No End In Sight

There is a great article in the NYT today talking about Saudi’s role in the destabilization of Iraq.

Reading this article it has become clear to me that we are closer to the beginning in Iraq than closer to the end.

Iraq is really not about the fight between different Iraqi sects at street level or a few car bombs here or there. It is more about the fight for control of the country between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and maybe eventually Turkey. Effectively, in the power vacuum left Saudi Arabia and Iran are fighting for the long-term control of the oil and this strategic geopolitical country (if you can still call it a country). They are funding and likely providing actual fighters for the continuing battle for Iraq.

There will be no victory for the U.S. (actually why doesn’t someone ask George Bush how he defines victory?). If the U.S. thinks it can just provide some minor stability and then hand the country over to some government and everyone is going to live happily ever after then that is a joke….

You can see a scenario where the country is partitioned with Iran taking part of it, Saudi Arabia taking part, and maybe even Turkey taking a piece. I think Turkey probably does not really even care about the Kurds. They probably really want the oil in Kirkuk. That is the real prize.

One plan apparently on the table is to pull U.S. troops out and leave a bunch in the North with the Kurds to I assume keep the Turks from taking the oil. The Turks are not going anywhere, so how long would the U.S. have to stay in the Kurdish part for? 50 years? Longer? Until Kirkuk is out of oil?

What a nightmare! The U.S. is being forced to stay in Iraq for who knows how long to keep the Saudis, Iranians and Turks from carving up the country….

Americas only solution is to get off the oil addiction and get out of Iraq and let these other guys fight over the oil…

BushCo is the terrorist that Bush keeps warning us about. The sickening irony is not lost on most of us I am sure.

Can’t wait to see this movie..thanks Larry.

Yes, THANK YOU, Larry, for the heads up about another great sounding documentary.

At least movies and blogs are ways of holding these bastards accountable for their war crimes.

It’s entirely frustrating that too few others…who do have the power…seem willing to do so.

All the talk — after Abu Gonzo testified defiantly LYING …hour after hour…before Congress — of CONTEMPT (of Congress, etc.) simply mirrors Bush-Cheney’s CONTEMPT for all of us and for the Constitution. They are laughing at us–thumbing their noses at us….saying “Go F— Yourselves!” while their family mafioso/RICO bank acccounts (in who knows what countries?) grow fatter by the minute.

We are witnessing the destruction of all we hold dear about this country, including the Constitution. It will take YEARS….DECADES….to repair all the damage these criminals have done.

I am amused by discussions of what this or that candidate has to say…and how well they appear…how viable a candidate. That is assuming (Why?) that a fraud-free election in 2008 will take place. Why would anyone assume such a thing? Who has done ANYTHING about the FRAUD in 2000 or in 2004? (and 2002) Oh, it’s that lame: “…but we don’t have the votes! whine?

Here’s a HEADS UP: tonight on Bill Moyers’ PBS NOW show…..GREG PALAST will explain to us HOW the 2008 election has already been rigged.

It, I think, is must-see teevee.

When the Bush Administration first took office we were told that, “the adults are now in charge.” What we weren’t told is that they’re psychotic adults. On the plus side however, Bremer did succeed in rewriting the traffic laws.

Si-i-i-i-i-i-i-igh!

Shouldn’t judge it before seeing it, but this sounds like yet another book/film/article/speach that puts forward the “we did it all wrong” fallacy and ignores the fundamental reality that the real wrong was doing it at all, and that there is simply no right way to do something that is wrong at its core.

These things are useful for pointing out the absolute moral and intellectual vacuity and spectacular incompetence of the power-hungry politicians and the ideologues who conspired and perpetrated this crime against humanity. But when is the “we did it all wrong” crowd going to understand that the “mistakes” along the way are secondary to the fact that this was an act of pure aggression that could never have had a positive outcome no matter how it was done.

“Bremer did succeed in rewriting the traffic laws.”

LOL!

Traffic laws which the occupiers consistently ignore, forcing the Iraqis to also ignore them if the wish to increase their chances of survival!

I take with a grain of salt the latest Pat Tillman story by AP, “New details on Tillman’s death “

The doctors — whose names were blacked out — said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

And various other reporting that he was shot three times, and that it was eventually concluded that all the shooting was triggered by either a mine or remote control bomb.

So reporting is that the suspicion of murder is renewed.

Here’s the grains of salt. Not mentioned in stories is that bullet fragmentation from an M-16 gradually decreases with distance up to around 200 yards. No widely reported stories about studying tissue penetration (maybe an unreleased autopsy somewhere); just that three bullet holes close together seem suspicious. Note: in automatic mode, a standard issue M-16 fires not continuously, but in bursts of guess how many bullets; three.

