The military commanders, as well as the original neoconservative planners, have no idea of what to do with the mess. This Administration has decided to lay all of the responsibility for straightening out Iraq on the military's shoulders.

Promulgated by chicken-hawks who either evaded the draft or went awol while in the National Air Guard.

It's been interesting watching them over the last four years planting their excuses for the inevitable cut-and-run while calling war protesters unpatriotic and traitors. Rumsfeld, when he was the primary manager of the war in Iraq, set the stage for total failure. This also reflects on the choices the President (Cheney) and his puppet (GW Bush) have made by surrounding themselves with incompetents; that whole gang of neocon politicians, little foot-soldiers, and media whores like Ann Coulter who would have excelled in the SS or Gestapo in Nazi Germany.

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The Bush administration won't survive the year - count on it. The most corrupt, disgusting administration since the invention of dirt is in its "final throes". The trasgressions of Richard Milhaus Nixon and company are a mere cup of water then placed in juxtapostiton with the ethical tsunami of the George Walker Bush Mob. Of this you may be absolutely certain: Bush will die in federal prison. I am as sure of that as I am my own name.

Tom Degan. Nice to meet 'cha!

The space limitation policies of AlterNet do not permit me to list all the scandals here - but they are many and they are deeply disturbing. From the lies that led to this mind-fuckingly stupid war, to the firing of the federal prosecutors who were trying to bring these hideous bastards to justice - the shit is about to hit the fan, trust me on this one, campers.

Oh, how I'd love to be listening in the moment Alberro Gonzalez gently tries to explain to the First Fool that a president cannot pardon himself....OH, BOY! The half-witted little asshole is going to hit the roof!

Peace....

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
"The Rant" by Tom Degan

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Just a couple of points of interest:

1) General Petraeus received his fourth star for accepting this assignment in Iraq. So for him at least, the mission is accomplished.

2) Clinton sent US troops to Bosnia in 1996 with an estimated deployment time of about a year. Ten years later, some US troops are still deployed in Bosnia.

3) Given how much the Arabs hate Americans, I suspect the long term deployment of US troops in Iraq will resemble the aftermath of Vietnam rather than Korea.

4) Somewhat off topic ... The less than honorable tactics of the Iraq insurgency (e.g. using women and children as human shields, fighting from mosques, etc) are actually ways to level the playing (a/k/a battle) field. Who in their right mind would go toe-to-toe with an M1A1 Abrams tank or an AH-1W Cobra helicopter if he were armed only with an AK-47?

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Joshua Key:

They didn’t know what "get down" meant, so we knocked the two brothers to the floor, face down. We put our knees on their backs, pulled their hands behind them, and faster than you can bat an eye we zipcuffed them...

The Iraqi brothers were taken away to an American detention facility for interrogation. I don’t know what it was called, and I don’t know where it was. All I know is that we sent away every man — pretty well every male over five feet tall — that we found in our house raids, and I never saw one of them return to the neighbourhoods we patrolled regularly.

Inside, we kept on ransacking the house. The more obvious it became that we would find no weapons or contraband, the more we kicked the stuffing out of the house. We knocked over dressers, sliced into mattresses with knives, kicked our way through doors, raiding the three bedrooms on the second floor, then raced up to the third floor. We turned over everything we could and broke furniture at random, searching for contraband, weapons, proof of terrorist activity, or signs of weapons of mass destruction. We found nothing but a CD...

Three teenage girls screamed when they saw us. Some of my squad mates grabbed them and held them at gunpoint, and the rest of us ran through the house. We found no men at all, just six more women in their 20s and 30s. The guys in my squad couldn’t find a thing, not even any guns — and it seemed that the more incapable they were of locating contraband, the more destructive they became. They smashed dressers, ripped mattresses, broke cabinets, and threw shelves to the floor...


Then something happened that haunts my dreams to this day. All the women were led back inside the house and our entire platoon was ordered to stand guard outside it...
Four U.S. military men entered the house with the women. They closed the doors.

Normally, when we conducted a raid, we were in and out in 30 minutes or less. You never wanted to stay in one place for too long for fear of exposing yourself to mortar attacks. But our platoon was made to stand guard outside that house for about an hour. The women started shouting and screaming. The men stayed in there with them, behind closed doors. It went on and on and on.

Finally, the men came out and told us to get the hell out of there.

It struck me then that we, the American soldiers, were the terrorists. We were terrorizing Iraqis. Intimidating them. Beating them. Destroying their homes. Probably raping them...

In December 2003, Key went home on a two-week leave. He never returned to Iraq. Instead, Key went into hiding.

full article

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The US REAL military spending is about one trillion dollars a year. Thats about 10% of the whole economy+the loans you took from countries lika China(and obviously are not paying back)

Lets say you cut this spending by half to about 500billion dollars. That would basicly leave an average American with little more then a thousand bucks extra. In otherwords, it really wouldn't make that much of a difference!

