Shades of Truth

In the end, even Scott McClellan couldn't quite grasp the transitive property within his message that Bush lied his way to assuming the wartime president mantle.

"Rather than open this Pandora's Box, the administration chose a different path — not employing out-and-out deception, but shading the truth," he wrote of the effort to convince the world that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, an effort he said used "innuendo and implication" and "intentional ignoring of intelligence to the contrary."

Intentionally ignoring intelligence to the contrary of what he trotted out as truth to the public on a daily basis is the very definition of out-and-out deception. That's not shading the truth. That's sealing the truth up in a lead-lined cement vault. The count as of this morning, if you're keeping track, is 4,084 US dead and over 33,000 wounded, over 42,000 officially reported iraqi deaths since 2005, and a new treaty between the Pakistani government and its pro-Taliban, Afghanistan-bordering Waziristan province.

Why this sideways sandpaper fuck and his cronies are still in power in Washington will be the sad mystery schoolkids are forced to write essays on fifty years from now.

Bomb Bomb's Greatest Hits, March Edition

Just in case anyone's forgotten that John "Better on the War than Anyone" McCain is actually either functionally clueless or too distracted to care that he's coming off that way, a few reminders.

Mid-March, to CNN:

His [Sadr’s] influence has been on the wane for a long time.

March 18, Jordan:

Well, it’s common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.

March 31, to the New York Times:

Apparently it was Sadr who asked for the cease-fire, declared a cease-fire. It wasn’t Maliki. Very rarely do I see the winning side declare a cease-fire.

From the hearings with General Petraeus, April 8:

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain did not appear to make any major mistakes in the hearing, although Mr. McCain did seem to get momentarily tangled over Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

It happened just after Mr. McCain asked General Petraeus if he still viewed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni group, as a major threat, and elicited the response, “It is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was, say, 15 months ago.”

Mr. McCain responded, “Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shiites over all ... .”

To which General Petraeus replied, “No.”

Mr. McCain continued, “Or the Sunnis or anybody else.”

Reality check? Al Qaeda wants to keep coming after us. And, should we bomb bomb Iran and somehow cede supremacy in the region in the aftermath, AQ will go after Iran.

John McCain. Because war not only means never having to say you're sorry, but also never having to really understand who you're at war with in the first place.

Triple Threat Friday!

Goodness me, so much in the paper this morning that needs responding to right now. Because that will fix it. Forthwith, the gays, the immigrants, and the terrorists!

Item the first: Gay Marriage Amendment Dies in Committee.

The House gave preliminary approval Thursday by a 28-27 vote to put the question on the November ballot. But that OK came only after Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Phoenix, lined up enough votes to tack on a provision to grant certain rights to unmarried couples living together, whether gay or straight.

That move effectively tied the two issues together as a single ballot question, meaning voters who want to make same-sex weddings unconstitutional would be voting for some constitutional rights for gay couples. A spokesman for House Speaker Jim Weiers, sponsor of HCR 2065, said that is unacceptable and that the Phoenix Republican will now kill his proposal.

Senate President and Karl Rove fanboy Tim Bee had another version ready to go, this one limited solely to keeping Teh Gayz out of the wedding market, but after HCR 2065's summary execution no longer "sees the point" in bringing it to a floor vote. You might hope that this would be the anti-marriage-equality camp's last gasp on this issue, given their referendum defeat in 2006 and the governor's recent approval of domestic partner benefits (justified in great part by the need to prevent brain drain and make Arizona more attractive to both companies that might relocate here and the young professionals they employ).

You might also reasonably hope that Alfonso Soriano and the rest of the guys at the top of the lineup might quit swinging at the first pitch unless they can actually make contact. Ain't neither one likely to happen anytime soon.

"We're looking at all options," said Ron Johnson who lobbies for the state's three Catholic bishops. And Cathi Herrod of the Center for Arizona Policy said she still believes that there is a way to resurrect the measure.

Ron, Cathi? Tell you what. Take it down and stick it in a hole and come back in three days to see if an angel has rolled back the stone. If there is not an empty tomb but, lo, a stench instead, walk away and turn your considerable energies toward something else. Want it to be biblical? Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. You can start with that one.

Item the second: Pledge Spoken in Spanish; Flag Threatens to Burst into Flames.

For years, Gale Elementary School teacher Anne Lee has had her students recite the pledge in three languages — English, Spanish and American Sign Language — as a learning exercise. The kids start with English.

Do you see a problem? No one had until the son of a Minuteman Mexican Huntin' Squad Civil Defense Corps loon patriot hit second grade. Dad posted the story on multiple message boards and the e-mail barrage began. TUSD's response has been, quite reasonably, wtf?

"It's really not a story," said Cheryl Hill Lander, the district's spokeswoman. "They recite the pledge in English every morning, and they recite the pledge in Spanish. After they recite it in Spanish, then they sign the Pledge of Allegiance."

