PIPA has released a new poll of Iraqi attitudes toward the U.S. occupation. There’s no doubt about what they want: they want us to leave. 74% of Shiites want us to leave within a year or less 91% of Sunnis want us to leave within a year or less. 78% of all Iraqis believe U.S. forces are provoking more violence … Read More
A Protest You Might Enjoy
Um, okay: Two peace activists have planned a massive anti-war demonstration for the first day of winter. But they don’t want marching in the streets. They’d much rather protesters just stay home. The Global Orgasm for Peace was conceived by Donna Sheehan, 76, and Paul Reffell, 55, whose goal is for everyone in the world to have an orgasm Dec. … Read More
No Magic Bullet In Iraq
Of late, there seems to be more willingness on the part of, well, everybody, to admit that the Iraq War is unwinnable, and indeed, it may already be lost. Even Kissinger put his toe in that pool. It strikes me that there is, too, that there is no way to "win" in Iraq (in part because nobody has bothered to … Read More
Vietnam Redux
Vietnam then: With these troops in place, U.S. officials instituted an “enclave” strategy under which U.S. forces would try to maintain only those areas of Vietnam already under Saigon’s control. General Westmoreland, opposing the enclave strategy, called for more and more U.S. forces and advocated “taking the battle to the enemy.” Indeed, in July 1965, Johnson sent 100,000 more troops … Read More
Trying To Get Into The Mile High Club Is An Act Of Terrorism?
Heard about Carl Persing and Dawn Sewell yet? They were the young couple aboard a Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles earlier this week. According to news reports, they were engaging in a bit of a romantic encounter (more on that in a moment), much to the consternation of the flight attendants and fellow passengers. "Persing was observed nuzzling or … Read More
Bush Personally Approved Torture
this seems like a big story: Document shows Bush guided CIA on detention The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged for the first time the existence of two classified documents, including one signed by President George W. Bush, that have guided the agency’s interrogation and detention of terror suspects. The CIA disclosed the existence of the documents in a letter Friday … Read More
A War Casualty That Doesn’t Get Tallied
Editor & Publisher Her name doesn’t show on any official list of American military deaths in the Iraq war, by hostile or non-hostile fire, who died in that country or in hospitals in Europe or back home in the USA. But Iraq killed her just as certainly.She is Jeanne "Linda" Michel, a Navy medic. She came home last month to … Read More
What Failure Looks Like
This says it all: BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Baghdad’s morgues are full. With no space to store bodies, some victims of the sectarian slaughter are not being kept for relatives to claim, but photographed, numbered and quickly interred in government cemeteries. Men fearful of an anonymous burial are tattooing their thighs with names and phone numbers. In October, a particularly … Read More
Rumsfeld — International War Criminal?
Bad way to start his retirement: New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany’s top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and at … Read More
Anti-Rumsfeld Editorial
Newspaper editorials calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation are pretty common. What makes this one unique? It’s an editorial that is running jointly in the Army Times, the Air Force Times, and the Navy Times: 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 … Read More
No. What’s Your Plan?
The president was campaigning today in one of the few places where he’s still welcome, and he rolled out his final campaign pitch of the season. Bush said Democrats calling for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq aren’t unpatriotic, just wrong. […] "If they say they want to win the war on terror, but call for America to pull out of … Read More
At The Request Of Rightwing Bloggers, Republicans Leak Nuclear Secrets Online
The Carpetbagger explains: Several months ago, right-wing activists and blogs were convinced that all the talk (read: reality) about Iraq not have weapons of mass destruction had to be false. If only intelligence documents could be released online, Republicans could unleash the mighty power of far-right bloggers, who could review the documents and prove that those pesky facts about going … Read More
Iraq As Art
Huh? A senior U.S. general compared Iraq on Thursday to a "work of art" in progress, saying it was too soon to judge the outcome and playing down violence and friction with Iraqi leaders as "speed bumps" on the road. "A lump of clay can become a sculpture, blobs of paint become paintings which inspire," Major General William Caldwell, chief … Read More
Iraq: Edging Toward Chaos
The New York Times obtained this classifed Powerpoint slide, prepared by the U.S. Central Command two weeks ago. Bottom line — our miiltary says thinks are getting worse in Iraq.
Iraq Getting Messier
More bad news: U.S. soldier death toll passes the 100 mark (up to 105, if you include "unconfirmed") for October, making this the deadliest month since January 2005, and the fourth deadliest since the war started. Grand total no 2,815. And the quagmire worsens: Thousands of weapons the United States has provided Iraqi security forces cannot be accounted for, and … Read More