Towards the end of his time in government, Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld had a chat about Iraq with military analysts about basically how bad things were going. A recent mass Freedom of Information Act application managed to get thousands of documents and audio files from the Pentagon, and so we can listen to the whole damn thing if we want to.
Fortunately, Newsvine's jfxgillis has gone through and pulled out some of the more interesting clips, along with his own analysis. You can read his commentary and hear the clips at Liquid Lunch with Donald Rumsfeld. Here's an excerpt:
...the questioner prods him back on topic by asking, "Politically, what are the challenges because you're not going to have a lot of sympathetic ears up there [on Capitol Hill]?"More commentary at Prison Planet, if you like.
Rumsfeld's answer is nothing short of stunning. No, not the part where he claims Bush is a "Victim of his success." That's just stupid. And no, after hearing his previous insult to the American public, his condemnation of us because "we don't have the maturity" to recognize the threat of terrorism--the further we get from 9/11, the less and less... he trails off. But that's not shocking, nor is his doomsday scenario, all things considered.
So let's summarize. According to Rumsfeld and his media sycophants, America has real problems: We're weak-willed, we're immature, we're forgetting what happened, and oh my God, we've elected Democrats to Congress. So, what's the "Correction" for those problems? Listen to him:
Another 9/11 attack.
So, on Friday, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) was voted out of existence by the UN Security Council. The vote was 14-0, with Russia abstaining, using the opportunity to snipe at the US, saying it wasn't up to the UK and US to decide when the job was done.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was asked whether he would credit the team for its work and for having what turned out to be better intelligence about Hussein's weapons capabilities than did the U.S. and Britain.
"That is something that historians will have to work with," Khalilzad said.
How far we've come. I wonder how many Americans today, especially the younger adults, recall that the whole invasion of Iraq was originally in order to disarm Saddam of WMD that the US couldn't convince the UN he had.
As The Guardian reports, Bush administration officials have drawn parallels with South Korea and Japan with regards to a permanent military presence in Iraq. Yes, that's right, no matter how democratic things get there, the US isn't going anywhere. Why not? They've invested far too much in controlling that oil The popular and democratically elected government will humbly request they never leave.
This is, of course, hardly news. The Nation covered it quite nicely at the end of last year. But if it's more interesting predictions you're after, click here.
Yet the building of US military bases in Iraq continues apace, at a cost of over $1bn a year. Shortly after the invasion, the US established 110 bases in Iraq. The present plan appears to consolidate these into 14 "enduring bases" in Iraqi Kurdistan, at Baghairport, in Anbar province, and in the southern approaches to Baghdad. This does not point to an early US disengagement. And nor does the construction of a US embassy able to house 1,000 staff on a 100-acre site on the banks of the Tigris - the biggest US embassy in the world.
This is, of course, hardly news. The Nation covered it quite nicely at the end of last year. But if it's more interesting predictions you're after, click here.
Lt. Col. Paul Yingling has written a scathing assessment of US generals' failure to anticipate, respond to, and report to the public the extent of the Iraqi insurgency.
For reasons that are not yet clear, America's general officer corps underestimated the strength of the enemy, overestimated the capabilities of Iraq's government and security forces and failed to provide Congress with an accurate assessment of security conditions in Iraq. Moreover, America's generals have not explained clearly the larger strategic risks of committing so large a portion of the nation's deployable land power to a single theater of operations.
He's not interested, or it is outside the scope of his article, in whether or not the US should be there in the first place, but limits his criticism to the failure of the US military once involved. Still, an interesting read.
Forget what you've seen in the movies - war isn't all explosions and excitement. There are long quiet bits where the soldiers' worst enemy is boredom. As far as I'm aware (based solely on those movies I just told you to forget - I'm fickle), in World War II the average GI mostly kept himself entertained with booze, prostitutes, and Glen Miller. In Vietnam it was heroin, prostitutes and Jimi Hendrix. The one thing which has struck me over and over again about television coverage of the Iraq War is the surprisingly high geek factor of the modern GI. Every second US soldier seems to be pimply and bespectacled, and looks as though he would rather be playing a quiet indoor game involving polyhedral dice. Well, it turns out that impression is pretty accurate.
