Though it has largely disappeared from the collective kewl kid narrative, many people looking at the situation rationally at the time were not only right about the administration’s lies and the ill-advised nature of the war, but they were also right about the effects. Much of the media and the enablers of this imperialist adventure would like to forget their role in making this happen and marginalizing those of us who were correct from the start. It is important to not let the narrative become one of “everyone believed Saddam had to go” or “it’s not important how we got there,” because neither statement is true.

Honor our servicepersons’ sacrifice and our country by remembering the past honestly. It’s the least we can do.

So far… I’ve got nothin’.

Absent large scale collective action we, the People, have lost any voice in the direction of our country. Even “our” side is absolutely worthless – the Democrats have done nothing but further the imperialist, disgusting, nation-destroying agenda of the Republican administration. They’ve backed down from every fight, they’ve condemned MoveOn.org, they’ve continued unrestricted funding for our adventure in Iraq all for no purpose. A huge majority in this country is on the side they are supposed to be representing, and they’ve abandoned us. Whether because of cowardice, cooption, or political calculation that the lefties aren’t going to vote GOP so they should take votes from the right (which isn’t going to happen). Let me rephrase, whehter because of cowardice, cooption, or stupidity is of no matter to me. The Democrats have failed we, the People, and we have no one left to turn to except each other. And we cannot collectivize – They own the government, They own the media, and They have the money.

It’s depressing and it makes me spitting mad.

Now, the latest from the megalomaniacal Cheney administration is ramping up to attack Iran. He’s wanted to do this for a long time (he’s so delusional, I would not be surprised if he was suffering from late-term syphillitic corruption), but the military brass was against it sufficiently to make it only a low-likelihood option, though real nonetheless. In the past couple weeks, things have changed: the Lieberman-Kyl amendment (to which Hilary fucking Clinton voted aye) is the equivalent of the Iraq war resolution on Iran passed last week. Then a Senate resolution designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization passed. And now, today, Sy Hersh reveals that the Navy brass (in particular) is on board, the strategy has changed from ‘invade’ to ‘surgical strikes’, and the PR campaign is ramping up.

This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.

Make no mistake, we attack Iran and we are fucked. Our troops in Iraq will be waging Khe Sanh on a nationwide scale, isolated, alone, and attacked in a fashion that is going to chew up our military. Dien Bien Phu will look like a logistical success compared to the meatgrinder our troops are going to be in. Plus, Iran has far more power globally than Iraq did. If we attack them unprovoked, expect them to bring the war here (I’m sure the irony will be lost, yet again, on the Caligulistas in charge). The attacks here will remove all vestiges of the Constitution to which we still cling and we will be living in an outright police state. Less safe and more warlike with every passing day.

I used to think we had about 50 years until the end of the American hegemony, maybe 70. The signs of our collapse were there from the time of Nixon, but it was a slow decline. I would like to thank the Cheney administration for acting as the catalyst that has reduced that number to approximately 0. Their foreign policy combined with their fiscal policy has already put us past the point of no return in terms of our dominance. We’re approximately a hairsbreadth away from cementing the timeline as “yesterday.”

There is no suffering sufficient for what the members of the Cheney administration deserve. There is no forgiveness for any of us either. I hope I meet Cheney in hell so I can pull him further down his impaling stake. It still would not be enough.

Samuel Walker saw combat in Iraq firsthand: He was splattered with human flesh and shrapnel in a dining hall when a suicide bomber blew himself up just a few feet away.

When Walker got back to the U.S., he brought some of the battlefield home with him. He heard phantom screams in broad daylight, smelled gunpowder that wasn’t there. A loud noise would send him into a defensive crouch. He’d been eating French fries in the mess hall at the time of the blast, and the sight of a McDonald’s restaurant now brought back violent memories.

Two doctors diagnosed Walker with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, directly related to his close encounters with violence in Iraq.

But Walker was not a combat soldier. He was a civilian recreation supervisor for KBR, the largest contractor in Iraq. And instead of getting the medical and counseling help he sought, Walker, a U.S. Army veteran, found himself caught in a morass of red tape and rejected insurance claims.

