More Screwed Now Than Ever Before

My rusty old steed has finally gone to CPU heaven; rather than changing careers, I decided to get a new computer. I do not like the new keyboard at all, nor do I care much for the new OS. And they don't seem to like me, either. So we're having a big battle and not much else is getting done. All my blogs have been dormant.

But I've been reading as much as possible ... and I can't shake the feeling that we're more screwed now than ever before, though it seems hardly anyone agrees with me.

Perhaps that's why I don't agree with them.

I thought Mark Morford was making sense in his newest -- Greetings from "the angry left" -- until the end of his column:

But don't you worry, because there's an even bigger secret looming that the right wing can't really mention right now. See, much as they want to sling "angry left" around and hope it sticks, there's simply no getting over the fact that, despite how it will take the Obama administration many years to repair the incredible damage Hurricane Bush hath wrought, most of us on the left are actually feeling pretty damn good these days. Happy, even.

See, we know the tide has turned. The Bush Dark Days are nearly over. The Obama groundswell is historic, extraordinary, unstoppable. The GOP had its turn, was handed six years of unprecedented, unchecked power, and very nearly destroyed the country. Even Republican leaders now openly admit their party is a mess, shattered and gutted by Bush, will take years and decades to restore to something resembling dignity. And McCain/Palin? An aberration, one of the most disquieting quasi-conservative tickets to ever give a nation the creeps.

So then, trust me when I say, try as they might, "the angry left" won't stick. As anyone with the slightest sense of history and poetic justice knows, such a jab is merely the final, desperate wailings of the bankrupt, the shameful, and the doomed.

It's too bad how he's got it all twisted around there. It's America that's bankrupt and doomed, not the Republican party. As for shameful, I would use that word to describe Barack Obama and the people who still support him.

But Mark Morford thinks the Obama administration is going to reverse the depredations of the Bush administration and that's why The Left is not Angry. Uh-huh. Sure, Mark.

The only problem with this analysis in my opinion is that there isn't a shred of evidence that Obama wants to do anything of the kind, and plenty of evidence to the contrary; in the meantime Obama is showing himself to be utterly shameless with respect to a massive war crime as well as the betrayal of the vast majority of American voters. In other words, he is ready to be Commander-in-Chief.

And Mark Morford may speak for The Left but he certainly doesn't speak for me. Oh well.

At At-Largely, Jeff Huber slays a pack of stupid little lies in his newest -- They Lied with Their Boots On -- but along the way he sips from the Magical Chalice containing the Big Lie. As usual.

Huber rips into David Petraeus for saying things he can't prove, writing:

It's the eye-watering lies of the neoconservative oligarchy that everyone remembers, but I've come to believe the little lies they tell reveal more about their malignant nature, and I'm particularly interested when these venial mendacities get dropped not by our politicians, but by our ever growing phalanx of political generals.
...

[Petraus] said that senior Al Qaeda leaders "might be" diverting fighters from the war in Iraq to the Afghan frontier area. He also said that Al Qaeda "might be" reconsidering Iraq as its highest priority war front. What made him say this "might be" happening is "some intelligence that has picked this up.” In case you're wondering what "some intelligence" might consist of, Petraeus explained that, "It's not solid gold intelligence." And "not solid gold intelligence" means what, exactly, General?

“There are unsubstantiated rumors and reflections that perhaps some foreign fighters originally intended for Iraq may have gone to the FATA," Petraeus finally told AP, which means in point of fact that the entire story about al Qaeda in Iraq transferring itself to the Bananastans is total f***ing bulls***; but that didn't keep Petraeus from telling it or the Associated Press from running it.

And that's quite legitimate, but on the other hand consider this nonchalant reference to an even bigger lie, portrayed here as truth:

... you can smuggle dribs and drabs of martyrdom interns from Baghdad to Islamabad or wherever. You'd do that with key leadership personnel, or with special task operatives like the carload of out-of-towners who pulled off the 9/11 attacks. But it's not like the Petraeuses of this world would have you believe ...

The problem, of course, is that IF a cartload of out-of-towners had pulled off the 9/11 attacks, the entire terror war might be somewhat justified and the fact that Petraeus is exaggerating wildly now would be of minor import.

In order to believe the big lie, you also have to believe that a 47-story skyscraper that wasn't hit by a plane disintegrated in seven seconds, due to thermal expansion -- the first and only building to do so in the history of the world.

Yeah, right!

The NIST report by its own admission is utter horse manure, but Barack Obama buys the 9/11 Myth just as fully as John McCain does ... and while guys like Huber and Morford drink from the poisoned chalice, shake their bloody pom-poms and dream their pipe dreams, the biggest lies of all are still standing, and growing, and being reinforced in hundreds of millions of ways.

The foul and bloody chimera erected seven years ago is becoming more solid all the time.

Meanwhile, Robert Parry has been both Too Bad and As Usual lately as well, as prior trends have continued, and the former Consortium News has now become Cheering For Obama.

Recently, Parry has been writing about McCain and Palin and how phony they are; nothing of the sort about Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They're the good guys in an ever-evolving tale of news and politics, from one of the formerly great investigative journalists of his bygone era. Very sad and getting worse.

Why, among all the chumps writing today, do I pick on these three? Some sort of moral deficiency on my part, I suppose.

I used to think these three writers were excellent. I used to read them all the time.

Now I can't break the habit, even though they make me so sad and/or angry so often.

Sometimes I think that by sidestepping the big questions and/or supporting the big lie and/or ignoring the words and sponsors of their chosen candidate, they're insulting my intelligence.

Other times I think I'm insulting my own intelligence by continuing to read them ... but what else is there to read?

Plenty.

Gandhi is all the way in Australia but he can see what Obama is up to.

Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama said the surge of American forces in Iraq has ``succeeded beyond our wildest dreams,'' though Iraqis still haven't done enough to take responsibility for their country.

``The surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,'' Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, said in a recorded interview broadcast tonight on Fox News's ``The O'Reilly Factor'' program.

Gandhi asks:

Is it time to vote Green yet?

Yes!

John Caruso was paying attention and his post at A Distant Ocean bears the perfect title: "Obama and O'Reilly share a sip from the blood cup":

Just in case you missed it, here's another lovely nugget (or see the video here) to share with your Democrat friends:

Sen. Barack Obama: “Bill, what I’ve said is—I’ve already said it succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

Bill O’Reilly: “Right! So why can’t you just say, I was right in the beginning, and I was wrong about the surge?"

Sen. Obama: “Because there is an underlying problem with what we’ve done. We have reduced the violence…”

O’Reilly: “Yeah?”

Sen. Obama: “...but the Iraqis still haven’t taken responsibility! And we still don’t have the kind of political reconciliation. We are still spending, Bill, $10 [billion] to $12 billion a month.”

O’Reilly: “And I hope, if you’re president, you can get them to kick in and pay us back.”

Sen. Obama: “They’ve got $79 billion in New York!”

O’Reilly: “And I’ll go with you!”

Sen. Obama: “Let’s go!”

O’Reilly: “We’ll get some of that money back.”

As a friend said: let's make them pay for the whip we're using to beat them!

