So good ol’ General Petraeus–who I am sure is an excellent general, as well as clearly being a sharp man–is explaining to us why we should remain in Iraq basically indefinitely. Let’s review a few facts–just facts–about Iraq. Just for perspective, y’know.

• Since the Iraq war began, the U.N. estimates that 2.2 million people have fled Iraq. The population of Iraq prior to the war was 26.7 million people. For perspective, 2.2 million people is more than the entire population of Houston, TX, the fourth largest city in the country. Imagine the entire city of Houston leaving the country. Imagine everyone in San Francisco and San Jose packing up and leaving those cities empty. But it’s worse. If the same percentage left the U.S., it would mean 24.8 million people leaving the country. That would empty out the entire state of Texas and New Hampshire and Vermont.
• Estimates of Iraqi deaths since the war began range from 426,369 to 793,663. Again for perspective, the population of San Francisco is 744,000.
• We are spending two billion dollars a week on this war. Just today on the radio I heard that the Austin Independent School District received a grant for 330 million dollars over the next five years for drug prevention. So five years of an entire school district’s drug prevention money is less than 20% of one week’s worth of funding for the Iraq war.
• President Bush and General Petraeus have both trumpeted Anbar province as a success story recently because they have been working with Sunni sheiks. On Septeber 3, President Bush met with Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha. Yesterday, Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha was killed by a roadside bomb.
• On August 19, seven U.S. soldiers in Iraq had an Op-Ed published in the New York times in which they were highly critical of our mission there. On Monday, two of them died. Another of them is currently terribly injured from a gunshot wound to the head.

(If these last two items aren’t as eloquent an indictment of a failed policy as anything I have ever heard, I don’t know what could be.)

These are facts about the Iraq war. This is raw data. This is not spin. This is just data about the war that Bush and his enablers (such as the folks at National Review Online, The Weekly Standard, and so on) want to keep going indefinitely. This is the war that the Washington political establishment and the “mainstream media” have collectively decided is going to go on unchanged until there is a new President 16 months from now.

Can someone please explain to me why we–and by “we” I mean the 2/3 of this country that doesn’t want us to be involved in this war–are still in Iraq? What madness is this?

Today (and tomorrow and for the rest of the week, for all I know) General Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Crocker (how appropriate!) will be testifying before Congress about conditions in Iraq.

We all know what those conditions are, of course: the Bush Administration’s incompetent war has unleashed a civil war and sectarian violence; there’s ethnic cleansing going on; several million refugees have fled the country; Americans are not considered “liberators” but “occupiers”; no progress towards a “national” government is being made (nor should we expect any, since the tribes pretty much hate each other); and we are now trying to police all this with 160,000 troops, many on their third, fourth, or fifth deployment, in a country of, what, 40 million or so? Those are the conditions.

So Petraeus and Crocker will get up and spill their absurd blather about the “progress” that’s been made, the cowardly Congress will fork over more billions to the incredibly unpopular Bush–who has proven again and again his inability to run a war–and we will continue this charade until a new President takes office in 2009. Despite poll after poll showing that Americans overwhelmingly want us out of Iraq. As do the Iraqis. As does most of the rest of the world.

And honestly, just once I’d like to see a few things happen:

