World: Counting the Dead in Mumbai

Amiran White/NYT

Raw Story is reporting that 195 people lost their lives in the attacks on Mumbai, the financial and showbiz heart of India. The number includes 26 foreigners and 15 of the security forces who fought them. Eleven terrorists were also killed, and one terrorist, a Pakistani national, is in custody.

The Times of India is reporting that the captured terrorist has told his police interrogators that the terrorists received assistance from locals in Mumbai. Given the extreme carnage and destruction in Mumbai carried out by a mere dozen terrorists, it is possible that a significant number of terrorists got away and blended in to the local population. Sources among the survivors have claimed that the terrorists appeared to be quite familiar with the layout of the hotels they took over. However, survivors of violent incidents are not the most reliable source of evidence.

Also, given interrogation methods favoured by the Indian police, it is quite possible that the suspect in custody is telling them whatever he thinks they want to hear. Other things the suspect, the unfortunate Azam Amir Kasab, has told the police: The terrorists' specific mission was to target Israelis to avenge atrocities on Palestinians.

This is why, he claims, they attacked Nariman House. Times of India's sources said Kasab's colleagues killed in the operation had stayed in Nariman House earlier. Interesting. How would Muslims be able to rent in Nariman House, a building owned by an Israeli businessman who rented only to Jews?

Also, the dead terrorists who had previously stayed at Nariman House assumed the identities of Malaysian students. Does this mean that Malaysians are involved? Or is the guy just saying whatever comes to mind?

Meanwhile, the Independent reported on Friday that two of the arrested gunmen appear to have been Britons of Pakistani descent. Since there is only one gunman in custody, it is clear that some sort of misunderstanding occurred. Moreover, the unfortunate Kasab has given the names of all his colleagues at this point and claimed that they are all from Pakistan (although that claim may embrace a multitude of sins, given that many individuals who are Pakistani or Indian or Chinese by ethnicity but citizens of the U.S., UK, or any other nation, often make trips to the old country to visit friends or relatives, or merely to ascertain their cultural roots.

The foreigners killed appear to have come from various nations, including Mauritania, Singapore, and Cyprus. Earlier reports that the terrorists specifically targeted U.S. and U.K. passport holders appear to be incorrect.

Some 300 people were injured. The terrorists, who appear to have been well-trained in military tactics, well-armed and provisioned for exactly such a battle, took three buildings — Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, Oberoi and Trident Hotels, and Nariman House, the last being a building owned by an Israeli who rented to Chabad-Lubavitchers. Apparently, some of the Lubavitchers were U.S. citizens.

All eight inhabitants of Nariman House were killed before Indian commandos retook the building. The terrorists also targeted a hospital and the main Mumbai railway station. The New York Times is reporting that the terrorists immediately killed everyone they came across in the various buildings they invaded, although they allowed security forces to assume that they had taken hostages. The terrorists also fired randomly at people on the street and in facing buildings, killing several bystanders whose only crime appeared to be being within the line of fire.

CNN is reporting that the terrorists had planned on killing 5,000 people.

U.S. intelligence is stating that it has no firm opinion as to who is behind the attacks. According to the NYT, the Indian government seems to believe that Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, assisted the Lashkar e Taiba, or LeT, a militant Islamic group in Pakistan, in carrying out the attacks.

The terrorists claimed membership of the "Deccan Mujahideen." The Deccan is the mountainous plateau that divides North and Central India from South India. Mujahideen roughly translates to "freedom fighters." The group has not been involved in previous incidents and appears to be virtually unknown.

Indian security forces based their suspicions on the discovery of a boat adrift off the coast of Mumbai. The captain of the boat was discovered bound, face-down on the deck, dead. Four crew members are missing; and the logs from cell-phones retrieved from the boat indicate that they had been used to call Jalalabad, in Pakistan. Indian security have also, according to the Times of India, recovered multiple identity and credit cards from many different organizations. The level of sophistication involved is believed to indicate ISI involvement.

The current leader of Pakistan, best known for being the husband of Benazir "Pinkie" Bhutto, the corrupt Asif Ali Zardari, has warned India against holding Pakistan responsible while simultaneously, through the other side of his neck, warning Pakistani militant groups of a strict response should any of them be found responsible.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer, advisor to President-elect Barack Obama, as well as previous presidents, and a supposed expert on the Middle-East and South Asia, claimed in his book, The Search for al-Qaeda, that Usama bin Laden assisted the ISI in developing LeT. A devastating attack on India's Parliament was carried out in 2001 by another terrorist group, Jaish e Mohammad, also apparently in collusion with the ISI. It is not clear at this time which of these two terrorist organizations is behind the current attack.

The ISI has long operated as an independent force in Pakistan. It is controlled by no one and beholden, apparently, only to U.S. military and intelligence who supply it with arms and aid. It has been instrumental in the downfall of politicians who have not toed its line. It is quite possible that the ISI, acting on its own, planned and executed the attack on Mumbai with the intent to destabilize relations between India and Pakistan: an attempt that may well suceed, given the increase in such incidents since George W. Bush first took power.

For evidence of such increase in terrorism, see Rep. Henry Waxman's letter to Colin Powell written in 2004. The letter points out that while the misadministration of Gee Dumbya manipulated data to make it appear as if terrorist incidents decreased during his ill-favoured reign, the underlying data make it clear that the number of incidents had actually increased.

The only good news that has come out of this is that President-elect Barack Obama has already formed and announced an emergency advisory team to deal with intelligence received on the Mumbai situation. However, unfortunately, Obama does not assume the reins of power for a little over fifty days as yet, during which time the Idiot-in-Chief can fuck the situation up in a hundred different ways.

And before I forget - thank you, George, for leaving the world in the shitty state it's in. We couldn't have done it without you, ya little schmuck. While you bombed the crap out of women and children in Iraq, destroying the cradle of civilization, al-Qaeda had plenty of time to build up in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thanks.

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2008 Elections: More Entertainment!

Can John McAncient pass the Commander-in-Chief test?



Hey, anyone who confuses Sunni and Shi'a, accuses Iran of training al Qaeda, hires an "advisor" like Carly "outsourcing is rightsourcing!" Fiorina, tells Americans who don't have $100 million in their bank account (which would be, like, 99.5% of us) that our fears about the obviously faltering economy are entirely psychological, thinks Purim is the "Jewish version of Hallowe'en," voted against insurance coverage for birth control but FOR insurance coverage for viagra ... ah, why go on? Just watch and be entertained. Oh, yeah, and he thinks David Petraeus is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Scary!

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Iraq: The Needle And The Damage Done

Sgt. Merlin German poses with actress Elizabeth Rohm

Neil Young wrote a song with that title, about what junk was doing to great musicians as he watched them get hooked and OD before his eyes.

We were thinking about that yesterday as we trawled the intarwebs looking for information about Iraq. And the damage done. And damage aplenty it is. From being the nation that stood for economic achievement, honour, dignity, the enshrining of human rights in the very foundation of our existence, we have become a universal pariah, despised, pitied, and shunned. We're like the mad aunt in the attic, fouling ourselves, locked away out of the sight of the children because we're so unpredictable, so damaged, so pitiable.

