When the cheerleaders admit they were wrong, we'll move on

[True_Blue]

By the time you get to bed tonight, more will have died brutal bloody deaths in Iraq. The toll in the two weeks after the destruction of the Samarra mosque was 500, which averages 35 people a day - men, women and children. The explosions and the deaths have become so routine, they barely register with public opinion any more. Occasionally they make the television news and we flinch with horror from the blood and brutality. This is a conflict unlike any other, where the killers kill themselves as they kill.

The words of Zalmay Khalilzad, the US envoy to Iraq, were so chilling last week because they gave voice to a growing fear. He warned that "we have opened a Pandora's box" that "would make Taliban Afghanistan look like child's play". He was referring to the nightmare scenarios of civil war provoking wider regional conflict drawing in Iran, Turkey and Syria. Afghanistan's violence is on a smaller scale but still vicious. Last year 1,400 Afghans were killed in the bloodiest year since 2001.

The choice of targets is particularly cruel - teachers and schools have been attacked and intimidated, along with administration officials. The introduction of suicide bombings indicates new outside support, which prompted the gloomy recent assessment to Congress by the director of the Defence Intelligence Agency that attacks are likely to increase. The war on terror has failed - it has been the most catastrophic blunder in half a century of British and American foreign policy. Ill-conceived and spectacularly badly implemented, it was redolent of an old-fashioned understanding of conflict and quaint faith in superior military technology.

It has had precisely the opposite impact from that allegedly intended, by significantly increasing the threat of terrorism while alienating large sections of Muslim opinion across the globe. Yet the politicians who made the decisions, who lied, and ignored and manipulated expert opinion are still in power and still uttering the same meaningless platitudes. Take Tony Blair at prime minister's questions last week, in which he declared he was proud to have helped remove the Taliban and that he would have thought "anyone, whatever their beliefs or faith, would stand up for democracy against terrorism". George Bush in Bagram for lunch this month, declared: "It is possible to replace tyrants with a free society."

more....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1729399,00.html

[rodeodance]

1. "they barely register with public opinion any more."--& we might see 1

to 2 clips on the news.

[Why Syzygy]

2. okay

when do we get rid of his tyranny? It will take a long long time to clean up the mess he has made and I am sick and tired of letting him continue to make a MESS!

He totally copped out when he was TOLD that they were coming over here to do some damage.
Now he has just made a huge freaking mess of the Middle East. And Condi is calling for us to rally to 'fix' Iran. To make it the ME the WE want. I say, let them be the way they are. Let us protect ourselves, surely. But this is madness. Pearl Harbor was a horror? What have we done? Did we have the oil? Are we really at war with Russia? Again? They seem to have the oil rights. But we went in with big guns and lots of young folks.

I just hate this.

[Erika]

3. Ah, they are just a bunch of brown skinned Muslims

As the right wing sites say, the more dead the better.
The rabid towel heads.
Let them kill each other with genocide. The more dead the better.

NOT my words. These are the words of Bushbots.

[Why Syzygy]

4. this is why I don't date

"christians". I won't have anything to do with them. I have heard those words out of their mouths. Just blow them all up. Well. No. It is freaking scary and I do not hang out with those people. They need something. Maybe a baby bottle or something. I have no idea and no inclination to try to figure it out. They need to get with the real world and learn that we are all in this together. I cannot understand freaking militants. On either side.

[jaysunb]

5. Wow !

All wrapped up in a neat package w/ a bow. Where is the sorry assed American MSM ? :evilfrown:

[ClayZ]

6. Fools rushed in.... K and R

:kick:

snip>

"One can understand the eagerness to topple Saddam might have blinded some into backing a recklessly foolish war. But one can't understand the lack of honesty to acknowledge what a terrible mistake that has proved to be. We're waiting to hear. But one can't understand the lack of honesty to acknowledge what a terrible mistake that has proved to be."

[Tom Bombadil]

7. The real reason we invaded Iraq...

>snip

"As we gain distance on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, America's waning enthusiasm for nation-building only strengthens the impression that the neocons were naive idealists manipulated to window-dress a much simpler and more brutal post-9/11 imperative: Afghanistan and Iraq offered opportunities for revenge and for spectacles of US power designed to assuage the wounded pride of the American people. The wars have not made the world a safer or better place because that was not their aim."

Nothing to do with oil, nothing to do with democracy. Misdirected revenge -pure and simple.

[Briar]

8. Misdirected revenge -pure and simple

and still in operation. It won't take much to press that button again.