Exactly. Why not? Iraqis have to take responsibility for their own country now; this is an ownership society! And as the "Angry Left" used to say, we don't own Iraq.

Instead Iraq is the scene of an enormous and ongoing crime -- a war crime, a crime against humanity, the most serious offense against the most serious legal strictures ever passed -- and nobody -- left, right, or center -- will say anything about it, other than a few madmen on the net.

Chris Floyd must be the maddest of all the internet madmen; his four most recent posts combine to tell an awesome tale:

Surge Protectors: Obama Embraces Bush-McCain Spin on Iraq

Both parties support a heinous lie, a brutal crime against innocent people which is hailed as a success. Meanwhile ...

Work of Evil: Beyond the Worst-Case Scenario in Somalia

... yet another country is being destroyed as part of the Terror War, by proxy and for gas and oil, and without the knowledge or consent (or, apparently, much concern) of the American people.

Rebel Yell: Resistance and Renaissance in the Age of Terror

What's a self-respecting human to do? Submit to the craziness, or fight back in defense of life and dignity?

Fight back against what? The root of all evil?

Gobblers on Parade: Portrait of a Highly Successful System

Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie...

To comment on this post, please click here and join the Winter Patriot community.

Another Sure Sign That The Surge Has Worked

U.S. Armor[ed] Forces Join Offensive in Baghdad Against Sadr Militia: Americans Appear to Take the Lead as Iraqi Units Wait

By Sudarsan Raghavan and Sholnn Freeman | Washington Post Foreign Service | Friday, March 28, 2008

U.S. forces in armored vehicles battled Mahdi Army fighters Thursday in the vast Shiite stronghold of Sadr City and military officials said Friday that U.S. aircraft bombed militant positions in the southern city of Basra, as the American role in a campaign against party-backed militias appeared to expand. Iraqi army and police units appeared to be largely holding to the outskirts of the Sadr City fighting, as American troops took the lead.

Four U.S. Stryker armored vehicles were seen in Sadr City by a Washington Post correspondent, one of them engaging Mahdi Army militiamen with heavy fire. The din of American weapons, along with the Mahdi Army's AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, was heard through much of the day. U.S. helicopters and drones buzzed overhead.

The clashes suggested that American forces were being drawn more deeply into a broad offensive that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, launched in the southern city of Basra on Tuesday, saying death squads, criminal gangs and rogue militias were the targets. The Mahdi Army of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite rival of Maliki, appeared to have taken the brunt of the attacks; fighting spread to many southern cities and parts of Baghdad.

As President Bush told an Ohio audience that Iraq was returning to "normalcy," administration officials in Washington held meetings to assess what appeared to be a rapidly deteriorating security situation in many parts of the country.

The Washington Post has more, and there are something like 12,000 other news articles floating around -- all of which show that the surge has worked very well so far.

But none of them, to my knowledge, explains how we can tell for sure that the surge is a success. And -- let's make no mistake -- the surge is a success.

The analysis goes like this: if the violence decreases, that shows US troops are good for Iraq, withdrawing them would be a bad move, and if we do anything, we should probably send more.

On the other hand, if the violence increases, that shows Iraq is in danger, we definitely should send more troops, and withdrawing would be a very bad move.

And since the war is "long" -- in other words, since we're in it to fight, not to win -- then no matter what happens, we probably (or definitely) should send more troops, and bringing them home would be a bad (or very bad) idea. So the surge is a sure success.

And it had to be; it was designed that way. Sending more troops could only enlarge and extend the war, which was the whole point in the first place.

What did you think? The war in Iraq was about WMD?

Of course the surge has worked. It couldn't not work!

O ye of little faith!!

Visions Of The Surge

Like everything else in life, how you see the Surge depends on where you stand.

Thomas Lifson, editor and publisher of the euphemistically named "American Thinker", encapsulates the "conservative" view at the equally euphemistic "Real Clear Politics", in a piece called "The Winter of Conservative Discontent", where Lifson writes:

Iraq was a horrendous disaster, and then it just vanished from consideration as the Surge turned things around.

Lifson's analysis suffers from one weakness only. It doesn't take into account the possibility that the government may be lying.

The "good news" from Iraq certainly seems fabricated to me, and whether it's legitimate or not, it's still insultingly trivial.

Iraq vanished from the headlines because the "liberal" media failed to carry all the good news in banner type, but also because the "liberal" media failed to pursue the obvious story lines, including but not limited to: What are we doing to Iraq? and Why? and What is the depleted uranium doing to our soldiers? and What is it doing to the Iraqi people? and What will it do to life on Earth?

But all these questions are always omitted from the "conservative" "frame" of Iraq, so Thomas Lifson might almost seem to make a little bit of sense -- if you're as dumb as a stick.

The "Good News" From Iraq

What good news is there from Iraq? Sectarian violence is down?

Down from what? Horrendous levels, of course. And how far down? Not all that far, actually. Can other factors account for the downward trends? Sure, they can. Let's start with the redefinition of sectarian violence: Do we have a problem with car bombs? Just stop counting them. Do we want to decrease sectarian violence? No trouble. We can just change the way we classify different types of "injuries".

What other good news is there from Iraq? Casualty rates are down?

Let's talk about how an occupying force can reduce its casualties by changing tactics: If you keep your patrolling to a minimum and bomb the smithereens out of residential areas in the middle of the night, you can cut your losses drastically. And that's what the Americans seem to have done.

But all of this is way outside the frame at "Real Clear Politics", just as it is at "American Thinker", and at every other place where dunderheads gather to slurp Kool-Aid.

The situation elsewhere is a different.

Over at the Washington Independent, Spencer Ackerman remembers when the surge was about something more than short-term reduction in mortality rates. In "Security Gains From 'Surge' Backsliding: New Iraq Security Statistics Show Uptick in Explosions", he writes:

It was the crescendo of an otherwise flat State of the Union address. "Ladies and Gentlemen," President George W. Bush declared Monday night, "some may deny the surge is working, but among terrorists there is no doubt." Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), The Hill reported, rose in applause.

Bush’s speech was one of the more restrained descriptions of the surge—last year’s decision to send an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq. In recent weeks, politicians and commentators have moved beyond saying the surge is working to the blunter declaration that the surge "worked," full-stop. Bill Kristol, declaring Gen. David Petraeus his Man of the Year, wrote in a Weekly Standard editorial, "We are now winning the war. " In his New York Times column, Kristol challenged the Democratic candidates to "say the surge worked." On Jan. 10, the first anniversary of the surge, the GOP presidential front-runner, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), co-wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined, flatly, "The Surge Worked."

It used to be that surge enthusiasts would at least hint at the unachieved strategic objective of the surge. As Bush himself put it, the surge was meant to provide the Iraqi government "the breathing space it needs to make progress" on sectarian reconciliation. But reconciliation hasn’t happened, and, in important respects, sectarianism has deepened over the past year. So surgeniks are now simply declaring victory by the sheer fact of reduced violence itself, unmoored to any strategic goal.

Ackerman goes on to note rising casualty rates and concludes that the surge has failed on two counts: the "reconciliation" hasn't happened, and the violence is getting worse again. Ackerman therefore concludes that the Surge has failed.

