Tag: Antiwar movement

How to boost troop morale, Rumsfeld style:

“Because we’re in the midst of a major troop rotation, we have a planned increase in the number of U.S. troops,” Rumsfeld said at a hastily arranged Pentagon press conference.

The first casualties of what Rumsfeld called “taking advantage of the overlap” were a few hundred soldiers from the Army’s First Armored Division. Pentagon officials told the Daily News those troops were at Baghdad International Airport preparing to return to their home base in Germany this week when the plug was pulled.

“They were on the tarmac waiting for their plane when they were told to pick up their gear, head back to camp and get ready to go back into the field,” the official said. “Can you imagine the effect on morale that had?”

I wonder if Rumsfeld ran this move by the Army mental health advisory team investigating the abnormally high suicide rate among American soldiers in Iraq? I’m sure he must have because we all know how the Bushies Support the Troops^TM!

Lest we be accused of ignoring the good news coming out of Iraq, lets all celebrate this latest triumph of the incompetents running Operation Poorly Planned Occupation.

Radioactive Scrap From Iraq Shows Up in Europe

Iraq’s nuclear facilities remain unguarded, and radioactive materials are being taken out of the country, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency reported after reviewing satellite images and equipment that has turned up in European scrapyards.
[…]
According to ElBaradei’s letter, satellite imagery shows “extensive removal of equipment and in some instances, removal of entire buildings,” in Iraq.

In addition, “large quanitities of scrap, some of it contaminated, have been transfered out of Iraq from sites” previously monitored by the IAEA.

In January, the IAEA confirmed that Iraq was the likely source of radioactive material known as yellowcake that was found in a shipment of scrap metal at Rotterdam harbor.
[…]
The IAEA has been unable to investigate, monitor or protect Iraqi nuclear materials since the U.S. invaded the country in March 2003. The United States has refused to allow the IAEA or other U.N. weapons inspectors into the country, claiming that the coalition has taken over responsibility for illict weapons searches.

Now, anyone who says the Bush administration doesn’t have the safety and security of the world as their highest goal in life just wants the terrorists to win and hates freedom. Clearly, ElBaradei and those IAEA whiners hate freedom and want to ruin troop morale and give aid and comfort to the enemy or they’d shut up already with the negativity.

Iraqi ‘beaten to death’ by US troops

An Iraqi has died of his wounds after US troops beat him with truncheons because he refused to remove a picture of wanted Shiite Muslim leader Moqtada Sadr from his car, police said today.

The motorist was stopped late yesterday by US troops conducting search operations on a street in the centre of the central city of Kut, Lieutenant Mohamad Abdel Abbas said.

After the man refused to remove Sadr’s picture from his car, the soldiers forced him out of the vehicle and started beating him with truncheons, he said.

What will the warmongers and alleged free speech enthusiasts at the Volokh Conspiracy say about this? Not a damn syllable. Count on it. And I point this out not just because of the personal disappointment I have felt over the last few years about people I once admired, including some of the Volokhers, but because their rank inconsistency in support of war taints everything they have ever done or will do. Notice I wrote “taints,” not “contradicts”; all of their work still stands on its logical/factual merits, of course, but their hypocrisy has discredited the entire libertarian movement in the eyes of potential sympathizers. They should never be forgiven for that.

(Link courtesy of LRC blog.)

So the prez doubled the amount of mustard gas actually found at that Libyan turkey farm. Really, so what? What if it had been a million tons of mustard gas? I’m gonna keep telling you this till you beg me to stop:

1. Chemical weapons are archaic, largely ineffective battlefield tools that have no business hanging under the same mendacious rubric as nuclear weapons.

2. Possession of deadly agents is one thing; possession of delivery devices is quite another.

3. If the possession of so-called WMD legitimates preemptive violence, then we’re in trouble. Hell, our government is using radiological weapons right now!

Gadhafi’s turkey farm is a friggin’ petting zoo compared to what the U.S. government has in its cages.

From an Army wife, Extension is Absurd:

My husband has been in the Army for 17 years, and I’ve been proud of that because we’ve done a lot of good things in many ways. We never regretted any place that Army life has taken us because we knew our job and our place in the Army world. My husband has been in many other places, and we’ve always stood side by side. But the extension of the deployment of 1st Armored Division soldiers in Iraq is absurd.

I cried for an entire day after getting the news of the extension of the soldiers in Iraq. Now I have to laugh knowing that everywhere we look, we don’t see any welcome home banners anymore. Now we see crisis and anger management banners. Everything was supposed to be happiness. Now it’s sadness, and still they pretend we are calm, happy families, like what just happened is nothing but part of the soldiers’ jobs. They forget that these same soldiers are fathers, mothers, sons, brothers and sisters, and have done their jobs in Iraq. Now it’s time for them to come home!

There’s not going to be any sweet, beautiful answer that anyone can give my two children to make them understand why. Why is daddy not coming home? My kids are going to think that their daddy is not coming home because they did something bad. That’s what a lot of other children will be thinking while they are crying at night.

For a year my children and many other kids all marked off each day on the calender, hoping that each day that went by would be one day sooner that their fathers would be home. A lot of people’s dreams and plans were shattered once again.

As a proud Army wife, I think there’s no fairness in any of this. I don’t expect miracles to happen. But if a lot of we spouses raise our voices together, maybe we can do something to bring ours husbands, fathers, mothers, sons and brothers back home where they belong after a yearlong deployment. I am a very proud and angry wife and mother.

Lorna I. Soto
Baumholder, Germany

We’re continuously hearing about the low reserves and high price of crude oil. We continuously hear about the high cost of war. Next time you slide up to the pump and stiffle a gasp at the price of a gallon of gas while peeling megabucks out of your wallet to fill up, think about the many places where our fuel is going.

As just a modest example, your fuel is going HERE