War?

Oh yeah, that war.

At least 15 people died and 147 were hurt, including many schoolchildren, by two suicide vehicle bombs in the former rebel bastion of Fallujah on Thursday, an interior ministry official said.

Earlier, a defence ministry official said at least 10 people, including women, were killed in the bombings, which he said targeted Iraqi police posts.

The surge was a success!

War?

Oh yeah, that war:

A suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest blew himself up in a crowd of Iraqi police recruits on Tuesday, killing 28 people and wounding 45, police said.

Timeline me.

War?

Oh yeah... oh yeah... that war.

U.S.-led coalition forces killed 76 Afghan civilians in western Afghanistan on Friday, most of them children, the Interior Ministry said.

We're still there? I never would have guessed.

Harper's Index tells me that there were 300 total minutes of network TV coverage devoted to the war in Iraq in 1H08, down from 1,229 in 1H07. I can only imagine how abysmally low Afghanistan ranks, but don't forget, we're fighting there too.

All About the Benjamins

Conservativism:

Influential former Pentagon official Richard Perle has been exploring going into the oil business in Iraq and Kazakhstan, according to people with knowledge of the matter and documents outlining possible deals.

Mr. Perle, one of a group of security experts who began pushing the case for toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein about a decade ago, has been discussing a possible deal with officials of northern Iraq's Kurdistan regional government, including its Washington envoy, according to these people and the documents.

It would involve a tract called K18, near the Kurdish city of Erbil, according to documents describing the plan. A consortium founded by Turkish company AK Group International is seeking rights to drill there, the documents say. Potential backers include two Turkish companies as well as Kazakhstan, according to individuals involved.

The pursuit of one's happiness.

War?

Oh yeah, that war.

Two suicide bombers posing as army recruits struck an Iraqi base just east of Baquba on Tuesday morning, killing at least 35 Iraqi recruits and wounding 63, according to the Iraqi police and medical officials in Diyala Province.

John McCain and Joe Lieberman say we have to stay, and McCain is a POW and Lieberman a good man, so they must be right!

All About the Oil

A free and independent Iraq:

A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq, American officials say.

The disclosure, coming on the eve of the contracts’ announcement, is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism.

Iraqis are going to love this.

War?

Oh yeah, that war.

A suicide bomber struck Thursday inside a municipal building west of Baghdad, killing at least 20 people at a meeting of tribal sheiks opposed to al-Qaida, police said. The U.S. confirmed American casualties but gave no further details.

Another 18 people were killed and about 60 wounded in a car bombing near a government headquarters in the northern city of Mosul, officials said. Thursday's attacks were part of a spike in violence in Iraq after weeks of relative calm.

John McCain's favorite.

Always Winning All the Time!

No news is good news!

THE Iraq war’s defenders like to bash the press for pushing the bad news and ignoring the good. Maybe they’ll be happy to hear that the bad news doesn’t rate anymore. When a bomb killed at least 51 Iraqis at a Baghdad market on Tuesday, ending an extended run of relative calm, only one of the three network newscasts (NBC’s) even bothered to mention it.

The only problem is that no news from Iraq isn’t good news — it’s no news. The night of the Baghdad bombing the CBS war correspondent Lara Logan appeared as Jon Stewart’s guest on “The Daily Show” to lament the vanishing television coverage and the even steeper falloff in viewer interest. “Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier,” she said. After pointing out that more soldiers died in Afghanistan than Iraq last month, she asked, “Who’s paying attention to that?”

If it doesn't get ratings, why do consumers need to know? Boring!

War Crimes

Bush Co:

The first extensive medical examinations of former detainees in U.S. military jails offer corroboration for prisoners' claims of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of their American captors, a Boston-based human rights group said in a report released yesterday.

...

In a statement accompanying the report, retired Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who led the Army's first official investigation on Abu Ghraib, said the new evidence suggested a "systematic regime of torture" inside U.S.-run detention camps.

The only remaining question is whether they'll be tried for it.

Importance of Bringing the Troops Home

For John McCain, not very:

Q: If it’s working, senator, do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?

McCAIN: No, but that’s not too important. What’s important is the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea. Americans are in Japan. American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine.

Of course. It's not like constantly fighting a war has any effect on the troops:

Maj. Lance Waldorf took pride in what he did during two tours in Afghanistan as a civil affairs officer, helping villagers build schools, roads and hospitals.

And, his wife said, he was looking forward to a third tour in Africa in the coming months. As she prepares for his funeral, set for Saturday, Lana Waldorf is comforted by the good her husband did while deployed and her deep Christian faith.

Lance Waldorf, 40, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head Monday at the Great Lakes National Cemetery in Holly Township. A note, his will and family photos were nearby. While he exhibited signs of depression, Lana Waldorf, 51, said her husband seemed to be doing better in recent days. He was in the U.S. Army Reserves.

It's not important enough to bring them home. That John McCain doesn't understand this and is unable to draw a distinction between South Korea and Germany, which are peaceful outposts, and Iraq, which is a war zone, speaks volumes about his judgment and leadership.

They Don't Want Us There Either

In a shocking turn of events, Iraqis don't agree with the words put into their mouths by the Bush administration:

Iraqi officials have raised a number of objections to the draft documents, both publicly and privately. And they are now suggesting that the latest proposal isn't even worth submitting to their parliament for approval.

The war was never about the condition of the Iraqi people, WMD or whatever excuse Bush and his enablers managed to peddle that day. It was about everlasting glory for the boy who would be king.

