or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
May 05, 2008
New From TomDispatch
The Last War and the Next One
Descending into Madness in Iraq -- and Beyond
By Tom EngelhardtThe last war won't end, but in the Pentagon they're already arguing about the next one.
Let's start with that "last war" and see if we can get things straight. Just over five years ago, American troops entered Baghdad in battle mode, felling the Sunni-dominated government of dictator Saddam Hussein and declaring Iraq "liberated." In the wake of the city's fall, after widespread looting, the new American administrators dismantled the remains of Saddam's government in its hollowed out, trashed ministries; disassembled the Sunni-dominated Baathist Party which had ruled Iraq since the 1960s, sending its members home with news that there was no coming back; dismantled Saddam's 400,000 man army; and began to denationalize the economy. Soon, an insurgency of outraged Sunnis was raging against the American occupation.
After initially resisting democratic elections, American occupation administrators finally gave in to the will of the leading Shiite clergyman, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and agreed to sponsor them. In January 2005, these brought religious parties representing a long-oppressed Shiite majority to power, parties which had largely been in exile in neighboring Shiite Iran for years.
Now, skip a few years, and U.S. troops have once again entered Baghdad in battle mode. This time, they've been moving into the vast Sadr City Shiite slum "suburb" of eastern Baghdad, which houses perhaps two-and-a-half million closely packed inhabitants. If free-standing, Sadr City would be the second largest city in Iraq after the capital. This time, the forces facing American troops haven't put down their weapons, packed up, and gone home. This time, no one is talking about "liberation," or "freedom," or "democracy." In fact, no one is talking about much of anything.
—Jonathan Schwarz
Posted at May 5, 2008 05:10 PM160,000 troops in country, if each one kills about 150 Iraqis then the OIL is OURS (held in public trust for the American People by Halliburton, of course).
Posted by: Mike Meyer at May 6, 2008 11:57 AMBadrists v. Sadrists
USers = McCannon Fadrists
And there is NO WAY, despite the fact that 68% of the people say they want the troops home, NO WAY it's gonna happen. Cuz the folks in the Pentagon and in Foggy Bottom, not the politicos but the careerists, know that the realities of geo-politics militate overwhelmingly against the appearance of weakness, which a withdrawal signifies (McCancer's right: "Withdrawal" = "Surrender", in the eyes of our global antagonists at least), which our position as #1 and ONLY superpower cannot withstand much of...super-powers do not long endure which consistently lose face in matters such as theis, especially when they have brought on the crises themselves...
USer troops are gonna be in Iraq for the foreseeable future, first to protect the equipment--airplanes and ordnance, mainly--that is going to be based on the 'temporary' facilities already built around the country with the mission of 'projecting USer Influence' over the trans-Caspian.
Apparently now, too, they're gonna be needed to protect the investments of speculators like that ass-wipe who wants to build Disneyland-Am-Tigris, with skate-board tracks (something you gotta say really s l o w l y or the Iraqis won't get it).
Then there's the oil (and prospective natural gas fined in the SUNNI west of the country)...
Finally, it is still remotely possible that the Iraqis might be able to unify again sufficiently to pose a bother to the Israelis.
No significant number of USer troops will "come home" untill all those issues are resolved, and the Iraqis stop killing USers, so that then we can stay another 100 years...
BUT SAY the whole world looked upon the Iraq invasion as a CRIME and WE ARRESTED TRIED AND REASONABLY PUNISHED the perpitrators as a part of withdrawal, would that not show a greater strength?
Posted by: Mike Meyer at May 6, 2008 06:38 PM
