Month: June 2005

Gee, I’m so glad that we sacrificed 1,700-plus dead, thousands more horribly wounded, and hundreds of billions of dollars — for this:

“Physicians have been beaten for treating female patients. Liquor salesmen have been killed. Even barbers have faced threats for giving haircuts judged too short or too fashionable.

“Religion rules the streets of this once cosmopolitan city, where women no longer dare go out uncovered.

“‘We can’t sing in public anymore,’ said Hussin Nimma, a popular singer from the south. ‘It’s ironic. We thought that with the change of the regime, people would be more open to singing, art and poetry.’

“Unmarked cars cruise the streets, carrying armed, plain-clothed enforcers of Islamic law. . . . Shiite religious parties now control both the streets and the council chambers. And though Basra has not suffered the same level of bombings and assassinations as major cities to the north, the trade-off for law and order appears to be a crackdown on social practices and mores that were permissible under the secular, if repressive, regime of [Saddam] Hussein.

“. . . A local businessman who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisal compared the current strict rule to life under Hussein. ‘The same thing is happening now,’ he said. ‘During Saddam, we had the secret police. Now it’s coming again. If you say something bad, they shoot you in the night.'”

Andrew Sullivan, Christopher Hitchens, Glenn Reynolds, and all the smarty-pants know-it-alls who hailed the “liberation” of Iraq as the triumph of modernity, and “democracy, whiskey, sexy,” owe everybody — and especially the people of Iraq — an abject apology.

What’s happening in Basra today is more like “theocracy, thuggery, creepy.”

Hat tip: Needlenose

A visual representation of the coalition deaths since the invasion of Iraq. (via ICasualties.org)

According to Arianna Huffington, this story is a load of BS. The anticlimactic ending seems to be that Cheney left the hospital under his own power after an angina attack, though it’s amusing to note that the White House appears to consider this episode is worth denying. Maybe they should think about the distraction value of an Executive branch health crisis since Americans are beginning to notice that the reality in Iraq bears no resemblance to the rosy scenarios painted by the Bush administration.

Saturday on the Weekend Interview Show, I’ll be talking with Daniel Ellsberg, the man who stole the 7,000 page secret history of the Viewtnam War know as the Pentagon Papers, which he leaked to the U.S. Senate and the newspapers back in 1971.

In the second hour, the bad news, and your calls.

4-6 pm Eastern time

Update: Show’s over
Archives here

The US military is admitting to “casualties” after a car bomb attack on a Marine convoy in the “safest city in Iraq.” Xinhua is claiming to have spoken to an eyewitness:

An overnight roadside bomb blast struck a US military patrol in Iraq’s western city of Fallujah, destroying a US armored vehicle and causing several casualties, witnesses said on Friday.

“The blast took place on late Thursday near the main US military checkpoint at the eastern entrance of the city, destroying a US Humvee, killing and wounding the US soldiers aboard,” Ahmed Salih, a Fallujah resident told Xinhua.

A US military statement on Friday confirmed the attack, without giving precise casualties and further details.

Separately, a suicide bomber blew up his explosive-laden vehicle near the house of a tribal leader in the southern neighborhood of Fallujah on Thursday night, witnesses said.

The suicide bomber was killed in the blast which caused no other casualties, they said, adding that Sheikh Khamis Hasnawi al-Eifan, chieftain of Albu Issa tribe, escaped the assassination attempt unharmed.

Eifan and his family member refused to talk about the reasons behind the attack.

Meanwhile, General John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, practically calls US VP Dick “Last Throes” Cheney a liar. And that was before the Marines in Fallujah were bombed.

UPDATE: Wonkette on Cheney’s “Clintonesque” response to Abizaid’s statement.

And, the US military’s statement on the Fallujah bombing:

Jun 24, 2005 — BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Two U.S. Marines were killed, 13 were wounded, and four other troops were listed as missing following a powerful suicide car bomb attack on a U.S. convoy, the U.S. military said on Friday.

“Three Marines and a sailor believed to be in the vehicle are currently listed as Duty Status Whereabouts Unknown pending a positive identification,” the Marines said in a statement that also listed the two dead and 13 wounded.

Sailors attached to Marine units are normally medics.

Missing?

I think that I will use the following from Don Boudreaux the next time I receive a “you don’t support the troops” emails:

Libertarians understand in their guts that flags, anthems, marble domes and columns, fancy titles, embassies, and majoritarian-voting procedures do not transform human beings and human institutions into something higher than human beings and human institutions.

There’s nothing special about the policemen who protect my house from burglars, my son from kidnappers, and my wife from rapists. There’s nothing special about the troops who protect us from foreign armies and terrorists. These activities are important and valuable when done properly. But there’s nothing special about them. Nothing about these activities gives the people who carry them out any exceptional claims upon our affections or wallets.

If the policeman or soldier agrees to render unto me a certain degree of protection in exchange for $100 of my money, neither of us owes anything more to the other as long as I pay him $100 and he performs his contractual duty accordingly. I owe him no special allegiance just because he specializes in using force to counteract force. Nor does he gain superhuman knowledge or wisdom just because he is a force-specialist.

Read the rest.