Our currency has sunk to unheard of lows. Our economy writhes and flails pathetically struggling to rise like a wounded Leviathan even as it bleeds jobs in the tens of thousands, as homes go into foreclosure and families are forced out onto the street, as suburbs and subdivisions lie abandoned, rotting, damaged by those who once lived there or by casual thieves looking for an easy mark. Our infrastructure rots before our eyes, and we have no money to fix our sewage systems, our water systems, our dams and bridges and roads, even as we bleed billions of dollars into a war without a foreseeable end.

Today's reminder of the ongoing multiple wars in which the Bush regime has entangled us, and the continuing damage. Click the preceding link to read the story of Marine Sergeant Merlin German, who died April 11 as the result of injuries sustained from a roadside bomb blast in Iraq. Sgt. German was 22 years old.

He suffered damage to 97 per cent of his body from the bomb. It took him a little over three agonizing years of multiple surgeries and therapies to die. Sgt. German was a saxophonist. The bomb blew off his fingers. He would never be able to play his favourite instrument again. The article talks about how this poor man was "an emblem of resolve." Well, fuck your resolve. Tell us how it took him one and a half agonizing years to learn how to walk again. As a gimp, we can totally understand the torture of having a body that does not like to obey one's wishes and responds with agonizing pain when one does something it doesn't care for.

Tell us how it feels to have 40 surgeries. Each time someone cuts your body open, your chances of infection, fatal complications like clots in your veins and lungs, and, of course, the never-ending pain, increase. And sometimes pains create more, unexplained and inexplicable pains. So that when someone operates on your right knee, two years later you can suffer agonizing pains in your left toe.

They give you gabapentin for that. It's medication for epileptics, but apparently works off-label to cope with nerve-related pain. Unfortunately, it causes your wrist and forearm muscles to behave strangely, and can result in carpal tunnel syndrome.

In related news, a New York state appeals court has held that the New York/New Jersey Port Authority is liable for damages caused by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, because it knew about but chose to ignore “an extreme and potentially catastrophic vulnerability that would have been open and obvious to any terrorist who cared to investigate and exploit it.”

We can't help but wonder if this means Gee Dumbya and his criminal cronies can be held liable for the deaths of the 3,000 who died in the attack on the Twin Towers? Personally liable? For damages? And the 4,000-plus troops who have died so far. And the 620,000 suffering from PTSD and TBI. And the 30-50,000 maimed and wounded?

After all, there's plenty of evidence that Bush and his stooges knew about 9/11 nearly a year before it happened.


Meanwhile, Reuters tells us that on April 19th, "Iraqi government troops" swept into the oil-rich southern Iraqi city of Basra and took the bastions of Hojatoleslam Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, at whose hands they had suffered such a humiliating defeat in the first weeks of April.

Of course, the article fails to mention that the "Iraqi government troops" are, for all intents and purposes, the military arm of puppet prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, a man with so little support among his own people that defections among "his" police troops and "his" army forces number in the thousands. In the event, he required massive air support from British and American forces. Caveat: Registration (free) required.

And if you don't know what happens to "collaborators," consider what you would do assuming your country was invaded by some other occupying power. What would you do to Americans who aided the enemy? Jeez, let some politician make a speech about how things are totally fucked in Iraq and every frothing rightwinger is simultaneously wanking their dicks off while screaming "Treason! Aiding and Abetting! Giving comfort to the enemy! Hang them!"

As far as the rest of Iraq, Sunni and Shi'a, religious or secular, are concerned, al-Maliki's "troops" are collaborators, calling in American and British air power to bomb the living fuck out of their own countrymen and women and children.

So we had to bomb hundreds to death, destroying their homes and hospitals and streets and towns, in order for al-Maliki's so-called "army" to succeed against al-Sadr's militiamen. Remember, if you will, that al-Maliki's "army" gets its uniforms, salaries, training, equipment, and ammunition from our treasury, while al-Sadr's militia, if they're lucky, get an inferior grade of weaponry if they can pay for it either from the black market or from our soldiers and their proxies, the Iraqi army.

Damn, if we're paying them, training them, and giving them top-notch guns and ammo, and they still can't beat a rag-tag bunch of untrained fucking desert dwellers, what the fuck does that say about this "war"? Incidentally, both al-Sadr's and al-Maliki's followers are Shi'a muslims. In other words, this is a civil war. Moreover, many people are saying that this is simply an attempt by al-Maliki's Dawa party to ensure that no other Shi'a politicians can possibly win the coming elections.

Does anyone else get the feeling that this is just a sham, set up for a gullible American electorate that doesn't bother to inform itself? Does anyone want to take a bet that the Iraqi "elections" will be held not too distant from the American elections and steps will be taken by the CheneyBush Misadministration to ensure that they can proclaim a victory, success, a drawdown?

Of course, they'd better pray that the Iraqi units don't flee their posts, as this one did. Caveat: Registration (free) required.

A pertinent snippet:

A company of Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions on Tuesday night in Sadr City, defying American soldiers who implored them to hold the line against Shiite militias.

The retreat left a crucial stretch of road on the front lines undefended for hours and led to a tense series of exchanges between American soldiers and about 50 Iraqi troops who were fleeing.

This occurred in Baghdad around April 16th. Commanders in Iraq are, to the extreme frustration and resentment of their troops, doing their best to paint any success as being led by Iraqi troops when in fact, it is American troops that are doing the dirty work, reaping the death toll, and receiving none of the credit.

Meanwhile, the Sons of Iraq, or the Sons of the Awakening, or the Awakening Council, or whatever they're calling themselves this week &mdash the number, out of the approximately 40 per cent of Iraq's population that is Sunni Muslim, who have decided to cooperate with the U.S. in attempting to expel from Iraq the al-Qaeda in Iraq "turrrrists" who are blowing up people and things &mdash have degenerated into an internecine conflict, the likes of which make the al-Sadr/al-Maliki conflict pale in comparison.

Patrick Cockburn, writing for The Independent, tells us that aQI, as al-Qaeda in Iraq is referred to, is targeting the al-Sahwa, that is, the Awakening Council, or Sunni Awakening, or, as we've been reduced to calling it of late, the Sunni Whatever. Christ. And this, hard on the heels of news that the U.S. has not provided agreed-upon amounts of arms and money to these poor sods who are in the frontline of this battle.

Is it any surprise, then, that U.S. troop deaths are currently at their highest for the past seven months? According to AP, 50 U.S. soldiers died in the month of April. Iraqi civilian deaths are also at a high. 36 people per day.

So, close to 40 people are dying every day, and what exactly are we supposed to be doing there? Preventing civil war? Too late, it's raging as we speak. Bringing democracy to the nation? How can there be democracy in a nation at war? The conditions don't exist for people to use the ballot box when they have to kill or be killed each day. We can't even successfully steal their fucking oil, which is, let's face it, the real reason that we attacked a small, poor nation that had nothing to do with 9/11. If this was about 9/11, we would have invaded Saudi Arabia which has lots of oil and, apparently, lots of terrorists, having supplied some 15 or so to the effort to bomb the fuck out of the Twin Towers.

Whoever tells us that our effort in Iraq is succeeding is lying through their teeth. This is not success. Watching 22-year-old boys get blown to smithereens is not success. Fomenting civil war in a nation that had absolutely nothing to do with the attack on us is not success. Building a mercenary army is not success.

