The Iraq War at 20

After that start-off by Two-Party Opera, let's add a few more thoughts. March 20 is the official start, but, I'm jumping the gun a day with Brian's prodding, and it may still have been March 19 in DC when "go was the word" anyway.

First, like World War I and II are really part of a thread, so are the original Gulf War and the Iraq War. Connection? House of Bush.

Actually, there's three parts to that thread, arguably. The first being the Carter-era Iran hostage crisis. 

According to former Texas House speaker Barnes, Poppy Bush was not part of that, it seems. Rather, in a big twist? John Connally was.

The Gulf War? Before my blogging time. Before there really was a civilian internet. But, I remember the controversy over depleted uranium tank shells. I remember Poppy Bush later being attacked from his right for stopping the war early. 

And, of course, connecting it to the Iraq War? I remember the sanctions and their punishment on Iraq. I remember Madeleine Albright, as Clinton's Secretary of State, writing off the many thousands of deaths they caused.

The Iraq War itself? We know the only "Mission Accomplished" by Shrub Bush was Turd Blossom Rove's politicizing the war run-up in the 2002 midterms, then again in the 2004 general, as the cowardly Dems warhawked with John Kerry. This was when and why I became a Green.

We know how Obama flip-flopped on the "surge."

And, we know that Lying Glenn Greenwald supported the war, in the preface to the book that made him famous. And lied about it to the point of attacking others who pointed out his lies. Then doubled down on his lying.

Part of why I became a Green? A decade after the invasion, and 8 years after Glennwald supported the invasion in his first big book, a BlueAnon wanker at Daily Kos was STILL regurgitating his lies.

And, 20 years later? Iraq is still a hellhole; Sadrites not under Iran's thumb battle other Shi'ites who are. Sunnis are semi-marginalized. Kurds want still more autonomy and may still push for an independent nation. ISIS lurks at their edges, still.

And, BlueAnon never learned. Dear Leader, with Shillary as his Secretary of State, pushed to bomb Libya, figuring that it too would succumb to shock and awe, then easily be rebuilt. Actual result? North Africa's strongest economy wrecked, and replaced by open slave markets. And, people smart enough in other fields to know better, like Massimo Pigliucci, or Juan Cole, or Bernie Sanders, signed off. (Bernie also voted for the first, and all subsequent, "support the troops" resolutions in Iraq.)

And, BlueAnon still hasn't learned. Even Pope Francis talked about NATO "barking" at Russia, but Warmonger Joe won't listen to him or the Goldilocks Three Bears and start peace talks. And, even within BlueAnon, showing Dem tribalism on war, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including the Fraud, er the Squad, supports the warmongering.

Don't forget that all these wars were started by, or abetted by, lies.

Gulf War? We're still not sure what Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam Hussein; I believe it was indeed the claim that the Bush Administration had no big problems with him taking Kuwait. I also wrote an op-ed column about that. We know, during the run-up to war, about the incubator babies who weren't real, and the Emir of Kuwait hiring Western PR flak.

Iraq War? The lies about the aluminum artillery tubes by Powell et al. Tenet going Hearst reporter to Shrub Bush's William Randolph Hearst in 1898 Cuba. Condi Rice's "smoking gun - mushroom cloud."

Libya? The lies about how easy this would be. The lies about our real intent. The lies, post-Iraq, about how regime change could be done without boots on the ground.

Russia-Ukraine? The lies that we never promised "not one inch further eastward" on NATO expansion, when we did; even Gorby lied about that later in life, just because he hated Putin that much. The lies behind the Minsk Agreements. And more. That's even as Warmonger Joe still opposes real peace talks.

==

Sidebar, and not noted immediately? Our media's responsibility. Via Jeff St. Clair, the New York Slimes' 20th anniversary piece "somehow" never mentions the name of Judith Miller.

And, directly related to that, at Counterpunch, Jeff has a good piece about the selling of the war.

Sidebar: Here's my story about meeting a guy in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico, with a VERY interesting conspiracy theory on how the Gulf War started.

Support the latest Ukrainian peace protest

In your hearts, in your minds, in your blogs, in your words, wherever and whatever — 

Now and before 1 p.m. Eastern time this Saturday, March 18, at the White House —

Support Peace — No Money, No Weapons for the Ukraine War. Main protest here, with information on a growing list of satellite protests elsewhere at the bottom of the link.

This is also the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War — the invasion started March 20, 2003.