And Governing Board President Alex Rodriguez, who served in the military, said "it was clear … there was no patriotic disrespect intended."

It doesn't matter to American Dad.

But to Altherr, a 34-year-old landscaper, the disrespect has been made, and the e-mail campaign will continue.

"It's nothing against Spanish," he said. "I would be just as upset if they were making my son say the Pledge of Allegiance in German."

Uh huh. That's why you set up your lawn chairs at JFK every spring, to make sure the NSA folks are checking the German tourists' passports with the rigor befitting a True Patriot.

Item the third: Daily Star Unwittingly Installs Astroturf, One Letter at a Time. Two letters in two days isn't much, but, well, we have two letters in two days with this lovely reminder:

Remind public why we're in Iraq

Re: the March 29 letter "How to end the Iraq War."

I think the idea has merit.

As a supporter of the war, I think that would be a great service provided that just after the information on the soldier is given the media profiles one of the individuals killed on Sept. 11.

The in-your-face approach to the war is needed to remind everyone why our brave soldiers are required to be placed in harm's way. Maybe we could also remind some of your readers what started the entire situation.

Wow, thank you for this! What with the 9/11 Commission Report and the Joint Forces Command's report and St. Rudy of 9/11 dropping out of the race and all, I had completely forgotten that the Iraq war is necessary retribution for Saddam planning September 11 and flying one of the planes himself by remote control while sitting on a copy of Mein Kampf personally signed by Barack Hussein Obama and getting blown by Osama bin Laden. Who was wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt at the time.

Final score, for those keeping it at home: Arizona 2, Rational Thought 1. Better luck today, Rational Thought! Hope the wind's blowing out!

Did We Say al-Maliki is Bush Jr.? Yes. Yes, We Did.

Poor Nouri. All he wanted to do was swiftly crush an ideological opponent with overwhelming military force, so he sent in the army and poof, his slam-dunk went down the shitter quicker than you can say Basra Backsplash and he was left floundering, first having to admit that he "miscalculated" the uproar his Basra offensive would create among Shiite militias in Baghdad, and then having to rely on Muqtada al-Sadr to calm things down.

Let's play Find the Ways Maliki Pretends He Is George Bush--first to four wins--but don't blink, because it's going to be a quick game:

The negotiations with Mr. Sadr were seen as a serious blow for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who had vowed that he would see the Basra campaign through to a military victory. He has been harshly criticized even within his own coalition for the stalled assault.

Last week, Iraq’s defense minister, Abdul Kadir al-Obeidi, conceded that the government’s military efforts in Basra met with far more resistance than expected. Many Iraqi politicians say that Mr. Maliki’s political capital has been severely depleted by the Basra campaign and that he is in the curious position of having to turn to Mr. Sadr, a longtime rival, for a way out.

Such a curious position, but not unexpected to anyone who's been paying a lick of attention. As noted before, al-Sadr pulls the strings in Iraq, and he's young, and he's patient. None of that bodes particularly well for neocon dreams of a permanent US presence acting as a stabilizing force for the region.

Iraq at Defining Crossroads Corner-Turning Moment This Time, Really

Dear Leader apparently emerged from his bubble long enough to notice that the momentary very relative lull in violence in Iraq has passed, with military and civilian deaths on the uptick again this week. Nouri al-Maliki sprang into what he likely hoped would look like prime ministerial action by instituting a crackdown on Shiite militias in Basra, the militias responded by smacking the Iraqi army around while the Shiite-dominated police force ran for their lives, the Iraqi army responded by calling in US backups, Muqtada al-Sadr responded by ordering his Mahdi Army to spearhead a nationwide general strike, and militia members in Baghdad responded by lobbing rockets into the Green Zone on an hourly basis since Easter Sunday.

George Bush responded with a classic there-must-be-a-pony-in-here-somewhere statement:

Bush said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's crackdown in Basra against Shiite militias vying for control of the oil-rich region is a positive milestone in the birth of a democratic nation.

Naturally, the resurgent bombings and mortar attacks mean that the troop drawdowns (more accurately, the return to pre-surge levels) will probably have to stop. Because Bush can't seem to wrap his brain around the fact that the cooperation of al-Sadr was a necessary precondition for the surge to work at all, along with the continuing willingness of Sunni militias to sell us their loyalty, the extra boots must be kept on the ground. No matter what.

al-Maliki went with a force-based strategy in Basra, and it's blowing up in his face. Bush is bursting his buttons with pride as his protege trip-traps down the same route Bush took with Iraq as a whole. Positive milestone? Of course it is. If your name is Muqtada, it's fucking awesome.

4,000 Redux

This morning, the day after the count ticked over to four thousand, the Daily Star ran a full-page photo piece on the men and women with southern Arizona ties who have been killed. But they don't seem to have it online. The Phoenix paper has their all-Arizona casualty list up, although the linked blurbs appear to have come from the DOD and, as such, omit the homey details that made the Tucson version such a sad read today.

