiting for you to get close to the bomb before he clicks the detonator? Every day. Sanitation workers in New York City get paid more than these guys. Talk about courage and commitment.
Second Bravest Guy in al-Anbar Province — It's a 20,000-way tie among all these Marines and Soldiers who venture out on the highways and through the towns of al-Anbar every day, not knowing if it will be their last — and for a couple of them, it will be.
Worst E-Mail Message — "The Walking Blood Bank is Activated. We need blood type A+ stat." I always head down to the surgical unit as soon as I get these messages, but I never give blood — there's always about 80 Marines in line, night or day.
Biggest Surprise — Iraqi Police. All local guys. I never figured that we'd get a police force established in the cities in al-Anbar. I estimated that insurgents would kill the first few, scaring off the rest. Well, insurgents did kill the first few, but the cops kept on coming. The insurgents continue to target the police, killing them in their homes and on the streets, but the cops won't give up. Absolutely incredible tenacity. The insurgents know that the police are far better at finding them than we are — and they are finding them. Now, if we could just get them out of the habit of beating prisoners to a pulp...
I have read a whole lot of war letters. Some of my favorites are from soldiers of WWII. They had a sense of purpose, and despite the same kind of language, 50 some years removed... This one strikes me... There is something magnificent about this Marine's writing. I wish I owned a newspaper, I would give him a job the moment he stepped off the plane when he gets home. It is something everyone who supports this war, especially those who support it from the safety of their Den, needs to read. I loved this line:<
