Whose funding the 'insurgents' in Iraq? It's early, so don't spook the Bully Boy with the news but in Anbar Province the funding comes from the US government. Hannah Allam's "Iraqi insurgents taking cut of U.S. rebuilding money" (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Iraqi contractors in Anbar Province state that they've been using US funds to pay off 'insurgents' and one contractor tells her, "I put it right in my contracts as a line item for 'logistics and security'."
Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's Foreign Minister, admits to being "aware" of what he calls an "insurgent tax" and explains, "It's part of a taxation they put on trucks through all these territories, but it's very difficult to establish if it's going directly to insurgents." So why does he call it an "insurgent tax"?
More upfront is Barham Saleh, the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, who admits the payments take place and allows 'insurgents' to purchase "more weapons and vehicles" and explains, "I'm a realist." From the article:
One Iraqi contractor who is working on an American-funded rebuilding project in the provincial capital of Ramadi said he faced two choices when he wanted to bring in a crane, heavy machinery and workers from Baghdad: either hire a private security company to escort the supplies for up to $6,000 a truck, or pay off locals with insurgent connections.
He chose the latter, and got $120,000 for a U.S. contract he estimates to be worth no more than $20,000. The contractor asked that specific details of the project not be disclosed for fear he'll be identified and lose the job.
So now we know who has been funding the 'insurgents': the US. When someone breaks the news to the Bully Boy, no doubt he will put the US on a "terrorist watch list".
Lloyd and Martha both highlight Megan Greenwell's "Iraqi Leaders Reach Accord On Prisoners, Ex-Baathists" (Washington Post) and we'll go with Llyod's highlight for this entry and save Martha's for the next. A 'meeting' took place yesterday (see next entry) and in it Iraqi 'leaders' decided that they would "release an estimated 1,700 prisoners who are being detained without specific charges." Whether they will release them or not remains to be seen but the talking points the puppet wants in the press today are the oil law (next entry) and the release of prisoner's held without charges. The Iraqi Accordance Front is maintains that this "was just one of 11 demands" and that they "left the government and we are not going back unless they meet all of the demands."
And Brendan notes Workers World's "The Pentagon's problem:"
The failed and failing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are bringing the U.S. military's basic problem to a boiling point. Such a boiling over can affect the Pentagon's role for decades, despite its overwhelming advantage in strategic warfare and air power.
Warfare still requires humans. This is the root of the Pentagon's problem.
The resistance movements in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to attract people who are willing to fight and ready to die to liberate their countries from the U.S. occupation. Most of the U.S. soldiers and marines, on the other hand, only grudgingly and wearily follow their orders to fight a war they see more and more for the crime it is, a crime against the Iraqi and Afghan people, and a crime against themselves.
A sign of the growing despair among U.S. forces is that troop suicides reached a high point for the last 26 years in 2006, and that the rate was growing for those troops now stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The combination of longer tours in Iraq--now at 15 months--and the knowledge that the war had lost the support of the U.S. population drove the U.S. troops not just to despair but to unprecedented expressions of dissent. An opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times written by seven enlisted soldiers in the 82nd Airborne Division offered its own analysis of the war that differed entirely with the chain of command, up to the president, and called on the U.S. to get out of Iraq.
Those committed to ending the occupations of those countries can only applaud the recent decision of the Iraq Veterans Against the War to actively support war resisters. The IVAW's choice of a 2003 anti-war hero--resister Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia--as chair of the IVAW board underlines that step toward promoting active-duty resistance.
Add to this the Pentagon's difficulty in attracting new cannon fodder. The African-American community's near 100-percent rejection of the war has driven the enlistment of new Black recruits to a low point. In Puerto Rico, a popular movement has been preventing U.S. military recruiters from luring high-school students.
