The Iraq War is over. Or, so we are informed. The BBC:

Obama speech at Fort Bragg marks end of Iraq war

US President Barack Obama has marked the end of the Iraq war with a speech at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, telling troops, “welcome home!”

His address paid tribute to the soldiers who served in the conflict – both those who died and veterans who returned home after long tours of duty.

More than 200 soldiers based at Fort Bragg died over the course of the nearly nine-year war.

The final US soldiers are expected to leave Iraq within days.

The last combat troops departed in August 2010….

But, ‘midst the ticker-tape parades, the wild festivities and American celebration for a war that never should have been fought, that was never supposed to cost us anything, was supposed to be “greeted with flowers” according to a high-ranking Darth Vader, and all the rest, I can only think of Shelley:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said—‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’

– Percy Bysshe Shelley

But I am sure that’s entirely too cynical. All that remains are those gravestones with that Official Logo™.

Hoorah.

Courage.

We know the names of every one of the 4,479 Americans who were killed and the 32,200 who were wounded, both civilian and military, between March 20, 2003 and Oct. 21, 2011, the day President Barack Obama, fulfilling a campaign promise, declared the last American soldier would leave Iraq before the end of the year.

We know Second Lieutenant Therrel Shane Childers was the first American soldier killed by hostile fire in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

On March 21, 2003, less than a day after the U.S.-led invasion, Childers was shot in the stomach by hostile forces while leading a Marine platoon to secure an oil field in southern Iraq.  His father, Joseph, told NPR that it was his dream to lead Marines into combat.

Childers, from Gulfport, Miss., had enlisted in the Marines 12 years earlier, was a security guard at the Geneva consulate and the Nairobi embassy, fought in the Persian Gulf War, and then attended the Citadel on a special program that allows enlisted personnel to be commissioned upon graduation. He was a French major and on the Dean’s List. Childers, who had wanted to be a horse trainer when he retired from the Marines, was 30 years old when he died. The Marines promoted him to first lieutenant posthumously.

On the day Childers was killed, 12 men—seven from the United Kingdom, one from South Africa, and four from the U.S.—were killed in a helicopter crash near Umm Qasr, a port city in southern Iraq. At the time, the Marine Corps called the crash of the CH-46E Sea Knight accidental, but didn’t elaborate.

About the time the helicopter crashed, Lance Corporal José Antonio Gutierrez, a 22-year-old Marine, was killed by what is euphemistically known as “friendly fire.” He was an orphan from Guatemala who had illegally crossed into the United States from Mexico, lived on the streets of San Diego and Los Angeles, was granted a temporary visa, lived with a series of foster families, graduated from high school, and began attending college, hoping to become an architect. The U.S. granted him citizenship posthumously.

On the second day of the war, three more Americans and six from England were killed. On the third day, 30 more Americans and four British were killed. By the end of March, 92 were killed.

One month before the invasion, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had declared the upcoming war, which he warned would be a “shock and awe” strategy, might last “six days, maybe six weeks; I doubt six months.”

On May 1, 2003, aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln off the coast of San Diego, President George W. Bush, decorated in flight gear, declared “Mission Accomplished.” Official military records show that when President Bush made his announcement, 172 Coalition troops had been killed. More than 4,600 American and allied soldiers would die in Iraq after that declaration; more than 31,500 Americans would be wounded, many permanently disabled, after that bravado proclamation.

We know the oldest American soldier to die in combat was 60; the youngest was 18, of which there were 34. We know that 476 of those killed were from California; Pennsylvania and Florida each had 176 deaths by the time the President announced full withdrawal from Iraq.

 There are names we don’t know. We don’t know the names and life stories of the 4.7 million refugees, nor the two million Iraqis who fled the violence caused by the Coalition invasion. We don’t know the names of the orphaned children, one-third of all of Iraq’s youth. We don’t know the names of the 100,000–150,000 civilians killed. We don’t have accurate records of more than a million who were wounded. It no longer matters who killed or wounded them, who destroyed their lives and property—American, allied, Shia, Sunni, insurgent, criminal, or al-Qaeda. It doesn’t matter if they died from IEDs, suicide bombers, gunshots, artillery, bombs, or missiles. In war, they’re simply known as “collateral damage.”

