Good on Big John

While I badger John Kerry from time to time, mainly because he didn't stand up to the Swiftboaters, he would still have made a far better President than Dumbya. He also has the right idea. C&L has an excerpt from his appearance on that old, rotting, lizard-skinned idiot Imus' show:

Kerry: No, what it does is provide the only opportunity for success. Stay the course is not a plan. And what this administration wants is to have a fake debate, as usual. There, there, you hear the drumbeat on every television show from every commentator, cut and run, cut and run, cut and run, cut and run. That's their phrase.

They've found their three words, they love to do that, and they're gonna try to make the elections in November a choice between "cut and run" or "stay the course." That's not the choice. My plan is not "cut and run." Their plan is "lie and die." And that's what they're doing...Our plan is very simple. It's re-deploy to win the war on terror. Change to succeed...

The distinguished junior senator from Massachusetts is absolutely right. It's time we start pushing this meme.

Republican plan for Iraq = Lie and Die

Outstanding!

Germany - 3

Ecuador - 0

Mrs. F was kind enough to tape the game and I watched it after I got home from work. They won their group and it's on to the next round. I'm sure my family is still partying. Nobody's going to work tomorrow over there, that's for sure.

Murtha v. Rove

The Smirking Chimp

At least the battle lines are drawn and clear. It's Jack Murtha vs. Karl Rove. They are the front men who represent the moral and political choices the American people will make in the 2006 elections.

Pennsylvania congressman Murtha is an authentic and sincere man who knows the horrors of war firsthand. The former Marine put his own life at risk in Vietnam, where he was wounded and decorated. Murtha is calling for a new course in Iraq, a change in direction that will save the lives of countless Iraqis and American troops.

Rove is the supreme cynic, the total utilitarian. He believes in nothing and craves only power. Rove is nakedly amoral, a perfect reflection of the men he serves. When the Vietnam War came his way, Rove chose to duck and dodge, cut and run. He is a physical coward who shamelessly uses the lives of Americans dying in Iraq to slur his political opponents.

We are seeing a dress rehearsal of the Busheviks' fall campaign, another grab-bag of lies. They will do anything to retain control of Congress as they continue on the path of unobstructed destruction of the ideals our nation once stood for.

These serial criminals and career incompetents fear the very thought of one house of Congress with subpoena powers that would compel them to testify under oath. The vile Rove knows George W. Bush's presidency, his ultimate political dirty trick, will be exposed as the corrupt fraud it is.

No presidency in memory has had such a compliant, loyal and acquiescent bunch of lap dogs in Congress. The White House raids the Treasury and gives the lard-ass Republicans on Capitol Hill all the pork-barrel projects they want. In return, GOP lawmakers let the White House get away with murder -- literally.

During the Vietnam War, Rove managed to get a series of student deferments as he jumped from college to college confusing the local draft boards. Rove was usually working on political campaigns and not attending classes as a full-time student as his deferments required. He dodged the draft, but never got a degree. Rove did, however, become a master of deception.

Jack Murtha is an honest, decent man who has served his country honorably as a Marine and member of Congress. He cares deeply about our troops and knows the futility of the conflict in Iraq, which can never be won militarily.

Karl Rove believes in fear and smear. He cares nothing about the morality of the war and the fate of those fighting there. He just wants to win in November.

The American people have a clear choice on the war and our nation's future: Jack Murtha or Karl Rove.

That's about the clearest that point has been made. In the reality-based world, my money's on the Colonel, but Rove's politics have nothing to do with reality.

Why doesn't somebody just punch Rove's lights out - on camera of course. I volunteer.

Semper Fi, Colonel Murtha. I'm with you all the way.

Tell your Senators...

...to support the Kerry-Feingold Act.

Congress at the mid-term

The Drum Major Institute has its report on how Congress voted in terms of the Middle Class. The results aren't too surprising. Extensive site, but if you have the time give it a look-see.

Military's Leadership Crisis Begins With Bush and Rumsfeld

Bob Geiger expands on Fixer's post, a little below this one, about the crisis in military leadership.