I post this for a few reasons including, inter alia, our country’s inability to treat mental illnesses as illnesses, the ridiculousness of our so-called “health-care system”, my interest in (and prediction that) the major systemic healthcare burden for our veterans (contactors included) is going to become increasingly psychology-focused rather than physicality-focused as field medical technology and other protective war tech preserves people’s bodies but leaves our minds as exposed as they’ve always been, and that the government has essentially been paying for Huguenots, but refuses to acknowledge them as such (no VA for you, buddy!)

That may be a record for longest run-on in the history of this blog. Probably.

Media analysts are casting the Democrats’ decision to pass an Iraq spending bill without a pullout provision as a win for the White House. MSNBC’s Hardball, for example, said “after weeks of refusing to back down to the White House, today Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did just that.” NBC Nightly News reported, “The Democrats will argue they took a tough stand here, but the reality is that facing a veto threat, they backed off.” USA Today describes the Democrats as “flinching,” the New York Times calls “the decision to back down” a “wrenching reversal for leading Democrats,” and the Washington Times titles its front-page story “Democrats Capitulate On War Funds.”

You were elected in 2006 to end the war. Over 2/3rds of the American populace wants us out and out ASAP. Bush’s support is under 30%, and this is what you do? You capitulate on a nonnegotiable item to a weak Caligula and a weaker congress.

The only against you right now are Caligula, his enablers, and the media. If you can’t stand up to the opposition party and the idiotsphere, then you don’t deserve to be in Congress.

Poorly played, Dems, poorly played. You now own this war just as much as the GOP. You fucking cowardly idiots.

The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.
…
Some operations, apparently aimed in part at intimidating Iran, are already under way. American Naval tactical aircraft, operating from carriers in the Arabian Sea, have been flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions—rapid ascending maneuvers known as “over the shoulder” bombing—since last summer, the former official said, within range of Iranian coastal radars.

I’m out of words on this one. Attacking Iran will be a disaster on so many levels that the wisdom in keeping it from happening should be self-evident.

Some view the spiraling attacks as a strand in a worrisome pattern. At least one former White House official contends that some Bush advisers secretly want an excuse to attack Iran. “They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something [America] would be forced to retaliate for,” says Hillary Mann, the administration’s former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs. U.S. officials insist they have no intention of provoking or otherwise starting a war with Iran, and they were also quick to deny any link to Sharafi’s kidnapping. But the fact remains that the longstanding war of words between Washington and Tehran is edging toward something more dangerous. A second Navy carrier group is steaming toward the Persian Gulf, and NEWSWEEK has learned that a third carrier will likely follow. Iran shot off a few missiles in those same tense waters last week, in a highly publicized test. With Americans and Iranians jousting on the chaotic battleground of Iraq, the chances of a small incident’s spiraling into a crisis are higher than they’ve been in years.

Yeah, we’re totally not attacking Iran. Totally. And we’re definitely not going to do a massive airstrike on ginned up excuses, using nuclear “bunker buster” bombs.

The Bush administration has postponed plans to offer public details of its charges of Iranian meddling inside Iraq amid internal divisions over the strength of the evidence, U.S. officials said.

Am I dreaming or does no one else in the media remember 2002? Jebus on a stick, we’re stuck in an endless loop of idiocy and evil perpetuated by the administration and abetted by the media and spineless Dems.

For the Dem examples, two of the announced 2008 presidential candidates – both of whom voted in favor of the Iraq resolution – apparently learned nothing from the worst foreign policy blunder in our nation’s history, the administration’s mendacity, or the 2006 election results. To whit: both Clinton and Edwards have come out and essentially said that war is a viable option with regards to Iran.

War is an option now.
War is an option now when every shred of evidence indicates that Iran is ten years or more away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.
War is an option now despite what is going on in front of our very eyes in Iraq.

Here’s Clinton:

“U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons,” the Democrat told a crowd of Israel supporters. “In dealing with this threat … no option can be taken off the table.”

