Ten years after

Nope. Still not over it.

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction."

-- Dick Cheney, 9/8/02

"Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

-- George W. Bush, 10/7/02

"We will win this conflict. We will win it easily."

-- John McCain, 1/22/03

My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

-- Colin Powell at the UN, 2/5/03

"[T]he area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

-- Donald Rumsfeld, 3/30/03

"There's a certain amount of pop psychology in America that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all."

-- Bill Kristol, 4/1/03

"Who said war never solved anything?"

-- Brendan Miniter, The Wall Street Journal, 4/8/03

"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals."

-- Charles Krauthammer, 4/19/03

TED KOPPEL: "[Y]ou’re not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is going to be done for $1.7 billion?"
ANDREW NATSIOS (Agency for International Development): "Well, in terms of the American taxpayer's contribution, I do. This is it for the U.S."

-- Nightline, 4/23/03

"(Liberals) can't deny that President Bush has won his two wars, and won them resoundingly."

-- Paul Mirengoff at Powerline, 4/26/03

"The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."

-- Tony Snow (later Bush's press secretary) on Fox News, 4/27/03

Five years later:

As the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq neared, Vice President Cheney flew unannounced into Baghdad on Monday and declared the U.S. effort to install democracy and stabilize Iraq a "successful endeavor" that has been "well worth the effort." … The vice president used the opportunity to reassert that there was "a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda" before the U.S. invasion, despite reports that have found no operational ties between the two.

And five years ago today:

Cheney: On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success.
Martha Raddatz: Two thirds of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.
Cheney: So?
Martha Raddatz: So? You don’t care what the American people think?
Cheney: No.

Here also...

The History of the Friedman Unit

(Below from 5/18/06)

For weeks now, liberal bloggers have proposed a new measurement to mark the mildly optimistic, if farfetched, pronouncements on Iraq coming from many pundits, Republicans, and White House spokesmen: the 'Friedman Unit' or ‘F.U.’ It equals six months, and is named after famed New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a longtime supporter of the war who, for nearly three years, has repeatedly declared that things would likely turn around there if we just give it another six months.

The full listing of Friedman Unit pronouncements.

Bush Lowballed the Cost of the Iraq War by $6 Trillion



What We Did to Iraq

The US public was always carefully protected by its media from full knowledge of what the US government did to Iraq. The networks had a rule of never showing blood. They almost never showed wounded Iraqis with bloody bandages. Of course, they never showed dismemberment (bodies blown up, unlike in Hollywood movies, don’t just pile up whole). Since Arabic satellite TV showed such images every day, the Arab world and the US saw two different wars on their screens. US media almost never interviewed Iraqi politicians (magazine shows like 60 Minutes very occasionally took up that task). Frequently, Pentagon talking points were swallowed whole. Propaganda about ‘al-Qaeda’ and Zarqawi being responsible for “80%” of the violence was used to hide from Americans that there were both Sunni and Shiite resistance movements against American occupation, and that they were Iraqis and widespread. 

The US created a power vacuum and exercised a pro-Shiite favoritism in Iraq that fostered a Sunni-Shiite civil war. At its height in 2006-2007, as many as 3,000 Iraqis were being killed a month by militias. Many showed signs of acid or drilling or electrical torture. The Baghdad police had to establish a corpse patrol in the morning to collect the cadavers. How many Iraqis died as a result of the US invasion and occupation will never be known with any precision, but I think 200,000 would be the lower minimum. Since three to four times as many people are typically wounded as killed in conflict situations, that would suggest that as many as one million Iraqis were killed or wounded, some 4% of the population.

The US rounded up some 25,000 Iraqis at the height of the conflict, and their Shiite Iraqi government allies held another 25,000. The vast majority were Sunni Arabs. This 50,000 were in a vast gulag at any one time, but tens of thousands circulated through this system. Many were arbitrarily arrested, for simply being young men in the general vicinity of a bombing or other guerrilla activity. Very large numbers were tortured.

US troops sometimes committed excesses. One national guard unit was known for laying down suppressive fire whenever a bomb went off in their vicinity. This tactic ensured that they killed Iraqi pedestrians after a market bombing. US troops sometimes shot drivers who did not know English and could not understand commands to slow down at checkpoints. How widespread actual atrocities were is always difficult to gauge in the fog of war.

Do you feel safer?

Update: The Last Letter, by Tomas Young.

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.  

[...]

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

The Weekly Wrangle (live from Bracketville)

The Texas Progressive Alliance has its NCAA tournament brackets all filled out as it brings you this week's roundup.

The Republicans, perhaps unwittingly, offer the Democrats a deal on redistricting, which Off the Kuff thinks they ought to give serious consideration to taking.

Dan Patrick wants to pull a Jan Brewer and Dos Centavos tells you what is going on with SB1128 in what might fast become another Republican-created debate on just what kind of history is taught at Texas colleges and universities.

