You could go back to 1980, when the US decided to back a petty tyrant in Iraq has a bulwark against the percieved threat of Iran to Mideast oil supplies, and supplied one Saddam Hussein with cluster bombs, DIA military intelligence, and chemical weapons which were used against Iranians en masse. That's why Saddam had to be killed, and why he was never allowed to be interviewed by reporters - he knew too much.

Now, the only thing to do is to get Congress to overrule the President when it comes to troop deployments, and that might require impeachment. A good first step for Congress would be to halt the overseas deployment of National Guard troops. Cutting off funding is nonsense, since Bush can simply get money from the bloated Pentagon budget.

We are going to have to close the bases in Iraq, and that'll mean that Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell will probably lose all their Iraqi oil and petrochemical contracts - but who cares?

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Hundreds of thousands in the streets. The real (as opposed to puppet) leaders of the country calling for our ouster. Those Iraqis who stood with us now standing down and echoing the worst critiques of the occupation.

Again, I share that image of how you capture a monkey by putting food in a jar with an opening large enough for the monkey to put his hand in but too small to pull his hand out unless he lets go of the food. The monkey, so the story goes, will never let go of the food if he's hungry enough.

Are we monkeys? Worse, by far, yes I know.

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As the Boston Post points out ( here ), a large number of poorly qualified home-schooled evangelicals in the Bush White House with "law degrees" from Pat Robertson's Regent University may soon become available for deployment to Iraq.

They're "5th Amendment" experts with the goods on Karl Rove - prepare to Surge!

Their next assignment: convert the Iraq unbelievers. It's time for a hard-hitting PR mission to explain to each and every Iraqi why they should feel privileged to live under US rule. Door to door. Led by heroes like Monica Goodling. It's God's will!

Warm up the jets and send in the clowns!

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There has been precious little about the basics that has been "murky" about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, which is as much a crime against humanity as anything.

This could be readily seen for those who cared to look well prior to the U.S. ground invasion in 2003, let alone in the aftermath with its further revelations.

Regarding the position of official America in relation to Iraq, essentially nothing has changed since I drafted these words below in 2003, in my explicit anti Iraq War novel, Homefront (later updated), the year of the U.S. ground invasion:

“The official position of Senator Sam Washburn, support for the invasion and conquest of Iraq (and its massive oil fields), was the position of Congress in general and by and large. There had scarcely been a dissenting vote in some of the votes to fund the atrocity. Of course this congressional and executive support that had killed Carolyn’s son was also killing, disfiguring and disabling the sons and daughters of many other families in the US, not to mention the far more frequent killing of the people of Iraq and the accelerating spread of violence and chaos and desperation there due to lack of security, lack of jobs, lack of medicines, lack of even electricity, and the failure of the invading forces to establish non-abusive let alone decent conditions of life.

“It had all led, quite predictably, to an even more ferocious resistance in Iraq that was gaining the ever-increasing support of the population, despite the bombings, beheadings, and other brutality by the resistance – so hated were the country-destroying American invaders and those who sided with them in the power-grab for which there was no end in sight and for which there never had been an exit plan, because no exit had ever been intended.

“On the contrary, Carolyn had learned that from the start the US had been intent upon building fourteen permanent military bases for the purpose of dominating oil-rich Iraq from now until Kingdom Come, or until there was oil no more. That was the actual plan that US forces were still trying to implement – morality, carnage, and the fate of the world be damned – and never mind the views of the Iraqis.

“Totally Dominant or Totally Dead seemed to be the US model. Carolyn understood it now, the real standard for much of US action in Iraq and the world. For this, her son had been sent to kill and be killed, as Carolyn had gone through the great pain of finding out. Because of this brute madness, her son had died. For this homicidal and potentially suicidal endeavor, her son had been led by official America.

“Possibly she could be forgiven for dwelling on it.”

http://www.mainstaypress.org/MP-homefront-trilogy.htm

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Can you say Romans? They essentially did the same stupid shit that the Bush administration is doing...so did the Nazi's...and so have almost all imperial nation states during the course of their expansionism.

There appear to be 2 kinds of people in this world. Those with respect for life, and those who will exploit whomever or whatever they can to satisfy their own personal greed and lust for power.

I think we can figure out which category the architects of this most recent debacle are in. But, even when they aren't behaving overtly, they are still running the world in the background...under the radar of public perception.

Let's face the facts...the world has become reality TV. All of this stupidity is merely entertainment for the arrested adolescents that sit around all day playing Risk and Monopoly with the world. Average people don't matter to them...they are merely pieces on the board to be moved, or removed at the will of the Player.