• While testifying before Congress, I’d like a Senator or Congressman say to Petraeus or Crocker, “Bullshit. That’s all bullshit. The situation there is a mess, our presence is making it worse, and we should get the fuck out. You are excused from this committee. Don’t let the door smack you in the ass on the way out.”
• While giving yet another B.S.-fueled press briefing, I’d like the White House press corps to absolutely refuse to swallow the baloney spewed by Dana Perino or Tony Snow, and start throwing rotten fruit when they say things that are obviously and demonstrably lies.
• I’d like one of these loudmouth Senators who grandstand about being tough to actually vote that way. Phil Specter leaps to mind.
• I’d like to see someone the entire White House press corps agree beforehand on a question to press President Bush on, and to keep asking him. No matter who he calls on, keep asking the same question until he actually friggin’ answers it. Even the foreign press people. Even the Fox News people. It’s high time Bush actually gave a straight answer.
• I’d like to see someone interview a high-ranking official and when they blatantly lie, call them on it. For example, when Cheney said, “You’re out of line,” I wanted the interviewer say, “No, sir, I am not, and the American people deserve an answer to the question.” These people are criminals, and we deserve answers. It’s time to stop letting them get away with their dodging and ducking.
• When Bush goes one of these obnoxious photo ops, when he uses the press as his sickening lap dogs to sell this absurd war to the public, I want them to stand up in a body and say, “No thanks; we’re not going to be part of your propaganda machine.” If he gives one of his heavily-scripted speeches in Iraq, and no one is there to film it, did it happen? Would that whatever press maven he invites on his next Turkey Trip to Iraq this November have the juevos to say “No,” so that his trip is only filmed by official Army propagandists.
• I’d like to see Bush booed, seriously booed, at one of his major speeches. No matter how carefully they vet the audience, how carefully the script the speech, I want him booed, long and loud. At the State of the Union. In front of the VFW. I don’t care; I want that guy booed. I want him to know how the other 77% of us feel, and I want him to know it in his bones.

Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?

As a method of dismissing arguments against various Bush-authored or Bush-proposed policies without presenting counter-arguments, some folks on the Right like to say that their opponent suffers from “Bush Derangement Syndrome” (BDS). Said syndrome, the implication goes, means that the sufferer cannot see the good and wise things in whatever it is that Bush proposes because of their blinding hatred for All Things Bush. And they certainly have a point to some degree; there definitely are some people who can’t listen to Bush without rejected whatever he says out of hand. (Of course, I would argue that Bush has brought this on himself to a large degree.)

But there is a flip side to BDS, and that is that some folks on the Right simply can’t see anything wrong with things that Bush proposes because of their blinding love for All Things Bush.

I personally think this is exemplified by Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online (who was kind enough to print my accusation of same in its entirety, but too cowardly to print my contradiction of her implied [but not stated] argument), as well as anyone whose last name is Kagan, or is related to that family in any way by marriage.

But it reached an absurd height when Fred Kagan recently opined that Bush has reached Lincolnian rhetorical levels in Iraq. To recap: Bush snuck out a side door of the White House, concealed his destination from most of the press corps, avoided Baghdad (presumably because the insurgents now have sufficient anti-aircraft capability to make it dangerous to fly in and out of the Baghdad airport), landed in al Anbar, had a photo op, looked al Maliki “in the eye,” and then scurried on to Australia. Kagan’s view: Bush’s speech in Iraq was comparable to The Gettysburg Address, and turned a corner on the Iraq war. (Another one! We’ve turned so many corners there now, I’ve lost track.)

I just read this report on the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech earlier in the year, and what struck me about the article was how it was played: “Report faults Virginia Tech response.” I couldn’t help thinking of a couple of things simultaneously:

• An episode of Star Trek (the original series), “The Conscience of the King,” where Kirk discovers that a Shakespearean actor is actually a cover for an old mass murderer from years ago. Kirk wants to bring him to justice–the implication is that he wants to kill him, and McCoy asks him: “What if you decide he is Kodos [the mass murder]? What then? Do you play God, carry his head through the corridors in triumph? That won’t bring back the dead, Jim!“
• In Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun, Detective John Connor is explaining one of the differences between the Japanese and American ways of dealing with problems to Detective Webb Smith. Connor explains: “The Japanese have a saying: fix the problem, not the blame. In American organizations it’s all about who fucked up. Whose head will roll. In Japanese organizations it’s all about what’s fucked up and how to fix it. Nobody gets blamed.”
  