Fuck, we can't even build a mercenary army properly. Incompetence, dishonesty, and outright idiocy resulting from greed and short-sightedness are the hallmark of what Maru likes to call the Cheney Menstruation. Here, for example, we have a wonderful incident in which mercenaries, most of whom are former military personnel, often U.S. military personnel, get killed because some senior manager used the armored vehicle in which these poor sods were supposed to travel, to &mdash no, really &mdash transport hookers.

Meanwhile, arms and equipment that we, the taxpayers, are paying through the arse for, are showing up for sale on ebay.

And little schoolgirls in Iraq are weeping while celebrating Saddam Hussein's birthday. So much for being greeted with flowers as liberators.

As we used to say when we was a yoof, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth &mdash bugger me blind. What the fuck? Is there anything we're doing that's remotely likely of success? Fuck, no. We keep propping first one, then another foot up while we take potshots at each, each time with a weapon of a greater caliber. Call us when they trundle out the cannon.

Meanwhile, the Red Cross is reporting that health care and clean drinking water in Iraq is less available to the populace, after five fucking years of our presence. The city of Baghdad has overflowing sewers that are visible from Google Earth.

There is no doubt, as Rep. Ike Skelton of MO says, that our continuing engagement in Iraq is preventing us from anticipating and preparing for future acts of terror. We're bogged down, boys 'n girls. Plain and simple.

The Pentagon is claiming that it is cutting funding for the Iraq war even as the Idiot-in-Chief is trying to force through a $70 billion dollar request for funding in Iraq. This is called, "The right hand knoweth not in whose underpants the left hand is sticking a finger." So you cut a twenty-cent purchase out while slipping a two-thousand dollar purchase in. Veddy clever.

And the Senate's Armed Services Committee is asking the GAO to find out where billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenue have gone. Admittedly, the previous, Republican, congress didn't even bother to find out if the taxpayer was being screwed without lube. But, gentlemen, isn't this a bit like closing the barn door long after the horse has embarked on a trip to a different fucking continent?

In other news, the Iraqis prove that they, at least, are not as stupid and befuddled as the American electorate-cum-taxpayer. Even as John McInsane was tootling around those parts, our erstwhile bosom friends and financial dependents of the Iraqi power structure were chortling with glee. Pertinent excerpt:

Many Iraqi politicians are closely monitoring the American presidential race, and some said the visit bolstered their belief that if Mr. McCain, of Arizona, succeeded President Bush in the November election, the American military would have a large presence in Iraq for a very long time.

“This visit confirms that the Republicans believe that the Iraqi war is very important in the fight against terrorism in the Middle East,” said Wael Abdul Latif, an independent Shiite member of the Iraqi Parliament. “It’s a message to Iran that the United States will never leave, even after Bush is gone.”

Never leave? Hah! Why don't we just line up every single American man, woman, and child who has less than one million dollars to their name (which would be most of us, don't kid yourself), and remove half their blood, or half their limbs?

Those of you planning to vote for McInsane? Just join the military already. Take your spouse and sprogs with you. Don't plan on coming back. They'll just foreclose on your home while you're gone, anyway, and if McInsane's in charge, your kid won't be able to afford health care or college, and there won't be any jobs left after you've served. At least in the military they often give you food, plus your housing and clothing and health care is all paid for. Sure, you risk ending up like Marine Sgt. German. But that's a small price to pay to see McInsane in charge, innit?

Meanwhile, since we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, the following has occurred:

• The real, genuine, original al-Qaeda (the one in Iraq has the same name but no links to these big daddies) just tried to kill Afghani President Hamid Karzai;
  
  Bush's old oil buddy Karzai must be wondering how long he can hold on to power.
  
  
• Our own intelligence guys are reporting that al-Qaida is doing just ducky, over in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they started out and continue to grow and thrive;
  
  
• We still don't have the first fucking clue where Osama bin Laden is, but we're willing to bet he's laughing his ass off, even if it's in some cave;
  
  Note to our so-called allies: If you see an ass wandering around sans legs, torso, or any other identifiable part, please turn it over to the U.S. military.
  
  
• No matter how much we grovel and beg, nobody wants to give us more pennies or bodies for our war in Afghanistan.

So what do we do about this? Do we keep making "support the troops" noises and buying flag pins made in China while leaving the men and women who do our dirty deeds for us to rot and die in body, mind, and soul?

Libby, over at TheImpolitic, tells us about some of the horrifying things our troops have gone through. Jesus, we're fucking outraged and disgusted.

One soldier's father was so disgusted by the treatment of his son's comrades, he videotaped it and posted it on YouTube. All on a sudden, the brass are putting away their balls which they've been playing with for ages, and leaping up to "address the issue" of the appalling conditions at Fort Bragg.

The good folk of Vermont continue to protest the war with all their might and main. Thanks, people! You give us hope!

Meanwhile, we ask, when are the Young Republicans going to step up and volunteer in droves? Because they're sitting around in school leeching off the taxpayer teat or the parental teat, the military has had to lower its standards to the point where people such as this eminent worthy get to disgrace the service.

And, to leave you all with something other than the bitter taste of ashes, here's a sweet story about service members who have to leave their four-footed friends behind, and the kind folks who help them out by taking their little beastlies in.

Crossposted over at Out of Iraq Bloggers' Caucus

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2008 Elections: What Is So Objectionable About This?

Here is a clip of the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, opening a two-day symposium on the Black Church with a speech at the Press Club. Please listen to it and tell us, if you can, exactly what the good Reverend is saying that is objectionable.



It does not seem as if Reverend Wright went out of his way to seek publicity &mdash at least so far, based on this video clip. It seems as if he was merely opening a symposium previously scheduled. We are researching the issue because the mainstream media has, for the past decade or more, played a very sinister role in this nation's politics.

In an attempt to herd us, like sheep, in one direction or another, they control what we see and hear of the people among whom we must choose a leader for our nation. While that may have been acceptable for a decade, this country is now in a terrible place. We no longer have the luxury of being sheeple.

For the first time in our history, the economy is broken. Our children are fairly well guaranteed a lower standard of living than ourselves. Our healthcare is broken. We have no recourse for the sick, the disabled, the dying. Our nation is at war, on two fronts, and if the monsters that hold the reins have their way, there will be a third front soon.

If you value your country, forget about lapel pins, polarizations, and distractions. It's time to choose carefully. We cannot allow another warmonger near the reins of power. While John McCain offers 100 more years of war in Iraq, and says nothing about Afghanistan or Iran, and refuses to negotiate with other nations, my friends; while Hillary Clinton promises the deaths of 70 million people who have done us no harm &mdash we are faced with only one choice.

Choose wisely, my friends. Unless you want your children and grandchildren stuck in the morass of another endless war, or facing hunger, joblessness, and no prospects.

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World: War Crimes

Image from Court of Impeachment and War Crimes Blog

Well, well, well. We haven't always liked former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad. In fact, when Anwar Ibrahim was running against him and he brought Anwar down and even had him set up, arrested, and jailed, we thought he was one of the most disgusting politicians and human beings we had ever come across.

But this week, Mister Ten Per Cent has almost completely redeemed himself in our eyes. He just called for Tony Blair, George Dubya, and John Howard to be tried for war crimes based on their actions in Iraq. From The Australian:

In a speech at Imperial College in London overnight, Mr Mahathir called for an international tribunal to try US President George W. Bush, Mr Howard and former British prime minister Tony Blair for their part in the conflict [...].