The Media's Mancrush David Petraeus Loves Progress

This kind:

More than 900 people have been killed in clashes between militiamen and security forces in Baghdad's Sadr City that broke out last month, a senior Iraqi official told reporters on Wednesday.

"There were 925 martyrs in Sadr City and 2,605 others have been wounded," in the firefights that began on March 25 and are still continuing, said Tehseen Sheikhly, a spokesman for the government's Baghdad security plan.

Thank you all for continuing to enable this.

Supporting Human Rights

Eat it, ivory tower, liberal hawks. Just because the invasion of Iraq had some trappings of your pony plan, you never should have deluded yourself for one second into thinking that it would become reality, which turned out like this:

He also said that his superiors saw no problem with using confessions obtained through torture, including waterboarding. Everything is "fair game," he says he was told, "let the judge sort it out."

End the war now.

War?

Oh yeah, that war:

Fierce clashes between Shiite militiamen and US and Iraqi forces in east Baghdad killed at least 38 people, the American military said on Monday, amid new political efforts to end the bloodletting.

Sunday's heaviest fighting in weeks came on a day when militiamen blasted Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone with rockets and mortars, taking advantage of a blinding dust storm that grounded US attack helicopters.

Sounds like freedom is on the march.

Selling the War

Back from vacation.

Here's an article in today's NYT about how the Pentagon pushed coordinated talking points (otherwise known as propaganda) through retired generals in order to sell the Iraq war. This administration is full of crooks, thieves and liars through and through.

Petraeus Punts

Can I be the first to call this a Petraeus Unit (P.U.)?

In his opening remarks, Gen. David Petraeus, the Iraq war commander, told the Senate panel there has been "significant but uneven security progress" in Iraq and the situation remains fragile.

The general recommended a 45-day "period of consolidation and evaluation" in July before deciding when to resume troop reductions and said current troop reductions will continue through July.

Wasn't this supposed to be the evaluation? Oh, it doesn't matter. It's only a few dozen lives and billion dollars.

How long before John McCain starts recommending P.U.s?

The Iraq War: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying.

Beyond the Pale

Friends of BushCheney:

That dawn, naked, covered in blood and feces, bleeding from her anus, she found a US soldier she did not know lying naked in the bed next to her: his gun lay on the floor beside the bed, she could not rouse him and all she could remember of the night before was screaming and screaming as the soldier anally penetrated her while a colleague who worked for defense contractor KBR held her hand--but instead of helping her, as she had hoped, he jammed his penis in her mouth.

Over the next few weeks Smith would be told to keep quiet about the incident by a KBR supervisor. The camp's military liaison officer also told her not to speak about what had happened, she says. And she would follow these instructions. "Because then, all of a sudden, if you've done exactly what you've been instructed not to do--tell somebody--then you're in danger," Smith says.

But contractors are good! And we can't prosecute them because they're not operating in the U.S.!

Read the article, this isn't an isolated incident.

I feel ill.

Oops, My Bad. But It's Really Not My Bad

Condi.

Think Progress snarks:

Perhaps one casualty of the Iraq war has been the conservative belief in personal responsibility

That would be insightful if Bushco had any to begin with.

Nobody Could Have...

Thousands of supporters of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr marched in Baghdad on Thursday to protest against a three-day-old crackdown against his followers and call for the downfall of the U.S.-backed government.

Mass demonstrations were held in the Sadr City, Kadhimiya and Shula districts. An Interior Ministry source said hundreds of thousands had taken to the streets.

"We demand the downfall of the Maliki government. It does not represent the people. It represents Bush and Cheney," said Sadr City resident Hussein Abu Ali.

Continuing the U.S. occupation of Iraq is not a good idea, precisely because the Iraqis want to govern themselves, even if at times not in our image.

Link.

War?

Oh yeah, that war.

The Bush administration hailed an Iraqi offensive against Shiite militiamen in the southern city of Basra as a ``bold decision'' that shows the country's security forces are capable of combating terrorists.

At least 40 people were killed and 200 wounded in two days of fighting between fighters loyal to Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and Iraqi troops, the Associated Press reported, as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki pledged to restore security in the southern oil hub. The clashes continued today in five Basra neighborhoods, Agence France-Presse said. Separately, 14 people were killed and 140 were wounded in fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City, Sky News said, citing Reuters.

``This is what we have been wanting to see the Iraqis do,'' White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters in Washington yesterday. ``This is one of the first times that they've had such an entrenched battle and we'll be there to support them if they need it.''

Fighting bad guys, yeah!!!

Do these even understand the most basic underpinnings of strategy? Like how the truce al-Sadr signed is one of the major reasons that has stopped things from going from horribly bad to horribly worse, and gunning for a fight with him is one of the dumbest things we can do?

Al-Sadr threatened to instigate protests nationwide if the raids by Iraqi forces weren't stopped. ``If the government does not respect these demands, the next step will be civil protests in Baghdad and the provinces,'' his spokesman Hazam al-Aaraji said yesterday, reading a statement from the cleric at a news conference in Najaf aired on state television.

Fighting spread late yesterday to Sadr City in eastern Baghdad and Kut and Hilla, south of the capital, AFP said, citing unidentified security officials.

I'm sure when the country is embroiled in death and destruction we'll be greeted with another "nobody could have predicted..."

By the way, why Basra?

Basra has been plagued by the smuggling of ``oil and its derivatives, weapons, drugs and other prohibited materials,'' al- Maliki said yesterday in a statement carried by state television. The government ``is firmly resolved to restore security and stability and to impose law.''

I'm sure Cheney's recent visit and focus on the oil law had absolutely nothing to do with this.

Update: The cease fire is over. Very bad things are going to happen.