FW: oxoxxoox

A must see if you have not already.
An honest and passionate monologue.
See below.

—— Forwarded Message
From: john douglas <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2007 23:42:32 -0400
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: oxoxxoox





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC4W7hQD89s&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Etruthout%
2Eorg%2Fdocs%5F2006%2F090507A%2Eshtml


and


Time to Take a Stand
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Friday 07 September 2007

Here's what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus
testifies before Congress next week: he'll assert that the surge has
reduced violence in Iraq - as long as you don't count Sunnis killed
by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and
people shot in the front of the head.

Here's what I'm afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen.
Petraeus's uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They
won't ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them
of attacking the military. After the testimony, they'll desperately
try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks
President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like
it.

There are five things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember.

First, no independent assessment has concluded that violence in
Iraq is down. On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital
and police records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths
is almost twice its average pace from last year. And a recent
assessment by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found
no decline in the average number of daily attacks.

So how can the military be claiming otherwise? Apparently, the
Pentagon has a double super secret formula that it uses to
distinguish sectarian killings (bad) from other deaths (not
important); according to press reports, all deaths from car bombs are
excluded, and one intelligence analyst told The Washington Post that
"if a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian. If it
went through the front, it's criminal." So the number of dead is
down, as long as you only count certain kinds of dead people.

Oh, and by the way: Baghdad is undergoing ethnic cleansing, with
Shiite militias driving Sunnis out of much of the city. And guess
what? When a Sunni enclave is eliminated and the death toll in that
district falls because there's nobody left to kill, that counts as
progress by the Pentagon's metric.

Second, Gen. Petraeus has a history of making wildly
overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be
convenient for his political masters.

I've written before about the op-ed article Gen. Petraeus
published six weeks before the 2004 election, claiming "tangible
progress" in Iraq. Specifically, he declared that "Iraqi security
elements are being rebuilt," that "Iraqi leaders are stepping
forward" and that "there has been progress in the effort to enable
Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security." A year
later, he declared that "there has been enormous progress with the
Iraqi security forces."

But now two more years have passed, and the independent
commission of retired military officers appointed by Congress to
assess Iraqi security forces has recommended that the national police
force, which is riddled with corruption and sectarian influence, be
disbanded, while Iraqi military forces "will be unable to fulfill
their essential security responsibilities independently over the next
12-18 months."

Third, any plan that depends on the White House recognizing
reality is an idle fantasy. According to The Sydney Morning Herald,
on Tuesday Mr. Bush told Australia's deputy prime minister that
"we're kicking ass" in Iraq. Enough said.

Fourth, the lesson of the past six years is that Republicans
will accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic no matter what the
Democrats do. Democrats gave Mr. Bush everything he wanted in 2002;
their reward was an ad attacking Max Cleland, who lost both legs and
an arm in Vietnam, that featured images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam
Hussein.

Finally, the public hates this war and wants to see it ended.
Voters are exasperated with the Democrats, not because they think
Congressional leaders are too liberal, but because they don't see
Congress doing anything to stop the war.

In light of all this, you have to wonder what Democrats, who
according to The New York Times are considering a compromise that
sets a "goal" for withdrawal rather than a timetable, are thinking.
All such a compromise would accomplish would be to give Republicans
who like to sound moderate - but who always vote with the Bush
administration when it matters - political cover.

And six or seven months from now it will be the same thing all
over again. Mr. Bush will stage another photo op at Camp Cupcake, the
Marine nickname for the giant air base he never left on his recent
visit to Iraq. The administration will move the goal posts again, and
the military will come up with new ways to cook the books and claim success.

One thing is for sure: like 2004, 2008 will be a "khaki
election" in which Republicans insist that a vote for the Democrats
is a vote against the troops. The only question is whether they can
also, once again, claim that the Democrats are flip-floppers who
can't make up their minds.

——-

—— End of Forwarded Message