All the faces in that roster of thumbnails should be pondered. I'll point out a couple that particularly grabbed me.

There's Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff translator and interrogator with the 101st Airborne. She committed suicide seven months before Abu Ghraib broke, after repeatedly objecting to interrogation techniques she witnessed and was required to perform on prisoners at Tal Afar.

There's Alan McPeek, 20, a Tucson soldier who died in a maelstrom of converging stupidity of jaw-dropping proportions the day before his unit was scheduled to come home. The AZ Central website reports that he and another soldier succumbed to small-arms fire in Ramadi, but the DOD recently admitted it was friendly fire, a shell from a US Abrams tank that rolled out (1) undermanned because the tank crews were also due to go home soon, and their CO didn't want to put all of them in harm's way, (2) with maps three months out of date because the platoon's printer had run out of ink, preventing them from printing out a current version, (3) with insufficient amounts of machine-gun ammo because cracking open new cases would have required paperwork the tank crew was unwilling to fill out, leaving them (4) to rely in the heat of an engagement on their big gun, which (5) the tank commander allowed an unqualified soldier to shoot because he was leaving Iraq soon and had never had the chance to fire it, so (6) instead of targeting the insurgents a couple of rooftops over, the tank targeted the rooftop where McPeek and his trainee replacement were standing and attempting to call in fire on those insurgents a couple of rooftops over. They were killed instantly.

And there's Robert Unruh, 25, another Tucson soldier, another small-arms fire casualty, this one in Al Anbar. His mother viewed his body in its coffin the morning he came home. Two hours later she died from heart failure.

To commemorate the 4,000th American falling in Iraq, George Bush promises to make sure that the 3,999 who went before him will not have died in vain. Meanwhile, the blogs are all a-twitter over Hillary Clinton's repeated misstatements/flat-out lies about dodging sniper fire at a Bosnian airport, and righty commentators still have their shorts in a twist over Barack Obama's nutty preacher, and nobody pays much attention to John McCain's inexorable march forward.

Fuck.

Four Thousand

And counting. Four thousand lives lost. Four thousand families torn apart.

There's nothing else to say.

Oh, and Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War? Get over yourselves, kids. Wrong venue for that little bit of street theatre. Cardinal George may be a dick, but the Catholic Church's position on the war is pretty much your own. Want to squirt fake blood to protest the Church's influence on anti-abortion policy? Get on with your bad selves. But the war? Next time hit the Google first.

Just in Case Your Right-Wing Relatives Have Any Lingering Misconceptions

This was released on Wednesday with the barest of ripples. That whole invading Iraq because Saddam was intimately tied to al Qaeda and was ready to nuke the Washington Monument, Talladega, and your mom's apple pie within 45 minutes thing? Yeah, uh, well... not so much.

Actually, it wasn't released at all. The Joint Forces Command's report on the run-up to the war , with its references to over 600,000 captured documents, definitively demonstrates, once and for all, that the administration's reasons for war were invalid. False. Bullshit. Pick your word.

The study, based on more than 600,000 captured documents, including audio and video files, found that while Saddam sponsored terrorism, particularly against opponents of his regime and against Israel, there was no evidence of an al Qaida link.

This is huge, right? I mean, this is beyond a non-partisan commission. This is the freaking Pentagon saying whoops, my bad. So this should be plastered all over the headlines, no?

No.

The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for broad public release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida terrorist network. Rather than posting the report online and making officials available to discuss it, as had been planned, the U.S. Joint Forces Command said it would mail copies of the document to reporters — if they asked for it. The report won't be posted on the Internet.

The Pentagon's burying it. No public release. You have to fill out a form to request the report, which they will snail mail to you. On a CD.

Remember the Bush-Kerry debate in which each candidate was asked to recall a mistake he had made, and what he did to rectify it? Bush was stumped. Ain't never been wrong. Still isn't. Never being wrong means never having to admit being wrong. Eat it, America.

And Here We Go

Five yesterday, three today. Surge + Mahdi Army cease-fire + Sunni Awakening Councils = fewer attacks on US forces = increased foot patrols = fostering goodwill among Iraqi civilians ==> we win.

Unfortunately, increased meet 'n' greet foot patrols = increased opportunities for direct attacks on unarmored soldiers ==> get back in those up-armored HMMVs, boys ==> so much for that hearts and minds thing.

