All our hearts must be broken.

Relatives and loved ones of 12 U.S. soldiers attend a group burial with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The 11 men and one woman died in a helicopter crash in Iraq. (Getty Images / October 12, 2007)

I can't look at this picture without crying. There is so much I feel I can't control right now. But, this war on Iraq seems out of everyone's control. It just goes on wasting lives, cursing families. The grief will reverberate for decades in the lives of the families whose loved ones have died so miserably in a foreign land.

I propose that every newspaper and magazine in America produce one supplement every week that includes only photos of every military burial that took place that week for soldiers who have died in Iraq (and Pakistan). As a country we are shamefully passive about the destruction of the lives of Iraqi's who now number in the hundreds of thousands. It seems this knowledge alone would move us to revolt, but, it doesn't.

Maybe, if we could see the compounding of death to just our own soldiers, we might get up in arms---an American insurgency against this nightmare. But, these images of burials are few. We are protected from this suffering. We need many, many images, over and over, day after day until the hardened American heart breaks open---until an American insurgency takes root. We must stop this war. This warring. This mindless, unconscionable waging of death.

Mission Accomplished

Jim Holt, a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine and the New Yorker, has written a piece in the London Review of Books. It nails the Iraq oil theory nicely (he must have been reading my blog!). Holt cogently lays out the middle east stew pot. He sums up why the administration must feel, behind closed doors, that it has been wildly successful. The US now sits on one quarter of the world's oil reserves. Now, if only everyone would cooperate. A worthwhile quote that sums it up:

"Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.

Who will get Iraq’s oil? One of the Bush administration’s ‘benchmarks’ for the Iraqi government is the passage of a law to distribute oil revenues. The draft law that the US has written for the Iraqi congress would cede nearly all the oil to Western companies. The Iraq National Oil Company would retain control of 17 of Iraq’s 80 existing oilfields, leaving the rest – including all yet to be discovered oil – under foreign corporate control for 30 years. ‘The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy,’ the analyst Antonia Juhasz wrote in the New York Times in March, after the draft law was leaked. ‘They could even ride out Iraq’s current “instability” by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country.’ As negotiations over the oil law stalled in September, the provincial government in Kurdistan simply signed a separate deal with the Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company, headed by a close political ally of President Bush."

China to the rescue.

Chinese police train at a military base in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province August 30, 2005.
By Herman47 at Flickr, August, 2005

The Washington Post exposes, yet, another humiliation for this Bush administration. Iraq is buying arms from China because we can't produce them quickly enough. The article could be used by some MBA study group as the foundation for a critique of all the ways a delivery system failed.

Meanwhile, General Patreaus has again insisted that Iran is providing Iraqi insurgents with arms. But, according to the latest count, 190,000 American-provided weapons are missing from the Iraq rosters. It looks to me like the primary provider of weapons to the insurgents is...the United States!

As far as China selling $100 million in arms to Iraq, maybe we could join the Iraqis and also purchase our arms from China. Since we are unable to arm our own troops in a timely fashion, let's get some help from the Chinese. They are more than happy to be of service. We'll just outsource everything.

By the way, where did Iraq get the $100 million for their arms purchase? Think about that for a moment.

Iraqi "Oil Bill"

An apparently little explored ingredient of the Administration's exit plan for Iraq is the passage of the "Oil Bill" which provides for the care and distribution of Iraqi oil. The bill, formulated at US direction, is a center-piece of the Administration. I continue to read about this bill, but it is always understated and reported with little investigation. The Administration is particularly adamant about its passage by the Iraqi congress. My understanding is that the bill cedes all control of Iraqi oil to "foreign" oil companies. The Administration urgently wanted it passed before the Iraqi congress left for their August break. The Iraqis did no such thing. This appeared today in the blog Iraq Today:

"A statement, signed by 419 Iraqi oil experts, economists and intellectuals, expresses grave concern that the newly proposed law would deprive Iraq from its most vital natural resource, oil, and give foreign oil companies ultimate domination over Iraq's oil wealth. Iraq's intellectuals demand a fundamental modification to the proposed law, and a referendum, the statement said. The law is expected to be discussed in the Iraqi parliament next month, after the parliamentary summer holiday is over."

It is not that we have wondered whether the War on Iraq was first, last and always about OIL. The suggestion has always been denied at best, mocked at worst, by the right as an example of leftest paranoia. Now that we have rained hell upon the people of Iraq, we are trying to move the Iraqis to give away their oil resources. We strive to control their oil for ourselves and also give it away as a reward to the members of the "Coalition of the Willing."