But unlike Abu Ghraib, where low-level enlisted personnel were allowed to take the fall, it is vital that we understand that what happened in Haditha, while certainly an atrocity for which the troops involved bear responsibility, was an overarching failure of leadership that goes all the way to the Oval Office.

Which suggests a significant lack of leadership on the part of officers on the ground and, as I think many Americans now believe, at the Defense Department going all the way to the top of the food chain with Donald Rumsfeld. Somehow these Marines thought it had suddenly become a free-for-all, where all bets were off and all rules of conduct were suspended. Ultimately, accountability for that can only be assigned to people in positions of leadership.

Then there's the White House, the Republican-controlled Congress and the Defense Department who started this war, went into it without a plan to win the peace and are responsible for creating a new generation of troops who have endured multiple deployments and undoubtedly operate with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) now and will for a long time to come.

he Republican Congress talks a lot about supporting the troops but has done little to provide the massive funding necessary for the untold number of PTSD cases we will have in our country for a generation. The second part of that GOP one-two punch, is that they've done zero to bring the White House back to reality and to get our troops the hell out of there so we can avoid having young men and women, stretched to the limit on their third and fourth tours in combat. Indeed, they just voted in principle last week to keep our troops there indefinitely.

There is indeed a problem in our military -- but it goes from the top down, not the other way around. It comes from an administration that likes to use men and women in uniform for Bush's public-relations stunt du jour, who started this war on a whim, who offer nothing but "stay the course" to our 130,000 boots on the ground and who appear to advocate keeping our honorable, but worn-out troops in Iraq forever.

The truth is, if George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld wanted to show a fraction of the honor they expect from our troops, they would all do the right thing -- and resign.

Once they resign (fat chance!) they'll be easier to arrest. That would be a good thing.

Bob also goes into the looming and present nightmare of PTSD that will be with our troops for the rest of their lives. Go read.

The Dark Side

The Boston Globe

"Frontline" delivers a devastating look tonight at the efforts of Vice President Dick Cheney to gain control of the war on terror after 9/11. In doing so, the show purports, he compromised the integrity of America's intelligence system.

To many, Cheney is the dark side of the Bush administration, and this program will only cement that judgment. "Frontline" chronicles the brutal campaign by two consummate political in-fighters -- Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- to decimate the CIA, politically emasculate Secretary of State Colin Powell, and construct a near-limitless concept of executive power during war. While many of these strands are familiar, they have not been assembled as effectively before on television to present a coherent picture of what happened after 9/11.

"The Dark Side" is, in a sense, CIA payback for its treatment. The program is dominated by legions of former CIA officers, some of whom left over the agency's treatment by the White House, and they detail what they view as Cheney's efforts to find the intelligence to fit the war he wanted against Saddam. Virtually no one, in contrast, appears from the Cheney-Rumsfeld camp to defend the two men's actions.

Probably because their actions are getting more and more indefensible by the day.

Don't miss this show. Get info on showtime at PBS or the "Frontline" link above.

Hadji Girl 4

Okay, this is the last one, basically because thinking about this is keeping me up nights again. Have I mentioned there is a big price to pay for allowing yourself to get in touch with your more baser instincts? It's how I figured out I wasn't a psychopath; those guys can sleep well.

Anyway, I'm talking about leadership today. Or the lack thereof. This struck me this morning:

...

Russert: If your analysis is not correct, and we're not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?

Cheney: Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.

...

And that was that. They created a culture around the need to go to war. They made their plans, fixed the intelligence, defiled a genuine relationship that took two centuries to cultivate to give them some legitimacy, and got themselves a war.

The grunts on the ground, who would ultimately do the dirty work, didn't have a say. The flag (Generals and Admirals) officers who did speak up, opposed to the folly, were cashiered or discredited. Opposition was considered traitorous. Those in command positions now are nothing more than 'yes men' for the administration.

So now we have a war run by draft dodgers and incompetents.