It's a vicious circle. If the soldiers don't engage civilians in these community relations-styled patrols, they'll continue to be viewed as distant, brutal occupiers looking for their next target from behind mirrored shades. But when they get out of their vehicles to chat up the locals and display their rebuilding-Iraq human side, they're terribly vulnerable to suicidal maniacs in explosive pajamas. Which will have the additional repercussion of making the men in the foot patrols even jumpier than they already are, which is going to lead to more indiscriminant targeting after--or, even worse--before an attack happens. More collateral casualties breeds more distrust and outright hatred among the civilians, and that brings more attacks, and that makes more guys more inclined to grease anyone who looks at him crosseyed, and that wins the insurgents more sympathizers, and that...

You get the picture.

It doesn't matter at this point if the attacks are being carried out by the one disgruntled Shia or Sunni or AQ operative or rogue Iranian Revolutionary Guard in a crowd of 100 people. Remember the one kid back in sixth grade gym class who kept fucking around, leading the coach to punish the entire class with 45 minutes of running laps (yes, Tom Roper, I'm talking to you)? Same deal. It only takes one suicide bomber mingling with a foot patrol to make every surviving guy in the unit deeply suspicious of every Iraqi on foot with bulky outerwear he will ever see again for the rest of his tour, whether that Iraqi is a man or a woman or a kid, make it a no-brainer for him to err on the side of caution, where "caution" here means not hesitating to pull his trigger on anyone who crosses his new, significantly lowered threat threshold. And it only takes one US soldier blowing away a woman who turns out to be carrying a bag of vegetables instead of bombs to turn every surviving member of her family into confirmed insurgents.

And so it goes.

Friday Rundown

Item the first: Muqtada al-Sadr announced this morning he's extending the Mahdi Army cease-fire another six months. This is very good news for our guys in Baghdad--always preferable to minimize the amount of crossfire you're caught in--and good news for the Iraqi government, such as it is, which now has another half year to flail around on life support without having to worry about this particular bug doing it in. If this cements al-Sadr's position as a national leader, well, maybe not so good in the medium- to long-run. But whatever. If it brings more stability the next president can leverage into a ticket home for every pair of boots over there, I'm all over it.

Item the second: Arizona legislator feels state not quite Wild Wild West enough; acts to remedy situation.

A House panel voted Thursday to let people pull out their guns without fear of winding up in jail if they believe they are in danger.

The 5-4 vote came despite questions by several legislators as to whether that language would provide a legal defense for gang members caught waving their weapons, as they could say they were in fear a rival gang had threatened them.

And Bob Ticer, a lieutenant with the state Department of Public Safety, said he feared this kind of law could escalate a simple dispute into an outright gunbattle.

What fair municipality, you ask, might have produced the legislator who proposed this latest bit of gungungun escalation? Amazingly, it's Mesa. Home of Karen "More Guns In Schools" Johnson. Don't worry, though--the guy has a foolproof argument against the other legislators' (and the cop's) concerns:

Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, sponsor of the measure, dismissed their concerns as unrealistic.

Pearce said police officers "sometimes have not used the discretion or the good sense the Lord gave them."

"Some folks are capable of taking care of themselves and other folks are frightened or intimidated very easily," Pearce said. He said individuals should be able to "express their fear in a proper manner."

Um. Let me see if I follow this correctly. Trained police officers sometimes don't use discretion or good sense, and some people frighten very easily, so they should... be allowed to brandish a firearm at every perceived threat? What happens when the perceived threat is another person who frightens easily? Or, god forbid, a cop not exercising discretion that day?

Clearly, there are not enough rivers of blood flowing in Arizona from gun violence. Glad Rep. Pearce is looking out for the rights of gangbangers to wave their Rugers at each other as long as they don't actually point them at someone.

Item the third: The New York Times breaks the news that John McCain may have had an inappropriate relationship with a lobbyist. Result? McCain says it's a lie, and the conservative base--which heretofore wouldn't give him the time of day--suddenly rallies to his defense. How would this have played out had the accused candidate been Obama or Clinton? Think "it's not true" would be more than enough for everyone to shrug and write it off as a smear tactic? Uh-uh, I don't either.

In Case Your Right-Wing Relatives Are Having Continuing Reality-Integration Problems

It is official and indisputable (handy thing, that public record): the Bush Administration lied the US into the Iraq War. 935 times. The Center for Public Integrity has produced a searchable database of government false statements about Iraq for your use, should you wish to tell Uncle Ernie exactly how many times a senior official let slip falsehoods about, say, mobile labs (5) or, perhaps, ominous tubes (36). More troubling, the database also tracks the ebb and flow of the tides of false statements within the context of the runup to war, Powell's address to the UN, and the midterm elections. Guess where the spikes fall on the timeline of the past six years. I won't spoil the surprise--just go and see for yourself.

See? Good News from Iraq.

Never let it be said that I ignore the good news coming out of Iraq. The paper had some just this morning:

Associated Press figures show a sharp drop in the number of U.S. and Iraqi deaths across the country in the past few months. The number of Iraqis who met violent deaths dropped from at least 1,023 in September to at least 905 in October, according to an AP count.

