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the value of make believe .....

the value of make believe .....

In the first insider account of Pentagon decision-making on Iraq, one of the key architects of the war blasts former secretary of state Colin Powell, the CIA, retired Gen. Tommy R. Franks and former Iraq occupation chief L. Paul Bremer for mishandling the run-up to the invasion and the subsequent occupation of the country. 

Douglas J. Feith, in a massive score-settling work, portrays an intelligence community and a State Department that repeatedly undermined plans he developed as undersecretary of defense for policy and conspired to undercut President Bush's policies.

Among the disclosures made by Feith in 'War and Decision,' scheduled for release next month by HarperCollins, is Bush's declaration, at a Dec. 18, 2002, National Security Council meeting, that 'war is inevitable.'

The statement came weeks before U.N. weapons inspectors reported their initial findings on Iraq and months before Bush delivered an ultimatum to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Feith, who says he took notes at the meeting, registered it as a 'momentous comment.' 

Although he acknowledges 'serious errors' in intelligence, policy and operational plans surrounding the invasion, Feith blames them on others outside the Pentagon and notes that 'even the best planning' cannot avoid all problems in wartime. While he says the decision to invade was correct, he judges that the task of creating a viable and stable Iraqi government was poorly executed and remains 'grimly incomplete.'

Powell, Feith argues, allowed himself to be publicly portrayed as a dove, but while Powell 'downplayed' the degree and urgency of Iraq's threat, he never expressed opposition to the invasion. Bremer, meanwhile, is said to have done more harm than good in Iraq.

Feith also accuses Franks of being uninterested in postwar planning, and writes that Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser during most of Feith's time in office, failed in her primary task of coordinating policy on the war. He describes Bush as having wrestled seriously with difficult problems but as being ill-served by subordinates including Powell and Rice.

Feith depicts former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld with almost complete admiration, questioning only his rough handling of subordinates. 

Feith left the administration in mid-2005 and is now on the Georgetown University faculty. He was the subject of an investigation early last year by the Pentagon's inspector general for his office's secret prewar intelligence assessments outlining strong ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

His reports, deemed 'inconsistent' with those of the intelligence community, were judged 'inappropriate' but not illegal. In his book, Feith defends the intelligence activities on grounds that the CIA was 'politicizing' intelligence by ignoring evidence in its own reports of ties between Hussein and international terrorists. 

Ex-Defence Official Assails Colleagues Over Run-Up To War

syndrome of whatever wars...

Study links Gulf War syndrome to chemical exposure

Nearly two decades after veterans of the 1991 Gulf War came home complaining of odd illnesses, enough evidence has been gathered to determine that many of them were sickened by chemical exposure, a study published yesterday concluded.

And some of the damage was likely caused by pills prescribed to protect against the use of nerve gas and pesticides used to control sand flies, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

While the military has subsequently stopped using the pills, the pesticides continue to be used in agriculture and for pest control in homes and offices in the United States and around the globe.

"Enough studies have been conducted, and results shared, to be able to say with considerable confidence that there is a link between chemical exposure and chronic, multi-symptom health problems," said study author Beatrice Golomb of the University of California San Diego's school of medicine.

"Furthermore, the same chemicals affecting Gulf War veterans may be involved in similar cases of unexplained, multi-symptom health problems in the general population," she said.

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Gus: and this does not tale into account the effects from depleted uranium that has radiated many parts of conflict theaters... 

all's well in the best of whatever

A normal day in Iraq...

And according to his majesty Bushit II, the situation has improved remarkably...

Below is only the top of the list:

FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, March 12
12 Mar 2008 12:25:28 GMT
Source: Reuters
March 12 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq at 1230 GMT on Wednesday.

* NEAR KIRKUK - A roadside bomb targeting a local council member near Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, wounded two of his bodyguards, police said.

* BAGHDAD - A mass grave containing 10 bodies, including men, women and children was found on Saturday near Khalis, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, the Defence Ministry said. The U.S. military had said that initial reports suggested there were some 100 bodies.

* BAGHDAD - Three mortars landed in Baghdad's Green Zone, but details of casualties were not available, police said.

* BASRA - Gunmen shot and killed a former official of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, 550 km (340 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

* BASRA - A senior figure in Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Basra office, Saed al-Haidery, was shot dead in northern Basra, police and Sadrist officials said.

* BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb wounded five people in Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad, police said.

* BAGHDAD - Mortar rounds wounded three people in Shaab district in northern Baghdad, police said.

* BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed two people and wounded 10 in Ameen district in southeastern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - The bodies of the five people were found in different districts of Baghdad on Tuesday, police said.

