Permanent bases in Iraq?

Continuing my reporting of developments on this issue, here's a brief post by Gary Hart with which I agree, that such bases must not be established. Trouble is, the link he provides to a Reuters story, which he claims attributes an assertion of such bases to the commander of American forces in Iraq, doesn't really support his claim. So--nothing new.

P.S. I'm not naive, BTW. I know the neocons and military desire permanent bases and are constructing them as I type. I'm just keeping watch on how they manage to pull it off while concealing and denying it all the while. Call it cyber-curiosity.

P.S.S. So, check this out for a quick verification.

Look, we whities have been killing and occupying the lands of these "wogs" for over a century, since oil became a vital resource. Now that it's in even more critical demand, are we whities all of a sudden gonna become benign intervenors, dispossessing dictators and withdrawing to allow the hapless natives control their own liquid gold? Get real, whities. What is their sand doing over our oil?

I love this

Apparently, Bush wrote a letter to influential Iraqi Shia cleric al-Sistani, suggesting that the cleric intervene or at least express a preference that the Premier-designate, al Jaafari, not be selected for an upcoming term. The letter was hand-delivered, but al-Sistani, who's tired of Bush's meddling in Iraq's affairs, put the letter aside and hasn't even had it translated.

Ya gotta love it.

What do you think?

Bush is in Mexico, touring some Mayan ruins today. Will he comprehend the historical similarities between the steps he's taking to try to build an American empire and the causes of the decline and decay of the Mayan civilization?

Don't bet on it. He'll have a tough enough time fighting back the urge to slug down a cerveza or ten.

This is comforting

According to a Reuters report, that disputed assault a few days ago by US and Iraqi forces wasn't on a mosque, after all. According to a rescued kidnap victim and the Iraqi military leader it was just a business office of some kind. So--all is well, right? Not quite. According to the rescued victim, he'd been kidnapped and held and tortured by Iraqi militia forces who were supposedly part of Iraqi security, wearing uniforms of the Interior Ministry. Whaaa...? They're supposed to be on our side!

Be the last on your block to know

about this Republican fraud. Hilarious, actually. I've followed it for hours, overnight, while it was exposed by bloggers picking out discrepancies from the photo. The photo? A shot a street scene that a Republican congressional candidate said showed how calm the streets of Baghdad really are, and that the leftists were accentuating the violence to defeat the Bush administration. The photo, the Republican said, was taken by him on a recent trip to Iraq, and for sure, the scene's quite serene, no doubt. Trouble is, the photo's not of a Baghdad street, but of Istanbul.

I've got good taste in blogs

Turns out that one of my favorite, regular links for news about the Middle East, "Informed Comment" by Professor Juan Cole, has been awarded the first-ever Aronson award for Social Justice, announced by Editor & Publisher website.

Bush in a box

At least three tough choices loom for Bush, and we should keep an eye out for how he deals with them. On Iran, without a concensus among the other powers about how to react to its continuing dodging and weaving about its nuclear activities, can Bush--through Cheney's mouthpiece Bolton in the UN--save face while getting results? Military might won't help, so what's Bush to do?
On the immigration bill that Kennedy/McCain sponsored, that gives immigrants a shot at citizenship, how will Bush placate his base without causing a furor among Latinos? Bush is willing to give them a six-year work permit, but requiring them to return home afterward (best of all worlds for agribusiness), and the far right barely tolerates this accommodation. Can Bush find a way through this morass?
The Iraqis are becoming increasingly testy about our military's continued presence. How will Bush deal with the prospect that the "democratically constituted" government will demand our withdrawal of troops, or at least set a timetable for doing so. I would suspect that some leader in Iraq will soon see the popular benefit of making such a demand and will persuade others to join him. How will Bush finesse that prospect?
Bush is so incompetent--has he succeeded at anything in his life?--that it's almost amusing to watch him suffer the consequences of his idiocy.

Another word that's difficult to come up with

is one that describes a person who does this. It's akin to placing explosive candies in schoolyards, but on the grownup level. And because its victim is democracy, it's baseline odious, an act so destructive of our entire system of governance. If there's a hanging offense (and I don't believe in capital punishment), this is it.

Riverbend rocks!

My favorite Iraqi blogger, a young woman whom I've often cited, is a nominee for an important nonfiction award for her blog, Baghdad Burning.

I'm not alone in being confused about what's being reported in Iraq

My preferred expert, Professor Juan Cole, is too.

Who's on first?

Here's BBC's report of some of today's attacks in Iraq. It lists several players: "insurgents," "the Medhi Army," "armed militias," "Iraqi military," "Iraqi police," "Sunnis at prayer", the "US Army", and of course the ubiquitous "innocent bystanders," who likely comprised most of the dead. Can you figure out what happened?

The problem with being a blogger/writer

is that you're expected by others--certainly you expect yourself--to come up with a word to describe the type of person who would do this. Trouble is, like concepts such as infinity and eternity, the human mind cannot conceive of it.

Veep visits

From Metaphor we learn of the list of requirements for any hotel suite that Cheney chooses to stay at during "downtime" when he's traveling. Check it out; and don't forget to flood Cheney's Advance Office with phonecalls as faxes, now that you have their numbers.

How to measure "civil war"

Buried in this ABC News article is this paragraph from yesterday:

South of the capital, 40 people were killed or wounded in a big gunbattle near Mahmoudiya, police said. Police said gunmen of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia were fighting insurgent forces, which are primarily Sunni Muslim.

