"One great day isn't going to reverse a year and a half of blunders"

[autorank]

Fareed Zakaria, The Daily Show w/Jon Steward 1/31/05

This is the best * can do with an initial supporter of the war from the foreign relations establishment. Maybe if they grade on the curve...

[Skittles]

1. it's another MISSION ACCOMPLISHED moment for bush inc

and nothing more

[hatrack]

2. And four more Marines KIA today

Along with the dozen-odd British soldiers who died in the C-130 crash, and the dozens of Iraqis who will die in the next 24 hours, shot or kidnapped or blown to bits by car bombs or guys wearing suicide vests.

The election has changed nothing, and our soldiers aren't going anywhere, and the dying is not going to end.

[autorank]

3. People like Zakaria never lose, they just assume the position.

He was a big advocate of the war, had all sorts of smarmy pseudo intellectual justifications. Now he talks about how * has screwed things up, saying it could have been done cheaper, safer, easier, much, much better.

It makes me wonder. How can you be that close to power and not factor into your grand equation the obvious fact that * and his team are morons and bumblers?

I put the quote out there just because it was so ridiculous.

[EFerrari]

4. It is ridiculous.

How desperate are these people that they have to fake an election -- getting people to risk their lives for nothing via soldiers on bullhorns and implicitly threatening their food rations?

Thirty one people died -- that are admitted -- only $9 billion gone missing and the candidates don't dare appear by name on the ballot.

Even in other countries, ex patriots are afraid to be photographed voting for fear of endangering someone back home.

"Oh, brave new day." Mir

"Tis new to you." Pros

[IndianaGreen]

5. What "victory"? Stop reading the WH press releases!

Iraq elections set stage for deeper crisis of US occupation regime
By Patrick Martin
31 January 2005

The election January 30 in Iraq marks a further intensification of the contradictions confronting American imperialism, both in Iraq and at home. It will neither resolve the crisis of the American stooge regime in Baghdad, hated and despised by the vast majority of the Iraqi people, nor legitimize the US occupation in the eyes of the world and among large sections of the American public.

George W. Bush emerged from the White House briefly to make a triumphal statement hailing the vote. The US media carried wall-to-wall, gushing coverage all day Sunday. But even the combined propaganda powers of the US government and the corporate-controlled media machine cannot transform an election held at gunpoint and under military occupation into a genuinely democratic event.

Initial reports on voter turnout were driven by the political imperative to put the best possible face on the election and influence public opinion in the United States, which is increasingly turning against the war. The turnout figure began at 90 percent plus—numbers reported, naturally enough, on Fox News. Then an Iraqi election official put the figure at 72 percent nationwide. This was subsequently lowered to 60 percent nationwide, then to 60 percent “in some areas.”

The compliant US media dutifully swallowed all these numbers in succession, never challenging their accuracy or questioning how each figure could be so quickly supplanted by a lower one as the day wore on.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/iraq-j31.shtml

[autorank]

10. I agree with you. I just posted it because Zakaris is so rediculous!

:dunce: = ZAKARIA

[me b zola]

6. I believe destabilization was their goal

Criminals (or evil, or evil criminals) work best under the cover of chaos. Their arrogance states quite clealy that they don't give a rats ass how they are graded---they have their objectives, and they are acheiving them. Next stop, Iran?

BTW, Auto, I always enjoy your posts.

[EFerrari]

7. I sort of think so, too. No one can be this incompetent.

I just never could figure out why they'd want to destabilize Iraq. Cover? Have to think about that.

[me b zola]

8. The entire way in which they handled Iraq has had me puzzeled

I agree with you, that no one is this incompetent.
I believe that part of it is cover. Another part is much more maniachal. That the deaths of our service men & women will envoke nationalism here at home, particualry with the 'red staters'. Particuarly since their base are fundies, it is easy to wonder if this is not an effort to shore up their belief that this is an outright war on Muslims, thus making it easier (with popular?) support to invade other Muslim nations.

I don't know for sure about much. But I do know that this administration does not have good intentions for our country, nor any other country.

[EFerrari]

9. We might want to remember, the Neos aren't nationalists.

That's just the fig leaf, what they try to incite in others.

In reality, they represent the interests of multinationals.

So, our whole way of thinking about the job they're doing for our country just isn't pertinent to them. Hard to wrap one's mind around.