Who's war is this anyway? I mean let's just give Bush all the money he wants and keep him smiling.
Leaving Iraq will not make the circumstances these people face worse, it will 'stabilize' them. The Iraqis have been taking care of themselves all this time, it won't change.
The role the holy men of Iraq play now is no different or dissimilar than that of someone like Nasrallah. It isn't preferable but for the Iraqis at least livable. I don't believe it can get worse from here. The 'scare' tactics/pleadings for continued war' simply don't hold water. The only issue at peril in Iraq is Baghdad. All the other provinces are reasonably stable. We leave Baghdad and it will find it's perscibed fate/gravity if you will. That IS what Bush is afraid of.
Sorry. Stability has it's virtue.
The USA is killing too, too many people. There are an average of 2 to 4 dead civilians for each of the 167,400 square miles of Iraq. Texas is 163696 square miles. Picture that for every square mile of Texas one would walk there would be two to four dead bodies. That is what the USA is doing in Iraq. If we were to leave it would not get worse, those statistics would improve.
BAGHDAD — The U.S. military Friday reported the deaths of seven more troops in Iraq, hours after President Bush warned that a bloody summer lay ahead.
Military officers in Baghdad predict that insurgents will seek to inflict maximum casualties before the top commander, U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, delivers a review of the troop buildup in September.
Three of the U.S. service members died Friday. One soldier was killed by small-arms fire in Baghdad province, another in a roadside bombing north of the capital, and a Marine died of noncombat causes in Al Anbar province, the military said.
On Thursday, a soldier was killed by small-arms fire and two died in bombings in Baghdad and north of the capital, the military said. One of the blasts also killed an Iraqi interpreter.
A U.S. soldier was killed Tuesday in an explosion near his vehicle in Baghdad province.
The deaths brought the number of U.S. personnel killed in Iraq since the start of the war in 2003 to 3,444, according to the website icasualties.org, which tracks military deaths and injuries.
At least 93 U.S. troops have died this month, putting May on course to be one of the deadliest months for the U.S. military in Iraq. Last month, 104 soldiers were killed, the sixth time since the war began that more than 100 troops died in a month.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
By Rupert Cornwell
President George Bush was able to sign the "no-strings" Iraq funding bill he demanded. But this is likely to be a short-lived victory, as domestic opposition to the war grows, and a bloody summer of fighting lies ahead.
Congress finally approved the $120bn (£60bn) measure by relatively comfortable margins yesterday. In the House the majority was 280 to 142 - even though more than half of the Democrats opposed a bill they considered a betrayal of the platform on which they won back control of Congress last November.
The Senate margin, of 80 votes for and 14 against, was even more conclusive. But Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the two leading contenders for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, both voted no - a sign of their fear of alienating the party's liberal anti-war constituency, so important in the upcoming primaries.
Unlike the initial funding measure which Mr Bush vetoed on 1 May, this one contains no timetable for an American troop withdrawal. It does lay down "benchmarks" for political progress by the Baghdad government, but even these can be waived by the President.
But for the White House the going is likely to get much tougher in the next few months, even before a new funding measure comes up for debate in September. The Senate and House will hold repeated votes on whether US troops should be pulled out, and whether Mr Bush even has the authority carry on the war.
By Rupert Cornwell
President George Bush was able to sign the "no-strings" Iraq funding bill he demanded. But this is likely to be a short-lived victory, as domestic opposition to the war grows, and a bloody summer of fighting lies ahead.
Congress finally approved the $120bn (£60bn) measure by relatively comfortable margins yesterday. In the House the majority was 280 to 142 - even though more than half of the Democrats opposed a bill they considered a betrayal of the platform on which they won back control of Congress last November.
The Senate margin, of 80 votes for and 14 against, was even more conclusive. But Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the two leading contenders for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, both voted no - a sign of their fear of alienating the party's liberal anti-war constituency, so important in the upcoming primaries.
Unlike the initial funding measure which Mr Bush vetoed on 1 May, this one contains no timetable for an American troop withdrawal. It does lay down "benchmarks" for political progress by the Baghdad government, but even these can be waived by the President.
But for the White House the going is likely to get much tougher in the next few months, even before a new funding measure comes up for debate in September. The Senate and House will hold repeated votes on whether US troops should be pulled out, and whether Mr Bush even has the authority carry on the war.
The Shape of a Shadowy Air War in Iraq
Turse, TomDispatch, 25 May 2007
Does the U.S. military keep the numbers of rockets and cannon rounds fired from its planes and helicopters secret because more Iraqi civilians have died due to their use than any other type of weaponry?
These are just two of the many unanswered questions related to the largely uncovered air war the U.S. military has been waging in Iraq.
What we do know is this: Since the major combat phase of the war ended in April 2003, the U.S. military has dropped at least 59,787 pounds of air-delivered cluster bombs in Iraq -- the very type of weapon that Marc Garlasco, the senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch (HRW) calls, "the single greatest risk civilians face with regard to a current weapon that is in use." We also know that, according to expert opinion, rockets and cannon fire from U.S. aircraft may account for most U.S. and coalition-attributed Iraqi civilian deaths and that the Pentagon has restocked hundreds of millions of dollars worth of these weapons in recent years.
Unfortunately, thanks to an utter lack of coverage by the mainstream media, what we don't know about the air war in Iraq so far outweighs what we do know that anything but the most minimal picture of the nature of destruction from the air in that country simply can't be painted. Instead, think of the story of U.S. air power in Iraq as a series of tiny splashes of lurid color on a largely blank canvas.
Cluster Bombs
Even among the least covered aspects of the air war in Iraq, the question of cluster-bomb (CBU) use remains especially shadowy. This is hardly surprising. After all, at a time when many nations are moving toward banning the use of cluster munitions -- at a February 2007 conference in Oslo, Norway, 46 of 48 governments represented supported a declaration for a new international treaty and ban on the weapons by 2008 -- the U.S. stands with China, Israel, Pakistan, and Russia in opposing new limits of any kind.
Little wonder. The U.S. military has a staggering arsenal of these weapons. According to a recent Human Rights Watch report, the Army holds 88% of the Pentagon's CBU inventory -- at least 638.3 million of the cluster bomblets that are stored inside each cluster munition; the Air Force and Navy, according to Department of Defense figures, have 22.2 million and 14.7 million of the bomblets, respectively. And even these numbers are considered undercounts by experts.
A cluster bomb bursts above the ground, releasing hundreds of smaller, deadly submunitions or "bomblets" that increase the weapon's kill radius causing, as Garlasco puts it, "indiscriminate effects." It's a weapon, he notes, that "cannot distinguish between a civilian and a soldier when employed because of its wide coverage area. If you're dropping the weapon and you blow your target up you're also hitting everything within a football field. So to use it in proximity to civilians is inviting a violation of the laws of armed conflict."
President Gerald R. Ford, center, with Chief of Staff Donald H. Rumsfeld, left, and Rumsfeld's assistant, Dick Cheney, on April 28, 1975. (By David Hume Kennerly -- Ford Library Via Associated Press)
For those that seem to think Bush is correct. Well, for about 24% of the country (click here) the fact of the matter is, the man that 'called off' Vietnam would do the say with Iraq. To 'stop the killing' in Iraq there has to be a USA exit of that country, especially now, there will be more and more aggression by the Bush/Cheney military and the slaughter of people will be astronomical again.
...According to the survey, which was conducted May 18-23, more than three out of four citizens (76 percent) now believe the Iraq war is going badly, up from 66 percent just a month ago. (May 25, 2007)...
