Another Kind of Courage

Veterans of the Iraq War protest more over-deployed soldiers being sent to that mess.

Many Dark Actors [updt]

The Bush-Blair legacy gets darker and darker. More here:

"The official heading an inquiry into the suspicious death of a British weapons inspector who cast doubts on the main argument for invading Iraq has secretly ordered all evidence locked up for 70 years.

Lord Hutton, who chaired the 2003 inquiry, which controversially concluded that Doctor David Kelly's death has been a suicide, secured a 70-year seal on all major evidence, including medical records — none of which had ever been made public.

The unprecedented move was revealed last week, sparking fresh uproar and allegations of a government cover-up, since by 2073 anyone with the least interest, or stake, in the case will probably be long dead.

Kelly was mysteriously found dead in the woods near his Oxfordshire home in July 2003, just days after his name was leaked as the source of a pre-war BBC documentary that undermined the now-notorious 45-minute dossier as highly exaggerated."

David Kelly may have killed himself - how the hell would I know? But a 70-year seal on medical records? That protects national security how? This horrible story just got much, much worse.

Emptywheel has much more.

Update, 1/27/10: The medical records will be released to a group of doctors.

$1 Trillion For Unnecessary War Good; For Health Care Bad

How often does it hit you in the gut that George Bush and Dick Cheney started an unnecessary war, and that more than 1 million men, women, and children died horribly violent and painful deaths - that didn't have to happen? Most of them would be alive today if that unnecessary war wasn't started. I mean just think of that.

Kicks me in the gut nearly every day.

* And stories like this kick you again. This did not have to happen.

Blogging From the War

We live in a very strange world.

Colby Buzzell's blog: MY WAR.

Wiki.

22,000 Vets Call Suicide Hotline

The fruits of George Bush's unnecessary war:

WASHINGTON - More than 22,000 veterans have sought help from a special suicide hot line in its first year, and 1,221 suicides have been averted, the government says.

According to a recent RAND Corp. study, roughly one in five soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan displays symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, putting them at a higher risk for suicide. Researchers at Portland State University found that male veterans are twice as likely to commit suicide than men who are not veterans.

This month, a former Army medic, Joseph Dwyer, who was shown in a Military Times photograph running through a battle zone carrying an Iraqi boy, died of an accidental overdose after struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder for almost five years.

Missing Soldiers Found

Tragic.

Remains of two US soldiers missing in Iraq since their capture more than a year ago have been found, a US defense official said Friday.

The families of Private Byron Fouty, 19, and Sergeant Alex Jimenez, 25, have been notified by the army.

"They have been returned from Iraq," said the official, who asked not to be identified.

Rest in peace.

Hitchens Gets His legs Blown Off by Vanity Fair

First, read this about one-time (the important lead up and starting time) rabid Iraq War supporter Christopher Hitchens. Here's some background and context for that.

Now read this.

RIP

I've edited the title to this post. You don't need to know what it said before.

This is a Newsweek article. It's an extremely depressing read.

Pvt. David Dietrich had a history of cognitive problems. He struggled in boot camp at Fort Knox, Ky., striking at least one of his superiors as unfit for the military. Dietrich was so slow at processing new things, some fellow soldiers called him Forrest Gump. His squad leader, Pfc. Matthew Berg, says Dietrich couldn't hit targets on the rifle range and had trouble retaining information. "He was very strong physically, but mentally he wasn't really all there," Berg says.

He lasted eight weeks in Iraq. Then he was shot and killed.

And this line:

He also said that in Germany, doctors had given him antidepressants and medication for attention-deficit disorder.

Jesus.

10 American Dead in Iraq in 8 Days in June

With all the bizarre crowing about the fact that only 19 Americans were killed in Iraq in the 31 days of May, are we going to now hear from those same cheerleaders that they were wrong, misguided, or just continuously stupid since there have been 10 Americans killed in just 8 days in June?

No. Of course not. Because more deaths is something to crow about, too.

Sick.

Deepest condolences to the families and friends of the fallen.

McCain On "Criminal" War

Criminal:

A reader sent me this link to the Cunning Realist from May 5 and I was surprised by what it contained. Were you aware that John McCain wrote the forward to an edition of The Best And the Brightest? And were you aware that it said this?

It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn’t support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay. No other national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war. If the nation and the government lack that resolve, it is criminal to expect men in the field to carry it alone.

The Best and the Brightest was written in 1981, but McCain wrote that forward for the 20th anniversary edition, in 2001. And more from that forward:

And anyone who feels a need, as a confused former prisoner of war once felt the need, for insights into how a great and good nation can lose a war and see its worthy purposes and principles destroyed by self-delusion can do no better than to read and reread David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest."

Five Years Later: They Lied About Iraq

You don't say. And Sen. Rockefeller, the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which put together the current Phase II report, preresponds to the pushback:

“There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate.

The "Everybody - even the Europeans! - agreed that Iraq had WMDs!" is not going to cut it anymore.

And, without comment:

The report found that the clandestine meetings between Pentagon officials and Iranians in Rome and Paris were inappropriate and mishandled from beginning to end. Deputy National Security Advisor Steve Hadley and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz failed to keep the Intelligence Community and the State Department appropriately informed about the meetings. The involvement of Manucher Ghobanifer and Michael Ledeen an the meetings was inappropriate.

And: My senator hits it harder:

“This is stunning: the Secretary of Defense, testifying before Congress about whether or not ground forces would be strategically necessary in a war against Iraq, said that the Executive Branch “knew” something that it did not know.

“The intelligence available at the time made this clear, and two months later a report prepared specifically for Secretary Rumsfeld directly contradicted what he told the Committee. As far as I know, neither Rumsfeld nor anyone else from his office made any attempt to contact the Committee and correct the public record, and the result was that Congress and the American people were misled on a question of the utmost importance. I do not think that this is a matter that Congress can afford to ignore and I hope that the Armed Services Committee will take a serious look at Secretary Rumsfeld’s statements.”