Who's right? Neither of them, in my view.

The Flaw In The Analyses

Ackerman's analysis suffers from the same flaw that clobbered Lifson's: gullibility. Lifson buys every bit of propaganda ever produced, apparently; and Ackerman doesn't fare quite so poorly. But Ackerman judges the Surge by the standards set for it by its proponents, who may possibly have been pulling wool over somebody's eyes.

By any sane and rational analysis, the "justification" Bush advanced for the Surge was -- if not a flat-out lie -- extremely disingenuous.

Whenever somebody says "I'm going to make this unpopular move in order to allow other people to do what I want them to do," red flags should go up everywhere. This is a "booby-trapped test", so to speak, akin to the old "Heads I win, Tails you lose" con-game.

If Iraq had made progress toward the so-called "reconciliation", Bush could have taken the credit. But now no progress has been made, so Bush and his bootlickers can blame the Iraqis -- and they do!

Why is this so hard to see?

Over at Kiko's House, Shaun Mullen makes the same kind of mistakes as Spencer Ackerman, but he rides the train of thought even further:

An Iraq War Roundup: The Surge ‘Window’ Begins to Close & Other Forever War News

You don’t have to be a bloody genius to know that sooner or later the window of opportunity for Iraqi national reconciliation and a lasting reduction in sectarian violence as a result of the successes of the Surge would begin to close unless there was progress on the part of the Baghdad government.

Well, boys and girls, it would appear that the window is indeed beginning to close since there has been no progress whatsoever except for a totally bogus un-de-Baathification law passed earlier this month.[...]

[Y]ou’d hardly know that nearly two thirds of Americans want the U.S. to get the hell out of Iraq, according to one recent poll.

But alas, that’s not going to happen because the Al-Maliki government has no incentive to take advantage of the opening the Surge has given it because President Bush has given something far more important to [him] and his Shiite cronies — coup insurance in the form of a long-term troop presence. This is the status quo for the foreseeable future. There is no post-Surge strategy, let alone an endgame, because in the Bush Universe politics yet again trump policy.

Is this clear or am I hallucinating? As I read it, Mullen believes the US won't be leaving Iraq "because the Al-Maliki government has no incentive" to proceed with the "reconciliation". And that Bush has no strategy for anything approximating a withdrawal because "politics trump policy".

Nonsense

It's nonsense, of course. There can be no reconciliation in the midst of a civil war, least of all in a country occupied by foreign troops. That's doubly true when the people screaming loudest for reconciliation are the occupying foreigners, and you can redouble if the same people started the civil war.

Unless I'm confusing a bundle of very clear signals, the US won't be leaving for Iraq for the same reason the US invaded Iraq in the first place: the oil. And there is no post-Surge strategy for the same reason there was never any exit strategy of any kind: we never intended to leave -- and we still don't!

None of this ever seems to dawn on Cernig, who picks up the ball from Mullen and runs even farther with it, at Larisa Alexandrovna's blog, At-Largely:

Beware Of Closing Doors

Think-tank types - and not just those on the Left - are beginning to write that the window of opportunity the Surge was intended to force open is now closing. But if the window for the Iraqi government to firmly grasp reconciliation is closing then so is the US' chance to head for the exit while on a Surge of favorable news. [...]

It doesn't matter how many military battles the US wins - it will lose in the long run if AQ [al Qaeda] can simply help keep Iraq unstable. The political dynamic in Iraq means AQ can claim victory just by surviving but the Bush administration (and [its] supporters) are deliberately myopic about Iraq's [internecine] mess simply because it holds little hope of good news, let alone victory. [...]

So the US finds itself in a no-win situation. To withdraw now would seem to invite either a civil war or the ascendancy of nationalists from both Sunni and Shiite sides who would be no use at all in forming a bastion of pro-American power in the Middle East. Yet to remain to try prevent this [occurring] will only put off the inevitable while bloodying American hands [...] Bush has punted the whole issue, leaving it for the next president -- or perhaps even the one after that -- to tell the US public the bad news. That the US should have gotten out while the getting was comparatively good.

It's almost pointless to comment on this; we lost touch with reality several spins back.

Lost: The Essential Point

The essential point, it seems to me, is lost in virtually all the war coverage, on both sides of "the debate", which increasingly seems to bear no relationship to reality whatsoever.

Scott Ritter gets close to this point in his recent essay for TruthDig, "Iraq’s Tragic Future":

The continued ambivalence of the American population as a whole toward the war in Iraq, perhaps best manifested by the superficiality of the slogan “Support the Troops,” all the while remaining ignorant of what the troops are actually doing...

But Ritter himself gives no hint of the ingredient that is always missing from the story.

What The Troops Are Actually Doing

The Pentagon has clamped down so severely on news from occupied Iraq that we're forced to rely on very unofficial sources. And the news we receive in this way may have traveled through informal channels. But it's all we've got.

Late last month, Layla Anwar, author of Arab Woman Blues, spoke at length with her Uncle Abu Nabil, who had "just arrived from Baghdad, via Erbil" and who "had much to tell".

A summary of that conversation served as the centerpiece of a post called "Bits & Pieces from the Iraqi Coffin", from which I quote extensively here. (I have added space, corrected typos, and snipped a great deal. I've also added to the headings.)

Abu Nabil is not a Baathist, but is a retired judge and has very good contacts and inside information. He is half Sunni/half Shia. He has family in Basra, Baghdad and Erbil.

We talked for hours and he had a lot to tell me. [...] I would like you to read it CAREFULLY, SLOWLY and THINK! [...]

Basra (Southern Iraq) -- "Pictures Of Turbaned Snakes Everywhere"

- Most official and non-official buildings have inscriptions in Farsi/Persian. They have been renamed in Persian.

- Farsi is spoken in Basra, alongside Arabic.

- Monetary dealings can be done in either Tooman (Iranian currency) or Iraqi dinars. That means when you buy something you can pay in both currencies.

- The pictures of Khomeini, Ahmadinejad, Al Hakeem, Muqtada Al-Sadr [photo] are everywhere. When you think that critiques of President Saddam Hussein accused him of imposing the personality cult and you see these pictures of turbaned snakes everywhere... Makes you wonder, does it not?

- The Iranian and sectarian militias have infiltrated the highest echelons of police, army, government officials. Any criticism means death.

- ALL women are forced to veil. And the number of women murdered by those militias is much higher than the official figure given (153).

- People FEAR speaking out against all the human rights abuses that are taking place in Basra, for they run the risk of disappearing in no time.

- Corruption is endemic.

- Kuwaitis are often seen in Basra and have numerous business deals with the Iranians there.

- Drugs and arms are the main bread and butter of the sectarian militias.

- Basra is now unofficially considered a state of its own.

Erbil (Northern Iraq) -- "Iraqis Have Been Imprisoned For Waving The Iraqi Flag"

- Masoud Barazani, the Kurdish, Mossad/CIA agent, crook, embezzler, thug, arm dealer, insists on changing the Iraqi flag.

- Several Iraqis have been imprisoned for waving the Iraqi flag in “Kurdistan.”

- [Masoud Barazani] and his family have monopoly over all businesses and contracts to the annoyance of the Kurdish population.[...]

