Americans reelected Bush, we enable him by not marching on Washington, our representatives treat him nicely and respectfully, we argue whether the war is lost and our media claims that it's not. We hardly mention the mass murder of Iraqis.

The most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq will appear next Wednesday, a 90-minute PBS broadcast called "Buying the War," which marks the return of "Bill Moyers Journal...

The war continues today, now in its fifth year, with the death toll for Americans and Iraqis rising again -- yet Moyers points out, "the press has yet to come to terms with its role in enabling the Bush Administration to go to war on false pretenses."

Among the few heroes of this devastating film are reporters with the Knight Ridder/McClatchy bureau in D.C. Tragically late, Walter Isaacson, who headed CNN, observes, "The people at Knight Ridder were calling the colonels and the lieutenants and the people in the CIA and finding out, you know, that the intelligence is not very good. We should've all been doing that."...

...Isaacson notes there was "almost a patriotism police" after 9/11 and when the network showed civilian casualties it would get phone calls from advertisers and the administration and "big people in corporations were calling up and saying, 'You're being anti-American here.'" ...

Phil Donahue recalls that he was told he could not feature war dissenters alone on his MSNBC talk show and always had to have "two conservatives for every liberal." Moyers resurrects a leaked NBC memo about Donahue's firing that claimed he "presents a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. At the same time our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."

Not to be missed. Especially recommended for the Bush enablers on this blog.

Jim - I've already said that I (for one) will be happy to take the blame for the fact that Bush and the peasants have so wretchedly lost public confidence, but as I conceded earlier all my efforts are as nothing compared to yours: "Collateral damage is not an argument, but a description of damage".

All sentences beginning, "What we should now do in Iraq ... " are devoid of meaning. We are in no position to do anything. We have no potency; that is the definition of anarchy.
...
[Bush and Blair] will have to stop the holier-than-thou name-calling and the pretence that they hold any cards. They will have to realise that this war has lost them all leverage in the region. They can insult and sanction and threaten. But there is nothing left for them to "do" but leave. They are no longer the subject of that mighty verb, only its painful object.

So only one course remains: Get Out Now.

Saddam is gone. There was never any threat to the US or UK from Iraq, and there is not now one. What is the mission, for which these young people have given their lives this spring? What do we tell their children about why their daddy is no longer there for them? Is it just Karl Rove's best guess about what will win the next election? Better business for Dick Cheney's golf buddies among the Big Oil CEOs? George W. Bush's cokehead emotional shallowness and inability to admit he ever made a mistake? What?

We ask our men and women in uniform to risk their lives, sometimes to sacrifice them, for the security of our nation. But the security of our nation is not in doubt.

The more I read the clearer it becomes that the US policy has taken its cues from Leo Strauss, in that war is the prefered state, and peace offers no advantage to those wishing to maintain control and power over any given populace.

Via Laura Rozen, this interview with the US Ambassador to Syria says it all:

How do you respond to the U.S. assertion that Syria is undermining stability in Lebanon?
Today the Lebanese are divided half and half. The tension is very high and Lebanon can easily reach a tipping point after which, God forbid, a civil war might erupt. And there is a very keen initiative to try and convince the Lebanese to have a coalition of national unity. We are supporting this, the Saudis are supporting this, the United States is opposing this.... Yet we are considered as negative and disruptive, and the United States considers itself the moderate player in the Middle East.

Their outpost here, a cluster of fortified houses officially designated a joint security station and unofficially called the Alamo by some of the soldiers, is a test case for President Bush's new Baghdad security plan. The strategy envisions at least 20 more facilities like it in other troubled neighborhoods, all jointly staffed by Iraqi and American forces.

. . . In the week since the Americans arrived, however, the troops have seen the truth of what their commanders warned in announcing the plan: it leaves Americans more exposed than ever, stationary targets for warring militias.

. . . Over the course of three days spent with the 105 soldiers here -- Company C of the Second Battalion, 12th Cavalry -- four American vehicles were hit by roadside bombs near the outpost. No soldiers from Company C were wounded, but they know the fighting will intensify.

"I'm a juicy target they are just trying to figure out," said Capt. Erik Peterson, 29, the commander at the outpost.

"We are ready to surrender.

I'm not in any way advocating using nukes, but if you're going to have a war and people are bombing you then you have to take the gloves off and demolish them. If you can't bring yourself to do that then you need to refrain from fighting. This is the failure of Vietnam and the failure of Iraq.

To perhaps find some semblance of a reasonable, normal life, the citizens of Iraq need only wait for the US to withdraw.

The Shia majority need only WAIT to work their will (whatever that may be) on the Sunni after the US troops withdraw.

The Sunni are probably motivated to keep the US Armed Forces in Iraq as a means to gain time & find some way to function as a potentially oppressed minority.

The insurgents & what elements of al Qaeda may be present are motivated to keep the US military in Iraq.

The geographical neighbors of Iraq are motivated to keep the US occupying forces in country to produce a type of stand-off or neutrality--a form of pax Americana.