Booman: Obama's Plan to End the War

Great piece....

Herbert: Oh Happy Day, For the Oil Companies

"One of the starkest examples of U.S. priorities came during the eruption of looting that followed the fall of Baghdad. With violence and chaos all about, American troops were ordered to protect one particularly treasured target — the Iraqi Oil Ministry. As David Rieff wrote in The Times Magazine in November 2003:
“This decision to protect only the Oil Ministry — not the National Museum, not the National Library, not the Health Ministry — probably did more than anything else to convince Iraqis uneasy with the occupation that the United States was in Iraq only for the oil.”
How convenient that the peculiar perspective of the oil-obsessed Bush administration can now be put to use advising the Iraqi government on its contracts with big oil."

Once again, Bob Herbert nails it. Did we forget, the guy who folks wanted to have a cup a coffee with is an oilman?

Far too many voters, vote against their own economic interest because cultural reasons. The Republican party kidnapped God and high jacked values during the Nixon administration.

The money being spent to retrieve the oil in Iraq will not be spent on the bridges, health care or new green initiatives.

Folks were outraged when Clinton and Company stole a few White House trinkets before they left. What we are witnessing with this band of theives is the theft of our economy. Worse the death and destruction of our war heroes and the collateral damage to their families.

If this is not the case for treason, I really don't know what is?

Frank Rich: Declare Victory and Come Home

There is a big difference between understanding history and getting stuck in the past. Some older folks have a tendency to see the world through their bifocals. Others are sensitive to the past with a full awareness of today's reality.

Frank Rich is dead-on when he points out Iraq is not Vietnam. This is not the 70s and pulling out will not make the Dems weak on defense.

McCain doesn't have the exclusive on these notions, Pelosi, Reid, Clintons, etal are stuck in that time period. They really need to exorcise those demons.

My father will turn 72 in July. He served his country and is a pretty smart guy. He keeps sharp by being engaged with politics, sports and (much to my horror) pop culture. He knows far too much about Britney and Beyonce. He, on occasions, forgets where he puts his keys. 

My daughter one day asked me how old is McCain? 71 I responded. She gave it some thought. "He is the same age as PopPop,  that not so old" she replied.  Would you really want PopPop running the country? I asked. A hearty laugh ended that conversation.

Do we really need McCain looking for his keys to the Oval Office? 

Bad joke

I found this gem on Suburban Guerrilla.

Unfortunately, the joke is on us, the taxpaying citizens.

Leave Right

"Both views of Iraq are right: the situation is awful and, four years on, cleverer U.S. commanders are winning a few. The enduring horror counsels a swift exit. The positive shifts bolster a catchphrase Cordesman found doing the rounds in Baghdad: “strategic patience.”

I side with the latter, provided the patience is indeed strategic and not just a means to kick the mess into the post-Bush world. That strategy should involve the following elements.

First, continue bolstering Sunni power and allegiance through aggressive use of aid and local security deals. A rough balance of power between the main Iraqi communities — Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish — is in the interests of Iraqi stability.

Second, while accepting that Iraq’s central government will at best be a respectable fig leaf and that strong provincial authorities are essential, pressure the weak Shia-dominated coalition to share oil money, power and space. Stronger American-backed Sunnis and fewer U.S. troops may help focus Shia minds.

Third, establish, with United Nations help, a regional framework for talks between the neighboring powers. Use this to reach out to Iran. Tehran wants America to fail in Iraq but not to the extent that Shia gains are reversed. That provides some leverage.

Fourth, recognize that all Middle Eastern problems — Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq — are tied and that the U.S. needs a coherent diplomatic strategy for containing jihadist fanaticism through ideological persuasion. An uncritical embrace of Israel does not help. And whatever happened to Karen Hughes, our invisible public diplomacy czar?

Fifth, protect the countless Iraqis who have helped America and are vulnerable. The U.S. urged Iraqis to rise up in 1991 only to abandon them to slaughter. Never again should be our policy.

The above may just avert the worst: a regional war in which a disintegrating country’s neighbors are drawn into carnage that makes current bloodshed pale.

Some see Iraq as the ultimate demonstration of the demise of American power. Fast withdrawal is in that view’s logic. But if you believe, as I do, that global stability still hinges on the credibility of that power, “strategic patience” is the least bad of the terrible options Bush’s now amnesia-clouded incompetence has bequeathed."