If there is one thing the Administration could point to is that even if we withdraw, we win...if we can get that OIL. No matter how many people die.

One wonders what it would take to get the Iraqi congress to pass this bill. Do we just pay enough of them off? Offer a million dollars to every legislator who votes for the bill? The country certainly does not want for corrupt officials and the audacity of the Administration is legend. With a war costing $10 billion a month, any bribe our government would offer individuals would look like a smart deal. Too, cynical? I can't tell anymore. After all Iraq and its people have suffered, I hope they hold steadfast to retain this vital resource of their country, that they do not pass this bill.

In case you're looking for a spare tire.

This is a marketing video from the Military Times. I cringe at a lot of what is being said, but the line..."to leave our footprint as small as possible" is just nuts. Preposterous.

No End in Sight - the trailer

This looks difficult to bear. It is just so insane.

The frustrations of truth.

Richard Engel, a highly respected NBC correspondent and longtime reporter in Iraq, provides one of the clearest explanations of the complexity of the political/religious environment in Iraq that I have read. His report appears in Harvard Education, Nieman Reports Summer 2007 Issue. We Americans like our problems reduced to simple images, as Karl Rove so well understands. But these reductions only diminish our ability to tolerate the understanding of the context of a truth and complexity of truth. Too, the administration is really hog-tied in its own swill. It wallows around its own untruthful, sometimes alarming, simplicities, when deeper perceptions and presentations might unite so many efforts to end this war.

Please note that Engel's report on Iraq required far fewer words than any adminsitration presentation I have heard. So maybe the truth can be simply told, rather than endlessly spun. The quote that follows puts to death one more administration "talking point."

"U.S. politicians and military commanders often complain that the Iraqi government "won't step up and do its job." The impression they give is that Iraqi officials are sitting around smoking hooka pipes and refusing to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, while U.S. troops are fighting and dying to "get the job done." Perhaps the question should be, "Which job?" American soldiers often ask me when the Iraqis will "step up and fight for their own country." They are already fighting for their country. Iraqi officials, religious leaders, militia groups, Syria, Iran and al-Qaeda are struggling and dying to get a "job done" in Iraq, though it does not appear to be the job the White House would like them to be doing.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned during his April visit to Iraq that America's "patience is running out." If he's waiting for Iraqis and the wider Middle East to start fighting the war of Freedom Lovers against Freedom Haters, Americans might need to have considerably more patience in the years ahead."

Could the Iraq tragedy get more strange?

"There are more US-paid private contractors than there are American troops in Iraq."

I hope you can see this tiny chart above from the LA Times article explaining this graphic and the issue of private US-paid contractors. We have been hearing rumors about the vast numbers of private contractors PAID by the US. This seems to be the first time that real numbers have emerged.

What does it mean that 118,000 of these people are Iraqis? We're fighting Iraqis and we're hiring Iraqis? These companies that are hiring the Iraqis are being paid billions of dollars a MONTH. Are the employed Iraqis receiving the better part of this money? What about the underfunded, underpaid Iraqi military we are supposed to be training to take over? What does it mean to fight a war with private contractors...who exceed the number of troops? Why did we refuse to send enough troops and then hire enough civilians to out-number the troops? To hide the real cost? To hide the truth that we are not able to even raise enough troops?

There are just so many questions that this war arouses that will never be answered. There are not enough answers. Not in a hundred years will we investigate all these mounting, astounding issues and receive answers for all the questions provoked.

One haunting question is, where will all these companies go when we leave Iraq? Imagine the lobbying "surge" they will put forth to insure they continue to sustain and increase earnings. I think these bloody, greedy war merchants are going to be very desirous of a NEW war.

Theater-wide food shortage. The salad bar is closed.

Juan Cole reveals the following leaked memo from the Green Zone, which reports that getting food out of Kuwait, up to our troops, is becoming a problem. Cole says that local food cannot be eaten because of the danger of guerrillas poisoning the food:

'Due to a theater-wide delay in food delivery, menu selections will be limited for the near future. While every effort will be made to provide balanced meals, it may not be possible to offer the dishes you are used to seeing at each meal. Fresh fruits and salad bar items will also be severely limited or unavailable.

