Bush is well known for his soaring rhetoric, especially when it comes to Iraq. It is a conflict born out or rhetoric, and indeed sustained by it. But the rhetoric has begun to ring hollow with a majority of the American public, and statements comparing Bush's War on Terror with the greatest conflict of the last century is well.... Ridiculous!

From Slate:

Accept for a moment the argument that Iraq is but one theater in a global war on terrorism. Overlook that, to the degree this is true, it's because Bush's invasion of Iraq and his many miscalculations afterward helped make it so. Even so, it would be an enormous leap to claim that the war in Iraq or the broader war on terror is the political, strategic, or moral equivalent of World War II.

Al-Qaida or its sundry offshoots could crash many more airplanes, wreck many more buildings, and bomb many more subways and the magnitude of their power, and the urgency of their threat, would still fall far short of that posed by Nazi Germany. The panzers of the Wehrmacht rolled across the plains of Europe, toppling governments with ease, imposing totalitarian regimes, and killing millions in their wake. This was a war of civilization on a level that today's war however you might define it doesn't begin to approach.

But let's say that the two wars World War II and Iraq (or the broader war on terrorism) are comparable, that their stakes are even remotely as high. Then why is President Bush fighting this war so tentatively?

From December 1941 to August 1945 the attack on Pearl Harbor until the declaration of Allied victory the United States manufactured 88,430 tanks and 274,941 combat aircraft. Yet in the two years after the invasion of Iraq, much less the four years since the attack on the World Trade Center, the Bush administration has not built enough armor platings to protect our soldiers' jeeps from roadside bombs.

To fund World War II, the United States drastically expanded and raised taxes. (At the start of the war, just 4 million Americans had to pay income tax; by its end, 43 million did.) Beyond that, 85 million Americans—half the population at the time—answered the call to buy War Bonds, $185 billion worth. Food was rationed, scrap metal was donated, the entire country was on a war footing. By contrast, President Bush has asked the citizenry for no sacrifice, no campaigns of national purpose, to fight or fund the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. In fact, he has proudly cut taxes, heaving the hundreds of billions of dollars in war costs on top of the already swelling national debt.

If this war's stakes are comparable to World War II's, the entire nation should be enlisted in its cause not necessarily to fight in it, but at least to pay for it. And if President Bush is not willing to call for some sort of national sacrifice, he cannot expect anyone to believe the stakes are really high.

Bush has not asked the American public to sacrifice for the war in Iraq. If he had, I doubt it would have taken this long for the American Public to become fed up with it. This disorganized, disjointed conflict, in which our young men and women are sent to die in a meatgrinder of RPG's and Roadside Bombs, has been a disaster from it's inception.

And despite claims to the contrary, the shortage in available Guard Units due to the war, has no doubt had an impact on the ability to rapidly respond the victims of Katrina. Would anyone argue that we are one disaster away from a tragedy of ungodly proportions. This administration is an undeclared National Disaster. We put a drunken Frat Boy in the highest office in the land, fronted and propped up by an old boy network and a political hack in Karl Rove, and NOW... NOW with thousands dead in Iraq, New Orleans wiped off the map,fiscal problems that would make The Lemon Drop Kid blush, political scandals ranging from Gay Hookers in the Press Room to Outing CIA agents for revenge, only NOW do we start looking at the five year train wreck and international embarrassment that this administration is...

It is beyond belief to me, that an entire Nation, a nation with the backbone of heroes, could be so cowed by 9/11, that we allowed this man to waltz back into the White House on an Agenda of "Fear All the Time." That Bush is President for three more years, means that the opportunities to continue to squander this nations assets, destroy our international esteem, and generally continue to FUBAR everything in sight, is a reality that we all must face, and all must take responsibility for. My ONLY hope is that in the Mid Term elections, The American people wake up and realize that the only way to apply some sanity to an America on the brink, is to throw those out, Republican and Democrat, who have collaborated with this government. Then there is a long path to getting our house back in order, and I am afraid it will be a few more years yet, before we can start the real cleaning...