As a result, the U.S. areas providing most new "volunteers" are poor rural towns and small cities, where even recruitment bonuses of $20,000 and a $3.2 billion recruitment campaign were barely keeping the numbers on target.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute--Bush's "war czar"-- raised one solution for the recruiting problem in a recent radio interview. Lute spoke of reinstating military conscription of U.S. youth: the draft. Even the Bush administration, which has arrogantly stonewalled the growing mass opposition to the war in Iraq, fears a draft and has denied it will happen--up to now. It fears a draft might turn 40 million U.S. youth from passive avoiders of imperialist war to impassioned political activists against it.
The troops have moved from compliance to demoralization to despair to dissent. They are moving toward military resistance. Those troops who resist deserve the unstinting support of the anti-war movement. The Pentagon's problem is an opportunity for humanity.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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mcclatchy newspapers
the washington post
Monday, August 27, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
And the war drags on . . .
Desperate to shore up support for continuing his unpopular war on Iraq, George W. Bush drew an analogy with Vietnam when he addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "The price of America's withdrawal [from Vietnam] was paid by millions of innocent citizens," Bush declared. But he overlooked the four million Indochinese and 58,000 American soldiers who paid the ultimate price for that imperial war. And the myriad Vietnamese and Americans who continue to suffer the devastating effects of the defoliant Agent Orange the U.S. forces dropped on Vietnam. The 10 years it took to end our war there claimed untold numbers of lives.
Bush cited the "killing fields," referring to the more than one million Cambodians who died after we pulled out of Vietnam. He failed to mention that if Richard Nixon had ended the war by 1969, as the antiwar movement was demanding, the war wouldn't have extended into Cambodia. Secret U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia destroyed that country, enabling Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come to power. Nixon, too, had warned of a bloodbath in Vietnam to justify continuing his war.
Contrary to the picture Bush painted, Vietnam is a unified, stable country that doesn't threaten the region; it has become a trading partner of the United States.
In his desperation to rationalize the death and destruction he is wreaking in Iraq, Bush credited the United States with the great progress South Korea and Japan have made. He didn't say that the people of North and South Korea seek to reunify their country but the United States stands in the way. And Bush neglected to add that his government is pressuring Japan to repeal Article 9 of its Peace Constitution which now forbids the aggressive use of military force.
George Bush also reiterated that Iraq is "the central front" of the war on terror. But for his invasion, war and occupation of Iraq, however, al Qaeda wouldn't be there.
The above is from "Turning Iraq Into Vietnam"(Common Dreams) by National Lawyers Guild president Marjorie Cohn and Mike's the one who caught that. Bully Boy's illegal war got a little bit of truth (slowly) from the mainstream press and it was time to spin yet again. The US fatalities were coming in at 100 and more a month, the Democrats learned that (suprise, suprise) you can't con the people and they're not going to forget why they voted you into office in less than a year's time. Voters were angry and demanding the Democratic Party provide something other than 'symoblism,' the illegal war (which they bought into by funding it this year) was, like Bully Boy's legacy, in the toilet. So it was time to insist everyone wait for the September report and use that bought-with-blood time to try a new rollout. Bully Boy's back to selling the fear. So he lies about the realities of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and really did avoid getting called out by many. (Check what others have elected to write about since Bully Boy gave that lying, dishonest, historically inaccurate speech.)
And the Dems will go along. Some will stand up, but some have been for the illegal war all along even if they made a few public statements that were seen as 'strong.' Dianne Feinstein's husband certainly learned how rich one could get off an illegal war. From Peter Byrne's "Feinstein Resigns" (MetroNews):
SEN. Dianne Feinstein has resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. As previously and extensively reviewed in these pages, Feinstein was chairperson and ranking member of MILCON for six years, during which time she had a conflict of interest due to her husband Richard C. Blum's ownership of two major defense contractors, who were awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects approved by Feinstein.
As MILCON leader, Feinstein relished the details of military construction, even micromanaging one project at the level of its sewer design. She regularly took junkets to military bases around the world to inspect construction projects, some of which were contracted to her husband's companies, Perini Corp. and URS Corp. Perhaps she resigned from MILCON because she could not take the heat generated by Metro's expose of her ethics (which was partially funded by the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute). Or was her work on the subcommittee finished because Blum divested ownership of his military construction and advanced weapons manufacturing firms in late 2005?