Now believe me, it’s not that I don’t believe that killers shouldn’t be brought to justice; I do. And it’s not that I don’t believe that the Japanese don’t point fingers; I think they do. But this was a horrible tragedy, and the knee-jerk tendency to apportion blame, rather than fix the systemic problems, strikes me as, well, insane.

Another good example of this is the recent Utah mining disaster. There is absolutely no question in my mind that both mine owner Bob Murray, Bush Administration head of mine safety Dick Stickler, and probably some others have a major hand in this disaster for doing everything they could to maximize profits at the expense of safety. It’s clear, and they should obviously pay.

But the much more important issue here is, what is the systemic problem that should be addressed? Clearly, the cronyism of the Bush Administration–the tendencies that gave us “Brownie” and “Fredo” Gonzales and all the other “loyal Bushies” who are in high positions for reasons of loyalty and cronyism rather than competence–is the problem here, much more so than the rank criminal negligence of a couple of people. And that is the problem that needs to be addressed, much more than apportioning blame. Because once the perpetrators have been removed, don’t we want to make sure that this sort of thing never happens again? And you can’t do that just by laying blame and slapping a few assholes in jail.

And that’s what I kept thinking about the Virginia Tech newspaper report. They are laying blame at the feet of the Tech officials. People who are probably getting up every morning taking Paxil and Prozac to get through the day, feeling horrific guilt at their mistakes already. What good is done by an official report that points a finger at them? Does that bring the people back to life? Does that make the people who made the mistakes feel better, or perform better? Does it make Virginia Tech’s safety situation improved?

Fix the problem, not the blame. That way, maybe it won’t happen again.

Yesterday, in front of yet another military audience, President Bush gave a speech about Iran that can only be described as extreme sabre rattling.

(And let me just say as a personal aside that, as the son of a Naval officer, it offends the heck out of me that Bush continues to use military audiences as a prop for his speeches. Bush’s family used its political connections to get him into the Texas Air National Guard to avoid active duty service in Vietnam, and then he skipped out on even completing that. His Administration has presided over one of the worst-run wars in our nation’s history, a war that we most assuredly didn’t need to fight. His Administration has treated its wounded veterans poorly. He is forcing his reserve and national guard personnel to serve second, third, fourth, and deployments without sufficient time between each. Desertions and suicides among active duty personnel are up at 50 year highs. And this man has the temerity to use our brave veterans as back-drops for his desperate efforts to continue his disastrous policies? To say that this enrages me exposes the inadequacies of the language.)

Can anyone listen to this speech–or even read excerpts of it–and not think that Bush and Cheney are absolutely determined to fight yet another war, this time with Iran? We have had reports that Cheney believes that war with Iran is necessary, and that he doesn’t “trust” a future Administration to “deal with it,” and that he has been maneuvering Bush to begin one. With this speech, it is clear that Cheney is winning his bureaucratic battle. And I can’t say strongly enough how much this terrifies me.

Folks, the military is now so close to collapse that even the Joint Chiefs are saying that we have to draw down the forces in Iraq starting next year at the latest, like it or not. Almost all the experts believe that any military action against Iran would only make the situation there worse, not better. The terrorists that we really need to go after are in Afghanistan, not Iraq or Iran. Bush and Cheney have proved over and over again that they are utterly incompetent at running a war. And now they want to begin another one? I am petrified, to be honest.

And any commentators and other folks who are trying to comfort themselves by thinking that Congress will stop these war mongers are fooling themselves. First of all, the Democrats have proven again and again that they are craven cowards when it comes to stopping Bush from his insane war mongering. But second of all, Bush and Cheney believe–and have put forth their various theories to bolster their beliefs–that the “War on Terror” means that they can fight “the enemy” wherever that enemy is, even on U.S. soil (hence the arrest of Jose Padilla without charges, a U.S. Citizen on U.S. soil, who was slapped in a military prison).