Spokesman Mohammed Shafiq said Mr Mahathir, who was in office from 1981 to 2003, wanted to see the trio tried "in absence for war crimes committed in Iraq".

"He said that people have to stop killing each other and use arbitration, negotiation and discussion as an alternative to violence, war and killing."

On the war in Iraq, Mr Mahathir spoke about "the thousands dying, the economic war, the power of oil and how we could utilise some of these tools to have a leverage against the people who commit countries to war", Mr Shafiq said.

[...]

More than 450 people attended the speech and about 200 more had to be turned away.

Why isn't any other Leader of Teh Free World stepping up and putting their support on the line? Mahathir is saying what millions of ordinary people have been thinking for a long time. Tony Blair is a war criminal. Gee Dubya is a war criminal. John Howard is a war criminal. These three stinking fetid pigballs are responsible for the deaths of one million human beings, maybe more.

We went into a secular nation that was not threatening us in any way based on the 935 lies of Gee Dubya Pigball, and we killed women, children, old people, sick people, the disabled. We destroyed families and homes, and now we can't even leave because the entire country is trembling on the verge of a civil war that threatens to destroy more millions. We took that secular nation where women had jobs and freedom, and we turned it into an Islamic fundamentalist state where honor killings have become the order of the day. From The Guardian:

Last year 133 women were killed in Basra - 47 of them for so-called 'honour killings', according to the Basra Security Committee. Out of those 47 cases there have been only three convictions for murder.

Since January this year, 36 women have been killed.

That's Basra alone. Just one city in Iraq. Who knows how many more women are being murdered in honour killings, or for failing to conform to the fundie codes of dress and behaviour that did not exist in this country when Saddam Hussein was in power.

It's a sad and shameful day indeed when a democratic nation does more harm to the rights of women in another land than its totalitarian dictator.

Meanwhile, somewhere between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden laughs his ass off watching us drown under the rising tide of debt, the cost of financing two wars, the armless, the legless, the wounded and maimed who come back to a system that can't take care of them. We can't give health care to our own children, but we're creating hundreds of thousands of potential recipients of health care, disability payment, and support services that we haven't bothered to put in place or pay for.

All the people associated with this crime against humanity need to face the gallows for their part in it. While Blair rakes in the millions, Howard has disappeared, afraid to face his countrymen, and Gee Dubya is relegated to dancing in front of reporters and acting like a cheap drunk with foreign dignitaries.

They all need to be in the Hague. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Pearle, Rice, Cheney, Addington, Yoo, Dumbya, Gonezales, Tenet, the whole bloody lot. For shaming this once-proud nation. For destroying our system of laws. For thinking up ways to violate human rights. For approving torture. For planning and carrying out the murder of a million people. For causing soldiers who obeyed orders to commit suicide in despair due to homelessness, depression, injuries physical, mental, and spiritual. For failure to care for those they put in danger. For burdening the nation with inflation, debt, suffering, death, poverty, joblessness and misery.

A pox on all their houses! May they suffer every day of the rest of their lives from nameless fears and miseries and sickness, plague and disease.

Where are the European politicians and the other Asian politicians and the African politicians? Why are they not standing behind Mahathir in this moment? If the whole world called for these war criminals to be tried, and made it unsafe for them to travel outside the country, perhaps they would understand how much suffering they have created.

Here's to hoping Paraguay arrests the Chimpenfuehrer when he tries to flee there, and turns him over to an international tribunal.

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Iraq: How Many Times

Does Nouri al-Maliki need his ass kicked really hard before he learns his lesson?

This is a question that will undoubtedly be resolved sometime before he either absconds with all the billions we've been pouring into Iraq (no doubt largely funnelled directly into his, and his cronies', unnumbered Swiss bank accounts) or meets a hideous end when he proves to be too much of a liability to either the Dawa Party (his party) or the fragile coalition of Dawa/SCIRI (or Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, ISCI, as it's calling itself these days) and whatever else is coalitioning with these thugs.

We didn't post about al-Maliki's recent primate-like posturing and associated blunders because it was all so deeply depressing and predictable. Why bother? It was obvious from the conflation of Cheney's "visit" to the ME and the revelation that he did not really discuss oil prices with the House of Saud followed by the chest-beating and rump displaying of teh Maliki that Sadr was going to have to kick his baboonlike ass but good just to keep the dumb motherfucker from overreaching.

To recap, a chronology of events:

• March 17, three days before the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq: Cheney flies into Iraq unannounced, meets with al-Maliki
  
  
• March 21, Cheney meets with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
  
  
• March 22, Cheney announces through a myrmidon that the only relief in terms of oil prices will come from drilling in America's remaining pristine wildernesses, in other words, thanks America for funding my junket on which I took my wife and daughter and we went fishing in Oman on March 19th, and fuck you very much on oil prices.
  
  
• March 26, Nouri al-Maliki issues his famous "ultimatum" to Iraqi "militias."
  
  Who are these Iraqi militias? Right now, Iraq is controlled by various hardline Islamic Shi'a factions, including al-Maliki's Dawa party, which has the Iraqi Army functioning as its own militia; SCIRI/Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) which has its own militia; and Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr's Jaish al-Mahdi.
  
  For the benefit of the apparently senile or terminally stupid John McCain, elderly and doddering presidential candidate, we would like to point out here that al-Qaeda in Iraq (aQI) is a Sunni Muslim organization, with no friendly ties at all with the warring Shi'a militias. Also that al-Maliki's Dawa party is very friendly with the rulers of Iran - so friendly that they greeted that nation's president, Ahmedi Najad, with flowers and parades and marching bands when he recently visited &mdash unlike our leaders, who, despite paying nearly one trillion fucking dollars of our money for the privilege, must sneak into Iraq under cover of darkness and cannot even travel to the fucking market without fully armed squads of bodyguards, full body armour, and air cover.
  
  Nouri al-Maliki was apparently targeting al-Sadr's Jaish al-Mahdi with this crackdown. He called them "worse than al-Qaeda," the Sunni terrorist organization. Apparently, to al-Maliki, al-Sadr's challenge to his Prime Ministership is worse than the terrorist strikes around the world that have killed thousands of American, British, Spanish, Iraqi, Pakistani, and other peoples. Nice to know one's allies' priorities, Mr. Cheney. al-Maliki gave the JAM three days to lay down their arms and personally flew to Basra to supervise the extermination of JAM.
  
  
• March 28, three days later, when it was pretty obvious that JAM was beating the living shit out of the Iraqi army, with Iraqi police turning over arms and equipment to JAM in Baghdad and Basra, al-Maliki "extended" the deadline to ten days.
  
  Despite all the guns and uniforms and training we have given the Iraqi Army, you can't buy loyalty and you can't buy a will to fight. JAM fights because they want control of Iraq and they believe they will be rewarded with political power or houris in paradise regardless of whether they live or die. The Iraqi Army fights because it's a job in a country with staggering unemployment rates and few other ways of making money, and at least they can feed their families. Whose motivation do you think is greater?
  
  Despite the full strength of the U.S. Army as backup & despite 160,000 or so American and British fighters with top-flight military equipment, including air strike capability, al-Maliki was forced to put lipstick on the pig of his claim that he would fight the Shi'a militias to the end. He had to beg for the help of his Iranian masters to end the conflict.
  