Pardon Snowden and/or Assange? ONLY with preconditions

This leftist homey doesn't write blank checks, and this tweet to Greenwald should say it all:

I will support a pardon for Snowden ONLY if .@Snowden answers these questions which you, Glenn Greenwald, never asked him.https://t.co/j2nDpjFaCy
I will support a pardon for Assange ONLY if he tells us what he knew and when he knew it about the source of the SVR-stolen emails

— Your Glenn Greenwald pouty tomato face 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) January 18, 2021

First, Snowden. 

The questions Glenn failed to ask (and Snowden has failed to answer despite being tagged by me on Twitter many times), are from my review of his book.

Short version here. Go to the review for more in-depth versions, with explainers and my tentative answers.

• Question 1: Why didn’t Snowden approach him? 
• Question 2. Snowden talks about cooling his heels in Hong Kong while getting people to bite. What journalists DID he talk to besides Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman and Ewan MacAskill? 
• Question 3: What is he not revealing about his time in Hong Kong before meeting G & P? 
• Question 4 goes straight to Snowden: If he did get other serious nibbles, did they not pan out? Did he cut them out? Why?
• Question 5, or really, a series of related questions: What does he think about Poitras and Greenwald (actually Greenwald, basically) ultimately NOT publishing most of what he gave them? (This is also a question for Glennwald, of course, who lied his ass off when surrendering these jewels to Omidyar.) 
• Question 6: Given Omidyar’s own access to the national security state, did Snowden not think of this possibility in advance? 
• Question 7: Did he not, at this point, rethink going to Wikileaks? 
• Question 8: Had he thought about Greenwald stovepipeing this information? 
• Question 9: Did he really not think that the almighty US Government would find him sooner rather than later? 
• Question 10: How does he reconcile him allegedly having a plan to go to Ecuador with him stating a dozen pages earlier that he chose NOT to originally go to Latin America? (At that point, I think we’ve caught Snowden in an outright lie.) 
• Question 11: How do you explain apparent discrepancies in the passport and the time frame? 
• Question 12: Why does he never mention direct Russian involvement? 
• Question 13: This is unrelated to the spying, but if you were such an idealist, and already at least a bit informed at age 20, why didn’t you oppose the Iraq War?

These were no-brainer questions to me.

As for Assange? Beyond him being the first person to goose the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, his toady-flunky Craig Murray has indicated he knows that Assange knew something about their provenance before the end of 2016, it seems. And, he's never apologized for goosing the conspiracy theory.

Greenwald has been tagged about every time I've tagged Snowden, and has also chosen not to respond.

Beyond wanting to know what Snowden and Assange know, I want to remove the potential veil of martyrdom from them. 

Without that, no pardons.

Let's have video fun with #HillarySoProgressive at the #DemTownHall

I started tuning out Hillary Clinton more and more after her "George Bush hypnotized me into the Iraq War" answer about halfway through. That's because, of course, her actual past, as captured on non-fun video, refudiates her.



I didn't see that video until after the debate, thanks to a retweet by Brains and Eggs.

But, I did start thinking about videos at various points during the debate, and so now, on to the airing of grievances.

First, in relation to the rabbi's two pockets question, we have Gollum and "what has it got in its pocketses"?



Speaking of, doesn't Gollum look a bit like Lloyd Blankfein of GoddamSachs? I have no experience with videoshopping, but in straight photoshopping, could easily make that happen.

Then, thinking of Hilary's neoliberal non-roar? Helen Reddy was probably throwing up in her mouth, wherever she is these days:



Hillary, did you "roar" 675,000 times?

And "Down on Wall Street (stuck in the corner)" is certainly no CCR:



No common touch from her.

Of course, her answers on the Iraq War and her $675K bankster speaking fees only increased her "credibility gap" with me. Speaking of "credibility gap," I thought you'd never ask:

Jim Webb makes it official on the Democratic Prez side

The former Virginia senator and Navy Secretary before that has become the fifth Democrat to enter the presidential campaign, following Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley and Lincoln Chafee.

Webb is probably, overall, the most socially conservative of the candidates, as shown by his stance on some of the issues. He is talking about class-based economic issues more than Clinton, and with more conviction, but he was arguably the last to the gay marriage table of the five Democrats, and by some degree. He opposed the Iraq War, but that is about the only other plus, and, unlike Sanders, or Chafee, wasn't in the Senate to cast a "no" vote on it.