I 'll respect you in the morning

Krugman continues to be the rare sane media voice in what has been a huge snow job. The Bush adminstration would not have ventured into Iraq and Iran is next without the help of the mainstream media.

The Petraeus report will have as much value as Powell serving as a marketing rep before the UN. Independent voices? Bullshit.
Both are loyal soldiers. They just follow orders.

The sad reality is more civilians will be killed for no particular reason other than we have a maniac in the White House and spineless jerks in the Congress.

Tragic Reality of War

"HBO’s contribution to an expanded awareness of the awful realities of war continues with a new documentary, “Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq.”

Mr. Gandolfini, one of the executive producers of the film, steps out of his Tony Soprano persona to quietly, even gently, interview 10 soldiers and marines who barely escaped death in combat.

The interviews are powerful, and often chilling. They offer a portrait of combat and its aftermath that bears no relation to the sanitized, often upbeat version of war — not just in Iraq, but in general — that so often comes from politicians and the news media.

Dawn Halfaker, a 28-year-old former Army captain, is among those featured in the documentary. She lost her right arm and shoulder in Iraq, along with any illusions she might have had about the glory of war.

“I think I was a little bit naïve to what combat was really like,” she told me in an interview on Sunday. “When you’re training, you don’t really imagine that you could be holding a dying boy in your arms. You don’t think about what death is like close up.

“There’s nothing heroic about war. It’s very tragic. It’s very sad. It takes a huge emotional toll.”

Lonely road to Nowhere

"Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, detects "a sense of fatalism" at the White House.

"I think President Bush has reached a point where he perceives he doesn't have options other than what he is doing -- a course has been put in place and you have to see the course through," Jamieson said. "If people get locked down psychologically, it makes it possible for them to think that they are doing something heroic, even in the face of public criticism."

President Petraeus?

"That’s because the Petraeus phenomenon is not about protecting the troops or American interests but about protecting the president. For all Mr. Bush’s claims of seeking “candid” advice, he wants nothing of the kind. He sent that message before the war, with the shunting aside of Eric Shinseki, the general who dared tell Congress the simple truth that hundreds of thousands of American troops would be needed to secure Iraq. The message was sent again when John Abizaid and George Casey were supplanted after they disagreed with the surge."

How about a man who is woman enough?

"Even in an era when male politicians can mist up with impunity, it was startling to see the defense chief melt down at a Marine Corps dinner Wednesday night as he talked about writing notes every evening to the families of dead soldiers like Douglas Zembiec, a heroic Marine commander known as “the Lion of Falluja,” who died in Baghdad in May after giving up a Pentagon job to go on a fourth tour of Iraq. “They are not names on a press release or numbers updated on a Web page,” he said. “They are our country’s sons and daughters.”

The dramatic moment was disconcerting, because Mr. Gates, known as a decent guy who was leery of the Bushies’ black-and-white, bullying worldview, has clearly been worn down by his effort to sort out the Iraq debacle. He and Condi, who worked together under Bush I, have been trying to circumvent the vice president to close Gitmo without much success, while the president finds ingenious new ways to allow torture.

Mostly, though, it was moving — a relief to see a top official acknowledge the awful cost of this war. The arrogant Rummy was dismissive. The obtuse W. seems incapable of understanding how inappropriate his sunny spirits are. And the callous Cheney’s robo-aggression continues unabated. (What could be more nerve-racking than the thought of President Cheney, slated to happen for a couple of hours yesterday while Mr. Bush had a colonoscopy? Could it be — a Medal of Freedom for Scooter?)

Mr. Gates captured the sadness we feel about American kids trapped in a desert waiting to be blown up, sent there by men who once refused to go to a warped war themselves."

War on Sex

Bush & the neocons campaigned on bringing "dignity" back to the White House. I guess we have to agree on the definition of "dignity."

I really couldn't give a crap about Clinton & Moncia or Vitter's need to purchase sex. The sex scandals become worse when it involves a cover up or a sanctimonious hypocrite.

This mindless war on sex takes time away from the real issues: our whacked relationship with China, Iraq, Iran, affordable education, available health care, and living wage employment.

I must wonder when these women will stop the press conferences for their straying husbands?

As I posted on Suburban Guerilla's site earlier this week, my prayer is that Joe Lieberman is caught up in this mess. I get warm all over just thinking about it.