In Afghanistan, 2,769 Coalition troops have been killed, 1,815 of them American, by the day that President Obama announced the withdrawal from Iraq. There are already 14,343 wounded among the Coalition forces. Between 36,000 and 75,000 Afghani civilians have been killed by insurgents and Coalition troops during the past decade, according to the United Nations. President Obama told the world that the war in Afghanistan would continue at least two more years.

You can try to sanitize the wars by giving them patriotic names—Operation Iraqi Freedom; Operation Enduring Freedom. But that doesn’t change the reality that millions of every demographic have been affected. War doesn’t discriminate. The dead on all sides are physicians and religious leaders; trades people, farmers, clerks, merchants, teachers, and mothers.  And they are babies and students. We don’t know what they might have become had they been allowed to grow up and live a life of peace, one without war.

We also don’t yet know who will be the last American soldier to be killed in Iraq. As important, we don’t know how Post-Traumatic Syndrome Disorder (PTSD) will affect the one million soldiers who were called for as many as seven tours of duty, nor when the last Iraq War veteran will die from permanent injuries. And we will never know the extent of the terror that will plague the families, children, and grandchildren of those who served.

But there is one more thing we do know. A year before José Antonio Gutierrez was killed, he had written a “Letter to God” in Spanish. Translated, it read: “Thank you for permitting me to live another year, thank you for what I have, for the type of person I am, for my dreams that don’t die. . . . May the firearms be silent and the teachings of love flourish.”

[Walter Brasch first began writing about war in 1966. He wishes he didn’t have to. His latest book is Before the First Snow, a novel that focuses upon America between 1964 and 1991, the eve of the Persian Gulf War.]

I slept the day away in hopes that I would feel better, but, today’s Ten Post Round-Up tells me I probably should crawl back into bed:

1: Shameful: US servicewomen more likely to be raped by fellow soldiers than killed by enemy fire…

At War With Ourselves: Battling Sexual Violence in the Military–AlterNet

2: Not A Surprise: Teenage girls adopting eating disorders from healthy eating messages at school…

‘Eating disorders fuelled by teachers’–The Australian

3: ACLU comes out in defense of polygamist ranch…

ACLU weighs in on Texas polygamist custody case–CNN.com

4: Florida fire hydrants to begin multi-tasking as spyware…

Florida Gets All Stasi On Citizens–duckplops

5: Smart: Bush sneaks into New Orleans, Not So Smart (?): To discuss expanding NAFTA…

José Can You See? Bush’s Trojan Taco–Greg Palast

6: Grandma’s weird Depression-era recipes are beginning to look good, now…

Food Rationing Makes Unwelcome Return–The Huffington Post

7: Oh, but flip-flops are so comfy, aren’t they?….

McCain: That was then (flip). This is now (flop).–Hypocrisy.com

8: Un-frak-ing-believable…

Judges deny some crack convicts legal help on sentences–McClatchy

9: Put this in perspective: The Army and Marines are recruiting individuals who would otherwise not be able to purchase or possess guns as civilians or be able to live in neighborhoods with a school nearby…

Army doubled felony waivers for recruits in year of Iraq surge–Raw Story

10: Oklahoma sheriff (D) works to up the ante of sexual predators vs (R)s…

Cain’t Say No–Reason Magazine

272 días hasta el final de un error…

Peace.

(I like my morning cuppa with a little hypocrisy chaser)

Tomorrow voters will cast their votes in the Pennsylvania primary and then it’s on to Indiana and North Carolina.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend was stumping in South Bend for Hillary on Sunday. She answered some questions for the South Bend Tribune after and event at St. Mary’s College.

Here’s a couple of quips from the interview:

Q: With the primary coming so closely and still a lot of people unsure who they like more, Hillary Clinton or Obama, can you give them a little more of an idea as to why they should vote for Hillary?

A: I think we have two different candidates but I think what we’ve got in Hillary Clinton is someone who knows how to get things done, and is willing to fight — for health care for all Americans, to bring our troops home, to make sure we’ll have 5 million new green jobs and 3 million jobs in infrastructure. We want somebody who’s got the grit to get down in the details and solve problems. I want somebody who knows that we are in the worst economic times since the Great Depression, who understands what that requires, and who has a grasp on how to solve these problems.