NEAR SAMARRA - Three fuel truck drivers were killed when three roadside bombs went off near a convoy of seven fuel trucks on the main road near Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. Three trucks were set ablaze.

NEAR DIWANIYA - A U.S. soldier died from wounds sustained and two wounded by a roadside bomb during a patrol on Tuesday near Diwaniya, 180 km (110 miles) south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

MOSUL - Six fuel trucks were set ablaze and three drivers were wounded on Tuesday when a bomb attached to one of the vehicles detonated, in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

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Gus: the US soldier casualty list in Iraq is approaching 4,000 (shy of a dozen, today) and the numbers of injured is approaching 30,000. The list of those who were "sick" (heat, disease, depression, desertion) adds another 20,000 to these numbers. Since the surge started, the number of type of incidents as published above has "halved" and even gone down by 70 per cent on some days. Concrete barrier have but destroyed social interaction and "check-point Charlies" are so numerous that fake ones can sprout and disappear without the authorities being alerted...

Here and around the world, most of these incidents do not make the news anymore. Even the death of US soldiers, unless they die in packs of three or more, do not make "news". 

The surge means that while we were "promised" reduction in troops, the number of US troops has increased to about 170,000. Despite that, about 700 Iraqis are killed every month as a direct result of the war, by bombs and gunfire. 

The US has more than 2 million troops in the US and around the world. ten per cent of these are in Iraq and Afghanistan. 2 per cent of these more than 2 million troops have become dead or useless after their tour of duty in the theaters of war... Small potatoes for the bean-counters at headquarter... More worrying is equipment fatigue... The sands are harsh on rotor blades of gunships and in the grease pots of tanks or armoured humvees...

Bushit remains optimistic while the US dollar goes down the drain... Airbus — despite the high Euro — can be more efficient and cheaper that Boeing for US air-force air-refuelling tankers... But then there are a few complication, as Boeing claims of dirty tricks from specification changes to Presidential hopeful MacCain's advisers lobbying for the European contracts... Meanwhile, all's well in the New york cesspool, where "Client 9", a fighter for good and justice, gets pulled down by the short and curlies...

Ah for a world where more Moko would show a great insight...

In fact there are many Moko of the humankind, but the murderous psychopaths make sure they are never on top — and let's face it, should you be a honest self-less humanist why would you want to rule a mob that has too many tricksters, con artists, born-again fanatics and loonies?...

fading, fading.... news...

Public Is Less Aware of Iraq Casualties, Study Finds

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2008; A12

Twenty-eight percent of the public is aware that nearly 4,000 U.S. personnel have died in Iraq over the past five years, while nearly half thinks the death tally is 3,000 or fewer and 23 percent think it is higher, according to an opinion survey released yesterday.

The survey, by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, found that public awareness of developments in the Iraq war has dropped precipitously since last summer, as the news media have paid less attention to the conflict. In earlier surveys, about half of those asked about the death tally responded correctly.

Related Pew surveys have found that the number of news stories devoted to the war has sharply declined this year, along with professed public interest. "Coverage of the war has been virtually absent," said Pew survey research director Scott Keeter, totaling about 1 percent of the news hole between Feb. 17 and 23.

The Iraq-associated median for 2007, he said, was 15 percent of all news stories, with major spikes when President Bush announced a "surge" in forces in January of that year and when Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, testified before Congress in September.

"We try not to make any causal statements about the relationship between the absence of news and what the public knows," Keeter said. "But there's certainly a correlation between the two. People are not seeing news about fatalities, and there isn't much in the news about the war, whether it be military action or even political discussion related to it."

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Gus: my point exactly... see blog above. 

spiritual ferocity...

From Robert Fisk

It will be many years before we have a clearer idea of the number of bombers who have killed themselves in the Iraq war – and of their origin. Long before The Independent's total figure reached 500, al-Qa'ida's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was boasting of "800 martyrs" among his supporters. And since al-Zarqawi's death brought not the slightest reduction in bombings, we must assume that there are many other "manipulators" in charge of Iraq's suicide squads.

Nor can we assume the motives for every mass murder. Who now remembers that the greatest individual number of victims of any suicide bombing died in two remote villages of the Kahtaniya region of Iraq, all Yazidis – 516 of them slaughtered, another 525 wounded. A Yazidi girl, it seems, had fallen in love with a Sunni man and had been punished by her own people for this "honour crime": she had been stoned to death. The killers presumably came from the Sunni community.

One of George Bush's most insidious legacies in Iraq thus remains its most mysterious; the marriage of nationalism and spiritual ferocity, the birth of an unprecedentedly huge army of Muslims inspired by the idea of death.

success for some...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday [17/03/08] declared the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq a "successful endeavour" during a visit to Baghdad, on the same day a woman suicide bomber killed 40 people.