The informant adds his own comment:

The bottom line is that our troops depend on a ground supply line that runs from Kuwait to the various bases in Iraq. When I was in Iraq last year at the U.S. base in Balad I had the chance to eat four meals a day--breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight rations (midrats). If you like late nights the midrats were great--steak, eggs, pancakes. Pretty good food. Well, based on this memo, it looks like those were the good old days. We don't have enough convoys to give our troops three hot meals a day. '

Surrender!

(h/t: japandrew. image: Doug Mills/The New York Times. Washington. May 22, 2007. nytimes.com)

Did they surrender, throw in the towel, give up, roll-over, faint, collapse, capitulate, or WHAT?! Do you believe that withdrawing the time-table for deployment from Iraq was a "win" for the Dems, as Harry Reid implies? That they now have Bush on the run? Didn't they have a mandate? Does anyone but Russ Feingold feel betrayed? They say we need 11 more votes to make the withdrawal stick. How could that be?

On other fronts, there are reports that everyone, the US and Iraq, is planning for withdrawal. Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at the University of London and author of Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation-Building and a History Denied, gave a recent interview in which he seemed pretty pessimistic about current plans working out. Replying to a question about the moment when the US embassy personnel will need to be evacuated by helicopter from Baghdad, he advised that the architects of the US embassy give it "a large roof." This is a good indication of the possibilities of the "surge" and now the "2nd surge" succeeding.

Opposition.

Click image to enlarge.

It is spreading to unlikely places. This is an AP photo taken outside St. Vincent Archabbey last month, a group protests the school’s decision to invite President Bush to deliver the commencement address. The southwestern Pennsylvania school’s president is the former head of Bush’s faith-based initiative. "Blessed are the peacemakers."

Torture. Petraeus speaks out.

The Commander of the Iraq debacle, General David H. Petraeus, has sent a letter to the troops. He suggests that soldiers are measured by how they treat the enemy. A good soldier does not torture. It is an audacious letter. It has taken six years for ONE person in the administration to set the standard straight and to reassert our respect for the Geneva Conventions. It is heartbreaking that the Pentagon's own recent internal report showed high support and widespread acceptance of torture among U.S. soldiers. Hence, the Petraeus letter has been sent out to the troops. It will be interesting to see how the Right handles this letter. It they are consistent, they must show outrage.

Australia and US to Swap Refugees

Australia has a camp for asylum seekers in Nauru.
The USA used Guantanamo. Both are off shore islands.

Huh? I put aside this article because I just didn't know what to say. I still don't.

"The move is aimed at deterring would-be refugees by preventing them from reaching their destination of choice...The hope is that potential refugees might think again about trying to get to the US if there was a chance they could end up in a faraway place like Australia, and vice versa."

This seems to be a new philosophy of refugee management forged with Australia's John Howard. The article is cruel, if it weren't so weirdly funny and, er, ignorant. This stance is right up there with the US refusal to consider Iraqis for immigration to the USA. This is a difficult issue, because we do not want to let Iraqi terrorists into the country. We should be very careful to keep out those who would bring harm to our families through terrorist attack. However, we have even refused the entry of Iraqis who have served the American war effort: journalists, photographers, interpreters, Green Zone workers, American Embassy workers. These people have aided the US in the war effort. Now that their lives are in danger because they are "collaborators" with the US, we refuse them entry to the country. We did this to the Vietnamese as well. Remind me, why is it that we are not trusted, globally?

The War Archives

Click on image to enlarge

Tom Tomorrow remembers:

"I was planning to mark the fourth anniversary of the start of the war by looking back at some of the more remarkable statements pundits made at the time. But I'm a weekly cartoonist, and this month I just had too many other ideas clamoring for my limited space, so this one stayed on the back burner and never ended up running. So here's a small exclusive for the HuffPo."

Other's Grief

Photo: Ahmad Al-Rubaie/AFP/Getty

This photo accompanies Andrew Sullivan's quote from a Kurdistani who was in Iraq visiting when one of this week's bombs went off. Sullivan's comment is reassuring to me.

"In the three days that Americans have rightly been fixated on a horrifying act by a mentally disturbed person, well over 200 innocent people have been massacred in a country with less than one tenth the population of the United States, where the U.S. government has ultimate responsibility for security and where al Qaeda and Sunni mass-murderers roam with impunity."