I wish there was a possible positive end to this game, but alas, the plan is that a whole lot of the earth's population is destined to die at the hands of the rich and powerful...and it appears to be too late to take back what has been given away...our freedom.

The Dark Lord is victorious...and we shall all despair.

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You forgot to mention the real mission: oil and petrodollars.

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Now that “the surge” has apparently (and inevitably) failed, the only face-saving option for the NeoCons and their Repug/Demwit enablers is breaking apart the nation that we’ve broken. Joe Biden has been pushing this “solution” of splitting Iraq into three separate nations along Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish lines for some time.

We have to consider how the Neocons think..We can’t naively believe that everyone has a good heart. ...Creating a peaceful, democratic Iraq was never their goal...The core goals were: control over the world’s 2nd (or maybe 1st) largest reserves of easily extractable oil, the destruction of Iraq as a threat to Israel and (especially) stopping Saddam from converting the Iraqi oil reserve currency to the Euro from the US Dollar.

So what if it’s apparent that we’ve "lost” Iraq...It was also apparent that we had “lost" Vietnam in 1968 but that did stop both Dem/Repugs from dragging the war on for an agonizing five more years (and 25,000 more US troop deaths)? In the end the Dems under Reid and Pelosi will not call Dubya’s bluff and cut off the war funding...the Dems have a short-term, vested political interest in letting the American meat-grinding continue in Iraq as it’s causing so much damage to their Republican opponents. The ONLY non-violent, political solution I can see right now to ending this debacle is for those of us on the Left to make a pact with the devil by supporting Chuck Hagel...He is the only American politician right now who has the credibility/guts to end this catastrophe...Yet, other than being on our side on the Iraq War...Hagel is just another traditional right winger on economic and social issues...Do we want to sell-out all other principles to stop to this war?

Short of doing this, we’ll just have to sit helplessly by while our stupid politicians break Iraq into three separate nations so that we can maintain control of the oil…Of course this will require the continued presence of American troops and the daily 3-7 troop deaths from IEDs…but to the Neocons their lives, like that nation of Iraq, are ultimately expendable.

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Looking at Gulf War 2 forensically requires an understanding of the White House wheels who started it.

The Iraq occupation was planned well before George W. became president. The instigators were members of the neoconservative paperwork organization, "Project for a New American Century" (PNAC), whose founders included Gulf War 2 architects Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Don Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. Bush 43 is connected to PNAC through his brother, Jeb, an original 1997 member.

The White House PNAC Gang approved the organization's published goal of invading Iraq before 9/11. Issued when Clinton was in office, the PNAC position paper eerily predicted that the first preemptive war in U.S. history would be supported by the American people if they suffered a "catastrophic and catalyzing Pearl Harbor-type event" (PNAC's words). Thus, to Bush and his neocon cabal, 9/11 was an excuse to attack Iraq, not a cause.

To achieve their goose-stepping global goals. PNAC members recruited an obedient mercenary army. More importantly, absent a draft, the “all-volunteer” force minimized war protests, a key to PNAC’s grand design of starting preemptive conflicts and dominating the world with U.S. military power.

Not coincidentally, it was Rep. Rumsfeld who introduced legislation in Congress to kill the draft. He later joined Cheney in the Pentagon and helped him create no-bid “singe-source” contracts which made both men wealthy war whores

The influence of PNAC was particularly pervasive in 2002. For example, how many bloggers know that Senator Joe “Love-Me” Lieberman chaired the White House Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) established that year by Bruce Jackson, a PNAC director?

A rightwing hawk in liberal clothing, Lieberman rubbed elbows at CLI meetings with PNAC members Jeane Kirkpatrick, Robert Kagan, Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle, William Kristol and James Woolsey.

In sum, because of PNAC’s rigid imperialist ideology with no moral compass or allegiance to the Constitution, Iraq was doomed the moment Dub-ya took office.


Hugh E. Scott, editor of FreedomCentralUSA.com, an investigative website dedicated to the destruction of domestic fascism (neoconservatism) using truth and the Internet as WMDs.

I also manage King-George.biz -- the only website with hardcopy proof of White House corruption.

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There is only one reason for the US to deploy our troops into battle overseas- the defense of the United States. Peacekeeping under the UN- maybe, but otherwise no.

Bush knew all the Iraq hype was bullsh*t , has been responsible for more misery than anyone since the Vietnam/Cambodian/Laotian War and has damn near bankrupted the nation in the process. All based upon a known lie. If that is not an impeachable offense, WTF is?

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Why are US troops in Baghdad at all? Somebody need to tell these guys that the oil is outside of town somewhere. Too much mission-creep going on. Focus on the oil, guys. After all, stealing the oil was the real point to all this.