- Many Kurds do not approve of what is happening but are AFRAID to voice their discontent.

- The statues of Masoud Barazani and his father are found on every street corner. So are his pictures and that of his father. And the Kurds, along with sectarian Shias, criticized President Saddam Hussein for having portraits.

- The majority of the Kurdish population is impoverished and does not have access to decent medical care.

- Honor killings against women in the Kurdish villages are very common.

- Both Masood Barazani and Jalal Talabani (the so-called current president of Iraq) are dealing in Iraqi oil through dubious contracts, exporting it and cashing in the profits - just like their corrupt Shia counterparts.

Baghdad (Central Iraq) -- "Concrete Blocks, Checkpoints, Barbed Wires, Walls EVERYWHERE"

- Baghdad in the past 6 months has changed even more. The road from the Airport to central Baghdad is unrecognizable.

- There are concrete blocks, checkpoints, barbed wires, walls EVERYWHERE. Authorizations from BOTH the militias and the American forces are demanded to move from one neighborhood to another.

- The streets have become garbage containers. The garbage has reached the sky.

- There is a terrible shortage of electricity, water, and fuel.

- Inflation is over 110%.

- The health system is in shambles. Doctors cannot be found. Some have sought refuge in Erbil and most have escaped outside the country.

- It is common knowledge in Baghdad that those who murdered the scientists, academics and doctors were the IRANIAN Quds brigades and paid AMERICAN death contractors including the MOSSAD.

"Al-Qaeda Is Financed By BOTH America And Iran"

- It is common knowledge in Baghdad, that Al-Qaeda is financed by BOTH America and Iran.

- Rape is common. Many women are raped by militias, police and armed forces but they DARE NOT report it.

- Women are forced to take up the veil, including the few left Christian Baghdadis, even young school girls are veiled out of FEAR.

- Orphaned children live in the streets. American troops throw a few candies their way, high above, from their humvees, as if feeding animals. [...]

- One finds so many drug addicts and drugs dealers in Baghdad (something unheard of during our “dictatorship”)

- Many people DARE NOT send their children to school for security reasons. Also schools are frequent targets for both the sectarian militias and the American occupation forces.

"What Were Mixed Neighborhoods Are Totally Ethnically Cleansed"

- What were mixed neighborhoods are totally ethnically cleansed [and] are now Shia only neighborhoods.

- A lot of the true Iraqi Shias are AFRAID to speak out against the sectarian militias.

- In Sunni neighborhoods, you find on a regular basis, the IRANIAN Quds Brigades harassing the people, burning down Sunnis mosques, insulting and slandering. In one Sunni neighborhood, one week ago, they caught 4 Iranians cursing and slandering the Sunnis and the Americans were there and did nothing.

- You will see in most neighborhoods, including Sunni ones, pictures and portraits of Muqtada al Sadr, Abdel Azeez Al-Hakeem and other turbaned mullahs, with black or green flags waving. The Badr Brigades posters include the following remarks: “District no. 1, 2, 3… Islamic Revolutionary Council of Iraq/Iranian Quds Brigades.” They control every district.

- Hadi Al-Amiri, military head of the armed Badr Brigades is known to be a notorious killer. Even Bremer said so in his memoirs. He [...] arrived on American tanks from Iran.

- Muqtada Al-Sadr so-called freeze on all “activities” are due to a fall out with Al-Hakeem head of SCII and Badr Brigades. This latter promised him and his Jaysh Al-Mahdi chunks of the bounty, if he agreed to ethnically cleanse Sunnis.

The SCII and Badr Brigades did not deliver, that is why Muqtada Al-Sadr and his Jaysh Al-Mahdi s decided to supposedly stop their sectarian cleansing until further notice.

- The Sawha or Awakening Councils are another American ploy to contain the Resistance. After being massacred by both the Iranian sectarian shias and Al-Qaeda, Sunnis and the Resistance have realized that both Al-Qaeda and the Shia sectarian militias were working for the Americans and the Iranians.

- People are AFRAID to speak out, they can easily be abducted, disappear, get imprisoned, or get killed by the militias, the police or the armed forces both American and Iraqi.

"Everyone Hates The Americans." ... "We Are Prisoners In Our homes."

- Everyone hates the Americans. They shoot anyone standing in their way, physically eliminate them. When they drive around, if you don’t stop and stand aside, they shoot you. As simple as that.

- The Americans are aware of what Iran and its militias are doing in Baghdad. They are also aware of the sectarian nature of the Government, but they don’t seem to mind. As long as their presence is secured, that is all they care about.

- We are prisoners in our homes. No one dares go out, no one dares do anything. It is unbearable. You never know when a bullet or a mortar will fall on your head.

- Iraq is in bits and pieces. I don’t when and who will be put together again.

The above is what Uncle Abu Nabil said word for word. I knew all of that anyway but he just confirmed it to me. But what he was trying to tell me is that the situation is getting worse. And that Iraq and Baghdad in particular have dramatically changed.
...

We ended our conversation with a question he posed and I hope you will take time to ponder and answer it yourselves.

He said “I really don’t understand why people are defending Iran against an American attack. Iran is in the heart of occupied Baghdad. The Americans we will eventually drive away, but Iran is a neighbor, It will be more difficult to get rid of that one. Why did the Americans hand Iraq to the Iranians? This I don’t understand. Must have been an agreement between both.”

Thomas Lifson was right, of course. And so was John McCain. The Surge Worked.

It drove another dagger into the heart of Iraq. It shut down media criticism of the war. It put us one step closer to all that oil. And it made sure everybody in Iraq will hate us -- forever.

So now we can never leave.

It's astonishing how ungrateful the Iraqis are after all we have done for them. We've even inspired their children to create innovative art.

Try To Imagine: NATO Unchained With Petraeus At The Helm And Nukes In The Quiver

A multinational team of elderly hijackers is trying to cut NATO loose from its few lawful restraints. If they succeed, NATO would no longer need the consent of its constituent nations and/or the UN before it attacked defenseless countries at the direction of the USA. And furthermore, it would feel comfortable not only threatening to use nuclear weapons in a first-strike role, but actually using them. This is utter madness, of course, and therefore entirely to be expected.

Chris Floyd explains it in a masterful post: "The New New World Order: A First-Strike NATO Über Alles", which you should read in full -- soon.

Coincidentally -- or not! -- there appears in the New York Times a piece by Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt announcing that

The Pentagon is considering Gen. David H. Petraeus for the top NATO command later this year

Gordon and Schmitt explain that this move

would give the general, the top American commander in Iraq, a high-level post during the next administration

but they say the matter

has raised concerns about the practice of rotating war commanders.

I should say so. Plenty of questions here, too.

Why? It's a reward.

A senior Pentagon official said that it was weighing “a next assignment for Petraeus” and that the NATO post was a possibility. “He deserves one and that has also always been a highly prestigious position,” the official said.

How? Congressional approval.

In one approach under discussion, General Petraeus would be nominated and confirmed for the NATO post before the end of September, when Congress is expected to break for the presidential election.

When? Before January of 2009.

