It Ain’t Over ‘Till It’s Over

Comments

1. bubbles - March 20, 2006 @ 1:56 am

   87% of Iraqis want America to leave immediately, yet staying the course and fighting for democracy there is a worthy cause. So must be fornication for the sake of chastity. You’d think spending $15,000 on every man woman and child over the course of three years in an entire country would buy a little gratitude wouldn’t ya? Seems like the media isn’t the only one under reporting the good news there. But, no the only mistake we’ve made is we hadn’t counted on how successful we would be. Just think if these same executives have their way all records of these accomplishments will remain classified 10 years from now and still they’ll be under appreciated.

2. Tam O’Tellico - March 20, 2006 @ 6:36 am

   The sad simple truth is this administration, for all the supposed brilliance of some of its members, has never understood the complexities of the situation. Their misunderestimations have been compunded by misoverestimation of their own abilities. That is to say, they failed to comprehend that a simple military solution rarely, if ever, solves a complicated political problem.

   Since its creation by the British after WWI, Iraq has been a marriage of convenience for oil interests and a marriage of inconvenience for traditonal tribal and sectarian groups who have been more or less hostile to each other since the days following the death of Mohammed – at least.

   In the early days of Baathist rule, an attempt at a somewhat reasoned rule was made, but that being far too difficult in a thoroughly divided country, it quickly passed in favor of the iron fist of Saddam, a great admirer of Stalin. But for all his horrors, Saddam at least understood that most of Iraq was never going to greet him with cheers and flowers.

   I told this story earlier, but it bears repeating for those who continue to harbor delusions that the press has it wrong about Iraq:

   “I mentioned a line from George W. Bush’s speech; on March 17, 2003, he had declared to the Iraqis. “The day of your liberation is near.” Maher, sipping sweet tea, smirked again. “They’re going to burn the forest to kill the fox”, he said smiling.”

   Quoted from: Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War by Anthony Shadid

   If anyone really wants to understand how horribly we have underestimated the complications of this war, they need to read this book. In another chapter, Shadid tells the story of an 18 year-old Iraqi boy who, under pressure from the Americans, fingered a couple of insurgents.

   Unfortunately, the young man was discovered and his fate fell to the only real law left in Iraq. Absent any other legitimate authority, the nation has reverted to tribal law, and punishment for this transgression fell under the law of the dead insurgents tribe.

   Their family demanded that the family of the 18 year-old boy kill him, or face the retribution spelled-out under tribal law: The death of two members of the young man’s family for each of the dead insurgents.

   Faced wirh such a Sophie’s choice, the father and brother of the young man took him into a field behind their home and shot him dead.

   Unlike the stories told by this administration, this is not a work of fiction.

3. Michael Herdegen - March 20, 2006 @ 1:30 pm

   Stringed along

   During a recent visit to Baghdad, I saw an enormous failure. On the part of our media. The reality in the streets, day after day, bore little resemblance to the sensational claims of civil war and disaster in the headlines.

   No one with first-hand experience of Iraq would claim the country’s in rosy condition, but the situation on the ground is considerably more promising than the American public has been led to believe. Lurid exaggerations and instant myths obscure real, if difficult, progress…

   [T]he foreign media have become a destructive factor, extrapolating daily crises from minor incidents. Part of this is ignorance. Some of it is willful. None of it is helpful.

4. Tam O’Tellico - March 20, 2006 @ 5:42 pm

   Haven’t we heard this before – when things don’t go according to someone’s inept plan, blame it on the media? Well, don’t blame the media because the American public had had it with what appears to be an unwinnable war; blame the administration for raising unrealistic expectations.

   We were told that oppressed Iraqis would welcome 150,000 Christian soldiers into their country with flowers and kisses. Didn’t happen that way; should we blame the press for that misunderestimation?

   We were told that the war would be paid for with Iraqi oil revenues. Half a trillion dollars and a helluva lot of national debt later, should we blame the press for that misunderestimation?

   We were told, particularly in the persons of Donald Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks, that “shock and awe” would defeat the Iraqi army and that the insurgency would be small and temporary. Well, they were half-right, but should we blame the press for that misunderestimation?

   We were told “Mission Accomplished” and the embedded media dutifully reported the news and all America was watching. But the good news turned out to be bad news. Three years later, with most of our troops still in country and Iraq on the brink of civil war, should we blame the press for that misunderestimation?

   It is obvious the people will no longer be swayed by empty promises and an appeal to “stay the course”. Stay the course isn’t a plan if it means stay and pay and die with no apparent progress and no end in sight. The President has put too much faith in empty rhetoric, should we blame the press for that misunderestimation?

   If the polls are to be believed, and I suspect they are, the people are ready to bring the boys home and let the Iraqis figure it out for themselves. Things may not work out as we intended, but it may be as good a plan as any. Certainly, this administration hasn’t offered anything better, but should we blame the press for that misunderestimation?

   Frankly, no one, and I mean no one, has offered a plan for extricating ourselves from this godawful mess. This war has proven far more difficult and complicated than almost anyone imagined, but should we blame the press for that misunderestimation?

5. Michael Herdegen - March 20, 2006 @ 9:20 pm

   [N]o one has offered a plan for extricating ourselves from this godawful mess.
   [S]hould we blame the press for that misunderestimation?

   Yes, we should.

   The fact that you believe that the U.S. is engaged in “what appears to be an unwinnable war”, and that the plan is to “stay and pay and die with no apparent progress and no end in sight”, is directly attributable to the press, which, as my linked article points out, is in part due to the fact that most of the “reporters” in Iraq are simply being spoon-fed propaganda by factions in Iraq, and pass it on in turn.

   They’re not “reporting” in any sense that war correspondents in past wars would recognize, and so your badly mistaken analysis of the situation in Iraq is indeed, in part, the fault of the press.

   Your concept that “no one has a plan” for withdrawal is a mystery that cannot be blamed on the press, for they have reported on many such plans, including the one that we’re actually following.

6. lonbud - March 20, 2006 @ 10:01 pm

   most of the “reporters” in Iraq are simply being spoon-fed propaganda by factions in Iraq, and pass it on in turn

   as chalabi did with BushCo?

   michael, the time has come to quit mincing words: do you not believe the bombs explode, the people die? are the bodies of the summarily executed a myth? are you willing to go see for yourself?

   harry had it right on the duck: when the general in charge of the theater of operations cannot ride in a jeep 10 miles on the main road to the airport — and live to describe the journey — his side is not winning the war.

   in your estimation we are following a plan for withdrawal in Iraq; in mine, the one we’re following is likely to be about as successful as the one we used to get there. which is to say, three years hence is likely to see us fighting a very different battle than the one we think we’re fighting now, with “significant numbers” of combat forces in Iraq, against an insurgency far from its “last throes,” scrambling for shelter amidst — at best — intermittent sectarian lunacy.

   i don’t believe anyone has a reason to quibble with cheney and rummy’s yearning for the whole of the middle east to spawn hosts of reasonable, self-interested “partners” in the enterprise of capitalist democracy. by its very definition, where is the reasonable person who wouldn’t want that halcyon day to dawn?

   the ruling junta are simply, clearly, not likely to bring such a thing about.