  
• March 31, al-Sadr graciously extends the olive branch of peace &mdash along with a nine-point statement demanding the release of various of his supporters who have been arrested but not accused of any crime, and an end to attacks on his forces.
  
  
• April 1, Nouri al-Maliki announces that the military operation in Basra has been a success. Obviously, he's smoking the same thing as Bush.
  
  Five hundred Iraqis were killed in the fighting. al-Maliki is asking al-Sadr to "please return" the 50 armored vehicles and government cars that JAM took. Two Americans were also killed, and rocket and mortar attacks carried out on the "fortresslike, secure" Green Zone, where the American Embassy is located.
  
  
• April 03, we learn that Nouri al-Maliki is a masochist with a fetish for ass-kicking &mdash as long as he is the kickee. Nouri, my man, we had no idea you were such a BOTTOM!
  
  Even as Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr is calling for nationwide protests to mark the anniversary of the U.S. toppling Saddam (April 9), al-Maliki is planning to enter Sadr City and other JAM strongholds. Is he trying to get the nascent Iraqi Army wiped out? Or is this an attempt to force continuing American and British involvement in the war?

Already the drawdown of "surge" troops has been halted and the British have announced that they will not pull out the 4,000 remaining troops in Basra. Not that the British troops are very effective, since they're all hiding out at the airport, and who can blame them. They must be tired of being used for target practice.

As for American troops &mdash people, if you have friends and relatives over there who were supposed to come back anytime soon, you can just kiss that goodbye. They may never come back at all, except in a body bag, if George keeps letting al-Maliki play soldiers using our forces. Is that what your friends and relatives signed up for? To be the pawns of an idiot who persists in playing with other people's lives and doesn't have the first clue about military strategy?

Meanwhile, you will no doubt be thrilled to your very toenails to hear that Chimpy McAWOL, who managed to weasel out of serving in any capacity except possibly National Buffoon, is paying no attention whatsoever to the restarting of the meatgrinder. Nope, he's busy trying to create a "legacy" or something, at the taxpayers' expense, somewhere in the former Soviet Union.

REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

Clue: They're not laughing with you, George.

Stumble It!

War: Meanwhile, Over At The Other Success

Raw Story tells us that A a suicide car bomber blew himself up next to a convoy of Canadian troops in Kandahar yesterday. Toll? One civilian dead, two soldiers wounded.

A Humvee vehicle of the convoy was burned and destroyed.

Other important factoids for your perusal:

• 160 suicide attacks and 68 thwarted attempts (2007);
  
  
• 123 suicide attacks and 17 failed attempts (2006)
  
  Source for both sets of numbers: U.N. report released Monday 03/10/08 in New York. The report adds that insurgency-related violence has killed more than 8,000 people in Afghanistan in 2007. 1,500 of the dead were civilians.

Not that we're trying to piss on your parade or anything, but that's more than double the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq so far, y'awl.

And, speaking of Iraq, Raw Story is reporting that three soldiers were killed in Iraq today, bringing the total number of U.S. troops killed since the beginning of this immoral and illegal war of occupation to 3,987. Only thirteen more to go, Dumbya, before you hit 4,000. You've already killed over 1,000 more Americans than Osama bin Laden. How does that feel?

Well, the depraved idiot seems to think it feels just fine. He's out there "reframing" the Iraq war as "forever" the right decision to make. What a putrid little bucket of puke. Makes us wish we believed in God just so we could imagine the nasty little bastard burning in Hell forever.

Stumble It!

Bring The Troops Home NOW!

Well. Isn't that just ducky? Raw Story tells us that, after reviewing hundreds of thousands of captured Iraqi documents, the Pentagon has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein had any connection at al with al-Qaeda.

Apparently, the only links between Saddam and any terrorist groups were just like ours. Just as we funded and armed Osama bin Laden to wage Islamic Jihad against the Russians when they invaded Afghanistan in support of Babrak Kamal's government, Saddam Hussein funded and armed groups to attack "Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime."

The study is due to Congress and for general release by midweek.

The article, penned by Warren Strobel of McClatchy's Washington Bureau, states, in part:

[...] the upcoming Pentagon report promises to be a particularly stark and thorough refutation of one of the primary Bush administration arguments for the invasion of Iraq [i.e., that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaeda. Another Bush Misadministration argument, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, has already been thoroughly refuted.] The subsequent war has come at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, nearly 4,000 US troop deaths, and some half a trillion US dollars and counting.

Mr. Strobel's math skills are poor &mdash or perhaps McClatchy prefers to err on the cautious side of the balance ledger. Current wisdom has it that the total cost of Shrubya's Little Misadventure will run to over three trillion dollars. These costs do not address the Iraqis we've maimed and wounded, or the bills that other countries foolish enough to join in the "coalition of the willing" face. Britain, for example, announced today that their estimated cost will total approximately ten billion pounds sterling.

The article adds that the Bush Misadministration continues to lie about Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda, despite previously released documents and reports indicating the same findings as the forthcoming extensive review. As recently as last April, Vice President Dick Cheney again asserted a link between the Iraqi dictator and the terror network. So, if you know anyone stupid enough to listen to them and believe, please buy a copy of the review when it is released and use it to beat some sense into them.

The study is entitled "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents." Although it has been essentially complete since last year, it has been undergoing what one U.S. intelligence official described as a "painful" declassification review.

The article notes, in a painful aside, that "In fact, al Qaida in Iraq didn't emerge until 2004, a year after the invasion." Was that before or after Commander Codpiece was strutting around on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a uniform before a banner that screamed "Mission Accomplished," to the collective spooging of the shameless press corps?

Photo montage from grupo-utopia.com with the request that you spread it around

Meanwhile, we note that almost exactly a month ago, Auntie Beeb published a piece about the "reverse surge" that appears to be grimly prophetic. That article was pointing out the increase in violent incidents, many of which seemed to be targeting the Sunnis that the U.S. has been wooing with large sums of money:

US commanders on the ground [...] have pumped money into local economies by employing tens of thousands of young Sunni men as local auxiliaries - now re-named "Sons of Iraq" after several unhappier titles such as "Concerned Local Citizens" - to act as the eyes and ears of the US and Iraqi troops in the struggle against the militants.

They are also trying to encourage the Baghdad government to be more proactive in providing services and job-creation schemes in areas where the insurgents have been driven out.

But as we, and many others, have pointed out, the war has been going on for five years at this point. It's a bit late to start trying to win "hearts and minds." What's more, as the U.S. military strategy in Vietnam might suggest, the buying over of the "Sons of Iraq" sounds suspiciously like Tricky Dick's "changing the color of the corpses."

Al-Qaeda, and those Iraqis who are fighting the U.S. military will treat as traitors any Iraqis who side with the U.S. military. The U.S. is not going to stay in Iraq forever, John McCain or no John McCain. We simply cannot afford to. Sooner or later, our internal economic straits will be so dire, as a result of siphoning money out of the country to fund a prolonged war, that our economy will collapse. The U.S. is not willing to accept Iraqi refugees in any significant number. Despite the fact that more than 4 million Iraqis are now refugees, either in their own country or in Syria, Jordan, and other neighbouring nations, only approximately 7,000 have been accepted into the U.S. to date, and the original target of 25,000 has been lowered to 7,000.