He might stay in Iraq for some time after that before moving to the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, but would take his post before a new president takes office.

What are these people thinking?

A NATO post would give him additional command experience in an important but less politically contentious region, potentially positioning him as a strong candidate in a few years to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, several military officials said. They and some others who discussed the potential appointment declined to be identified because they were speaking about an internal personnel matter.

So why are they talking? Just passing the time of day with a few ace reporters?

No, really. What's up?

General Petraeus’s last post in Europe was as a senior officer for the NATO force in Bosnia, where he served a tour in 2001 and 2002. “He did a great job for me as a one-star in Bosnia,” said Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, who served as NATO commander at the time and has since retired. “He would have the credibility to keep Afghanistan focused for NATO.”

I never know what to make of Michael Gordon but I get the impression that whenever anybody in the Pentagon needs to leak some goodies, there's a short list of reporters he might call, and our man at the NYT is on that list.

So this story is probably a trial balloon, but the idea is actually quite perfect, when you think about it. Petraeus gets a reward for the alleged success of the so-called surge, NATO gets Petraeus to put Afghanistan back on the map of GWOT, Petraeus gets additional "command experience" in a leading role in a war designed to last forever, after which he can become chairman of the Joint Chiefs, it puts a pro-Bush general in charge of NATO just in case 2009 brings a new President with new views ... and ... and ... and ... if it's not clear yet, the entire mode of thought expressed here confirms that NATO really is a branch of the Pentagon.

Put this together with what Chris Floyd has written (which is by far the larger story, by the way), and you get a very scary picture: nuclear NATO as a first-strike weapon in the American "quiver of escalation", led by a man who thinks nothing of walling in urban residents behind concrete barriers and bombing their homes in the middle of the night, then calling it "progress" and "democracy".

If anyone could say with a straight face, "We had to nuke the Middle East in order to save it," Petraeus is your man.

Now try to imagine this man leading a nuclear-armed rogue army called "NATO".

Don't take my word for it; read Chris:

The Lords of the West have called upon their elder chieftains of war to chart a course that will preserve their power and preeminence in the face of an ever-more uncertain future. The answer? A meaner, leaner NATO, openly committed to a nuclear first-strike strategy and stripped of all the "consensus" garbage that has sometimes hampered the organization's American bosses.

[and more...]

Tom Toles: Pacified By The Surge

Tom Toles: Progress In Both Directions

If you don't care which way you're going, any movement looks like progress. Or so they tell us.

Tom Toles: All The Progress We're Making

There You Go Again: Liberal Media Ask A Stupid Question And Give A Stupid Answer

Shankar Vedantam of the Washington Post tries to work out what will happen in Iraq, or tries to confuse the issue, or maybe he simply has trouble differentiating between "where" and "when".

In The Insurgency's Psychological Component, he's trying to answer

one simple question: Can an increased number of U.S. troops subdue the Iraqi insurgency?

and he gets two different opinions. From one expert, he gets this:

Alex Braithwaite of Colorado State University tracked insurgent attacks across Iraq's provinces over a six-month period from January to June 2005. On average, there were 16 attempted attacks in each province each week. Braithwaite found an inverse relationship between insurgent attacks and the presence of U.S. troops.

"The insurgency is most severe where U.S. troop presence is low," Braithwaite said, as he presented his findings last week at the American Political Science Association meeting in Chicago. "U.S. troops dampen the effects of the insurgency."

Another "expert" tells him this:

[Robert] Pape [photo] has found that 824 of [the 870 suicide attacks he has studied over the past 25 years], or 95 percent, have come from groups that are fighting against military occupations of their homeland. Pape found that 85 percent of all the suicide attacks in the last quarter-century have come about in response to U.S. combat operations. There were eight times as many suicide attacks in Iraq in 2006 as there were in 2003.

While suicide attacks account for only a part of the overall Iraqi insurgency, Pape argues that these attacks provide the most reliable measure of the state of the insurgency. Furthermore, they are among the deadliest sources of mayhem in Iraq today. Every case that Pape counts has been corroborated by at least two independent sources. Pape's figures are considered so rigorous that U.S. government officials now use his database, and he gets funding from the Defense Department.

"If you look at the chart [of suicide attacks] from 2004 to 2006, you see Iraq and Afghanistan exploding," Pape said. "American combat operations are directly associated with suicide terrorism. There was no suicide terrorism, and we go in and now there is suicide terrorism."

Pape believes his findings offer empirical proof that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have not lowered the risk of suicide attacks. Contrary to President Bush's argument that those wars provided the best way to lower the risk of suicide terrorism, Pape says the data show that launching overseas wars appears to be a way to increase the risk of suicide attacks.

And what do we learn from this? According to Shankar Vedantam,

the outcome of the troop increase hinges on whether the insurgency is primarily a mathematical phenomenon or a psychological phenomenon.

If the insurgency follows the rules of conventional mathematics, increasing the number of U.S. troops should produce a greater counterinsurgency effort and a more peaceful Iraq.

Did you get that? It's a fact that the insurgent attacks are mostly happening where the troops are weakest. This fact becomes "conventional mathematics". It's a fact that the attacks are most numerous when the attackers are fighting against foreign -- especially American -- occupation. This fact becomes "a psychological phenomenon". Now the question becomes "whether the insurgency is primarily a mathematical phenomenon or a psychological phenomenon".

Why?

Isn't it clear yet? The experts' data didn't disagree, even though their opinions did. They were talking about two different things, so there was need to propose an either/or explanation.

It can be both. In fact it is both.

Insurgent attacks happen as a result of foreign occupation and they are targeted at the occupier's weakest spots.

What the heck was so hard about that?

But if you pull a little "false binary" out of the bag of tricks, cast this definite conclusion as an either/or question, and if you implicitly assume that both possibilities are equally likely, then you can theoretically wind up on "if it's this rather than that" and base your conclusions on a flip of a coin, or a predetermined outlook perchance.

And in the meantime you can disregard the data from both experts as well as the opinion of the expert that makes sense, and accept the spin of the expert whose data don't really apply to your question, which should have been whether an increased and continued surge would stop the insurgency, rather than where the insurgents would attack.

It's the damned liberal media all over again, and to top it all off, Shankar Vedantam outlines a murderous test to see whether the doomed surge can possibly "succeed":

Unlike many of the other theories circulating in Washington, his theory can be put to a simple test, Pape said. For the first time, Pape said in an interview at the political science convention in Chicago, the troop buildup in Iraq has aggressively targeted Shiite groups, such as Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Until now, suicide attackers have been largely limited to Iraq's minority Sunni population. Pape believes that U.S. operations against Shiite groups will cause increasing numbers of Shiites to see the Americans the way many Iraqi Sunnis do -- as occupiers, rather than liberators.

If foreign occupations do indeed provide the strategic fuel for insurgencies, Pape said, Americans should expect to see a spate of Shiite suicide attacks. He said he could not predict when the insurgency would take that disturbing turn but said it would be soon: "We're heading toward the cocktail of conditions that favor suicide terrorism from the Shia."

The entire vicious liberal media lie is archived here.