Now, I'm no genius, but it seems that if a "militia" of one religious sect is engaging in a "big gunbattle" with rebels from another religious sect that sounds like a "civil war" is happening. So, I checked my favorite online source, Wikipedia, to see how "civil war" is defined:

A civil war is a war in which parties within the same country or empire struggle for national control of state power. As in any war, the conflict may be over other matters such as religion, ethnicity, or distribution of wealth. Some civil wars are also categorized as revolutions when major societal restructuring is a possible outcome of the conflict. An insurgency, whether successful or not, is likely to be classified as a civil war by some historians if, and only if, organized armies fight conventional battles. Other historians state the criteria for a civil war is that there must be prolonged violence between organized factions or defined regions of a country (conventionally fought or not). In simple terms, a Civil War is a war in which a country fights another part of itself.

By my reckoning, the fracas in Iraq is walking pretty malardasquely.

The career of the future in America? Divorce lawyer

This article digests an authoritative essay in Foreign Affairs, the salient point of which is that in the near future there will be a huge "sucking" sound as service jobs leave the US, just as manufacturing jobs are. Globalization and electronics are already seeing the loss of phone-bank jobs and such services as computer tech assistants. In the future, the author says, the only jobs that won't be readily out-sourceable will be crane operators, janitors and--maybe--divorce lawyers. (Contract lawyers will of course be outsourced since there's no personal attention to the client.)

A thrilling prospect for college grads: janitor or divorce lawyer. You'll never guess which I'd chose.

Permanent bases continued

I told you a few days ago that I'd keep you posted on the status of permanent military bases in Iraq. Here's the latest.

Anybody want to join me in an income-tax-refusal protest?

For those of you who don't think war is hell...

check out this story about a particularly effective insurgent. And scroll on down the article for enlightenment about the struggle over the city of Kirkuk, and why, among other reasons, the chances of a "unity government" are truly chancey.

Body counting

Here's an article that places the number of dead and wounded American soldiers in perspective: The number of deaths has lately fallen but the number of woundeds has commensurately increased. One additional factor that I read somewhere but can't now find is this: Because this is a desert war--with less risk of infection and similar hazards of a moist environment--and because we control the theater, allowing us to remove wounded soldiers swiftly from battle to treatment facilities, the ratio of deaths to woundeds is quite low. In earlier wars our present total of 19,588 Iraq casualties (17,269 wounded, 2319 dead) would read more like 6,000 dead and 13,000 wounded. It's good news, except that it means a much greater number of severely maimed survivors who will require a lifetime of medical attention.

Me--a Dixie Chick fan?

You betcha. (If the lyrics don't inform you whazzup with the song, click onto the album site which explains it.)

News coverage of Iraq

Bush/Cheney and their camp followers complain that the news coverage of Iraq slants toward the car-bombings and the battles with insurgents instead of toward the positives in the country: building of schools, digging of sewer lines, whatever. Well, Bush/Cheney, you "gotta understand", you folks have conditioned us Americans to react to dramatic events, you've indeed created a political base upon such a culture of fear and destruction, that you surely can't complain that that same culture drives the media in its war coverage. After all, you're the ones who started Shock&Awe, who placed reporters in the tanks of our Army, who reveled in the filming of the toppling of Saddam's statue. Why now, when the war drags on, do you fail to understand that Americans love that stuff--the gore and violence--more than some bricklayer's tale of constructing a school?

Besides, it's gore and terror that the MSM--your best buddies--cover daily here in the US. Are you saying that the MSM should do differently in Iraq? We never learn of a new turnoff being constructed on highway 101--certainly not by TV coverage--so why should the US public be interested in such construction in Iraq? Borrrrring.

He who lives by Shock&Awe shall, hopefully, perish by it.

Postscript--Herewith is the text of a letter to the editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press that tracks the foregoing and that might, maybe, get published since it meets the 250-word limit of the paper and is, of course, brilliant.

Bush/Cheney/Rummie,

You complain that news from Iraq is slanted toward the negative—the deaths, the violence—resulting from US occupation: car-bombings, kidnappings, insurgent attacks. You complain that sufficient coverage isn’t given to “positives”: reconstruction of schools, sewers, bridges. Well, fellas, let me tell you why this is.



First, the “positives” aren’t very positive. Most projects consist of our rebuilding—at outlandish cost—infrastructure that your invasion demolished. Second, many aren’t proceeding, because the cost of keeping rebuilders from being killed has swallowed the money.



Third—the fundamental reason the reporting focuses on violence—is because the Americans who constitute your political base relish it. They don’t tune in to watch road-building and dam-building. They want drama: violence, that’s their fare. Telecasts of government projects? Borrrring. And fellas, you’re no dummies, you know the culture of your base. Indeed, for five years you’ve exploited it. Bigtime.



You trumpeted the horror of 9-11 to justify the invasion of Iraq. You invented “Shock & Awe” to market the bombing of Baghdad and reveled in its coverage. You embedded reporters with our troops to convey the blood-rush of war. You purveyed photos of Saddam’s sons’ corpses and of Saddam’s humiliation. You touted these images and they served you well. Indeed, they’ve kept you in power.



But now, fellas, your time’s up. The marketing of violence you’ve used to support your political position will now, let’s hope, bring an end to the occupation and, let’s further hope, your tenure.