The Rag Blog

If anyone thinks the horrors of the Bush Imperium are somehow at an end – or will even be seriously impaired – by the results of yesterday’s election, they have a harsh and bitter awakening to come.

10/28/06 “Harpers” — — Staying in Iraq not an option. Many Americans who were among the most eager to invade Iraq now urge that we find a way out. These Americans include not only civilian “strategists” and other “hawks” but also senior military commanders and, perhaps most fervently, combat soldiers. Even some of those Iraqis regarded by our senior officials as the most pro-American are determined now to see American military personnel leave their country. Polls show that as few as 2 percent of Iraqis consider Americans to be liberators. This is the reality of the situation in Iraq. We must acknowledge the Iraqis’ right to ask us to leave, and we should set a firm date by which to do so.

We suggest that phased withdrawal should begin on or before December 31, 2006, with the promise to make every effort to complete it by June 30, 2007.

The following is an excerpt from Patrick Cockburn’s new book, The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq (Verso, 2006).

The US failure in Iraq has been even more damaging than Vietnam because the opponent was punier and the original ambitions were greater. The belief that the US could act alone, almost without allies, was quickly shown to be wholly false. By the summer of 2004 the US military had only islands of control. The failure was all the worse because it was self-inflicted, like the British invasion of Egypt to overthrow Nasser in 1956. But by the time of the Suez crisis the British empire was already on its deathbed. The disaster only represented a final nail in its coffin. Perhaps the better analogy is the Boer War, at the height of the British imperial power, when the inability of its forces to defeat a few thousand Boer farmers damagingly exposed both Britain’s real lack of military strength and its diplomatic isolation.

In many ways the guerilla war in Iraq resembled Vietnam. A year after it started I talked to US sappers with the highly dangerous job of looking for buried bombs, known as IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), usually several heavy artillery shells wired together and detonated by a long wire or by remote control. These so-called “convoy killers” were to prove a devastating weapon, causing half of US fatal casualties. The sappers explained they had received no training for the job. “I never heard of an IED before I came to Iraq,” remarked one soldier. A sergeant said that he had with difficulty obtained an old but still valid US Army handbook, printed during the Vietnam war, about this type of bomb and the lethal booby traps often placed nearby to kill unwary sappers. He believed the army had not reissued the handbook, useful though it was, because doing so might appear to contradict the official line from the Pentagon that Iraq was not like Vietnam.

DENVER (Nov. 9) – There will be prayer, and perhaps the laying on of hands. There will be counseling and a confession. And there will be advice, confrontation and rebuke from “godly men” appointed to oversee the spiritual “restoration” of the Rev. Ted Haggard.

After tumbling from the pinnacle of the American evangelical movement amid allegations he snorted meth and cavorted with a male prostitute, Haggard has agreed to a rehabilitation process that could last three to five years.

“I see success approximately 50 percent of the time,” said H.B. London, vice president for church and clergy at Focus on the Family, the conservative Christian ministry in Colorado Springs. “Guys just wear out and they can no longer subject themselves to the process.”

BISCARROSSE, France (Nov. 9) – France test-fired a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles for the first time on Thursday and said the launch was a success.

The M51 missile — which is designed to carry a nuclear payload — has a range of 6,000 km (3,726 miles), 50 percent further than that of the missile currently in service.

DETROIT — His shrill voice pains sensitive ears. In the red states of the South and West, he ramps up his Texas twang as he brags on his war and hurls insults and lies about those who don’t share his views. President George W. Bush says he’s “pleased with the progress in Iraq,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is doing a “fantastic job,” and those who support Democrats “want the terrorists to win.”

Bush goes well beyond gutter rhetoric and the politics of desperation. He is a delusional madman and a disgrace to our national heritage. When young people hear the president of the United States talking as he does, it’s no wonder their perception of politics and public life is so low.

The man who ran for the presidency claiming “I’m a uniter, not a divider” is one of the most divisive figures in American history and he will only get worse as his fiasco in Iraq continues to spiral into the abyss and the nation unravels.

Bush says, with mindless repetition, that we will “win the war,” when the fact is, we are slogging it out in a conflict that screams for a political solution he is unwilling to confront as any reasonable leader would.

* Served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1991 until 1993. He was the only career officer in CIA history to rise from entry-level employee to director of central intelligence. Joined the CIA in 1966.

* Recently has been deeply involved in bipartisan discussions on Iraq as member of Iraq Study Group headed by former Secretary of State James Baker. The group is expected by the end of the year to issue alternative ideas for a way forward in Iraq.

* First nominated as CIA director in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan but withdrew amid questions over his and the CIA’s role in the secret sales of arms to Iran and the diversion of profits to Nicaragua’s contra rebels. In hearings in 1991 Gates admitted mistakes and said he should have done more to get at the truth.

* Served as deputy director of Central Intelligence from 1986 to 1989 and as deputy national security adviser for President George Bush at the White House from 1989 until 1991.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US envoy in Baghdad who tried to conciliate the Sunni people, is to leave his post in the next few months said a senior member of the US administration.

“Khalilzad really failed because greater Sunni political participation has not reduced the violence and has at the same time angered the Shia,” said a senior Kurdish political figure.

Appointed ambassador to Iraq in April 2005 Mr Khalilzad played a highly active role in Iraqi politics but the crisis has worsened dramatically during his tenure.