In the future you(like the rest of the so called "west)have to decide, will you REALLY afford everyone publich healthcare or not? I think America probobly could survive, if it wasnt for the baby boomers and the immigrants. The baby boomers needles to say will take the "big slice" from the publich healthcare system, but seriosly, do you really think that immigrants will settle for being second class forever or run away back to there native countries because your nativist ranting? America used to have a full scale civil war for A LOT LESS!

Basicly, you have to chooce. If your going to afford publich healthcare even for a small minority, you will have to give up on this so called "Empire" Otherwise you will go broke and become like modern Russia;a crazy, big business controlled dictatorship, with thousands of nukes(and not having the ability to afford the REAL military even with the basic needs and border control!)

It it makes you feel anymore comfortable, i'll tell you that your not alone with this shit! In China, the senior citizens riot just about every week in the villages! China and America ironicly have one thing in common;if they try to afford publich healthcare for the baby boomers, they will go BROKE;both economicly and mentally(you wont be able to handle the pressure, trust my!)

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Capturing Iraqi oil supplies! Really, until this becomes a part of the daily discourse you're simply tiptoing around the giant elephant in the living room. The permanent military bases in Iraq are all near the major oilfields and pipelines - what do you think the military is doing in Iraq? Guarding the oil for Exxon, Chevron, BP and Shell - and that's why Bush will veto any proposal to get the troops out. You can't write articles that attempt to analyze the situation in Iraq without addressing the oil production situation - it's at the very center of all US policy.

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In "Military"Review" Sept./Oct 2006 issue an article by Sarah Sewall explains in detail the numbers creeping up. A counterinsurgency because of it's complicated nature always causes more casualties. Maybe no one told what's his name.
And certainly not us. I don't mind finding things out for myself. It's interesting. I very much mind being lied to as a matter of course. The s--t has hit the fan and the time seems right to get 'W' and friends OUT. Thanks, ANNA

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Our goverment isn't that stupid. They knew this would turn out badly. The last thing this goverments wants is a middle east democracy. That wouldn't be good for business, but a never-ending war is.

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This way, the US troops won't have to torture Iraqi citizens - Saddam can do it! According to the latest insider info, all kinds of cell samples were taken from Saddam before he was hanged, and scientists have been working around the clock to develop a viable clone - and have succeeded (though you wouldn't want to see the failed attempts, believe me!).

This little clone is being nourished on Cheney's special recipe of puppy dog blood and children's tears, and will soon be ready to take over the daily affairs in Iraq - read all about it at the Asia Times Online: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/ Middle_East/IC13Ak05.html

"Even as the "surge" proceeds in Baghdad, the US is quietly moving to implement "Plan B", which would be nothing less than a coup d'etat pushing the hapless Nuri al-Maliki aside and installing former CIA asset and neo-con favorite Iyad Allawi back in as a dictator. Nothing less than a return to strongman rule will restore order, Washington believes. - Pepe Escobar (Mar 12, '07)"

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Why do we keep doing this? Why do we keep reiterating the outrages and abuses of the Bush administration? God knows, they have managed to put a deadly stench on nearly every aspect of foreign and domestic life during the 5-odd years they have abused their power and ignored the will of the people. Yes, we know.

We know that they lied – about WMD's, Al Qaeda, 9/11, healthcare, Social Security, and much, much, more – and lie today; we know that they are sacrificing the lives of our young for their profit; we know that they have violated the Constitution time and time again; we know that they have made a mockery of the rule of law, of social order, of the truth; we know that they have sold out America and everyone in it to the highest corporate bidders.

So, why do we continue to reiterate the obvious, if we cannot rise up and demand what also should be obvious: the impeachment of the entire Bush cabal and their prosecution for literally hundreds of crimes? We are now in Broken Record territory, spinning 'round and 'round through the sewage of recent history, while the abuses and the outrages don't just continue, but worsen.

I write my letters, make my phone calls, go to demonstrations, to the point that I now become physically ill when I see the smirking and posturing George, or KKKarl, or Dick, or Con-do-leezzzza; but as an individual, it all seems so miniscule. I need another one or two or three million individuals to come along. Where are they, watching American Idol? (We need REAL American Idols, not just desperate entertainer wannabes sweating it out in front of a curmudgeon with bad hair.)

Our Congress acts as if the outrageous behavior of the Bush cabal is something to be sorted out with polite discussion; that the force of superior ideas alone will carry the day (when Congress accidentally comes across one). This is exactly the kind of mistake that Europe made with the rise of the Nazis, and what Winston Churchill desperately tried to warn against, to no avail. Less than a decade after that warning, all of Europe was in ruins, because nobody wanted to believe the threat that was festering right under their noses. Are we the same, so used to at least a modicum of rationality and civility in government that we cannot recognize the destruction of democracy, even when it is happening right under OUR noses? Why are there not a million – or two million, three million – people in Washington surrounding the White House and clogging the halls of Congress? Why are not the phones and faxes in Washington melting down? Why are not our representatives' e-mails so jammed up with protests that business-as-usual cannot continue? Where has the spirit gone that sent a king packing some 230 years ago? Where is the America that our ancestors fought for, the one that belongs to us? And, even more importantly, where are the offspring of those fighters?

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