Did you catch that, by the way? The Nation has seen fit to fret over Hillary Clinton's potential problems with female voters. But the non-journalistic magazine that would boast in print of 'dozens' of photos of abuse didn't bother to report on DiFi's war profits. And you have to wonder if they ever will or if they exist at this point for any reason other than to create a make-work project that brings in a lot of dollars? It should have been a cover story in the magazine. It wasn't. That's because war is big bucks and Mia notes Norman Solomon's "How to Survive at the Pentagon on $2 Billion a Day" (CounterPunch):
The USA's military spending is now close to $2 billion a day. This fall, the country will begin its seventh year of continuous war, with no end in sight. On the horizon is the very real threat of a massive air assault on Iran. And few in Congress seem willing or able to articulate a rejection of the warfare state.
While the Bush-Cheney administration is the most dangerous of our lifetimes -- and ousting Republicans from the White House is imperative -- such truths are apt to smooth the way for progressive evasions. We hear that "the people must take back the government," but how can "the people" take back what they never really had? And when rhetoric calls for "returning to a foreign policy based on human rights and democracy," we're encouraged to be nostalgic for good old days that never existed.
The warfare state didn't suddenly arrive in 2001, and it won't disappear when the current lunatic in the Oval Office moves on.
No, it won't. And you only have to look at Congress' refusal to end the illegal war to grasp that.
They're just there to try and make the people free,
But the way that they're doing it, it don't seem like that to me.
Just more blood-letting and misery and tears
That this poor country's known for the last twenty years,
And the war drags on.
-- words and lyrics by Mick Softly (available on Donovan's Fairytale)
Last Sunday, ICCC's number of US troops killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war was 3703. Tonight? 3728 with 70 for the month thus far. Iraqis? Just Foreign Policy lists the death toll at 1,019,627.
Reuters reports today saw the US drop bombs (from the air -- this is the air war) on a home and the result were the deaths of 5 children and 2 women, one woman and six people (three children included in the wounded) were shot dead in Baghdad, anoter woman ("female shepherd") was killed in Kirkuk by a roadside bombing. Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports "an American patrol opened fire (a machine gun)" in Baghdad and at least one person died while six more were wounded, three police officers were wounded in an attack in Baghdad, a Baghdad mortar attack on Baghdad University left "a caravan inside the campus," a second Baghdad mortar attack claimed the life of 1 child and left two people wounded, 11 corpses were discovered today in Baghdad and: "The spokesman of Kurdistan's forces guards and the deputy of the Peshmerga minister, Jabbar Yaour, said that 'two American helicopters and two plane fighters bombed early Sunday morning two locations of emergency police of Kurdistan region of about 500 meters of Qara Taba village (70 kilometers north of Baquba, which is the capital of Diyala province) killing four policemen and injuring eight others . Also two police cars were destroyed. Also, Yaour said that 'Kurdish police are in north Diyala to keep peace and fight terrorism in the area with the knowledge and approval of the collation troops and central government and the bombing was by mistake'."
Their Parliament (like the US Congress) is out of session until September 4th. Their puppet? From Lelia Fadel's "Iraqi prime minister's isolation growing" (McClatchy Newspapers):
Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, harshly criticized by Washington politicians last week for failing to bring about reconciliation among Iraq's political and ethnic factions, is increasingly isolated among his own countrymen as well.
He has lost the Shiite Muslim power base that brought him to power. Analysts say his support among Kurds could easily vanish, too, if the Kurds receive the go-ahead from the Bush administration. Nearly half of his cabinet ministers have resigned their posts or are refusing to participate in cabinet meetings.
Many say he is on his last legs as prime minister.