The number of American military deaths fell from 65 to at least 39 over the same period.Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of U.S. forces south of the capital, said Sunday he believed the decrease would hold, because of what he called a "groundswell" of support from regular Iraqis.

"If we didn't have so many people coming forward to help, I'd think this is a flash in the pan. But that's just not the case," Lynch told a small group of reporters over lunch in the Green Zone.

He attributed the sharp drop in attacks to the American troop buildup, the setup of small outposts at the heart of Iraqi communities, and help from thousands of locals fed up with al-Qaida and other extremists.

Well, there it is. If it reflects reality rather than wishful thinking, which I hope is the case--the reality bit, not the wishful thinking--then it's great, great news (although I'm not sure I'd characterize the drop in Iraqi deaths from 1,023 to 905 as "sharp," and that's still a big damn number to wrap up as good news). If the shine is starting to wear off some, you know, of the endless cycle of bombings and murders, and that means we can bring the guys home sooner, fabulous. I'm all over it. Let the good news keep rolling in so we can get the hell out of there.

And let's support the troops while we're at it. Of course, since I am a hopeless liberal, after all, by "support the troops" I mean "fulfill their immediate and long-term physical and mental health needs resulting from military service, in a timely fashion, with the best level of care, rather than seeing how many hoops they can jump through while seeking treatment before denying healthcare benefits on whatever pretext can be located or fabricated." John Edwards, who has similar notions, has proposed a modest $400 million plan for treating veterans afflicted with PTSD--in other words, a price tag coming in at less than half the cost of a month's worth of war--and, even if he wins neither the nomination nor the presidency, maybe it's an idea with legs enough to be picked up by a Senate sponsor at some point.

"I strongly believe we must restore the sacred contract we have with our veterans and their families, and that we must begin by reforming our system for treating PTSD. We also must act to remove the stigma from this disorder," Edwards said in prepared remarks his campaign provided to The Associated Press. "Warriors should never be ashamed to deal with the personal consequences of war."

Edwards said that despite his opposition to how the war has been waged, the enlisted men and women deserve the nation's support when they complete their service.

"We must stand by those who stand by us. When our service men and women sacrifice so much to defend our freedom and secure peace around the world, we have a moral obligation to take care of them and their families," he said.

To reiterate, standing by them means much, much more than slapping a ribbon on the car and cheering as more and more men and women get shipped over to the grinder. Most Americans' fondest hope is that they start coming home quickly (von dein Mund zu Gotts Oiren, Rick Lynch), and when they do they are going to need a hell of a lot more help than the Army is currently giving. If that little problem is another one Bush is happy to leave to the next administration, let John Edwards' ideas be in the forefront of addressing it.

Less Bush, More Helen Thomas, Please

Helen Thomas. 'nuff said. The first 45 seconds of the video are all you need to see.

Q Mr. President, you started this war, a war of your choosing, and you can end it alone, today, at this point — bring in peacekeepers, U.N. peacekeepers. Two million Iraqis have fled their country as refugees. Two million more are displaced. Thousands and thousands are dead. Don’t you understand, you brought the al Qaeda into Iraq.

THE PRESIDENT: Actually, I was hoping to solve the Iraqi issue diplomatically. That’s why I went to the United Nations and worked with the United Nations Security Council, which unanimously passed a resolution that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. That was the message, the clear message to Saddam Hussein. He chose the course.

Q Didn’t we go into Iraq –

THE PRESIDENT: It was his decision to make. Obviously, it was a difficult decision for me to make, to send our brave troops, along with coalition troops, into Iraq...

Another presser, more of the same. September 11th, Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein. New way forward. This young democracy. Freedom. Govern, defend, sustain itself. Hard work. There rather than here. Mix 'n' match.

Meanwhile, as W pays lip service to our brave troops, we learn that Marines are being sacrificed in the interest of no-bid contracts.

The contracts continued even though Force Protection "did not perform as a responsible contractor and repeatedly failed to meet contractual delivery schedules for getting vehicles to the theater," the report said. Under one contract issued in 2005, Force Protection failed to deliver 98 percent of 122 mine-resistant vehicles on time despite getting $6.7 million from the Marines to upgrade its production facilities.

The report, signed by Richard B. Jolliffe, assistant inspector general for acquisition and contract management, also found that a subsidiary of Armor Holdings of Jacksonville, Fla., was late delivering some crew-protection kits, which are added to vehicles' windows and doors, and provided others with missing and unusable components. The delays, including reinstalling the kits, "all resulted in increased risk to the lives of soldiers," according to the report.

Remember, voting to cut off funding in order to bring the troops home undermines them, but continuing to pay companies who lag far behind schedule or deliver substandard quality somehow supports them.

And all for what? Propping up a barely wheezing government that will collapse the second we leave? Keeping the bad guys at bay until the Iraqi security forces decide they want to show up for work?