7. Tam O’Tellico - March 20, 2006 @ 10:27 pm

   If you believe we have a plan beyond “stay the course”, if you believe we are winning, then I see how you easily you can be deceived – but it sure as hell isn’t by the press. The real deceivers are Bush and Co, and they have no one to blame but themselves for raising expectations they have left unmet. By the way, my previous post left out one of the biggest:

   Whatever happened to the promise to deliver Osama to justice? I suppose you’re going to blame that on the press, too.

8. Michael Herdegen - March 21, 2006 @ 4:23 am

   do you not believe the bombs explode, the people die?

   Of course.

   But the fact that people are being killed on a daily basis doesn’t mean that either America or the central Iraqi gov’t is losing a “war”.
   Iraq is a big place, with a large population, and if 20 people were to die of violence every day, it still wouldn’t make a difference to the eventual outcome, any more than it would in the U.S.
   Further, the history of insurgent movements that aren’t supported by an outside power is quite dim. The Tamil Tigers are the only group that I can think of offhand who have been even close to successful on their own, and even they haven’t overthrown the gov’t, just defended an area that they like to call “theirs”.

   Who supports the Iraqi insurgents ?

   are the bodies of the summarily executed a myth?

   No.

   Neither are the tens of thousands of bodies, INCLUDING CHILDREN, that Saddam had summarily executed.
   I fail to grasp why people killed by a merciless tyrant count less than those killed by terrorists or sectarian militias.

   If there were an easy way to fix Iraq, it would have been done back in ’91.

   are you willing to go see for yourself?

   If you’re paying, sure.
   I’ll drop in on the two of my brothers serving there now.

   in your estimation we are following a plan for withdrawal in Iraq; in mine, […] three years hence is likely to see us [still] fighting…

   Always possible, but unlikely.

   Whatever happened to the promise to deliver Osama to justice?

   Bin Laden’s probably dead, killed or severely wounded in Tora Bora.
   We know for a 100% fact that he was at least injured there.

   If he’s still around, he’s been awfully quiet for a media hound whose troops in Iraq could badly use a pep talk.

9. Tam O’Tellico - March 21, 2006 @ 6:23 am

   M: Further, the history of insurgent movements that aren’t supported by an outside power is quite dim.

   Of course there is outside support of insurgent movements – we’re there aren’t we? The difference is our definition: Our Iraqis are freedom-fighters and those on the other side are insurgents.

   I would remind you that this nation would not have won its independence without the support of the presently much-maligned French, who had their own politco-economic reasons for supporting our insurgency. I would remind you that our nation’s foremost symbol, the Statue of Liberty, is a representation of outside support of insurgents.

   You must be aware that the creation of Iraq as a nation was imposed by outside forces. Without the armed insistence of the British after WWI, there would be no Iraq for us to “liberate”.

   Would you seriously propose that Israel would have come into existence without the aid and abetting of outside forces? Do you believe the terrorist methods the Zionists employed to bring Israel into existence were justified?

   If so, how can you not grant the same evil means to the terrorists fighting for what they believe to be their political existence – and clearly they are willing to risk their own lives for it. Yes, Iran is providing support to these insurgents for its own religio-politico-economic reasons. But does that really make Iran different than us?

   I do not condone the terrorist methods of the insurgents, but as our torture of unarmed prisoners attests, desperate men do desperate things. And the simple fact of the matter is that our “collateral damage” has killed more innocent Iraqi civilians than all the insurgents put together.

10. Tam O’Tellico - March 21, 2006 @ 7:32 am

    Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

    Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)

11. Michael Herdegen - March 21, 2006 @ 12:53 pm

    And the simple fact of the matter is that our “collateral damage” has killed more innocent Iraqi civilians than all the insurgents put together.

    Yeah ?
    Prove it.

    If you’re going to whip out the Lancet study, be aware that their conclusions are statistically unsupportable, BY THEIR OWN DATA.
    Their conclusions were politically, not scientifically, based.

    However, it’s probable that by now we’ve mistakenly killed maybe 50,000 Iraqis, although the number might be as low as 20,000.

    Problem is, how do we differentiate between innocents caught in a crossfire, insurgent fighters, rival gangs battling, and deaths due to political infighting between factions ?

    Iran has reasons to help the Shi’ites kill Sunni and Ba’athist “freedom fighters”, none whatsoever to help the insurgents kill Americans.
    Syria has reasons to help the Sunnis and Ba’athists kill Americans, but we’re watching the Syrian border pretty closely. While we are absolutely sure that smugglers are making successful runs across the Syrian/Iraq border, pursuit by military forces is keeping that at a low level.

    Syria cannot provide the kind of support that China and the USSR gave to the North Koreans and NVA; they can’t even provide the kind of support that France gave to the American colonists.

12. lonbud - March 21, 2006 @ 1:06 pm

    We know for a 100% fact that [bin Laden] was at least injured [at Tora Bora].

    is that right? and how exactly is that known?

    the mere fact that people are being killed on a daily basis [in Iraq] doesn’t necessarily mean that America or the central Iraqi government is losing a “war,” but other facts, such as the one that the general commanding the troops fighting the war couldn’t survive a 10 mile ride in an open jeep on the main road in the capital city, do point to a certain remove from anything we might call “victory” or “mission accomplished.”

    you may cavalierly dismiss the notion that it would matter if 20 people a day were getting blown up in America, but let me tell you right now, if that were happening here, heads would roll, starting with the pinhead in the oval office.

13. Michael Herdegen - March 21, 2006 @ 2:46 pm

    Because we were listening in on their radio traffic, using a captured radio from a dead al Qaeda fighter, while we were bombing them in Tora Bora.

    Yeah, heads wouldroll, and that’s exactly what’s happening in Iraq – the Iraqis are killing the foreign terrorists that they perceive are responsible for the random car bombings.

    But you’re mistaken about what would happen if people started being killed here in America. As we saw on 9/12/01, (and 12/8/41), the first response to an attack on Americans is to rally ’round the flag, and that is represented by our President.

    If the POTUS plays it right, he ends up being seen as Mr. Law ‘n Order, the Scourge of the Blasphemers.

    Bush got it right, Carter got it wrong.

    But, let us suppose that we started taking casualties here at home, and Bush does get the axe.

    Will the next President be softer on the terrorists, and will 10,000 casualties a year bring America to her knees ?
    Obviously not.

    It’s a tragedy and an annoyance, but Israel learned to live with it, and we would too – if we didn’t just nuke the Middle East, which is more likely than just taking it.

14. lonbud - March 21, 2006 @ 6:35 pm

    Michael:

    There you have it then. It’s obviously easier and more preferable for you to “just nuke the Middle East” than to do the hard work of upholding the principles upon which our country was founded: liberty and justice for all.

    I say you and people like you represent the real danger to human life.

    As for the al Qaeda radio story, I’d like a citation to a publicly verifiable source. My guess is you are passing on spoon-fed propaganda.

15. Tam O’Tellico - March 21, 2006 @ 8:49 pm

    History’s Sad Rhymes

    While many people, myself included, see clear parallels between the Iraq War and the Viet Nam War, the “peace” in Iraq reminds me a great deal of another historical event, an event much closer to home.

    Bear with me while I remind you of what you surely already know.