So bear this in mind: Bush believes that as Commander in Chief, it is his duty to go after terrorist wherever they are. His speech yesterday makes it clear that he believes that they are in Iran. He has also made it clear that he believes that Congress’ 2002 vote to “authorize the use of military force” (AUMF) gives him the authority to use military force for the entirety of the “War on Terror.” Congress telling him otherwise now is not going to stop him. The only thing I can imagine stopping him is a huge public outcry, or the military command flatly telling him no. And I frankly can’t imagine either of those two things occurring.

So I’m terrified that sometime in the next 12 months, we’re going to be at war in Iran. I wish I were wrong. But I honestly don’t think so.

Can no one stop these insane maniacs?

As I’ve said before here, I’m completely baffled by homophobia. You’re a guy who wants to marry another guy, or a woman who wants to marry another woman, hey, be my guest. I just don’t understand what all the hubub is about, and I never will.

Another thing that confuses me, though, are people like Senator Larry Craig. I’m not confused by him being in the closet; I understand that. There are times when, as a Jew, I find it mighty uncomfortable to tell people that I’m Jewish (e.g., around Christmas). I get that. If a gay man or woman wants to remain in the closet, I’m content to let them.

But when a gay or lesbian gets married to a member of the opposite sex, then I start getting a little confused. I definitely understand the impulse to have children. And for men and women of Sen. Craig’s generation, it was definitely much harder to be in a committed same-sex relationship. I get that. (Although I have a lot of problems with gays and lesbians who marry, have kids, and then leave their partners because–sorry, wife (or husband) and kids!–I have to follow my same-sex bliss now! Hey, after the kids are raised and gone, knock yourself out. But up until then, the partner and kids should pay the price for your confusion? That just seems wrong to me, not to mention selfish.)

But Sen. Craig didn’t just marry, he then became a Republican politician who not only voted for, but actively supported, anti-gay legislation. And that’s most assuredly not okay. It’s not even hypocritical; it’s actively wrong. Quisling, back-stabbing; apply whatever epithet here you want, it’s just plain wrong, bordering on evil. “I–a rich, powerful man protected by my position–will outlaw this behavior, knowing full well I can engage in it in secret because of my wealth and position.” (It reminds me of wealthy, vehemently”pro life” Republicans who–I have no doubt whatsoever–would secretly take their daughters to a doctor for an abortion should they become pregnant at the age of 15 even if it meant they had to fly her from Tupelo to Boston. But I digress.)

Aside from being plain wrong, it confuses me. Why is he doing it? I can understand him voting for these positions–he’s a Republican from a deeply Red state. But to actively support them? Is it some kind of weird denial thing? Does he make his fiery anti-gay floor speeches immediately after one of his bathroom trites in a fit of remorse? Is he like an adulterer who immediately goes to the confession booth seeking absolution from a priest, or an alcoholic who, severely hung-over the next morning, begs the lord for forgiveness and swears to never, ever drink again? I don’t know, but it baffles me.

Yesterday–in a stunning display of audacity for a man who used the National Guard to hide from his own service in the Vietnam War, and then skipped out on even that–President Bush said, among other profoundly unbelievable things:

Our troops are seeing this progress that is being made on the ground. And as they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they’re gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq? Here’s my answer is clear: We’ll support our troops, we’ll support our commanders, and we will give them everything they need to succeed.

Somehow, I sincerely doubt that the first question on the minds of “the troops,” many of whom are on their third or fourth deployment, is “Will my elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under me?” No, I’m guessing that the question at the forefront of most troopers minds is, “When the hell can I go home from this insane war?“

And frankly, I wonder why the Democrats don’t pound on exactly that point more often. (Ans.: they’re cowards.) I mean, who supports the troops more? President Bush and his war-mongering compatriots, who want to continue throwing them into the middle of this endless civil war indefinitely with no clear plan for “victory,” or even an end? Or the folks who want to bring them home?

If I was on the ground in Iraq, I know how I’d feel.

