Marshall, August 20 at 11:17 pm #

By ardee, August 20 at 8:13 am #

I was referring to you, Adree, not “everyone on the left”. 
./..........................

Remarkable how much horseshit you can assemble without actually owning a horse.

By ardee, August 20 at 8:13 am #

I was referring to you, Adree, not “everyone on the left”.  And if I misunderstood the intent of your statement below then forgive me, but it sounded an awful lot like siding with the AQ extremist and insurgents and a cynical payback measured in the lives of electrocuted troops.  I hope that’s not what you meant.  And i’ve never been on common dreams but have it your way.

“while they gave little to nothing in return ( unless one considers the several American troops electrocuted by faulty wiring in their showers as a return on investment)”

By bogi666, August 20 at 8:20 am #

“The Surge in Iraq, was simply bribing/paying insurgents not to kill American troops.”

Even if that were true, which it’s not, what difference would it make?  The whole point of the surge was to open up breathing room for establishing governance.  Every measure of the surge is positive whether you believe it’ll hold or not - it achieved its major goal.

The Surge in Iraq, was simply bribing/paying insurgents not to kill American troops. Paying the opposing armies/forces so to speak. Fortunately, this will serve as a model to the world and the Pentagon will pay all the armies, America’s opponents of the world. Already, the Pentagon’s budget is 50% of the world’s spending for military purposes. By simply paying 100% of the world’s military budgets our opponents will disappear and this includes paying the armed forces of the world. This is the only reasonable, intelligence, rational solution. Just charge it Pentagon.

On further reflection.

One must see Marshall for what he is, what he was on Common Dreams and elsewhere, and what he will always be; one to whom truth is a malleable political ploy and nothing more.

The way he shares the canard that everyone on the left rejoices in the deaths of American troops, the way his advocacy of that foreign policy leads to those very deaths in fact.

That he seeks to minimise the criminal actions of the company that installed substandard wiring in shower rooms that did indeed lead to the deaths of our soldiers, of course his stock position trumps any compassion for those poor kids.

That he refuses to deal with the fact that so many nations, and courts, see the invasion of Iraq as illegal and based upon outright lies and distortions.

That we , not Sadaam Hussein, caused the destruction of so much of Iraq’s infrastructure and today, after all these years, we have still not repaired much of it.

Marshall is a cousin to Karl Rove, he lies and I believe he does so knowingly, in order to advance a neocon agenda that has led, and will continue to lead, to many more deaths, to a continued moribund and declining economy and ,worst of all, to a continued distortion of the truth and a destruction of what remains of our civil rights.

I believe it the duty of every decent and truth seeking American to ponder the meaning and the intent of this execrable liar , to whom anonyimity is a blessing and a protection. He was eventually laughed off Common Dreams (  he denies, and foolishly so, ever being there), though he may very well be back there now. Ms. Bedingfield or KDelphi still post there and may know.

I would urge all decent people here to refuse to ignore his continued and never ending lies and distortions and to confront them, however politely you deem necessary. How else to steal the credibility given by silence?

Marshall

You expose yourself as exactly what I postulated you to be, a slime trail leaving piece of excrement, for this remark if no other:

And I understand that the insurgents were freedom fighters to you and that every US troop lost to an electrical malfunction (or a bullet) is a cause for celebration in your household.

This sort of garbage is beneath even a nut job like Martha, but not a neocon like you. Try all you might to demonize the left with such lies and far right stupidities, you cannot win in the end.

You might possibly refrain from that third martini prior to posting in future.

Re: the water, electric, sewage & hospital systems:

  Didn’t we bomb the beHesus out of Baghdad in Shock&Awe; #1 (King
George IV) 1991, then blockade the country for 13 years, thru Bush,
Clinton, and Bush II reigns, until April, 2003 and Shock&Awe; #2?
During those 13 years, bookended by our bombing, Iraq couldn’t
import any parts, chlorine, no pencils (graphite could be used for
nuclear reactors, right?), pads of paper, toilet paper.)

    I don’t know about “a 1984 infrastructure upgrade that never
happened,” but I do know that the two Shock&Awe; campaigns (more
bombs that were dropped by us in all of WWII, did I read somewhere?)
that bookended 13 years of “collective punishment” of an entire
national population had a profound effect on the well-being of that
country, Saddam or no. (UNHCR or UNESCO or OXFAM, some well-
known but easy-to-forget NGO, estimated that by 1995, the bombing
and the embargo had consigned 500,000 children under 5 years old to
early graves. Just imagine what an impact all of their ghosts would have
if they encircled the White House and staged a “Haunt In.” Or 500,000
of anything related to children. Their bodies may have been quite small,
but that’s a big number, know what I mean?

  And if you haven’t seen it, check out the 60 minutes clip of
Madeleine Albright telling Leslie Stahl (who apparently gets invited to
Bilderberg meetings) that the “price” of 500,000 dead children “was
worth it.”