Here’s Edwards:

Iran must know that the world won’t back down. The recent UN resolution ordering Iran to halt the enrichment of uranium was not enough. We need meaningful political and economic sanctions. We have muddled along for far too long. To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table, Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table.

Make no mistake, we all know exactly what they mean by no option: a preventive strike on Iran by US forces. That’s the stated presidential philosophy, that’s what our options are: do nothing or attack.

Here’s my message to both of you: you’re not getting my support now, let alone my vote. Attacking Iran is a mistake of monumental proportions. In addition to the illegality of it. In addition to the inhumanity, immorality, and cowardice of an attack, it will result in the death of thousands of our troops in Iraq and in the Gulf and make us a pariah state on the scale of a late-80s South Africa or an anytime Israel.

If we let this happen, we have all failed, but none so much as those with a voice and the power to derail this train who instead add coal to the furnace.

The Air Force is preparing for an expanded role in Iraq that could include aggressive new tactics designed to deter Iranian assistance to Iraqi militants, senior Pentagon officials said.

The efforts could include more forceful patrols by Air Force and Navy fighter planes along the Iran-Iraq border to counter the smuggling of bomb supplies from Iran, a senior Pentagon official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing future military plans.

Such missions also could position the Air Force to strike suspected bomb suppliers inside Iraq to deter Iranian agents that U.S. officials say are assisting Iraqi militias, outside military experts said.

Note: this is in addition to making a Naval officer (with specialty in air strikes) head of CENTCOM and the current bullshit whispers about us killing Iranian agents who were mixed in with the Iraqi militias.

Look, they – the authoritarian nutbags in the administration – are going to attack Iran unless we do something about it.

So do something, already.

Credit where credit is due. Bravo, sir.

(I’m at a conference all week, hence the light posting)

They feel they can do this with no Congressional support.
They feel they can do this with no popular support.
They feel they can do this with impunity and at any time they so choose.

Because in their world view – now fully supported by their handpicked regulatory agency heads and their legal lackeys – that the president is accountable to no one in a time of war … and the president is the only one who gets to determine when we are in a state of war or what war is.

Welcome the Bush imperial presidency.

Evidence? We’ve already attacked an Iranian consulate in Iraq. We’ve arrested Iranian diplomats inside Iraq. Condi’s statements this week were full of prevarications when it came to intent with Iran and also threw in language obviously intended to create a fig leaf for causus belli. They administration is on record hoping for a Gulf of Tonkin incident (in Iraq there, but they discussed plans to fabricate an incident if no argument otherwise could be found), and they’ve been goading the Iranians for months. Years, if Sy Hersh is correct… and I think we know that he is.

And now these insane, bloodthirsty, chickenhawks need to slake their thirst in Iran.

Ignore for the moment that such a strike is unwise, illegal, and a violation of everything this country has ever stood for – I will make this plain: an attack on Iran will result in the deaths of thousands of US troops. Sadr runs Iraq, is tight with the Iranians, and has the ability to interdict our troops logistics. If we attack Iran, it is going to make Chosin Reservoir look like a walk in the park. We don’t have the airpower or naval capacity to fully resupply our troops throughout the country and our army will be forced to retreat to a few isolated bases in major ports. Not only will our army be in trouble, but Iran is going to make life for our navy pay and pay heavily. The Gulf is a tiny area, Iran has multitudes of very good, very fast anti ship missiles. Shipping as a whole will come to a halt, but if we don’t lose a good number of ships, I will be surprised (or it will be because they’re not actually in the Gulf and thus are not in full support of the ground). One carrier sinks and the entire endeavor just became a miserable failure.

Now is the time to stand up. Call your congresspersons and tell them to speak out publicly against attacking Iran.

I also think it timely for us to start the articles of impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors. One would think that the deaths of more than 100,000 people and the destruction of American goodwill and power worldwide ought to be enough to qualify. Then again, there’s no blowjob involved.

Stand up and say no to an insane, illegal, preemptive strike against Iran. Do it now. All we can do is call our representatives, but what they can do is make it a constitutional issue.