So don’t listen to all this hoo-ha about how trying to wind down the war through cutting the funding means that you “don’t support the troops.” It’s garbage. The only way the Congress can bring the troops home is through the “power of the purse.” That’s their only option. Bush, like it or not, is the Commander in Chief. Congress controls the money; Bush controls the command structure. So when they try to cut off his funding, it’s not because they “don’t support the troops,” it’s because they want to bring them home.

So ask yourself who is more supportive of the troops: the folks who keep voting to endless fund this boneheaded war, or the folks who are trying–through the only means available to them–to bring the troops home. And then call ol’ Rush Limbaugh and tell him.

I apologize for the rant, but it infuriates me when folks on the right insist that if you don’t give Bush all the money he wants with no conditions, it means you “don’t support the troops.” I wouldn’t trust this group to run a game of Clue correctly, let alone prosecute a war; why on Earth should we give them a blank check with the lives of our sons and daughters? Good grief.

Two months ago, the craven Democrats completely caved and gave George W. Bush–Mr. 30% Approval Rating–yet another blank check for the war. The commentariat at the time said that Gen. Petraeus promised September report on “the surge” would be the make-or-break point, when–if “progress” wasn’t shown in Iraq–Republicans would start peeling away from Bush.

I, on the other hand, was a lot more cynical.

And now we see that everyone is maneuvering for the September game. First of all, we find that the good General isn’t even writing the report himself, the White House is. (Of course, they say that they were always planning on writing it, and anything you believed otherwise was your own misinterpretation!) Second, the report is going to be delivered on . . . wait for it . . . September 11! Yes sir! Just a coincidence, though! Nothing nefarious about that, sirree! And of course, Bush has already started giving speeches decrying anyone who doesn’t write him another blank check as “pulling the rug out from under the troops.”

And of course the cowardly, craven Democrats are buying it. Senators Levin and Warner, after a two-day trip to Iraq where they were given what Sen. Jim Webb so accurately termed the “Dog and Pony show,” are talking about “progress” in Iraq. Let us bear in mind two things:

1. Levin and Warner were Iraq two days. Two days isn’t long enough to tour the Smithsonian Museum, let alone get even the remotest idea as to how the situation is in a war zone. Hell, you can’t even get through more than a couple of wings of the Smithsonian in that time.
2. Levin and Warner got all their information from military sources. What are military sources going to say? “Yes, Senator; we’re getting our asses kicked over here.”

Make no mistake, this trip was about one thing only: political tail-covering for when Warner, Levin, and other Democratic Senators make their next craven vote in support of Bush’s disastrous war. “Well, we went to Iraq and saw enough progress to justify continuing to try!”

And Republicans, of course (as I again suspected quite a while ago) are most assuredly not peeling away from Bush.

The lack of political courage on the left simply sickens me. While these politicians bicker and squabble and refuse to stand up to an incredibly unpopular president prosecuting an unbelievably unpopular war in which American soldiers are dying to prop up a government that a lot of Iraqis don’t want (and a lot of Iraqis would like us to leave, I might add), Osama bin Laden is rebuilding his organization over in a completely different country.

The insanity of this absolutely boggles my mind.

I know I’m probably alone in this, but I have a simple solution to what the blovacracy calls the “accelerated primary season” (that is, the attempt by other, more populous and diverse states to have some actual, honest-to-God say in the Presidential primaries, rather than just leaving it all up to Iowa and New Hampshire).

Lately, a lot of states have been moving their primaries up to February and even January, in an attempt to give their states some relevance, rather than having so much influence being held by the predominantly-white, small population states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Which seems reasonable to me; as I carped in an earlier post, I got tired of living in California and having no say in picking my party’s Presidential candidate. Iowa and New Hampshire are responding to this effrontery by moving their primaries and caucuses even earlier, to the point where Iowa may end up having their caucus in December of 2007 (believe it if you can). I get the impression that Iowa would move their caucus to the first Wednesday in November the day after the election if that’s what it took to keep their “first caucus” status.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’ve got nothing against Iowa or New Hampshire. Nothing. I just think it’s absurd that these two highly-unrepresentative states have so much say over who gets to be President. We can see where this has gotten us the last several times around (Dukakis! Mondale! Bush! Kerry!), and I think it’s high time we made some changes. And given that Iowa has a law that requires they have the first caucus in the nation, there only one obvious way to do it:

Pass a law.

