War Stories

Iraq war is the most expensive in terms of human and material costs in the US history after the Vietnam War. The official statistics released by the US Congressional Budget Office on 4 December shows that the Administration had spent some US $350 billion for military operation in Iraq. Recently, the US Congress approved an additional amount of US $70 billion for the war against terrorism, in which US $50 billion is to be reserved for the war in Iraq.

I say all this with a bit of self experience. I’ve been in the authors’ shoes. When I protested the Iraq war, I was called both anti-American and anti-Semitic. I remember going to synagogue around the time of the Iraq war and hearing a sermon on why Saddam was our generation’s Hitler and so we needed to invade. I went to the Rabbi to express my disagreement on the substantive merits of whether we could succeed in Iraq after Saddam was toppled. The Rabbi told me that I was not a loyal Jew.

TOne thing I don’t quite understand with Iraq is what it is we’re going to win. The most common metric (there’s that “M” word again) I hear when I ask pro-war people this question is something along the lines of, “when we can leave with a stable government and without massive bloodshed and ethic cleansing.” A corollary I often hear is that leaving—à la Bush’s new argument—would be a strategic blunder comparable to how withdrawing from Vietnam ruined America.

Some British born humorist over at the HuffPo is calling for General Pace to remove President Bush from his elected duties as Commander-in-Chief thereby removing the military from civilian control.

But while that PR machine cranks out the lie that Kermit the Frog is writing bad lines, another is turning loose another message issued by an Iraqi war veteran who lost his legs in Iraq. Utilizing imagery from the 9-11 attacks that have nothing to do with Iraq. Because that old lie still has 2 out of 5 Americans convincingly deceived.

America’s past wars have usually required a tremendous sacrifice of life. 13,000 of the 78,000 soldiers in the Mexican-American War died. Over 360,000 soldiers died in the Civil War. About 115,000 died in World War I, 405,000 in World War II, and 36,000 in the Korean War. If Iraq were truly like Vietnam, we would be on schedule to lose 58,000 over ten years rather than about 8,000.

New york Times, Rumsfeld Doubles Estimate for Cost of Troops in Iraq, July 10, 2003

In an article in the NY Times entitled A War We Might Just Win Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack report unequivocally military progress in Iraq. Not since Walter Cronkite changed the narrative on the Vietnam war have I seen such a shift coming from an opinion leader in the MSM - particularly one that has been consistently against the Iraq war in its editorial policies.

If Iran gets successfully blamed for American failure in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the temporary ego boost they feel will be quickly tempered by American bombs raining down on every nuclear facility the DoD the CIA can find. Furthermore, if Iran does successfully support insurgents in both wars just enough to force an American withdrawal from Iraq and a refocus on Afghanistan, they’re in trouble, as the tables will suddenly turn as Iran must try as hard as it can to keep Iraq from spilling over while not being able to fight a pissed off and determined U.S. by proxy to the east.

Here in Las Vegas, NV we are mourning the loss of another local soldier killed in Iraq. Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Coby Schwab was on his second tour in Iraq, and he chose to go back to help protect his buddies.

“I have always been an advocate for nonviolence and I have stood as firmly against the Iraq war as I did the Vietnam War 40 years ago,” she wrote. “I realize now that I might have contributed to a better welcome home for those soldiers fresh from Vietnam. Maybe that’s why I didn’t hesitate to accept the invitation to sing for those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. In the end, four days before the concert, I was not ‘approved’ by the Army to take part. Strange irony.”

A profile of the YouTube Multi-National Force - Iraq channel: U.S. military shows its side of Iraq war on YouTube - pdf

Most of you have never heard of Larry Wilkerson, and probably even fewer of you have heard of Jasim al-Azzawi, and that's truly a shame. Larry Wilkerson was the chief of staff to Colin Powell, first at the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later at the State Department. He has become an outspoken critic of the Iraq War, and most especially of the process by which the George W. Bush White House went about selling the American public, the Congress, and at least some of the international community on the idea of régime change by military force.

As of Friday, March 2, 2007, at least 3,165 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,547 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

So, the danger isn’t that leaving Iraq will bring more terrorism to the U.S., but that staying there will.

4. This will mark the first time the U.S. has sat with Iran and Syria to look at Iraq's future, an initiative that lawmakers and a bipartisan panel of American statesmen have sought. The Iraq Study Group, headed by former secretary of state Republican James Baker, recommended in its Dec. 6 report that the U.S. engage in a wider regional diplomatic offensive to curb violence in Iraq.

Iraq is now a full blown civil war and the vacuum for power is greater now than it was even a year ago. Our troops are simply target practice for the thirty or more political factions that want control of Iraq. Chaos is no place for our troops.