I wonder when we might develop for others the kind of empathy we feel for our "own." What human quality is it that imbues us with deep care for only our own tribe, so to speak, and not for other tribes, all of whom are humans like us. It is not particularly unique to the USA tribe, as we can see in Iraq, Darfur, Bosnia and on and on.

In this instance, our government has created the problem in Iraq. Its population is experiencing terrible suffering and grief because of the administration's reckless, misguided, thoughtless attack that it then mismanaged into a catastrophe of carnage. Our hearts, minds and devotion should go out to these people in the same manner it goes out to our own.

It would be fair to hold our government to the same standards of examination that the institutions of Virginia, Virginia Tech and Blacksburg are going to be held. If our government had met these standards of responsibility it is unlikely that we would have ever gone in to Iraq or, had we gone in, still be there.

If we could place 1/10th of the focus on the conduct of the administration in Iraq that we will on Virginia Tech, the administration would be toast by now. But, we have ignored the suffering caused by our government's mad assault and bizarre behavior in a far away land. Our insouciance in the face of the great harm we have brought on the people of Iraq is unforgivable.

Massacre

I am heartbroken, and broken-spirited about the shootings at VT today. I don't even know how to talk about it. It descends to the realm of unspeakable. I can't bear to think how I would feel if my child was gunned down in such a terrifying way, in such an insane manner, for no reason. It is horrifying.

I know the nation's hearts and minds are focused on this loss. There will be an outpouring of support and concern from Americans. But, I must say to this outpouring, that if we also focused the same incensed feelings on the loses of mostly innocent Iraqis and decent American soldiers in the Middle East, we could end the war. Our separation from the horror of Iraq, and for that matter the suffering of Palestinian's, makes us less able to identify with them. If Iraq was being covered with the thoroughness of the Blacksberg tragedy, people would be in such revulsion they would change the world. But because there is no thorough coverage, we are able to turn away from that catastrophe.

One way to grasp what is happening to innocent, men, women and children on a daily basis in Iraq is to read what is happening. I have included below, what happened in Iraq, just today as reported in this blog.

The horrifying loss of our American children, can lead us to understand the horrifying loss and suffering of the people in Iraq. This understanding could energize the public to insist on getting us out of Iraq. No more senseless death, anywhere.


TODAY IN IRAQ

BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed a U.S. soldier on patrol in southwestern Baghdad, the U.S. military said. One other soldier was wounded. A roadside bomb also killed a U.S. soldier and wounded another in southern Baghdad.

BAGHDAD - Coalition forces killed an armed man during a raid in Baghdad on Monday, the U.S. military said. The military was investigating claims by local Iraqis that the dead man was an airport highway security guard. Four armed men with suspected ties to al Qaeda were detained during the raid.

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi army has killed seven insurgents and arrested 83 others in the past 24 hours in different parts of Iraq, the Defence Ministry said.

BAGHDAD - The bodies of 30 people who had been shot were found in different districts of Baghdad on Sunday, police said.

BAGHDAD - The final death toll from two car bombs in a mostly Shi'ite district in southwestern Baghdad on Sunday has risen by two to 17, with 50 wounded, police said.

BAGHDAD - The death toll from a car bomb targeting a police patrol on Sunday has risen by four to nine, with 17 wounded, in the predominantly Shi'ite district of Karrada, police said.

RAMADI - U.S. forces killed three Iraqi policemen on Monday in a case of friendly fire during a raid against suspected al Qaeda militants in Ramadi, the U.S. military said. It said American forces had come under small arms fire and returned fire. Seven insurgents were arrested.

MAHMUDIYA - Mortar rounds killed three people and wounded 18 in Mahmudiya, about 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

NEAR HIMREEN - Gunmen kidnapped nine workers and killed one on the way to Himreen, about 90 km (55 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

FALLUJA - The bodies of seven people were found shot in the Sunni stronghold of Falluja, police said. There were signs of torture

FALLUJA – US military base was attacked by five mortar shells. No reports of injuries.

HAWIJA - Gunmen killed the imam of a Sunni mosque in the town of Hawija, 70 km southwest of Kirkuk, police said.

HAWIJA - The bodies of three people were found tortured and shot near the town of Hawija, police said.

BAIJI - Gunmen killed a tribal leader and wounded his son on a road near Baiji, 180 km north of Baghdad, police said.

MOSUL - The bodies of six people, including a policeman, who had been shot were found in different districts of Mosul, police said.