    In my book, The Disappearing Cemetery, I pointed out that the greatest villain in the American Civil War was John Wilkes Booth, and not simply because he was a back-shooter who by that act violated every principle of Southern decency, nor even that this cowardly little man took the life of a genuine American hero, a man whose boots Booth wasn’t fit to lick.

    Sad as all that was, the worst tragedy is that by his villainous act, Booth destroyed any hope for reconciliation “with malice toward none” as Lincoln had so eloquently advocated. The assassination and the accompanying conspiracy to kill members of the President’s cabinet, was the final straw that sealed the South’s fate. The once proud Confederacy was plunged into a hellish retribution it has yet to fully recover from.

    During Reconstruction, former Confederates could not teach, police, administrate, sue in courts, hold public office – well, you get the idea. The former Confederate States were at first administered by officers ill-trained for that task. The military gave way to carpetbaggers who had little or no experience or expertise at governance. Government was of, by and for those whose primary desire was to enrich themselves. History does not record if any of these men were named Chalabi.

    Most certainly, this imposed government did not have the consent of the people they were supposed to govern.

    The consequence was chaos in the South, and the consequence of chaos was the creation of a shadow government often made up of those displaced persons, persons who at least knew how to make things work. Unfortunately, this shadow government made up its own laws, laws not tested in court – not even in the court of public opinion. What followed was vigilantism and night riders and the KKK.

    So what does this have to do with Iraq? The ill-advised policy of total de-baathification in the aftermath of the Iraq War had similar consequences. We gutted all existing authority and replaced it with military rule and outsiders who knew little or nothing about the idiosyncrasies of governing a nation cobbled together from rival tribes and sects.

    To make matters worse, we attempted to police a nation roughly the size and population of California with combat forces about equal to the number of police officers in New York City. The number of actual combat soldiers is classified, but forty-thousand would be an optimistic guess. Now we know why General Shinseki said it would require three times as large an army as Donald Rumsfeld misunderestimated it would.

    No wonder things went to hell in a hurry, and no wonder a lot of Iraqis quickly decided they were going to have protect themselves.

    These bad decisions led to the bad news our leaders don’t want the press to tell us about. But instead of blaming the press, this administration ought to stand up and acknowledge the obvious fact that they ignored history and the warnings of their own experts. But instead, they choose to continue to blame everyone but themselves.

    Our leaders may call these guerilla fighters insurgents and terrorists, but it is hard to see much difference between them and the vigilantes and night riders of our own South during Reconstruction. Ironically, reconstruction having failed in Iraq, that nation now teeters on the edge of its own civil war.

    The situations may not be exactly the same, but they are close enough to hold suspect the administration’s mantra that resolution waits right around the corner if only we stay the course. History says otherwise.

    In fact, all this puts me in mind of Mark Twain’s brilliant observation that “history doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes.”

    ©2006 Tom Cordle

16. Paul Burke - March 22, 2006 @ 12:51 pm

    Here’s a fun article one
    http://journeyhomeburke.blogspot.com/

17. Michael Herdegen - March 22, 2006 @ 6:34 pm

    http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0505/13/ltm.02.html

    AMERICAN MORNING
    Aired May 13, 2005

    BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR
    GARY SCHROEN, AUTHOR of First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the war on Terror in Afghanistan.

    HEMMER: How close was the U.S. in getting Osama Bin Laden?

    SCHROEN: I think the closest we came in Afghanistan was during the battle of Tora Bora at the end of 2001.

    HEMMER: Was he there, do you believe?

    SCHROEN: I’m absolutely convinced that he was there.

    HEMMER: Why?

    SCHROEN: All of the information that we were obtaining from the battlefield and the way troops were fighting, the way the Afghans were — Taliban were fighting to protect people, it was very clear to us that Bin Laden was there, and in the aftermath, the first videotape that he released with me and — it shows that his left side was injured. Clearly, we believe he was there.

    04.01.2006
    Bin Laden was at Tora Bora, according to a new account by the CIA officer who ran the agency’s operations in the country.

    Gary Berntsen, a CIA veteran who headed a paramilitary team called “Jawbreaker” during the Afghan war, said in a book published last week [titled Jawbreaker] that one of his Arabic-speaking operatives found a radio on a dead al-Qaeda fighter during the Tora Bora battle and heard the terrorist leader repeatedly try to rally his troops.

    “After the Spectre [gunship aircraft] cleared the area, Bilal heard a voice he recognised from dozens of tape recordings,” Mr Berntsen wrote, using a pseudonym for an Arab-American former Marine who was part of the CIA team. “It was Osama bin Laden telling his troops to keep fighting.”

    Later on the same captured radio, “Bilal” and a second CIA agent, another American of Middle Eastern origin, reported hearing Mr bin Laden apologising for getting his men trapped in the mountains and killed in large numbers by American bombing, Mr Berntsen wrote. […]

    “We do not know to this day whether Mr bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001,” [retired general Tommy Franks, the former head of US Central Command who ran the Afghan campaign] wrote in the New York Times during the [’04] presidential race. “Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed or captured, but Mr bin Laden was never within our grasp.”

    Mr Berntsen disputes this account, saying he told senior commanders of Mr bin Laden’s presence. […]

    Media reports have cited accounts of Mr bin Laden’s presence at Tora Bora, but Mr Berntsen is the highest-ranking former official to publicly confirm that senior US commanders had been told the al-Qaeda leader was there during the battle.

18. Michael Herdegen - March 22, 2006 @ 7:23 pm

    lonbud:

    A scenario is postulated in which over 7,000 Americans are being killed by terrorists every year.

    YOU YOURSELF say that “heads would roll”.
    I put forth the idea that the U.S. might nuke the M.E., in those circumstances.

    From this you conclude that given the current situation, absent 7,000 American deaths per year, I want to nuke the M.E.

    Do you see your lapse in logic here ?

    Also, just exactly HOW do you plan “to do the hard work of upholding the principles upon which our country was founded: liberty and justice for all,” if you have no military or police forces, being a pacifist who rejects the escalation of violence inherent in killing terrorists ?

    You might say “of course I’d have police, being a pacifist doesn’t mean that I reject public order.”

    Fine, but will those officers be armed ?
    If so, isn’t that an admission that social order comes from the barrel of a gun, that without violence in the name of good there’s only anarchy ?
    If not, how do you propose that the peace officers apprehend the terrorists ?

    I say you and people like you represent the real danger to human life.

    About that you are absolutely correct.

    In the right circumstances, I can kill a human as easily as you take out the trash, and with the same sense of accomplishment for a minor chore accomplished – just some garbage disposed with.

    You and people like you would ensure that humankind would suffer eternal degradation, since you rather live on your knees than die on your feet, but you don’t threaten the very existence of humanity.

    My kind do.
    Indirectly and unintentionally, but clearly.

