It's official; George Bush no longer believes in personal responsibility. He said so in his November 26, 2005 Radio Address.
We are thankful for the abundance of this prosperous land. We are thankful for the freedom that makes possible the enjoyment of all these gifts. And we acknowledge with humility that all these blessings and life itself come from Almighty God.Wow. It's not hard work. It's not education. It's not self-discipline. In fact it appears that taking personal responsibility for one's life choices don't play that much of a role in success; it's all god's doing whether we succeed or not. Since some Americans are more "prosperous" than others, I guess god loves some of us more than others. I wonder if George can explain that to me?
After listening to Republican after Republican insist last night that real progress is being made in Iraq, I thought it would be a good idea to remind myself how good things are really going. Reuters.com reports,
Two improvised bombs killed five U.S. army soldiers patrolling near the Iraqi town of Baiji on Saturday, and wounded another five, the U.S. military said.Yep, looks like progress to me. We've be reading reports like this for at least a year and there appears to be no end in sight. No plan. No policy. No strategy. Nothing but violence as far as the eye can see.
In another installment of doing my part to inform the Americn public of what is really going on in Iraq I quote this NYT report detailing another wave of bombings.
A pair of suicide bombers detonated explosive belts inside two Shiite mosques in the northern Kurdish town of Khanaqin today, collapsing the buildings and killing at least 70 people and wounding more than 100. The attack came as worshippers were gathering for Friday prayers.Earlier in the day,
two suicide truck bombs exploded outside a hotel in downtown Baghdad that houses many foreign journalists. Those blasts killed at least six Iraqis and injured more than 40, and reduced a neighboring apartment building to rubble.It's just not "soft" targets that bore the brunt of violene in Iraq today,
The well-organized assault at the Hamra Hotel, one of the most important and perhaps the most heavily populated expatriate center outside the fortified Green Zone, was the latest strike in a growing jihadist campaign against virtually all foreign presence here.
at least 50 insurgents carried out a coordinated attack on Thursday on American and Iraqi Army posts on the main road in the western provincial capital of Ramadi.See, once you really know what's going on in Iraq you'll agree that we're making progress and that our presence there really is making America safer. So if you're baffled as to how our presence in Iraq is making the U.S. safer, just read the news. I mean if we weren't there these bombings would be happening in cities across America.
It's hard to see how elections are going to make much difference given the level of sectarian violence taking place in Iraq. Elections staged by a government and occupying power that lack credibility stand very little chance in curbing the violence. Unfortunately it's long past the time that either we or the Iraqi "government" can call on the U.N. to step in and take over. We've accomplished little more than creating a failed state. It's going to take a lot of time and a lot of blood spilled before Iraq will be functional. Our actions over the past two years have done nothing to shorten that process and most likely have done much to make it bloodier and longer. Our policy is completely bankrupt. It was bankrupt from the start. Our failure to build a truly international coalition to effect regime change is bearing its bitter fruit. Our ability to positively influence world events is shattered and may never be repaired. It took nearly a generation for us to recover from Vietnam, it may take us even longer to recover from Iraq.
Since neo-cons are trying their best to con the American public into believing the problem in Iraq isn't that things are going from bad to worse but rather that the American public doesn't know what's really going on in Iraq, I've spent some of my idle time compiling a little list of the news out of Iraq. From Reuters.com
American Philip Bloom, who controlled three companies that worked on reconstruction in Iraq, was charged on Wednesday with paying bribes and kickbacks to U.S. occupation authorities and their spouses, The New York Times reported.Sounds good to me. I mean what's a regime change without some bribes?
From the New York Times
Five marines were killed and 11 wounded Wednesday in an ambush at a farmhouse while hunting for insurgents on the outskirts of this rural town, Marine officials said. It was the deadliest day for the Marines since beginning an aggressive sweep along the Euphrates River near the Syrian border early this month. [. . .] Military officials also announced Wednesday the deaths of two other marines with the Second Marine Division in Anbar Province, one killed Wednesday by a homemade bomb near Haqlaniya and the other by a car bomb near Al Karma on Tuesday. An American soldier died Wednesday of wounds suffered in a roadside bomb attack near Baghdad the day before, officials said.Sure sounds like the Iraqi "army" is starting to take the lead and that the insurgents are on their last legs. Just in case you're not sure the same NYT article quotes a Colonel Davis as saying the following about the insurgents
"Their tactics were very good, their discipline was very good," he asserted. "It's not your average insurgents running around because they have nothing better to do."Discipline and improving tactics are always a sign of an insurgency in its last throes.