How the GOP Supports the Troops

By filibustering the Webb Amendment, which was designed to ensure that combat units get at least as much downtime between deployments as they get in the theater of operations. Yes, fillibustering. The party of the self-righteous demands for "up or down votes" filibustered, betting that the Dems and defecting GOPers wouldn't be able to muster the 60 votes needed to bring Webb's proposal to the floor for the hallowed up or down vote.

So it died.

And the Republican senators who supported the filibuster while claiming to support the troops will, later today, have their flunkies lock up the office and head off to the bar for a cocktail or two before going home to snuggle into their beds and perhaps dream of the fundraising junkets they'll go on during their upcoming monthlong summer recess. And the boys and girls in Iraq will hit their racks in 110 degree heat so they can get up in a few hours to go out again the next day. And a few of them will leave their limbs and their lives on those miserable fucking streets. And their buddies who get through physically unscarred will get to look forward to a three-month longer stay than they'd bargained for, followed by a few months at home before they're shoved back into the grinder.

And we're called defeatists.

There is some hope, though, as more Republicans trickle over to the withdrawal side of the line.

Two of the Republicans who voted for the Webb amendment, Sens. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.), announced this morning they would also support Democratic legislation, soon to come to a vote, that would begin troop reductions no later than 120 days after enactment. U.S. forces would then shift their efforts to targeted missions such as counterterrorism. The process would have to be completed by April 30, 2008.

"We have arrived at the crossroads of hope and reality, and we must now address the reality. We need to send a strong message from the United States Congress on behalf of the American people that the current strategy is unacceptable," Snowe said.

How long before even W has to address the reality of the mess he's made? Time should be counted in days. Unfortunately, our time in Iraq is counted instead in bodies.

Cave-in on Aisle 7

So midterm elections are pointless unless the opposition party gains a bombproof veto-override majority.

Democrats gave up their demand for troop-withdrawal deadlines in an Iraq war spending package yesterday, abandoning their top goal of bringing U.S. troops home and handing President Bush a victory in a debate that has roiled Congress for months.

Full funding, no demand for a withdrawal timetable, no requirement of progress reports, no accountability for the Iraqi government or military. But hey, at least the Dems managed to sneak the minimum wage hike in there among the $20B of non-war-related spending provisions (along with increased healthcare funding for both currently enlisted personnel and veterans).

That last little ray of sunshine, however, does nothing to mitigate the capitulation to a lame-duck president with a 28% approval rating. W gets clear sailing to continue dumping money and American lives into Iraq with, four years after the start of the war, absolutely no plan for achieving either a victory in World War II terms or a favorable outcome in the complex language of the modern Middle East.

The administration this week also quietly implemented plans to increase troop levels in Iraq far beyond the numbers initially reported as "the surge," possibly putting 200,000 boots on the ground by extending combat tours an additional three months and falling back on the tried-and-true tactic of rotating combat brigades back into the theater far more rapidly than standard guidelines allow, ensuring troop and equipment fatigue by shortening the recovery periods needed for rest, repair, additional training, and physical and mental recuperation.

So the plan it for additional security and just a little more patience and just a little more time for the Iraqi government to get on its feet and the Iraqi security forces to decide to show up for work and the Iraqi people to choose democracy over tribal and religious sectarianism. In other words, the plan is for more of the same, to keep throwing cash and bodies at the wall hoping something eventually sticks, and the Democrats are terrified of looking like they don't support the troops. Instead of forcing Bush to take the onus of continually vetoing bills designed to take our guys out the the fire and force the Iraqi government to stand on its own feet, two goals the majority of Americans support, they bluster and bark and then skitter out of the way, tails between legs. And today more soldiers and marines will be blown to kingdom come, advancing nothing but death.

Inbox Fun

The week is never complete without another bullshit e-mail forward from my brother. This week's installment was bafflingly cobbled together from a few different things that have been bouncing around the internets for a few years, combining 2004's "A Letter from a Vietnam Vet" with Howard Metzenbaum's stupid 1974 (!) senate race "You Never Had a Job" attack on John Glenn and some hand-wringing about how tired our president is looking lately. The upshot of the new Frankenstein product is that we liberals simply don't understand how hard it is to win a war and should quit bitching about George Bush's grand adventure in Iraq because of several facts people just don't think about clearly enough.

Let's jump right in, shall we?

Last January, there were 39 combat-related killings in Iraq. In the city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the same month. That's just one American city -- about as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq.