19. lonbud - March 22, 2006 @ 10:24 pm

    there’s no real need to parse the words too analytically, michael. i don’t believe either you or i have lapses in logic to ascertain. the long and short of it is that you put a value on your life and on the lives of those who share your values and belief system, that is higher than the value you impute to the lives of people differently situated with differing beliefs and motivations.

    oh, you may protest that you only devalue the lives of those whose express intent is to kill you and your kind, but it’s clear from your posts here and elsewhere that “garbage” to you is not confined to incendiary types.

    i disagree with your conclusion that my approach to life and to human affairs would ensure humankind would suffer eternal degradation. indeed, with history having been composed largely by men of dispositions similar to yours, we find the horizons of human degradation persistent and infinite.

    the difference between you and i is that i am happy to die in the service of my beliefs and i feel that, given the opprtunity, i can defeat those who oppose my beliefs without resorting to killing them in return.

    as jeff might be pleased to point out, Life is not a zero sum game.

20. Michael Herdegen - March 23, 2006 @ 12:18 am

    [W]ith history having been composed largely by men of dispositions similar to yours…

    Hey, thanks.

    i feel that, given the opportunity, i can defeat those who oppose my beliefs without resorting to killing them in return.

    That’s my question: HOW do you intend to do such a thing ?

    Suppose that a person or persons wish you ill. They aren’t willing to talk about it.
    If you aren’t willing, at least in theory, to kill them, your only options are flight or slavery.

    The rest is hand-waving.

    And, what about armed cops ?
    You’re against that, right ?
    All they need is a radio and some pepper spray, right ?

21. lonbud - March 23, 2006 @ 12:34 am

    well, what are we talking about here, michael? policing the streets of san francisco or managing the global sphere of geo-politics?

    the bobbies seemed to fare quite well in merrie old england for the longest time without firearms. i’d say when it comes to local police action, for the most part, firearms exacerbate volatile situations more effectively than they resolve them. the best policemen take pride in the number of years that go by between the discharging of their weapons in the line of duty.

22. bubbles - March 23, 2006 @ 1:19 am

    George Bush’s Trillion-Dollar War
    By BOB HERBERT
    Published: March 23, 2006

    Call it the trillion-dollar war.

    George W. Bush’s war in Iraq was never supposed to be particularly expensive. Administration types tossed out numbers like $50 billion and $60 billion. When Lawrence Lindsey, the president’s chief economic adviser, said the war was likely to cost $100 billion to $200 billion, he was fired.

    Some in the White House tried to spread the fantasy that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for the war. Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary and a fanatical hawk, told Congress that Iraq was “a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”
    The president and his hot-for-war associates were as wrong about the money as they were about the weapons of mass destruction.

    Now comes a study by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University, and a colleague, Linda Bilmes of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, that estimates the “true costs” of the war at more than $1 trillion, and possibly more than $2 trillion.
    “Even taking a conservative approach and assuming all U.S. troops return by 2010, we believe the true costs exceed a trillion dollars,” the authors say.

    The study was released earlier this year but has not gotten much publicity. The analysis by Professors Stiglitz and Bilmes goes beyond the immediate costs of combat operations to include other direct and indirect costs of the war that, in some cases, the government will have to shoulder for many years.

    These costs, the study says, “include disability payments to veterans over the course of their lifetimes, the cost of replacing military equipment and munitions, which are being consumed at a faster-than-normal rate, the cost of medical treatment for returning Iraqi war veterans, particularly the more than 7,000 [service members] with brain, spinal, amputation and other serious injuries, and the cost of transporting returning troops back to their home bases.”

    The study also notes that Defense Department expenditures that were not directly appropriated for Iraq have grown by more than 5 percent since the war began. But a portion of that increase has been spent “on support for the war in Iraq, including significantly higher recruitment costs, such as nearly doubling the number of recruiters, paying recruitment bonuses of up to $40,000 for new enlistees and paying special bonuses and other benefits, up to $150,000 for current Special Forces troops that re-enlist.”

    “Another cost to the government,” the study says, “is the interest on the money that it has borrowed to finance the war.”

    Among the things taken into account by the study are some of the difficult-to-quantify but very real costs inflicted by the war on the American economy and society, such as the effect of the war on oil prices, and the economic loss that results from the many thousands of Americans wounded and killed in the war.

    The study does not address the substantial costs of the war borne by Iraq or by any other countries besides the United States. In an interview, Mr. Stiglitz said that about $560 billion, which is a little more than half of the study’s conservative estimate of the cost of the war, would have been enough to “fix” Social Security for the next 75 years. If one were thinking in terms of promoting democracy in the Middle East, he said, the money being spent on the war would have been enough to finance a “mega-mega-mega-Marshall Plan,” which would have been “so much more” effective than the invasion of Iraq.

    It’s not easy to explain just how much money $1 trillion really is. Imagine a stack of bills worth $1 million that is roughly six inches high. (Think big denominations — a mix of $100 bills and $1,000 bills, mostly $1,000’s.) If the six-inch stack were enlarged to the point where it was worth $1 billion, it would be as tall as the Washington Monument, about 500 feet. If it were worth $1 trillion, the stack would be 95 miles high.

    Ms. Bilmes said that the $1 trillion we’re spending on Iraq amounts to about $10,000 for every household in the U.S.

    At his press conference on Tuesday, President Bush made it clear that whatever the cost, American forces would not be leaving Iraq soon. When asked whether a day would come when there were no U.S. forces in Iraq, he said that decision would be made by future presidents and future governments of Iraq.

    The meter’s running. We’re at a trillion dollars, and counting.

23. Michael Herdegen - March 23, 2006 @ 5:23 am

    Well, saying that “the ‘true costs’ of the war are more than $1 trillion, and possibly more than $2 trillion” makes good copy, but that’s not actually what Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz wrote in their working paper, which can be seen here (PDF).

    The main point that they’re trying to make, and it’s a good one, is that there are tremendous opportunity costs associated with any large-scale military operations.

    Their estimate is that the “true cost” of the war will ultimately be around $ 650 billion, or roughly four times the approximately $ 160 billion that we spent to patrol the “no-fly” zones in Iraq between the invasions.

    Then they speculate about what the future costs of various scenarios evolving from current decisions might be, which is where the estimate of an additional trillion or so comes in.

    However, they don’t speculate about the amounts of any future savings due to our current actions, so the projection is incomplete and of limited usefulness.

    Still, it’s a fun read, and I highly recommend it.

24. Michael Herdegen - March 23, 2006 @ 5:53 am

    policing the streets of san francisco or managing the global sphere of geo-politics?

    Can you accept violence in one area, but not the other ?
    They’re not separate concepts, they’re a continuum.

    the bobbies seemed to fare quite well in merrie old england for the longest time without firearms.

    And now they have ’em.

    Despite the fact that many police officers in America never draw their weapons under duress during their entire careers, they carry firearms because the public has empowered them to kill in the name of order – just like Secret Agent 007.

    Some volatile situations can’t be resolved, except through the use of violence.

    The meta-point to bringing up armed “peace” officers is that once a putative pacifist endorses enforcing domestic order at the point of a gun, he loses the ability to object, on philosophical grounds, to enforcing foreign policy goals at the point of a gun.

    Then it’s just an argument over ends, not means.

25. bubbles - March 23, 2006 @ 8:31 am

    Ok Michael,

    What savings? Show me the ROI –on the low end of the estimated investment– of 700 million to 1 trillion dollars invested in a war in Iraq. Lets say compare that to the ROI on the same money invested in alternative energy, healthcare or education. You’re saying, even from a security standpoint, that –borrowing largely from China– “$10,000 for every household in America” was best spent in Iraq is that correct? That will put you in some very rarefied economic analysis air even by the Bush Administrations budgeting standards. Which is saying quite a lot.