In the mean time, The President continues his "vacation," while 10's of thousands of Americans in Louisiana and Alabama wonder how they are going to live now that they have no job or place to live....

Welcome to Daou Report readers. Please feel free to comment on the post that the Daou Report linked to, as well as anything else you find interesting on ISOU.

And if you want to read two more interesting viewpoints on the effects of the war in Iraq on Bush's legacy. Professor Bainbridge and Kevin Drum have two excellent pieces on the subject. It is heartening to see Conservatives like Bainbridge waking up to the reality of this folly.

I found these two comments, particularly compelling:

The trouble with Bush's justification for the war is that it uses American troops as fly paper. Send US troops over to Iraq, where they'll attract all the terrorists, who otherwise would have come here, and whom we'll then kill. This theory has proven fallacious. The first problem is that the American people are unwilling to let their soldiers be used as fly paper. If Iraq has proven anything, it has confirmed for me the validity of the Powell Doctrine.

and

The second problem is that the fly paper strategy
seems to be radicalizing our foes even more. For every fly that gets
caught, it seems as though 10 more spring up. This should hardly come
as a surprise to anybody who has watched Israel pursue military
solutions to its terrorist problems, after all. Does anybody really
think Israel's military actions have left Hezbollah or Hamas with fewer
foot soldiers? To the contrary, the London bombing suggests to me that
it is only a matter of time before the jihadists strike in the US
again, even though our troops remain hung out as fly paper in the
Augean Stables of Iraq. {Update: The news
that Scotland Yard foiled a gas attack on the House of Commons, for
which the Yard deserves mega-kudos, doesn't change my mind. As the
climax of Tom Clancy's novel Debt of Honor suggests (and I still wonder of that inspired 9/11), the terrorists only need to win once. Conversely, the latest news
about that rocket attack on a US Navy ship in Jordan seems to confirm
my concerns: "The Abdullah Azzam Brigades -- an al-Qaida-linked group
that claimed responsibility for the bombings which killed at least 64
people at Sharm el-Sheik in July and 34 people at two other Egyptian
resorts last October -- said in an Internet statement that its fighters
had fired the Katyushas, bolstering concerns that Islamic extremists
had opened a new front in the region." Indeed, the NYT reports
that: "The possible involvement of Iraqis and the military-style attack
have raised fears that militants linked to Iraq's insurgency may be
operating on Jordanian soil."}

I have to admit, I often wonder what some Conservatives out there are smoking, that they can't see the obvious. I am convinced that they do see it. If 2000 was a heady experience for Conservatives who had suffered through eight years of Bill Clinton, despite aggressive attempts to get rid of him at any cost, then 2004, after surviving numerous mini scandals and debunking Rathergate, must have been the greatest of highs.

That Republicans managed to take healthy majorities in both Houses, and seemed to dominate the U.S. political agenda, must have given Conservatives a sense of invulnerability. But the cracks have been showing in the armor for some time now, and it has taken "Rovian," measures to keep the fact of the Emperors Nakedness from the American Public. It must be painful in the extreme to see those cracks appearing, and know that not only did they make a monumental mistake, but that all they worked so hard for is based on a foundation of lies, deception and corruption.

Admittedly, the Downing Street Memos, in and of themselves might have been compelling to those who already suspected the truth, but they were not "smoking gun," enough to convince the majority of the faithful. This is especially true of those who invested so heavily in what they felt was a new Conservative Revolution. They have been rewarded by stark failures on the part of the Administration to propel that Revolution forward, and have instead seen it get bogged down in a morass of ineptitude. For a time, they were able to defend against this ineptitude by making the issue "Liberal Hate of Bush," rather than accepting the realities of consistent and repeated failure by the Administration to accomplish much of anything, except successfully defending itself against charge after charge. Now, with more and more Conservatives beginning to acknowledge the obvious, the spin begins to ring hollow, even for those who once believed it.