Under the auspices of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), we have abdicated our responsibility to treaties signed in good faith by those speaking for the people of the United States. The Geneva Conventions are not quaint or archaic, or a plot by the U.N. to tie America's hands when prosecuting the GWOT. They are in place to protect our soldiers. This is why I talk about taking the high road. The Rude Pundit says it best as only he can:

Chances are, maybe even by the time you read this, the two American soldiers, captured by the Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq, will be dead, probably in some horrible way, probably with their bodies dumped like all the horribly murdered Iraqis in the blood and gore-strewn landscape that are the markers of Iraqi liberation...

...

What if we get pictures of the soldiers, nude, cowering, screaming in a corner, shitting themselves on the filthy floors of a makeshift cell, as their captors hold snarling dogs on leashes just out of bite range of the soldiers?

What if we learn that their captors decide that the soldiers can offer intelligence that can be of use to al-Qaeda and, in order to get that information, the captors put the nude soldiers into rooms that are heated to hellish temperatures, followed by rooms that are impossibly cold with colder water tossed onto them? What if the soldiers are made to stand for days on end? Put into stress positions that fuck up their muscles and limbs? Denied sleep? Had loud music played into their cells? Kept in isolation and fed bread and water for days, weeks on end?

...

And he posits:

...

And what about the good right-wing punditry? Would Rush Limbaugh look at the photos of the nude, cowering Americans and say it looks like fraternity hazing or some such shit? Would others dismiss it as a media fabrication? Or would they just pathetically overlook everything done in our American names to Iraqis, Afghanis, and others, calling madly for the heads of the captors, not even thinking about the irony of such a statement?

...

Yes, ladies and germs, what if? Can we take the high road? Of course not. Our leaders say treatment like that is permissible to achieve certain ends. Is it okay for us to do it but not al-Qaeda? We are in no position to protest the treatment of these men, whatever it might be, because we've taken a path no better than those we claim to be so different from. The abuses at Abu Ghraib might have been committed by the grunts, but they were given legitimacy by the leadership.

As I've explained in the first three parts of this little diatribe, and what it seems few people understand, is the guys doing the shooting don't make the decisions. They don't get the whole story, or anything near the truth. They're allowed to listen to Rush, but not Al Franken. They're allowed Fox 'News'. Most of the grunts in Iraq believe Saddam was in cahoots with Osama to pull off 9/11. So anybody who thinks the average soldier has any decision-making ability is fooling themselves. The grunts believe they are doing the right thing. They couldn't do their jobs if they didn't.

When we hear of abuses, crimes against civilians, and general misconduct by our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, you must remember the military is a tightly controlled organization. When those in the lower ranks act up, or act out, you can almost always trace it back to a permissiveness on the part of the command, be it the local commander, the theater commander, or the Commander in Chief himself.

When I was in, I knew how long my leash was. So did the other guys. We knew what our CO would let us get away with and we generally didn't cross the line. When we did, we paid, usually with really shitty details so we didn't forget exactly where the line was. My CO looked the other way to a lot of our hijinks but no one got hurt.

The line in the GWOT has become very wide and very gray. There is only one reason for that and it's simple. Failure of leadership. A rule of thumb to use is the wider and grayer the line, the higher up in the chain of command the failure goes. A supply sergeant running a black market operation out of Okinawa is a local command failure. Soldiers murdering innocent civilians and torturing prisoners is a failure at the top.

As I've said before, the grunts should pay for what they've done but so should the leadership. I've seen a whole buncha grunts go to jail over the past couple years, but the people who define where the line is have yet to answer for their crimes.

It is why I want more than to see Bush and his cronies out of power, I want them all in jail too.

Bush: America's defender against gay married terrorists

Paul Krugman via The Obfuscation Report.

In case you haven't noticed, modern American politics is marked by vicious partisanship, with the great bulk of the viciousness coming from the right. It's clear that the Republican plan for the 2006 election is, once again, to question Democrats' patriotism.

So what's our bitter partisan divide really about? In two words: class warfare. [...]

But if the real source of today's bitter partisanship is a Republican move to the right on economic issues, why have the last three elections been dominated by talk of terrorism, with a bit of religion on the side? Because a party whose economic policies favor a narrow elite needs to focus the public's attention elsewhere. And there's no better way to do that than accusing the other party of being unpatriotic and godless.

