I really hope this war is not about religion and the crusades and all that crap again.  I really don’t think I could take it.  I hope it is about oil and money, cause at least that makes sense.  I hope it is about spreading democracy in an effort to promote progressivism to that part of the world.  Just anything but religion, I see all those Iraqis and how seriously take religion and it makes me sick.  Our religious right is even worse.  It like the people that say they are the most religious are the ones doing all the damage and the killing.  Religion is a brainwashing magic show and the longer people die for it the more embarassing the human race becomes.  I really hope its about money, and it probably, and that makes me happy- at least there is a rational explanation for action rather than religious magic show bs.

Nothing new in this article that many of us didn’t already predict before the U.S. invasion.  The was never any proof of WMD and many of us knew that bush was exploiting the September 11th tragedy in order to invade iraq.  Nothing but lies has come from this administration.  I’d just like to know when these people, including condelezza rice, are going to held accountable for what they’ve done to iraq, to america, and to the world.  Also, how can these same people now talk about invading iran?  They are using the same arguments they used to invade iraq to invade iran.  Unfrigginbelievable…

This mess will end with another helicopter flight full of desperate people. It won’t end soon because we have a congress full of cowards and weasels, a president supposedly anointed by God to deliver liberty to the Middle East and military brass too concerned with their next promotion to care about our kids on the ground. And what’s to say about a five time draft dodger like Cheney who still clings to the notion there are only “dead-enders” left figting us. Look in the mirror, loser. This is so hopelessly pathetic.

We are starting to see increasing evidence of a cover-up of events that do not help the PR effort of the US.  The shot-down helicopter crash recently would have been big news a while ago but it was suppressed long enough to lose its immediacy and then buried in the midst of other bad news about the war.  This seems to indicate a growing desperation on the part of the administration that reminds me of the end game in Vietnam where we fought on for “peace with honor” long enough to extricate out troops with some degree of success.  Of course the Vietnamese people’s army soon rolled dpwn the streets of Saigon and the pupper government left in planes full of US-donated gold.  I don’t think this administration has figured out their exit strategy and must fight on until they can get out “with honor”.  Those lives lost from now until then will be lives lost needlessly.

If only peanuts grew in the sands of Iraq can anyone think one little cell of the Bush-Cheny-Rove-Rumsfeld and all their neocon acolytes brain would yearn to establish democracy in the middle east?
How fortunate we are to have all these great humanitarians but how costly their “good works.”
Bush is right to add another costume to his wardrobe, after various flight jackets, pilot costumes etc.-- he is now appearing as a clown.

I had a moment of confusion when reading the New York Times editorial. Are the Baghdad “thugs” who “kidnap and torture innocent civilians with impunity, then murder them for their religious beliefs” Iraqis or Americans? Just curious.

As I have said before, we, the world, will never leave Iraq as long as we value oil as highly as we do. Neither the Republican nor Democratic parties will let us leave. The military bases there are permanent. Oil contracts are in place for control of Iraqi oil. This is the corporatist agenda and corporations, through their hugely funded programs to manipulate democracies, control most of the industrial state’s governments. (Chances are that China’s leaders are in their pockets as well). So, they control the world’s resources, people and money. For this to change, a genuine enlightenment among the world’s elites would have to occur. Perhaps a pervasive evolution in the human psyche could bring this about, maybe in a hundred thousand years if the human race exists that long. 

But, for now, what’s a poor progressive to do? All we need is one U.S. President to stand up and do two things: first, institute a policy prohibiting any further killing of other human beings by any part of the U.S. government and its agents; also, demand an accounting of killings by U.S. client states, starting with Israel. This will set us on a course to moral legitimacy in the world.

Next, we need a kind of ‘Manhattan Project’ (--gave us the atomic bomb): a project to make us oil-independent; probably development of new technology for directly harnessing the energy of the Sun.

Appear feasible? Of course, it does, and it’s entirely within the power of the American people to bring about.

Iraq and Iran fought a war that cost each side, a million casualties each.

Iraq was supported by the United States. We used Saddam to check the fundamentalists in Iran.

But after that war Saddam became reluctant to play our stooge. So, we tricked him into invading Kuwait, and we humiliated him, but still he wouldn’t do our bidding.

