If they question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied. ---Rudyard Kipling

Aping the president’s practice of surrounding himself with sycophants, Rumsfeld has promoted a coterie of yes-men to top military ranks—men who “kiss up and kick down,” in the words of former Assistant Secretary of State Carl Ford

More outspoken still has been Lt. Gen. William Odom (US Army, ret), the most respected senior intelligence officer still willing to speak out on strategic and intelligence issues. Unfortunately, you would have to understand German to know what he thinks of “staying the course” in Iraq, because U.S. media are not going to run his remarks. Here is my translation of what Gen. Odom said last September on German TV’s Panorama program: “When the president says he is staying the course, that makes me really afraid. For a leader has to know when to change course. Hitler did not change his course: rather he kept sending more and more troops to Stalingrad and they suffered more and more casualties. “When the president says he is staying the course it reminds me of the man who has just jumped from the Empire State Building. Half-way down he says, ‘I am still on course.’ Well, I would not want to be on course with a man who will lie splattered in the street. I would like to be someone who could change the course... “Our invasion of Iraq has made it a homeland for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Indeed, I believe that it was the very first time that many Iraqis became terrorists. Before we invaded, they had no idea of terrorism.” At Fort Bragg yesterday, the president spoke of the need to “prevent al-Qaeda and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban: a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends.” Too late, Mr. President, has no one told you that you’ve succeeded in accomplishing that yourself? “No organizational design will compensate for incompetent incumbents.”

Not tho' the soldier knew Some one had blunder'd: Their's not to make reply, Their's not to reason why, Their's but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. - Alfred Tennyson, 1854

The House of Representatives have recently voted on the 2004 budget which will cut funding for veteran's health care and benefit programs by nearly $25 billion over the next ten years. It narrowly passed by a vote of 215 to 212, and came just a day after Congress passed a resolution to "Support Our Troops." How exactly does this vote support our troops? Does leaving our current and future veterans veterans without access to health care and compensation qualify as supporting them? cite

The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin' your pardon," he said, "You wrote o' the Light Brigade, sir. Here's all that isn't dead. An' it's all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin' the mouth of hell; For we're all of us nigh to the workhouse, an, we thought we'd call an' tell. "No, thank you, we don't want food, sir; but couldn't you take an' write A sort of 'to be continued' and 'see next page' o' the fight? We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell 'em how? You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now." -Rudyard Kipling, 1891

According to this week's Washington Post - The number of Iraqi army battalions that can fight insurgents without U.S. and coalition help has dropped from three to one, top U.S. generals told Congress yesterday, adding that the security situation in Iraq is too uncertain to predict large-scale American troop withdrawals anytime soon.

Jabor said intelligence indicated some Arab militants had already left Iraq after losing ground during last month's assault by U.S. and Iraqi forces on the northern town of Tal Afar, where more than 1,500 insurgents were captured.

An Iraqi army lieutenant colonel suggested that up to half the rebels might have managed to flee to neighbouring villages. Among those arrested were some 30 foreign fighters, including around 20 Syrians, as well as four Afghanis and two Saudis, he told AFP requesting anonymity." That is, 200,000 inhabitants were driven from their homes, neighborhoods were flattened, and 500 people were killed so that the US could capture 20 Syrian villagers so angry about the US military occupation of Iraq that they slipped over to Tal Afar to fight it.

Let me now risk some more flak and say that given that it is two weeks before the referendum and no ordinary Iraqis have seen the text of the new constitution, and given that the Sunni Arabs reject it to a person even just from the little they know of it, this constitution is another sick joke played by the Bush administration, which keeps forcing Iraq to jump through hoops made in Washington as "milestones" and "tipping points" to which the Republican Party can point as progress. Not to mention that the draft we have all seen of the constitution is riddled with fatal contradictions that will tie up the energies of parliament and the courts for decades trying to resolve them.

Ray McGovern, (wrote)the war in Iraq is being run civilians

Before we invaded, they had no idea of terrorism.”

The 1998 indictment said: "Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq."

"In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars."

Jabr is originally Turkmen. He headed the Syrian and Lebanese offices of SCIRI in exile and served as its Political and Arab Affairs chief. It is possibly significant that Interior went to a political operative of SCIRI rather than to the paramilitary Badr Corps, which had been angling for the ministry itself. The Badr Corps fighters were trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Bayan Jabr is clearly an old-time revolutionary deeply committed to SCIRI's paramilitary actions. I'd say there is likely to be some trepidation among Iraqi moderates about his now taking over Interior, which is a mixture of what in the US would be the FBI, Secret Service, and Homeland Security.