"He has to resign," said Salim Abdullah, a leading member of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the Sunni alliance that officially withdrew its ministers from the government earlier this month. "We have nothing against Maliki as a person but there are reasons he failed. His advisors are yes men and he doesn't have the authority to do anything."
Pru gets the last highlight, Great Britain's Socialist Worker's "Defeated in Iraq:"
And it's a lie to say Britain can win in Afghanistan
The cat is finally out of the bag. Military commanders, politicians and newspaper headlines all now admit that Britain has lost the war in the south of Iraq.
"Run Out Of Town" is how the Financial Times described the British army's decision to pull out of the centre of Basra to a fortress outside the city.
Soldiers are under constant mortar fire and their armoured vehicles are being hit by explosive devices. Foot soldiers now have to accompany the vehicles -- and they in turn become vulnerable to small arms fire.
The only reason that British troops remain in Iraq is that Gordon Brown promised George Bush that Britain would not pull out completely before the US did.
Yet the army commanders and politicians who now admit that British troops should be pulled out of Iraq argue that they should be sent into Afghanistan instead.
Afghanistan is a "winnable war", they say -- but this another lie from the warmongers. The conflict in Afghanistan gets bloodier by the day -- more than 700 British soldiers serving on Afghanistan's battlefields have required treatment since April.
More intense
Defence secretary Des Browne claims British forces have reached a "turning point" and are now stabilising Afghanistan. But this assessment simply ignores the fighting that rages throughout the country.
Jon Hill is a soldier with the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters regiment. He served in Iraq three times -- but says Afghanistan's war is "much more intense".
An army officer told the Daily Mail this week, "The West's dirty little secret is that we don't have enough infantry to hold the ground. It's now very likely that the numbers freed up from Iraq will be soaked up in Afghanistan."
Six years after the US declared "victory" in Afghanistan, the country remains one of the poorest on earth.Thousands of civilians have been killed by occupying forces, fuelling popular support for the resistance.
Extra troops are not the solution to the chaos. This strategy was tried in Iraq with Bush's "surge" -- and it failed.
War and occupation have brought disaster to both countries. We need to withdraw the troops from Iraq immediately -- and withdraw them immediately from Afghanistan too.
The following should be read alongside this article: » Britain's failing presence in Iraq and Afghanistan
© Copyright Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original and leave this notice in place.
If you found this article useful please help us maintain SW by » making a donation.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
iraq
and the war drags on
donovan
marjorie cohn
the national lawyers guild
norman solomon
the socialist worker
Bush cited the "killing fields," referring to the more than one million Cambodians who died after we pulled out of Vietnam. He failed to mention that if Richard Nixon had ended the war by 1969, as the antiwar movement was demanding, the war wouldn't have extended into Cambodia. Secret U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia destroyed that country, enabling Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to come to power. Nixon, too, had warned of a bloodbath in Vietnam to justify continuing his war.
Contrary to the picture Bush painted, Vietnam is a unified, stable country that doesn't threaten the region; it has become a trading partner of the United States.
In his desperation to rationalize the death and destruction he is wreaking in Iraq, Bush credited the United States with the great progress South Korea and Japan have made. He didn't say that the people of North and South Korea seek to reunify their country but the United States stands in the way. And Bush neglected to add that his government is pressuring Japan to repeal Article 9 of its Peace Constitution which now forbids the aggressive use of military force.
George Bush also reiterated that Iraq is "the central front" of the war on terror. But for his invasion, war and occupation of Iraq, however, al Qaeda wouldn't be there.
The above is from "Turning Iraq Into Vietnam"(Common Dreams) by National Lawyers Guild president Marjorie Cohn and Mike's the one who caught that. Bully Boy's illegal war got a little bit of truth (slowly) from the mainstream press and it was time to spin yet again. The US fatalities were coming in at 100 and more a month, the Democrats learned that (suprise, suprise) you can't con the people and they're not going to forget why they voted you into office in less than a year's time. Voters were angry and demanding the Democratic Party provide something other than 'symoblism,' the illegal war (which they bought into by funding it this year) was, like Bully Boy's legacy, in the toilet. So it was time to insist everyone wait for the September report and use that bought-with-blood time to try a new rollout. Bully Boy's back to selling the fear. So he lies about the realities of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and really did avoid getting called out by many. (Check what others have elected to write about since Bully Boy gave that lying, dishonest, historically inaccurate speech.)
