Monday, November 15, 2010

The 2012 rollout

Joshua Miller (ABC News) reports that Senator Lindsey Graham spoke, on ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour yesterday, about Iraq. It's the rollout that we gave you the heads up to in April 2009. It's what you'll most likely hear in 2012 during presidential debates. Barack has screwed things up so badly that I'll even give the White House a little tip: Tell Chris Hill to shut his mouth and stop giving interviews. If the American people don't know or forget Hill, the Republicans will have to spend ample time in the 2012 race educating voters on who Hill was before they can note what a poor job he did. Other than that, they're on their own because the easiest way they could've handled this was to have immediately started a full withdrawal of all US service members from Iraq upon Barack being sworn in. Had they done that, they could point the finger at George W. Bush. They could say it was on him. But Barack didn't do that and, all this time later, the war continues and US forces remain on the ground in Iraq. Meaning he owns the Iraq War as much as Bush did.

KIVI reports Idaho's 116th Comba Brigade are not leaving Camp Shelby for Iraq. Rachael Giffoni (KMTV) notes that some left yesterday and others will be landing in Kuwait over the rest of the week.



Last night, Huffing Post posted Iraq War veteran Jason Hurd's "Open Letter to America:"

I forged strong relationships with soldiers in my unit; we were close friends. What if one of them were killed or injured? Could another medic provide the same level of care I could? Despite my moral reservations, I thought my unit would do some positive things during deployment: protect Iraqi civilians and help them rebuild their country.
I was wrong. You can't protect people while simultaneously oppressing them.
My experiences in occupied Iraq traumatized me. I returned home angry, with debilitating depression and vivid memories playing through my mind like an eight-millimeter reel: dead soldiers, dead civilians, car bombs, IEDs, rockets, the smell of open sewage, bodies splattered on walls, U.S. soldiers firing at unarmed Iraqis. The war followed me home. Despite a rudimentary understanding of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), I never expected the condition to exact such a toll on my life. I destroyed numerous relationships, was fired from my job, attempted suicide in a friend's bathroom, and spent a week on the psychiatric ward at Charles George VA Medical Center in Asheville, N.C. -- all within three years of returning home from Iraq.


At Information Clearing House, you can stream an interview with Chris Hedges. And on Law and Disorder Radio (airs this morning on WBAI at 9:00 am EST -- and elsewhere around the country throughout the week), Heidi Boghosian provides an update on Mumia Abu-Jamal.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.










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