It appears that there’s less real new information than is being advertised. Most likely we’ll never really know the answer unless the shooter is identified and gives up a confession. Meanwhile, it’s plausible that someone in panic with sweat and dust in their eyes at 50-100 yards could have mis-interpreted Pat’s reported arm waving as someone throwing a grenade, and fired a three round burst. A burst, with less time between bullets fired, would be more likely to hit a moving target closer to the same spot than individual shots, assuming the rifle is being held still enough against recoil.

ybnormal,
Yeah, it’s like those eerie “cattle mutilation” cases out West about 30 years ago. It turned out the cattle hadn’t been mutilated, but had been picked over by scavengers and decomposed. The people who alleged that the cattle had been mutilated had had NO experience in viewing cattle carcasses, and so it looked strange and inexplicable. The problem was that economic forces had caused a lot of the old cowboys to leave the range, to be replaced by tenderfoots who wouldnt know their elbow from a hot rock.

Shirin,
Here are some dramas in the pipeline that might be more to your taste. Apparently Susan Sarandon is the new Jane Fonda. “Conflict on Screen: Hollywood Goes To War:”

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2809181.ece

I think to say that “doing it at all” was wrong is merely stating the obvious.

I think that not to state and restate that doing it at all was the single, overriding wrong is to make the the perilous error of IGNORING the obvious. More importantly, not making that the primary premise of any discussion of “where we went wrong” risks losing that critical central reality in the details.

It is also clear that while some of us recognize doing it at all as the central, overriding wrong, many do not. All too often these “we did it all wrong” discussions have the tone, and probably the purpose, of a “lessons learned” analysis for the purpose of improving the outcome of the next venture. It is very, very dangerous to ignore the fact that the only lesson that really needs to be learned is to refrain from initiating acts of aggressive conquest.

No one here, unless they have other agenda’s, not for one minute, is ignoring the obvious. Can we at least get that much straight?

WE ALL KNOW WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE GONE INTO THIS ILLEGAL WAR IN THE FIRST PLACE. We all know that. For cryin out loud.

OK. Shirin, if you not a professional concern troll, at least give us that much credit.

Mudkitty,
Tell that to Hillary–I don’t think she’s gotten the memo.

You might want to forward the memo to Obama as well. He and Hillary are both very hot to significantly increase the size of the military.

Increasing the size of the military is only necessary if you plan to 1) maintain tens of thousands of troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future (gotta populate those four mega-bases they’ve spend billions on, after all), and 2) further the policy of invading and occupying unwilling foreign countries, as Benjamin Friedman of the MIT Center for International Studies points out in this article.

And for those who think the Democrats are serious about really extricating the U.S. from Iraq, keep in mind that the Levin-Reid Amendment that got so much attention last week was NOT about withdrawal by any stretch of the imagination. (was utterly appalled to hear Barbara Lee of all people claim that it called for complete withdrawal by April 2008. I can’t imagine she would have lied about it, so can only conclude that she never actually read the Amendment – terribly disappointing!)

Hillary VOTED for the misbegotten Iraqi Enterprise and now conveniently forgets that she did. Obama was unable to vote for it, even if he’d wanted to. That makes Hillary a finger-in-the-wind hypocrite, voting for something when it’s popular and then trying to explain away her vote when it becomes unpopular.

There’s a historical story about the Progressive Republican U.S. Senator “Fightin’ Bob” LaFollette of Wisconsin. In 1922 he was running for re-election, and was scheduled to address the Wisconsin Legislature. His aides wanted him to repudiate his votes against WWI and other “patriotic issues.” Instead, LaFollette reaffirmed his votes, insisting he’d cast them again even with 20/20 hindsight, and told anyone who didn’t want a Senator like that to vote for his opponent. Even one of LaFollette’s enemies said, “I still hate that S.O.B., but I’m proud of him.” LaFollette won the election handily.

Looks like an excellent film. It’s great that more and more people are questioning all aspects of this war.

“That makes Hillary a finger-in-the-wind hypocrite…”

That has been quite clear for some time.

Look, we ALL KNOW that Hill regrets her vote. Rubbing her nose in it won’t do a damn bit of good. She may be the only thing that stands between you and a Gulliani, or another Republican presidency. Is that what any of you want? We need to get on with it. Believe me, Hillary KNOWS…

I say this, and I’m not even a supporter yet.

I say this as someone who believes that Gore will be drafted, and Hill will be VP.

It took a great deal of competence to achieve the desired results. Iraq is exactly as the administration and Israel desired it to become. Every step of the way what is now beind deemed incompetence was in fact competent. Measured by the results, Iraq’s oil is still in the ground and going up in value every day, Iraq’s oil is and will be priced in $$$, there is no one group or party or institution within Iraq that can speak with an force behind it, the military activities are at an acceptable level not too hot not too many americans being killed on any given day, the selective service system is in place and can begin processing draftees with a 15 day notice. Yup this wonderful film painting all those administration types as incompetents is just another in a string of successful disinformation and misdirection tools.
“Look at the incompetents over here do not look at successful results behind the curtain.”

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