What did the "official" think this war was in the first place but a breakdown in morality?

Photos Indicate Civilians Slain Execution-Style
An official involved in an investigation of Camp Pendleton Marines' actions in an Iraqi town cites `a total breakdown in morality.

A documentary shown this week on the A&E Network detailed the frustrations of a company of Marine reservists who had 23 members killed and 36 wounded during a deployment last year in Haditha.

One Marine sergeant, in an interview after his unit had returned to Columbus, Ohio, remembered a raid in which he burst into a home and came close to killing two women and a teenage boy out of rage for the deaths of fellow Marines.

Sgt. Guy Zierk, interviewed in the documentary, "Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company," said he knew at that point that he had been in Iraq too long.

Far between sundown's finish an' midnight's broken toll
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight
An' for each an' ev'ry underdog soldier in the night
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

May they rest in peace

My what a difference a week makes.  Last week I thought that Ivo Daalder's bet that the Bush Administration would come to grips reality and negotiate with Iran was at best a long shot.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets on Daalder

 IraQ Backs Iran in Proliferation Dispute
Foreign Minister Tells West to Back Off (CNN)

Iranian Foreign Minister Visits Sistani in Najaf


High Level Dispute Emerging in Bush Administration Over Direct Talks with Iran -  Rice Under Heavy Pressure from Europe, War Cabal Opposed to Any Contact (Nyt)

And the Tigers were very, very
angry, but still they would not let go of each other's tails.
And they were so angry, that they ran round the tree,
trying to eat each other up, and they ran faster
and faster, till they were whirling round so fast
that you couldn't see their legs at all.

And they still ran faster and faster and faster, till
they all just melted away, and there was nothing
left but a great big pool of melted butter (or
"ghi," as it is called in India) round
the foot of the tree.   The Story of Little Black Sambo

An Ongoing Case Study of the Israel Lobby. Now where have we witnessed this before.

A story authored by a prominent U.S. neoconservative regarding new legislation in Iran allegedly requiring Jews and other religious minorities to wear distinctive color badges circulated around the world this weekend before it was exposed as false.

The article by a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Iranian-American Amir Taheri, was initially published in Friday's edition of Canada's National Post, which ran alongside the story a 1935 photograph of a Jewish businessman in Berlin with a yellow, six-pointed star sewn on his overcoat, as required by Nazi legislation at the time. The Post subsequently issued a retraction

Iran Target of Disinformation Campaign

 

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —President George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

Since when did Rumsfeld become The Decider??? Gen Batiste ripped into Rumsfeld on Hardball so fiercely today that he all but answered the question

Adventures of the Decider [Daily Show]

Wolfowitz's military adjutant; Commander First Infantry Division (Big Red One) in Iraq "resigned a promising career to make sure that people take responsibility"!



The only thing they were planning was a war to get a second term

The Lobby campaign for war on Iran has prompted some interest here and not a few lies from our resident lobbbyists.  Given the interest, this post from Juan Cole's Informed Comment further documents the media influence analysis of Mearsheimer/Walt's The Israel Lobby:

CanWest and the Lobby
A kind reader alerted me to this item about the present owners of the National Post that tried to float the black psy-ops operation charging Iran with requiring religious minorities to wear "badges". This item is from before they owned the National Post, but there is no reason to think their policies have changed: The CanWest Chill: "We do not run in our newspaper Op Ed pieces that express criticism of Israel". It goes on:

' The 7 December 2001 broadcast of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's As It Happens [Real Audio link] uncovered a disturbing example of corporate and political interference in freedom of the press. The program reported on a new editorial policy directive from CanWest Global, a leading Canadian media conglomerate, that impairs readers' ability to make up their own minds about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, among other issues.

As It Happens reported that over two dozen journalists at the Montreal Gazette have pulled their bylines to protest a new policy imposed by the newspaper's owners, Southam Newspapers Inc, which is owned by CanWest Global.

The new policy requires the company's main local newspapers to run editorials written at headquarters in Winnipeg by Southam Editor-in-Chief Murdoch Davis.

Bill Marsden, an investigative reporter at the Montreal Gazette, noted that up to 156 times a year -- about three times a week -- the editorial would be imposed and that the remainder of locally-written editorials would be required to reflect the viewpoints and stances taken by the paper's corporate headquarters.

Does this influence really matter? Yes, it does. CanWest's 2000 Annual Report states that:

...[O]n July 31, CanWest announced its acquisition of all of the major Canadian newspaper and Internet assets of Hollinger Inc., including the metropolitan daily newspapers in nearly every large city across Canada and a 50% partnership interest in the National Post. We closed that transaction successfully on November 16, 2000, following completion by the Competition Bureau of its three-month review of the transaction.

The magnitude of these deals is unprecedented. Just a few months ago, the $860 million WIC purchase was the largest acquisition in the history of Canadian media. The $3.2 billion transaction to bring the Hollinger newspaper assets to CanWest remains the biggest media convergence deal ever consummated in Canada. The deal transformed CanWest into a $7.5 billion international media company and the largest Canadian publisher of daily newspapers.

Note that CanWest Global has not just limited itself to the Canadian media. It additionally owns media organisations in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. '

Meanwhile, Michael Massing at the NRYB pulls off one of those suprise endings, where he begins by criticizing aspects of the paper, "The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy," then criticizes its critics, then actually fleshes out some of the mechanics whereby the lobby operates in Washington. Massing is right that the Mearsheimer and Walt paper would have been better if it had included more of these sorts of specifics.

I think around 1,600 academics have by now signed the two petitions I started protesting the smearing of Mearsheimer and Walt by organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League. Since constituent organizations of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations are lobbying Congress to cut off funding to academic programs that are not "balanced" (i.e. do not privilege the Likud Party line), academics are likely to have further things to say on this issue.