Sooner Be Blue

Mostly politics, a few current events, a squirt of seltzer down yer pants .. a little blog for my rambles and rants.

2008/3/21

And then he went fishing...

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@ 07:32 AM (3 months, 19 days ago)
 
The audacity of Dick Cheney never ceases to amaze me.
 
The other morning, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, ABC’s Good Morning America aired an interview with Cheney on the war. During the segment, Cheney flatly told White House correspondent Martha Raddatz that he doesn’t care about the American public’s views on the war:
 
CHENEY: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.
 
RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting. They’re looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives.
 
CHENEY: So? <sinister smirk>
 
RADDATZ So? You don’t care what the American people think?
 
CHENEY: No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls..........
 
“Fluctuations in public opinion polls” my aunt fanny…it's been a pretty consistent drumbeat over the last 2-3 years that two-thirds of Americans think this war has been a colossal failure.
 
Cheney has won elections by talking about protecting life, but when a reporter asks him about the soldiers who have given their lives to the war he helped start, he barely bats an eye. “So?” he says.
 
Let us not forget that Cheney was deferred from military service five times during Vietnam.
 
Cheney doesn't even try to hide that he doesn’t give a flying fig what we the people think.
 
Maybe because his Halliburton stock is up over 3000 percent since he lied us into that war? Cheney and the Corporate Elite War Profiteers are now richer than ever.
 
Words can’t begin to describe my contempt for the man. Some people compare him to Dan Quayle, as being one of the worst VP's we've ever had. I don't agree, Quayle was not very bright, but he wasn't evil.
 
Anyway...Cheney went on to say:
 
"Think about what would have happened if Abraham Lincoln had paid attention to polls, if they had had polls during the Civil War. He never would have succeeded if he hadn’t had a clear objective, a vision for where he wanted to go, and he was willing to withstand the slings and arrows of the political wars in order to get there."
 
This is so infuriating I’m not sure where to start. Comparing himself and George Bush to Abraham Lincoln makes my skin crawl.
 
This Administration has been utterly incompetent in Iraq, everyone says so. And there is no comparison to the Civil War. The two wars have absolutely nothing in common strategically, tactically, culturally, politically...any way you can think of.
 
You wouldn't think Cheney would draw our attention to Lincoln having a clear objective in the Civil War when this White House has NEVER had a clear objective in Iraq. NEVER had a clear vision. They've flip-flopped so many times about why we're there and what we're trying to accomplish.
 
Of course, he couldn't tell Martha Raddatz the truth---that the invasion and occupation of Iraq were carried out primarily to establish permanent military bases so we could squat over all that lovely oil.
 
Oh yes, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion he went fishing... on a boat owned by the Sultan of Oman.

2008/3/18

It is time for this madness to end

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@ 09:37 AM (3 months, 22 days ago)
 
We've spent five years and over a trillion dollars for this war, and we still have bombings within secured areas.
 
Right when Dick Cheney and John McCain were over there cheerleading...trying to draw attention to successes in Iraq....
 
From nytimes.com, March 18, 2008: BAGHDAD — A bombing on Monday evening killed 43 people near the Imam Hussein shrine in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, penetrating one of the most secure perimeters in Iraq. [..]"
 
http://tinyurl.com/343cyo
 
Then on the same day:
 
Two US soldiers were killed Monday north of Baghdad when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb.
 
And another soldier died last Saturday from small arms fire during combat operations. 19 y/o kid.
 
I already wrote about the five US soldiers in Baghdad who were killed by a suicide bomber while they were on foot patrol. One week ago.
 
But Dick Cheney smiled pretty for the cameras and said the invasion of Iraq was a "successful endeavor...if you look back on those five years it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavor ... and it has been well worth the effort."
 
http://tinyurl.com/yolmnk
 
Successful endeavor? ... well worth the effort? For whom? Cheney's corporate friends? Blackwater, etc.?
 
Cheney thinks this is progress:
 
From Reuters: "Five years after the United States led an invasion of Iraq, millions of people there are still deprived of clean water and medical care, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday.
 
...Better security in some parts of Iraq must not distract attention from the continuing plight of millions of people who have essentially been left to their own devices," [..]"
 
http://tinyurl.com/yoxy2j
 
Iraqis make $5 a day, and a third of their monthly budget goes just for water.
 