And because Iran continue to grow and fundamentalism continued to be a threat to our Oil, we decided to take over Iraq, and use a puppet goverment, instead of Saddam to be a stooge, and check the power of the fundamentalists, and keep the oil flowing to US.

But, it wasn’t that easy. Because death is no threat to those who aren’t afraid to die. But it is to those whose lives are about leisure, pleasure, and consumption.

And now we’ve made a mess of things, because we didn’t listen to our Generals, instead we replaced those that disagreed with Mr. Bush, and Mr. Rumsfeld.

And now it is crystal clear that the fundamentalists will win this war, and there is nothing to check them now, no Iraq, no puppet Iraqi state, with Rumsfeld at the helm instead of Saddam.

And now the Neocon’s only have words, to try and hold back the destruction in Iraq, and the surging power of the fundamentalist jihad, that they’ve made more vibrant, stronger with each passing day.

The U.S. is well and truly screwed in Iraq. There is no possible way for anything to turn out well. Either the U.S. stays and keeps losing troops and money until it gets kicked out in a humiliating defeat, or it runs now—a humiliating defeat. Then Iraq becomes a new Afghanistan. That will happen one way or another. The only question is how far the instability will spread and how much it will wreck the world economy. George Bush will go down as the worst president in the history of the U.S. and will eventually be extradited to stand trial for war crimes. I’m so glad I emigrated for the U.S. and could get into Australia!

Did you ever have a rich kid in your class back in Junior High whom you would talk into leading skip day or something because if he or she did it then you could get everyone to do it because everyone knew we would all be forgiven if something went wrong and the rich kid was involved?

Can’t you just see Wolfowitz(sic?), Rummy, Cheney, et al coming up to Bush #43 with their Neocon strategy way back when and saying, “You can do it. You’re the man!”

Trouble is, Bush now believes it (that he has been authorized by God to lead us in these troubling times) and there isn’t anyone to tell him different without having to also tell him how they used him in the first place.

If people weren’t dying in Afghanistan and Iraq including some of our best and brightest youth, this would be laughable ... deep, long belly guffaws ... the plot of a incredibly funny farce.

And watching all our powerful leaders wringing their hands because their puppet president thinks he is the real thing and no one yet dares tell him the truth ... because they still are more interested in their careers then they are in the welfare of our nation or the world. Buckley? He’s what? 80? He’s part of what got us here, but he can’t DO anything about it except try to preserve the current power elite’s path to the future.

The NY Times still has its caveat, “Well, we WANTED it to turn out right, like a democracy.” Everyone knows Kevin Phillips nailed the motivations in his new book AMERICAN THEOCRACY: oil and the manifest destiny of God’s chosen peoples.

We sent our young men and women to bleed and die in the sands of Mesopotamia for oil and a religious pipe dream ...

Behind it all (behind the curtain?) is Cheney’s madness in believing the core idea of Strausian Neoconservatism, “If you are not willing to exercise the power you have, then you don’t deserve to have the power.” And Cheney’s power is based on the control of oil.

And Buckley is doing his best to give Cheney a free pass into the future lest we the people catch on to the real source of the madness.

These men are the axis of evil. And they do have the bomb.

How did our president go wrong and what to do to to set Iraq on the road to treedom and democracy?  Should the occupiers choose so and so as Iraq’s leader or some other person(s) (never a woman, of course), this faction or that, as if it makes any difference who or what the American government chooses to run Iraq?  After all there’s never been an occupied country in which the natives couldn’t tell a puppet from a true patriot, and Iraq is no exception.to this rule.  The mistake was conquering and occupying Iraq.  What ‘s happening now is the natural consequences of taking away a people’s sovereignty and is entirely predictable, not in the details (Iraq is different that Vietnam is different from Algeria, etc. etc.) but in the eventual outcome.  Following an intial period of popular shock and disbelief (not awe), there’s a gradual reawakening (manifested by factionalism, chaos and anarchy) and then the inevitable realization that nobody will be free until the occupation ends, whereupon unity is forged in the struggle for freedom and independence.
How to cut the losses?  Bring the troops home now, that’s how.  But wouldn’t that lead to even more chaos and bloodshed?  Maybe, but if’s kind of late now for our president to be concerned with the lives and well-being of Iraqis.  If he really cared he’d never have invaded Iraq in the first place!