Sink Or Swim With The Invisible Surge

An "invisible surge" is flowing in the Homeland -- a substantial increase in the quantity and quality of the pro-war propaganda. I first noticed it a couple of weeks ago; now I think it probably started a week earlier.

Regardless of when it started, the manure has been flowing faster and more furious than ever, and it's been moving mountains. Here's one example among many:

On Monday it seemed amazing that a prominent Democratic Senator would call for the removal of the famously democratically-elected government of Iraq. But within the past few days we have seen similar calls (or warnings) from a wide variety of sources.

By Wednesday the mainstream press had turned fully against Nuri al-Maliki and he seemed to know it; I couldn't help thinking "Sink or Swim with Ngo Dinh Diem", recalling the famously democratically-elected President of South Vietnam, who held the position for eight years before being kidnapped and eventually assassinated in what would be the first of many coups d'etat in the ill-fated South Vietnamese "republic".

President Bush's inept conflation of Vietnam and Iraq certainly hasn't helped me to sweep the inane slogan from my mind, nor have I managed to forget that Diem's assassination preceded that of JFK by less than three weeks.

None of this would have any bearing of course on rumors of an impending coup d'etat coming from the Iraqi exile community, via Professor Juan Cole's blog, Informed Comment.

Military Coup Planned for Iraq?

A rumor is circulating among well-connected and formerly high-level Iraqi bureaucrats in exile in places like Damascus that a military coup is being prepared for Iraq. I received the following from a reliable, knowledgeable contact. There is no certitude that this plan can or will be implemented. That it is being discussed at high levels seems highly likely.

"There is serious talk of a military commission (majlis `askari) to take over the government. The parties would be banned from holding positions, and all the ministers would be technocrats, so to speak... [The writer indicates that attempts have been made to recruit cabinet members from the ranks of expatriate technocrats.]

The six-member board or commission would be composed on non-political former military personnel who are presently not part of the government OR the military establishment, such as it is in Iraq at the moment. It is said that the Americans are supporting this behind the scenes.

The plan includes a two-year period during which political parties would not be permitted to be part of the government, but instead would prepare and strengthen the parties for an election which would not have lists, but real people running for real seats. The two year period would be designed to take control of security and restore infrastructure.

...[I]t is another [desperate plan], but one which many many Iraqis will support, since they are sick of their country being pulled apart by the "imports" - Maliki, Allawi, Jaafari et al. The military group is composed of internals, people who have the goal of securing the country even at the risk of no democracy, so they say."

I can't help but wonder what they mean when they say "securing the country even at the risk of no democracy". Do they mean to sign the damned Oil Law no matter how anti-democratic it may be, in the hope that the Americans will then try to provide security rather than fomenting further "sectarian violence"?

And if not, what else could they be talking about? Could they be so disconnected from reality that they fail to see the American occupation as an oil heist? And does it even matter? If, as they say, "the Americans are supporting this behind the scenes", then the question is moot, is it not?

Bush and the bipartisan foreign policy consensus have made it very clear that they are not interested in any Iraqi government that doesn't give them what they want: a stable puppet government, long-term access to huge military bases, and of course the oil. (In America, this is called "meeting benchmarks".)

Is it possible that the "plotters in exile", if that's what they are, are contemplating taking power in Iraq and then defying the Americans? Who would be so mad? Why not live a life of relative luxury in exile?

All in all, strikes me as quite likely that a coup is being planned, and that the pronouncements of Senator Levin and others may be intended to prepare the American public not so much for the event but for the rest of the spin which will precede and follow it.

As for the whispers in the Iraqi exile community, I find them most intriguing and I imagine we'll be learning much more about them very shortly. Keeping an eye on Professor Cole's blog seems like a good idea -- even better than usual.

Decades of sleuthing by generations of scholars has failed to give a definitive answer to the question of whether the US was behind the Diem coup. It appears that JFK knew nothing of it, and certainly didn't approve it; but it's not impossible for events to take place without the knowledge and consent of the president.

Certainly, if there is a coup in Iraq and if it is perpetrated by Americans, they won't leave much evidence behind.

Part of covering their tracks would involve establishing what they call "plausible deniability". Creating "plausible deniability" would entail the creation of "patsies", bogus suspects on whom the coup could be blamed. Where would you find such bogus suspects? In the Iraqi exile community? Hmmm.

Am I accusing Professor Cole of anything untoward? Certainly not. He appears to be honestly reporting what he learns. What more can anyone ask?

Is it possible that he and his sources are being used in some way? In other words, are his sources being lied to? ... Well, of course it is, but that's all entirely speculative, and based on nothing.

On the other hand, I know for a fact that when the surge becomes a flood, it's gonna come in the front door and the back door at the same time.

Tom Toles: Shhh!

I love the line at the bottom: "Shhh! I never said which September".

I just can't say enough good things about Tom Toles -- I've been reading him for years and years and years and he keeps getting better and better and better.

Even though we complain about the depths to which the Washington Post has slunk, we have to give them some credit for luring Toles away from The Buffalo News. His work is political cartooning at its best, in my opinion, and I am humble to bring it to you here on my nearly frozen blog.

Good News From Iraq: 29 Villagers Killed In Diyala Province; None From Baquba!

Wake up the vice-president!

The Scotsman has some excellent breaking news, from Reuters:

Gunmen kill 29 Iraqi villagers

Twenty nine villagers were killed by men wearing Iraqi military uniforms who stormed their homes north of Baghdad on Monday, an Iraqi security official said on Tuesday.

Colonel Raghib Rawi, spokesman for security operations in Diyala province, said a large number of gunmen surrounded Duwailiya village, north of the city of Baquba, on Monday afternoon and then opened fire.

There were four people wounded in the attack, which he blamed on militants fleeing U.S. and Iraqi security forces who last month launched a major operation in Baquba, the capital of the religiously mixed Diyala province.

Thousands of troops swept into Baquba to drive out an estimated several hundred al Qaeda militants who had turned the city into a stronghold. But U.S. commanders say that many of the most senior al Qaeda fighters departed before their net closed.

This is what they mean when they say "The surge is working." We've chased them out of Baquba and now they're only killing people in Duwailiya! Hooray for us and don't you forget it!

This is the sort of thing the president could use to his advantage, as TIME's Joe Klein pointed out last week.

The President's tragic addiction to broad-brush propaganda prevented him from telling his Cleveland audience the one bit of good news emanating from Iraq in recent months -- that the Iraqi version of al-Qaeda (AQI is the military acronym) is being rejected by its Sunni hosts across the country; that recent U.S. military operations have forced AQI from some of its most important sanctuaries, like the city of Baqubah; that many al-Qaeda operatives are on the run; that even horrific explosions, like the bomb that killed more than 150 in the obscure town of Amerli, north of Baqubah, are a perverse form of good news. A bomb that size was probably intended for downtown Baghdad but couldn't reach its destination because U.S. forces have blocked the routes south.

You see? 150 people were killed in a single attack last week, but they lived in "the obscure town of Amerli" rather than one of AQI's most important sanctuaries, like Baquba, not to mention the world-famous utterly demolished city of Baghdad, so that's good news!

Who are we kidding? With a bomb that size, to kill only 150 people! That's excellent news!

Besides, a bomb that size was probably intended for downtown Manhattan.

