There are laws in this country making it a crime to threaten the President or incite violence resulting in harm to him (or her). President Bush is a criminal, a murderer, a depraved madman. I will not threaten him or call on others to harm him. However, if there is a God, one truly just and caring about us as his children, He will find it in his benevolent being to strike George Bush dead. Whatever form this retribution takes matters not, the world must be rid of him soon. This is a man undeserving of dying peacefully of old age in his sleep. Something horrific and agonizingly painful is called for.

That's what they get for having Weapons of Mas....Uhhhh...Harboring Terrori...Uhhhhh...Being Tortured by Sadda...Liberated by the United States? Democracy in action, American style!

With the official change from ground forces to air power against insurgents, Iraq is going to look like someone lit a stick of dynamite in a cow's keister. Any arguments that we are there to liberate or save our little brown brothers from a horrific dictator are moot. We'll end up making the insurgents look noble since they'll be seen as trying to save the Iraqi's from us.

Sometimes we tend to overcomplicate issues as we discuss them to death. You're right in asking the simple questions.

Saddam's been captured: why are we still there? We've given them 'sovereignty': why are we still there?

Unless we're there to further a secret design, such as establishing a permanent military presence in the region, then we've done what we came to do and need to get out.
But of course we will never get the truth from this administration, just the propaganda, so common sense will be confounded again and again.

Why are we still there?

Latest Newsweek poll shows 50% of Americans want to vote for George Bush and his war. So it's official: America has gone insane.

You're right. This entire war is a war crime and we have an administration filled with war criminals. The UK Guardian has a story today about more routine torture and abuse of prisoners, this time in Mosul.

http://tinyurl.com/6vamf

I've long thought America was growing dysfunctional; now it seems to have gone insane.

"Last year, as troops poured over the Kuwait border to invade Iraq, the U.S. military set up at least 120 forward operating bases. Then came hundreds of expeditionary and temporary bases that were to last between six months and a year for tactical operations while providing soldiers with such comforts as e-mail and Internet access.

Now U.S. engineers are focusing on constructing 14 "enduring bases," long-term encampments for the thousands of American troops expected to serve in Iraq for at least two years. The bases also would be key outposts for Bush administration policy advisers.

As the U.S. scales back its military presence in Saudi Arabia, Iraq provides an option for an administration eager to maintain a robust military presence in the Middle East and intent on a muscular approach to seeding democracy in the region. The number of U.S. military personnel in Iraq, between 105,000 and 110,000, is expected to remain unchanged through 2006, according to military planners.

"Is this a swap for the Saudi bases?" asked Army Brig. Gen. Robert Pollman, chief engineer for base construction in Iraq. "I don't know. ... When we talk about enduring bases here, we're talking about the present operation, not in terms of America's global strategic base. But this makes sense. It makes a lot of logical sense."

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy chief of operations for the coalition in Iraq, said the military engineers are trying to prepare for any eventuality. "

Courtesy GlobalSecurity.org--Chicago Tribune 3/23/04 simplethings, this is not a "secret design", rather a publicly known fact. The U.S. is not leaving Iraq for a very long time.

Meanwhile, back here in Bizarro Minnesota, my office is throwing a picnic this afternoon for employees. It's to "celebrate" the hard work and "sacrifice" we've endured during a year of 8-hour days in our air-conditioned cubicles. I told the boss I was uypset about what the government was doing in Iraq and in this country, and didn't feel like partying. That stuff doesn't concern our "team," my boss said. That's not our business, that's the business of the federal government, he said.

Maybe your boss will care when his own kids get blown up because President Bush is a war felon who committed terrible crimes.

We do not live in a vacuum. This will come back at us--this is not Southeast Asia or Chile.

In time, cooler heads will prevail.

500 years of future history put into motion because of a family feud between the Hussein's and the Bush's.

Nice to know that everythings under control. Looks like "major combat operations" have been back in fashion in Iraq. Somebody want to explain to this guy what he's doing there? Dubya says we need to complete the mission. Didn't we do that already?

god what a sad scene. if (and granted, it's a big if) the large media outlets were to put these types of photos on the front pages, home pages, and evening & morning news programs, how long do you think support for this operation would last?

has anyone ever studied how our country's relative isolation from major incidents/invasions/events (with the exception of 9/11 & Pearl Harbor) has fostered a spirit of immunity or perhaps a tolerance for these types of events, so far as they don't occur in our 'backyards'? it simply baffles me that people are being killed with our taxpayer dollars and yet the large majority of americans are able to simply ignore it, and carry on with their mundane lives.

This administration needs to be taken away in handcuffs and brought to the Hague and convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity. After which they should spend the rest of their lives in prison. Its that simple but will never happen. The best we can hope for is their defeat in Nov and defeat of all right wing extremists in every future election.

And what do we get from the media? Old Headlines

This appears like some kind of tit for tat revenge operation, similar to Israeli tactics.There can only be so many Al Zarqwhai "safehouses." These bombings don't qualify as legtimate military operations, but terror operations. Quite thematic for a nation which pioneered carpet bombing of civilian populations, not to mention nuclear death.

I'm glad you could just come out with this and say it.It's just that the criminally negligent American press has all but supressed it. I'm not sure if it matters anyway or would make a difference. Only American lives matter.

There will be no acountability. They do this with utter impunity.

Are these the flys the right wing pundits speak of?

I think that most Bush supporters would see nothing wrong with a few more dead brown people. They might even celebrate the occasion.

I'm not yet comparing us to the Germans of the 30s & 40s, and I'm not yet comparing our war in Iraq to the holocoast - but - as to the similarities, I wonder if we are doing enough by just 'voting' against Bush in the coming election. (I too wish there were a world court with the jurisdiction to prevent and punish such unprovoked wars.)
In any case, I have become a bit more understanding of the Germans, who did nothing, or felt helpless, when Hitler acted with impunity. And, as for the Nationalism that the Germans felt, it appears our country too can be led into the same type of nationalistic attitude.

Cali, you have some of the same thoughts. However, you should remember that there are people who think that we are doing the right thing, and killing others is of no consequence if we get what we want. Actually, they are for killing people. The more the better.

Ugh. Disgusting. After WW2 we led an industrial and social rebirth of the Western World. If Bush, Cheney, and Rice want to compare Iraq to post-war germany, I say have at it. There were ZERO combat casualties in post war Germany, and I may be rusty on my history, but I do believe we stopped bombing towns and cities after the war was over.

Proud to be an American? No, I am not.

And if we are idiotic enough as a nation to actually elect this idiot, then we deserve the world's scorn on a massive scale. They are waiting to see what we will do on Nov 2 - most figure the 2000 election was rigged, but if we do it again, the dream of 'America' will die for the rest of the world.

Whoever this photographer was, he deserves mention in every major piece of journalism in the world. The account reminds me of those accounts of old time reporters in foxholes and on planes taking fire. Our current crop is satisfied to get "embedded" at the militaries pleasure to highlight their own viewpoint.

Speaking of which - does anyone have a link to the pictures from that attack? The one at the top is awful enough, but if there are more, the blogs should be posting them again & again.

?!

BUSH/CHENEY '04: We deserve it!