I think it's a reasonably safe bet that Ziggurat Con, on June 9th at Talil Airbase, near Nasiriyah, will be the first ever organised convention for role-playing enthusiasts held in a war zone. But it probably won't be the last. Apparently RPGs, table-top war games, collectible card games other forms of assorted geekery are a common pastime with entertainment-starved soldiers.
"There is a deeper sense of camaraderie in a war zone than you see back home," said SPC David Amberson, Ziggurat Con's organiser. "You eat with these people, work with them on a daily basis, and can even share a tent with the same people. When work is over for the day, we can sit back, relax, drink our favorite sodas, eat our favorite snacks, and play a bit of D&D. This helps us relax in a very stressful environment. We found a place where we can go somewhere far away from the IED's, mortar attacks, and gunfire, without ever leaving the safety of our camp. The next step was only logical."
It's hard to explain quite why I am so pleased by the knowledge that enough troops on active duty play role-playing and war games for there to be a convention. Maybe it feels like a sort of vindication for me and my fellow Followers of Gygax, or perhaps a sign that geeks have finally inherited the earth. Mostly it's because of the image of Bible Belt types getting wind of Ziggurat Con and the 'D&D evil'/'troops good' paradox causing their heads to assplode.
9-year-old Arkin is fed his democracy through a tube.34,452 is three Mosgiels of people. I have tended to measure large numbers of people in Mosgiels since an early age. There are 10,000 people in a Mosgiel. Roughly. Give or take. Anyway, that's an awful lot of civilians to have died last year in Iraq. Who should be surprised by this, I don't know. Given that the popular justification for invading Iraq has, since the invasion began, focused on how awful Saddam Hussein was and how he was basically just slaughtering Iraqis any chance he got, anyone who thinks the invasion was a good idea now borders on the religiously fanatical.
Interested to see what the zealous spin is on the matter, I tried to check out Little Green Footballs, which seems to be offline. Aww. So I checked out Political Crossfire, and no one was talking about it there. Getting worried, I finally checked Christian Forums. Ahh, here we are. BearerBob says, "Trust the UN? I think not!" But then, he's always saying that, because the UN is a communist anti-Christian satanist nihilist feminist liberal conspiracy.
That said, Bob was talking about bribery charges in the so-called Oil for Food Scandal. Here's my favourite part: "[U.S. attorney Michael] Garcia said the United States had issued warrants for the arrest of Nadler and Sevan and will seek their arrest and extradition to New York." Yeah? Is the US down with extradition now? Excellent. I look forward to a certain CIA terrorist being extradited to Venezuela.
On a bizarre personal note, the unique ID for the javascript in the image above is 1701071 - the only palindromic unique ID until... Oh, wait. There'll be another one in 10 days. Never mind.
Hitler: Iranian?
Thank you kindly, Idiot Savant and Russell Brown, for the mad hook-ups. Apologies to my mother. Mum, you're no longer the privileged sole reader of this blog. Plus, I'm gay. Just kidding. Or is it? Russell referred to me as "former award-winning Craccum editor". I like that. It suggests that I was award-winning a while back, but no longer. Or am they?
Speaking of the fairer orientation, there's too much cool shit on Metafilter today for me to pick a link and pretend like I'm informed. They are, in no particular order, testable hypotheses regarding the "gay gene", the Passivhaus architecture that's already necessary, and some guys finding their perfect supervillain hideout behind Niagara Falls.
The US is accusing Iran of funding two sides of the same conflict, which has a weird symmetry to it, especially given that half of the Reagan-era staff are now advising Bush. Uninterestingly and unsurprisingly, the suggestion that the recent incarnation of the Ayatollah Saddam bin Castro is behind American troubles comes shortly after Bush's ridiculously unpopular decision toescalate augment US troops in Iraq. Condoleezza Rice heard a few complaints from her own party:
Speaking of the fairer orientation, there's too much cool shit on Metafilter today for me to pick a link and pretend like I'm informed. They are, in no particular order, testable hypotheses regarding the "gay gene", the Passivhaus architecture that's already necessary, and some guys finding their perfect supervillain hideout behind Niagara Falls.
The US is accusing Iran of funding two sides of the same conflict, which has a weird symmetry to it, especially given that half of the Reagan-era staff are now advising Bush. Uninterestingly and unsurprisingly, the suggestion that the recent incarnation of the Ayatollah Saddam bin Castro is behind American troubles comes shortly after Bush's ridiculously unpopular decision to
Madam Secretary, when you set in motion the kind of policy that the president is talking about here, it's very, very dangerous. As a matter of fact, I have to say, Madam Secretary, that I think this speech given last night by this president represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam - if it's carried out. I will resist it.
