A Veteran of the Iraq War says what needs to be said...

...and things only Veterans CAN say:

Absolutely Nothing: A Veteran's Savage Indictment of the Iraq War

It should be required reading for all of-age Americans.

To any politician or pundit on the Right calling for the US to go into Iraq again -- from an Iraq War Veteran

I’ll tell you what, let’s go back to Iraq.

Oh, yes, let us do that.

I’ll dig out my uniform and strap on my pistol and gird up my sword and ride into battle yet again.

Just so long as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Paul Ryan, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, and every single one of those powdered, Botoxed talking heads at Fox News are in the vanguard. That’s right, you cowards, you put on a uniform and you lead the charge this time around. The Koch brothers and Mitt Romney can pay for it, every goddamned penny, we’ll bleed them until they’re dry and then we’ll pull the gold fillings from their teeth to pay for it right along with the rest of their Wall Street cronies. You fuckers got rich off the last one, you can damned well pay for this one. And when you run out of money, we’ll take your blood, fair’s fair.

Strap John McCain into the cockpit of an A-4 Skyhawk and let him fly air cover.

If he gets himself shot down and taken prisoner again, well, you know what? Fuck him, leave him to the enemy because frankly his hate and bile and raging insanity have done more damage to this country than Bowe Bergdahl ever did.

The terrorists can keep him.

Peace love and understanding tell me
Is there no place for them today
They say we must fight to keep our freedom
But Lord knows there’s got to be a better way

War what is it good for
Absolutely nothing…
- Edwin Starr, “War” 1969

Originally posted by Jim Wright on Stonekettle Station.

Once again, thank you George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and all, for your incompetence

$40M fuel theft from Army prompts global manhunt

April 16, 2009 11:46 AM EDT

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia - A former U.S. Army contractor convicted of stealing $40 million worth of fuel from a military base in Iraq is helping authorities search the globe for other suspects in the case.

The thefts occurred in 2007 and 2008 from Camp Liberty in Baghdad.

Former Army contractor Lee Dubois has pleaded guilty and faces up to 10 years in prison. A sentencing hearing scheduled Thursday in Virginia was postponed.

A second suspect was arrested January in Guam and awaits indictment. Court records indicate other suspects have scattered around the world and that Dubois has been cooperating with investigators to locate them.

The thieves used fraudulent paperwork to withdraw tens of thousands of gallons (liters) per day from the base.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press

Worst. President. Ever.

Proof, if--or as though--you need it:

-Iraq War
-Catastrophic, open-ended war
-Misrepresentation of reasons to attack Iraq
-Internationally illegal, unprovoked attack of another foreign, sovereign nation
-WMD's
-Complete lack of WMD's
-Guantanamo Bay
-Torture
-Abu Ghraib
-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice
-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
-Undersecretary of Defense Paul (I'm crazy and hungry for war) Wolfowitz
-Attorney General John Ashcroft (who actually turned out to do some good for the country after all, in denying the President and his staff the ability to "have their way" at the Justice Dept., with their illegal request)
-Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (the stooley)
-Attorney General Michael (the shill) Mukasey
-Vice President Dick ("Darth Vader") Cheney
-Little or no planning for what to do after we, the US, attacked and invaded Iraq, again, against international law
-"Kangaroo" courts
-"Waterboarding" (like it's a fun thing)
-"Black Sites"
-Extraordinary rendition (from and by the United States)
-Halliburton
-"No-bid" government contracts for corporations and other "Big Business"
-$147.00/barrel oil (due, largely, to illegal attack on Iraq)
-Cronyism
-Graft
-Gross Incompetence
-FEMA
-FEMA scandals
-Hurricane Katrina response
-Recess appointments
-Warrantless wiretapping
-Unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping
-"Signing Statements"
-Fired US Attorneys
-Politicization of the US Justice Department, specifically
-Politicization of the US Government, generally
-Plamegate
-Outing an undercover CIA agent for political reasons
-Treason (see line just above)
-Doubling the National Debt
-Denying global climate change
-Undermining the Environmental Protection Agency
-Undermining EPA laws
-Undermining US laws and law
-Stripping the Endangered Species Act of all real power, even though it's US Federal Law, with much precedent
-Housing Crisis
-Credit Crisis
-Deregulation of the Banking Industry (see both lines above this one)
-Faith-based initiatives
-Virtually obliterating the line between State and Church, which is unconstitutional
-Undermining the rights of individuals in the United States
-Asking the Federal Government, through the FBI, to, once again, spy on private American citizens (this is very recent and ongoing)
-Denying homosexuals equal rights and "equal protection under the law", in spite of our Constitution
-Growing--and bloating, indeed, ballooning--the size of the Federal Government
-Cutting taxes for the wealthy and uber-wealthy
-Cutting taxes for the "Big Oil" Companies--at just the time they're making their largest profits--and the largest profits in the History of the United States (yeah, we need to cut their taxes, didn't we?)
-Making it illegal--yes, illegal--for the Federal Government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of medicines and medicinal drugs (Did you remember that one? Then again, did you even know it already? If that isn't FOR big business and against the American Public--the little guy, you and me--I don't know what is)
-Making all records of their own Bush Administration "off limits" from the American Public, once they're out of office (like it was never OUR government--it's apparently his--and we'd like it back)
-The dividing of the country into "us" vs. "them", rich vs. poor, right vs. left, religious believers vs. unbelievers, etc.
-The use of bullying tactics on foreign countries, telling us and them that they are either "with us or against us"
-The use of access to the President, his staff and the administration for reward, when they like someone's work
-The denial of access to these same people and individuals when the administration doesn't like their viewpoint(s)
-The denial of access to the administration to Betty Thomas, the longtime, veteran White House reporter, which actually happened, because they didn't like her and her questions
-The use of the Federal Government to make propaganda in our own press
-The use of the Federal Government to make propaganda in foreign country's press
-The use of the Federal Government and Federal dollars to create propaganda
-The use of the American Press to create propaganda in our own country
-The use of Fox "News" Network, specifically, to create propaganda in our own country
-Declaring "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, when the war had virtually just begun
-Denying freedom of the press
-Denying Americans access to pictures--video or stills--of American Soldiers killed in action, coming back from the war in Iraq, even if their families felt otherwise and made that clear