The people of Baghdad generally don't understand how lucky they are, to have visiting American forces around who have blocked the routes south!! If only they understood how much good news is happening all around them, then they would be more grateful.

It may be hard to imagine but the implication is quite clear: some of the news coming from Iraq is fabulous, but you'll never hear about it. And why? Because the Liberal Media hates Bush and doesn't want you to know the good news? No; quite the opposite, in fact.

The president has to be picky; he can't share all the good news he gets, because then people might think we were winning!

And if we were winning we might have to go back home. As Joe Klein puts it,

The reason Bush didn't tout this success is byzantine: If al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia is on the run, if we have "turned a corner" against al-Qaeda, as a senior Administration official told me, then an argument can be made that it is time to begin planning our departure.

Slow down for a second; let's take that statement apart. Picky? Maybe, but it shows how dangerous the truth is, and how many layers of insulation the lies need.

Look carefully at what the "senior Administration official" is saying here: it's not just that we can't leave; and it's not just that we can't plan to leave; and it's not just that we can't begin planning to leave; we can't even allow an environment to develop in which it would be possible to make an argument that we should begin planning to leave.

The danger of course is not in the leaving; it's in the argument. This is the danger to all Infallible Leaders; as soon as they lose one argument, their facade begins to crumble and by the time it stops crumbling there's nothing left. So we're not supposed to think of any of that; the real message, reading Joe Klein between the lines, is that we've got nothing to worry about because the president has more good news than he can possibly use.

Lest any readers think I'm being unfair to Joe Klein, I hasten to add that in this very piece, Klein catches Bush in a lie! It's not so hard to do, I know -- but Klein does it, and he says so, in the bluntest possible way: L-I-E. This used to be unacceptable, not very long ago:

Recently, in his desperation, starting with his speech at the Naval War College on June 28, [Bush] has been telling an outright lie, and he repeated it now, awkwardly, in Cleveland: "The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is the crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims, trying to stop the advance of a system based upon liberty."

As Joe Klein points out, this is not exactly true. In fact, it's not even close.

But the debunking of one single Bush talking point seems more like political cover than real analysis. Because Joe Klein doesn't point out all the lies: in fact he laps 'em up! And he serves them back to his readers -- dressed to kill, as it were -- in a piece that, except for the passage quoted above, amounts to industrial strength bootlicking.

And it all starts this way:

"I want to talk about the war we're in," the President of the United States said in Cleveland, and then he sighed, an exhausted ahhhhh. "I didn't want to be a war President," he continued, and the stage was set for George W. Bush to say something real...

Does Joe Klein mean the stage is set for Bush to say something real because he's just said something totally unreal? Apparently not.

Klein seems to think that telling the pre-screened bootlickers he never wanted to be a "war president" was Bush's way of saying, "Hey, chumps: Listen up! I'm gonna let you in on some inside stuff now." But that's not the case at all.

The fact, amply documented, is this: Bush wanted to invade Iraq even before he took office. Even if Saddam Hussein had died or resigned or been abducted by aliens, the US was going to invade Iraq, if George Bush -- meaning Dick Cheney -- had anything to say about it.

In fact, George W. Bush had decided to be a war president before he ever took office.

So it's probably a good thing for Joe Klein that he stuck to debunking the al-Q'aeda / Iraq lie and didn't mention everything else, because, of course, Bush can always brush off the al-Q'aeda / Iraq "blunder" as a misunderstanding, whereas it's a good deal more difficult to brush off premeditated mass murder.

And now that Joe Klein has not called George Bush -- or Dick Cheney -- a premeditated mass murderer, he's probably not on the Enemies List, and he's still free to phone the White House and remind everybody -- as if Fat Karl needed any reminders -- that today's news from Iraq is good!

And what's the good news about the 29 Iraqi villagers who were shot dead like ducks on a pond?

* They didn't live in Baquba!

* And neither did any of the 150 people who were blown up last week in Amerli.

* None of them lived in Baghdad, either.

So there you go. Three bits of good news from Iraq.

In comparison, there have only been two bombs today in Baghdad itself, leaving a total of merely 14 dead, and just 16 wounded.

Not bad! 14 is way less than 29! Not bad at all!!

You see? Baghdad is safer than obscure little towns like Amerli and unknown little villages like Duwailiya ... and so is Baquba!

And all this is evidence -- evidence the blinkered liberal defeatists will never accept -- that The Surge Is Working!

Hooray for us and don't you forget it!

Marne Avalanche: Because Nobody Stops The Snowslide

The US surge in Iraq has launched yet another offensive operation.

"Marne Avalanche", involving about 8,000 troops, started today, according to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, which says the operation is intended to stem the flow of weapons and fighters into Baghdad from the south.

The operation takes its name from the French scene of two bloody World War I battles, both famous Allied victories. More than half a million men died in 1914 in the First Battle of the Marne, as the British and French stemmed a German invasion, transforming a war that appeared lost into a deadlock. Four years later, in the Second Battle of the Marne, Allied forces stopped another German advance and then executed a counter-attack which shifted the momentum of the war. As Wikipedia says, this "disastrous German defeat" was "the first step in a series of Allied victories that ended the war".

The Pentagon spin-meisters who name operations clearly know their military history; they also know they need a transformation. Unfortunately for them, it is not possible to replicate the historical impact of a given battle merely by naming an operation in its memory.

Aside from the wistfully intended symbolism, this operation -- this Marne Avalanche -- has nothing in common with either of its namesake battles. In those cases, "coalition forces" (British and French in 1914; British, French and American in 1918) stopped an invading (German) army in a "coalition" country (France).

Both Battles of the Marne did produce vast arrays of graves, however. Maybe that's what the Pentagon spin-meisters were thinking.

As the Washington Post reports, Marne Avalanche started in the dark -- and with a bang!

In pre-dawn raids, helicopter-borne troops swept into an area the U.S. military said was an al Qaeda safe haven around the Euphrates river valley, 35 km (22 miles) south of Baghdad.

The terrain, criss-crossed with an extensive canal system, has been the location of fierce fighting between U.S. forces and militants in the past and at least one air strike was called in during the early hours of the operation, a spokeswoman said.

Sounds like a bit of a revenge mission to me. But ...

"They captured a militant cell leader and seven of his lieutenants, as well as a mobile IED (improvised explosive device) factory," said Major Alayne Conway.

Well, if that's true, and that's a BIG IF, more power to 'em! It would be virtually the first time they'd told the truth in more than four years.

But it is very hard to take them seriously anymore -- ever. After year upon year of one lie after another, one "mistake" after another, a thinking observer has to start wondering: Do they even know where the "al-Q'aeda terrorists" are? And why is every Iraqi -- insurgent, civilian, whatever -- "al-Q'aeda" all of a sudden?

Because if all the Iraqis are al-Q'aeda, then they're everywhere, right?

They are, aren't they? And that means we can kill 'em all!

Marne Avalanche's companion operation, Arrowhead Ripper, has been doing an excellent job, as Dahr Jamail has reported, of raining death and devastation on places where al-Q'aeda used to be:

"The U.S. military bombed houses that were completely uninhabited," Kadhim Rajab, a 39-year-old city official told IPS. "Al-Qaeda had left the city before the operation even began because they knew what was coming even before we did."

