Category Archives: Iraq

If the administration were smarter it wouldn't let anyone intelligent visit Iraq, as they tend to report that the emperor has no clothes — or at least no realistic Iraq policy.

Lawrence Korb just got back from a trip to Iraq. “Unreal” seemed to be his overall reaction to the PowerPoint-laden presentations he heard from various American and Iraqi officials, most of which were entirely divorced from the ground-level reality of day-to-day life in Iraq. In a different sense it also applies to his conclusions about the surge:

Getting through Iraqi customs was a chore….The long wait did allow me to speak to some of the contractors about the situation on the ground. When I assured them I was not a member of the press, they were unanimous that the surge was not working….The most optimistic projection was “maybe temporarily.” But most people speaking off the record believe that the insurgents will shift to other areas and lay low for a while in Baghdad.

Actually, wasn't the ban on brains the initial US occupation strategy?

Sadly, No! brings us a modified Kübler-Ross process, Iraq edition:

1. Denial: “The media doesn’t show the good news in Iraq.”

2. Anger: “The treasonous far-left-liberals and their media lapdogs are making us lose in Iraq.”

3. Bargaining: “If we send x-thousand more troops to Iraq, victory will be ours.”

4. Depression: “Did you catch 300 yet? [munch-munch-burp] God, it made me hate liberals even more. [channels flipping] They wouldn’t last a day in ancient Sparta.”

5. Advanced Literary Theory: “The hegemonic binary of ’success’ and ‘failure’ traumatizes the (re)interpretive possibilities of an ethos of jouissance regarding the War in Iraq.

There Must Be Peace, a video photo montage and commentary by Stirling Newberry.

The music, incidentally, is from the last three movements of Newberry's own Piano Sonata in C, “Ares”.

The other day, Republican members of the House Appropriations Committee unanimously opposed requiring that the troops sent to Iraq be properly prepared for their mission and protected with armor. As they've done often before, and as they will undoubtedly do again.

Over at Daily Kos, one of the diarists has come up with a name for the Representatives who send troops into harm's way without adequate equipment, training or rest.

He calls them “troop-killers”.

Harsh? You bet. Justified? Yes. It has come to that. There really is no 'nice' name for people from a country as rich as ours who send other people's children, spouses, and parents into combat without basic necessities like body armor, armor for their vehicles, or the weapons they trained with. I recognize that there might be conflicts — like World War II — in which the Army would have to suspend its rotation policies and send units that have served a tour of duty back into theater without the year's rest, rehab and equipment refit that our doctrine says is needed. But I don't accept that Iraq, a war of (erroneous) choice, is a conflict on which national survival depends.

Three of these troop-killers represent districts in Florida:

• Ander Crenshaw, 4th District in Jacksonville;
• Dave Weldon, 15th District – Melbourne & Vero Beach;
• C.W. “Bill” Young, 10th District – Pinellas County.

If you happen to be reading this from their neighborhood, why not give them a (polite) call and tell them what you think of this sort of behavior.