The list goes on and on, longer than this, unfortunately.

Four things come to mind just now, seeing this list:

1) Warren G. Harding had nothing on George W. Bush, his incompetence, his corruption and his graft (just wait 'til he's out of the White House. Then he'll REALLY start reaping benefits from Big Business)
2) I'll be glad when this nightmare is over
3) I can hardly wait for January 20, 2009, when these people are gone
4) I hope we, as a country and, really, as a world, can recover from the damage George W. Bush and his entire administration, for 8 years, has done to this country.

(With thanks to Garry Trudeau and his "Doonesbury" comic strip, this Sunday, August 24, 2008. You can see the original comic here: http://www.doonesbury.com/)

From a local guy--and the Kansas City Star

An important article from the Kansas City Star today, by a General at Fort Leavenworth, who served in Iraq in the last few years:

Missed Signals from Iraq Resulted in Wrong Responses, Retired General Recalls

By Scott Canon
The Kansas City Star

FORT LEAVENWORTH | Premature declarations of victory ultimately doomed the Iraqi occupation to lost opportunities, a former commander of U.S. troops there said Friday.

Ricardo Sanchez, a retired Army lieutenant general whose Iraq command stretched through the first year after the invasion, told more than 1,000 mid-career officers that Washington’s expectations of good news blotted out drearier reports coming from Baghdad in 2003 and 2004.

“We honestly believed what we had been told — that we’d be greeted as liberators,” Sanchez said in a 90-minute talk to students at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.

So when Sanchez and others began reporting that a deadly and powerful insurgency was brewing in the country, and that Iraqis saw Americans as occupiers, not saviors, he said, the Bush administration was slow to accept the reality. That, in turn, meant troops ill-equipped and poorly trained for the burgeoning insurgency.

So at the very time when the military needed more armor and counterinsurgency expertise, he said, the White House wanted symbols of success.

Sanchez, on a tour to promote his memoir, cited as a chief example the turning over of sovereignty to a disorganized Iraqi government before it was ready to assume power.

He said unreal expectations also prompted a retrospectively foolhardy overreaction to the killing of four Blackwater security employees in Fallujah in 2004.

Seared in the public consciousness, the burning and hanging of two of the bodies off a bridge was “tactically insignificant,” Sanchez said. Yet it created political pressure to show that U.S. troops were not just sitting ducks.

When the subsequent offensive in Fallujah turned out to be bloodier than expected and threatened to tilt the 2004 U.S. elections, Sanchez said, the White House ordered a retreat.

In his book, Wiser in Battle, published last week, he said he refused because it would have given the enemy a resounding victory while putting his troops in unreasonable peril as they withdrew from the city under fire. He threatened to quit.

That won him a compromise, he said: The U.S. offensive would halt, but there would be no retreat.

Resigning, he said in an interview after Friday’s speech, would have been a perilous turning point, putting “our mission at much greater risk.”

Such a public rebuke of the President Bush and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by a field commander would have been “a tumultuous situation at the highest levels of command (putting) a question in the mind of the soldier on the battlefield.”

Sanchez’s book has drawn varying reviews — lauded as a frank look at the tension between military commanders and the White House, and criticized as being self-serving.

In The Washington Post, reviewer Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote that Sanchez “is so busy castigating erstwhile colleagues that he never stops to wonder if he might have erred.”

In the book, Sanchez took some responsibility for the abuses of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. Yet, he said Friday that the scandal’s seeds were planted in 2002 when the administration decided some terror suspects were not necessarily protected by the Geneva Conventions. Consequently, Sanchez said, abusive interrogation techniques became commonplace and accountability for abuses fell apart.

Bush was focused on the war, attuned to its difficulties and supportive of the military, Sanchez said in his interview. But he said the president “does not impose his will.” For instance, he said Bush was slow to demand action in Fallujah.


And then this quote, from a sign on a poster a lady held in a picture in that same newspaper today:

"Blind faith in bad leadership is not patriotism."

Obvious but important to say.

Have a great weekend, folks. American soldiers are still out there, fighting and dying in your name, for your oil.