Thus in 2004, President Bush basically ran as America's defender against gay married terrorists. He waited until after the election to reveal that what he really wanted to do was privatize Social Security.

So what should we do about all this? I won't offer the Democrats advice right now, except to say that tough talk on national security and affirmations of personal faith won't help: the other side will smear you anyway.

But I would like to offer some advice to my fellow pundits: facereality. There are some commentators who long for the bipartisan days of yore, and flock eagerly to any politician who looks "centrist." But there isn't any center in modern American politics. And the center won't return until we have a new New Deal, and rebuild our middle class.

This is the line that bears repeating: "There isn't any center in modern American politics."

Thoughts on the 'Khalilzad Cable'

'Just World News' by Helena Cobban

Is the "Khalilzad Cable", the full text of which was published by the WaPo today, the present war's equivalent of the Vietnam War's "Pentagon Papers"?

The "Khalilzad cable", which was sent from Viceroy Khalilzad to Secretary of State Condi Rice just "hours" before the surprise trip that Bush made to Baghdad on June 12, reveals how stunningly unsuccessful all the US's efforts to stabilize Iraq and build effective, pro-US new security forces there have been. Equally significantly, it also reveals the degree to which Zal Khalilzad, the US Viceroy in Baghdad, is aware of this situation-- despite all of Bush's earnest public avowals that things are going ahead very well in Iraq.

That's why it deserves to have the same impact within the US policy elite that the Pentagon Papers had in their day.

So okay, at the next press briefing at the White House or the State Department, let's hear some of those reporters asking the Prez, or Condi, or their flaks: "So really, how are things going in Baghdad? And do you judge that Ambassador Khalilzad is an experienced and well-informed judge of the situation there?"

Yeah, we'll see what kind of 'rug dance' Snow will do.

My judgment from all the above-- assuming the cable as leaked and published is genuine (and I assume the WaPo would have done much to authenticate it before they published it)-- is that things are even more precarious for the US position in Iraq than I had previously thought... It seems to me that Khalilzad and his staff there are hanging on by a hair. And what's more, he seems to understand this-- and to be eager to warn Condi about just how bad things are... And this, apparently even after he'd gotten the good news about the killing of Zarqawi and Maliki's completion of forming his government...

Editor & Publisher weighs in on this as well.

Scout Prime brings up "The Second Cable".

Let's keep our eyes on how this one plays out in days to come. I think things are maybe a lot worse in Iraq than even we cynics think they are.

Start your week with a twisted smile...

Ironic Times

Poll: Americans' Global Image Slips Again
We now rank lower than Libya, but higher than North Korea.

Documents Found With Zarqawi Vindicate Bush
Praise his handling of Iraq, economy, Katrina, Texas Rangers, Harken Energy.

Report: Seventeen Glasses of Beer a Day May Prevent Prostate Cancer
And standing up.

Hadji Girl 3

Since I brought up the realities of combat and the rationale for war yesterday (Hadji Girl, Hadji Girl 2), I'd like to talk this morning about what the guys and girls in the meat grinder have to deal with.

As I've let on, I've seen combat on more than a few occasions. Basically on spec ops missions where we encountered unfriendlies. Grenada was different, but it was more of a spec ops job than a war. And that's what I'm getting at. Yesterday we spoke of the inherent inhumanity of war as it related to the civilians. Today we speak of the troops.

Some smart guy said, many years ago, that war was 'long stretches of boredom interrupted by short stretches of intense terror'. Which is quite probably true. It's this difference I'd like to talk about. The difference between 'war' and an 'operation'. I was on operations. We trained up, were on station for a week or so, took care of business, were debriefed, and then returned to our base. Over, done, put it in the past and prepare for the next.

When we were done, our ladies (or guys, but don't ask, don't tell) were waiting for us. The bar was open and you were back in the bosom of 'family', so to speak. We could decompress, drink, fuck, do whatever we had to in order to forget about the nastiness we just finished dealing with. Trust me, you have to forget, or at least put it in a place where you can deal with it.