Besides, the "hearts and minds" that the U.S. military is trying to win are deeply split even among themselves. We've said this repeatedly: Iraq has always been a fractured, heterogenous nation, with many different ethnic and religious groups, divided loyalties, in many ways still adhering to family, clan, tribe and feudal notions of society.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that Auntie Beeb once again informed us just yesterday that a woman had detonated her explosive vest when she came calling on a Son of Iraq. Chances are that, just like the Issawi celebrants mentioned in the previous link, the woman was either a member of the tribe of the slain "Son of Iraq," Thaer Ghadban al-Karkhi.

According to Auntie Beeb, Al Karkhi was the head of one of the majority-Sunni Arab Awakening Councils, allied with the US military against al-Qaeda in Iraq. How true that is, we have to wonder, since the same piece identified "Sheikh" Abdul Sattar Abu Risha as the head of the Awakening Council in Anbar, a key US ally who was widely credited with having defeated al-Qaeda in much of western Iraq. Greg Palast can give you the lowdown on the "Sheikh."

We ourselves have blogged about the "Sheikh's" mysterious trips with U.S. money. $75 million worth, fellow-taxpayers.

Meanwhile, to add further credence to Auntie Beeb's prognostications, Raw Story is telling us that forty-two people died in Iraq today as the result of violence. Forty-two. Do you know forty-two people? Add up your family members. You might have to include a few neighbours or colleagues.

Now imagine that these people who you, maybe, love, or like, or just know, were blown to smithereens. An assemblage of body parts, bloody meat, barely recognizable as human. Now imagine that happens to you every day. You probably don't know enough people to sustain that kind of loss every day for a year, probably not even a month. Well, for the Iraqis, this has been going on for five long years. And some days, it's a lot more than forty-two people.

In other news, eight U.S. servicemen were also killed. When are we going to bring our troops home? Because this has gone on too damned long. The troops did the job they were sent there to do. An army's job is to fight. They fought. The other stuff has to be done by non-military qualified and experienced civilian personnel. But Boy George wanted to send his friends and cronies out there to bilk the taxpayer, and because they're the friends and cronies of an incompetent boob, to no one's surprise they too are incompetent boobs. So now we have a failed state, in which people are being killed every day in large numbers. And it's too dangerous to send qualified experienced civilian personnel out there to help to fix the mess we made.

Every day that the soldiers stay there is one more day that they present a target to a people furious that their country has been invaded, their jobs are gone, their economy is faltering, they don't have power or light or working telephones, their streets are unsafe, and their wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters are being raped and beaten and killed, while their sons, brothers, fathers, and husbands are kidnapped, tortured, and killed. Get them out NOW. Bring them home.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, articles like this are just beginning to show up on the radar. The article states that railcars due to ease congestion in Philadelphia will be delayed. See if you can guess why.

New SEPTA Regional Rail cars will be at least four months late, delaying relief for riders on the increasingly crowded rail lines, SEPTA officials said yesterday.

[...] delivery of the rest of the 120-car order will also be pushed back at least four months, Nowakowski said. Final delivery of all the railcars is now scheduled for October 2010.

Rotem [the company building the cars, Ed.] was unable to procure enough of the type of steel specified in the SEPTA contract because the U.S. government has cornered the market; it is using the steel for armoring vehicles bound for Iraq, Nowakowski said.

For the sake of the dying, dead, maimed and wounded, in Iraq and at home; for the sake of the faltering economy, the people losing their homes, the people without health care, or with inadequate care; for the sake of the families that are being fractured by the stresses of this war; for the sake of the nation that is tottering under the accumulation of debt and the loss of its sons and daughters &mdash bring them home. End the war now.

Stumble It!

Iraq: More Success

Damn, we gotta quit successin' so much, it's startin' to hurt.

Raw Story tells us that U.S. troops in Iraq have fired on Sunni allies, killing three people. The troops claim that the Sunni group "mistakenly" fired on them first, and they returned fire. This is the third such incident within the past month. A total of 19 Sunni "allies" have been killed, and 12 others injured.

Let's see now, originally we invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, was a "brutal dictator" (aided, of course, by U.S. taxpayer monies, and pictures of him shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld around the time that he received several tons of nerve gas that he used on Kurdish Iraqis are freely available on teh Googlez).


So we were on the side of the Kurds and freedom and against Saddam Hussein, even though we gave him money and weapons to kill Kurds. Got that. 911!!

Saddam Hussein favoured his Sunni Muslim brethren and even though they are a minority (by a small margin) of Iraqi Arabs, they got the best jobs, etc. So when we invaded, we sided with the Shia Muslim Arab Iraqi majority and helped them to kick a bunch of Sunni Muslims out of power. Got that.

But that didn't work out so good, because the Sunni Muslims who were in power when Saddam was around were mostly just your average yob, trying to work and feed their families, and they got kinda pissed off that their erstwhile neighbours were taking over their houses and kicking them out of their jobs, so they started fighting back. So the insurgency was largely a Sunni insurgency, although Donald Rumsfeld said we shouldn't call it an insurgency at all. Got that.

Meanwhile, the Kurds were, like, our friends and everything, because Saddam Hussein had used (our) nerve gas and other weapons (paid for by our dollars) to kill them. So even though we encouraged them to rebel against Saddam Hussein during the First Gulf War, and then left and Saddam Hussein got to bomb the crap out of them, they're still our friends. Got that.

So while the Sunnis were biting holes in our collective ass, it didn't help that Moqtada al-Sadr and his Shia followers who had fought Hussein for decades were being totally ignored by the U.S. in cobbling together a puppet government. So they started taking bites out too. Then the Shia "governmental" factions &mdash SCIRI (now SIIC), Da'wa, and Fadhila parties, all retrograde Islamic theocratic parties who dream of establishing a Shia Caliphate &mdash started fighting each other for control of Iraq's oil, and were not above attacking U.S. military personnel. But waitaminnit, they're supposed to be teh good guyz, even if they are "Islamofascimunists." OK, got that.

Then it turned out that having an armed Sunni insurgency killing, oh, around FOUR THOUSAND U.S. military while we were successfully occupying their peaceful country in which over 1 million civilians have been killed, 4-5 million others displaced and turned into refugees fleeing for their lives, and perhaps another 2 million wounded, crippled, and otherwise maimed, was not such a great idea. And we should try to make friends with these "insurgents," and win them over to our side. So we gave them a bunch of money, guns, and bombs so they would be our friends and stop fighting each other and fight "al Qaeda" which doesn't seem to be such a big player among all the numerous factions out in Iraq, and in fact seems to be headquartered in our other big success, Afghanistan, where it's causing trouble with our friends the Pakistanis. Got that.

Meanwhile, some of our soldiers decided it would be fun to stalk, rape, and murder a teenage Iraqi girl, so they did. And they murdered her whole family, and set fire to the bodies so no one would know that the girl had been gang-raped and murdered. Except it turned out that the girl &mdash Abeer Qasim Hamza &mdash is a member of one of the biggest and most powerful Sunni tribes, the al-Janabi. Um, oopsie. So is it true, like people say, that in the Near Eastern countries, tribal loyalties mean a great deal? Like, you know, people named al-Janabi, or belonging to the al-Janabi tribe might, maybe, hold a grudge against American military because some of their people raped a member of their tribe?