The stock market surge is breaking records, but strangely neither the Republicans nor the Democrats want to talk about it, much less take credit for it. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has noticed the anamoly.

At TexasKaos, Libby Shaw has a bone to pick with the City of Houston. Check out Houston: It is illegal to feed homeless people, but country clubs get tax cuts.  

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants you to know that we're #1 in minimum wage jobs. Just what the crony capitalists pulling Republican strings ordered.  

WCNews at Eye on Williamson says all we ever hear from is the center and the right. It's long past time for pushback from the left.

Neil at Texas Liberal was in Los Angeles this past week. When he's on the road, Neil tries to make the time to visit a veterans' cemetery. This picture is from the main veterans' cemetery in Los Angeles.

 ========================= 

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Greg's Opinion revealed the secret, untapped Democratic voting bloc: apartment dwellers. And then the Daily Kos helpfully followed up on it later the same day. (Note the two GOP Congresscritters most endangered by this strategy: TX-24 (Kenny Marchant) and TX-07 (John Culberson).

Letters from Texas suggests we need to move beyond the usual debates on public education.

News Taco rounds up reaction to the death of former ambassador and mayor of El Paso Raymond Telles.

Keep Austin Wonky describes the choice Austin must make on urban rail routes.

Burnt Orange Report was there for the Battleground Texas launch in Austin.

Grits for Breakfast reports on a bill from Rep. Harold Dutton that would reduce the penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana.

The Texas State Teachers Association points out that public schools don't have waiting lists.

Nonsequiteuse documents AG Greg Abbott's hypocrisy about misleading medicine.

Texpatriate notes that there is in fact a candidate for governor that would be worse than Rick Perry.

Jason Stanford tells Dan Patrick that keeping public and private school athletics separate is actually not like the civil rights struggle at all.

Texas Leftist reminds us that the Family Research Council really hates the ladies.

Beyond Bones reminds us that now is an excellent time to be looking up at the sky.

And finally, The Bloggess reveals the untold truth about McDonald Land.

Stock market soars, but nobody's talking about it

It's been kind of an unintentional theme here for awhile, even in the Funnies: the old "rich get richer, poor get poorer" story. What's different this time is that neither political party wants to talk about it, much less take credit for it. Joe Concha at Mediaite nails it.

... Obama portrays himself as a savior of the middle class. His primary function, as successfully articulated in the campaign that earned him a second term, is to shelter working folks from Republicans, who, of course, only exist to protect their rich buddies currently waterskiing behind a yacht near you.

Mantra: Tax the top 1% even more, make them pay their fair share, level the playing field, and give everyone else a break.

Most Republicans portray themselves as saviors of the economy and capitalism. Their primary function is to prevent the President/Democrats from spending us into oblivion (some call it Greece) as evidenced by our $17 trillion debt…about $7 trillion of which was spent under the current administration.

Mantra: Stop the bleeding, balance the budget, allow more folks to keep their hard-earned money, and party like its 1986 again.

In a related story, Friday’s Dow closed down slightly at a still-eye-popping 14,514, ending its longest winning streak in nearly 17 years. This kind of rally, these record-highs, are usually great news for the party in power. But for a guy who enjoys spiking the football on any issue resembling success, Mr. Obama rarely broaches the subject.

Republicans are mum as well. After all, any good economic news (in their view) can’t be good for the party going into the midterm election season (which starts in seven minutes). That’s not saying [...] that the GOP is rooting for Americans to suffer…it just means you won’t really hear any conservatives in government or its brand of media bring it up. 

This past Friday, every single Republican (and six Democrats) in the House voted against raising the minimum wage. That vote doesn't seem to reflect the will of the 71% of Americans -- which includes half of all Republicans, mind you -- who support raising the federal minimum.

I know this is going to come as a shock, but your Congresscritter -- unless you live in a deep blue district -- is out of touch with you, his constituent. If lifting the minimum wage can't be done in an economy where the rich people are this rich, it probably can't be done with this Congress. But it also may not be -- even here, in Houston's latest boom -- the minimum wage that is all of the sputtering economic problem.

Let's not digress, though.

So why isn’t the President taking credit for the market’s awesome performance?

Here’s one theory: As mentioned earlier, the President says he’s a champion for Main Street, not Wall Street. If he touts the Dow busting through another ceiling, he’ll only be contradicting the Occupy Wall Street crowd he subtlety aligned with during the campaign (when he was drawing a contrast with a very rich Republican nominee). The way Mr. Obama’s surrogates in the media laid out the argument when courting votes, Wall Street is a place where corporate raiders like Gordon Gekko and Mitt Romney get rich on the backs of the middle class. To suddenly say a big bull market is a good thing for the country as a whole would somehow be seen as hypocritical, the improving 401k argument notwithstanding. 

Concha has some other ideas, and includes an explanation of quantitative easing that everyone ought to read.