The guys in this war don't have that luxury. Not only are they going out to fight, their patrols at constant risk from IED, but they are not safe when they come in from patrols either. They are living in the war zone. A mortar or rocket can ruin their day at any time. They are always on, always up, always juiced. There is no time, no place, for them to decompress fully.

Sex is difficult and in the Mid-East, booze is close to non-existent (black market and officer's tents only ... probably). Oh what? Sex and booze? 'We don't send our troops out to fuck and get drunk', you might say. Well, let me tell ya. They're human beings too and there are only so many ways humans can deal with that kind of stress in a place where their freedom is so limited. A place where personal safety is a very tenuous thing.

In the Air Force when I was in, we had a thing called the 'Golden B-B'. I'm pretty sure it had its origins in Vietnam. It went that there was a bullet with your name on it somewhere. Until you and that bullet met up, you'd be fine, but one day that Golden B-B was gonna get ya. Well, when you live every fucking day looking, waiting, watching for that Golden B-B, you can get a little, if not a lot, crazy. Especially when you know, until you get orders home, that Golden B-B might catch up with you as you lay in your rack, or cot, or bedroll, dreaming about the hottie waiting for you when you get home.

Do that for a year at a time. Then do that year for the second or third time.

Think you'd keep your sanity?

And you wonder why I have no patience for people who talk about war like it's a big fucking game?

Who Supports the Troops?

The Nation is a gold mine today.

The February Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey of U.S. troops serving in Iraq found that 72 percent of them thought the United States end its operations in that country by the end of 2006.

On the day when the 2,500th American died in the Iraq quagmire, the Senate was asked to approve the sentiment of the troops who say that it is time for them to get out of the middle of a foreign civil war.

The vast majority of senators decided to do the bidding of the president who deceived them about the "case" for war and who then played politics with national security and the lives of the young men and women who wear the uniform of the United States.

Only six members of the chamber charged with serving as the ultimate check and balance on the fools' missions of failed presidents chose to support the troops. Boxer, Byrd, Feingold, Harkin, Kennedy and Kerry will, of course, be vilified by Rove regenerated attack machine for having done so. It will be suggested that they sent the wrong message to the troops by voting as they did.

At the end of the day on which the American death toll topped 2,500, however, the only message the six senators sent to the troops was this: We agree with you.

Six. Six who value principle and the lives of our troops above playing along with Rove's charade. The other 93 are despicable partisans or cowards.

Travel Dept.

If you're contemplating a tropical cruise to dodge next winter a little, contemplate this one. Does ecology trump politics and sexual fantasy? I could be a very green pickle in a Molly-and-Katrina sandwich...

Dunkirk in the Desert

Nicholas von Hoffmann: Nightmare Scenario at The Nation.

Is the badly outnumbered American expeditionary force in Iraq in trouble? Is it in danger of being trapped? With all our firepower, are we looking at the possibility of some kind of a military defeat?

We could be moving toward an American Dunkirk. In 1940 the defeated British Army in Belgium was driven back by the Germans to the French seacoast city of Dunkirk, where it had to abandon its equipment and escape across the English Channel on a fleet of civilian vessels, fishing smacks, yachts, small boats, anything and everything that could float and carry the defeated and wounded army to safety.

Obviously, our forces in Iraq will not be defeated in open battle by an opposing army as happened in 1940, but there is more than one way to stumble into a military disaster. Fragmented reports out of Iraq suggest we may be on our way to finding one of them. Defeat can come from overused troops. It does not help that one by one, the remaining members of the Coalition of the Willing give every appearance of sneaking out of town.

The Internet is alive with pessimistic stories and opinions about what may be happening, one of which informs its readers, "Military commanders in the field in Iraq admit in private reports to the Pentagon the war 'is lost' and that the U.S. military is unable to stem the mounting violence killing 1,000 Iraqi civilians a month. Even worse, they report the massacre of Iraqi civilians at Haditha is 'just the tip of the iceberg' with overstressed, out-of-control American soldiers pushed beyond the breaking point both physically and mentally."