Dboy

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The pretext (or rather retrotext) of bringing demcracy was only emphasized after it became undeniable (even for the NY Times) that the WMD claim, the "single question", was utterly fraudulent. Either Government has no objective or, more likely, they have one, but don't feel it is fit for public consumption. I think that the premise of this artilce misses the cruicial point. That war was, and is, in fact an Imperial adventure that never had any defensable objective such as a person with a consience would approve. Perhaps a more relevant question is why our society it organized in such a way that terrible atrocities not only take place, but are indeed the result of key operative principles--protecting and hopefully extending America's hegemony (of this objective controlling ME oil has always been a priority; nothing less the the most "stupendous" souce of stategic advantage in fact)--principles pursued with virtual religious fervor.

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if the same corrupt forces (politicians in bed with corporations) dominate the USA?

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It should be blatantly obvious to everyone now but the brain-damaged that the war was never meant to be won, and never meant to end. Its architects saw it as an endless gravy train to pillage the treasury, and nothing more, and using George Orwell's "1984" and Adolf Hitler's rise as their playbook, pretty much counted on trotting out one false flag 9-11 after another in regular intervals to keep the natives fearful, fighting, enlisting, and sacrificing as the architects smirked and laughed all the way to their stockbrokers. Truly they had figured out the secret of endless wealth in America, and that's all they ever gave a damn about, period.

They just didn't count on two things; that the internet would expose the truth to a worldwide audience with a very strong bullshit detector, and the fact that the military would turn on them when they realized they were pawns in the equation, their numbers and infrastructure dwindling and dissolving every minute down to nothing.

They also didn't count on their grip on the voting machines being broken, and the dissolution of their one-party Nazi state with a new but tenuous Democratic majority in Congress.

But still, they go on, hoping their next 9-11, designed to enrage the mob against Iran, will carry them through to the next moneyminting treasury-stealing battle, this time nuclear, in their endless war against an idea, the idea of everyday people fighting for freedom from enemy Nazi Amerikan occupation and destruction against overwhelming force the only way they know how, the way Americans would fight the Chinese if the situation was reversed and China bombed and invaded, destroyed America's infrastructure, killed Bush, and claimed they were "liberating America from its evil unelected dictator" "who attacked his own people" on 9-11. Watch how fast Americans would take to car bombs and terrorism, not just against the Chinese, but against any Amercan who cooperated with them in any way whatsoever. Of course, then we'd be talking about freedom-fighting patriot heroes whom China would be demonizing as "terrorists".

Maybe BushChenyCo. will be stopped in time, but I highly doubt it. History shows time and time again that by the time citizens finally wise up and kill their insane Emperor(s), the hordes are already at the gates ready to continue the job on everyone else to the last man, woman, and child.

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When Russia invaded and occupied Afghanistan, we The United States, supplied the "insurgents" with arms and training. Russia, losing that war, eventually left defeated.

What difference is there with the American invasion and occupation --- two countries instead of one.

But how dare we condemn Iran and Syria for supplying and training the "new" invaders and occupiers of Islamic lands. It’s only natural.

And nobody's comparing anymore but it IS the Crusades all over again. As with all invading armies, we too will leave as a defeated, spent force.

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Is it never a military mission or is it harder than just blowing things up. Maybe just maybe the president and the military leaders realized that it was going to be 1,000 times harder to create a viable democratic government than it is to blow them up. No one will argue that it is harder. Some have just under estimated the cost and time.
For all you that do not think it is worth the blood and money. Look at Israel or any of the middle east countries now. Think of living in a country where you never know if someone is going to blow your school or mall or gas station. We live in fear because a couple of kids shoot others at a high school. Think of gas at six dollars a gallon. We complain because unemployement is 4.4 and. You have no idea what our economy and way of life would be if gas goes to six dollars. The reason you can not see that we need to win this war is because you do not think. The crap that is coming out because of global warming is not in the same universe as the problems we would have if Iran or Saddam had controlled the oil. If you think you can negotiate with out a gun to there head any of our enemies then you are nieve. They are our enemy because they hate us and want us dead. They do not seek to live and let live they want us dead or converted. Just like the Christians of the middle ages. Dead or converted. Learn from history. These are no different than the japanese or germans. We are just not willing to kill them all even though it would be so easy. Like Iran, we have 4 nuclear submarines with nukes loaded off there coast. They run their mouths like someone with little man syndrome and at any time we could smack them down like the ant that they are, and if it pushes us far enough we will and there is no one that can do anything about it.

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