It's about time

On the "more later" front:

Ocean County Republican Reps. Jim Saxton and Chris Smith are both feeling the heat on their pitiful support of the Iraq war and may be prepared to switch their votes to withdrawal, along with Reps. Frank Lobiondo and Mike Ferguson next time the pullout vote comes around.

Iraq: Reporter's notebook on the ground

UPI reporter Pamela Hess, just back from Iraq, tells C-SPAN, "U.S. national security can take care of itself, but someone has to take care of these Iraqi people."

Guaranteed, this video will clear some fog from your eyes.

Top commander: Iraq 'surge' a 1-in-4 longshot

Sen. Gordon Smith told an audience Friday in Oregon that Gen. David Petraeus, the new top military commander in Iraq, recently told him the troop surge has only a one-in-four chance of succeeding, the Oregonian reported. Hat tip to the Rachel Maddow Show's Buried the Lead, one of my favorite features in talk radio.

And there is no Plan B, says seemingly everyone from head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Peter Pace to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Washington Post reported Monday.

Then there's still the perennial question: Success of what? There never were WMD, not even the long-rotted chemicals Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld sold Saddam Hussein when they were friends in the 1980s. It'll be four years in May that "Mission Accomplished" was declared; Saddam was captured more than three years ago and is now dead; George Bush (God of the world) declared Iraq sovereign, and democratic elections chose its government just in time to make George look good for his own presumed election in 2004. Think Progress has a timeline with source citations.

Yet at every step, this White House has mucked up the bloody civil war we unleashed in Iraq more and more. But luck be a lady this time? Someone who goes back to the poker table in Atlantic City with 1-in-4 odds, after losing miserably at every hand for four full years, would be called a gambling addict. What do you call a president who can't figure out when to fold 'em?

What American MSM isn't reporting

How much air time or news space would it take to let us know seven foreign ministers in Islamic nations are meeting to seek diplomatic solutions to America's sabre-rattling with Iran?

The story is in al-Jazeera.

Maybe it wouldn't suit Dick Cheney's obsession with using "1984" newspeak to make Americans think anyone who doesn't want war is a terrorist al-Qaeda sympathizer.

"It's over. You lost."

Riverbend, an American-educated Iraqi woman who has been blogging about daily life in Baghdad since 2003 at Baghdad Burning, posted this week about flipping past Oprah on her TV and seeing an al-Jazeera interview with a woman who was gang raped by Iraqi security officers.

(snip) "I know that looking at her, foreigners will never be able to relate. They’ll feel pity and maybe some anger, but she’s one of us. She’s not a girl in jeans and a t-shirt so there will only be a vague sort of sympathy. Poor third-world countries- that is what their womenfolk tolerate. Just know that we never had to tolerate this before. There was a time when Iraqis were safe in the streets. That time is long gone. We consoled ourselves after the war with the fact that we at least had a modicum of safety in our homes. Homes are sacred, aren’t they? That is gone too."

I wonder, if President Bush gets his wish to escalate troops -- and I guess he's doing it as we speak despite what the majority thinks -- will our troops protect Iraqi women? Is protecting the innocents in the mess he made there one of his goals? Bush never tells us his goals, does he? He told reporter Bob Woodward in 2002, "I'm the commander -- see, I don't need to explain -- I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

Riverbend sums it up: "Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile."

It's hard for me to forget that human rights atrocities are no stranger to John Negroponte, who was in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 as head the U.S. embassy. He had a history during death squad days in Honduras in the 1980s. Then he came back to work here as national intelligence director, America's top spy, at what amounts to a Cabinet post. How odd is it Negroponte just last week moved back to foreign meddling when he was confirmed to the No. 2 post at the State Department?

Peace on the march

Carol Gay, the Dem challenger to Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., in November's election, helped organized two busloads of people from Monmouth and Ocean counties to join hundreds of thousands of people at the Jan. 27 peace demonstration in Washington, D.C.


The day was gorgeous, she says, but the mission "was a serious one - to stop the funding for the occupation of Iraq. The mood of the crowd was high spirited, joyous and peaceful. Young and old, veterans protesters and first-timers, they all are committed to stopping George Bush's ill-fated actions in the Middle East."

Gay and some others followed up on Monday with a personal visit to every member of the NJ congressional delegation. She says they'll keep on demanding our federal government stop meddling in Iraq and start accounting for the waste, fraud and abuse of our tax dollars there. (Speaking of which, if you thought the missing $8.8 billion sent for Iraq reconstruction during Paul Bremer's watch was bad, get a load of the latest news that we sent another $4 billion to him to run the provisional authority in 363 tons of $100 bills and LOST THEM! That's like 16 tractor-trailers full, about $4 billion of our hard-earned tax dollars.)

NJ Labor Against the War and NJ Industrial Union Council sponsored the buses, Gay say.

Truthout has video of the march and Central New Jersey Coalition for Peace and Justice has pictures posted from the march.

What happens when these guys come home?

Iraqslogger, which has consistently scooped traditional media on Iraq news, hasn't verified the origin of this Youtube video, last we heard, but stay tuned because Americans ought to know the monsters we may be creating in our own citizens, who will be coming back to American society.

Go here for a transcript of the worst of the tape but be forewarned it's not for the squeamish. We discourage watching the video unless you have a strong tolerance for base cruelty.