Clueless in Iraq

Clueless in Iraq

Oh - - - oh - - this is just great. Now what the hell do we do?

This sounds like a Daily Show skit..
The problem is..it's for real!

This sounds like a Daily Show skit. The problem is...it's for real!

~~~~~~~~~~

"Get down and clear your own weapon!" Cpl. William Kozlowski shouted to Zwayid in English.

Zwayid answered in Arabic. "That's my weapon," he explained, pointing to his friend.

"Corporal, you're a leader!" Kozlowski shouted back. "Take charge!"

Zwayid smiled at him. "What's he saying to me?" he whispered

~~~~~~

Seriously, I'm getting angrier by the moment. I hear tougher-talking Democrats, like Joe Biden, say that Bush's rhetoric is right but the plan is wrong. Yet, no legislator, Republican or Democrat, can come up with a realistic or convincing strategy to pull that "right" rhetoric out of Bushworld and into reality. The Military recruitment is suffering and it won't be long before our government is drafting our children into a service that serves no productive purpose because there is no plan to win.

Most disappointing is Congressman Charlie Rangel, who is pushing a draft because he believes it's the right thing to do while, at the same time, he's comparing the Iraq war to the Holocaust. What about that "disconnect?" Rangel cannot see what he's doing, which is, in effect, creating the path of least resistance for the neocons who want warm bodies to finish Iraq and invade Syria and Iran.

Look at Iraq! The rubble, the carnage, the failure. If we've made a mistake, we'd best find a plan to rectify it before we break our Military's backbone and destroy American families who lose drafted sons and daughters to a war planned by civilian idiots.

UPDATE - From the Boston Globe, Sat. June 11:

"Faced with plummeting public support for the war in Iraq, a growing number of members of Congress from both parties are reevaluating the reasons for the invasion and demanding the Bush administration produce a plan for withdrawing US troops. A bipartisan group of House members is drafting a resolution that calls on the administration to present a strategy for getting the United States out of Iraq, reflecting an increasing restlessness about the war in a chamber that 2 1/2 years ago voted overwhelmingly to support the use of force in Iraq."

Kansas.com June 12 - Military action won't end insurgency, growing number of U.S. officers believe

Support the Iraq war? Consider Yourself Morally Responsible

Fernando Botero painting
Support the Iraq war? Consider Yourself Morally Responsible

There is a new batch of gruesome Abu Ghraib torture photos coming - and many Americans who have supported this war will be (rightfully) morally outraged. Columnist Naomi Klein reminds us, however, that the majority of Iraqi citizens do not want us to remain as an occupier in their country. Torture is part of the territory and we'd best be clear on that inescapable fact if we, as a democracy, are going to be accountable for what we allow to be done to others in our name. Using the example of the character known as 'Col. Mathieu' in the 1965 Pontecorvo film "Battle of Algiers", Klein warns us that unwanted regimes, whether domestic dictatorships or foreign occupations, rely on torture precisely because they are unwanted. In the film, 'Col. Mathieu' neither denies the abuse and torture of Algerian prisoners by French paratroopers, nor does he claim that those responsible will be punished. Comparisons are made, by Klein, to Donald Rumsfeld and the Iraq war.

U.S. troops are on Iraqi soil in open defiance of the express wishes of Iraq's population. The point Klein wishes to drive home is that there is no nice, humanitarian way to occupy any nation against the will of its people, and that those who support such an occupation don't have the right to morally separate themselves from the brutality it requires.

If you, who are outraged by any of these new photos, still find that you support this war, then you must be held morally responsible for, and accepting of, all the consequences that go along with it - in your name.

Frankly, I continue to look at the Abu Ghraib photos that have already come out, and I'm beginning to believe that only a moral dengenerate could be accepting of a war in which we must do the things we are doing to these detainees.