    And, if so why is the Bush administration consistently low-balling the cost and getting it financed in what are still enormous barely palatable chunks of ‘support the troops now that they’re there, really we are making progress’ chunks they press through Congress.

    Where you work do people get fired for missing their projections by a factor of 100 percent how about 1000 percent no how about 2000 percent?

    That’s right they said 50 billion and its –at least– a Trillion Dollars! Are we talking ‘real money’ yet? Show me the ROI on borrowing a trillion dollars from China and spending it in Iraq.

26. Michael Herdegen - March 24, 2006 @ 6:04 am

    The money would have been better spent on alternative energy infrastructure, but spending it on healthcare or education wouldn’t have produced much of a return, because those areas are nearly fully-funded already.

    Another trillion bucks spent there would have simply produced a lot of rich healthcare or education providers.

    My point about potential future savings is that our actions over the past few years may obviate the need to fight future wars in the region, which would clearly make the expenditures worthwhile.

    Now, how can we know if we’ve avoided a future war ?

    My benchmark would be that if, in ten years, the region is largely stable, with no barely-surpressed hostilities, or externally-menacing dictators, then we will have succeeded.

    A region of Arabias, Egypts, Jordans, and UAEs, in other words.

    If, in ten years, the players have changed but the dynamic is the same as it was in ’90, then we will have failed, and the cost in money and lives will have been much too high.

27. Michael Herdegen - March 24, 2006 @ 6:21 am

    Also, why do you emphasize that the money was borrowed from China ?

    Why does that make any difference ?

    If you are under the impression that the PRC somehow has some leverage over the actions of the U.S., because they hold a few of our notes, that is a mistaken notion.

    Besides, what else are they going to do with the huge surplus of American dollars that they hold, if they don’t loan them back to us ?

    If they were to loan massive amounts of U.S. dollars to the Eurozone, it would increase the amount of American currency floating around the world, which would lower the dollar’s value against other currencies, which would result in Chinese goods being more expensive for Americans, which would result in them selling fewer goods to America, their largest market by far.

    That would be a minor irritation for the American public, but a huge problem for the Chinese government.
    That’s why the Chinese government pegged the renminbi to the U.S. dollar in the first place, even though over the past five years it’s resulted in them subsidizing goods sold to the U.S. to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

28. lonbud - March 24, 2006 @ 9:08 am

    Healthcare and education are nearly fully-funded already? That’s a joke, right?

    And so what if a trillion bucks spent there would simply produce a lot of rich healthcare or education providers? You don’t seem to have a problem with spending policies that simply produce a lot of rich weapons manufacturers and energy services providers.

    As long as you remain willing to attempt to secure your liberty from the barrel of a gun you will never obviate the need to fight future wars anywhere. All your what ifs and blather about potential future savings are no more than empty words justifying the simple production of rich military industrialists.

    Given that, I’d prefer to live in a society that produced rich education and healthcare providers.

29. Paul Burke - March 24, 2006 @ 9:46 am

    This is heroic …and it needed to be said and it needs to be repeated over and over again – sobering!

    Play the video and listen
    http://www.wingsofjustice.com/06/03/woj06012.html

30. Michael Herdegen - March 24, 2006 @ 11:08 am

    As long as you remain willing to attempt to secure your liberty from the barrel of a gun…

    Ah, but we both secure our liberty with guns, as I demonstrated above.
    I may have a more liberal policy of using them, but we are alike in kind, differing only in degree.

    I’d prefer to live in a society that produced rich education and healthcare providers.

    Obviously, I disagree, but for me it’s win/win – if you got your way, and spent another trillion on education and/or healthcare, you’d make me very rich.

31. bubbles - March 24, 2006 @ 12:02 pm

    Michael,

    Where’s the accountability? A President makes what will be at least a trillion dollar mistake. Dismantles our moral/legal authority and security credibility. Let me guess, in your inside-out upside down world view we should be planning for the addition of W to Mount Rushmore.

32. Michael Herdegen - March 24, 2006 @ 7:34 pm

    bubbles:

    Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz don’t call it “a mistake”, and with good reason: We don’t yet know if it was.

    Our “security credibility” has never been higher; foreign nations are well-convinced that the U.S. might attack them. When we rattle our saber, they jump to attention.

    Further, since 9/11, there have been massive terrorist attacks in Indonesia, Jordan, Spain, and the UK – but none in America.
    Is that because al Qaeda no longer wants to hurt America, but instead hates Europe and fellow Muslim nations ?

    You know the answer to that.

33. lonbud - March 25, 2006 @ 10:01 am

    Michael:

    we are alike in kind, differing only in degree.

    you got that right, bro.

    you claim to have this wide horizon in which the “mistakes” of the bush admnistration — plain as they have been for anyone to see — will not matter for the peaceful reign o’er the middle east that’s going to grace the world in ten years. yet a mere five years between terrorist attacks in America proves our saber-rattling has contained or disarmed the threat?

    i think your degrees could use a little calibrating there.

34. Michael Herdegen - March 25, 2006 @ 9:41 pm

    yet a mere five years between terrorist attacks in America proves our saber-rattling has contained or disarmed the threat?

    No, it proves that our security credibility has not been dismantled.

    Five years between terror attacks is “mere” ?

35. Paul Burke - March 26, 2006 @ 4:11 pm

    Michael and I are having a wonderful side bar at “Journey Home” under the heading “Impeach Bush” thought you all might like to see the latest posting –

    Michael,
    I thought if given the chance you would act like a man – my mistake.

    The comment I made that started this thread was –

    We could fix the public schools if there was direct profit in it for Exxon/Mobil.

    You said the fix for public schools is simple – break the teachers’ unions.

    Breaking the teachers union allows for one thing only – lower wages what follows is wal-mart nation for the teachers – you’re lucky that you have never been taken advantage of as an employee- if you ever were you would see the value of unions

    The public school system problems are much larger than the very narrow “incompetent teachers, break the union” mantra of corporate America and their puppets on Pennsylvania avenue – the infra-structure, facilities, security, and supplies of trying to place a school in a ghetto are enormous. How do you provide for a safe haven for those kids – and create an environment that fosters learning and rewards good grades and the development of real job skills?

    What about the teachers who make a modest salary compared to the CEO’s of the world and brave the front lines of the inner city and the guns and knives? Are they all just fat cat union members taking the money and running – seems to me there are better alternatives than confronting that every day – a bit dangerous wouldn’t you say – and do you think that might be an impediment to bringing in top notch scholars – you bet – so what do you do – your answer is overly simplistic, but then again I’m the one who doesn’t know anything about it (sarcasm Michael)- a good school with excellent facilities and a safe campus can anchor and restore a whole community – look at your inner city college campuses like Temple in North Philadelphia – a total war zone has been reclaimed by a sprawling first rate campus with spun off medical facilities and housing – the public school problem is much the same and a broader fix for the entire urban environment in which the schools are situated is required -but then again – what do I know – I’m so ignorant and obviously not serious it’s amazing I can put a whole thought together let alone type my name because I don’t believe in pat answers and look a little deeper into who’s giving those answers and what’s in it for them. Oh Michael what are we going to do with you – when everyone is unserious, and unknowing if they disagree with your assumptions. Assumptions generated by a pamphlet or talk show – to sum up and I make the point again – there’s more to it than teacher testing Michael

    The phrase “you don’t believe that the teachers’ unions have anything to do with the current state of education in America” is yours not mine

    The “anything to do with it” is the key phrase – from there you launch your personal attacks –

    But I never said that – nor would I disagree that in finding a solution to the public school sytem nothing is taboo including impediments set up by unions against testing – or any other change to make the situation better for all.