But residents did speak of an al-Qaeda presence earlier. "U.S. troops bombed a number of houses that were actually used by al-Qaeda," Ibrahim Hameed, a 43-year-old secondary school teacher told IPS. "But there was no resistance at all, we heard no shooting."

Ismail Aboud, a 51-year-old physician, said the U.S. military had deliberately avoided armed clashes with militants. "It seems that the forces allowed the terrorists to leave the battlefield in order to avoid direct military clashes," he said.

Abu Mohammed, a 54-year-old grocer, said U.S. troops were now moving unarmed in the streets. "The troops appear absolutely sure that there is no resistance to face."

Very strange, isn't it? A war against elusive terrorists in which the good-guys don't have to face any resistance?

Those who are left to face the American occupiers have plenty to worry about:

Others spoke to IPS of the damaging effects of the U.S. military cordon around the city that was denying basic needs like medical care, food, water and security.

An expatriate programme manager for an international organisation, who did not wish to be named, told IPS that "the military operations are still continuing and the roads are still closed. One of my sources said that on Friday in Qatoon quarter a house was bombed and an entire family was killed. Only a baby survived."

The manager told IPS that tens of thousands have fled the Qatoon area. "Because of the closure (of roads and parts of the city) in Baquba the price of food has increased dramatically," she said. "Earlier 50 kg of flour cost 11 dollars. Now it is 40 dollars."

Only bicycles and animal-drawn carts are being allowed to bring basic supplies such as vegetables and fuel into the city, she said.

Once again, the al-Q'aeda terrorists get away, and the civilians who remain see their city demolished and their economy reduced to a standstill. Three hundred thousand people, and they're having to bring in food and fuel on bicycles!!

But that's nothing.

There's a political schizophrenia at work here; everything is happening as slowly as possible given the urgency of the situation:

Time is pressing. Many Americans want their soldiers to come home soon and senior members of Bush's own Republican party have broken ranks to call for a change in course on the war.

But Bush says he will not alter course before a September review from General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, his top two officers in Iraq.

U.S. commanders says Iraqi security forces are a long way from being able to keep the peace without U.S. help and a senior officer told the New York Times that success would not be in sight before spring next year.

"It is going to take us through the summer and fall to deny the enemy his sanctuaries ... and then it is going to take us through the first of the year and into the spring" to secure these gains, it quoted Major General Rick Lynch as saying.

What sort of a crystal ball does Rick Lynch have? How does he know how long it will take to "deny the enemy his sanctuaries"? How does he know -- or rather, what makes him think -- that such a thing can be done at all?

And what are we really trying to secure? Well, the roads, for one thing. American convoys like to move fast!

Sgt. Kelly Dougherty, 29, from Cañon City, Colorado, was based at the Talil Air Base in Nasiriya with the Colorado National Guard's 220th Military Police Company for a year beginning in February 2003. She recounted one incident she investigated in January 2004 on a six-lane highway south of Nasiriya that resembled numerous incidents described by other veterans.

"It's like very barren desert, so most of the people that live there, they're nomadic or they live in just little villages and have, like, camels and goats and stuff," she recalled. "There was then a little boy -- I would say he was about 10 because we didn't see the accident; we responded to it with the investigative team -- a little Iraqi boy and he was crossing the highway with his, with three donkeys. A military convoy, transportation convoy driving north, hit him and the donkeys and killed all of them. When we got there, there were the dead donkeys and there was a little boy on the side of the road.

"We saw him there and, you know, we were upset because the convoy didn't even stop," she said. "They really, judging by the skid marks, they hardly even slowed down. But, I mean, that's basically -- basically, your order is that you never stop."

The avalanche never stops, and you're a part of that avalanche, so you never stop either. Because you're on a mission, and your mission has nothing to do with protecting that little boy and his donkeys. In fact, your mission would be a lot easier if we could get rid of all the little boys, and all the donkeys.

Because, realistically, is this little boy gonna grow up wanting to protect the pipeline, or is he gonna grow up wanting to destroy it?

In truth, it all depends on how much fear he feels as he grows up. And we are always learning more and more about how to use fear as a weapon:

No words can describe the real terror of what's happening and being committed against the population in Baghdad and other cities: the poor people with no money to leave the country, the disabled old men and women, the wives and children of tens of thousands of detainees who can't leave when their dad is getting tortured in the Democratic Prisons, senior years students who have been caught in a situation that forces them to take their finals to finish their degrees, parents of missing young men who got out and never came back, waiting patiently for someone to knock the door and say, "I am back." There are thousands and thousands of sad stories that need to be told but nobody is there to listen.

I called my cousin in the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad to check if they are still alive. She is in her sixties and her husband is about seventy. She burst into tears, begging me to pray to God to take their lives away soon so they don't have to go through all this agony. She told me that, with no electricity, it is impossible to go to sleep when it is 40 degrees Celsius unless they get really tired after midnight. Her husband leaves the doors open because they are afraid that the American and Iraqi troops will bomb the doors if they don't respond from first door knock during searching raids. Leaving the doors open is another terror story after the attack of the troops' vicious dogs on a ten-month old baby, tearing him apart and eating him in the same neighborhood just a few days ago. The troops let the dogs attack civilians. The dogs bite them and terrify the kids with their angry red eyes in the middle of the night. So, as you can see my dear Gerri, we don't have only one Abu Ghraib with torturing dogs, we have thousands of Abu Ghraibs all over Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.

I was speechless. I couldn't say anything to comfort her. I felt ashamed to be alive and well. I thought I should be with them, supporting them, and give them some strength even if it costs me my life. I begged her to leave Baghdad. She told me that she can't because of her pregnant daughter and her grandkids. They are all with them in the house without their dad. I am hearing the same story and worse every single day. We keep asking ourselves what did we do to the Americans to deserve all this cruelness, killing, and brutishness? How can the troops do this to poor, hopeless civilians? And why?

The answers to these questions are easy to find but very difficult to express.

What did we do to the Americans to deserve all this?

Nothing. Nothing at all. Nobody could possibly deserve all this.

How can the troops do this to poor, hopeless civilians?

That's what they're trained to do. They all get paid for it. And some of them "really enjoy it". The poorer and more hopeless the victims, the easier it is for them, and the more fun they have. If you were well-funded, well-armed, well-organized -- like they are -- they would enjoy it a lot less.

And why?

It's a long, sad, story; but the basic idea is this:

You were unfortunate enough to be born into a country with vast oil wealth and no way to protect it. And the people who want that oil don't care about you, or your donkeys, or your ten-year-old boys, or your little babies.

They are masters of deception, patient schemers with long-term ambitions and the means to achieve them.

They have lied and cheated and stolen their way to the most powerful office in the most powerful country in the world.

They now control the most fearsome killing machine ever assembled.

Or at least they think they control it. A good case can be made for the notion that it controls them.

But at the moment it doesn't matter, because the machine is very difficult if not impossible to stop, and the only people who could possibly stop it are more interested in letting it run.

And the machine drinks oil.

That's why.