The insurgents all escaped

The sixth stanza opens with Tennyson's second question, "When can their glory fade?" Perhaps he is asking this question because he fears that these men and this incident may not be remembered or worse yet, that they will be remembered as men that failed. This dual perception is implied in lines 50 and 51 where he again uses two words that appear to be used as double entendres. In line 50 he uses "wild" to refer to their charge, which can mean it was a fantastic charge or a disorderly charge. In line 50 he repeats and uses the word "wonder" in a manner similar to his use of it in line 31. According to Dr. LuAnn McCracken Fletcher, a third possibility for the question may be that Tennyson may be saying, "When can we stop glorifying actions like this?" - even as we honor the men that engaged in this action. He concludes in lines 53-55 that all of the men should be honored for their actions that day, both those that gave their lives in the line of duty and perhaps more importantly, those that chose to retreat when they realized that "someone had blundered."

A city of 200,000 innocent civilians are now homeless refugee

We know that the guerrillas mostly escaped the city through tunnels, and few engagements were fought (though 500 or more people were killed in the city, some proportion of them innocent civilians caught up in bombing raids) The US military claimed 150 guerrillas killed and 400 captured, but it is not at all clear that the 400 apprehended were actually guerrillas as opposed to Sunni Turkmen who had some pressing reason to try to stay in the city. The stated objective had been the foreign infiltrators. What happened to them? AFP reported on Sept. 13, "An Iraqi army lieutenant colonel suggested that up to half the rebels might have managed to flee to neighbouring villages. Among those arrested were some 30 foreign fighters, including around 20 Syrians, as well as four Afghanis and two Saudis, he told AFP requesting anonymity." That is, 200,000 inhabitants were driven from their homes, neighborhoods were flattened, and 500 people were killed so that the US could capture 20 Syrian villagers so angry about the US military occupation of Iraq that they slipped over to Tal Afar to fight it. But wait. This battle was supposed to be a major one. How how did at least half of the guerrillas (I suspect many more) escape from the city? Could it be that they were tipped off by officers in the Iraqi army? How did the US find out about the infiltration? Was it when they got to Tal Afar and nobody was there? Or was it when there were a few firefights, and everybody but a few gung-ho Kurds held back?

Nope, nothing happening. Nothing at all. Can you hear me laughing.....now?

"Before we invaded, they had no idea of terrorism.”

That's cocaine talking, Big Time. All grins and no consequences. And Jim don't know coke sniffers from ordinary bigots like him.

JimakaPPJ likes to lie

REPORTER: Mr. Bin Ladin, will the end of the United States' presence in Saudi Arabia, their withdrawal, will that end your call for jihad against the United States and against the US ? BIN LADIN: The cause of the reaction must be sought and the act that has triggered this reaction must be eliminated. The reaction came as a result of the US aggressive policy towards the entire Muslim world and not just towards the Arabian peninsula. So if the cause that has called for this act comes to an end, this act, in turn, will come to an end. So, the driving-away jihad against the US does not stop with its withdrawal from the Arabian peninsula, but rather it must desist from aggressive intervention against Muslims in the whole world.

DA - The topic of the thread is the comments by retired General Odom, a critic of the war. As part of those comments the retired General said:

"Before we invaded, they had no idea of terrorism.” I feel the retired General misspoke himself.

“Our invasion of Iraq has made it a homeland for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Indeed, I believe that it was the very first time that many Iraqis became terrorists. Before we invaded, they had no idea of terrorism.”

"Scoop" from Juan Cole? I had no idea he was in Iraq covering the war.

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

I hate the war in Iraq with a passion. It is killing innocent people ... Killing is killing, and killing is a terrible thing. But it isn't always genocide. ... The right has this bad habit of escalating the mere airing of opinions as a crime. "Giving aid and comfort to the enemy", etc. I don't want to see us fall into the same habit, and don't think accusing someone of genocide just because they defend bad policies is fair.

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the ensuing military occupation has resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths and sparked the emergence of these insurgent groups. Two chapters in the report summarize laws of war violations by U.S. and Iraqi government forces. But these violations do not justify the insurgents’ unlawful attacks, the report says. “U.S. forces have used excessive and indiscriminate force, tortured detainees and held thousands of Iraqis without due process,” Whitson said. “But that does not justify attacks by insurgent groups that have deliberately targeted and killed civilians.”