And those millions of people who have been left to their own devices are children and women...elderly and disabled people.
 
While the Iraqi government wallows in oil money, we the US taxpayers continue to pour billions into the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraqis have a budget surplus. We have a budget deficit. Now, tell me, who should be paying?
 
The Iraqis haven't used the gains in security to try to strengthen their government. All they can do is argue about how to spend money....which tribe should get what. And more violence by the day....
 
And yet, the White House and John McCain are selling the 'surge' as a victory.
 
Bush refuses to take any further responsibility for this mess...he's just waiting until he can hand it to the next president.
 
Meanwhile, Democrats are trying to find a spine...again. The Democratic Party candidates (Netroots Caucus) for the US Congress have put together a plan to end the war in Iraq. A plan they have pledged to campaign on and support once elected.
 
http://responsibleplan.com/
 
The plan is being endorsed by people who are for Obama and people who are for Clinton...and everyone in between who's in favor of stopping the war.
 
We're nearing 4,000 US dead, well over 50,000 US wounded, and what could be 1 million dead and wounded Iraqis.
 
The total cost of the war will be more than $3 Trillion taxpayer dollars. It could well be worse. This for a war we were assured wouldn't cost more than $100 Billion, tops, and most of that would come back to us through oil taken from Iraq.
 
It is time for this to end.
 
Ah well...what with our economy crashing, maybe it can't go on much longer anyway.
 

2008/3/14

War? Damn the war...don’t you know that Spitzer got laid?!

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@ 06:46 AM (3 months, 27 days ago)

The media has been so caught up in the Obama/Clinton horse race, and the politician/hooker scandal (like *that's* never happened before) and haven't been paying attention to the war....well, last fall they had a couple stories of how "the surge" had reduced violence and people were out buying ice cream again....
 
Things have changed, the war is heating up.
 
But hardly any mention of how a suicide bomber killed five US soldiers as they chatted with shop owners while on a foot patrol in Baghdad on March 10th. Not to mention the rise in car bomb violence, Iraqis and Afghanis dying every day. Google a bit and you'll find that growing violence in Iraq is eating up security gains.
 
Hardly any mention of how Admiral William Fallon, the top US commander in the Middle East, resigned his command on March 11th. He recently publicly criticized the Bush Administration’s Iran policy and was seen as the lone wolf standing in the way of Bush going to war with Iran.
 
Yet, to watch the news, the war seems to have disappeared.
 
But war still rages, we still occupy two countries, people still die, and $12 billion still drains out of our pockets every month to fund the whole thing.
 
It's sad and disturbing that hardly anybody is talking about it...at all. Check this out:
 
"Public Is Less Aware of Iraq Casualties, Study Finds"
 
From the washingtonpost.com, March 13, 2008:
"Twenty-eight percent of the public is aware that nearly 4,000 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq over the past five years, while nearly half thinks the death tally is 3,000 or fewer and 23 percent think it is higher, according to an opinion survey released yesterday.
 
The survey, by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that public awareness of developments in the Iraq war has dropped precipitously since last summer, as the news media have paid less attention to the conflict. In earlier surveys, about half of those asked about the death tally responded correctly.
 
Related Pew surveys have found that the number of news stories devoted to the war has sharply declined this year, along with professed public interest.
 
"Coverage of the war has been virtually absent," said Pew survey research director Scott Keeter, totaling about 1 percent of the news hole between Feb. 17 and 23.[..]"
 
http://tinyurl.com/2w4qqt
 
Up until now, the media has done such a fine job covering Iraq have they not? NOT. The waste and corruption is staggering....barely mentioned.
 
I also found this little news tidbit -- the Pentagon authorized an all-out exhausting study of Iraq's Saddam-era documents...and get this, the report was finding NO relationship between his government and Al Qaeda.
 
http://tinyurl.com/296am6
 
Well, seems that didn't fit in with the Bush Administration's agenda, and they decided to just not allow the study to be released on-line (it was supposed to be released Mar. 12th).
 
So now, you have to actually write and ask for it and eventually they will send you a CD-ROM, and it probably won't arrive until late January 2009.
 
I'm sure this was all over the news today, but I've just been too busy to catch it. Right?