Not all the images come out clearly on this video but something about the music and the quotes put together that motivates me.  There is a clip of McCain talking about staying in Iraq for 100 years, Pat Buchanan saying very strongly that McCain means it when he promises more war, coverage of McCain saying how safe Baghdad is contrasted with comments from someone on the ground and finally McCain talks about how ambition motivated him to make comments about the confederate flag.

Hoping to bolster support for the surge in Iraq, John McCain over the past year has frequently touted the safe streets of Baghdad.  In April 2007, McCain boasted of neighborhoods "you and I could walk through."  By March 2008, he reminded us that "there's problems in America with safe neighborhoods as we well know."  And the solution to urban crime in the U.S., John McCain now tells us, is to bring the surge to the streets of America.

Waking up early this morning, turned on NPR morning edition in time to hear about a (weekly?) ritual at the Green Zone in Baghdad. General Petraeus takes time out of his busy schedule to go to the stage at the American Embassy and makes himself available for photos with anyone who wants them - and can get through the security screening.

The story isn't up at the NPR site  yet (they promise 8:30 for a summary, audio by 9:00 East Coast time), but you may want to check it out there if you don't catch it on the radio. The story is, so many people were always asking if they could have a picture taken with the general, his staff decided to streamline the process. Now they line up by the hundreds to run through a regular assembly line photo op on a regular schedule.

I'm not even going to try to comment on this. Feel free.

(I wrote almost the same thing two years ago, but I'm an old US history teacher and these things always bear repeating to the next generation.  Today I celebrate the 4th of July in a small trailer in Baghdad.  We've been asked to remain inside since we are afraid insurgents will mark our Independence Day with mortars and rockets.  Nothing like the 4th of July inside a small trailer to maek you realize what a complete screw up W. is.)

I just attended the annual Silverdocs international documentary film festival, an AFI/Discovery joint venture. Last year Al Gore attended with his film, this year in attendance were Wes Clark, Mike Gravel, Spike Lee, and Bela Fleck, among others. Great films, some reel(sic) eye openers i.e. Bulletproof Salesman, about an armored car salesman in Iraq, and IOUSA, about the national budget deficit. (Not to mention "All Together Now" about the Beatles/Cirque de Soleil Vegas production.)

Regardless of how you feel about the crimes of George W. Bush and impeachment, there are millions of innocent people asking for justice and who have no voice of their own. Follow me below the fold to hear ONE case for impeachment and justice.

Aided and abetted by the conservative echo chamber, John McCain this week launched a campaign to rewrite his dismal history of faulty forecasts and disastrous predictions on Iraq.  Demonstrating that experience is truly no substitute for judgment, John McCain like President Bush was sadly wrong at almost every turn in promoting the invasion and occupation of Iraq.  From his predictions of a short war and claims U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators to his announcements of mission accomplished, his ongoing confusion over friend and foe in Iraq and so much more, McCain's is an unbroken legacy of error.

But you'd never know it from his ill-fated "green scream" speech on Tuesday.

If nothing else, John McCain is an irony producing machine.  On the very day Scott McClellan described the Bush administration "propaganda" used to sell an "unnecessary war" in Iraq, talking points McCain himself regurgitated, the Arizona Senator challenged Barack Obama to join him on a Baghdad visit.   More ironic still, John McCain hasn't merely been wrong at every turn about the war in Iraq; the closer he gets to the war zone itself, the more disastrously off-base he becomes.

Yes, Keith Olbermann was right to take umbrage at Bush Two's claim to have sacrificed his golf outings in sympathy with all of the people he's ordered to be killed in Iraq.

However, it still strikes me as a mistake to assume that the man who claims to take his directions straight from God is actually competent to be responsible for the mayhem of the last seven years.  I mean, one reason there's a new candidate on the scene spouting the same lines is because there's a whole army of minions supporting the notion that the United States government has just two functions: to reward the compliant and punish the recalcitrant.

Somebody tells Bush Two what to say and he says it.  It's the same relationship Bill o'Reilly has with his teleprompter.

Theme Park Planned for Washington, Not Baghdad

(reposted from richieville.com)

Richieville News Service– WASHINGTON, D.C.