What say you, presumptive Dem ’08 nominees? Where’s Hilary? Obama? Edwards (note: he’s not in congress, of course)? More triangulation from the first two and the latter’s focusing on the McCain/Lieberman/Bush escalation AFAIK.

And if anyone needs a top-notch lawyer to draft up the articles of impeachment for you, I’m here for you.

Update: Edwards has come out strongly against escalation, so I’ll consider him anti-Iran as well. Obama is still triangulating (grr). General Clark (still my fav candidate) is also outspoken in opposition to the escalation and exceedingly concerned about Iran. Go Clark!

Though President Bush’s national address Wednesday night was about Iraq, his most provocative comments focused on her neighbor, Iran.

Early in his speech Bush raised the matter of Iran, suggesting that if U.S. efforts to secure Iraq failed, “Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.”

Bush blamed both Syria and Iran in helping radical insurgents within Iraq.

“These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq,” he said.

He then singled out Iran, adding that she “is providing material support for attacks on American troops.”

Bush made an implied military threat against both nations: “We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”

The President continued in this vein, suggesting a larger U.S. goal of stopping Iran’s nuclear program:

“We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region. We will expand intelligence sharing — and deploy Patriot air defense systems to reassure our friends and allies.

So you’ve got a 30% approval president pursuing a 12% approval strategy of escalation pumping a sub-5% new attack on a new target that is not threatening us… tell me again how we’re living in a democracy instead of an authoritarian banana republic?

No Surge.

No McCain/Lieberman magic pony plan.

No Surge.

No Bush/Cheney oedipal dreams of imperial grandeur.

No more.

If you can call your congresscritters to register your opposition to this latest infernal idiocy (which, by the way, is also a precursor to the likely upcoming naval and air strikes on Iran – this is America, how?). You are not alone and maybe, just maybe, enough voices working together can stop this insanity.

Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging shortly before 6 a.m. (10:00 p.m. EST) on Saturday, U.S.-backed Iraqi television station Al Hurra and Arabic satellite channel Arabiya said.

There’s nothing like a kangaroo court in an illegitimate and unjust legal system executing a former dictator in secret to really bring home my country’s support of the Rule of Law and security in the righteousness of our actions.

Imagine how much weaker we would have looked had we sent Saddam to the International Crime tribunal, presented actual evidence in an impartial court, and then acted on that courts judgment. I sure am glad we didn’t go that option. Non sureties are for wimps.

In 2001, al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, was in the United States legally, on a student visa. He was a computer science graduate student at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, where he had earned an undergraduate degree a decade earlier. In Peoria, he lived with his wife and five children.

In December, 2001 he was detained as a “material witness” to suspected acts of terrorism and ultimately charged with various terrorism-related offenses, mostly relating to false statements the FBI claimed he made as part of its 9/11 investigation. Al-Marri vehemently denied the charges, and after lengthy pre-trial proceedings, his trial on those charges was scheduled to begin on July 21, 2003.

But his trial never took place, because in June, 2003 — one month before the scheduled trial — President Bush declared him to be an “enemy combatant.” As a result, the Justice Department told the court it wanted to turn him over to the U.S. military, and thus asked the court to dismiss the criminal charges against him, and the court did so (the dismissal was “with prejudice,” meaning he can’t be tried ever again on those charges). Thus, right before his trial, the Bush administration simply removed Al-Marri from the jurisdiction of the judicial system — based solely on the unilateral order of the President — and thus prevented him from contesting the charges against him.

Instead, the administration immediately transferred al-Marri to a miltiary prison in South Carolina (where the administration brings its “enemy combatants” in order to ensure that the executive-power-friendly 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has jurisdiction over all such cases). Al-Marri was given the “Padilla Treatment” — kept in solitary confinement, denied all contact with the outside world, including even his own attorneys, not charged with any crimes, and given no opportunity to prove his innocence. Instead, the Bush administration simply asserted the right to detain him indefinitely without so much as charging him with anything.

