The charts and analyses over at Hubris Sonic’s and Red Dan’s place are pretty compelling.

Dammit, Jane, you’re smarter than this. I don’t read Siun’s stuff regularly enough to know if she is, but dammit, you are.

Their charts are of U.S. troop fatalities. All their charts show is that when U.S. troops pull out of an area, U.S. troop fatalities there drop to zero. Red Dan clarifies that in the comments, but it was hard to interpret the charts any other way.

IOW, their charts have no connection with their conclusion. They prove nothing that isn’t trivial.

Chalk this one up under “too good to be true,” anyway. It would be extremely great news if it were true, but that’s exactly the sort of thing that should send one’s bullshit sniffer into overdrive.

It may, or it may not, but several things ARE practically certain:

Fact: Iran is going to come out of this with much enhanced power in the region and the world, and regarding this, I think that one of our candidates could make political hay of the fact that this was a dead lock from the moment that first tank crossed the Kuwait border. It was inherent in what george bush did, and now, he and his little coterie want to drag us into a mid-east war (if we’re lucky) in which to enfold and “hide” the original monumental fuckup.

Fact: The Saudis are way-pissed at the idea of a Shiite petro-combine between Iran and whichever Shiites gain control of those fields in and around Basra Province, with their 80% of Iraq’s proven reserves. They want no competitors for the King-of-the-petroleum-hill crown;, and the next president, no matter whom it is, is going to face policies, that is, hands on the oil-tap, from the House of Saud that will be decidely less user-friendly to americans. In fact, if a democrat gets elected, you can pretty much count on the Saudis doing a “Jimmy Carter” on he or she.

Fact: The situation with the Kurds has no solution. It too, will be the “gift” that keeps on giving, as a result of bush’s savage idiocy in wrecking the status quo there. The Kurds don’t care a fig about “greater Iraq”, and when our troops leave that will become VERY apparent. Of course, Talabani’s offer of “good basing opportunities” is perpetual, given the situation with the Turks, and either bush, or the next president, is almost certain to take him up on it.

Fact: Assuming, or even hoping for, the Sunni and Shia in the midlands around Baghdad to put their AK-47’s back in their respective closets, is whistling past the graveyard. Period. Exclamation point.

As I see it, these are generally the most compelling factors of the denouement that’s coming from what these retardo Machaivellis have created. There are others, some of them, unforeseeable.

I understand that candidates, and parties, don’t get elected by telling voters “we’re screwed, whatever we do. Bush can’t “fix” this, and neither can we.”

For what it’s worth, we have to keep pointing out that it was bush and the GOP who shit the bed; they don’t know how to UNSHIT it… and neither do we, but that doesn’t make it our fault.

All that’s possible is for us to end the occupation; try to keep any neighboring countries from invading to grab the oil, and hope that the Iraqi’s will decide that a full-on civil war will be to the detriment of all concerned.

We have to deal with the bushturds retreating to their last foxhole, which is “it’s going to get worse if we drawdown.”
But when they throw that out as the reason for sustaining the shitmire, there HAS to be an immediate Beethoven’s Ninth, chorus of:

“And whose fucking fault is THAT, that we’re stuck with this miserable Hobson’s choice???”

That’s one of the things that pisses me off so much. When Cheyney, etc., start warning sonorously about the need to “do” Iran, the fucking MSM bobble-heads haven’t got the courage to say:

“Yeah, right. You’re the assholes who brewed up the first batch of koolaid and bullshit, and now you’re trying to funnelfeed more of it to us. Your track-record sucks. Fuck you.”

Same as ever; gonna be one hell of a year.

What if your goal is to maximize the profits for munitions manufacturers and mercenary contractors?

Maybe I could be persuaded to go into a different line of work? Or perhaps the munitions manufacturers and mercenary contractors could be persuaded to go into a different line of work?

“A hungry world will also hunger for scapegoats. A thirsty world will thirst for revenge. A world in crisis will be a world of anger and violence and terrorism.”

This person’s answer the question I posed can be found
http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…../183131/33

The same person supports an immediate end to the US intervention in Iraq. Read
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..68860.html

Doesn’t this story rate an entire 60 minutes? Is it too much to ask Katie Couric to bring America current on Traitorgate?

What, and deny our rightwing bretheren the talking point that the whole story is just “Valerie hyping her book?”

On the Sadr City story, this morning NPR ran a report that was a rare case of them almost openly calling out the military briefers who put out the “49 criminals” story. (Boy is that close to Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, a popular metaphor for bullshitting in that part of the world.)

The reporter took great care to express quote marks around the word “criminals” every single time he used it, and also gave the details from Iraqi witnesses on who (children, old ladies, and other folk at home or about their business) and how many (fewer than 40 or 49, actually) were killed and wounded. There is no way to have heard his report and not treated the official story with skepticism.

Unfortunately, since the report was not a feature but just part of the hourly summary, I haven’t been able to find it on the NPR site.

Hippo birdies and welcome back!

As to your nice summary, do you suppose Hillary and Barack have gotten the memo yet? Gov. Richardson apparently got the memo at least 6 months ago, and yet people have been scoffing at him for the whole time, saying it can’t be done.

Obviously, Hillary and Barack have been drinking the Washington kool-aid for too long, because Bush has convinced them that something really terrible will happen if the president now or later pulls the plug. And they apparently believe him.

What passes for leadership in the Democratic Party also seems to believe him, too, because they are all Deathly Afraid of stopping the blank checks they are sending to Bush to keep troops in Iraq. I mean, are they all zombies?

Memo to DLC Democrats: Wake up!!!

Bob in HI

Something to watch for:

The first candidate, particularly among the “big three” who begins describing, loudly and repeatedly, what is happening in Iraq as nothing more than george bush and the republicans trying to string it out long enough to get out from under it and dump idt on the next administration.

When we see that, it just MIGHT mean that we have found our candidate.

The rub is, it probably, but not certainly, needs to be one of the current front-runners. And of course, it needs to be someone who thinks that invading Iraq was, flatly, a mistake.

Our troops are concentrated in and around Baghdad. That’s where practically the entire surge went. And it has worked, to some degree. But the problem is, as Juan Cole’s piece up-thread pointed out, when the lid comes off in the most heavily mixed Sunni-Shiite areas in Iraq, it’s highly likely that the shit will hit the fan.

I think we’re deluding ourselves if we think otherwise.

BUT, this is NOT a reason to stay.

The people in what used to be Iraq are going to have to decide for themselves if it’s more satisfying to have a full-on civil war, or if they want to make some huge compromises to avoid that…and they won’t make that decision while the U.S. military is occupying their country and playing one faction off against the other one, to try to buy time for the people who created this to get out of town and dump it on the democrats.

Because THAT is what is going on.

Here is what I hope will be remembered as the high point of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, as she becomes an electoral footnote.

Speaking in Davenport, Iowa on January 29th of this year, she said of bush:

“We expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office.”

And:

“It would be the height of irresponsiblity to pass the war along to the next commander-in-chief.”

Now, she’s talking about “inheriting” it.

That acceptance, evidently and sadly shared by Edwards and Obama, is very bad news for anyone who wants to see our part in this end.

At some point, they are all going to have talk about the specifics of any plan they have to get us out, and they are going to have to talk about what might follow.

Anything else, and they’re just bullshitting us with more bullshit.