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The current occupation is more dangerous than Operation Iraqi Freedom. The article reads:

Landstuhl Regional Medical Center is receiving more than twice the number of patients from Operation Iraqi Freedom that it did during the major combat phase of the war.

An average of 48 patients a day were being treated last week, compared with 22 patients a day in March, said Col. David Rubenstein, who relinquished command of the hospital last week for a new post.

Of those patients admitted, about 5 percent were combat-related injuries, “although that’s starting to grow a bit,” Rubenstein said last week, referring to continued attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. During major combat, which officially ended May 1, 40 percent of Landstuhl’s patients had battle injuries.

From the BBC:

The US House of Representatives has approved funds for the creation of a radio and television network in the Middle East aimed at promoting American views. “This new network will… greatly contribute to an enhancement of our efforts to combat the misinformation and propaganda that contribute to the rising anti-American sentiment in the region,” said House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde.

For Romania?

That’s what some in the military are saying, as Rummy and co. ponder putting bases there. From the NYT:

July 16, 2003
U.S. Eyes a Willing Romania as a New Comrade in Arms
By IAN FISHER

CONSTANTA, Romania — Kurt Sanger is only a captain and so he will leave to higher-ups the question of whether Romania would make a good ally as the United States sets about a historic reordering of its military, relying less on its old friends in Western Europe and more on new ones in the east. He does, however, have some thoughts about Romania as a place where American soldiers like him may find a new home, perhaps soon.

“Paradise isn’t too strong a word,” said Captain Sanger, 31, a Marine reservist on leave from his job as a lawyer in Manhattan.

It is cheap, he said, and the food is excellent. So are the beaches near this Romanian port on the Black Sea. But more important, he said, Romanians really like Americans, and his worries, as an officer in charge of protecting United States soldiers on an exercise here, are not the ones he might have elsewhere.

I know a coupla things about my girlfriend’s home country. Pretty places, pretty women, an admirable disdain for puritanism. That’s the good part. It’s cheap because the locals are poor, hence their apparent desire for U.S. handouts. But maybe they should look at Okinawa and Aviano before selling out for an ephemeral boost to their economy.

Jason Leopold reveals that the Office of Special Plans (OSP), which “probe[d] links between Iraq and the terrorist organization al-Qaeda and whether the country was stockpiling a cache of weapons of mass destruction,” also advised the President to include the uranium claim in his State of the Union speech. “Staffed mainly by ideological amateurs,” the OSP,

The Romance of Empire

New to Antiwar.com: ‘The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions’: Jason Leopold:

Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator who repressed, murdered and tortured his own people. That and that alone was a good enough reason enough to go to war, according to Bush and his cabal of neoconservatives.

But that’s only true if Iraq proved to be an “imminent” threat. As the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Bush may have meant well, but he lied and lied and lied.

Read more…