Don't believe the hype

"Bush continues to dissemble and distort the facts — he recently insisted that "the same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th." Although al-Qaida in Mesopotamia didn't exist on Sept. 11, its recruits now have battle-tested maneuvers they can bring to American shores. There is no reason to believe they can't fight us there and here at the same time.

Even if the Bush White House had remained focused on bin Laden, splintering his organization would have proved difficult. It's hard to stop every fanatic with a bomb or a gun. But we might have been better prepared if the president and his advisers had used the terrorism threat to shore up our defenses and ramp up our emergency planning rather than to manipulate us into voting for their candidates and supporting their foolish war.

In our sixth summer since Sept. 11, after countless color-coded alerts and shoeless shambles through airport security, we no longer believe the hype. This may be just what bin Laden had in mind."

Who is the crack in Bush's team?

"One has to wonder, of course, what public opinion would have been if the first cabinet official to lose it — just a bit — had been not the stoic bureaucrat Gates but instead our female secretary of state. Had it been Rice up on that podium, and were she constitutionally capable of that degree of non-Bush-centered feeling, would she have been denounced? Would she have been belittled, punished politically, dismissed as too irrational and emotional — too girly — to deal with the ugly realities of war?

We’ll never know, because she — like all powerful women in politics — will never let us find out. They can’t afford to. Not unless much more of official Washington decides it’s man enough to truly feel our nation’s inner disarray."

How dare Ms. Warner? After she gave this administration the liberal venue to lie us into war, now she has the temerity to discuss the lack of compassion.

How dare the Times continue to give this woman space. I'm sure Faux News would be happy to give her air time.

Ms Warner should rendezvous with her criminal boyfriend Scooter Libby and write trashy novels and leave the reporting to an actual reporter.

Codependency in the White House

"Now Iraq is a bloody quagmire, Afghanistan is deteriorating and the Bush administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate admits, in effect, that thanks to Mr. Bush’s poor leadership America is losing the struggle with Al Qaeda. Yet Mr. Bush remains confident.

Sorry, but that’s not reassuring; it’s terrifying. It doesn’t demonstrate Mr. Bush’s strength of character; it shows that he has lost touch with reality.

Actually, it’s not clear that he ever was in touch with reality. I wrote about the Bush administration’s “infallibility complex,” its inability to admit mistakes or face up to real problems it didn’t want to deal with, in June 2002. Around the same time Ron Suskind, the investigative journalist, had a conversation with a senior Bush adviser who mocked the “reality-based community,” asserting that “when we act, we create our own reality.”

Bush stalks Iraqis

"We simply can’t want to be in Iraq more than the Iraqis want us to be there."

Bush wants to be in Iraq more than they want us to be there. This worse that a one-sided love affair. "Oh baby, my love is strong enough for both of us." I doubt any sane person would want to be in that situation.

What exactly does "support our troops" mean?

"The Vietnam War veteran and former Navy secretary - whose Marine son recently returned from a tour in Iraq - had urged Congress to impose restrictions on troop deployments to give soldiers and Marines more time to recuperate and train at home.

Webb's measure, offered as an amendment to an annual defense policy bill, would have required that troops spend as much time at home as they do on deployments. Active-duty Army soldiers now get 12 months at home after a 15-month tour overseas.

"Many of our ground forces are actually spending more time in Iraq than they are at home," Webb said. "This is four years into an occupation. There is not a strategic justification for this."

Webb actually has "skin in this game" per se is truly trying to help the fatigued military. I wonder what the service records are for those who have blocked his efforts?

American Impotence

The mere mention of the "I" word in a room of testosterone raging boys, they suddenly feel compelled to show off their manhood.

The result is always disastrous. Not only do the fail when they are naked, their dressed performance is generally inadequate.

No upside to this war

"There is no upside to this war. It has been a plague since the beginning. But it’s one thing to lose a war. It’s much worse for a nation to lose its soul."

Rove takes no responsibility

"Look, I make no apologies," Rove said in response to a question from the audience about whether he felt personally responsible for the war."

Adults with souls take responsibility for the mistakes they make in their life. Irresponsible children have been in the White House for years.

Powells pleas fall on deaf ears

"Powell believes that a reduction in US forces will have to be accompanied by talks with Syria and Iran. “You have to talk to the people you dislike most in this dangerous world.”

Maybe Powell should have spent more time with Cheney and Bush.........