USA The Biggest Failing Gouvrnment in Human History.

robinea has it about right. Whether Bush and his gang were naieve, stupid, clever, or whatever is moot. The truth of the matter is that they just don't care and they know that they are unassailable. They are totally amoral and corrupt, disconnected from all reality as it were from the masses of the rest of the common folk that populate the world to serve their needs. Iraq for the most part has turned out about right for the neocons; they've accomplished control of the region; they've short circuited any hope for a pan-Arab regional movement; they've recreated the modern day equivalent of the crusades, both foreign and domestic; they've completely trampled the Bill of Rights and the rule of law, again both domestically and internationally; they've validated the Zionist movement; they've been able to raid the national treasury and transfer fortunes to the military-industrila complex; in short, they've taken total control of the gameboard at absolutely no cost to themselves. Such is the life of kings and princes...

The Bush Cabal really believed that the world would act according to its wishes. These people are psychotic.

The State Dept. had comprehensive post-invasion plan that Rumsfeld made a large point of discarding, and making sure that anyone who had anything to do with it was no where near Jay Garner, who left the reservation early when he saw the chaos growing.

The only people who have suffered no consequences (the Iraq fiasco has a place of honor in the multitude of factors disassembling the American economy right now) are the people responsible for it.

Just remember Donnie boy, "Stuff" does indeed happen, and because the world loves a little balance, someday stuff will happen to you.

Some of you get it that the problem is war in fighting terrorism.

This point is missed by the Army study which points all the blame on the generals who were taking orders from the White House... notice the Army does not blame who controls the game.

Sugar kills more people than terrorism and modern warfare kills more and breeds more "Terrorists" or freedom fighters if it was your family killed by the invading occupiers.

The roots of terrorism is the racket of War!

I think the Bush Administration was incredibly naive when it came to the Iraq war. They imagined that all they had to do was cross the Iraq border and all Iraqi's would welcome their invasion with open arms. They had no plans for a long and protracted war. They had no plans for Iraq's future rule. They didn't plan for their ever being any opposition to their grandiose plans. They didn't plan on terrorism taking a hold. In fact, it reminded me more of kindergärtners playing war games. In fact, I think kindergartners could have done a better job of planning an invasion than the Bush Administration did.

The author, Andrew Clark, covers Wall Street for the Guardian. In light of the No End In Sight movie, and a lot of stuff supporting what robinea said, I'm not quite clear what CommonDreams was doing with this piece.

ray "...the victor writes the history."

That was truer in an earlier world than it is today.
Today, the vanquished also write the histories and post them Online.

What hasn't changed is that too many people still don't care, one way or another.

Its all about protecting the rich. What fruits of an oil war , when our continuing use of oil puts our planet at peril.

Mastershake,

The first thing that any historian knows is that the victor writes the history. Our Bible stories aren't written from the perspective of those who were eradicated in the name of God, Homer's tale of the Trojan War isn't written from Troy's perspective. When I was young, my history books portrayed the Native American as the aggressor - seeking battle against wagon trains and peaceful settlements. The Native Americans neither wrote American history or the "western" TV shows. The four people killed at Kent State were accused of having head lice and wearing filthy clothes by reporters on the national news. There was a time when people didn't question government and a generation of loyal and patriotic Americans existed to go with whatever the government told them. If your government said that the Vietnamese attacked our ships in the Gulf of Tonkin - that IS what happened. This way of thinking is nothing to do with our founding fathers who generally were liberal thinkers and had a distrust of government. It was an outgrowth of poor education as children (my father had four years of school and rode his horse many miles to get to the one room school house, honestly and I started out in a one room school too) and a tremendous sense of nationalism and pride. Too much pride is really a bad thing. Nationalism can be a bad thing too.

In our media, bad things were never written about our leaders and their private lives were none of our business. We didn't even know that FDR was in a wheel chair because no pictures were ever printed in the paper that compromised the stature of our great leader, not even by the other political party. In this kind of environment the Vietnam War was the kind of thing that would happen if a pushy president wanted to halt "communist aggression." Even during WWII, we considered the Russians to be a greater threat than Hitler. When the war was over we quickly moved to block further "soviet aggression," we put bases in countries all around them striking up deals with little dictators all over the world, we put nuclear missiles on all sides of them to block them in. We stopped their aggression in Korea, but remember that the Americans cared so little about Korea as to divide it in the first place. Once the "communist" influence grew in Vietnam, it had to be an enemy and we had to stop it. It was our duty. The old men who wanted that war and who made the decisions in it, have mostly gone to their graves never understanding the wrong that they committed. You and I will never convince them of any truth because they don't have the mind for it.

Your comparison of Vietnam and Iraq is quite accurate, the methods used by Cheney and his crew of evil doers is the same as for Vietnam. The enemy must be thought of as sub-human or so dangerous to other innocent people in order for us to justify the millions of accidental deaths that are going to occur. We must rationalize in our minds to justify the sins we commit. Cheney as secret leader of the axis of evil, (Bush, Blair and Sharon) (I like saying that)came out of the Vietnam era having never served and he has consistently surrounded himself with people of no military knowledge or experience. (He served as Sec of Defense in the early 90's and devastated the military for political gains) His view and John McCain's view is that we should have stayed the course and achieved victory no matter how long it took and faulted liberalism for the humiliating loss in Vietnam. My view is that we never should have been there in the first place and if we took sides at all, then why not with the little people, the freedom fighters opposing the dictator. In other words, I still don't know that we were on the right side - that communism was a worse form of dictator than the existing dictator and by what can I determine this. What I know is that it didn't matter to the subsistence farmer. His view was that the Americans did the damage to his field with their war machines and burned his food storage, and as such he hated us more than the Viet Cong. Does that sound like the feelings of the people in Iraq?

You can win over the hearts and minds of the people through deed and word but you can't communicate the "word" if you don't speak their language. In Iraq we haven't even convinced ourselves of our deeds yet alone the people of Iraq. The other way is in fact "shock and awe" and it works but not by demonstrating our military might. It means being so cruel that we slaughter the masses and those who survive are so afraid that they are obedient.

Mastershake,
Regarding your good question about responsibility for the war in Viet Nam - I will try to provide my understanding - Although I am not a historian, I did live in Southeast Asia when I was young and have a perspective on the war.
Over three million people in Indochina died as a result of the US War against Vietnam and its genocidal extensions into Laos and Cambodia. The US took absolutely no 'prisoners of war' - it interrogated and tortured them in the field and either turned them over to the ARVN or slaughtered them outright. Our 'saintly' Secretary of State Colin Powell was the boot licking young officer who wrote the first total white-wash, cover-up report on the massacre at My Lai. The American war criminals were never punished for the supreme crime of waging an aggressive war against three small, mostly agrarian, nations on the other side of the world. History shows that war criminals are only punished when they lose power and there is a 'regime change' (such as a revolution) or a foreign occupation (such as the Allies in Post-War Germany.) 'Regime change' is something our political system is carefully designed to avoid at all costs - we just get two parties pushing the same foreign policy line with very few domestic differences. Therefore, as guilty as the politicians and administrators, torturers and generals, were during the Viet Nam War, they virtually all died peaceful deaths enjoying their blood-soaked wealth or leaving it to their heirs, many of whom are our current political, economic and military 'leaders'.
For inspiration, you should read a good military history of the defeat of the German Army on the Eastern Front (an invincible war machine of 'supermen' Nazis defeated into groveling worms by 'subhuman' Russians - or at least that is what the Fascists considered Slavic people. Another inspiration can be found in any good account of how the 'primitive' Vietnamese defeated the invincible superior French colonial army at their 'impenetrable fortress' at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
Don't worry about why American war criminals in the past were not punished - there are a lot more pressing issues to consider here and now.

Very Nice Ray!!
Well said.

I often wonder if the spy division has setup a couple of private spy companys to trak all the dissidents blogs and webb sites they don't like accross the USA.

After all 90 billion a year ,5 years running ,buys alot of spy computer power and personal.

They know how really Angry most of the well informed real patriotic Americans are, an are numbers are far greater than the petrified main stream media will ever admit.

But they have major money,controll, and Immunity thus far.
So most Amricans do not know the whole story yet.

Its like the cigarette companys telling us that tabaco wasn't treated to help us become more addicted.

No Immunity , bring on the large law suits, save all the lawyers and our laws , sue all warrantless spy organizations into hell.

They should feel the FEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For trying to destroy the Constitution.

Our government was effectively taken over by the military industrial complex on 11/22/63. The day they killed Kennedy.

It takes 696 pages to explain why the current military leaders aren't to blame but the previous leaders were at fault along with the bush regime. The military knew (cause I was there) that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. All of the other lies were disproved before Cheney told them too. The role of the military is assigned and the lack of post war planning isn't something that was even known by military leaders regardless of their personal competency. It was Cheney along with Rummy and Cheney's pals Libby, Addington and I'd name them all but NOBODY can. Here's why:

1. Cheney argues that, as the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, he is not exclusively part of the executive branch and therefore not subject to the public-records standards that have been applied to past administrations.

2. The Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), a branch of the National Archives, confirmed that it does not possess any reports about what data Cheney's office has classified or declassified.

3. Similarly, Cheney's staff information is not included in the Plum Book, which identifies all presidential-appointed positions. In the last Plum Book, the OVP was listed as Appendix 5, which stated that the vice president is part of neither the executive nor the legislative branch of government.

4. In addition, a Cheney aide wrote to the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) on June 2 that its disclosure requirements for privately paid travel records apply only to those who head an "agency in the executive branch." In past letters to OGE, Cheney's staff said he does not head an agency and would not have to disclose.

5. The matter was also referred by Congress to the Justice Department. (Gonzo! That's a laugh) But the department passed on following up, citing Bush's belief that the vice president and his staff were not part of the executive branch and did not have to follow the president's own executive order.

This and more can be reviewed at truthout.org I tell you this because the crap that I just wrote above is so ridiculous that I know you won't believe me.

Every person who is suspected of being part of this bush regime should be locked up at Gitmo and tortured into confessions - just kidding on the torture. They should be held awaiting a determination of their legal status and long enough to make them squeal on each other, then tried and sentenced to life w/o parole.

This secret office that belongs to no department of government is responsible for our nations energy policy, the war in Iraq, torture of prisoners, military tribunals, suspension of habeous-corpus, spying on American without a warrant, 1.2 million deaths in Iraq and just about every major blunder of the past 7 years. Starting with Pelosi, then Cheney then Bush, IMPEACH NOW!

Though we are slow to awaken , the American intellectual masses, both right and left , are painfully aware of the dangers the Neocon-corporate-Oil companys-Milatary complex now present to America.

Thank you Pentagon Army Officials for speaking the truth.
Better late then becoming a communist country.
Our Military is still the best in the world , and I trust they will obey their oath to protect the constitution and our country from enemys foriegn and domestic.
" WE THE PEOPLE" need to remind them that we are America, not the Banks who fund war, not the Corporations looking for Global Expansion, not the oil companys that dirve the greed, and not the Miliary Complex that Make the Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Lets face facts, the neocons have been buying Washington 28 of the last 40 years. Proof of that is ,, where have all the huge lawsiuts gone????

They have pulled the teeth from our legal system, and now create thier owns laws from the Executive Branch down.

Shame on our Democrats, and shame on our legal system- our checks and balances have no power.

They wont impeach because the congress would have to implicate themselves,the judicial branch and the compliant major media networks.

The three ring circus, what a show!!

The major media is the RingMaster.

Its amazing how they report the increase in oil prices every day as if they are shocked and overwhelmed.
Pass out the oscars.Where was the same shock when this administration was selling the war??????

NO Immunity,,, we need to find out how much data they gathered , where it is kept, who has access to the data?

What methods were used to aquire the data?

You are all assuming exactly what you have been told.
Its phone and email data.

What about ground survielance???
Do you really think that the data collected is only electronic.

Get REAL. Community watch groups, law enforcement, IAFF.
You have government spys in your community.
Is that so hard to believe?
Do think terrorits don't drive, got to stores, schools, sports, strip bars, banks ,work.

THEY ARE MOBLIE.

You have to follow suspects.Come on, when are you going to see how deep the warrantless surveilance hole really goes.

Your local community can't get DHS funding without suspects, so they create them using fear tactics.
Then they build there survielance groups.

Laugh if you like, but its happened all over this country, 450 billion dollars over 5 years, and thousands of innocent Americans were tortured by gangstalking tactics.Cointel PRO.

We have no shortage of heros and cop wannabes that would spy on their nieghbors as quick as tunning into a Jerry Springer show.Here, 12 bucks an hour , call us when he gets in his car.

Trust me ,,No Immunity if you want to see the rest of the Warrantless surveilance ice burg.

If you want to save our Democracy, we must slay the warrantless Immunity protection.

Born Free Men

Former Sec State Powell owes an apology to this country, for having been taken in by Rumsfeld. A goodsoldier with training should not become a slave to corrupt leaders. What is the difference between Mexico and USA? We have generals with
ribbons and so does Mexico..
We need MaCarthur and Father Coughlin to scare the hell out of these pussy-cats in the democratic party. Oil and the Liebermanites
have taken over the country. Why is Obama
ass-kissing the Clintons when he had a mandate
to take over the democratic party and the country that is starving for leadership, not
the money grubbing Clintons.
Enough of that corrupt selfish, immoral gang.
The selling of our Industrial base to China
and Mexico under Clinton and Bush has ruined
our economy and we may never recover.

The only one to be blamed is the one who OK'd this OCCUPATION to begin with.

Since i'm only in my mid 20's, can some of you baby boomers explain this to me. Why was no-one ever held to account for Vietnam? Is this history repeating for my generation?

I really can't tell how the current Iraq war criminals are different than the one's in Vietnam. If someone could help explain the vietnam era and provide some insight that would be great.

Cheney 2006 "We have to fight them over there, or else we'll be fighting them over here."

LBJ "If we lose in Vietnam, tomorow we'll be fighting in Hawaii, the next day in California."

Mastershake,
The Nazis carefully censored the military news from the Eastern front while their elites toasted each others in mansions adorned with the looted treasures of Europe. They saw themselves as 'winners'...The deaths of over 23 million Soviet soldiers and civilians did not stop the Red Army from defeating the 70% of the German Fascist Army and its allied 'Coalition of the Willing' - including Fascist Italian, Hungarian and Roumanian troops on the eastern front.
Just because the American, British and Israeli elite are bloated with the spoils and fat contracts of this invasion and pillage doesn't mean they have 'won'. They never expected the Arabs, for whom they have unfathomable contempt,to mount a sustained resistance which is growing by the day. They expected Shock and Awe to lead to a rapid capitulation of Syria and Iran and 'regime changes'.
The US expected a rapid victory in Indochina to lead to a collapse of national liberation movements throughout Asia and an eventual collapse of the PRC. You should have seen the mansions of the US colonial functionaries and contractors in Bangkok at the height of the US war in Indochina, which were filled with looted art treasures ...
The US military and domestic economy cannot sustain a counterinsurgency war against protracted peoples resistance in the Middle East - even though they have deliberately tried to erase (using an Israeli term) all vestiges of Iraq's republican society and have caused the death of over a million civilians and the injury and displacement of many millions more. The collapse of the US dollar and the unremitting regional instability leading to runnaway oil and now food speculation is just one indication of their failure to secure Iraq for the Empire and to secure the Middle East for US-Israeli hegemony. Imperialism is not defeated - but the US-Neo-Con schemes for rapid conquest of Middle East resources and markets on the back of tanks and bombers (military rather than market empire) seems to have failed.

I think that, contrary to the experience of the Bonus Army by the hand of Douglas MacArthur, what some of this means is that there are top brass who will be true to their oathes and reject CIC orders amounting to an internal coupe. That is unless they're all forced to resign.

Well into this 6th year of this Illegal Occupation, fucking surge? Troop Escalation. The bars and stars crowd fuck with their Surrogates heads until they are screaming hate and murder, redeployed X 7 and who thinks they'll ever recover, Fuck America. Still have people on this site think every damn person in the ME are darker in skin, there is a sizeable chunk that are not, its just that they THERE, they're THERE. Making Murderers out of our children, Motherfuckers. My youngest listens to a band called 'State Radio', it has one tune that says, "Twenty days in a concrete fallout, Want a life then take your own, Oh My Country can't you hear me call out, From another lands war torn country to a prison cell all my own, Punish me for not Taking Your Orders, but don't lock me up for NOT LEAVING MY HOME!, Camilooo....." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8DckersoRM
Go there see the video, for those that don't know both sides, then ivaw.org and give Matthis, Camilo and ALL our Resistors and Conscientous Objectors some help, a hello will suffice....

...and the Democrats and Republicans and Independents in Congress just smiled and smiled.

Amused. W didn't go to kindergarden. He has never cleaned up after himself, and he never had to learn how to get along with others. Beyond all these things, maybe he was practicing for his military service. One thing he probably did learn at that age was that America was a service department for the family wealth.

Oooooh Oooooh Oooooh

Now the children of the world can see
There's a better way for us to be
The place where mankind was born
Is so neglected and torn… torn apart

Every woman, every man
Join the caravan of love
Stand up, stand up, stand up
Everybody take a stand
Join the caravan of love

Are you ready for the time of your life
Are you ready, are you ready?
Are you ready for the time of your life
Are you ready, are you ready?

Come go with me
Are you ready, are you ready?
Come go with me
Are you ready, are you ready?

Every woman, every man
Join the caravan of love
Stand up, stand up, stand up
Everybody take a stand
Join the caravan of love
Are you ready, are you ready?
Every woman, every man
Join the caravan of love

Dear curmudgeon99,
As others pointed out, was from The Charge of the Light Brigade:

The actual lines are as relevant today as way back then:

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
**Someone had blunder'd: **
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred... "

________________

As to the article itself :::: Lo! Behold!!

Overnight, a veritable wonder!

Why, a whole FOREST of FINGERS hath sprouted up overnight, each pointing the blame at someone else!

Within this forest, where are those with any 'true grit' and visceral matter who will be brave enough to announce to the world: "WE GOT IT TERRIBLY BLOODY WRONG!!!!!"

Nope.

[No reply.]

It's all gone very, very quiet on that score...

xx

Caravan of Love

Are you ready for the time of your life
It's time to stand up and fight
It's alright It's alright
It's alright It's alright
Hand in hand we'll take a caravan
To the motherland

One by one we're gonna stand with the pride
One that can't be denied
Stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up
From the highest mountain, and valley low
We'll join together, with hearts of gold

Now the children of the world can see
There's a better way for us to be
The place where mankind was born
Is so neglected and torn… torn apart

Every woman, every man
Join the caravan of love
Stand up, stand up, stand up
Everybody take a stand
Join the caravan of love

I'm your brother
I'm your brother, don't you know
I'm your brother
I'm your brother, don't you know

We'll be living in a world of peace
In a day when everyone is free
We'll bring the young and the old
Won't you let your love flow from your heart

Every woman, every man
Join the caravan of love
Stand up, stand up, stand up
Everybody take a stand
Join the caravan of love

I'm your brother
I'm your brother, don't you know

Isley Brothers

Consider the number generals, Etal who have had to resign because they disagreed with the Bush administration. Over the past few years, these retired leaders have spoken out singly and in groups. The attrition of competent Pentagon leadership goes right back to the Commander-In-Chief and his agents of change. Most of the MSM attention has been given to about 150 military consultants, high-ranking retirees, with financial ties to the military-industrial complex who were instructed by the Pentagon on making propaganda points.

http://poetry.eserver.org/light-brigade.html

"Their's but to do and die:"
is the usually misquoted line from
The Charge of the Light Brigade by
Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Read truthaddict again. End of story.

Democrats secretly colluding with Republicans and devoting millions in covert operations to destabliize Iran. Is China going to pay for that too? This country is finished -- finished, thanks to our government's PNAC/Joint Vision 2020 mentality to control the world.

The military could have saved themselves a lot of time by just acknowledging that the reason we invaded AND STAYED is the oil promised to Friends of Dick and George. Our illegal and immoral occupation and all the death and destruction associated with it are what the writers of this report should be screaming about.

Juliann-
EASY - Clinton did not benifit from a 9/11 whereby he could proclaim himself DICTATOR... er... make that Unitary Decider.

It's not worth saying but I'm bustin' to say it: If Bill Clinton were in the White House right now - and for the past 7 years - the right would be throttling the doors to the white house to hang him, Sean Hannity and his ilk leading the charge.

HOW DO GWB, CHENEY ET AL GET AWAY WITH THIS?????????

robineau 12:07 You nailed it, and the empire has plans more victims.

It actually was all Iran's fault Bush now says and they're gonna get it.

Andrew Clark says: "Colleagues of Rumsfeld, such as his former under-secretary Douglas Feith, have suggested that the Pentagon was let down by poor intelligence from the CIA"

What a crock of B.S.! The neocon likes of Doug Feith forced the CIA to distort its' own intellignence to ram the war down the throat of the Pentagon.

The Pentagon does not need a 696 page report on what went wrong. What the Pentagon needs is a a mandetory sebatical to be educated on our democratic form of government and the U.S. Constitution.

The Pentagon was totally irresponsible in not recognizing that the balance of power between the legislative and executive brach of government was most seriously out of wack. The Pentagon should have stonewalled orders from an administration that had obviously gone mad until the truth could be made evident to the Congress.

If Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Feith, Bolton, and the rest of the lying neo-con cabal aren't put on trial and convicted of treason, the mistakes of Iraq will be repeated yet again, just as the mistakes of Vietnam were repeated in Iraq. It is also essential that what went on in Cheney's Energy Task Force meetings in 2000 finally be made public. That will confirm that we went into Iraq to control the oil reserves and to set up permanent bases. Bush/Cheney has been the administration of the Big Lie par excellence. They long ago stepped over the line into criminality and proved themselves to be a sort of mafia.

Thank you, Scottslewis

Re:curmudgeon
I think it's from a Tennyson poem, "Charge of the Light Brigade"

robinea June 30th, 2008 12:23 pm

Nonsense. Iraq is a great victory, and at very little cost. Both in economic, political, and human terms. It's been a tremendous success. Only about 600-700 billion of taxpayer dollars financed, to reap 30-40 trillion at least for the foreign direct investors. The taxpayers never see a dime though of course.

The leaders in charge also have to be laughing and happy with how apathetic the masses are, and how easily influenced and manipulated they are.

They're very happy with the outcome of Iraq thus far.