Q: So do you feel that Obama is sort of too gentle or isn’t tough enough to deal with Republicans in Washington?

A: I just think that that he doesn’t have the same experience. Give him a few years so that he knows how to get things done. Look, he’s a very good candidate. I think he has inspired wonderful numbers of young people to come into the campaign. He has been very exciting. But at the end of the day, when we have had the crises that we have now, I want somebody who has really got the grit and the fight to solve problems. [...]

Q: As far as the economy, what can Hillary do that Obama can’t?

A: Hillary can get things done. The issue of experience is, who can actually get things done? She’s got a plan for 5 million green jobs, she’s got a plan for 3 million infrastructure jobs. I haven’t heard that he has those plans. But she’s been in the Senate for a while. She’s been the first lady of the United States, the first lady of Arkansas. She is accustomed to actually seeing a problem and trying to solve it.

The bottom-line, Barack Obama “doesn’t have the same experience” that Hillary Clinton has. That fact is something that has been echoed here time and time again. Townsend is right: “Give him a few years so that he knows how to get things done.” This is a critical election. We need an experienced leader to clean up the mess that Bush has made. That leader is Hillary Clinton.

Hillary has the “grit”:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Maybe it’s the cold medicine, but, today’s Ten Post Round-Up has my head spinning:

1: Proof of progress in Iraq: Seatbelts!…

As the Iraqis Buckle Up, We Will Stand Down–Bring It On!

2: Sometimes, doing things the old-fashioned way, really is best…

Exposed: The Great GM Crops Myth–CommonDreams.org

3: Ben Stein’s movie is number 8 with a bullet! On the upside, it should be available in Blu-Ray in a couple of months!…

Expelled’s Weekend Box Office–Friendly Atheist

4: To be sure, it wasn’t just television news that was taken in by the Pentagon’s Propaganda machine…

A Guide to ‘NYT’ Bombshell on Military/Media Propaganda–The Huffington Post

5: In the UK, psychics will have to prove themselves…

New Psychic Law–The J-Walk Blog

6: Mark Fiore has a great ad about the Presidential retirement plan…

White House Life–Mark Fiore.com

7: Another reason Dizzy does not watch game shows: For any number of reasons, I find them highly unpalatable….

Dubya: Game Show Playa–Perez Hilton

8: A draft by any other name would be just as rotten…

No Draft, You Say?–Reconstitution 2.0

9: The truth is, the blogosphere has been suspicious of such things for awhile now…

The Puppetry of the Pentagon–Shakesville

10: Hey! At least they have a seatbelt law now!…

you read it here second–skippy the bush kangaroo

273 días hasta el final de un error…

Peace.

(I like my morning cuppa with a little hypocrisy chaser)

It’s smells like a pep rally burning out of control, in my front yard.  Today’s Ten Post Round-Up might singe your eyebrows:

1: What a relief! The Cheney sunglasses mystery is solved!…

Image In Cheney’s Glasses Actually Bush’s Eternal Soul–CAP News

2: Ahem–Attention American Taxpayers: You are supposed to squander your stimulus check NOT pay bills with it! Putting it away for your own benefit is not why we are sending it to you…

Economic Stimulus: Good for individuals or the overall economy, not both–Colorado Confidential

3: On the upside, those stimulus checks might come just in time for you to make the massive going-out-of-business sales, sure to be all the rage this summer…

More Economic Pain: Retailing Chains Caught in a Wave of Bankruptcies–The Democratic Daily

4: More “good” news…umm…the war in Iraq might come to an end, particularly if those stimulus checks don’t work out like they’re supposed to…

US Financial Collapse Will End Bush/Cheney Iraq War–duckplops

5: Some conservatives like to complain about all those “liberal activist judges”. Would you like to guess who the truly “activist judges” really are (pssst…they are conservative)…

So Much For The False “Activist Judges” Canard…–Firedoglake

6: Decisions, decisions: affordable food prices or less oil-dependency. Hmmm…those mud pies look really good…

Backlash Against Ethanol–Free Market News

7: Silver lining emerges after the military finally releases AP photographer…

At least this poor sot didn’t make it to Gitmo..–Its my Right to be Left of the Center

8: Even visitors are being ticketed for not having their vehicles registered in Washington, D.C….