Even still, some refuse to acknowledge the obvious:

I honestly don't see anything "inappropriate" about it. Cindy accuses the President of "lying" about several of the reasons for war in Iraq, so maybe these television stations are worried about giving air time to somebody calling the President a liar when its clear to most of us with common sense that he didn't lie about Iraq. But that's just a guess.

Were it up to me, I'd have let the ad run. Most Americans don't agree with the idea that the President "lied" about the WMD's and know that Saddam had plenty of ties to al Qaeda, though not to the 9/11 attacks specifically. This is why Americans re-elected the President in the face of these accusations of lying. Putting Cindy Sheehan up to repeat these accusations again is only going to do more harm to her causes than it would to the cause of the President.

Rob's argument is deeply flawed... First off, recent polls indicate that as many as 51% of Americans feel the American Public was deceived about Iraq. With some polls nearing 60%. So the argument that "Most Americans believe that the President did not lie is intellectually and morally dishonest.

The Left has often made this spin easier, by failing to stay on message, and by failing to present a clear alternative. The Left has also been guilty of wimping out at key times. Those who have shown strength, have been attacked as members of the "Loony Left." Rove has been able to successfully exploit this time and time again by pointing out the inconsistency of the Left's message, while hammering away on the Administration's, even in those cases where it was obvious that the Administration message was a nefarious one. Rove and his Conservative Disciples have been Masters of hammering away on a message until it BECOMES truth, even when it is clear to any thinking person that the message lacks logic.

9/11 was a catharsis for America. Karl Rove and the Administration have shamelessly taken advantage of this to smear Liberals, out a CIA agent in an act of revenge, and execute a disastrous and unjustified war. This administration's legacy will be based on Post 9/11. With information coming to light almost daily on how badly they bungled the so called "War on Terror," and with little else to point to as accomplishments, Bush's legacy will likely suffer. More significantly, he may join Nixon as a President corrupted by his own sense of infallibility.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. diplomats have conceded ground to Islamists on the role of religion in Iraq, negotiators said on Saturday as they raced to meet a 48-hour deadline to draft a constitution under intense U.S. pressure.

So what exactly was it we were fighting for in Iraq?

Bringing Freedom to Iraq? It will be interesting to see how Women's rights are respected under the new constitution. It will also be interesting to see how the Administration spins this. Conservatives continuously scream loud about not cutting and running, and it is one of the few areas I agree with them about Iraq. But this is just cutting and running under a another name folks. The administration will do ANYTHING to get out of Iraq at this point, including selling out the Iraqi people to the very terrorist who have been cutting off their heads and blowing up their markets for the last two years.

In the Meantime...
The NEW Iraq promises to be a model of stability, with none of the torture, abductions, cruelty and injustices of the Saddam Regime.... Yeah Right!

BASRA, Iraq -- Shiite and Kurdish militias, often operating as part of Iraqi government security forces, have carried out a wave of abductions, assassinations and other acts of intimidation, consolidating their control over territory across northern and southern Iraq and deepening the country's divide along ethnic and sectarian lines, according to political leaders, families of the victims, human rights activists and Iraqi officials.

While Iraqi representatives wrangle over the drafting of a constitution in Baghdad, forces represented by the militias and the Shiite and Kurdish parties that control them are creating their own institutions of authority, unaccountable to elected governments, the activists and officials said. In Basra in the south, dominated by the Shiites, and Mosul in the north, ruled by the Kurds, as well as cities and villages around them, many residents say they are powerless before the growing sway of the militias, which instill a climate of fear that many see as redolent of the era of former president Saddam Hussein.

It is going to be interesting as HELL to see how the right spins this, the latest barrage of evidence to support the idea that the American Public and possibly even Colin Powell were bullshitted into believing war in Iraq was justified.

