Tag: Antiwar movement

An echo, not a choice:

We will double our Special Forces, and invest in the new equipment and technologies so that our military remains the best equipped and best trained in the world. This will make our military stronger so we’re able to defeat every enemy in this new world.

But we can’t do this alone. We have to restore our respect in the world to bring our allies to us and with us. It’s how we won the World Wars and the Cold War and it is how we will build a stable Iraq.

With a new president who strengthens and leads our alliances, we can get NATO to help secure Iraq. We can ensure that Iraq’s neighbors like Syria and Iran, don’t stand in the way of a democratic Iraq. We can help Iraq’s economy by getting other countries to forgive their enormous debt and participate in the reconstruction. We can do this for the Iraqi people and our soldiers. And we will get this done right.

A new president will bring the world to our side, and with it — a stable Iraq and a real chance for peace and freedom in the Middle East, including a safe and secure Israel. And John and I will bring the world together to face our most dangerous threat: the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon.

With our credibility restored, we can work with other nations to secure stockpiles of the worlds most dangerous weapons and safeguard this dangerous material. We can finish the job and secure all loose nukes in Russia. And we can close the loophole in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that allows rogue nations access to the tools they need to develop these weapons.

That’s how we can address the new threats we face. That’s how we can keep you safe. That’s how we can restore America’s respect around the world.

Could David Duke have picked a better prime-time speaker for tonight’s Democratic convention than Al Sharpton? The only thing worse than Sharpton’s barking screed – which Doris Kearns Goodwin, in a rare moment of lucidity, compared to nails on a chalkboard – was the delegates’ reaction: euphoria. After watching this sorry spectacle, I’m quite happy that the Democrats renounced the antiwar movement. I only hope these imbeciles cheering Sharpton find the next four years of Bush-Cheney even more excruciating than I will. And as I watch that slick little creep (and Bush operative) Ralph Reed on Chris Matthews’ show now, I know the next four years are gonna be hell.

I’m trying to imagine who might donate to the Lynndie England Defense Fund. Rush “Blowing Off Steam” Limbaugh? FReepers? Republican neocons?

The site, still being developed, also will try to help improve England’s image which, until now, has been controlled by the Army, said lawyer Rhidian Orr.

“The part we don’t see in the press right now is Lynndie the human being,” Orr said by telephone from Denver.

“Lynndie has a life. She’s a churchgoing person. This isn’t a bad person who did these acts. … This is one person defending herself against not only the government, but what the media is trying to do to her.”

Because sometimes you just shouldn’t believe your own eyes.

Bombings, clashes kill over 120 in Iraq today – and not a word yet (3:50 CST) from Glenn Reynolds, Jeff Jarvis, Volokh, Tim Blair, Roger L. Simon, or Andrew Sullivan, all of whom have found time today to post mind-numbing trivia. Come on guys, I need some positive spin on this. Explain to me how this is really a sign that we’re just about to turn the corner. You’re supposed to be the hardnosed pragmatists – give us a little of that old callous magic you do so well!

. . . are now available.

The top news story out of Iraq today reports a massive suicide car bomb in Baqouba. Early reports neglected to mention that the target of the bombing was an Iraqi police station, in front of which lines of Iraqis applying for jobs as policemen had formed, but that information is now out. It is well known that guerillas have targeted the Iraqi police force for being collaborators with the occupation, but a report from Newsday reveals another reason for Iraqis to hate the NEW! Iraqi Police:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Intelligence Service has its own secret prison. Criminals wear uniforms and collect police salaries. Senior security officials hand out jobs to family members. Investigators charged with being watchdogs over the police say they have little or no power. They report to the interior minister rather than to justice itself. The police arrest the innocent, beat them, and imprison them without charge; and in at least one case, police shot dead an innocent bystander.

This is not Saddam Hussein’s corrupt police state. This is the new Iraq run by interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, the man the international community is hoping will shepherd Iraqi democracy into being early next year. There are so many corrupt, violent and useless police officers in the new Iraqi police force that, according to a senior American adviser to the Iraqi police, the U.S. government is about to pay off 30,000 police officers at a cost of $60 million to the American taxpayer.

Did you get that last bit? The US government is paying 60 MILLION dollars stolen from American taxpayers for 30,000 Iraqi “police” to go away.

The staggering cost and violent results of the repeated asinine blunders committed by the clueless neocons and Bushie nation-builders in Iraq is no surprise for those who’ve watched this farce unfold. Could anyone read this and not feel a frisson of dread as well as anger at the hypocrisy and stupidity of the War Party?

United States occupation authorities are recruiting and training agents with the Iraqi intelligence service to help identify resistance to US forces after months of increasingly sophisticated attacks and bombings.

The employment of agents of Saddam Hussein’s brutal security services underscores a growing recognition that US forces cannot alone prevent attacks like the bombing of the United Nations headquarters last week.

Authorities had stepped up recruitment over the past two weeks, a senior US official said.

“The only way you can combat terrorism is through intelligence,” the senior official said. “It’s the only way you’re going to stop these people from doing what they’re doing.”

Officials are reluctant to disclose how many former agents have been recruited since the effort began. But Iraqi officials say they number anywhere from dozens to a few hundred, and US officials acknowledge that the recruitment is extensive.

OK, so now we have installed the thug Allawi in place of Saddam and recreated Saddam’s Mukhbarat. Allawi is shooting people in cold blood and sending goon squads out to round up entire neighborhoods. His secret police are torturing and beating prisoners and the New! IP are shaking down Iraqis at checkpoints and working with kidnappers. What was the justification for invading Iraq again? Anybody? Is anyone still mystified as to why the guerillas would attack the Iraqi “police” so relentlessly?