As I've been reading about Pfc. LaVena Johnson's suspicious death and the situation for female troops in Iraq,

And now, our friends at Pajamas Media are weighing in, pointing out the fact that the Huffington Post had edited hundreds of comments, then simply went ahead and closed them entirely, due to a handful of nutjob far-leftists (not “Liberals”, LEFTISTS - big difference) weighing in with hate speech, indicating their displeasure with the Veep’s survival. The idea I am getting from the Pajamas Media post is that this indicates some sort of a “conspiracy” on behalf of the Huffpo, most likely in response to the White House’s recent censoring of tons of embarrassing statements by the Veep in relation to the civil war in Iraq. I wrote about that one, myself yesterday — “Bush Administration (Re)creates History at WhiteHouse.Gov Website?” — just in case you missed it (originally broken by a diarist at The Daily Kos).

The current debate over the so-called "surge" is just the latest example of what Elowitz and Spanier were writing about more than thirty years ago. President Bush is attempting to achieve battlefield conditions that can lead to a political settlement in Iraq, but he is being denied the flexibility and maneuvering space necessary to achieve that goal. Just like Truman and Eisenhower in Korea and Johnson and Nixon in Vietnam, Bush is being pushed into a corner from which he cannot escape, except by conceding that the war cannot be won. In Korea, due to the unique geographical conditions of the country, a stalemate was achievable because the opposing armies held a World War I-style line of trenches stretching across the entire peninsula. The Chinese and North Koreans were finally willing to accede to a cease-fire because they knew that they could not achieve anything more by continued war. In Vietnam, since much of the war was being fought by units passing back and forth over porous borders between the two Vietnams and the border with Cambodia, no such stalemate was possible. The North Vietnamese knew they merely had to wait for our troops to leave and our support of the government of South Vietnam to end before they could take the country by conventional invasion and occupation.

Today in Iraq women are traveling in convoys, patrolling streets, manning checkposts just like the men. They are IN combat every day. But we still think of war in old time terms where soldiers line up on two sides and move toward each other in hand to hand combat or tank combat. That doesn't happen much these days. Most wars that happen now tend more toward the guerilla type. You never really know where or who your enemy is and everybody has to be ready to defend. Will this change the way women are seen in the military?

This image is from the Guardian Unlimited and carries this caption: Iraqi boys in a refugee camp in Baghdad play with toy guns.

There are 3 major factions here. The Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. The Shiites are in the majority, but Saddam was a Sunni, so he kept the Shiites in check. Everyone hates the Kurds, who are Christian and in the vast minority. The Kurds received the brunt of Saddam’s murderous tyranny. Now that Saddam is gone, the Shiites have taken control of Baghdad. The largely peaceful Sunnis are now the victims of radical Shiite terrorism. So the young Sunni men, who can no longer go to work and support their families, do what all young men would do. They join the Sunni militia and battle the Shiites. And thus the country sits on the brink of civil war.

My advice is to read “The Diary of Anne Frank”, watch the movie and reflect on your life in America and what life would be like under the threat of tyrants and dictators, extremists and terrorists. Ask yourself if America isn’t better for their accomplishments in the world, our graciousness, our goodness and our sacrifice. Ask yourself if our non-support of the soldiers of WWI, WWII, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and others would have been tolerated.

The new Mark Fiore animation on the Iraq war is on the Internet.

That may be one of the dumber things I've heard in a while. We gave the president time for his plans to work. We've been in this war now longer than we were in World War II. We could conquer Japan and Germany in less time than this. Besides, the president has been wrong on so many things, he no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt on anything. He has to prove it.

The President won't move from his position, which is escalation, but Congress can act aggressively to stop him. Encourage them do just that by appearing at the above date and time to march against this war in Iraq. Iraq is not Al Qaeda, no matter how our Leader tries to confuse us. Just because you are not being drafted doesn't mean that you shouldn't take a stand for the troops now fighting, as ill-equipped and ill-manned as they are due to incompetent leadership.

November of '07 would give the U.S. and Iraqi forces just enough time to clean up the streets of Baghdad and Anbar, IF they are serious about it. They must fight the insurgents (Al-Sadr especially) and not fight with diplomacy but weapons. The surge may or may not be a good idea, but the message it sends to the insurgent groups is a good one. It tells them that we will do what we say, no matter what.

Both the Congress and the Senate are preparing to cast symbolic votes against the increase in troops in Iraq. They are using the same Republican tactics that were used on flag burning and gay marriage and every other issue that places you in your category and box on the voting ticket. Vote for the increase in troops and you are in step with the madness of the President that has us involved in what is now a civil war in Iraq. Vote against the troop increase and you are with the liberal whining left that doesn’t know any better and terrorist are going to kill us all at the local coffee shop.