Powell's speech, delivered on February 5, 2003, made the case for the war by presenting U.S. intelligence that purported to prove that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Wilkerson says the information in Powell's presentation initially came from a document he described as "sort of a Chinese menu" that was provided by the White House.

"(Powell) came through the door ... and he had in his hands a sheaf of papers, and he said, 'This is what I've got to present at the United Nations according to the White House, and you need to look at it,'" Wilkerson says in the program. "It was anything but an intelligence document. It was, as some people characterized it later, sort of a Chinese menu from which you could pick and choose."

Wilkerson and Powell spent four days and nights in a CIA conference room with then-Director George Tenet and other top officials trying to ensure the accuracy of the presentation, Wilkerson says.

"There was no way the Secretary of State was going to read off a script about serious matters of intelligence that could lead to war when the script was basically un-sourced," Wilkerson says.

In one dramatic accusation in his speech, Powell showed slides alleging that Saddam had bioweapons labs mounted on trucks that would be almost impossible to find.

"In fact, Secretary Powell was not told that one of the sources he was given as a source of this information had indeed been flagged by the Defense Intelligence Agency as a liar, a fabricator," says David Kay, who served as the CIA's chief weapons inspector in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. That source, an Iraqi defector who had never been debriefed by the CIA, was known within the intelligence community as "Curveball."

After searching Iraq for several months across the summer of 2003, Kay began e-mailing Tenet to tell him the WMD evidence was falling apart. At one point, Wilkerson says, Tenet called Powell to tell him the claims about mobile bioweapons labs were apparently not true.

"George actually did call the Secretary, and said, 'I'm really sorry to have to tell you. We don't believe there were any mobile labs for making biological weapons,'" Wilkerson says in the documentary. "This was the third or fourth telephone call. And I think it's fair to say the Secretary and Mr. Tenet, at that point, ceased being close. I mean, you can be sincere and you can be honest and you can believe what you're telling the Secretary. But three or four times on substantive issues like that? It's difficult to maintain any warm feelings."

The whole thing just reeks, stinks to high heaven, and it is beyond the pale to me that anyone can continue to justify this war. I believe very seriously, that the only way some Right Wingers will acknowledge that this war was based on unadulterated lies and deceptions, is if Bush wakes up one day and just says, "Sorry folks, the guy tried to kill my Daddy. It's a Texas thing, I had to get some payback. And we all know that Saddam was a loony so who cares why we went to war. We did, and in the end, the ends justify the means." And even if he did, I still think some people on the right would try to spin it.

You go to war when you have to. You weigh the dangers and you make a decision based on the imminent threat to the United States. It is clear to all but a rabid Bush Supporter at this point, that no such threat existed, and that the administration not only knew it, but sought to invent one.

UPDATE: Post makes the Daou Report.

From Crooks and Liars:

Michael Scheuer ended his interview on Hardball last night with these words.

Full transcript

O'DONNELL: "And, finally, the president has made the case that winning the war in Iraq is central to winning the war on terror and making sure that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda cannot take harm the United States. Is that true, if we win there, will that help?"

SCHEUER: "No, ma'am. The war in Iraq has broken the back of our counterterrorism effort. I'm not an expert on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, but the invasion of Iraq has made sure this war will last decades ahead and it has transferred bin Laden and al Qaeda from being man and an organization into being a philosophy and a movement. We've really made sure that the war against us is going to be a long and very bloody one. Iraq was an absolutely disastrous decision."

Read the whole thing, and watch the video. Of course our Brothers on the Right will just say that this is Left Wing Propaganda, Treason and Harmful to the moral of our troops.

Well let me tell you something. It just might be, because my moral is harmed every time I see another body count from Iraq. My moral is harmed every time I hear about the number of dead Iraqis. My moral is harmed every time I hear about another incidence of terrorism in Iraq. Hell my moral is harmed by knowing that Iraq has become not only a rallying point for global terrorism, but also a training ground that is 100 times more effective than Afghanistan. You see in Afghanistan, the terrorist did not get a chance to practice on the best of our technology and people. In Afghanistan they did not get a laboratory on U.S. Tactics. In Afghanistan they simply LOST...