Last month, Congress endorsed this behavior and expressly vested the President with the power of indefinite, unreviewable detentions when it enacted the so-called Military Commissions Act of 2006.

If this doesn’t shock you into action or revolt your sense of justice and what it means to be American, then nothing will. As Greenwald notes, the US Department of Justice is now officially claiming that immigrants seized on our shores can be held indefinitely, with no recourse to any element of our judicial system. No habeas corpus, no open trials, no advocates for their cause, no fair trials.

I’m proud to be an American.

I have no idea what this country I’m currently residing in should be called.

After months of studied ambiguity, President Bush finally admitted that Iraq had “nothing” to do with the attack on the World Trade Center. The Defense Department, however, appears determined to perpetuate the myth.

Today, the administration released veterans day messages from troops in Iraq. These “taped messages from the U.S. Defense Department” featured a replica of the twin towers in the background.

Who exactly are they trying to fool? Whom do they think they are fooling? They might as well have hung a “Mission Accomplished” banner on the set as well.

The 2006 election was defined by a) a repudiation of the war in Iraq and the current Iraq strategy, and b) widespread national victories for Democratic House, Senate, and gubernatorial candidates.

This week’s guests on MTP:
Joe Lieberman: pro war, “Independent”
John McCain: pro war, GOP

Welcome to the new media order, same as the old.

Yeah, I’m just hoovering from thinkprogress. Thanks, guys!

An editorial set to appear on Monday — election eve — in the four leading newspapers for the military calls for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The papers are the Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times. They are published by the Military Times Media Group, a subsidiary of Gannett Co., Inc. President Bush said this week that he wanted Rumsfeld to serve out the next two years.

See, when I read this, I start thinking “military coup d’etat.” According to billmon, the [Branch] Times don’t do anything without the approval of the generals. And it seems to me that the Joint Chiefs (and even lower on the rung) are getting a taste for meddling in domestic politics. This is not a good sign for our democracy.

The U.S. military said on Thursday it believed an American soldier who was abducted in Baghdad 10 days ago is still being held by his captors.

Good thing the Bush administration allowed our military to be commanded by the Iraqi head of state and stop looking for the soldier.

American soldiers rolled up their barbed-wire barricades and lifted a near siege of the largest Shiite Muslim enclave in Baghdad on Tuesday, heeding the orders of a Shiite-led Iraqi government whose assertion of sovereignty had Shiites celebrating in the streets.

The order by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to lift the week-old blockade of Sadr City was one of the most overt expressions of self-determination by Iraqi leaders in the 3 1/2 -year-old U.S. occupation. It followed two weeks of increasingly pointed exchanges between Iraqi and U.S. officials, as well as a video conference between Maliki and President Bush on Saturday.

The soldiers had sealed off Sadr city in pursuit of a kidnapped American soldier, and now, on the orders of a foreign national that pursuit is being called off. Excuse me? Is the US military now taking orders from a puppet head of state?

Of course they aren’t. What they are doing is taking orders from Bush-Cheny-Rumsfeld who told them to abandon an American soldier because of political considerations.

The move lifted a near siege that had stood at least since last Wednesday. U.S. military police imposed the blockade after the kidnapping of an American soldier of Iraqi descent. The soldier’s Iraqi in-laws said they believed he had been abducted by the Mahdi Army as he visited his wife at her home in the Karrada area of Baghdad, where U.S. military checkpoints were also removed as a result of Maliki’s action.

The crackdown on Sadr City had a second motive, U.S. officers said: the search for Abu Deraa, a man considered one of the most notorious death squad leaders. The soldier and Abu Deraa both were believed by the U.S. military to be in Sadr City.

Remember when the righties said that we could have won in Vietnam if not for the micromanaging of targets? Of the directives that came from DC to the operatives in the field? This is no different than McNamara, but even McNamara never abandoned an American soldier to a hostile force.

The reaction from the jingoist nutballs was so incendiary, so ridiculous, so disproportionate to the innocuous comment by Maines, that it deserves a nice, long, objective look on the hows and the whys. I hope this documentary does that.

