Home > ’Last throes’ or latest quagmire?
Edito Wars and conflicts International USA
Which is it? Do we need 12 more years in Iraq to defeat the violent insurgency, or is the insurgency in its "last throes"?
Is this war essential to stop terrorism from invading our shores, or was shaky intelligence "fixed" to justify a pre-planned invasion?
Our own independence celebration this weekend is an appropriate time to take stock of just where we stand on Iraq, given the duplicity of information and mixed-messages coming from the White House and from our British allies.
The only firm facts we have are:
• The war is 27 months old.
• 1,738 service members and five military civilians have died supporting operations in Iraq since July 1, 2005.
• 22,774 estimated Iraqi civilians have been killed. We stand for our troops, we support them and we honor their courage.
We stand with resolve, as President George W. Bush likes to say, and we do not falter. But we also think independently and are not intimidated by rhetoric that indicates otherwise if we disagree with the country’s direction.
Conflicting information coming from the White House and our British allies has a majority of Americans shaking their heads in disapproval, unable to give full support to the stated cause in light of a failure to articulate an exit plan and stale rhetoric from the president.
When Vice President Dick Cheney said June 20 on television’s "Larry King Live" that the insurgency in Iraq is "in the last throes" and predicts that the fighting will end before the Bush administration leaves office in 2009, we take that as fact.
Then, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld states publicly just six days later that it may take as long as a dozen years to defeat the Iraqi insurgency, and we are dumbfounded.
"Coalition forces, foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency," he stated, apparently unaware of the disheartening message. "We’re going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency."
Along with those opposing, high-level predictions came the release of the so-called Downing Street memo.
That document, printed last month in London’s Sunday Times - and taking its time to make it across the Atlantic - contains minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting. In that meeting, eight months before the Iraq invasion, then-head of British intelligence, Richard Dearlove, and five other British officials consulted with American foreign policy experts.
The transcripts of a meeting memo to British Prime Minister Tony Blair details British intelligence response to the Bush administration’s intention to go to war against Iraq, no matter how Saddam Hussein responded.
"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided," states the document. "But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." As the document states, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Yet Americans were being told war would only be a last resort.
Who to believe?
A lost chance to resurrect our belief that the Iraq war is just and not another Vietnam quagmire came when President Bush addressed the nation Tuesday on national television.
It seemed staged theatrics to have as his on-screen audience 750 soldiers and airmen in dress uniform, listening quietly as they had been asked to do, to help give a somber atmosphere to their commander-in-chief’s talk.
Bush then rejected any notion of a timetable, telling Americans they must be "patient."
He invoked 9/11 memories five times in what seemed like tiresome, desperate button-pushing to inspire Americans.
Said one critic afterward: "The president’s numerous references to Sept. 11 did not provide a way forward in Iraq.
"They only served to remind the American people that our most dangerous enemy, namely Osama bin Laden, is still on the loose and al-Qaida remains capable of doing this nation great harm nearly four years after it attacked America."
Where do we stand in Iraq over this weekend of American independence celebration?
We are shrouded with conflicting information and seeking a credible source.
We are learning there is no, single trustworthy voice to give us the facts.
Except, perhaps, that voice within each of us.
That voice whispers its growing doubts.
Forum posts
4 July 2005, 07:50
Be a true Patriot!! Spread the truth this July 4th.
4 July 2005, 14:34
THE TIME HAS COME ...
to speak out against the Lies and Propaganda and let 25,000 of your closest friends know just how you feel about this war and the lying sons of bitches who dragged us into it.
Starting July 5th, freewaybloggers across the nation will begin placing signs on the freeways voicing their opposition to the war. These signs will continue going up through July and August and on until impeachment hearings begin in September.
– The Summer of Truth - http://www.freewayblogger.com/summeroftruth.htm
(More protest posters : Bush, War, Crimes - http://www.indymedia.be/news/2005/02/92994_comment.php )
5 July 2005, 06:52
And another thing. Is it a mission with out end, and we need to stay the course as Bush indicates, but bizarrely Cheney the Vice Resident has mentioned along with others that the insurgency is in its last throes. Well then if that is true then wouldn’t you know how weak your enemy is if you can make that statement, and if that was true and you made that statement based on some type of factual assesment, then you would know how LONG possibly it would be till the troops could be withdrawn.
You see the Residentional PretendWeKnowWhatWere Doing Commision of psycho smirk OFFs are filling our minds through the tought control medium of TV mind programming with the newest LIEandGetRich programmed human experiments notably GravefillingWarboy and the MilitaryMindDICK and super british psy ops man TongueTiedTonyThe-B-LIAR are all part of a global mind conspiricy to make you live in fear of their paycheck masters - TheBankOFMoneyChangingMindControl allowing usary to put wage slaves into debt everyWHERE the immoral antisocial economic mental mind controlling elitist slave traders go. They love to lie and it shows.
