"An Ordinary Death in Iraq"

Fuck Bush.

U.S. Army 2nd Lieut. Emily Perez, 23, was buried Tuesday at West Point, on a high bluff overlooking the Hudson River, alongside two centuries of fallen graduates from the United States Military Academy. She was the first combat death from the 2005 graduating class — called "the class of 9/11" because they arrived at the prestigious school just two weeks before the terror attacks. She was also the first female West Point graduate to be killed in Iraq.

She died an ordinary death in Iraq, at least by today's standards: a roadside bomb exploded as she led her platoon in a convoy south of Baghdad on Sept. 12. But what makes this death so difficult in a sea of violence is just how extraordinary this particular soldier was.

She was no relation - at least not by blood. She was however my "sister" in arms; a member of the Long Grey Line and as such as much a sister as it's possible to be without having the same mother.

"An ordinary death." Think of that phrase and what it really means.

Her blood is on Bush's hands and on the hands of all of his henchmen in this maladministration.

It can't be said too many times.

Fuck Bush.

Police Academy

There are two ways to take the title of this post: in reference to the new Iraqi Police College or to the series of movies. In fact, you should take it both ways.

The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed "the rain forest."

"This is the most essential civil security project in the country -- and it's a failure," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office created by Congress. "The Baghdad police academy is a disaster."

With the constant revelation of the complete and utter mismanagement of this war - one sold to all of us on lies - why is there not a roar of disgust from our fellow citizens? Where are the demands for troop pullouts? Have they become so brain dead on bad television and video games that they've become immune to the real carnage and the real posse of idiots in BushCo.?

Anyone want to guess how long before Mr. Stuart W. Bowen Jr. winds up in some god-forsaken, dead-end job in West Bumfuck, Iowa?

All You Need to Know About Bush's "War on Terror"

From Newsweek:

Ridge by ridge and valley by valley, the religious zealots who harbored Osama bin Laden before 9/11 — and who suffered devastating losses in the U.S. invasion that began five years ago next week—are surging back into the country's center. In the countryside over the past year Taliban guerrillas have filled a power vacuum that had been created by the relatively light NATO and U.S. military footprint of some 40,000 soldiers, and by the weakness of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's administration.

Clinton gets the "Wag the Dog" treatment when he actually tried to kill bin Laden. BushCo. gets a pass for letting him stay loose in and around territory that was supposed to have been the "central front in the War on Terror.

It's no wonder the Big Dog was pissed off.

The rest of us should be, too.

Bush Should be Relieved of Office and Impeached

This is different from the previous calls for impeachment. I believe there is real reason to believe that he and many of his closest advisers are literally and clinically insane.

Need proof?

The Pentagon's top brass has moved into second-stage contingency planning for a potential military strike on Iran, one senior intelligence official familiar with the plans tells RAW STORY.

[snip]

Adding to the concern of both military and intelligence officials alike is the nuclear option, the possibility of pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons targeting alleged WMD facilities in Iran.

What makes this truly plausible is that despite their protestations to the contrary, BushCo. knows that the military is stretched to the breaking point with Iraqi and Afghan operations. There is no slack left for ground operations in Iran; the scope of which would necessarily dwarf those in Iraq given the dispersed nature of their nuclear facilities and the near certainty that the Iranian army would fight rather than melt away like the Iraqi army did.

What option does that leave for this misadministration?

And what option does that leave all sane Americans? From The U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 4:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

How to Make Friends and Influence People

Now that we know how BushCo. was able to persuade long-time Taliban supporter Pakistan to support the Neverending War on Terror, it makes me wonder what was said to Great Britain or Australia to get them to be part of the Coalition of the Willing.

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said that after the Sept. 11 attacks the United States threatened to bomb his country if it did not cooperate with America’s campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Musharraf, in an interview with CBS news magazine show “60 Minutes” that will air Sunday, said the threat came from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and was given to Musharraf’s intelligence director.

“The intelligence director told me that (Armitage) said, ‘Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,”’ Musharraf said. “I think it was a very rude remark.”

It's no wonder that Musharraf has been so reticent to provide real help in catching bin Laden who's made his home since the battle of Tora Bora in the hinterlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's no wonder more and more of the world hates us if this is BushCo.'s idea of "diplomacy."

Global What?

They've never met a fact they couldn't find an "expert" to question. Especially on global warming which, if acted on, might interfere with their big business and oil backers. However, the facts are getting harder and harder for BushCo to question, spin or ignore.

For example, there's this story:

European scientists voiced shock as they showed pictures which showed Arctic ice cover had disappeared so much last month that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe's most northerly outpost to the North Pole itself.

[snip]

"This situation is unlike anything observed in previous record low-ice seasons," said Mark Drinkwater of ESA's Oceans/Ice Unit.

Fortunately, in a very limited sense, this is sea ice, which displaces its own mass in the water it floats on - that is, it will not cause a rise in sea level. But if sea ice is melting to such a degree, what is happening to the continental ice shelves in Antarctica and Greenland?

The doubters' stories get more and more fantastical while the facts on the ground slowly add up to the incontrovertible; human activities are warming the earth. To our eventual detriment.

Haven't We Been Saying This All Along?

Colin Powell, in the Washington Post (via MSNBC), says that his opposition to the administration's new rules for the treatment of detainees in the neverending war on terror is a "issue of morality." Powell, along with the other high-ranking military officials who've gone on record opposing these new rules, carries a lot of weight on these matters - with the public.

Apparently the BushCo.'s support of the troops doesn't extend to supporting their opinions, informed as they are by history and experience. And those are two things which they will never let taint their conduct of this disaster of a war.

What really gets me about this story, though, is that recently I've been noticing a lot of news that is new to the mainstream media, but that we in the blogosphere have been discussing for years. See some of my earlier posts about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo - and then look at the dates.

I'm not sure whether to be angry that it's taken everyone else so long to catch up to what has been public knowledge for so long or hopeful that finally somebody is taking note. The anger is partly what drove me to stop blogging for a while. The hope is what brought me back.

Five Years

A lot can happen in five years.

Some of it good, some of it bad. In politics and the media, five years can be forever. In our personal lives it can seem like days or it can seem like centuries; all at the same time.

Like five years ago, today is cool and clear here in Upstate New York. Unfortunately, that is not all that is the same. The Great Miscommunicator still squats in our White House and we are still little safer than we were on that fateful morning.

And I suppose all those things that are still the same five years after the event that prompted me to start blogging are the reason that I haven't written here in so long. The collective effort of the blogosphere, the writing, the joining up of like-minded people, the money many of us could so little afford sent to groups and causes, the letters and e-mails and phone calls to politician; all seemingly for nothing.

I suppose we'll know better after tomorrow. Will Democrats win back at least one house of Congress? Has the national mood turned away from willful ignorance about Afghanistan, Iraq and the true sources of terrorism?

It's too soon to tell. But considering the last five years, I'm not hopeful.