Note: NBC and CW Television (= UPN & WB) are refusing to air ads for the documentary. This after CNN and NPR refused to carry ads for Death of a President (the fake documentary about the assassination of W). Censorship, anyone? (and I’m being serious here, not in the fake “censorship”! way people who don’t understand censorship cry). Oh, and if you really want to get mad at the censorship in our country, observe how nearly every instance of refusal to carry ads by major media networks is for the benefit of the Bushevik administration.

Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al-Qaida suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called “water-boarding,” which creates a sensation of drowning.

Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn’t regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. “It’s a no-brainer for me,” Cheney said at one point in an interview.

I returned home in October, 2005, and I went back to teaching in mid-November. Next my family, I missed my students and my classrooms the most during my 17 months away, so I was anxious to get back. I believed that I understood that the transition from Iraq to home would be awkward–after all, I spent a good portion of my 19 years serving with Vietnam vets–but I was confident that it wouldn’t be too bad. I was (am) older than many soldiers sent to Iraq, with a stable family and career; moreover, I didn’t see the worst of Iraq by any stretch of the imagination. I could surely manage any difficulties. What did I have to fear?

Shortly after I went back to work, I began having serious anxiety attacks. Getting out the door in the morning got harder and harder. I had trouble serious trouble being in crowds. Loud noises sent my heart rate through the roof, and I heard explosions in my sleep. I knew I was angry while I was still in Iraq, but I found I could barely contain myself on some occasions now that I was home (though, thankfully, never with students–that would have really scared me). As the weeks passed, it seemed to be getting worse rather than better; I wasn’t handling it well at all. By early December, I knew something was wrong.

Posts like this really show how lacking our country is in good post trauma psychological care. We have far to go in so many areas of medicine of course, but our lack of attention to and care for psychological issues is damnable. I hope more people speak up and I hope we are finally past the stigmas of psychological injuries being somehow less than physical, or signs of weakness.

By Kevin Tillman
Editor’s note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we get out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,

Kevin Tillman

An Iraqi court trying Saddam Hussein for the killing of Shi’ite villagers in the 1980s could deliver a verdict on November 5, officials said, a ruling which could send the ousted leader to the gallows.

Bet you can’t guess what the outcome’s going to be!

There was nothing more inflammatory in my first book, about the 1994 invasion and occupation of Haiti, than my assertion that Special Operations was a hotbed of racism and reaction. “Hideous Dream – A Soldier’s Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti” (Soft Skull Press, 2000) was my personal account of that operation, and I was explicit not only about the significant number of white supremacists in Special Operations but how the attitudes of these extremists connected with the less explicit white male supremacy of white patriarchal American society and defined, in some respects, the attitude taken by U.S. occupation forces in Haiti toward the Haitian population.

The resistance to this allegation was particularly fierce, and not merely from those inside the Special Operations “community,” whose outrage was more public-relations stagecraft than anything else. There was outrage from people who hadn’t a moment of actual experience in the military at all. This is an affront to something sacred in the public imaginary of a thoroughly militarized United States: that we are an international beacon of civilized virtue, and that our military is the masculine epitome of that virtue standing between our suburban security and the dark chaos of the Outside. Questioning the mystique of the armed forces is tantamount to lunacy at best and treason at worst.

It’s a great article and well worth your time. I’ve previously argued that we’re already living in a fascist state (there’s a movie too, and that post could use an update in the post-Minuteman world). Rather than focus on endpoint analysis, Goff’s article goes over much the same ground, but also addresses some root causes responsible for making that fascism acceptable. A how-did-we-get-here look (or, pedantically, a look at how some key elements for the establishment of a fascist state are already normative values in American society). All this from someone who was SpecOps for many years.

Much of the article focuses on the neonazis in the military – and how the invasion of Iraq has accelerated our military’s destruction from within by neonazis – but there are asides to Straussian ideology, master-race impulses, gender issues, and the like. This is more of a precis for a journal article, but in internet terms, it’s a tome. Go read it.