    I’ve kept trying to figure out what it was Albright figured she was
“buying” with the deaths of half a million little kids. Still haven’t come
up with an hypothesis. You have any ideas?

    As for “human rights violations,” methinks you need to include all
civilian casualties, or “collateral damage,” from 1991 until today, the 2
million dispossessed but still within Iraq, the other 2.5 million who
have fled the country, the maybe 1 million kids under 5 who died
because of poor sanitation & lack of ordinary medicines during the 13
years of the blockade. That’s the “collective punishment” of the Iraqi
population, which our treaties call “crimes against humanity.” It’s what
Israel is doing to the “indigenous peoples of Gaza”—in what is
essentially a “holocaust, ethnic cleansing and theft of Palestinian lands
in slow motion”.

    If the Palestinians were at all smart, they would cease ALL offense
and even self-defense (the Israelis always call it an attack by the
Palestinians and folks in the US believe it, gulls that we are).

    And instead, just slap down on the table a new one-state or two-
state constitution & plan every single day. And when the Israelis and
the US gov’t object, make alterations and slap down the new modified
plan the next day, and the next and the next and the next.

    Neither Israel nor the United States, as Israel’s partner in crimes
against humanity, want a peace settlement, as that would put firm
boundaries in place, would leave the Palestinians with some few water
resources that have not yet been wrested from their grasp, a little bit of
arable land, maybe a few houses, might force the clearing out of some
of the illegal “settlements” (remember how we in the US did it, “settling”
on Indian lands and then driving these “indigenous peoples” out of their
own lands? It took us from the Wampanoag lands in Massachusetts all
the way to the Pacific Ocean. And Chris Columbus started earlier, in
1492, exterminating some 2 to 8 million Arawak indians in the
Caribbean. Think of it as “Settle, Hold and Cleanse”. It’s a very effective
tactic. Just takes a lot of time. A peace settlement in Istein or Palael
would stop that tactic in its tracks. So, as Noam Chomsky puts it, the
US & Israel are the “rejectionists” who fight against a peace settlement
tooth & nail (all the while mouthing hypocritical “peace” words).

#9

(Dunno ‘bout you, but I served in Vietnam; no “US hater” here.)

By Ashino Sushanti, August 19 at 11:35 am #

Ashino - I’m not claiming Iraq is in great shape, but your links are 1-2 years old and are primarily opinion and editorializing.  My earlier post was no more than pointing out that some of the major benchmarks, like electricity availability and oil production, have surpassed pre-war levels and are continuing to improve.

By ardee, August 19 at 7:47 am #

There was nothing “illegal” about the war and i’m not going to get into the same tired discussion with you about whether Bush lied or not.  And I understand that the insurgents were freedom fighters to you and that every US troop lost to an electrical malfunction (or a bullet) is a cause for celebration in your household.  But my point is that Iraq under Saddam was no paradise and there have been a number of successes in the global reconstruction effort since then despite the ravages of the war.  To admit any success at all in Iraq would undermine your hatred of the US so I don’t expect you to acknowledge any of this anymore than I expect a camel to lose its humps.

Now, there’s all this minuatae of information about the Sunnis and the so and sos, and in Afghanistan this tribal lord and that tribal lord who’s affiliated with the Uzbeqs.  Left in the lurch are the Pashtuns.
Well, all this is well and good, but the over-arching theme seems to be that wherever the US forces go with the cover of the their cohorts from Colombia and the paid mercenaries, there is death and destruction.
How much does one need to know?  Destruction of olive trees in Gaza?  The killing of innocent white-flag waving children and women.  The bombing of wedding parties in Iraq and Afghansistan? These do not bring security.  They bring career advancement to the military brass, as winessed by the face time of General Ray Odierno.  (Does that name imply an odor?)
Is there anyone out there who would refute the fact that if they were doing this to us, we would hate them?  Talk about assymetric warfare.

Marshall, August 18 at 1:43 pm #

By Ashino Sushanti, August 18 at 8:52 am #

“There are huge problems with drinking water, still large interruption of electricity, there’s no proper waste & sewage management which implies impending contagious diseases besides massive polluted air & areas of all sorts.”

Baghdad’s water system has been in a shambles for decades and was due for an upgrade in 1984 that it never got.  Baghdad has never had continuous electricity - it was rationed by Saddam as well.  Iraq’s infrastructure is managed by state run entities and the US has spent billions in reconstruction there after war damages.  But to blame the US for problems that existed before the war is misplaced.

................................

Our favorite apologist for neoconservative ideology once again tries the impossible. One must give credit where it is due for even attempting this rather impossible task.

That the “Coalition” destroyed electrical plants, water filtration plants, sewer lines, water lines and ,in fact, much of the infrastructure of Baghdad in an illegal by international law invasion of a sovereign nation based upon the lies of Marshall’s heroes is not the point.

That the billions of dollars we wasted on Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater et.al.while they gave little to nothing in return ( unless one considers the several American troops electrocuted by faulty wiring in their showers as a return on investment) is also not the point.