    What I was driving at was completely different – and perhaps my comment

    “We could fix the public schools if there was direct profit in it for Exxon/Mobil.”

    Which started your lashing and thrashing about should be spelled out to you. Dick Cheney gave access to a secret energy panel to devise an energy policy that pumps billions into an extremely profitable industry – If the people that direct our tax dollars and tax laws and control our purse strings and direct our politicians to do their bidding were the least bit interested in fixing the public school system – it would be fixed. But since those in power can’t make any direct profit in rehabbing the public school system – it doesn’t get done.

    You missed the point completely – as for the merits of unions you’ll never convince me that they are wrong – from coal miners to Wal-Mart workers to child labor – and sweat shops. Those who employ seek every advantage they can get – I love profit, profit good I invest in profitable companies but the profit at any and all cost mantra creates a hellish environment for all of us to live in and is an incorrect mind set for global survival of the human race.

    Employers vary widely in their attitudes from appreciating the backs of the workers – for whom they build their fortune – to tossing’ em to the curb like garbage when their backs wear out.

    As to your point “you don’t believe that the teachers’ unions have anything to do with the current state of education in America”

    I never said that and the fact that your whole discourse is based on that phrase demands an apology from you (come on Michael another chance to act like a man – admit you are wrong) and calls into question – your ability to read carefully, understand and most certainly completely contradicts your overly impressive feeling about yourself that you can discern all that there is to know by a single phrase

    “Tells me everything that I need to know about your familiarity with education issues.”

    What it seems to me that you do a lot of from your other many postings on “I just have to say” is to spin a generic point to argue from.

    This leads to failure of the discourse and mindless ranting and accusations – and we have to waste so much time pointing out to you where you launched from has nothing to do with the intent, theme or even point of the posting.

    It’s easy to counter your arguments because you hear what you want to hear – you may very well be exchanging postings with a moderate who supports the war – how would you know – or a Marxist – you don’t know – and I’m laughing at you right now – sorry about that – are you beginning to see – it’s easy to counter you with simple statements like

    ” Right the unions are the problem – the cry of corporate America – lawyers and unions bad – defenseless workers good…”

    Because you launch from generic assumptions that you have been taught answers to – reshaping postings back to generic arguments.

    Yes, yes, yes teachers unions in some instances bad, bloated and protecting the entrenched we all know this aspect of the argument you are foisting on me – as if I am now going to defend the entrenched status quo milking the tax payers – yeah Michael you really know me (sarcasm) and have really been paying attention to my postings – sheesh, and since that is what you oppose – you should also oppose it with your government because to the extent that the status quo protects itself is not only bad for the teachers union but it’s bad for the people directing our government and tax dollars – no new ideas can gain a foothold – we can’t drill our way out of the middle east – but as long as Exxon/ Mobil is proping up it’s political hacks, funding their campaigns – those hacks are beholden to them and the status quo perpetuates itself – the solution – public money only for campaigns – but you’ll never respond to that – you’ll have some other posting – not dealing with making the world a better place but defending those who you identify with.

    In closing I have a tremendous amount of respect for the teachers that have the guts to teach in our public schools – modestly paid – whatever their unions can get them is fine by me.

    AND

    “We (the people, together with our government) could fix the public schools (have the political will to do so) if there was direct profit in it for Exxon/Mobil (those in power could make money off of it).”

    That’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

36. bubbles - March 27, 2006 @ 1:12 am

    Michael.

    Yes they do. As usual you still don’t speak to the issue. In this case accountability. Here’s another accountability problem for ya’all.. oops yes it is Grant in Grant’s tomb, Helen Thomas was making a point at the press conference the other day he’s been lying from the start.

37. Tam O’Tellico - March 27, 2006 @ 3:21 pm

    Having been away from the fray for a few days, I return to discover the howling continues unabated. But my brief respite has given me a chance to clear my senses, and I’m beginning to detect the unmistakable odor of Bovine Scent. In other words, Michael is putting us on.

    It’s either that, or he’s been drinking the water in New Orleans.

    Only a crazy man would go from promoting the laughably ridiculous to the fatally ridiculous, from the $10,000 a year comfortable life to the trillion dollar plus just war. And if Michael honest about it, even he would have to concede there was no way in hell the American people would have ever signed on in advance to pay a trillion dollars to dump Saddam, kill tens of thousands of “collateral Iraqis, level Fallulujah and further pockmark the Iraqi desert.

    When pressed by the suffocating weight of the available evidence, Michael and w are both reduced to the most flagrant logical sophistry – the disprovable assertion. That is to say, if the present facts don’t fit, talk about a rosy future – it’s the primary technique of all Fundamentalists. If we just trust and obey, ten years from now, we’ll discover that Michael and w were right along.

    So how do you refute such nonsense and counter the claims of future promises? With the obvious – the insights available from past performance – and w’s past predicts a piss-poor future outcome.

    In spite of al this, he continues to insist things are getting better in Iraq THREE YEARS after he declared MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Ten years from now, we will still being told things are getting better, even though by then there may well no longer be an Iraq,

    But even if w’s fantasy materializes due to some miracle wrought by his peculiar robertsonian relationship with the Almighty, that isn’t what was predicted or promised.

    We were promised a quick, cheap and easy (certainly implied) victory delivered by Sturm and Drang – oops, I mean Shock and Awe – a victory so resounding as to leave tyrants around the world quaking in their boots. Didn’t happen, and when it didn’t, just like in Viet Nam, the administration and the Wrong blamed that failure on the press and the Lefties, rather than acknowledge that they got it wrong. As a matter of fact, Liberals predicted the present outcome far better than the Conservative Intelligentsia. Ask one of the most prominent Conservative Intellectuals, Francis Fukuyama.

    And after this demonstration of invincibility, we were promised cheers and roses from the Iraqis, who would now happily turn over their oil revenues to repay our kindness. And Liberals are the dreamers?

    If I’m not mistaken, the original cost of this misadventure was pegged at 72 billion all to be paid for by Iraqi oil. Bubbles is quite right, the administration’s own accountant said au contraire, it would be closer to $200 million, and for that he was told to shut up or be canned.

    Call it the Paul O’Neill Effect, but in this administration, no good advice, like no good deed, goes unpunished.

38. Michael Herdegen - March 27, 2006 @ 4:20 pm

    Tam O’Tellico:

    When pressed by the suffocating weight of the available evidence, Michael and w are both reduced to the most flagrant logical sophistry – the disprovable assertion.

    That’s my primary point.

    You can’t prove that invading Iraq was a mistake, and I can’t prove that it wasn’t.

    The difference is that I’m willing to say that I might be wrong, but you cannot conceive that you could be wrong.