Don’t Live in D.C.–Reason Magazine

9: Mystery of what happened to the good ship (snicker) Titanic still lingers after all these years ….

Rivets–Talking Points Memo

10: The plot thickens: It appears that the FLDS compound has a financial connection with the Pentagon…

BREAKING NEWS:::FUNDING QUESTIONS ABOUT THE SECT…..NBC REPORTED TONIGHT–Watergate Summer

278 días hasta el final de un error…

Peace.

(I love the smell of hypocrisy in my morning cuppa)

(Programming note:  I’m going to keep the round-up, short and sweet.  But, I will continue to post a video for the day and make my usual commentary on my own crazy blog.)

News gotcha feelin’ bitter?  Well, today’s Ten Post Round-Up ain’t gonna make ya feel any better:

1: Iraqi Government: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?…

Iraq: From One Dictator to Another?–AntiWar.com

2: American economy: Hope for the best, prepare for the worst…

12 Ways To Prepare For The Next Great Depression–Best Article Every Day

3: DNC is suing McCain for breaking campaign finance laws…

No, it’s not “hamstringing” McCain, it’s about investigating an election law criminal–Brilliant at Breakfast

4: The world is definitely coming to an end…

Lead Tainted Hillbilly Teeth Recalled–Bring It On!

5: Dang! I didn’t even hear the fat lady sing on that one…

Is the FISA fight over?–Crooks and Liars

6: FARK said it best: $9 billion reasons why the US government is not in a hurry to deport illegal aliens…

Illegal immigrants pay billions in taxes–Houston Chronicle

7: Bush admitted he approved of torture, but all the media was worried about was whether or not Americans are “bitter”…

Media Priorities–Morning Martini

8: Bush advocating diplomacy over confrontation…5 years too late…

Opposite Day for Stephen Hadley–Princess Sparkle Pony

9: A slope too slippery?….

Should the Death Penalty Cover Crimes Other than Murder?–Reason Magazine

10: About that “other” war…

US military deaths in Afghanistan at 423–Signs of the Times

279 días hasta el final de un error…

Peace.

(yes, I suffer from head*desk syndrome)

It’s official… “President Bush says he was aware that his top aides met in the White House basement to micromanage the application of waterboarding and other widely-condemned interrogation techniques.”

And he says it was no big deal.

“I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved,” Bush told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz on Friday. “I don’t know what’s new about that; I’m not so sure what’s so startling about that.”

It’s true that it has been widely assumed and occasionally reported that the CIA’s use of brutal interrogation techniques could be traced back to the White House on a general level. But it was most definitely new last week when ABC News reported that a group of Bush’s top aides, including Vice President Cheney, took part in meetings where they explicitly discussed and approved — literally blow by blow — tactics such as waterboarding. And while Bush has previously defended these tactics — vaguely, and insisting against all evidence that they did not amount to torture — he had not, until now, acknowledged that he personally OK’d them beforehand.

If you consider what the government did to be torture, which is a crime according to U.S. and international law, Bush’s statement shifts his role from being an accessory after the fact to being part of a conspiracy to commit.

Bingo! I know all the practical reasons why we never tried to impeach the SOB, but hello — he has admitted to this – let’s put impeachment back on the table!

And where the blazes is the mainstream media on this??? As Dan Froomkin points out they have been mighty silent:

The mainstream media by and large seem to agree with Bush that the ABC News Report wasn’t so startling, and they have given Bush’s remarks almost no coverage. There was no mention of Bush’s admission in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Los Angeles Times. There was nothing on the major wire services. And nothing on CNN, CBS or NBC.

From an ACLU press release on Saturday:

“The American Civil Liberties Union is calling on Congress to demand an independent prosecutor to investigate possible violations by the Bush administration of laws including the War Crimes Act, the federal Anti-Torture Act, and federal assault laws.

‘No one in the executive branch of government can be trusted to fairly investigate or prosecute any crimes since the head of every relevant department, along with the president and vice president, either knew or participated in the planning and approval of illegal acts,’ said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. ‘Congress cannot look the other way; it must demand an independent investigation and independent prosecutor.’