He's got a bad environmental record, and he's made no real effort to make it better. And, his stance on Confederacy-related issues, as well as the flip side of the image of promoting class-based affirmative action, will kill him with black Democrats.

I've not yet voted on my own poll, shown at right, but, assuming Greens don't need my help and I were to vote in the Democratic primary, I would NOT vote for him ahead of Clinton.

Wouldn't it be a great Memorial Day if ...

If we'd had a great start to it last night?

In other words, if during the "national" Memorial Day event at the Mall in DC on Sunday night, the one always hosted by Joe Mantegna and this year including Colin Powell ...

Powell actually admitted he knew that he was telling the United Nations a bunch of lies in early 2003, helping lie us into war in Iraq, a war that he knew was also breaking his old "Pottery Barn" rule about sufficient force?

You know, something like giving an actual apology for the dead — starting with the nearly 5,000 US troops killed, but, since he lied to the United Nations, also acknowledging the estimated 500,000 Iraqi war dead. (That number does not count the dead from the war-spawned ISIS movement and other things, either.)

It's didn't happen. Of course. (More related cartoons here.)

But, wouldn't it be nice?

True, he did have a weaselly half-assed non-apology "apology" four years ago, calling putting out some of this information as accurate as having "blotted my record," but the rest of that statement was blame-shuffling.

If a lot of us at the time of his speech knew stuff in there was inaccurate, Powell's sad trombone that he was forced to speak to the UN with just four days to review stuff

And, he knows it. And should be called out on it. Like this. He's still a liar, only one who is self-consciously trying to preserve his political legacy.

And, while Bush and Cheney were bad enough, in some ways, Powell was worse.

Beyond his Pottery Barn rule (and he surely knew that Don Rumsfeld's military force plans were inadequate), a career military man lying us into war, and lying soldiers to their deaths, is even worse than a civilian doing that.

And, at least one active-duty field general, Lucian Truscott, even apologized to his own dead from WWII.

And, beyond that, a straight non-apology from Shrub, or a snarl from Darth Chaney, is better in my book than a non-apology "apology" that's about a political legacy.

Also, he's spawned elected civilian politicians getting even more nutty since then, like potential GOP presidential candidate Huckleberry J. Butchmeup, among others, blaming Obama for the Iraq War not being a "success." Strange that he doesn't blame Powell/Bush/Cheney for the Afghanistan War not being a success because of all the force we diverted to Iraq.

Of course, the biggest apology is owed by tea partiers who continue to lie about what led to Memorial Day in the first place.

Conservative ministers hypocritically fuse church, state, military

A friend of a friend on Facebook recently posted one of these memes with attacking Clinton and Obama for lack of military service.

First, there's three big things militarily "wrong" with the picture.

One is that Shrub Bush, of course, used Air National Guard service, quite sporadically, to avoid Vietnam. Two is that the draft had ended before Obama graduated high school and thus he was not subject to Selective Service call-up.

And three is that Reagan, while in the Reserves even before World War II started abroad, let alone Pearl Harbor, was blind as a bat, never saw actual military work, and spent most of his active duty time making war movies, to be followed 25-50 years later by ongoing massive self-deception that he had in fact fought in World War II.

There's three things wrong with the attitude of the person who posted it, too. This gentleman, a Rev. Kevin Wenker is a pastor in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the main denomination of the conservative, even fundamentalist, wing of Lutheranism. (This, and his Facebook posts in general, are posted as "public," therefore, per my standards about social media and blogging or resharing, I'm not violating any privacy.)

The first thing wrong is a selective lack of respect, which is addressed in this gentleman's scriptures by Romans 13:

1 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience. 

6 This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. 7 Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

I highlighted that last line on purpose. Because that's obviously not being done by this gentleman, nor by thousands of other conservative Christian ministers, of whom he is a type.

Clearly, above cheap spoofing at both Obama and Clinton, the Obama picture bears either the insinuation that he is a Muslim, or was born in Africa. Both are, of course, lies, which is far below respect and honor.

The second thing wrong is somewhat related. It's the assumption that because the politics of one president, or one president's party, more than another, align with certain mores and doctrine of a denomination, that president should be run up the flagpole and saluted.

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is "pro-life," and hence, part of the love for GOP presidents. But it, and most Protestant churches, who have quasi-officially, or at the individual pastor level, supported a man deliberately waging a war that was stupid, whether or not Augstinianly unjust, aren't so pro-life; that's even more true if they support the death penalty. 