This is one of my favorites, frequently used to prove the point that since Iraq is just as safe as Detroit, we shouldn't be clamoring to get our guys out, or that we should invade Detroit. Given that this e-mail is obviously still circulating and serving as Truth in the brains of the folks who so eagerly keep hitting their "forward" buttons, the cited "last January" figure could use some serious correction. In reality, the cited death toll is not accurate for January of any year since the invasion; the monthly count has been below forty in only seven of the 49 months of the war to date, with an average of more than 67 US deaths per. Actual casualties from January 2007: 90 killed in combat; 44 in Baghdad, 56 elsewhere in Iraq (primarily Al Anbar province, Ninewa province, Karbala). Homicide data from Detroit during the same month are surprisingly difficult to come by; a blog tracking murders reported in Detroit media lists 15 homicides in January. The Iraqi civilian body count, which may be a more accurate proxy for the Detroit murder rate, is substantial: 1,568 people were killed in January 2007 in Baghdad alone, which works out to one murder per 63,400 Detroit residents (population ~951,000), compared to one per 4,719 Baghdad residents (pop. ~7.4 million)--a 1300% greater murder rate in Baghdad, which again does not count the rest of that war-torn country.

Okay, what's next? How about this one:

When some claim President Bush shouldn't have started this war because Iraq never threatened America, it could be recalled that in 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt went to war with Germany, which never attacked America. Japan did.

Why, yes, you are correct there; Germany did not pre-emptively attack the United States. Germany did, however, declare war on the US (another quaint concept, much like the Geneva Conventions, no?) on December 11, 1941; the US immediately responded with its own war declaration. The key distinction between Germany and Iraq should be fairly obvious here, but if it needs clearing up, the fact that Germany declared war on American means it was threatening America, and its very recent history of rolling into other countries (say Poland, for the history-impaired) backed that war declaration with a very real and immediate threat.

More.

John Kennedy started the Vietnam conflict in 1962. Vietnam never attacked. President Lyndon Johnson turned Vietnam into a quagmire. From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost -- an average of 5,800 per year.

Yes. We recognize that Vietnam was a monumental mistake that turned into a quagmire. No one rationally disputes that, not even us liberals, despite our hero Kennedy's culpability. We remember that history and use it to argue against getting embroiled in a modern quagmire in Iraq. The fact that Democrats fucked up forty years ago does not justify the current adminstration's refusal to learn the lessons of history.

This is getting tiring, but:

In the two years since terrorists attacked us President Bush has ... liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran and North Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.

Afghanistan indeed has a rudimentary democracy going, and the invasion of that country was fully justified because the people who plotted and planned 9/11 did the plotting and planning there. Great. The problem came when the dogs were largely called off and sent to Iraq, which had exactly jack shit to do with 9/11. You may have noticed the resurgence of the Taliban in the last year. You may have noticed today that the Afghan government is demanding a cease-fire in the wake of mounting civilian casualties. And yes, we caught Saddam, who killed thousands of his own people... using chemical weapons the US was happy to sell him during the Iraq-Iran war.

Hmm, something key is missing here. Wait for it... waaaaiiiit for it...

We've been looking for evidence of chemical weapons in Iraq for less time that it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose law firm billing records.

Ah, there we go. Compulsory Clinton reference absolving the current administration of any blame or fault. Well, hell, we'd been looking (in 2004, the time this e-mail originally surfaced) for less time that Dubya spent AWOL from his National Guard unit. We've been looking for less time than he's spent clearing brush in Crawford. What's your point? If Dear Leader is looking worn out, it's sure as hell not because he's losing sleep over Iraq.

That's all I can take for now. Note to my brother and people like him: develop some critical thinking skills before sending this crap winging through the ether. Your arguments would have much more substance if they weren't backed in such large measure by out-of-date information, distortions, and outright lies.

Confession Time

So George Tenet admits in his new book that the rushup to war was never seriously debated, and Dick Durbin makes a bizarro confession on the floor of the Senate that he knew the administration was lying about prewar intelligence but wasn't allowed to say anything due to his Intelligence Committee double-dog secrecy oath.

Someone clue me in on the true nature of oversight, because I'm clearly not understanding the concept if this is how it's operationalized.

Why is Tenet only now deciding it's time to clear the air? Maybe the $4 million advance had something to do with it. Or maybe four years was the limit on how long he could stare at his framed Medal of Freedom before his conscience finally kicked its way out of that dark corner where it had been walled up since 2003.

Or, as Durbin's performance suggests, maybe it's getting down to serious CYA time. The delivery of classified information to the Senate Intelligence Committee sounds like nothing so much as the closed loop of the confessional, where the priest is bound by vows to listen, absolve, and then keep his mouth shut. The senate is supposed to provide oversight on the executive's use of military force, so State keeps the senate informed... by talking to the sixteen senators on the committee, who are sworn to secrecy and, as such, can't actually do anything with the information they're given, even when it directly contradicts the president's stated reasons for taking the nation into a war. Even when it directly leads to thousands of dead and maimed Americans. And tens of thousands of dead and maimed and displaced Iraqis. Oh, and the draining of the treasury. And the forfeiture of America's moral authority. Ethically, there was nothing the members of the committee could do. Ethically.