The shortage of troops, which three years ago was a restraining factor, has become a potential disaster, with the ever-rising level of hostility to the American presence. To stay the course, to win, to realize our objectives, we need a half-million soldiers to pacify that country. If the force levels remain the same for another year and a half, this small, exhausted and overused American force may become so unglued that staying in Iraq will be come impossible. There may be no choice but retreat.

A half-million pair of boots on the ground can only be gotten by conscription. The chances of reactivating the draft for Iraq are nil. If our political leaders have to choose between a new conscription and risking a defeat, there is no question about what they will do.

Air evacuation would mean abandoning billions of dollars of equipment. There is no seaport troops could get to, so the only way out of Iraq would be that same desert highway to Kuwait where fifteen years ago the American Air Force destroyed Saddam Hussein's army.

Another analogy might be the defeated Wehrmacht leaving Russia in headlong high-speed retreat by the same roads it used to invade. I'd hate to see the same look on U.S. troops' faces as was on those Germans': A combination of despair, exhaustion, and relief.

The Real Security Risk...

Noo Yawk Daily News

After slashing the city's anti-terrorism funds, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff now apparently thinks angry letters from New Yorkers are the real safety threat.

When a Daily News reporter attempted to deliver scores of messages protesting the cuts to Chertoff's Washington office, he was promptly turned away.

The letters, faxes and printed e-mails "would put all the employees here, including the secretary, at risk," said a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman when the delivery was attempted Friday.

She cited the 2001 scare caused by anthrax-laced letters.

Chertoff was not in any immediate danger. He was safe in a Moscow hotel during an official visit.

I wish I could make up shit like that!

Good News/Bad News

Will Durst

It's almost dead solid meteorological summer and the crossing of the solstice seems to have inaugurated a season of good news/bad news for George W Bush, the Democrats, Iraq, you, me, pretty much everybody. Allow me to illustrate.

The good news is we've uncovered a new tactic of Al Qaeda: asymmetrical warfare. The bad news is the three guys at Guantanamo Bay who introduced it aren't able to tell us where to send the royalty checks.

The good news is Abu Musag Al Zarkawi is dead. The bad news is 72 virgins in heaven just filed a restraining order.

The good news is Michael Chertoff has determined New York City is without any national monuments and therefore safe from terrorism. The bad news is Michael Chertoff gets to determine anything.

The good news is failure is not an option. The bad news is it's a factory installed standard feature.

The good news is President Bush got to look Nouri Al Maliki eye to eye. The bad news is Nouri Al Maliki has to sleep with a chicken foot under his pillow to counter the curse of the evil eye.

The good news is there's more at the link. The bad news is there's not enough of them.

Happy Father's Day

To all you dads out there. God bless ya.

Hadji Girl 2

Okay, so let's talk about war a little, since most Americans think it's something like a cross between Mission Impossible and a Tom Clancy novel. It's not. People talk of war in terms of 'surgical strikes' and 'special ops units', thinking a few bombs and a few commando units running around can win any conflict. From the way the Iraq War has been run, it would seem a few of the civilians (and some of the generals) in the Penatgon believe the same things. I'm not talking about the morality of war, because war is also immoral by definition.

The idea behind going to war is to pound an enemy hard enough, destroy enough of his infrastructure, and kill enough of his people to make him lose the strength and the stomach to fight. Simple.

Your enemy's government is your enemy, his people are your enemies, and his ability to resupply his troops is your enemy. [If you want some perspective on this, check out some of the Bugs Bunny cartoons made during the war years ... if you can find them - F-man] When you have to start making distinctions; 'we are not angry with the people of (pick any country), just their government', you lose your right to wage war. When you have to say, 'we don't want to destroy their (pick something), just remove their leadership', when you force the men and women you send into combat to differentiate which of the 'enemy's' people are friend or foe, you have no right being at war to begin with.

War is for the defense of the nation and nothing else. Certainly not for 'regime change' in a nation posing no threat. It is the basest form of national revenge and, by definition, should be fought without concern for anything but victory. Dresden, the firebombing and atomic bombing of Japanese cities during World War Two, that was war in all its excruciating malevolence. It was a simple decision. We were attacked, the next day we were at war.