Yup. Time for those Congressmen and women and Senators who spend time grubbing for money for bridges to nowhere, who hide bricks of money in their fridge, who pass resolutions to rename french fries “freedom fries” and try to pass idiotic amendments to the constitution to outlaw flag burning (yeah, that’s a huge issue that keeps me up at night) to get off their duffs and tell the good folks from Iowa and New Hampshire that enough’s enough, and that it’s someone else’s turn now. I don’t care who; make it a rotation, or something. Start in Minnesota or New Mexico for all I care. But Iowa and New Hampshire have had it long enough, and someone else should have a turn.

I’m not holding my breath, though. And my Uncle John (resident of Derry) is going to kill me.

I’ve been holding this one in for a while, because I keep waiting for someone else to write about it–mainstream media (Dan Froomkin of the Post, Dan Savage of the Boston Globe; somebody), bloggers (Glenn Greenwald or Andrew Sullivan both seemed like good candidates), but no one has. Neither have I heard Keith Olbermann address it, either.

Not this issue of torture and the U.S. policy towards it. We’ve all heard and read plenty about that. No; I’m talking about the absolutely Orwellian approach to defining and talking about torture that the Bush Administration has taken. And I don’t know about y’all, but it absolutely outrages me. (And while I don’t know about anyone else, it is clear as crystal to me that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and a lot of other members of this Administration–Yoo, Gonzales, and others–are clearly guilty of war crimes.)

Let me ‘splain.

I’ve been wondering when the mainstream media (MSM) was going to call Bush and Cheney on their obvious B.S. when they stand up there and say, flat-out, “We do not torture.” Bush does it any time he is asked about it, and Cheney just did it a couple of week ago on Larry King. How on God’s green Earth can they do this when we know that the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo has been using waterboarding, hypothermia, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and other techniques that were used by (for example) Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, the Gestapo, and others?

It’s simple, folks: through the assistance of spineless lawyers like John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, and Steven Hadley, the Administration has redefined torture to not include those actions. Torture, for these folks, only includes activities up to and including death and organ failure. Other than that, all bets are off (or as Cheney says, we went to “the dark side”). So when they say, “We don’t torture,” or “We abide by all legal obligations,” make sure to add in your mind, “and of course, we don’t consider waterboarding, stress positions, forced hypothermia, or sleep deprevation ‘torture’.”

How do we know this is true? Because any time one of these folks is asked about a specific (let’s not mince words here) torture like waterboarding, they always dodge the question. “We don’t reveal specific methods,” Cheney likes to say. This is a huge pile of hooey. They know that if they “reveal specific methods,” they will be admitting that they do torture, and won’t be able to lie in front of the American people any more. So they duck and weave and dodge, and don’t admit to the obvious, which is that they’ve redefined these horrible acts so that they don’t consider them legal torture, even though any civilized human being would.

I know that I am out there by the lights of some folks, but I truly believe that these folks are war criminals. They have approved–and continue to approve–the torture of human beings. They secretly violated the fourth Amendment to the Constitution (illegal search and seizure), and once caught, insisted that they have a right to violate it. They violated and continue to violate the FISA law. They are criminals, pure and simple, and they are getting away with it. They have broken their sacred oaths of office (“preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution,” remember?). And they are torturing our fellow human beings, who have been convicted of no crimes, and in most case not even accused of any crimes.

These are the people in charge of our country today. I can’t decide what boggles my mind more; that we live under the rule of such people, or that there are actually people out there (Steven Hayes of the Wall Street Journal, for example) who continue to defend their behavior. I am constantly torn between sadness and overwhelming rage.