Erica Goode reports for the New York Times:
BAGHDAD — The shelling started just before 6 a.m., mortar fire shaking buildings and sending early risers in the Green Zone here running for shelter. Sirens went off, and loudspeakers blared, “Duck and cover! Duck and cover!†A thick column of gray smoke rose above the embassies and government buildings in the area.
The early morning onslaught on Sunday was one of the fiercest and most sustained attacks on the Green Zone in the past year, and it ushered in a day of violence that claimed the lives of at least 51 Iraqi civilians and soldiers, including two children.
How ’bout that surge, huh? And what was it the President said the other day about how romantic war is?
The Iraq war is now going better than expected, for a change. Most critics of the war, myself included, blew it: we didn’t anticipate the improvements in security that are partly the result of last year’s “surge.â€
The improvement is real but fragile and limited. Here’s what it amounts to: We’ve cut our casualty rates to the unacceptable levels that plagued us back in 2005, and we still don’t have any exit plan for years to come — all for a bill that is accumulating at the rate of almost $5,000 every second!
Why did we invade Iraq, again? Something about aluminum tubes?
I have a little background in machining and welding metals… and I’ve often wondered why nobody pointed out that cutting, welding, and re-machining aluminum tubes of any nature to critical tolerances is a more complex task than manufacturing them to those tolerances in the first place. The aluminum tube thing never made sense to me. But what do I know other than that freedom is on the march.
Oh, the violence in Iraq is just a spasm..the surge has been a “phenomenal success”…Just ask Cheney if you don’t believe me.
Freedom is on the march, but it’s hard to say in what direction. At least we saved the world from rogue aluminum tubes.
The aluminum tubes were nonsense from the beginning. The IAEA stated clearly in early March of 2003 that “Extensive field investigation and document analysis have failed to uncover any evidence that Iraq intended to use these 81-millimeter tubes for any project other than the reverse engineering of rockets.”
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/07/sprj.irq.un.transcript.elbaradei/
ElBaradei had stated two months earlier that “It may be technically possible that the tubes could be used to enrich uranium, but you’d have to believe that Iraq deliberately ordered the wrong stock and intended to spend a great deal of time and money reworking each piece.”
I’m not sure what Kristof is talking about when he says “The Iraq war is now going better than expected, for a change.” The war has long been over. What we have is an occupation with no end in site.
RC
Since the cost is human lives seems to be of little consequence to the war supporters, how about this. This country goes in debt every day for this war/occupation. And, the country that is carrying our debt is China. Doesn’t that bother any of those war mongers?
The death toll of GI’s killed in Iraq just reached 4000. Happy Easter America, God bless us!. Bush claims that no greater love has any man then to lay down their life for a friend as a justification for the blood on our hands.. But I think that no greater stupidity has any man than to lay down their life for a fiend.
Sorry if I’m so bitter and caustic about the loss of young American lives but I served America in Vietnam, and it hurts me terribly to see a repeat of the needless waste of precious young life to fulfill the childish fantasies of egotistical old men like Bush and Cheney. To die for your country is honorable, but to die for a lie is tragic. We should all be ashamed for allowing this loss to occur.
It is well worth viewing Bill Maher’s interview with Michael Ware about the realities in our fabled oil colony, and also Hillary’s oily fable about her arrival in Tuzla.
Swami:
I don’t think you’re bitter at all. War is stupid, plain and simple. We do have the right to defend ourselves but wars are all about power, greed and ideology. Anyone feel free to correct me since I am not a history expert but from what little I know, that is my conclusion.
I have been watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series (again) lately which was produced in the 70s. He makes a statement that for the first time in history, mankind has the power to blow himself off the planet. Are we going to do that or are we going to make the higher decision and start living as if we are all one and treat everyone humanely. You’re right, egotistical old men send young virile men off to die or be maimed and claim it is noble or romantic. That is very childish and I think we should elect an adult to be our leader.
I believe we are on the threshold of a big evolutionary leap for mankind. We MUST stop fighting or we will never have peace.
Gee, it’s only 4000 dead. I mean if you were to figure each dead body at an average of 6 feet tall and were to lay the 4000 bodies out in a line head to toe …it would only equal a distance of 4.5 miles long of dead bodies..That’s not much distance at all, and it’s certainly not enough distance to reach America’s heart.
Fox news is now reporting on Obama’s new pastor’s Easter sermon? Now I am not religious (I am a proud atheist) but it seems to me that if the “media” is going to report on every sermon given by every preacher, rabbi, cleric, etc. this could eventually be bad for all religions? Is FOX against religion now? Or just religion spoken by and believed in by black people? What a bunch of fucking racist bastards, how is this happening in this country today?
4,000 dead GI’s does not seem to be big news on the 24hr cable channels, I mean they mention it but it don’t seem to be that big of a deal. It’s a big deal to me. Every time I hear that another soldier has died my stomach contracts a little more and I start to feel sick, I have a family member over there he’s supposed to come home in April, I hope he makes it. This fuckin war has taken more than lives it has ripped families apart, half of my family hardly speaks to the other half because of this war. It has exposed nerves that none of us knew existed, I’m sure my family is no different than most that have had to send a loved one over their, it just a fuckin waste of energy.
“I vow so long as I am president to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain.â€
Ah, notice that Bush qualifies his statement with “so long as I am president”..you know what that means? They will all die in vain once someone finds the courage to pull the plug on Bush’s fiasco in Iraq.