Corporations doing better doesn’t necessarily mean its employees are also (consumer incomes are at a 20-year low, for example). Hence why President Obama didn’t mention the market’s performance even once during his most recent interview with George Stephanopoulos last week, a conversation dominated by the economy. Creating more millionaires is soooo Republican in the President’s eyes, but that’s exactly what’s going on, and that’s exactly why he ain’t talking.

And when the President wants to avoid a subject, so do (for the most part) his allies in the media. A booming stock market, particularly one breaking records that had existed for nearly two decades, should be a lead story on, say, MSNBC. But all we hear about is how horrible Paul Ryan’s budget is, or all about the legion of doom at CPAC, then we ever do about what’s unfolding on Wall Street.

I know it's a barrel of laughs to make fun of Sarah Palin -- and whatever revolting thing has most recently fallen out of the mouth of Ted Cruz, or Louie Gohmert or even some shithole who doesn't represent Texas -- but I am just worn out on that. Somebody needs to talk about what's really happening, after all.

As for conservative media, it’s the same deal. For Sean Hannity or The Five to lead their programs talking about a historic rally would appear too favorable to the President’s economic record amidst the gloom and doom normally hammered home on a daily basis. 

At least we haven't heard as much bleating about Obama being a socialist of late, have we?

In other news, Rick Perry is digging his little heels in on Medicaid expansion. If he had even 10% as much empathy as Rob Portman, we would still be left hoping that Griffin Perry would come out of the closet as poverty-stricken.

But that seems as possible as the governor himself finally declaring he is gay.

Sunday Funnies

Scott Prouty's "47%" video blackballed by Kossacks

So if you watched "The Ed Show" last night, you saw the bartender who recorded Mitt Romney's loose lips that sank his own ship. It was a Hall-of-Fame moment in populist political activism.

Prouty, a Midwest native, took his Canon camera to the fundraiser, thinking Romney might pose for photos with the event staff. Instead, he captured Romney speaking about "the 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them. Who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing."

The bartender said in a series of embargoed phone and in-person interviews with The Huffington Post that he decided to make the video public and posted clips online, hoping they would go viral.

There's more at this HuffPo link about Prouty, who is about as unlikely a progressive patriot as we are likely to get in the Social Media Golden Age. He could have made an enormous amount of money long ago (still might, hope he does), but he was motivated by things other than that after he left the Boca Raton fundraiser that mid-May, 2012 evening. The timeline of how the momentum was slow to build is here. But the most interesting thing to me is that the denizens of the alleged progressive community Daily Kos got Prouty blocked after just a few snips of his video were uploaded to the site.

"There was some pushback from people you wouldn't expect to push back," he told The Huffington Post. "To be banned from Daily Kos -- I had been a longtime reader. ... That was maybe the biggest surprise."

His profile is still accessible on Daily Kos, but individual items have been taken down.

The man said that other Daily Kos community members accused him of posting fake videos and didn't believe his protestations to the contrary. "They later apologized. Kos chastised the community," the man said.

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas explained in an email to HuffPost that the filmmaker had "posted 6-second clips of audio, without offering any proof or further authentication. The Daily Kos community is hyper-sensitive to people trying to play them for fools, and his claims weren't borne out by the audio clips he was posting." (The clips can be found here.)

That is one big black eye for the Great Orange Satan. Some Kos diarists still seem to be insistent on killing the messenger in order to feel righteous about having stifled the message and thus protected the website's, ah, reputation.

I have a lot of appreciation for what DK does generally, but this episode highlights one of the worst things about online fora ('communities', they prefer): this incestuous tendency to refuse, even blackball, those who don't buy into the groupthink. It's why I have moved to reading them to see what's being disseminated and not what's being discussed -- same as with places like Democratic Underground, and even the Chron.com comments underneath the stories there. I sill like to play in those sandboxes, but spend a lot less time there than I used to. It had the end result of simply being a massive waste of time and effort.

It's not just that those opportunities for self-expression can result in a reader losing faith in the human race (they can); it's that they are no longer populated by people with whom you want to have a conversation, civil or otherwise. There's some wheat there, but you have to wade through too much chaff to get to it. If you have more than 1000 people in your Twitter or Facebook feed, you know what I'm talking about: too many rants, too many comedians, too much bragging about what's being seen, done, and eaten; too many prayers and prayer solicitations... you get the idea. And culling the narcissists and publicity hounds is not enough. You have to defuse the urge in yourself to follow the herd in "building your brand".

So now I just concentrate on my little shop here and if people want to read what I write, fine. I'm well off the beaten path anyway and certainly not everybody's cup of tea. The problem, as Prouty has learned, is that even when you know you've got something newsworthy, it's difficult to get noticed.

"It was harder than you imagine to get the story out there," (Prouty) said.

Maybe this is a good thing for the left: some self-vetting. We have always been less likely to advance things like "Friends of Hamas", for example.

Anyway, the moral of the story remains 'be careful about what you read on the Internet'. Even here. ;^)