    For instance, even after I pointed out that Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz DO NOT SAY that the war will cost a trillion dollars, only that it could, you did not process that information.
    You’re psychologically stuck, repeating an already-discredited figure.

    You could follow the link and read their study for yourself, but that would be, like, work…

    bubbles:

    As usual you still don’t speak to the issue. In this case accountability.

    There hasn’t been a terror attack in the U.S. for 4 1/2 years.
    Who is “accountable” for that ?
    Why isn’t that credited to the Bush administration, in your world ?

    Further, Iraq was already a “quagmire” in Nov. ’04, when the American public held an “accountability” check – and decided to return Bush to office, as well as increasing the Republican majority in Congress.

    Your assertion that there is no accountability in American politics is laughable. Congress is held to account every two years, and the executive branch every four.

39. lonbud - March 27, 2006 @ 9:16 pm

    Add obfuscation to disingenuousness among the well-worn tools in Michael’s rhetorical kit. So often he seems to address a point or argument made by a post or comment, but he is often just characterizing things in a way to bolster his own pre-conceived notions, that is, when he’s not bounding off into the weeds of another issue entirely.

    For instance, it is not, in fact, disprovable that BushCo was badly mistaken in both its planning for the war in Iraq and in its execution of the requirements of victory.

    Time may one day allow some measure of representative government to shine upon the long-oppressed citizenry of the middle east, but it will hardly do so as a result of any plan or strategy conceived or implemented by w or his brain trust.

    That the “cost” of the adventure may or may not reach the magic trillion number is of no consequence whatsoever. The hundreds of billions it has already run to far exceed anything put forth as a budget in the days it was being promoted as something imperative for avoiding an imminent “mushroom cloud” here at home, thus, everything about this quagmire has been a “mistake,” from its conception, to its execution, to the administration’s continued insistence that we ought to be “pleased” with its progress.

    And as to the “accountability” question: the fact that no one of any import (save for the lowly Michael Brown, whose import was always debatable) in the BushCo ranks has lost his job over any facet of the government’s bungling ineffectuality in the past six years points to a culture of unaccountability running throughout w’s administration.

    But even to Michael’s specific insistence that the accountability question is resolved every two years by the electorate, it is clear BushCo manipulated both the media and Congress to both prevent the timely issuance of news and committee reports that would have given the voting public much better information than was ultimately at hand with which to balance the calculations of accountability in both 2002 and 2004.

    We’ll see what the 2006 elections bring forth on the accountability scale, but the early polls aren’t exactly whispering mandate.

40. Tam O’Tellico - March 27, 2006 @ 10:47 pm

    Au contraire, Lonbud, many have been held accountable by this administration – Paul O’Neill, General Shinseki, Joseph Wilson, Colin Powell and a host of others who had the audacity to tell Bush to at least put on some underwear.

    You are exactly right about obfuscation. My point was that we have far exceeded the 72 billion dollar “advice” of this administration and even the 200 billion advice of the chastized adviser. It is typical Michaelvellian logic to argue that before Bush’s Folly is over, we may “only” piss away 750 billion instead of a whole trillion. Only Michael could see that as my failure rather than Bush’s.

    Now I realize Michael and a rapidly disappearing residue still maintain that this was money well-spent and that the future will one day be brighter because of our wastrel warlike corporate welfare ways. But that residue no longer includes Fukuyama or for that matter Wolfowitz. By the way, have you noticed the Wolfman has slithered away to the leather-bound and limo-ed comfort of the World Bank instead of spittle-combing his hair for the cameras before pontificating about the New World Order? I think that’s called the Uber-Peter Principle at work, another fine example of the capitalist system at work – excessive executive compensation based on abject failure.

    But the Residudes are right on one score – the future is already a damned sight brighter for Cheney, Wolfman, Halliburton and the Oil Behemoths.

41. Michael Herdegen - March 27, 2006 @ 11:30 pm

    That the “cost” of the adventure may or may not reach the magic trillion number is of no consequence whatsoever.

    Then why did Tam bring it up again ?
    Why did bubbles think that it was of some importance ?

    [T]hus, everything about this quagmire has been a “mistake,” from its conception, to its execution, to the administration’s continued insistence that we ought to be “pleased” with its progress.

    Another fine example of what Tam calls “the most flagrant logical sophistry”.

    As we’ve already covered, you feel strongly that you are correct, but the final verdict remains to be rendered.

    [I]t is clear BushCo manipulated both the media and Congress to both prevent the timely issuance of news and committee reports that would have given the voting public much better information than was ultimately at hand with which to balance the calculations of accountability in both 2002 and 2004.

    ROFL

    Of course, of course, the public was tricked into voting Bush !!

    Sen. Kerry didn’t provide any counterargument, right ?
    A patsy, no doubt paid by Rove, right ?

    Your continued contention the THE MEDIA is controlled by “BushCo” is flatly insane – but hey, whatever gets you through the nights.
    It’s better than crack, anyhow.

    Majority of Iraqis Endorse Election and Show Optimism

    The majority of Iraqis […] are optimistic that their country is going in the right direction and feel that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has been worth the costs. […]

    Iraqis overall have a positive view of the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Asked, “Thinking about any hardships you might have suffered since the US-Britain invasion, do you personally think that ousting Saddam Hussein was worth it or not?” 77% say it was worth it, while 22% say it was not.

    Gallup asked the same question in April 2004. At that time, 61% said that it was worth it and 28% said that it was not.

    The poll was conducted for WorldPublicOpinion.org by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland and was fielded by KA Research Limited/D3 Systems, Inc. Polling was conducted January 2-5 with a nationwide sample of 1,150, which included an oversample of 150 Sunnis.

42. lonbud - March 28, 2006 @ 5:34 am

    And this from a guy who doubtlessly sang in the chorus that for eight years dammned Bill Clinton for — among other things — governing by poll results.

43. lonbud - March 28, 2006 @ 5:53 am

    Furthermore, Kerry did provide a counterargument, one in which nearly fifty million people believed enough to vote for.

    Who knows how many fence sitters were frozen into inaction or cowed into staying the course by fear of, if not a “mushroom cloud” (2002), then fear engendered by timely issuance of “heightened terror alerts” every time the public debate seemed to slip away or BushCo’s misfeasance and mendacity were brought to light?

    Who knows how many people would have thought better of putting a male cheerleader back in at quarterback had the 9/11 Commission’s full report been released for public scrutiny prior to the 2004 election?

    This crowd has ridden the time-honored Bush strategy of gaming the system from the very beginning, and if there is one shred of agreement you and I might have about this whole debate Michael, it’s that, despite the prescience or incompetence of Bush’s politics, and despite the complicity or not, of the media in the matter, it’s no one’s fault but the People’s that w remains in office today.

    The People still have the power in this country and if we won’t use it to sweep brushclearing faux-cowboys and greed-addled corporate sycophants from the halls of government, it’s our own damn fault.

    Adlai Stevenson had it right on the money (pun intended): in a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.

44. Michael Herdegen - March 28, 2006 @ 7:26 am

    We agree about that, and more, far more than “a shred”.

    It’s just that you like to argue about the Iraqi war, a subject about which there can be only opinion, no conclusions.
    But you like to pretend that it’s all cut and dried, over and done.

