Antiwar.com Blog

“Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it” – Shakespeare, Henry V

Every so often, the confused cranium of George W. Bush emerges from seclusion and words escape his lips which are apparently designed to be explanations of his policies. Typically, his statements only create greater confusion amongst observers, possibly including the President himself. Ever expanding confusion, mirroring ever expanding entropy, the second law of thermodynamics applied to the gray matter of George Bush*; that would be a neat explanation for this statement, concerning deceased US servicemen;

“We owe them something. We will finish the task that they gave their lives for. We’ll honor their sacrifice by staying on the offensive against the terrorists and building strong allies in Afghanistan and Iraq that will help us win and fight … the war on terror.”

“Finish the task” — what task? as tex pointed out below, Bush has never defined the task. The task, like the justification for the task, is whatever Bush wants it to be, moment by moment. That’s what “they gave their lives for” as he puts it. They gave their lives for the imagination of George W. Bush. “Honor their sacrifice”…by wiping out any resistance to our dreams of world domination, no matter who be in our way. And who are “the terrorists” Bush is always referring to? The president is always talking about terrorists and insurgents, insurgents and terrorists. He hasn’t clearly delineated who the enemy is. Clearly, the enemy is anyone whom George W. Bush imagines them to be. “Building strong allies” refers to the permanent US military bases in Iraq, assuming Bush remembers that he is having them built. And then this matter of “the war on terror”, another thing Bush has never bothered to define in anything resembling specific terms. Since we don’t know exactly what the war on terror is, it isn’t possible to win it, except in the imagination of its Creator: George W. Bush. The president imagines the cause, imagines the enemy — why not simply get out of the region and he can imagine the casualties too!

*For the Second Law to apply to Bush’s brain, it would have to be, in technical terms, a ‘closed system’, in which no new positive thermal energy can enter…

Or something.  Swopa has Salam Pax’s constitution-blogging:

swopa:  Team Shiite opts for a short punt

Salam Pax: So nothing really. They just wanted to make sure the current Assembly is not dissolved. al-Hassani is having a press conference and he is talking about four outstanding issues. One of them is the issue of regions. [sic]

al-hassani is saying this is not to be called an extension because we do have a draft what’s going to be done are amendments only.

And it looks like the preamble has not been agreed upon yet!

"we had two choices either take an unfinished draft or apply for a new extension. We chose the unfinished draft".

OK, so now you know as much as most Iraqis know about what happened.

UPDATE:

Salam’s dad is back from the Assembly:

“everybody’s got a bloody nose”. That’s what he is telling me.
There are still two issues which are still open. The formation of regions is still very much debated. The Shia want this to be an issue decided within the region itself i.e. if Basra wants to become an autonomous region this is decided in Basra only the central federal government has no say. The other parties want this to be a national decision.

The other big issue is de-Baathification. The Shia parties want this tobe mentioned in the constitution. Allawi and the Sunnis don’t want this to be mentioned there.

I did see the draft, I wasn’t allowed to touch it tho :-) It looks like a hastily written document, not even good hand writing. It is hand written and with lots of things crossed out. Each page is signed by a memeber of the Shia coalition and a member of the Kurdish coalition.

There’s more….

Steve Earle, entertaining at Camp Casey:

I think it’s really important for those of us who’ve been talking about this (opposing the war)  from when we first went in to Iraq and even before that to remember that the Vietnam War didn’t end because I opposed it, it ended because my father came to oppose it.  We have Cindy Sheehan to thank for the beginnings of what I believe is a mainstream movement against this war.

Video, broadband WMV.  Other versions available at truthout’s Cindy page.

The Trillion-Dollar War – New York Times

But the biggest long-term costs are disability and health payments for returning troops, which will be incurred even if hostilities were to stop tomorrow. The United States currently pays more than $2 billion in disability claims per year for 159,000 veterans of the 1991 gulf war, even though that conflict lasted only five weeks, with 148 dead and 467 wounded. Even assuming that the 525,000 American troops who have so far served in Iraq and Afghanistan will require treatment only on the same scale as their predecessors from the gulf war, these payments are likely to run at $7 billion a year for the next 45 years.

via Libertarian Jackass

Of course, anyone paying attention already knows that “assuming that American troops who have so far served in Iraq and Afghanistan will require treatment only on the same scale as their predecessors from the gulf war” is out the window.

George Bush, June 15, 2004 — "Coalition forces, including many brave Afghans, have brought America, Afghanistan and the world its first victory in the war on terror," the president said.

