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a loopy lapdog .....

a loopy lapdog .....

Yesterday, bushit’s latest loopy lapdog, General David Betrayus, lied to the world.

He used faulty statistics & cherry-picked intelligence to argue that American troops should stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Betrayus said we're making major progress & we have to stay the course. Sadly, independent assessments show that things in Iraq have gone from bad to worse (see below for more on how Betrayus stretched the truth).

Some say it was like the day four & a half years ago when bushit sent another lapdog, General Col’n Powell, to the UN to make a trumped-up case for war against Iraq.

Powell's WMDs helped justify the invasion of Iraq & Betrayus’ version of "progress" - if it goes unchallenged - will justify keeping troops there for years.

Bushit’s trusty little helper based much of his assessment on the claim that violence in Iraq is dropping just isn't true:

Betrayus is using "funny math." According to the Washington Post, Betrayus & the Pentagon are using a bizarre formula for measuring violence in the country. For example, deaths by car bombs don't count. And assassinations count only if you're shot in the back of the head - not in the front.

Iraqis believe the surge has failed. According to a massive new ABC/BBC Poll, every single Iraqi polled in Baghdad, the primary target of the "surge," said it had made security worse. Iraqis themselves overwhelmingly think the situation in Iraq is deteriorating, in terms of security, political cooperation, the economy & other measures. Overall, 70% think the escalation worsened rather than improved security conditions.

The independent GAO report found that violence is up. A comprehensive Government Accountability Office report ordered by Congress found that "average number of daily attacks against civilians have remained unchanged from February to July 2007. In August, things got worse, with civilian casualties rising according to the LA Times.

For US troops, it's the bloodiest summer yet. More US troops died every month this year compared to the same month last year.

Betrayus claimed that he compiled his report without consulting with the White House. But the Washington Post recently reported that Betrayus or his staff joined daily conference calls with the White House & former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie this summer to "map out ways of selling the surge." The Washington Post reported that Gillespie's White House political unit was "hard-wired" to Betrayus' military unit.

We would all like to see life improving in Iraq. But it's not - it's getting worse. And if US forces stay in Iraq, Americans, Iraqis & the rest of the world will pay a terrible price.

The tragedy of being...

2 Soldiers Who Wrote About Life in Iraq Are Killed
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times

Published: September 12, 2007

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 — “Engaging in the banalties of life has become a death-defying act,” the seven soldiers wrote of the war they had seen in Iraq.

They were referring to the ordeals of Iraqi citizens, trying to go about their lives with death and suffering all around them. They did not know it at the time, but they might almost have been referring to themselves.

Two of the soldiers who wrote of their pessimism about the war, in an Op-Ed article that appeared in The New York Times on Aug. 19, were killed in Baghdad on Monday. They were not killed in combat, nor on a daring mission. They died when the five-ton cargo truck they were riding in overturned.

The victims, Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, 26, and Sgt. Omar Mora, 28, were among the authors of “The War as We Saw It,” in which they expressed doubts about reports of progress.

“As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day,” the soldiers wrote.

Petraeus and Crocker failed...

Arab Neighbors to Petraeus: What About Us?

from Daoud Kuttab

The U.S. Congress was far too polite in questioning General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker during their long-awaited Iraq report. For me, the more important questions are the regional ones. What real, long-term plans does the U.S. have for our part of the world? Do any of the people of the region, not to mention the Iraqis themselves, have any say in our own future?

to the god of OIL...

As the "war" in Iraq gets weirder, is surged, desurged and is more or less planned by our US masters to stretch beyond the sunset of our lives despite not being a "true war" by any stretch of the imagination, except in the number of US troops being there taking a bit of flak, there is a sense of grind, wear and tear — despair, fatigue and distress — for most of the Iraqi population... They know they are tearing their own country apart but the old glue that gave them pride despite its horror strength has been replaced with a certain hate of American "occupation"...

Further more, they would not be deaf to the Greenspan utterance that their little country was invaded mostly because of its oil... Thus they would have to see a scam where there is one, despite the but-but-but denial of the Whitewash House.

So far the figure of US soldiers that have given their lives for the god of Oil this month (September) is a neat 50. Estimate of wounded stands at 364... Last month (— August, down on July figures) officially 84 soldiers (revised figure on 79) were killed and 613 were injured... Thus the average number of US soldiers killed is lower (2.5) than the one quoted on the cartoon (3) above... My apologies. But this average compared, say to 2003-04 is nearly twice what it was apart from a couple of really bad months then...

The sacrifice of human lives has always been a way to trick your believers into submission to your rules and to justify your plunder of others...

We would be a very sad blood-thristy lot if we vote for John Howard again. Boot him out. And impeach GW Bush...