Soldier Suicides

This unnecessary war keeps digging its hole deeper:

Until the day he died, Sgt. Brian Rand believed he was being haunted by the ghost of the Iraqi man he killed.

The ghost choked Rand while he slept in his bunk, forcing him to wake up gasping for air and clawing at his throat.

He whispered that Rand was a vampire and looked on as the soldier stabbed another member of Fort Campbell's 96th Aviation Support Battalion in the neck with a fork in the mess hall.

Eventually, the ghost told Rand he needed to kill himself.

That unfortunate soul is not alone:

In 2007, nine soldiers from Fort Campbell committed suicide — three during the first few weeks of October, according to a letter to base personnel by the 101st Airborne Division's commander, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser.

More here.

Bush and Sending the Wrong Signal

Our pathetic excuse for a president said yesterday that he quit playing golf in August 2003 after the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed the UN's top official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Bush said the event moved him to give up the game he loved out of respect for the men and women he sent to war. He said it "sends the wrong signal."

He was lying, it turns out, having played golf two months later. A round of golf is not the kind of thing you do without noticing, nor is a catastrophic event like the one that happened on August 19, 2003, which took the life of a man Bush knew, the kind of thing you mix up with some other memorable event. Did it later occur to him, in some twisted idea of sacrifice for our soldiers, to stop playing golf? I don't know. Maybe. But something that happened seven months later tells me the man is incapable of even such a trite idea of honor.

In March, 2004, President Bush spoke at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association Dinner. March, 2004. This was seven months after his alleged conversion by bombing. You probably remember:

It's standard fare humor. Bush says he is preparing for a tough election fight; then on the large video screens a picture flashes showing him wearing a boxing robe while sitting at his desk. Bush notes he spends "a lot of time on the phone listening to our European allies." Then we see a photo of him on the phone with a finger in his ear. There were funny bits about Skull and Bones, his mother, and Dick Cheney. But at one point, Bush showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office, and he said, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere."

The audience laughed. I grimaced. But that wasn't the end of it. After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. "Nope," he said. "No weapons over there." More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: "Maybe under here." Laughter again.

Somewhere around 550 American troops had been killed in Iraq by this time, and several thousands more had been shot or blown up and damaged forever. They had risked that fate for one reason: because Sadaam Hussein had WMDs. That's what they were told. And our president, out of his deep respect for the sacrifice of these courageous, mostly young, soldiers, a respect that drove him, he tells us, to not play golf because it would "send the wrong signal," deems it "good signal" worthy to make jokes - jokes obviously practiced and even with video accompaniment - about the very thing that those people gave their lives for. I'm supposed to believe, now, that George W. Bush gave much of a shit about the destruction and death he brought to those people?

No fucking way.

George Bush, you're a liar. I honestly can not at the moment think of a worse kind of one. You do more dishonor to the people you sent to unnecessary war with this pathetic attempt to rescue your reputation.

Some video, if you can stomach it.

Iraqi Body Count Pressure

Brutal story at Salon about the military putting pressure on sniper teams to "get more bodies," and how in some cases it could be leading to atrocities.

Report: Torture Approval Went to Top

I almost wrote, "This will be a huge story." I should know better by now.

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

[...]

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The "Principals." How ironic.

And - Colin Powell deserves a special place in Hell's Hell if he had a part in approving torture.






Iraqi Journalist Bilal Hussein is [*] Free [Updtd]

[* Ordered freed, not free yet.] [4/11: updt]

From Glenn Greenwald (go to updates):

The lawless detention of Bilal Hussein was one of the worst American travesties of the U.S. occupation. He was but one of 24,000 Iraqis (at least) detained without charges. But the fact that he was an AP photojournalist (part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team covering the war) whose journalism reflected negatively on the Bush administration, and who became controversial (and then lawlessly imprisoned) as a result of that work, made his detention -- imprisoned for over 19 months without even any charges before finally being turned over to an Iraqi court -- that much more reprehensible.

A small step for actual freedom in Iraq, a giant kick in the ass for George W. Bush.

Update: Hotair blogger Allahpundit reports on the story, giving his note the headline Not guilty? Not quite.

Those Warbloggers - constantly putting (other peoples') lives on the line to defend that sacred tenant of democracy: "guilty until somehow found guilty."

(Here's another one. They want him so bad to be guilty of something - anything - simply so they can justify their Jihad! against AP. Strange, demented children.)






Troops Want Dems

ABC News. (Video there.)

Basra

In the streets. Pipeline blown up. Hospitals full. And this:

During a briefing in Baghdad on Wednesday, a British military official said that of the nearly 30,000 Iraqi security forces involved in the assault, almost 16,000 were Basra police forces, which have long been suspected of being infiltrated by the same militias the assault was intended to root out.

Lovely.







Severed Fingers of Western Hostages Received

Hopefully this means they're alive.

Mar 12, 2008 9:44 pm US/Central Severed Fingers Of Hostages Sent To U.S. In Iraq (WCCO) U.S. officials say authorities in Iraq received five severed fingers belonging to four Americans and an Austrian who were taken hostage more than a year ago, according to newspaper reports

.

More than a year ago. Damn. Haven't heard a damn thing about it in the news.






All they will call you will be G.I.s

GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell doesn't want you to give too much thought to soldiers dying in Iraq:

Nobody is happy about losing lives, but remember - these are not draftees, these are full-time professional soldiers.

Nevermind them and their extended or extra tours or the worries or grieving of their families - they're " full-time professional soldiers". That's less than human. They're practially like robots, programmed to die (even in unneccessary, preemptive wars).

A song: