I guess it's okay to tell the truth now that gas is approaching $4.00 per gallon.President Bush answered growing antiwar protests yesterday with a fresh reason for US troops to continue fighting in Iraq: protection of the country's vast oil fields, which he said would otherwise fall under the control of terrorist extremists, the AP reported Wednesday via the (registration-restricted) Boston Globe.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Something tells me the threat of a U.S. invasion at this juncture doesn't exactly have the Iranians quaking in their boots.THE foreign secretary Jack Straw sought to distance Britain yesterday from comments by President George W Bush that he would not rule out a military strike against Iran.[...]
The Foreign Office reacted swiftly. “Our position is clear and has been made very, very clear by the foreign secretary,” a spokesman said. “We do not think there are any circumstances where military action would be justified against Iran. It does not form part of British foreign policy.”
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But some rightwingers in Washington have criticised Straw’s position, saying that every time the foreign secretary rules out any remote chance of military action the Iranians know there is no need to compromise.
Yeah. And then what?Britain has made it clear that if Iran has not backed down by September 3, when Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA’s secretary-general, is to report on the country’s nuclear programme, it will push for Tehran to be taken to the United Nations security council. Officials in Vienna warned, however, that any attempt to impose sanctions on Iran would be likely to be vetoed by Russia and China.
Evidently we have a strategy to succeed in Iraq. It consists of two parts. 1) “As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” 2) “The second part of our strategy is to help freedom prevail in Iraq.” A strategy is supposed to be a, you know, plan, not a bumper sticker.[...]
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He also says, “And I know it’s tough and I know it’s hard work,” and then goes back to his vacation. Asshole.
(Via LaBelle via Dependable Renegade)
So then, now what is the reason we invaded Iraq? What "mission" will we have "accomplished"?The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.
The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.
"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."
Well, we didn't really set out to establish a democracy; only to oust Hussein and replace him with someone more amenable to our demands. I'd say we really pulled a boner on this one, and didn't even get any side benefits."Iraqis are taking control of their country, building a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And we're helping Iraqis succeed," President Bush said yesterday in his radio address.[...]
But the realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how the initial U.S. ambitions have not been fulfilled in ways that Americans and Iraqis once anticipated. Many of Baghdad's 6 million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of kidnapping are keeping children indoors.
Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. Ethnic or religious-based militias police the northern and southern portions of Iraq. Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent.[...]
Water is also a "tough, tough" situation in a desert country, said a U.S. official in Baghdad familiar with reconstruction issues. Pumping stations depend on electricity, and engineers now say the system has hundreds of thousands of leaks.
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Oil production is estimated at 2.22 million barrels a day, short of the goal of 2.5 million. Iraq's pre-war high was 2.67 million barrels a day.
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Attacks on U.S. convoys by insurgents using roadside bombs have doubled over the past year, Army Brig. Gen. Yves Fontaine said Friday. Convoys ferrying food, fuel, water, arms and equipment from Kuwait, Jordan and Turkey are attacked about 30 times a week, Fontaine said.
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Killings of members of the Iraqi security force have tripled since January. Iraq's ministry of health estimates that bombings and other attacks have killed 4,000 civilians in Baghdad since Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's interim government took office April 28.
Last week was the fourth-worst week of the whole war for U.S. military deaths in combat, and August already is the worst month for deaths of members of the National Guard and Reserve.[...]
"We've said we won't leave a day before it's necessary. But necessary is the key word -- necessary for them or for us? When we finally depart, it will probably be for us," a U.S. official said.
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The ferocious debate over a new constitution has particularly driven home the gap between the original U.S. goals and the realities after almost 28 months. The U.S. decision to invade Iraq was justified in part by the goal of establishing a secular and modern Iraq that honors human rights and unites disparate ethnic and religious communities.
But whatever the outcome on specific disputes, the document on which Iraq's future is to be built will require laws to be compliant with Islam. Kurds and Shiites are expecting de facto long-term political privileges. And women's rights will not be as firmly entrenched as Washington has tried to insist, U.S. officials and Iraq analysts say.
"We set out to establish a democracy, but we're slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic," said another U.S. official familiar with policymaking from the beginning, who like some others interviewed would speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity. "That process is being repeated all over."
But you already knew that.One of the top leaders of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, warned Britons and Americans in a videotaped message today of more attacks, and said that the United States must withdraw its forces from Iraq.
Later this afternoon, President Bush said that Mr. Zawahiri's remarks demonstrated that Iraq was part of the "war on terror" and defended American operations there as necessary to fight insurgents on foreign soil instead of at home.
For the first time, a majority of Americans, 51%, say the Bush administration deliberately misled the public about whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction — the reason Bush emphasized in making the case for invading.
Corexit: More toxic than the oil
IVAW: Iraq Veterans Against the War