Then our NATO partner, Turki, was getting kinda annoyed because the Kurdish PKK guerillas, who are fighting for a united Kurdistan, were blowing up stuff in Turki (which has a significant Kurdish minority population), and then retreating across the border into Kurdish areas of Iraq. So, even though the Kurds are! our! friends!, we started secretly giving intelligence on Kurdish PKK hideouts in Iraq to our Turkish friends! who promptly bombed the shit out of the Kurds. Who are our friends.

Damn, all this successful successin' is just too fucking confusing for us. There must be somebody out there who can figure out just who the fuck our friends are and who our enemies are in this unholy mess.

Meanwhile, in other late-breaking news, a woman suicide bomber has blown herself up in a Baghdad shopping mall; a suicide bomber killed 80 people in the southern Afghani town of Kandahar; and the Pentagon states that there will be more U.S. troops in Iraq after the "drawdown" (huh?).

And Bush's friend, Prince Bandar of the House of Saud (whose country generously supplied 15 of the 19 terrorists responsible for the September 11th attacks on the U.S.), has been doing some stenchful deals for military might with U.K. companies, and threatening the UK with terrorist attacks if they investigate bribes that were paid to him.


The Boston Globe tells us that the Saudi government provided the September 11th terrorists with financial and logistics support in their quest to destroy the Twin Towers. While the New Yorker (Seymour Hersh, the most trusted name in news) tells us that the Saudi government has given a great deal of financial support to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Why is the Bush family personal friends with these people? Isn't it treason to befriend people who carry out or finance a military attack on your country?

Stumble It!

Iraq: More Success

Damn, we gotta quit successin' so much, it's startin' to hurt.

Raw Story tells us that U.S. troops in Iraq have fired on Sunni allies, killing three people. The troops claim that the Sunni group "mistakenly" fired on them first, and they returned fire. This is the third such incident within the past month. A total of 19 Sunni "allies" have been killed, and 12 others injured.

Let's see now, originally we invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, was a "brutal dictator" (aided, of course, by U.S. taxpayer monies, and pictures of him shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld around the time that he received several tons of nerve gas that he used on Kurdish Iraqis are freely available on teh Googlez).


So we were on the side of the Kurds and freedom and against Saddam Hussein, even though we gave him money and weapons to kill Kurds. Got that. 911!!

Saddam Hussein favoured his Sunni Muslim brethren and even though they are a minority (by a small margin) of Iraqi Arabs, they got the best jobs, etc. So when we invaded, we sided with the Shia Muslim Arab Iraqi majority and helped them to kick a bunch of Sunni Muslims out of power. Got that.

But that didn't work out so good, because the Sunni Muslims who were in power when Saddam was around were mostly just your average yob, trying to work and feed their families, and they got kinda pissed off that their erstwhile neighbours were taking over their houses and kicking them out of their jobs, so they started fighting back. So the insurgency was largely a Sunni insurgency, although Donald Rumsfeld said we shouldn't call it an insurgency at all. Got that.

Meanwhile, the Kurds were, like, our friends and everything, because Saddam Hussein had used (our) nerve gas and other weapons (paid for by our dollars) to kill them. So even though we encouraged them to rebel against Saddam Hussein during the First Gulf War, and then left and Saddam Hussein got to bomb the crap out of them, they're still our friends. Got that.

So while the Sunnis were biting holes in our collective ass, it didn't help that Moqtada al-Sadr and his Shia followers who had fought Hussein for decades were being totally ignored by the U.S. in cobbling together a puppet government. So they started taking bites out too. Then the Shia "governmental" factions &mdash SCIRI (now SIIC), Da'wa, and Fadhila parties, all retrograde Islamic theocratic parties who dream of establishing a Shia Caliphate &mdash started fighting each other for control of Iraq's oil, and were not above attacking U.S. military personnel. But waitaminnit, they're supposed to be teh good guyz, even if they are "Islamofascimunists." OK, got that.

Then it turned out that having an armed Sunni insurgency killing, oh, around FOUR THOUSAND U.S. military while we were successfully occupying their peaceful country in which over 1 million civilians have been killed, 4-5 million others displaced and turned into refugees fleeing for their lives, and perhaps another 2 million wounded, crippled, and otherwise maimed, was not such a great idea. And we should try to make friends with these "insurgents," and win them over to our side. So we gave them a bunch of money, guns, and bombs so they would be our friends and stop fighting each other and fight "al Qaeda" which doesn't seem to be such a big player among all the numerous factions out in Iraq, and in fact seems to be headquartered in our other big success, Afghanistan, where it's causing trouble with our friends the Pakistanis. Got that.

Meanwhile, some of our soldiers decided it would be fun to stalk, rape, and murder a teenage Iraqi girl, so they did. And they murdered her whole family, and set fire to the bodies so no one would know that the girl had been gang-raped and murdered. Except it turned out that the girl &mdash Abeer Qasim Hamza &mdash is a member of one of the biggest and most powerful Sunni tribes, the al-Janabi. Um, oopsie. So is it true, like people say, that in the Near Eastern countries, tribal loyalties mean a great deal? Like, you know, people named al-Janabi, or belonging to the al-Janabi tribe might, maybe, hold a grudge against American military because some of their people raped a member of their tribe?

Then our NATO partner, Turki, was getting kinda annoyed because the Kurdish PKK guerillas, who are fighting for a united Kurdistan, were blowing up stuff in Turki (which has a significant Kurdish minority population), and then retreating across the border into Kurdish areas of Iraq. So, even though the Kurds are! our! friends!, we started secretly giving intelligence on Kurdish PKK hideouts in Iraq to our Turkish friends! who promptly bombed the shit out of the Kurds. Who are our friends.

Damn, all this successful successin' is just too fucking confusing for us. There must be somebody out there who can figure out just who the fuck our friends are and who our enemies are in this unholy mess.

Meanwhile, in other late-breaking news, a woman suicide bomber has blown herself up in a Baghdad shopping mall; a suicide bomber killed 80 people in the southern Afghani town of Kandahar; and the Pentagon states that there will be more U.S. troops in Iraq after the "drawdown" (huh?).

And Bush's friend, Prince Bandar of the House of Saud (whose country generously supplied 15 of the 19 terrorists responsible for the September 11th attacks on the U.S.), has been doing some stenchful deals for military might with U.K. companies, and threatening the UK with terrorist attacks if they investigate bribes that were paid to him.


The Boston Globe tells us that the Saudi government provided the September 11th terrorists with financial and logistics support in their quest to destroy the Twin Towers. While the New Yorker (Seymour Hersh, the most trusted name in news) tells us that the Saudi government has given a great deal of financial support to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Why is the Bush family personal friends with these people? Isn't it treason to befriend people who carry out or finance a military attack on your country?

Stumble It!

Iraq: "Surge"

Of course, expecting Tony Snow to tell the truth, ever, on any subject for any reason, would have to mark you as a gull of the first order. That man lies every time his lips move. Still, he said something today that caused a major twitch in the PoliticalCat ears: Apparently (according to the lying diseasebag and shill Tony Snow), some 80 per cent of Bush's advisors opposed the surge, that disastrous temporary increase of troops to Baghdad that allowed Iraqi insurgents to migrate smoothly to other cities in Iraq, where they have since fulfilled their mandate of causing extreme trouble.