Please support rebooting your mind, with open source FreeThink NOT the corporate biased mind control slave programming. Use the new open source mind management software of FreeThink 1.0 and start thinking for yourself before the corporations implant behavior modfying software of their own. DO IT TODAY!
From the Founder of the FreeThink with FACTS Method of Freedom ->>
The logical software for your brain and your personal solidarity and freedom from MIND CONTROL WAGE SLAVERY, the hallmark of corporate/false religious wealth creation using mentally manipulated humans disposed of in wars based on lies and psychological manipulation.
5 July 2005, 05:31
Kudos to the Freeway Bloggers- the only true form of citizen awareness and freedom of speech we can get out there. Please everyone, if we all just made 1 or 2 signs, it could possibly inform hundreds. Forget emailing your Congressmen, or a letter to the local paper, this is the true way to express your opinion. Peace and Godspeed to all of us who want a better world for us, not corporate pigs and the filth that we call our "elected" leaders.
7 August 2005, 09:51
thanks man - but "hundreds" is way off the mark. I have a sign that’s been hanging over the 405 for over three weeks now, seen by literally 200,000 people a day... so we’re really talking millions. the sign cost me about thirty-five cents to make. -scarlet p. the freewayblogger
5 July 2005, 13:29
Lets get something perfectly clear here on Iraq ...they are praying that this war is gonna go on for years in fact they will make sure the war WILL go on for years by expanding it to the likes of Iran, Syria, and anybody else they can bloody well think of.
They are making lots and lots of money off it and they dont give a shit about how many GI’s snuff it, they dont give a shit on how many Civilians they slaughter... It’s money folk’s and they just dont give a dam.
Just when are folk going to wake up and say no to these people just say no we are not going to die for you people anymore so you can live high on the hog at our expense.
F—k em let them do the dying they are the ones getting the big bucks for it.
6 July 2005, 00:00
The massive giant, the human population just may be awakening to the reality of the Emerald Kingdom.
8 July 2005, 06:23
Don’t buy that. The world corporation spend more time building mindless, stupid, profit making trinkets that use energy, resources, and human labor to sell into large markets using the ideas of economic systems. This new NEO-CON dumb shit ploy is to move the mental control of the slave workers into a "terror" control neo-prison open air system where they use infrastructure and human characteristic profiling to create a parallel world of two worlds of those under the control system and those controlling the system in which part of their goals is to NOT ACCEPT any other input from other ideas or systems of social interaction or resource control other that a system of token economies and military threat systems of indoctrinating the controlled culture slaves to follow the dominant threat pattern of thought promoted by their drug usage, military educational false religion and economic systematic elimination of thought outside the structure and the operational mechanics of working or for that MATTER EVEN testing of trying anything else. This is a HALLMARK and a UNMISTAKABLE characteristic of a psychosis and the basis of any closed system that is not evolutionary or even logical. It is a patricarchal extention of the false Babylonia style false religious prostitution worship and military economic city state slave trading systems which is all that modern corporationism is an extention of.
It is clear that a social system that does not even offer educational courses at any level of education or even have a department of any type of feedback about how things actually work or if we are collecting open sources of information to in a logical truthful manner discuss as civilized people that have a real social connection with each other becuase of our indoctrination into false belief systems and slave trading economies. These systems are archaic and have no modern itelligent design based on scientific and psychologcial infomration in them. That is why they cause problems. They based on self indoctrinated fear of authority figures and institutions, combined with psychotic ideals of things like fear of GOD or burning in hell or any other stupid baseless things that have no basis in fact but are part of a larger mechanism of developing the mindset of the slave class. That is why people are slaves they are tought mindless shit and lack a true education, so they are easily led to wars, emotional behaviors like murder, voilence,etc...
The media is complicit in this they are the modern evolution of the lie propagated culture of control through disinformation. Only in a open network of information where choice is available and censorship is not promoted. The truth of the application of the information will realign the process toward something that yields valuable interactions and a building of trust which is built on a shared linguistic semantic and an ability to share information and ideas openly leading to a self directed and evolutionary peace oriented social semantic.
peace out 7b
ps buy a new video game! one that is not a psy ops suggestion of "terror and domination" - Use your own mind and keep it under PERSONAL CONTROL. In addition the population issue is not a problem. The problem is the population of the mind control idoits in government that believe the self indoctrinated mental illness bobble of babylonian archaic stupidity promoted by the coropration slave trading investment war making class.