And the Dems will go along. Some will stand up, but some have been for the illegal war all along even if they made a few public statements that were seen as 'strong.' Dianne Feinstein's husband certainly learned how rich one could get off an illegal war. From Peter Byrne's "Feinstein Resigns" (MetroNews):
SEN. Dianne Feinstein has resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. As previously and extensively reviewed in these pages, Feinstein was chairperson and ranking member of MILCON for six years, during which time she had a conflict of interest due to her husband Richard C. Blum's ownership of two major defense contractors, who were awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects approved by Feinstein.
As MILCON leader, Feinstein relished the details of military construction, even micromanaging one project at the level of its sewer design. She regularly took junkets to military bases around the world to inspect construction projects, some of which were contracted to her husband's companies, Perini Corp. and URS Corp. Perhaps she resigned from MILCON because she could not take the heat generated by Metro's expose of her ethics (which was partially funded by the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute). Or was her work on the subcommittee finished because Blum divested ownership of his military construction and advanced weapons manufacturing firms in late 2005?
Did you catch that, by the way? The Nation has seen fit to fret over Hillary Clinton's potential problems with female voters. But the non-journalistic magazine that would boast in print of 'dozens' of photos of abuse didn't bother to report on DiFi's war profits. And you have to wonder if they ever will or if they exist at this point for any reason other than to create a make-work project that brings in a lot of dollars? It should have been a cover story in the magazine. It wasn't. That's because war is big bucks and Mia notes Norman Solomon's "How to Survive at the Pentagon on $2 Billion a Day" (CounterPunch):
The USA's military spending is now close to $2 billion a day. This fall, the country will begin its seventh year of continuous war, with no end in sight. On the horizon is the very real threat of a massive air assault on Iran. And few in Congress seem willing or able to articulate a rejection of the warfare state.
While the Bush-Cheney administration is the most dangerous of our lifetimes -- and ousting Republicans from the White House is imperative -- such truths are apt to smooth the way for progressive evasions. We hear that "the people must take back the government," but how can "the people" take back what they never really had? And when rhetoric calls for "returning to a foreign policy based on human rights and democracy," we're encouraged to be nostalgic for good old days that never existed.
The warfare state didn't suddenly arrive in 2001, and it won't disappear when the current lunatic in the Oval Office moves on.
No, it won't. And you only have to look at Congress' refusal to end the illegal war to grasp that.
They're just there to try and make the people free,
But the way that they're doing it, it don't seem like that to me.
Just more blood-letting and misery and tears
That this poor country's known for the last twenty years,
And the war drags on.
-- words and lyrics by Mick Softly (available on Donovan's Fairytale)
Last Sunday, ICCC's number of US troops killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war was 3703. Tonight? 3728 with 70 for the month thus far. Iraqis? Just Foreign Policy lists the death toll at 1,019,627.
Reuters reports today saw the US drop bombs (from the air -- this is the air war) on a home and the result were the deaths of 5 children and 2 women, one woman and six people (three children included in the wounded) were shot dead in Baghdad, anoter woman ("female shepherd") was killed in Kirkuk by a roadside bombing. Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports "an American patrol opened fire (a machine gun)" in Baghdad and at least one person died while six more were wounded, three police officers were wounded in an attack in Baghdad, a Baghdad mortar attack on Baghdad University left "a caravan inside the campus," a second Baghdad mortar attack claimed the life of 1 child and left two people wounded, 11 corpses were discovered today in Baghdad and: "The spokesman of Kurdistan's forces guards and the deputy of the Peshmerga minister, Jabbar Yaour, said that 'two American helicopters and two plane fighters bombed early Sunday morning two locations of emergency police of Kurdistan region of about 500 meters of Qara Taba village (70 kilometers north of Baquba, which is the capital of Diyala province) killing four policemen and injuring eight others . Also two police cars were destroyed. Also, Yaour said that 'Kurdish police are in north Diyala to keep peace and fight terrorism in the area with the knowledge and approval of the collation troops and central government and the bombing was by mistake'."