I read this quote on Dean's World tonight:

The Left. Hopeless. Shameful. History will record that the U.S. could have saved tremendous loss of life and treasure had we liberated Iraqi with more troops and a proper "after-victory" plan. But the chronicles will also show that America could have saved time, money and--most especially, lives--had the Left contributed its valuable resources to the liberation effort as well. Imagine if feminists, labor leaders, environmentalists, civil rights activists, artists and the media had joined in the struggle instead of sitting on the sidelines--or worse, assisting the fascists? Imagine if the clarion cry of freedom and democracy had arisen from a unified progressive front consisting of conservatives and liberals? Just as we've learned how much succor the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong took from the anti-war protesters of the 1960s, we will someday learn how the parochial, small-minded, narrow-souled opposition to the establishment of democracy in Iraq stiffen the fascist backbone of the "insurgency." But of course, the Michael Moores, Robert Fisks, George Galloways, Ted Kennedys and innumerable Hollywood celebrities and academics of this world will not care--they will always find reporters, voters, fans and tenure committees willing to dull the sting of conscience.

Written by some right-wing death beast? No. By the late Steve Vincent.

Dean goes on to agree with the quote. Well, perhaps I am showing my ignorance, but I have no idea who Steve Vincent was. I will take some time tomorrow to read his blog. But I want to offer a strong opposing point of view.

I don't think Leftist have done ENOUGH in opposing the war. Yes you read that right, and if you have read ISOU before, you are probably not surprised.

Many of us opposed this war BEFORE the Downing Street Memos. We had different reasons. Mine is sitting in a cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan right now. I felt, and still feel that we should have focused our ire and our energies on punishing those responsible for 9/11, and bringing ALL of the perpetrators to justice.

No, we allowed ourselves to be deceived, and to be swept up in the "War on Terror," which has become a disjointed quagmire. Iraq is a mess, more of a mess than it was under it's former dictator, and even the CIA says it has become a breeding ground for 21st Century Terrorism. All the jingoism in the world does not change the fact that there was no plan and is no plan, at least no consistent one.

Iraq has become a meat grinder for our troops and the Iraqi people, and it will probably have to get to the point where it is proven that there have been more killed during the occupation, than during the Hussein Regime, before anyone on the Right is willing to admit it.

I am not a moonbat, and stupid/dramatic protest do not make an impact on middle America. What we needed was for our elected representatives to stand up, show some spine and demand accountability in the decision to go into Iraq. What we needed and still need is for Progressives to speak out logically, sanely and without rhetoric on the true impact of this war, on the American People, The American Economy and the Iraqi people.

That we did not contribute to a war that we did not believe in is not the sad thing, that we did not contribute to stopping it, and have not suitably contributed to exposing it for what it is, is...

Obviously no one told the terrorist and insurgents in Iraq that they were in the "Last Throes" of their fight.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A roadside bomb blast killed 14 Marines and a civilian interpreter Wednesday as they rode in a vehicle near Haditha, Iraq, U.S. military officials said.

The military said the bomb struck the amphibious assault vehicle about 1 mile (about 2 kilometers) south of Haditha, a city along the Euphrates River about 135 miles (217 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad. The military said one Marine was wounded.

The 14 Marines belonged to the same Ohio-based battalion as six Marines who were killed in the region on Monday, according to The Associated Press.

The six sniper team members were killed in a firefight near Haditha. A suicide car bomb killed a seventh Marine Monday in nearby Hit.

In the past 10 days, 43 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq. That brings the number of U.S. troops killed in the war to 1,820, according to U.S. military reports.

"Just in case you haven't been paying attention, the Brits have been rounding up terrorists left and right."
Say Anything

I wonder how successful we would be on ending terrorism, if we had spent the 200+ Billion Dollars we spent in Iraq, on rounding up Terrorist?