KABUL, Afghanistan August 21, 2005 A massive bomb exploded under a wooden bridge as a convoy of armored Humvees was crossing it Sunday, killing four U.S. soldiers and wounding three others in the deadliest assault on American forces in Afghanistan in nearly two months.

The troops were part of a major offensive against militants who have vowed to subvert legislative elections on Sept. 18 – the next step toward democracy after more than two decades of war and civil strife.

Rebels also stepped up attacks elsewhere, wounding two U.S. Embassy staff in a roadside bombing in the capital and killing a senior pro-government cleric and a colleague in the country’s south.

Though the U.S. military operation has left dozens of suspected rebels dead or captured, a number of American troops also have been killed, including 13 this month. U.S. and Afghan officials have warned violence may worsen ahead of the polls.

The bomb tied to the bottom of the small bridge exploded as the last of three Humvees was slowly crossing it, said Bashir Ahmad Khan, the government chief in Zabul province’s Daychopan district.

“It was an enormous remote-controlled bomb. The American vehicle was tossed into the air and off the bridge. It’s totally destroyed, as is the bridge,” he told The Associated Press.

The three wounded troops were hit by shrapnel from secondary explosions as they tried to pull the four soldiers out of the burning Humvee, the military statement said. The three were evacuated to a nearby base and were in stable condition.

Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya, the U.S.-led coalition’s operational commander, said the blast would “strengthen, not weaken, the resolve” of the troops to safeguard the polls.

It was the deadliest attack on American forces since June 28, when 19 service members were killed in eastern Kunar province when a Navy SEAL team was ambushed and a helicopter shot down.

Some 187 U.S. service members have been killed in and around Afghanistan since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in late 2001 – including 64 during a rash of insurgent attacks in the last six months, which have left about 1,000 other people dead as well.

The bloodshed has led the military to rush in an airborne infantry battalion of about 700 troops on standby in Fort Bragg, N.C., boosting the number of American troops in Afghanistan to about 20,000.

I can’t wait to see what victory in Iraq looks like.

UPDATE: An AntiWar.com reader sends a correction to this story:

"Some 187 U.S. service members have been killed in and around Afghanistan
since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in late 2001"

WRONG

Try 228 from official US government reports –

http://www.icasualties.org/oef/

and that’s not correct either. It’s almost certainly several times what the
US government admits. The first casualty in war is the truth.

Bush addresses the nation from Never-Never Land:

President George W. Bush said on Saturday U.S. troops in Iraq were fighting to protect Americans at home from more attacks like those of September 11, 2001, starting a five-day focus on his case for the war amid growing public discontent.

[…]

"Our troops know that they’re fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy," Bush said in his weekly radio address.

"They know that if we do not confront these evil men abroad, we will have to face them one day in our own cities and streets, and they know that the safety and security of every American is at stake in this war, and they know we will prevail," he said.

Meanwhile, back in Realitysville…..

As disturbing as those reports were, what Kulick had to say about the conduct of the war was even more troubling. He told his family that the Iraqi police "were corrupt and inept and there was no way they could ever train them to the degree where they could keep order." And when his unit went out after insurgents, far too many innocent iraqis were killed in the crossfire. And, Kulick reported home, "the more hate that created." When the Americans left an area, the insurgents came back the next day.

Eventually, when Kulick saw Iraqi citizens kneeling in the street in prayer, his interpreter would tell him they were praying for the Americans to leave. "They would rather live with evil they knew rather than live with us," Kulick said in his emails. "We were killing them as much as the insurgents were."

Bush:  "Now we must finish the task that our troops have given their lives for and honour their sacrifice by completing their mission," he said.

What was their mission again?  That part was missing from the speech, as usual.  Maybe Cindy Sheehan can ask him after he tells her what the "noble cause" was that Casey Sheehan and John Kulick died for.

The Cunning Realist, commenting on a Belgravia Dispatch post (both well worth reading for thoughtful analysis from a conservative perspective) on the shameful Rumsfeld and Myers performance at a recent press conference, writes:

This just floors me. Does it remind anyone else of invading Iraq ostensibly to disarm the country, then not securing the major weapons caches?

As Greg writes, “These guys should be going to bed every night with such figures [Iraqi troop strengths and capabilities] firmly implanted in their head.” That they have to “get back to us” several years into an occupation leads to a completely logical and appropriate question: Just what the hell is going on?

And here’s a more depressing question: If thousands of our troops have been killed and permanently maimed in order to allow Iraqis time to train and ultimately defend themselves, but our most senior civilian and military leaders have to “get back to us” about how much progress has been made in that regard, what does that say about the importance of our troops’ sacrifice to those leaders?

No "noble cause" rhetoric can drown out those questions.