Catholics, at least popes, get this right, with opposing the death penalty, and John Paul II questioning the Iraq invasion.

Heck, my own LCMS minister daddy got this right, in his last congregation, when some of his members got too gung-ho about running the Iraq War up the flagpole and saluting it.

Of course, the LCMS, like most conservative Protestant churches, has many members close to, or in Tea Party country, opposing Obamacare as "socialism" and more.

To that, and to Southern Baptists — per Jefferson's Danbury letter to Baptists — I note the fusion of church and state.

As for "supporting the troops"? This gets back to more and more veterans who say to wingnut types that your "thanks for your sacrifice" words are empty bullshit. I "support the troops" by not wanting them sent to stupid wars in the first place.

And, per Romans 13, and per additional blogging of friends like Dan Fincke, this is just another example of how fundamentalists can be selective about their fundamentalism.

Andrew Sullivan quits blogging; I shall cry no rivers for Sully's #hypocrisy

So Andrew Sullivan is giving up blogging? Boo hoo.

Because, Sully, I'm going to deconstruct your farewell post just like I was PolitiFact.

Let's start here:

(W)e experienced 9/11 together in real time – and all the fraught months and years after; and then the Iraq War; and the gay marriage struggles of the last fifteen historic years. We endured the Bush re-election together

A funny statement to make, as I just Tweeted Sully. Yes, per Wiki, he "repented" in time to vote for John Kerry in 2004. However, he was dumb enough to support a moral conservative in the first place in 2000.

Beyond that, his "four cardinal sins" on supporting the Iraq War in the first place show someone shockingly ignorant of geopolitics in general and the Arab world in particular, thus invoking some sort of Peter Principle issues.

Of course, that same general lack of brilliance led him to name his own personal "journalism" awards after Brat Pack "journalists" Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein.

Of course, as Wiki also reminds, and I do too, only more bluntly, that's due to Sully's "Bell Curve" infatuation, which I must say is high-grade racialism and nothing less.

And, that led to some blog spoofing by me, here, for the blog post where my Photoshopping above first appeared.

That in turn was part of his general work for a racist magazine, which is what The New Republic was. Hell, maybe he was having gay sex with Marty Peretz (who is far more nutty than painted at that link) for all I know.

Speaking of, and back to that part of his farewell.

He wasn't fighting the struggles for gay marriage 15 years ago. As Wiki reminds, per this Salon piece, 12 years ago he was fighting the fight on the down low for bearback gay sex at a time when AIDS concerns in the gay community were still pretty damned high. (Showing the weirdness of Salon at times, two years earlier, another writer defended him.)

Yeah, he eventually got married. But, not until three years after Massachusetts legalized gay marriage. So, again, Sully, not in front on that fight.

It's all part of Sully's seeming hypocrisy, the hypocrisy that makes him at least as much a "cafeteria Catholic" as a John Kerry.

Next?

This:

You were there when I couldn’t believe Palin’s fantasies.

What about your own fantasies, namely that Bristol Palin was Trigg Palin's mom? I eventually repented of following you and the "Palin Deception" website down that rabbithole, finding more reasonable possible explanations for Sarah's nuttery around Trigg's birth. But you, apparently, never did. 

Then this:

You were there when … we live-blogged the Green Revolution for an entire month.

Ahh, yes, when Twitter was supposedly the force overturning Iran, then the whole non-democratic world.

That was a conceit that was being refuted even as Sully mouthed it. I tackled some of that nonsense here.

It's all part of Sully's seeming hypocrisy, the hypocrisy that makes him at least as much a "cafeteria Catholic" as a John Kerry.

I don't begrudge at all his personal reasons for leaving. But, per the hypocrisy, he probably was about to fracture his spine figuring out new ways to triangulate himself.

Also, I don't get some liberals who think he's the bees' knees.

Was money the reason to quit?

I am not sure.

His last post says he was making $1 million revenue/year. Now, deducting for assistance (staff of about 10 at peak, perhaps; 7 non-Sully plus one intern listed now) ... overhead, etc., could he afford all this? Assume Sully paid himself $150K. The seven others, on average, about $80K. That’s $700K; whatever he paid the intern and overhead... yea, he was making money. Maybe not as rich as whatever Atlantic paid him before, but I don’t think he was going broke.

On the other hand, a WaPost story says he took no salary in the first year. And, it's not clear how well he maintained his renewal rate. Matthew Ingram talked about some of this early on.

On the third hand, he doesn't mention finances as a reason to throw in the towel.