Chad has recently discoverd photos of Nicholas Berg's body, as it was discovered by American forces in Iraq. Warning, the photos are gruesome. One of the things that strikes me time and time again about the Islamic Terrorist, is just how far they have gone from the teachings of the Q'uaran. As I understand it, in the Koran even a dead enemy deserves respect in death.

The people who did this are animals, plain and simple. They are not muslims, they are not insurgents, they are not freedom fighters... They are psycopathic murderers.

I have not said anything today about the Terrorist bombings in London. There seems to be sufficient coverage of it in the blogsphere and in the MSM. I just want to say that my prayers and condolences go out to the British people and the families of those killed or wounded.

I am certain that this will provide a greater sense of urgency on the part of the world's leadership to commit additional intelligence resources to fight International Terrorism.

From: Say Anything:

Recently Paul Taggart, a professional photographer who was taken hostage in Iraq for three days back in July of 2004, wrote a story about his experience for the April 2005 edition of Maxim. It was an informative read, but I found this passage near the end of the story particularly interesting:

There were a few theories on why I ended up in safe hands rather than being executed. Most were that either a criminal gang or Shiite militants had taken me and that Sadr City militia representatives interceded on my behalf, maybe to help out in their negotiations with the Iraqi interim government and coalition forces. Another major factor may have been that my abduction was never publicized; knowing that images of me on global TV would have made me much more valuable to insurgents and in ransom schemes, the media blacked out stories about my abduction.

This is an entirely plausible theory. The question is, will the bloggers who have really publicized these abductions take this theory to heart when publishing the reports on kidnappings and the the grisly beheading videos.

Home from Iraq
Journalist urges Americans to search for truth, freedom

We spent 10 months in Iraq, working on a story, understanding who the people are who are fighting, why they fight, what their fundamental beliefs are, when they started, what kinds of backgrounds they come from, what education, jobs they have. Were they former military, are they Iraqi or foreign? Are they part of al-Qaida? What we came up with is a story in itself, and one that Vanity Fair ran in July 2004 with my text and pictures. [My colleague Steve Connors] shot a documentary film that is still waiting to find a home. But the basic point for this discussion is that we both thought it was really journalistically important to understand who it was who was resisting the presence of the foreign troops. If you didn't understand that, how could you report what was clearly becoming an "ongoing conflict?" And if you were reading the news in America, or Europe, how could you understand the full context of what was unfolding if what motivates the "other side" of the conflict is not understood, or even discussed?

Just the process of working on that story has revealed many things to me about my own country.

This is an incredible bit of narrative. I found it on Rooks Rant, this morning and I could not stop reading until I had read the entire thing.

There are going to be some conservatives and war supporters who will be foaming at the mouth after reading the piece. This war, more than perhaps any in recent history, has been about "staying on message," and semantics. Calling the insurgents in Iraq, "terrorist," (which in the case of those who target civilians and cut off people's heads, I agree is an appropriate title), is an important part of justifying the war.

One of the things that has bothered me the most about this war, and the conserva-spheres coverage of it, is the willingness to demonize any journalist that dares to criticize our military actions in Iraq. This has in my opinion created an unhealthy situation for the American people(knowledge is power), and a reluctance on the part of Major Media to cover the war aggressively.

There are portions of the Editorial that I disagree with, and others that I find compelling. Go read it.

Via CNN:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An aide to terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been captured by Iraqi security forces in Iraq, the U.S. military said Sunday.

U.S. forces identified him Ammar al-Zubaydi, also known as Abu Abbas.

Al-Zubaydi was captured in Baghdad on Thursday, the military said. He is responsible for many recent suicide car bombings, the military said, and an attack on Abu Ghraib prison in April that wounded U.S. troops and detainees at the facility.

This is definately good news for the Iraqi people and our troops in Iraq. Perhaps this will lead to the capture of Al-Zarqawi himself.