Why, when the prime domestic support for the war were frothing FoxNews fed bigots  and when the Bush war policy - strategy and tactics - have been entirely driven by domestic crap, is any of this surprising?

Least surprising of all is the fact that the war is lost for these very reasons (.ppt)

- War Atrocities: Awareness Grows, Tolerance Drops
- US Military Denies Ishaqi Massacre Allegations
- US Probes Balad, Haditha, Samarra Killings
- Iraqi PM: GIs Habitually Attacking Civilians

6/01/06 Why we lost in Iraq, by Chet Richards [Straus Military Reform Project, Center for Defense Information

Defense & National Interest]. A few thoughts on the subject. PowerPoint (794 KB - play as slide show)

When you reach the analysis portion of the show, don't get "blocked" in an OODA loop. Richards is a John Boyd disciple. Wikipedia's explanation is about as clear as it gets.

Ishaqi Massacre . That's right...another one. We're so fortunate that George Bush and Hillary Clinton are people of high principle standing tall for American values.

 

The BBC has uncovered new video evidence that US forces may have been responsible for the deliberate killing of 11 innocent Iraqi civilians.
The video appears to challenge the US military's account of events that took place in the town of Ishaqi in March.

The US said at the time four people died during a military operation, but Iraqi police claimed that US troops had deliberately shot the 11 people.

A spokesman for US forces in Iraq told the BBC an inquiry was under way.

Roger Altman, of KillerHill's coterie, said as much tonight on Hardball. When asked about her pro-war positions, then and now, Roger said, in effect, "She's a woman of principle. She stands by her decision now and then and besides, no body will remember in 2008"

Roger might as well have said "Democrats are fools" because that in fact is what Hillary Clinton is playing us for.

"I'm as mad as hell. I'm not stopping. They can hand wave me off, dismiss me, but I'm coming back, again and again and again until there is some accountability" Retired Big Red One Commander, Maj. Gen. John Batiste told The Telegraph Group reporter Pentagon chief 'wasted US lives in Iraq'

With Rumsfeld as his putative and Bush/Cheney his obvious ulitmate targets, nothing is going to stop Gen Batiste you can bet on that.  We can also rely on Profile in Courage Prize winner John Murtha to speak truth to power and to the American people about what Batiste calls "strategic and tactical errors of enormous magnitude"

What do you think we can count on Hillary, Lieberman, Schumer, Bayh, Marshall Wittman et al for?

 Tim Roemer poses the question "Had enough?"

You bet.

but does Michelle Goldberg's excellent appearance in the Book Club last week pre-sage a visit from an nun, a former sister to be precise?

This is a Euro's comment to Cole's post today about the incredibly shrinking Karzai hold on Afghanistan...Somehow I think there may be more than one Euro who thinks this way. Somehow, a shitload more than just one.

We in the EU don't share your values anymore

At 10:51 AM, Christiane said...
Juan,
I don't see why you are so supportive of the Afghan war/occupation. When the US bombed and occupied Afghanistan, it was already a poor and weak country devastated by years of wars. They were not in need of another one. Bombing the hell out of Afghanistan was only a vengeful act after 9/11. Terrorists and underground movements can't be fought using traditional war methods, which only harmed civilians. The actual situation is the best proof of that. What is the result ? hundreds of prisonners in the shameful prison of Guantanamo, who can't be brought to trial because for the most part they are just innocents or fighters resisting the US invasion and because out of despair in front of this situation the US tortured them. What was needed and justified were traditional intelligence work, not the down pouring of hundreds tons bombs. Inebriated by her so-called unmatched military power, the US entered in another war then, the Iraq war. Treating its allies like shit, she bullied all those who refused to go along with this new folly and these new war crimes, to a such a point that in order to calm those bushists, they accepted to provide troops for Afghanistan instead, especially the Germans (who had never sent any troops out of their country since WWII), the French and the Canadians).
During the early bombings of Afghanistan, I remember seeing a TV footage showing an interview with a former Russian general who had commanded in Afghanistan. He was certain that no other country/army could ever successfully occupy Afghanistan. He laughed out at the US naivety and said he wished them good luck, both because of the mountainous topography and because of the complicated political situation reigning between the different warlords. Clearly, the former USSR included many center Asiatic Republics and had much more experience with the mindset of people living in Central Asia. If with all their experience Russia failed, how could the US succeed ?
The US has become a dangerous preposterous and irresponsible ally who is drawing us, the EU countries, in military adventures which are destabilizing the whole world. But look, how powerless the US is at the same time : just invading two weak countries, both already devastated by numerous wars, is enough to overstretch her powerfull military. The US is a dangerous country for all the others, allies or not, because her economic power is rooted in the militaro-industrial complexe. We in the EU don't share your values anymore. We have already gone through colonization and are not ready to do it again, to invade other countries out of greed and we don't think our values should be imposed to the rest of the world. There are some values we are proud of, but if they are that good, they will spread to the rest of the world by themselves, not by mere military power.


At 10:53 AM

In our occasional series "Will Bush Negotiate or Fight His Way Out of his IraN Mess ", score another for Mr. Optimistic, Ivo Daalder.  Even as Hillary and her DLC claque, Lieberman and his Lobbyists scurrry for daylight to the warmongering right of George W. Bush, the Los Angeles Times reports

 GOP Heavy Hitters Pressuring White House to Talk With Iran

Iran as previously noted is simultaneously moving aggressively to shore up their position internationally and in Iraq itself where in Basra, the British have lost control and Iranian-backed militias  (primarily Badr Corps) have begun to assert control.

Will he or won't he beat a retreat double quick to the negotiating table? Will Hillary and Joe remain as clueless and craven as ever? 

Check back later....

I have long argued after Yglesias that the US has a three party system - Dems, Republiicans, and the War Party. As the following from today's Los Angeles Times reports, the War Party Wing of the Democratic Party is circling the wagons.

In Tim Roemer's formulation - Had Enough?

It is payback time for the DLC, Hillary, Likud Lieberman, et al

Neocons in the Democratic Party
by Jacob Heilbrunn (Los Angeles Times, 5/28)

 DON'T LOOK now, but neoconservatism is making a comeback — and not among the Republicans who have made it famous but in the Democratic Party....

Other Democrats, who call themselves the "Sept. 11 generation," have formed what is known as the Truman National Security Project, whose avowed aim is to revive the "strong security, strong values of the Democratic Party — for Democrats of all ages."

Does this simply sound like Bush-lite? To the right and the left, it probably will, but the main opposition facing the would-be Truman successors will come from the latter. The battle will come from the generation of Democrats who came of age during the 1960s and who were instrumental in finishing off "Cold War liberalism" because of its failures in the jungles of Vietnam.

Vietnam, remember, was a liberal, not a conservative, war, undertaken by warrior intellectuals who were liberal at home but saw falling dominoes everywhere around the world. (The same lack of nuance plagues the Bush administration, which has been trying to depict a global kind of Islamic totalitarianism, when the foe, as in the Cold War, is really more diffuse and less of a monolith than American leaders are prepared to believe.)

The Moveon.org types are hardly prepared to go down without a fight. At the moment, with no end to the imbroglio in Iraq in sight, they — the populist left — are poised for their greatest influence in the party since the McGovern era.

The new Democratic hawks, like the old neoconservatives of the 1970s, represent an insurgency, a direct challenge to the establishment. And if they are to revamp the party, they will have to do a lot more than simply evoke the ghost of Truman and Co.

So funny I forgot to laugh 

 Had enough?