The information we had in the intelligence committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn’t believe it. I was angry about it," Durbin said. "[But] frankly, I couldn’t do much about it because, in the intelligence committee, we are sworn to secrecy. We can’t walk outside the door and say the statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that is being given to this Congress.

You know, because that would just be wrong.

Amazingly, the allegedly liberal-biased mainsteam media have been a little slow to pick up on this one. Olbermann was all over it, of course, but the Google can only come up with a Fox (!) story to complement the People's Voice and Pacific Free Press (also picked up by an Iraqi-Italian website) sources.

What does this admission do to John Edwards, who was also on the Intelligence Committee and thus, if he was paying attention, knew the war he voted for was a sham? Does his apology for his yea vote still absolve him, now that we know he knew it was bullshit all along? How can we forgive any of those 16 senators? Absolution is for the confessional box. And ain't none of us priests.

Mayday! Mayday!

Happy anniversary, George.

Worse Before Better

The merry-go-round from hell keeps spinning faster and faster, leaving us in the position of having to choose between trying to hold the painted ponies together while our limbs are ripped off by the centrifugal force or jumping off while we still have a chance of landing as something more like an intact human and less like a meat-colored skidmark while hoping the painted ponies that will fly off as a result don't hit us in the head.

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, depicted the situation there as "exceedingly complex and very tough" Thursday and said the U.S. effort might become more difficult before it gets easier...

He said that the increasing use of car bombs and suicide attacks, plus the greater concentration of U.S. troops among the population, has "led to greater U.S. losses" as well as increased Iraqi military casualties...

Petraeus also said that while the fledgling Iraqi government is often billed as a unity government among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, it actually is not. "It is not a government of national unity. Rather, it is one comprised of political leaders from different parties that often default to narrow agendas and a zero-sum approach to legislation," the general said.

As for waiting for the Iraqis to stand up... how's that going, again? Nobody's sure.

In its latest quarterly report to Congress on Iraq, delivered in March, the Pentagon said the US-led coalition was achieving the goals it set for the number of freshly trained forces, including the army, police, facilities protection officers, and the border patrol...

However, the report relies on broad generalizations to describe the relative readiness of particular units. Some units are described in the report as "conducting operations," others as "conducting operations at varying levels." ...

But the reports do not assess the loyalty, range of skills, or capabilities of those units. Even the whereabouts of all of the security forces that have completed training is unclear, according to Olga Oliker, a senior policy analyst at the government-funded Rand Corporation.

"No one knows how many Iraqi security personnel there are today," she told the oversight panel on Thursday. For example, she added in an interview, "it is unknown how many have died or how many have deserted."

Meanwhile, back in the states,

Virtually all of the U.S.-based Army combat brigades are rated as unready to deploy, Army officials say, and to meet the immediate needs in Iraq and Afghanistan they are finding it necessary to transfer personnel and gear to those units now first in line to deploy.

"I am not satisfied with the readiness of our non-deployed forces," Schoomaker told the Senate Armed Services Committee, noting that the increased demands in Iraq and Afghanistan "aggravate that" and increase his concern. "We are in a dangerous period," said Schoomaker, adding that he recently met with his Chinese counterpart, who made it clear that China is scrutinizing U.S. capabilities.

The Marine Corps commandant, Gen. James T. Conway, said in the same hearing that his chief concern is that Marines are not training for other types of conflicts beyond the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan -- such as conventional ground wars.

I seriously want to live in Dick Cheney's world for a while, where bad is good and death is life and everything is going according to plan.

American Tragedy

The McDonald's I drive past on my way to work every day has its flag at half-staff this morning in a salute to the 32 dead at Virginia Tech. 32 people gunned down by a faceless assailant. It is terrible, unthinkable that such a thing should happen, and I can't begin to imagine what it was like to be a student in one of those classrooms, or a parent unable to reach my child on his cellphone in the hours after the shootings.

The pro-gun and anti-gun people, the politicians and the preachers and the pundits all jumped up, elbowing each other out of the way to unleash the salvos of blame before the bodies have even been buried, all sides with their simple solutions shouting past each other, interested not in discourse so much as noisemaking for its own sake.

And then I think about the fact that 31 US soldiers and marines have died in Iraq in the past nine days, that over 700 Iraqi civilians and security forces have died this month, that it's such a regular, ordinary occurrence that it's been pushed well off the front page of the newspaper. What happened on Monday in Blacksburg was horrible and ripped hundreds of lives apart. I am trying to imagine taking that feeling of horror, that shock and anger and grief, and replaying it on a daily basis, trying to conceive of how a society and its individuals can find the strength to go on living another day in the face of it.

The nation collectively mourns, as we should.

But the flag is lowered and the president shows up to the memorial service only when the unpredictable, random killing happens down the road a piece from the White House. Our flags should be at half-staff every day.