Their Parliament (like the US Congress) is out of session until September 4th. Their puppet? From Lelia Fadel's "Iraqi prime minister's isolation growing" (McClatchy Newspapers):
Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, harshly criticized by Washington politicians last week for failing to bring about reconciliation among Iraq's political and ethnic factions, is increasingly isolated among his own countrymen as well.
He has lost the Shiite Muslim power base that brought him to power. Analysts say his support among Kurds could easily vanish, too, if the Kurds receive the go-ahead from the Bush administration. Nearly half of his cabinet ministers have resigned their posts or are refusing to participate in cabinet meetings.
Many say he is on his last legs as prime minister.
"He has to resign," said Salim Abdullah, a leading member of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the Sunni alliance that officially withdrew its ministers from the government earlier this month. "We have nothing against Maliki as a person but there are reasons he failed. His advisors are yes men and he doesn't have the authority to do anything."
Pru gets the last highlight, Great Britain's Socialist Worker's "Defeated in Iraq:"
And it's a lie to say Britain can win in Afghanistan
The cat is finally out of the bag. Military commanders, politicians and newspaper headlines all now admit that Britain has lost the war in the south of Iraq.
"Run Out Of Town" is how the Financial Times described the British army's decision to pull out of the centre of Basra to a fortress outside the city.
Soldiers are under constant mortar fire and their armoured vehicles are being hit by explosive devices. Foot soldiers now have to accompany the vehicles -- and they in turn become vulnerable to small arms fire.
The only reason that British troops remain in Iraq is that Gordon Brown promised George Bush that Britain would not pull out completely before the US did.
Yet the army commanders and politicians who now admit that British troops should be pulled out of Iraq argue that they should be sent into Afghanistan instead.
Afghanistan is a "winnable war", they say -- but this another lie from the warmongers. The conflict in Afghanistan gets bloodier by the day -- more than 700 British soldiers serving on Afghanistan's battlefields have required treatment since April.
More intense
Defence secretary Des Browne claims British forces have reached a "turning point" and are now stabilising Afghanistan. But this assessment simply ignores the fighting that rages throughout the country.
Jon Hill is a soldier with the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters regiment. He served in Iraq three times -- but says Afghanistan's war is "much more intense".
An army officer told the Daily Mail this week, "The West's dirty little secret is that we don't have enough infantry to hold the ground. It's now very likely that the numbers freed up from Iraq will be soaked up in Afghanistan."
Six years after the US declared "victory" in Afghanistan, the country remains one of the poorest on earth.Thousands of civilians have been killed by occupying forces, fuelling popular support for the resistance.
Extra troops are not the solution to the chaos. This strategy was tried in Iraq with Bush's "surge" -- and it failed.
War and occupation have brought disaster to both countries. We need to withdraw the troops from Iraq immediately -- and withdraw them immediately from Afghanistan too.
The following should be read alongside this article: » Britain's failing presence in Iraq and Afghanistan
© Copyright Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original and leave this notice in place.
If you found this article useful please help us maintain SW by » making a donation.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
iraq
and the war drags on
donovan
marjorie cohn
the national lawyers guild
norman solomon
the socialist worker
NYT: Congressional junkets to Iraq
First, a few points. Ruth doesn't have a report this week. She phoned Saturday afternoon and mentioned she was planning on focusing on GreenStone Media to which I replied, "Great, we can link to it in the piece for Third." She then noted that she'd like to take part in that piece and, I'm sorry, I'm not going to let her miss out on all the sleep (I've been up since 6:00 am Saturday morning). I told her to forget the report and that we'd love her help at The Third Estate Sunday Review. Isaiah called Saturday around midnight (his time) because he'd just noticed that he was out of drawing paper. I told him not to run out and get any, that we could run his comic on Sunday. So anyone upset about either should be aware that the blame goes to me.