And then there's the news that the Iraqi "government" tortures people. This from the NYT.
Iraq's government said Tuesday that it had ordered an urgent investigation of allegations that many of the 173 detainees American troops discovered over the weekend in the basement of an Interior Ministry building in a Baghdad suburb had been tortured by their Iraqi captors. A senior Iraqi official who visited the detainees said two appeared paralyzed and others had some of the skin peeled off their bodies by their abusers.The silver lining to this is that U.S. troops discovered the torture and reported it. Whew, becaus you know we don't torture, only our Iraqi proxies do, you know the ones we trained. But the bad news is that the tortured prisoners are Sunnis. That should do wonders for Shiite-Sunni relations. Oh, an it appears there might be more secret detention centers in Iraq.
So you see, once you know what's going on in Iraq you have to admit things are going pretty well. If only more Americans knew how things were progressing in Iraq they'd be more supportive. And they'd realize that as the Washington Post reports, life is returning to "normal" in most of Iraq,
Nov. 10 -- Two suicide bombers struck a popular restaurant in Baghdad and an army recruiting center north of the capital Thursday, killing at least 40 people and injuring three dozen more, police and witnesses said.
From CNN.com
Frist told reporters Thursday that while he believed illegal activity should not take place at detention centers, he believes the leak itself poses a greater threat to national security and is 'not concerned about what goes on' behind the prison walls.Yep, taking a page right of Rummy's book, it's not the torture, but the fact that people had cameras that we should be worried about. Frist's statements that he is "not concerned about what goes on" and "I'm going to make sure that everything that's done is consistent with the Constitution ... and the laws of the United States of America" seem to contradict each other. I guess Frist thinks the Constitution includes some language about keeping the public un-informed and about it being ok to run a secret network of prisons in order to torture (cruel and inhuman punishment) outside of congressional and judicial review.
Again it's sad to see so many Republicans so ignorant of the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution. Maybe we should require a test of some sort during campaigns. Maybe we could stage live events where candidates write essays on the Constitution and then orally defend those essays? Or maybe some kind of standardized test on the Constitution? We could call it "No Candidate Left Behind."
Reuters.com reports,
Four U.S. soldiers were among at least 15 people killed in a bloody day of suicide car bombings in and around Baghdad on Monday as a major offensive against Sunni Arab insurgents took place near Iraq's border with Syria.The deaath of four more soliders is bad, but as the Reuters article points out,
The attack echoed a similar attack a week ago when four U.S. soldiers were killed in Yusufiya, just south of Baghdad.It appears that we're stuck in a sprial of violence and there are no ideas coming from the White House or the Pentagon about how to break free. Having some real partners in our grand coalition sure would help. We keep repeating the same mistake over and over again all the while claiming victory is just around the corner (and revising what "we" mean by victory each time).
Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and the last five years will have been a bad dream?
The New York Times reports the latest bit of good news out of Iraq. It appears we owe the Iraqi government money.
An auditing board sponsored by the United Nations recommended yesterday that the United States repay as much as $208 million to the Iraqi government for contracting work in 2003 and 2004 assigned to Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary.Now we know why the Pentagon never released its own audits of KBR.The work was paid for with Iraqi oil proceeds, but the board said it was either carried out at inflated prices or done poorly.
So let's see, no WMD, no cakewalk, no Iraqi oil revenue paying for the whole thing, and now Big Daddy Cheney might have to give some of the money he stole back to the Iraqi government. Seems everything is going accordingn to plan. Nothing to see here folks, move along, nothing to see here. I see Big Daddy Cheney's approval rating hitting single digits, which means we'll declare the U.N. a terrorist organization and conduct a shock and awe style strike against its New York compound.
The New York Times reports,
The Iraqi government issued a plea on Wednesday to former junior officers in Saddam Hussein's military who were sacked by the U.S. occupiers after his fall to return to the army as it battles a fierce Sunni Arab insurgency.I guess this means that the US training of Iraqi armed forces isn't going al that well. That and the government sees this move as a way to solidify its position before the national elections. But mostly it's a sign that despite all of BushCo's assertions that Iraqi forces are well trained or on their way to be well trained things aren't going that well. This despite the billions of dollars we've spent to make the Iraqi armed forces independent.