This is a well-known fact for politicians, and they do not hesitate to use our money to buy support in order to break political competitors. Democrats may be outraged by Bush’s “new” strategy for the Iraqi war, but it they are certainly not outraged because he spends Americans lives in a distant land in a pointless war. They are outraged because they know Bush’s excellent sense for political tactics might cost them the next presidential election.

This piece is written by Kirsten Powers, a former Clinton appointee in the Clinton Administration, who just happens to be a Fox News Political Analyst. That will probably immediately turn off the extreme leftists like members of the American Nationalist Socialist Workers Party who came and visited the Wide Awakes the other day. She is a social liberal, as far as I can tell, for example, she was against the Iraq War, I supported it, she is against the death penalty, and I am for it. (Interesting how they’re ‘against’ things and we’re ‘for’ things.) But the conclusions she draws in this piece are fascinating, considering they’re coming from someone who I would term as a liberal. It gives me a little bright spot. Thanks to TK for sending this in.

Curious how a four-hour interview, along with a subsequent interview the following year, would only produce these four small excerpts ascertaining Ford’s views on the war in Iraq, particularly since Ford has publicly supported the administration and the war effort. Perhaps these are only the excerpts Woodward wanted published.

William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, was Jon Stewart's guest on The Daily Show on Tuesday. They didn't do "The Seat of Heat" schtick, but the whole interview was in that vein. Jon Stewart was refreshingly direct in questioning how anyone could possibly draw the conclusion that Bush is doing a good job. Although Kristol never conceded the core issue, he gave some ground on the periphery, and he was as successful at accomplishing his mission as George W. Bush has been at bringing a stable democracy to Iraq. In other words, he got his ass kicked from here to next Thursday. I'll give you the transcript below, interspersed with my commentary.

So the 'conservative' mainstream closed its eyes and ears to any criticism of the Iraq war, until the deterioration of the situation became impossible to ignore.

Gibson’s eye for sweeping landscapes and rainforests of Catemaco is strong, allowing the rich blue and yellow skies to mix with the palate of adobe and greenery. Like its material, Apocalypto has a continuously dark theme - much of the action springs through wooded areas, and climaxes through a solar eclipse. James Horner’s haunting instrumental score pervades all dramatic sequences, and the choice of percussion gives a rattling sensation for the chase sequence. On the topic, the film opens with the quote by Will Durant pondering “a civilization that cannot destroy itself without until it destroys itself within.” Gibson bridges this concept with what appears to be a creative analogy to the current Iraq War, and furthermore, war in general. From the introduction of a threat to the Mayans, leading to the sacrifice of strong Mayans for appeasement, and then to the fight for survival by those who stand against this anxiety, Gibson intelligently - and backhandedly - summarizes a philosophical discussion into a chase scene that will dazzle any action aficionado.

Earlier today my son emailed some photos of himself and his mates at work in and around Fallujah. If the war in Iraq weren’t a fact, one could be forgiven for thinking that these were pictures of boys at play albeit with very big, expensive toys.

Years ago, after much deliberation & research, I made the astute observation that the United States was not winning the war in Iraq. I know. I know. I’m brilliant. Robert Gates, Dubya’s choice for the Pentagon, just came to that conclusion this past Tuesday. He also warned that the Middle East “could” erupt in violence. Hmm. Could? Because the Middle East is just a Tupperware Party right now?

Well, this is just great. Robert Gates, the bumbling idiot in the White House’s choice to be the next Secretary of Defense, has just testified at his confirmation hearing that we’re losing the war in Iraq. Good grief. If you thought they were laughing at us in Teheran before, they must be doubled over now.

Now let’s see, Bush was right in his steadfast determination to stay the course in Iraq. So now that we know that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was pondering alternative policies and now that the President himself has indicated a willingness to grudgingly accept changes in the way the Iraqi war is conducted, that now makes him righter than right?

Sure enough, moments after my son hung up, a story appeared on the front page of the New York Times website: “Marines Get the News from an Iraqi Host: Rumsfeld’s Out. ‘Who’s Rumsfeld?’” The second of a four-part series called “The Struggle for Iraq” by C.J. Chivers, the article described how a U.S. Marine sergeant learned of the resignation from a local Iraqi whose roof had been commandeered as a lookout. The sergeant then told his five marines, one of whom asked, “Who’s Rumsfeld?”

The Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, rejected today calls for an international conference to reach a solution to the widening sectarian war in Iraq, saying the Iraqis were working to stanch the bloodshed through their own political process.