There was no need to spin things on 8 December 1941. No need for forged documents, no need for weapons inspectors, no need for intelligence assessments; bombs fell upon the U.S. Pacific Fleet at its homeport of Pearl Harbor. That was all the evidence needed. Did you think what happened after, the years of world war, was an honorable pursuit? There was unspeakable horror, almost a generation's worth of European and Japanese men wiped out, countless innocent deaths and we reconcile that with the fact we faced an enemy we believed evil incarnate. We did whatever was required to force their capitulation.

One day, we will have to reconcile the war in Iraq. We will have to sit back and ask if all the deaths, the maimings, and the horror was worth it. I tend to believe this war will leave us with a case of national post traumatic stress syndrome. It might take years, but eventually we will come to the collective realization that we were the bad guys. I think many of us do already.

Hadji Girl

Seems the Marines in Iraq are making up their own songs (video). Now, I usually leave Affairs de Corps to Gord because they're his boys, but a lot of people are taking exception to the brutality inflicted in Haditha and other places in Iraq and this video will probably raise more Hell. Let me explain something, being I've been in combat with Marines. Remember this:

The Marine Corps is not a police orgainization. The Marines have one purpose, to kill the enemy by any means possible. If you expect them to be touchy-feely and 'community oriented' like your local cops, you're sadly mistaken.

Now, I'm not condoning or trying to justify anything that resembles a war crime, but I think some of us on the left have to develop stronger stomachs.

...

I worry about people who think like this coming back into society. That kind of thing cannot be considered gallantry on the battle field. It's ugly and dirty and ultimately is going to blow back on some of these guys. I hope the Republicans are prepared to spend as much on VA mental health as they've spent filling their right wing cronies' bank accounts because a lot of these guys are going to need help. Our troops are in danger of losing their humanity in a war being fought for bogus political reasons. Some of them are going to have a hard time living with that.

...

Note to Digby: War is ugly and dirty and if you want to win, you have to be prepared to kill women and children. That's just the way it is. If you don't want innocents killed, don't go to war, period. The guys on the ground don't have the luxury of debating whether the war is just or not.

...

It's a good deal for senior ground commanders, who get career boosts by dint of assignment to the war zone that used to be a relatively peaceful country, ruled by a dictator whose fangs had been pulled by 12 years of sanctions and UN weapons inspections. For the younger ground commanders at company level, and the EM [enlisted men], of course, it's just toughski shitski, so suck it up, troop.

...

While we rail against war, there is a sad fact that war (not this war), sometimes, has to be done. I don't want touchy-feely Marines. I don't want touchy-feely anybody in the combat disciplines, be they Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine. I want them to be comfortable enough with killing that they won't hesitate when the time comes. I was, once. Rightly or wrongly, and don't forget these guys hear what the government wants them to hear, the Jarheads in that meat grinder believe anybody brown over there is a potential enemy. Ask a Vietnam-era infantry troop how that goes. Ask him how you justify friend from foe when Hell is erupting all around you. I couldn't, not unless you were wearing the same uniform I was.

A few weeks back, I alluded to an op in Afghanistan many years ago where we took ground fire extracting a CIA operator from Waziristan. I lost a friend on that op and I had no qualms drawing a bead on anybody on the ground as the chopper tried to lift off. I didn't care who it was; Soviet, Afghani, goat herder, it didn't matter. Shit, thems on the ground probably thought we were Russians. All we knew was we were taking fire. The door gunners and ramp gunner opened up and all of us who could, found a spot on that damned Pave Low to fire from. There was brass flying and noise from the mini guns and rifles cracking and small arms fire puncturing the fuselage, the chopper's jets screaming to lift that heavy bitch adding to the din. It was fucking insane. I'm sure a lot of innocents died that day. Have a rifle in your hands in the same circumstances and tell me what you'd do.

If the Marines had been used properly, not interchangably with Army troops or Military Police, we would see far fewer of these horrors perpetrated upon innocent civilians. If it weren't for the Chimp's illegal war, none of the atrocities would have happened. While the Marines, if found guilty, must take responsibility for their actions, the ultimate responsibility lies at the door of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill.