SELF-SUSTAINING LIFE FORMS WITH FOLDED HANDS AND CROSSED FINGERS IN A PERPETUAL WAR

In a country where values are collapsing, patriotism becomes the handmaiden to totalitarianism.

Norman Mailer

Our first problem is not immigration, but the American corporation. That is the force which has succeeded in taking America away from us.

Norman Mailer

This war, if it proliferates over the next decade, could prove worse in one respect than any conflict we have yet experienced. It is that we will never know just what we are fighting for. It is not enough to say we are against terrorism.

Norman Mailer

3 Iraqi children die; U.S. loses 17 soldiers in 4 days

By Kim Garnet

Associated Press

April 10, 2008

BAGHDAD - Errant mortar shells slammed into houses and a funeral tent Wednesday , leaving three children among the dead during clashes in a Shiite militia stronghold under siege by American and Iraqi forces on the fifth anniversary of the U.S. capture of the capital.

The fighting came as the U.S. military reported five more soldiers killed. That raised the number of troop deaths to 17 since Sunday.

Many Iraqis said hopes that followed the U.S.-led ouster of Saddam Hussein have been quashed.

"On this day five years ago we were dreaming of a bright future, but now we know that our dream has turned into a long nightmare," said Khalid Ibrahim, a 45-year-old teacher from the mainly Sunni area of Azamiyah.

In many ways, Bagdhad resembles more of a war zone than it did on April 9, 2003 when U.S. Marines stormed into the capital and pulled down a bronze statue of Saddam with the help of dozens of Iraqis.

The city of 6 million people has largely been carved up along sectarian lines, a patchwork of neighborhoods surrounded by 10-foot high concrete walls and dotted with checkpoints.

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They sat like solemn statues---with folded hands---without one crack of a smile---face to face with their inquisitors---and displayed their one-dimensional graphics of maps and charts.

After showering the General and the Ambassador with their praise and appreciation, the Senators proceeded to ask questions or to make their own speeches about the Iraq war.

But the Iraq war is an occupation by the U.S. military that finds itself in the middle of a civil war between fighting factions and sects who want to become Iraq’s new dictators.

They will fight among themselves with or without their liberators…I mean their occupiers…until Kingdom Come.

PERPETUAL WAR.

George W. Bush and his Neo-Con friends produced the present impasse in Iraq that will not pass on---except to the next American president and tomorrow’s children.

And so the Ambassador and the General must continue to carry out the dirty work of their Decider and Long War Commander-in-Chief.

Each must do his duty…

Each must do his job…

Each must press…

On

And

On

And

On

And

On…

And America’s powerful military-industrial complex cannot permit 140,000 soldiers to return home.

It will not permit thousands and thousands of private contractors (who get paid billions and billions from your paychecks) to leave Iraq.

THEY MUST STAY THE COURSE.

By invading Iraq, George W. Bush and his company permitted Iran to get back from Iraq what it lost when Iraq invaded Iran---with the blessings and aid of the United States.

Remember?

That’s when the United States didn’t mind if Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons as long as they were used to kill Iranians.

Iran’s interventions in Iraq will be the new way forward and the justification for the Pentagon---for the General---for the Ambassador---and for any future president---to stay in Iraq for one-hundred and fifteen years---

Or as long as it takes.

Bush and Cheney’s shock and awe turned into a confusing quagmire and chaotic civil war.

Iran is helping to fuel the civil war.

And so the show must go on.

The occupation has to continue.

There is much oil beneath desert sands to be coveted and protected----

NO WMDS.

IT’S THE OIL STUPID!

U.S. must leave Iraq, retired generals say

By Rick Maze
Apr 4, 2008

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/04/military_iraqwithdrawal_040208w/

Setting a withdrawal timetable from Iraq might be a shaky strategic move, but it would provide a morale boost for service members and their families, a former Army War College commandant said Wednesday.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales Jr., testifying before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee about U.S. military strategy in Iraq, said he has no doubt that a major withdrawal of combat forces is coming because the U.S. has “run out of military options” and cannot indefinitely sustain troop levels.

“Regardless of who wins the election and regardless of conditions on the ground, by summer the troops will begin to come home,” said Scales, who headed the war college in 1997. “The only point of contention is how precipitous will be the withdrawal and whether the schedule of withdrawal should be a matter of administration policy.”

White House and Pentagon officials have resisted efforts by some lawmakers to set a fixed timetable for withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq, arguing that insurgents and other groups would try to use the dates to their advantage.

Scales, who was one of the creators of the Army After Next program in 1995 that helped plan for transforming the force, agreed that following a fixed withdrawal schedule “is not a good idea in an insurgency because the indigenous population tends to side with the perceived winners.”

“However, some publicly expressed window of withdrawal is necessary, for no other reason than to give soldier’s families some hope that their loved ones will not be stuck on a perpetual rollercoaster of deployments,” he said.

Scales testified along with two other retired Army generals, Gen. Barry McCaffrey and Lt. Gen. William Odom, who also agreed a withdrawal of U.S. combat troops early in the next president’s administration is inevitable.

“We face a deteriorating political situation with an over-extended Army,” said Odom, who served as director of the National Security Agency in the Reagan administration.

“The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order,” Odom said. “Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping U.S. strategy in the region.”

McCaffrey, a former chief of U.S. Southern Command and commander of the 24th Infantry Division in the 1991 Gulf War, predicted a withdrawal of U.S. forces within three years or less because there is “no U.S. political will to continue” and because allies “have abandoned us.”

“It is over,” McCaffrey said.