- Senator Chuck Hagel (R)
And the Democrats chipped in:
I fear that what the president has proposed is more likely to make things worse. We hoped and prayed we would hear of a plan that would have two features: to begin to bring American forces home and a reasonable prospect of leaving behind a stable Iraq. Instead, we heard a plan to escalate the war, not only in Iraq but possibly into Iran and Syria as well. I believe the president's strategy is not a solution, Secretary Rice. I believe it's a tragic mistake.
- Senator Joseph Biden (D)
How ill-informed and regrettable of them. The Herald notes today that both those in favour and those opposed to escalation are "right", in that the choice is between upping the violence of the illegally occupying Coalition, and leaving the country to spiral even more into civil war.
This is exactly what opponents of the war originally said would happen, and I remember talking to Americans who talked about just going in, finding the WMD - or, once the invasion began, "changing the regime" - and being home in time for a smoked kipper. What I said then was that if the invasion occurs, international law requires that the occupying force stays long enough to leave the territory stable, with a working police and defence force.
The suggestion that the Coalition should stay in Iraq until it's stable is not popular with anyone at the moment. It's not popular with opponents of the war in general - "occupation is not liberation; US out of Iraq now" - and it's not popular with the American public in general, cos their boys are dying a bit too much. And it's expensive.
William Polk, author of Out of Iraq, argues that the violence will settle down far more quickly without the presence of the foreign aggressors:
We argue that, based on what is known of other insurgencies, once the major irritant - us -- is removed, conditions can be created for a healing of the wounds. To encourage and promote that process, we advocate a careful program including a "stabilization force" under the UN working for the Iraq government to police the major facilities (roads, hospitals, schools, banks, factories, etc.). This force would not engage in counterinsurgency and would have a limited mandate so the things that have made an American presence unacceptable will be lessened.
And Tariq Ali has an interesting take in an interview with the Socialist Worker. As he says at the end, victory for the resistance (much of which is currently being called "sectarian violence") would involve the occupier leaving and the people having control of their natural resources - "but will the US allow this to happen?" Given the massive investment already made, and America's tendency to stick around for a while, I don't like their chances.
A US soldier demonstrates the new "not orange"
rendition hoods on a young handcuffed terror suspect.
rendition hoods on a young handcuffed terror suspect.
I am 10 years old but I have not been to school for the past three years because I'm scared of the killings taking place in Iraq. Many of my friends have either been kidnapped or killed.
Since I was five I had been attending the Adhamiyah Primary and Secondary School, in Adhamiyah district [one of the most popular Sunni neighbourhoods in Baghdad]. I made many friends there but since last year, many of them have either fled Iraq with their parents or have left school because their parents are afraid for them because of the increase in kidnappings and killing of children and teachers.
I miss my school very much but in the classroom I used to keep looking at the door to see if someone would break in and kidnap me. My family is poor and if they [the kidnappers] take me, I might die because they cannot pay a ransom.
My mother usually forced me go to school, saying that if I believed in God nothing would happen to me but nowadays things are not so easy and even people who pray day and night are being killed.
Two weeks ago, a close friend of mine was killed while she was leaving the school with her father. A car with men wearing black crossed in front of them and the men shot them dead. It was horrible and there were many children at the school's gate at that time.
I have two brothers, Amir and Younis. Both of them are in school. Amir, who is 13, says he is not afraid of killers or kidnappers and he has become a man and is not afraid. But Younis used to cry every day when he had to go to school with me. He is only seven but was seriously sad and traumatised from the violence but my parents don't understand this and used to force him to go with me anyway.
I dream of leaving Iraq but this is only a dream because my parents are too poor to do that. Sometimes I think I will go crazy with the tension I have in my head and the pressure from all sides, especially from my mother who insists that I have to go to school to be someone important. Inside me I know that what I want is just to be away from this violence.
Life is very bad and education is going from bad to worse. Teachers are scared all the time and many of them have left school after receiving threats, making us more scared.
I want to stay at home because somehow I will be safer. I prefer to be illiterate than to die or see a friend killed in front of me or maybe kidnapped and have my ears sent to my family as happened to one of my best friends three months ago.
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