    That leads to dissent.

45. Tam O’Tellico - March 29, 2006 @ 6:02 am

    M: Then why did Tam bring it up again ?

    T: My point was that we have far exceeded the 72 billion dollar “advice” of this administration and even the 200 billion advice of the chastized adviser. It is typical Michaelvellian logic to argue that before Bush’s Folly is over, we may “only” piss away 750 billion instead of a whole trillion. Only Michael could see that as my failure rather than Bush’s.

46. Michael Herdegen - March 29, 2006 @ 7:02 am

    It is typical Michaelvellian logic to argue that before Bush’s Folly is over, we may “only” piss away 750 billion instead of a whole trillion.

    I argue that we may come to see that 750 billion – 2 trillion as money well spent.
    Your failure lies in your inability to see that such a future is possible.

    But thanks for the compliment, comparing me to Machiavelli. I’m flattered.

    ###

    President Bush, environmentalist:

    Auto Industry Gets New Fuel Economy Rules
    By KEN THOMAS, AP

    WASHINGTON (March 29) – The government is telling automakers to start churning out pickup trucks, sport utility vehicles and vans that go farther on a gallon of gas than today’s models. […]

    The new rules represent the most significant changes to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) system in three decades and will affect automakers’ product lineup.
    [President] Bush has called for a 75 percent reduction in Mideast oil imports by 2025. […]

    Changes first proposed last summer would lead to a projected fleetwide average of 24 mpg by 2011, [an increase of over 11% from 2006 CAFE standards], though the final rules could require higher standards, [with a] projected savings of 10 billion gallons of oil over the lifetime of the vehicles sold from 2008-11.

    The administration said it would save more fuel than any previous rulemaking in the history of the light truck program. […]
    “The president […] said we’re addicted to oil. This is his most important tool to curb that addiction,” said Dan Becker, who directs the Sierra Club’s global warming and energy program.

    The proposal from last summer also would phase out a single standard for light trucks and create different mileage goals for six categories of vehicles. Industry groups said the new plan may call for more specific fuel economy standards based on a vehicle’s dimensions.
    Automakers have noted that the final plan will likely mean seven straight years of higher fuel economy requirements for light trucks.

    Gee, calling for less use of oil and higher fuel consumption standards, supported by the Sierra Club…

    But can Bush’s detractors bring themselves to praise a “Texas oilman” for making America healthier and safer ?

47. Michael Herdegen - March 29, 2006 @ 8:16 am

    “Some may accuse me of being more of a warmonger than a Nobel laureate. It is always easier to say no to war, even at the price of appeasement. But being politically correct means leaving the innocent to suffer the world over, from Phnom Penh to Baghdad. War is not the worst evil known to mankind. And the absence of war is far from being the same thing as peace.”

    -Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta, writing in the Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2004

48. Tam O’Tellico - March 29, 2006 @ 9:36 pm

    “War is not the worst evil known to mankind. And the absence of war is far from being the same thing as peace.”

    Like all aphorisms, this has a ring of truth. On the other had, we can say without fear of contradiction that the presence of war is even farther from peace. And were Mr Ramos-Horta’s advice to be taken literally, one might reasonably argue it would produce a continual state or war – which would mean never knowing peace.

    Still, I acknowledge that there are times when war is a necessity. As much as I would like to be a pacifist, I am not. As much as I would like to turn the other cheek, I do not have the moral fortitude to do so. And should anyone attack my child or my wife – well, pacifism in the face of such an attack is hard to view as virtue.

    In fact, I supported this administration in the invasion of Afghanistan and the pursuit of Osama and his band of thugs – I only wish BushCo had done what they promised to do on that score.

    Nor am I suggesting that our stated aims in Iraq are wrong, but it is quite clear that this administration has other aims in Iraq as well. Meantime, the VP, a man with no moral compunctions, continues to tout the Osama/Saddam connection even after the President himself has dismissed that canard.

    I also have serious reservations about the policy of pre-emptive war since it flies in the face of the ‘just war” doctrine and is alien to our notion of being a nation that fights only when it must. But the Bush Doctrine is even worse than pre-emptive war. It holds that we not only have the right to pre-empt a imminent threat, but the right to pre-empt a potential threat. That can only lead to a state of perpetual war given the number of potential enemies we have, a list that seems to grow by the day.

    But beyond all the philosophical differences I have with this administration, it is also quite clear that they have executed this war badly – in fact, worse than even I could have imagined. And now that their failure is apparent to the vast majority of Americans, they shamefully blame the media for their failures and charge those of us who have urged caution all along of giving comfort to the enemy.

    While it is true that none of us can know for certain the eventual outcome of Bush’s bold – some would say foolhardy – gambit, all the evidence points to a far different and far worse outcome than we were promised by the Crawford Cowboy.

    Michael, W and a rapidly diminishing number of diehards may continue to hope – and pray – for a New World Order. But for the rest of us, New World Disorder has already arrived.

49. lonbud - March 29, 2006 @ 10:52 pm

    You slay me, Michael. The Connecticut Cowboy is all of a sudden an environmentalist for declining to keep open a loophole that US auto makers have steadfastly clung to for years in an effort to stave off their inevitable irrelevance?

    Yee-f*ckin’-haw!

    Let the Greening of Amerika begin.

    Pinch me when BushCo is ready to let scientists speak about the state of the environment and the effects our modi operandi have on its prospects for long-term support of human life — not to mention that of the rapidly dwindling number of “lower” life-forms with whom we share this cozmik joyride.

50. Michael Herdegen - March 30, 2006 @ 12:45 am

    And should anyone attack my child or my wife – well, pacifism in the face of such an attack is hard to view as virtue.

    Mainly because it isn’t.

    Pacifists like to associate themselves with Jesus, because Christianity is the dominant religion of the societies that matter, but in a nutshell Jesus’ teaching was “don’t seek revenge”, not “don’t defend yourself”.
    Also, we should not confuse justice with vengeance. It’s still “turning the other cheek” if the cops gun down your assailant, or if he gets put behind bars for decades.

    The reason that pacifists cannot rationally support prisons I shall leave as an exercise for the reader.

    I only wish BushCo had done what they promised to do [to Osama].

    They destroyed his training camps, broke his organization, killed his friends, and physically wounded him – pretty good try, I’d say.

    Besides, at this point, ObL is rather irrelevant. Sure, it would be nice to be able to put him on trial, but it’s not like he’s directing or funding anything.
    In fact, al Jazeera ran his obituary a while back.

    His most prominent successor, Zarqawi, is feeling the heat and is very frustrated by his lack of success in Iraq. This we know because we’ve captured some of his henchmen, and some of his letters.

    …a list that seems to grow by the day.

    Iran, North Korea, Syria…
    Who else ?

    Same list we’ve had for seventeen years, but with a few crossed off.

    lonbud:

    Very gracious.

    I was pretty sure that you wouldn’t be able to see this as a positive development, but I wondered if you might surprise me.

    You hate Bush so much that if he reduces pollution, pollution is suddenly irrelevant, and the plight of the snail darter is paramount.
    It’s sad, but also kinda funny.

    Bush is also reducing global warming, you know.
    (Assuming that there is such a thing as sustained global warming, and that humans are actually contributing to it).