One more thing...the smoking ruins of Iraq and the degradation and agony of its people were supposed to serve as a 'lesson' to the rest of the resource-rich, Third World, of what can happen to an entire people, their culture and institutions, when their leaders nationalize and socialize the national wealth in order to modernize their country and develop its capacity to resist the dictates of empire. It was a kind of Israeli collective punishment by bull-dozing an entire Palestinian neighborhood and arrest all its men, writ large.
It has had the opposite effect of driving potential current and future victims of the US to sign pacts and trade agreements with US imperial competitors. The success of the Iraqi resistance has become an inspiration to the world. The Iraqi resistance with their infinite capacity to sacrifice and halt the US Empire have taken on the kind of image that the Russian people and Red Army had in their unimaginable resistance to Hitler' Wehrmacht and eventual victory over fascism.

Please stop calling it a war. It is an INVASION and BURGLARY and a MASS MURDER.

The seemingly chaotic destruction of Iraqi civil and governmental institutions was a deliberate policy of the US government and its military with advice and support from the Israelis in order to dismember Iraq into three primitive ethnicly-cleansed, tribal client states submitting to the interests of a US-UK-Israeli Middle East Co-Prosperity Sphere. To achieve this - all advanced institutions in Iraq had to be destroyed, all leaders - both civilian, military, intellectual, scientific, trade union, artistic and government - had to be assassinated, arrested, deprived of their jobs and positions or driven into exile. There was never any plan to govern a post-conquest Iraq so it would remain one unified republic when 'democratic elections could be held'. Imperialism and colonialism use 'divide and conquer' as its principle method of rule after a military conquest. No question - the market bombings, the 'death squads', the systematic disruption of normal, civilized life in as sophisticated a country as the secular Republic of Iraq were all part of cynical, brutal social engineering project on the part of the US military, the State Department, the British government and the Israeli government and probably certain leaders in the United Nations. The goal...was to destroy any modern, secular, sophisticated Arab nation in the Middle East, which might opposed Israel's growing hegemony through ethnic cleansing and population transfer.
So...the US military now blames the Bush Adminisration for the mess. What hypocrites and imbeciles these be-medaled puppet generals are! They are racists who will forever express clueless surprise that brown people, the untermenschen below their contempt, whether Arab Iraqis or Vietnamese nationalists, are capable of sustained, bloody resistance spanning generations...
Viewed from this perspective...the role of oil and the oil multinationals appear small indeed.

Does Carlin's oxymoron 'military intelligence' come to mind?

I can't remmember the source of the following quote:

'Ours is not to question why.
Ours is but to do or die.'

Certainly fits here.

truthaddict (11:48) has said everything that needs to be said about this article.

In other words, the people "leading" this nation (civilian and military) are nothing more than a pack of towering fools and idiots. Puffed up like a bag of marshmallows, they have made us all like the protagonist of the film "D.O.A." - - - walking dead men. McCain will stride further and further into the swamp of bloody and vainglorious failure as if it were the swimming pool in the backyard of his desert mansion. Every other word from his mouth will be "victory". Obama will do the same. There might be a small voice in his head telling him, "Be smart, get out of it all . . . now" but he will be surrounded by military, civilian and business death's heads, lecturing, hectoring, poking him in the chest, yelling if necessary, getting so far into his face he won't be able to tell the difference between them and himself. And finally, the red hot ambition that made Obama want to be president in the first place will compel him go along. The Paths of Glory lead but to the grave.

the problem is the war itself. not how it was fought.

Put away your toys, children … and clean up your mess. "Oh no, there's post war consequences. Hadn't even thought of that."

Al Qaeda is defeated. It's Iran's fault, I swear.

We're really running out of scapegoats here.

The first mistake was going in for EXXON and the rest of Cheney's oily cabal. After that it's all down hill to the Bush Catastrophe. Will we still have a country?

All militarism is a perversion.

What! The Iraqis didn't roll over after shock and awe?

The Project for the New American Century didn't predict that to happen.

I believe that they honestly thought their plan would work, greedy bastards!
----

This article is an attempt to write history with a twist to save face.