Plaid Adder's Journal
Haditha
Wed May 31st 2006, 10:24 PM

Two years ago, I would have been writing about Haditha as soon as the story broke. But instead, I have more or less been avoiding reading about it, never mind writing about it.

It isn't that I don't care any more; I just don't see the point of talking about it. If Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, Shock and Awe, and the daily mounting casualties on all sides of the war are not enough to teach my fellow-Americans and my Congressional leaders that we need to pull the plug on the American occupation now, if they can't figure out yet that all we are doing over there is making things worse, if they haven't grasped yet the fact that whether we stay or go we no longer control the outcome, and if they can't tell from the news that's come out during the past three years that this war is a crime, a sin, and a shame, then I don't see why it should bother them to contemplate the possiblity that in November of 2005 a group of American soldiers executed a dozen or so unarmed civilians because they had the misfortune to be near a bomb that had been planted by someone else.

Bill O'Reilly has already explained to all of his viewers that, hey, shit happens in war, although Wes Clark tried to explain to him that he was full of shit. This is just going to become one more foul monstrosity that Bush and the media and the 29% swallow and smile about.

I've been listening to an audio course that my dad bought and passed on to me about the history of US policy in the middle east from 1914 to 2001. It's depressing. Basically the main problem is that US policy is always based on promoting America's interests, at the expense of human rights and democracy and everything else--and that their concept of "America's interests" is tragically short-sighted and limited. All that bullshit that went on with the US and the USSR jockeying for position during the Cold War as if everyone was playing a gigantic game of Risk, and then it just gets worse and worse. I'm now up to the part where Zbignew Brezinski, under Carter's administration, gets the bright idea of funneling covert aid to the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan because he's really excited about the opportunity to "sow shit in <the USSR's> backyard." Yeah. That was real farsighted of you, Zbignew. You indulge your puerile desire to piss on your enemy's doormat, and 20-odd years down the road, the Islamic dictatorship you helped give birth to winds up sheltering the guy who's going to take down the Twin Towers.

I can't wait to hear all about how Reagan took your mistake and ran with it. Because that's the really depressing thing about all of this: fundamentally, the objectives of American middle eastern policy don't change with a change in party. The methods vary, but they're all about equally ill-conceived.

Except for Bush's invasion of Iraq. That brainstorm goes beyond "ill-conceived" to "just downright insane."

All these idiot men and they are so convinced they're the smartest guys in the world and they know exactly what to do with the globe and how to win the game and they are just wrong. (I should say that I do not expect that when the course gets closer to 2001 and some of the idiot men become women, it will help much.) And so eventually they create the conditions that make it possible for American soldiers to deliberately execute innocent civilians.

Rumsfeld is just the last in a line of cocksure assholes who thinks the only reason the world isn't perfect is that he's never been in charge of it, and who fucks up and fucks us all over and then fucks off without a mark on him.

I guess I'm still a tad pissed off.

Well, anyway. So now the Vietnamization of the Iraq war is complete, and has this debacle has finally produced a My Lai. You'd like to think it would wake some people up. But I don't have much hope. The 29% has had a lot of damn wakeup calls. I think they're down for the count.

The Plaid Adder

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=Several of the Marines under investigation had served two tours of duty in Iraq, while one had served three. Congressional sources who were briefed by the Pentagon said that only two, three or four Marines are believed to be the shooters, and that the other Marines are believed to have looked on without doing anything. According to some military lawyers, several of the Marines involved could be charged with murder, which is punishable by death in military courts.

In addition to the criminal investigation into what happened and who, if anybody, should be charged, the Pentagon has launched a second investigation into whether there was a cover-up.

'I Can Still Smell the Blood'

Only hours after the Iraqi civilians were killed, a second team of Marines was sent to take the bodies to a local morgue. One of those Marines told the Los Angeles Times he is still haunted by what he saw.

"[The victims] ranged from little babies to adult males and females," Lance Cpl. Ryan Briones told the paper. "I can still smell the blood. This left something in my head and heart."

One of the bodies Briones said he picked up was a young girl who had been shot in the head. Briones' mother said he has nightmares about that.

He goes, 'I can't sleep, Mom,'" Susie Briones said. "And he goes, 'I can't get her out of my … I can't get her out of my head.' I said, 'Meijo, we need to sit down and let's pray. Because you didn't have anything to do with that,'"

Briones said her son called her from Iraq the day of the killings.

"He says, 'Mom, they — you know — something happened. Bad,'" she said. "And he— and I said, 'What happened?' And he goes, 'It's, it's — some people might get in trouble.'"

Allegations of a Cover-Up

Murtha said that an alleged atrocity of this caliber is something that cannot be excused. "There's no question in my mind about what happened here," he said. "There was no gunfire. They killed four people in a taxi and then went into the rooms and killed. I don't know how many were involved in it, but it's something we cannot excuse. This is what the Marine Corps told me at the highest level. I know there was a cover-up someplace. They knew about this a few days afterward and there is no question that the chain of command tried to stifle the story. I can understand why, but that doesn't excuse it. These people have to be punished."

Murtha said high-level reports he received indicated that no one fired upon the Marines or that there was any military action against the U.S. forces after the initial explosion. Yet the deaths were not seriously investigated until March, because an early probe was stifled within days of the incident, he said.

"I will not excuse murder, and this is what happened," he said. "This investigation should have been over two or three weeks afterward, and it should have been made public and people should have been held responsible for it."

I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time. But I think the level of activity that we see today, from a military standpoint, I think will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."
--Vice President Dick Cheney, on Larry King, one year ago today

(Hat tip to Terry Welch)

While Bush touted over the weekend his accomplishments in spreading democracy throughout the Middle East and southern Asia, his soul mates amongst the neoconservative community, who pushed for the global war on terror and Iraq as an outgrowth of the PNAC grand plan have finally had second thoughts. Some are finally questioning any commitment to democratization before basic security is established and Al Qaeda directly addressed, and some go even farther to reconsider whether a war on terror has a greater priority that getting our own house in order first on energy and the fiscal costs of such a war.

In other words, these folks who trumpeted the war in Iraq as part of some messianic crusade to remake the region in our image before defeating the Taliban first and Al Qaeda and their supporters, are now sounding the same policy as that advocated by John Kerry in 2004. To see the American Enterprise Institute bemoan Bush's failed execution and question his commitment to his Wilsonian rhetoric actually discredits the Danielle Pletkas of the world, who were cheerleaders for this war for a decade and who now suddenly wake up to what we on the center-left have known about Bush for years: he is a fraud who sets fire to things and leaves to others the job of cleaning up after him.

And the damage to the region, our military, and our country from these eight years will not be fixed for another decade. Want proof?

Take a look at Bush's first two claimed "successes, one of which sees renewed bombings and the loss of another 50 Iraqis just today.

Continue reading "Bush Foreign Policy Runs Aground - Ditched By NeoCon Supporters"
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Nothing like bankrupting your country in order to triple the number of enemies one has and increase hate towards us around the world. With all the economic refugees flooding in from Mexico costing us billions a year, and Bushes great war, we'll be broke, hated, and weak.

There's a great situation for America to be in. Then of course when nukes go off here, all the illegals from other countries will return to their home land, and because everyone else hates us, and other countries actually protect their borders, we'll be stuck in radiation land dying slow deaths. Seriously, look at our future thanks this idiot!

Bush has done such a great job.........