Snow's mendacity, exceeded only by his extreme stupidity, can best be seen in this statement:

“Everybody was telling him, ‘You’re crazy, don’t do this,’” Snow said. “You get the chills. He’s really unafraid to take the hits if he thinks he’s doing the right thing.”

Tony, you pathetic fucking idiot, what does he have to be afraid of? It's not like anybody's shooting at him, his kids, his family. We here at Casa de Los Gatos are completely and really unafraid to give the Iraqi insurgents the finger! In fact, we so firmly believe that we are doing the right thing that we hereby give the entire Afghani nation the finger.

What are they gonna do about it? Bomb some Canadian troops? Maim some American soldiers? Shoot some German soldiers in the head? Hahahaha! We laugh at their patheticness.

Jeebus fucking J.H. Christ, where do these morons come from? What the hell does Chimperor McDunce have to be afraid of? It's not like anyone's coming to take his meds or his case of Wild Turkey away for exhibiting verbal diarrhoea.

That's why he could say "Bring it on!" to the Iraqi insurgents, and when they did, he just threw 30,000 more bodies into the meatgrinder. Not his body, oh no. Like Darth Cheney, the Idiot Boy has "other priorities."


No, instead he sends his chimpminions to drag this suicidal, homicidal, bipolar, alcoholic soldier out of a hospital bed and return him to the frontlines. And these guys. And these guys.

And it's just so marvelously effective, all this surgeation and redeployment. Why, just look! Look how we're winning, winning, winning.

Meanwhile, because we took our collective eye off the ball in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden is hiding, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is now forced to beg NATO nations for more troops for Afghanistan.

This focus, Gates writes in his letter, explains why Washington is now sending 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan -- troops which will join the 26,000 soldiers already stationed in Afghanistan. The Marines, though, will stay for seven months at the most, after which other NATO allies are expected to take up the slack. Where Gates is pointing the finger, though, is clear: at the Germans.

How disingenuous of Gates to fail to mention that the U.S. Marines wanted out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, which is why they're being sent there. And why not? At least Afghanistan is a just war.

However, our NATO allies are having problems with our overly enthusiastic warmongering, it seems. It's not just the $5.2 trillion lost in world stock markets thanks to the U.S. subprime lending woes (Regulation BAD, right Republicans? Here's yer $5.2 TRILLION worth of bad, you dumb pricks) that's bothering them. Der Spiegel says:

Early in the week, the Canadians also ramped up the pressure on Berlin. After losing 78 soldiers in Afghanistan, Ottawa issued a clear threat to its allies at NATO headquarters in Brussels: Either the Europeans send 1,000 combat troops, together with helicopters, to Kandahar, or Canada will completely withdraw its roughly 2,500 soldiers from Afghanistan next year.

[...]

Officials at the German defense ministry have called the Gates letter an "outrage." The Americans, they say, are fully aware of the special circumstances -- conditions imposed by the German parliament -- under which German forces currently operate in Afghanistan.

Of course, Gates is trying to disguise the begathon as a "stern warning." Good luck, ya dumb fuck.

Here's what the Germans have to say:

"I have a clear mandate from the German parliament," Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung told reporters Friday. "It consists of 3,500 soldiers serving along the northern border, and only helping out in the south for a limited period of time, as needed."

Meanwhile, the NATO Secretary-General's take on Gates' posturing for the home market is, um, refreshing:

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was quick to condemn the letter on Friday. According to Reuters he said it was "not helpful."

He said it was unfair to say Germany was doing too little and he would prefer if discussion on boosting troop numbers in Afghanistan was not done in public.

Of course, Gates' begathon would probably have yielded better results if he hadn't first trashed other NATO commanders' role in Afghanistan. Or shill for an administration that has shown all too clearly that the "war on terrrrra" is really a pretext for a war on American citizens and taxpayers.

Stumble It!

Iraq: Nine Civilians "Accidentally" Killed

Thanks to Blogroll Amnesty Day, we have found new bloggers all over the net who say things we find interesting. We plan to feature them once or twice a week. Check out their blogs from the blogroll on the right, or click directly on the link below to read a specific post.

Over at Oak Creek Forum, One Fly flies outa the cornfield to tell us just how he feels about the accidental killing.

9 Iraqi civilians accidentally killed

"The U.S. military said Monday that it had accidentally killed nine Iraqi civilians during an operation targeting al-Qaida in Iraq — the deadliest known case of mistaken identity in recent months"

Fucking a right! Just an accident. So that makes it all otay and after they investigate they will let all know the truth. After all we're fighting al-Qaida member that? When I heard the phrase "I am a human being" for the first time over 30 years ago it struck me as odd but I was fresh outta of that cornfield and didn't have a clue. I feel for this country and the people in Iraq as they deserved none of this. The neo-murderers and the monkey are to blame and I despise them with all my being. Sonsofbitches!

Drop by and check out what else he has to say.

Stumble It!

Iraq: Success!

Gorgeous pic from the one and only Maru

Sure smells an awful lot like failure, though.

Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up in pet markets in Baghdad. The death toll: 64 (at least, currently; more may die of their injuries). Approximately 107 people were wounded.

Raw Story is reporting that at least one of the bombers was a mentally impaired young woman who might have been bullied or bamboozled into functioning as a human missile and detonated remotely. Beyond disgusting, this is utterly depraved.

Pertinent excerpts from the article:

An official at Al-Kindi hospital said at least 34 bodies had been received. "We have a disaster here. There are too many bodies to count. Many of them are just pieces of flesh," he said.

The latest attacks came even as Iraqi officials reported civilian deaths across Iraq in January had fallen to a 23-month low.

US military commanders say [...] the peace is fragile and that while Al-Qaeda, which the commanders believe is behind most of the violence, is on the run, it is far from defeated.

Of course the peace is fragile, you blithering idiots. You're not fighting al-Qaeda per se, you're fighting hundreds of different factions - former Iraqi Army guys who lost their cushy jobs thanks to you; Islamist fundie loons who want to crush any hint of secularism; Sunnis who lost their favoured position; Shia who lost families, friends, jobs, homes; thugs who see an opportunity to loot, steal, and rob; breakaway factions of the Mahdi Army; thugs in the employ of SCIRI and Dawa thugs in power, seeking to consolidate their position. Shit, the list could go on forever.

There has been zero political progress. The so-called "new de-Ba'athification law" threatens to take away the livelihood of even more Sunni or former Ba'ath party members than the old one did. People are living in a fractured peace that results from typical guerilla army tactics: When the enemy advances, guerillas retreat; when the enemy retreats, guerillas attack. The "surge" has placed some 30,000 additional armed Americans in a danger zone where daily one or more of them loses a life or limb. The guerillas prudently retreat to Mosul or some other city and take potshots at Americans there.

It's their fucking country, you bozo morons. They can outwait you. Sooner or later, you have to come home, broken in body and mind. Them? All they have to do is keep killing one or two of you every day, or even every other day. What does it matter if they die? You're making sure that plenty of others show up to take the dead men's places. While back home, no one is showing up to take the places of those fallen in action. Young Republicans are too busy making money to sign up for the war, ya know.


You can barely get the high-school dropouts and gangbangers to sign on.

39 American soldiers killed during January. That was up from 23 in December and on a par with figures in October and November. That's one soldier or more per day. Not much lower from the stats for the past four years. And so it drags on.

Stumble It!