"Iraq’s fragile coalition government failed again Saturday to reach agreement on the formation of a cabinet or on whether to ask some U.S. forces to remain beyond December — leaving the Obama administration with an ever-shorter timetable to complete the withdrawal or manage the political fallout from staying."
------------------------------------
Sadly funny or funnily sad, take your pick.
My heart is with the American, British and other coalition soldiers who have given so much for the fantasy of neocon revolutionary aspirations.
They were put in the position of having to do that because the lying bastards in the Bush Administration sold the American people the untruth that Iraq still possessed a nuclear weapons program in 2003. This evil propaganda campaign included encouragement of the unsupported belief of many uninformed Americans that Iraq had participated in the 9/11 attacks. On the basis of the success of this "information operation," people like Cheney and Wolfowitz dragged the US to invasion of Iraq and at least ten years of war there.
We used every instrument available to us to put Maliki back into power after the last election. Did we really think that the coaltion he assembled was made up of our friends?
Iran has won the long game in Iraq.
Let us pick up our marbles and go home where we can brood on the folly of tinkering with the contents of other peoples' souls. pl
Now....now Colonel, all is not lost.
After all, Bush and Cheney's corporate cronies managed to steal,(er..o... I mean make) tons of money out of this debacle.
At least it has been a good ride for those boys.
Posted by: highlander | 10 July 2011 at 11:27 AM
Murdoch was the main propagandist for the Iraq War. “Rupert Murdoch lamented what he described as a “loss of power” due to the ascension of the Internet and other new media"
http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p=341
Compare this filthy rich mogul with the brave Assange and the Wikileaks attempts to make the public informed about the authorities dirty deeds
Posted by: Anna-Marina | 10 July 2011 at 11:43 AM
highlander
And it continues. In addition to the legit contracts, the money being made in kickbacks from Afghan partners is impressive. pl
Posted by: Patrick Lang | 10 July 2011 at 11:57 AM
http://www.ivaw.org/
Col, U.S.-Brit troops too, who have learned about the lies you exactly depict, have a responsibility to seperate themselves from those whom
still support and even idolize the Bush criminals.
It seems to me that any individual who volunteered after the release of the Kay Report's decisive dismissal of the lies because that individual
still believed in the neocon version of the "war on terror," has a certain responsibility in these matters.
But perhaps I was too shaped by the Vietnam Vets Against the War's precedent?
Do you differ?
Posted by: Ken Hoop | 10 July 2011 at 03:05 PM
Ken Hoop
My only regets about the war in SE Asia are that
1- So many in the American left supported the communist enemy and
2- We did not win when we could have. pl
Posted by: Patrick Lang | 10 July 2011 at 03:21 PM
I advise to quit reading any article at the first use of "fragile government". It's bound to be nothing but colonialist propaganda.
Posted by: par4 | 10 July 2011 at 04:12 PM
My question more spoke to the responsibility of servicemen but...
You do agree that the alleged monolithic Communist Conspiracy replete with Domino Theory advanced scarily by the US elite was disproven and/or a hoax.
"National communisms" as in Vietnam, Cambodia etc
and their competing sponsors were not a monolith and presented no domino threat to the American Nation as opposed to Empire.
"Victory" would have also necessitated staying until a stable and popular pro-American Vietnamese government was installed.
Not just a defeat of North Vietnam. Not easily doable. Might still be there.
Posted by: Ken Hoop | 10 July 2011 at 04:40 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/world/middleeast/11military.html?hp
Posted by: arbogast | 10 July 2011 at 04:49 PM
Ken Hoop
Vietnam.Laos and Cambodia all fell to the communoists with horrific results. pl
Posted by: Patrick Lang | 10 July 2011 at 05:33 PM
"My only regets about the war in SE Asia are that
1- So many in the American left supported the communist enemy and
2- We did not win when we could have. pl"
Pat, couldn't you simply remove the communist in "communist enemy" and it would be equally odious to you?
I consider myself somewhat of a left-leaning free-thinker. Forgive me for analyzing the Vietnam war through my worldview which has basically been formed post 9/11. I know nothing other than what I've read of the feelings of serving patriots who endured abuse and vitriol from the anti-war types that era.
I don't think the American left supported the communists out of any shared ideology. In my experience, the communists (Stalin) reserved most of their hatred for those they viewed as the bourgeois liberals.
To me it seems what is viewed as support for the communists more properly reflected discontent with a perception that the war was a lost cause and an unnessary waste of blood and treasure.
I have no defense for the Jane Fonda types.
I do know that it was common for many on the right post 2004 to accuse those on the left of sympathy for the terrorists and insurgents due to their disillusionment with the broad "war on terror". I found that to be a flawed argument on multiple levels.
40 years from now some of those people, some of whom may have even served in Iraq/AFG, will still feel that way rightly or wrongly.
Posted by: Will Reks | 10 July 2011 at 06:45 PM
Will Reks
The enemy in VN were both "communist" and "enemy." It would be falsely easy to think of thm as merely nationalists. They WERE nationalists, but so were the RVN. The differences was that if the enemy had been just nationalists, they would not have had such an inclination for their agitprop cadres to hold "people courts" to try and execute small landowners and schoolteachers in the villages. Stalin may have despised liberals but the Vietnamese communists were much loved by the American left as their soul mates. Do you think that all communists were Stalinists? The desire of the American left for a communist victory was based in this feeling of comradeship as was the hatred that the left here bred for the people fighting their "comrades." It is revisionist nonsense to pretend that the left in America were merely anti-war. BTW, there was nothing hopeless about the war against the communists. The communists won becaue the American people chose to believe what you are spouting here. Go ask the millions of Vietnamese who fled from a communist victory what the enemy were. pl
Posted by: Patrick Lang | 10 July 2011 at 09:17 PM
Will Reks:
"left-leaning free-thinker" is an oxymoron.
Posted by: graywolf | 10 July 2011 at 10:42 PM
I think you misunderstood my point about the communist enemy. It should not have mattered that they were communist. They were the enemy.
No matter. I will not comment further on the subject.
Posted by: Will Reks | 10 July 2011 at 11:54 PM
Will Reks
Ah, I did misunderstand. you ar eright it would have made no difference if they had been republicans, but the communist agenda made it a great deal worse. pl
Posted by: Patrick Lang | 11 July 2011 at 12:55 AM