With that out of the way, let's move quickly to the New York Times. On first glance, it can be disappointing. There's no round up of the violence in Iraq yesterday. What it does offer is a front page article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Damien Cave entitled "Hear a General, Hug a Sheik: Congress Does the Iraq Circuit." This is a really strong article. The focus is on the attempts to woo Congress to support the continued illegal war. (If their past record can be any guide, no arm twisting will be required.) Congress is taking trips to Iraq and, as the reporters note, it leads to a lot of "'how I spent my summer vacation' sameness" with some, such as House Rep Peter Roskam doing a conference call from Baghdad with 6,000 constituents.
They note that the Congressional trips have led US House Rep Brian Baird to support the continued, illegal war. Baird is House Rep Crazy to Senator Crazy (McCain) because he tells the reporters how great it was to be able to speak with the mayor of Yusufiya and two sheiks and be there as they "embraced us in front of everybody out on the street". Though the reporters don't note whether Baird was panting heavy and had a wet spot on the front pants, they do quote House Rep Crazy explaining he had his "flack jacket on, and your Kevlar helment and you're surrounding by guys with automatic weapons as you're standing there, talking to the mayor." Yeah, just your typical no-security visit, right? Baird's not the 'anti-war' voice he's repeatedly portrayed as. He slimed Barabara Lee (without naming her) in a 2006 press release. He's a Blue Dog who repeatedly votes Republican although he is in name a Democrat (link goes to Washington Post voting record for Baird). He did not change his mind on Iraq due to a recent August trip and his voting record bears that out (despite what the press says). He voted for HR 2206 which was funding for the illegal war without timetables (May 24th and his position was the same as the GOP). He was one of 86 Dems voting for it (140 voted against it) and 194 Republicans also voted for it. (11 didn't vote for anyone doing math.) On HR 553 which (Robert Gates should begin reducing the number of US forces in Iraq) the GOP voted no and so did he, on July 12, 2007. HR 601 and HR 3159 had to do with mandating downtime for troops between deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan -- he was rone of 3 Democrats to vote with the Republican minority on the former and one of 12 Democrats to vote with the Republican minority on the latter. So let's stop calling him an "anti-war" Rep because he's nothing of the sort. These votes were all before NPR reported (August 21st) on Baird's trip "last week" to Iraq that the press keeps telling you changed his mind. His voting record demonstrates he changed his mind before that trip. It's a nice little spin and what would Congress be without it's Big Liars?
He voted against the illegal war before it started (many say that vote required UN authorization -- many say that's a naive take on it). He's voted with Republicans on the illegal war repeatedly. He grasps the p.r. in playing it like he visited Iraq and then changed his mind (a lot of people learned to pull the Lieberman Turncoat on). But the reality is that he is not "anti-war" and that he has repeatedly voted with Republicans (and against the Democratic majority) on the issue of Iraq.
You also learn what Gen. David Petraeues recently served Congressional visitors: asparagus soup and lobster tortellini. Isn't that just lovely? While troops exist on MRIs and really bad fast food, while Iraqis are malnutritioned, Petraeus dines on lobster and asparagus. Congressional visitors as well. How sweet that must be. Of course, not so sweet to the tax payers because that's who bought that meal. They didn't get to eat it, they just paid for it.
New content at The Third Estate Sunday Review:
Truest statement of the week
Truest statement of the week II
A Note to Our Readers
Editorial: IVAW supports war resisters, do you?
TV: Fox tried to tell news 'jokes', no one laughed...
Thoughts on GreenStone Media and the real lesson
Bully Boy lies about Vietnam -- who calls him out?...