The point, according to our favorite propagandist, is that it is all Sadaam’s fault…..You gotta admire a large set of brass balls….

Thanks, P. Cockburn, for an excellent report.

I’m a canuck, and what we do in the international theater of————has been referred to (by a Canadian journalist) as “Holding the Bullie’s Coat”—what say U ?

It might behoove some of the commenters (anaman51?) on this site to remember and consider the import of this on the ME:  200 years of Crusades still didn’t manage to wipe out the Muslim population - but they tried.

Maybe it would be helpful to consider the affect on a population and a country (America etc.) what 200 years of Muslim-backed Crusades to wipe out the Christian population would have meant to the West.  It is reasonable to argue that violence begets violence.

By Ashino Sushanti, August 18 at 8:52 am #

“There are huge problems with drinking water, still large interruption of electricity, there’s no proper waste & sewage management which implies impending contagious diseases besides massive polluted air & areas of all sorts.”

Baghdad’s water system has been in a shambles for decades and was due for an upgrade in 1984 that it never got.  Baghdad has never had continuous electricity - it was rationed by Saddam as well.  Iraq’s infrastructure is managed by state run entities and the US has spent billions in reconstruction there after war damages.  But to blame the US for problems that existed before the war is misplaced.

“human rights abuses by occupation”

There is no evidence of significant human rights abuses by coalition troops in Iraq.

“slaughter that the USA has been inflicted on Iraq for years”

What is conspicuously missing from your criticism is any mention of Al Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgency which inflicted the most casualties on Iraqi citizens by far.

By felicity, August 17 at 12:57 pm #

“Civil strife and violence among the citizens of a country always accompany the presence of an uninvited foreign occupier.”

I think the article’s point was that the war against the unwanted occupier is over.  We have a legitimate forces agreement with the elected Iraqi govt. and we’re no more “occupying” Iraq than we are Germany or other European countries with similar forces agreements.

Folktruther slipped, beat me to it darn you…

It is difficult to argue with someone who hasnt a clue as to the culture and history of that part of the world.

I wonder, anaman51, how you reconcile the fact that , once in Iraq, there were women in government, in medicine and in education? That the oldest still functioning Catholic church and Hebrew synagogue in the world were both in Baghdad?

It behooves you to understand that years and decades of violence and uncertainty, hardship and deprivation may be responsible for the extremism found there now. Just a thought.

The homicidal racism exhibited by Anaman51 is one of th major bulwarks of US homicidal foreign policy.  His view that the horrors of Iraq is due to the heretage of violence of the Iraqis, is apparently not amenable to revision by the reality-based truth. Although the US has slaughtered over a mullion Iraqis to control their oil reserves, the racist view is that it is the Iraqis that are violent, not the Americans.

When Madaline Albright stated publically on TV that it was worth killing half a million Iraqi children to acheive US foreign policy aims, there was no objection from power sources.  Indeed, Clinton so admired her he promoted her to Sec. of State, where she passed the Senate without a single dissenting vote.  No one questioned her on her apporval of the murder of a half million children.

US homidcidal racism is part of its bloodthirsty history, which has never been combated in American ideology.  It continues in the War on Terrorism, the torture, rape and homicide of dark skinned Muslims.

All decent Iraqis and Afghans have a patriotic duty to kill their occupiers and oppressors until they go away.  For Iraqis and Afghan to knuckle under to American brutality would be, well, un-American.

I’m reminded of that tautology - We must stay in Iraq in order to defeat those who don’t want us in Iraq.  {In essence, that was Rumsfeld’s convoluted (but perfectly sensible to him) justification for remaining in Iraq.}

Civil strife and violence among the citizens of a country always accompany the presence of an uninvited foreign occupier. That we would expect it to be different because we are the occupiers is yet again another example of American hubris (one of the reasons we’re often referred to as ‘ugly.’)

One of the realities about Iraq (among many) that our previous president didn’t comprehend was that the people there have a long history of settling things with violence. It’s a part of their heritage, a past which includes the practice of vengeance on a scale we are not familiar with. Killing each other over vendettas hundreds of years old in some cases, as well as the ordinary sectarian violence that permeates the Arab world, are part of the past and present of any Arab country. What we are seeing is the backlash of having been prevented from carrying out such attacks upon one another under the watchful eyes of our troops. Now that our troops are tucked into conclaves distant from the cities, it leaves room for business as usual. You can bet there are a lot of paybacks on the list from the Hussein days. By the way, fifty thousand troops in country does not equal a pullout. Why are we still there? To what end?

As long as we maintain fifty thousand troops in that nation, in whatever capacity, we cannot be said to have withdrawn.

As long as we continue to meddle in the internal politics of that country, and we do, American influence remains a destructive force within it.

I may be overly pessimistic but I see little hope for a future of Iraq as a state. Perhaps we will see three separate and unique territories, the Kurds, the Sunni and the Shia each within their own enclave, with, perhaps, a parliamentary body in common. Maybe not even that.