MOSUL - Police in Mosul said the death toll from an attack by two suicide truck bombers outside an Iraqi military base on Sunday had risen to six. The U.S. military said four Iraqi soldiers were killed and four others wounded.

MOSUL - Gunmen killed Talal al-Jalili, the Dean of the Political Science College, in a drive-by shooting in Mosul, police said.

MOSUL - Gunmen killed Mohammed Abdullah al-Zubaidi, a senior member of the former Baath party in western Mosul, about 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, a medical source at the Mosul morgue said.

MOSUL - Gunmen killed 13 soldiers and wounded four in an attack on an Iraqi army checkpoint near Mosul, police said.

MOSUL – Gunmen killed Dr. Jaafar Hassan Sadeq, a professor form the Faculty of Arts of Mosul University.

ISHAQI - Gunmen kidnapped five civilians in their cars in Ishaqi, police said.

ISHAQI - A suicide car bomber targeting a police directorate killed nine people and wounded 10 others in Ishaqi, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad. Ten cars were destroyed.

KIRKUK - Gunmen assassinated an imam and severely wounded his son in an attack in the district of Huweija in Kirkuk, while policemen found three unidentified bodies on the road linking Huweija to Kirkuk city, Iraqi police said.

KURKUK - A policeman was wounded while trying to defuse an explosive charge in southern Kirkuk, while another device went off near a police traffic patrol, severely damaging one of the vehicles, a Kirkuk police source said.

KUT – U.S. forces arrested two people who set up a fake checkpoint in northeastern Kut, while an explosive charge targeted a house in the city but left no casualties, eyewitnesses said.

ZAKHU (Dahuk) – Border forces in Zakhu, Dahuk province, arrested 12 people from the area of Sinjar in Mosul, near the Iraqi-Turkish borders, for attempting to enter Turkey illegally, an official source said.

Iraq Fatigue

This ABC brief report on the writings of Ali Alawi, adds to the bitterness of the administrations management of the war. The war must stop. Why aren't we in the streets like these Iraqis? Yes, they are led by the damnable, Shiite firebrand, Moqtada al-Sadr and they will all be in a big lock-down tonight with a 24-hour curfew. But why are we so acquiescent? Is it because there is no draft? Is it because there are not enough of us who know even one of the ten of thousands of men and women over in that sand pile? Would we take to the streets over and over, if we weren't so comfortable? What?

How can we stop this bloodshed? It is not good enough to say we have to wait-out this administration for two years. We need to bring all the Middle East players together and let THEM help bring stability back to Iraq. We must talk to them. Let Bush take credit for bringing all the parties together. Let him "win" the war. Our part in the carnage has to cease. Bring everyone home. Now. Keep saying it!

(Photo: Iraqi Shiite men wave Iraqi flags during an anti-U.S protest called by firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime on April 9, 2007 in the holy Shiite city of Najaf south of Baghdad, Iraq. Large crowds held flags and anti-US banners to show support for the cleric. Meanwhile the capital Baghdad was put under a 24-hours curfew. By Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images.)

Bitter Lesson

A recent Rolling Stone interview with some leading thinkers was convened to discuss the Iraqi quagmire. Gen. Tony McPeak (retired), Member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, contributed an important thought:

"This is a dark chapter in our history. Whatever else happens, our country's international standing has been frittered away by people who don't have the foggiest understanding of how the hell the world works. America has been conducting an experiment for the past six years, trying to validate the proposition that it really doesn't make any difference who you elect president. Now we know the result of that experiment."

Emphasis added.

Mad TV and iRACK

My friend Steve offers this funny YouTube send-up of Steve Jobs and the Bush administration all in one. Just in time for a Saturday afternoon break.

Terrorism Has No Religion

I found this absolutely riveting campaign while checking out the various Iraq blogs. It is so slick that I can only believe it is being produced in the West. I found it on a site called Iraqi Mojo written by an Iraqi who was born in Baghdad and raised in the US. I am very puzzled about its origins. I haven't seen it on any other sites.
_______________________________________________________
3/22/07 Update:
I received these words from the blogger Iraqi Mojo:

"I don't know who administers the website (http://www.noterror.info/index.aspx) but the ads are produced by the Iraqi government, and may have been funded by the US govt. I'm sure they hired a private company. The ads are indeed powerful and well made. You can email the webmaster of the site if you like: webmaster@noterror.info"

I have emailed the webmaster, but, no reply, yet.