FAIR late to the party and a little lost
Obama sucks up again
Highlights
Supermarket check out?
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
ruths report
the world today just nuts
the new york times
sheryl gay stolberg
damien cave
the third estate sunday review
With that out of the way, let's move quickly to the New York Times. On first glance, it can be disappointing. There's no round up of the violence in Iraq yesterday. What it does offer is a front page article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Damien Cave entitled "Hear a General, Hug a Sheik: Congress Does the Iraq Circuit." This is a really strong article. The focus is on the attempts to woo Congress to support the continued illegal war. (If their past record can be any guide, no arm twisting will be required.) Congress is taking trips to Iraq and, as the reporters note, it leads to a lot of "'how I spent my summer vacation' sameness" with some, such as House Rep Peter Roskam doing a conference call from Baghdad with 6,000 constituents.
They note that the Congressional trips have led US House Rep Brian Baird to support the continued, illegal war. Baird is House Rep Crazy to Senator Crazy (McCain) because he tells the reporters how great it was to be able to speak with the mayor of Yusufiya and two sheiks and be there as they "embraced us in front of everybody out on the street". Though the reporters don't note whether Baird was panting heavy and had a wet spot on the front pants, they do quote House Rep Crazy explaining he had his "flack jacket on, and your Kevlar helment and you're surrounding by guys with automatic weapons as you're standing there, talking to the mayor." Yeah, just your typical no-security visit, right? Baird's not the 'anti-war' voice he's repeatedly portrayed as. He slimed Barabara Lee (without naming her) in a 2006 press release. He's a Blue Dog who repeatedly votes Republican although he is in name a Democrat (link goes to Washington Post voting record for Baird). He did not change his mind on Iraq due to a recent August trip and his voting record bears that out (despite what the press says). He voted for HR 2206 which was funding for the illegal war without timetables (May 24th and his position was the same as the GOP). He was one of 86 Dems voting for it (140 voted against it) and 194 Republicans also voted for it. (11 didn't vote for anyone doing math.) On HR 553 which (Robert Gates should begin reducing the number of US forces in Iraq) the GOP voted no and so did he, on July 12, 2007. HR 601 and HR 3159 had to do with mandating downtime for troops between deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan -- he was rone of 3 Democrats to vote with the Republican minority on the former and one of 12 Democrats to vote with the Republican minority on the latter. So let's stop calling him an "anti-war" Rep because he's nothing of the sort. These votes were all before NPR reported (August 21st) on Baird's trip "last week" to Iraq that the press keeps telling you changed his mind. His voting record demonstrates he changed his mind before that trip. It's a nice little spin and what would Congress be without it's Big Liars?
He voted against the illegal war before it started (many say that vote required UN authorization -- many say that's a naive take on it). He's voted with Republicans on the illegal war repeatedly. He grasps the p.r. in playing it like he visited Iraq and then changed his mind (a lot of people learned to pull the Lieberman Turncoat on). But the reality is that he is not "anti-war" and that he has repeatedly voted with Republicans (and against the Democratic majority) on the issue of Iraq.
You also learn what Gen. David Petraeues recently served Congressional visitors: asparagus soup and lobster tortellini. Isn't that just lovely? While troops exist on MRIs and really bad fast food, while Iraqis are malnutritioned, Petraeus dines on lobster and asparagus. Congressional visitors as well. How sweet that must be. Of course, not so sweet to the tax payers because that's who bought that meal. They didn't get to eat it, they just paid for it.
New content at The Third Estate Sunday Review:
Truest statement of the week
Truest statement of the week II
A Note to Our Readers
Editorial: IVAW supports war resisters, do you?
TV: Fox tried to tell news 'jokes', no one laughed...
Thoughts on GreenStone Media and the real lesson
Bully Boy lies about Vietnam -- who calls him out?...
FAIR late to the party and a little lost
Obama sucks up again
Highlights
Supermarket check out?
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