“Fredrickson added, ‘Congress is duty-bound by the Constitution not only to hold the president, vice president, and all civil officers to account, but it must also send a message to future presidents that it will use its constitutional powers to prevent illegal, and immoral conduct.’

Earth to Congress — Are you paying attention?

THE MOST SEVERE FAMINE EVER?

F*ck American conservatives! Just f*ck the rotten murdering bastards.

My wife is Filipino. A main food staple for the Philippines is rice. What we pay to buy food for her family back home has tripled in the last six months.

People are now starving to death in the Philippines. Mainly homeless people now, but people nonetheless. Sure beggars are still allowed to beg, but doing it no longer keeps them alive. They used to look to those one or two notches above them on the economic scale for help, but that source is either going or gone because of the cost of food. The well to do? They won’t give the time of day. They live in walled compounds, travel in guarded comfort, and have their security provided by the government that they’ve bought and paid for. The middle class? What middle class?

Seen the stories the past month or so about worker riots in places like Egypt, Bangladesh, Haiti and other places I didn’t pay enough attention to because it was only the news I’ve heard in the past few days that got me to properly focus? Worker riots in poor countries are always another way of saying that people can’t feed their families, because billions of people do modern labor on this planet with no purpose other than just that. With a full stomach, people will put up with even grave injustices. Facing starvation, any minor event can be the spark that sets the planet on fire.

Food prices are spiraling upward here, and we grumble about it. In fact, it’s even to the point where an occasional economist will point out that one factor deepening the current recession is that the cost of food is draining off discretionary income. And me, I was shocked when I went into Costco yesterday and couldn’t buy our favorite rice brand because it is no longer even on the market.

On the way to Costco I had the radio on a random news report and heard a small piece about world rice prices. The world largely depends on India and Thailand for rice exports, and India just put a moratorium on selling rice outside the country, to make sure that it can feed its own people. This move caused rice traders in Thailand to push the market price up by 40% in one week.

Oil prices skyrocket on us, and what do we do? Park the car, take the bus (for less money, I might add), and watch our economy slowly sink. Not pretty, but not something that pushes us into the streets.

Rice becomes unaffordable in the third World, and what happens? In Haiti, people eat mud pies to kill the hunger, and the starvation still takes them. In the Philippines the homeless eat nothing and die, while others avert their eyes and say a prayer of blessing that that isn’t their family today. In other countries people protest more vigorously, or less vigorously, but ultimately are still left with prayer as their last resort.

One planet, pushing seven billion people, and do you know the regulatory structure we have for dealing with world food supply problems? Other than that blood sucking scum of a doctrine called “supply and demand” we have a U.N. agency that gathers food donations where available, and takes them for distribution to where they might be needed. And now we face a situation where almost no one has food to spare, and almost everyone desperately needs more, and all we can do is acknowledge how pitifully prepared we are to deal with any true world crisis.

As for supply and demand? If we are dumb enough to put that conservative a*shole McCain in office, he will point out that the free market ended up working just fine. That is, “The demand for food exceeded the supply until enough poor people died that balance was reached again. Now let’s get down to truly serious issues, and figure out who we need to attack next to make sure that we get the respect from the rest of the planet that we, as Americans, are entitled to.”

American conservatives have battled human progress for at least my whole life. They have bitched and moaned about us being able to create a system to care for even our own. With them, it has always been survival of the fittest, with the fittest being those who survived, and f*ck everyone else.

And now the entire planet faces a potential crisis that we have nothing better than decent odds of stumbling through. A crisis that need not even have been. Planning sets priorities, but Democratic planning never sets as a priority the promotion of the welfare of the small minority who have far too much of every resource necessary for survival, while acting like most of us matter, really, not at all. Democratic planning, Democratic governance, knows, at a minimum, what constitutes the necessities of life, and assures both sufficient production, and adequate distribution of those necessities.

Our standard garden variety American conservatives, of course, damn all planning. They know allegiance only to the flawed god of supply and demand. They possess the damnable ability to sacrifice any consequence to this supremely flawed “principle”, and will bet every penny of their vast fortunes on its ultimate planetary dominance.

Goddamn those f*cking bastards!