The Pentagon confirmed today that it had indeed commissioned plans for a $5 billion Iraqi- themed resort but said the site of the proposed development was Washington, D.C., not Baghdad.  

"We said we were going to rebuild Iraq, and that's what we're going to do," said Maj. General George Stanley, commander of the Army Corp of Engineers' theme park division. "We're just not going to rebuild it in Iraq."

For months now, supporters of the war in Iraq have trumpeted America’s apparent success in Iraq’s Anbar Province as a model for counterinsurgency operations.  With major fighting in Fallujah, Ramadi, and Qaim in the past, what had once been the most violent region of Iraq had--by the fall of 2007--become one of the most peaceful areas of the country.

It stayed that way until recently.  When a yet-to-be-named U.S. soldier was killed while on patrol in Anbar on Tuesday, he became the ninth American to die there in the past three and a half weeks.  This is neither random nor insignificant.

This is how the Pentagon envisions the Green Zone of Baghdad after a $5 billion tourist and development scheme.

A plan by US military planners for the "Tigris Woods Golf and Country Club" in the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq. Picture: U.S. Army/AP

There's nothing like playing a relaxing 18 holes of golf for U.S. generals and big oil executives after a tough day in oil-rich, occupied Iraq. Or as The Guardian describes it in Luxury hotels and golf: welcome to the Green Zone:

Picture... a tree-lined plaza in Baghdad's International Village, flanked by fashion boutiques, swanky cafes, and shiny glass office towers. Nearby a golf course nestles agreeably, where a chip over the water to the final green is but a prelude to cocktails in the club house and a soothing massage in a luxury hotel... Then, as twilight falls, a pre-prandial stroll, perhaps, amid the cool of the Tigris Riverfront Park, where the peace is broken only by the soulful cries of egrets fishing.

Unbelievable.

In the rush to cover current events, we often forget to go back and really mock the so-called "experts" who’ve said some of the dumber things about the war in Iraq recently.  So I want to take a few minutes this morning to do just that.  Doing so will better enable us to heap scorn on them when they attempt to say similar stupid shit in the future.

But first off, let’s consider the current situation in Iraq:

51 Americans died in Iraq this past month, making April 2008 the deadliest for U.S. troops since last summer--the bloodiest of the war.  This represents a more than 30 percent increase in combat fatalities over March (during the Basra fighting).  However, more telling than that, is the fact that American deaths in Iraq are up 122 percent since December.  

This diary is in response to CNN's National Disgrace.

I cannot tell you how distressed it makes me to hear complaints about deaths going unreported that exclude the majority of those killed in this war, innocent Iraqis. below the fold leads you to links about deaths that have been occurring over the last few hours, the last couple days.

Today, according to VOI (Voices of Iraq, as mainstream iraq news as you are going to find in Iraq)....

Iraq Primary Heats Up
Candidates Seek to Destroy Each Other's Credibility, Each Other
 
Richieville News Service - BAGHDAD (reposted from www.richieville.com)

The Iraq primary election campaign, which had seemed to moderate in recent weeks, has returned to its previous level of rancor, with rival candidates and their supporters throwing accusations at each other along with mortar fire and armor-piercing bullets. Both sides blamed the other for the increasingly negative tone of the contest, which will decide the winner of provincial elections to be held in the Fall.

[Llewellyn] Werner, chairman of C3, a Los Angeles-based holding company for private equity firms, is pouring millions of dollars into developing the Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience, a massive American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum. It is being designed by the firm that developed Disneyland. "The people need this kind of positive influence. It’s going to have a huge psychological impact," Mr Werner said.

(more after the fold.)

Al Qaeda
Iraq
Al Qaeda in Iraq
Iran
Al Qaeda in Iraq

After months of delay and enormous cost overruns, on Friday Ryan Crocker, US ambassador to Iraq announced that the new US embassy in Baghdad was complete.  This is troubling on two fronts, first, because of what it indicates about our future presence in Iraq.  Second, $736 million is a tremendous amount of money that could have had a serious impact had it been redirected either toward infrastructure spending in Iraq or here at home.

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