Beyond that, I don't get why he had so many followers.

Half of what he posted was too short for even a Tumblr. That's why, beyond not agreeing with much of what he said, I don't get why that many people would pay to read him. In that way, he reminded me of Duncan Black, aka Atrios, running the blog Eschaton, which, while more liberal than Sully, years ago became just as short if not shorter on a regular basis.

The only sidebar to this is that it shows his vaunted tip jar/self-subscription model for blogging may not be such a model. Here is my original thoughts on his setting up his subscription model riff on a tip jar. I didn't think about it at the time, but, on the model he proposed, it's "interesting" that he missed the whole "tragedy of the commons" angle.

Actually, it's not "interesting" — it's really a "no duh." Libertarian types in general refuse to acknowledge such a thing even exist. I love the sound of petards hoisting in the morning!

The New Republic is on life support? Good. #TNR is trash

Really, TNR died long ago.

It died when Marty Peretz inflicted his ultra-Zionism, plus his racism, on the journal. That's why, contra this former intern's claim, it's far, far away from "heterodox liberalism." Hell, Vox isn't the first place to halfway note that, as I blogged a few years back. Well, if you're on the Council for Foreign Relations, it's probably flat-out liberalism.

And, Mr. Greenberg, if it's impolite for me to email you calling Marty Peretz a racist? If you'd had a Twitter account, I would have done it more publicly, so consider yourself lucky.

And, if I had wanted to be impolite, I would have called Peretz a fucking racist, not just a racist.

Besides, The Nation publicly called you out. So did Gawker (insert irony, since new TNR owner Chris Hughes wants a new Gawker or something), but with more snark.

But, back to TNR's nearly 40 years of history being owned by ... a racist.

Instead, it had a nearly 40-year history of racism, racism fueled in part by a particular version of ultra-Zionism that is part of why some blacks have long been less than fully trusting of all Jews. Sorry, but I went there.

And, for Jews, especially with some degree of Zionism, to stay on, and to stay on not just through Peretz's craptacular management in general, but his racism, well ... it's no wonder that a lot of black journalists like Ta-Nehisi Coates feel little sadness for your loss.

Hell, I wouldn't blame them if they had a shade or two of schadenfreude. It would be well-deserved.

That said, back to the racism.

It's racism that was only further fueled when Andrew Sullivan (anybody calls him a liberal, I'll kick you in the nads) devoted a full issue of the magazine to singing a paean to Charles Murray's and Richard Herrnstein's love song to racialism, "The Bell Curve," a move that inspired my bit of Photoshopping at left. And a bit of punditry about that Photoshopping.

Dylan Byars at Politico has the inside-the-Beltway mourning for the mag, which is cutting its print issues in half, looking to go digital first, and ... moving to New York!

Quelle horreur!

In reality? TNR was a training ground for some neoliberals, and even more a lot of neoconservatives.

You know, the type that, at various levels of alleged liberalism, worked to give Shrub Bush pseudointellectual, pseudoliberal "cover" for invading Iraq.

Yes, since Peretz finally let go of the paper, it's gotten better on not being racist. But, the inside-the-Beltway thinking otherwise? From the occasional articles I've grokked online, little has changed there.

For those who claim TNR wasn't racist, an old cover.
Via Ta-Nehesi Coates' Twitter feed.

Who, outside the Beltway, would mourn that, or call it "heterodox liberalism"? Speaking of, I wonder how national Democrats will pontificate. Or national bloggers? Why am I not surprised that Josh Marshall called TNR, Peretz version, "really good"?

Additional serious points about its current status.

The Daily Beast nails one other angle.

Current owner Chris Hughes is a co-founder of Facebook. He's been a partner in Gawker.

You can form some idea of what the new TNR is going to look like just from that.

Clickbait articles. Political gossip. Political picture. A bit gussied up, still. Commentary to hold that together.

In other words, a kinder, gentler version of the UK's clickbait newspaper, The Daily Mail.

On the other hand, for the Dylan Byars types and beyond? Some people at TNR, and probably starting with Leon Wieseltier, probably did need some kicking around.

As for what this does, or does not, say about #JournalismIsDying, political/opinion mags have been money-losers for decades. Ask National Review and The Nation. Rich benefactors is the only way they stay afloat.

Chris Hughes will either become a rich benefactor, or his Facebooky click-bait model will fail without his wallet, and he'll move on. If we're lucky, Hughes will screw up enough to kill it.

That said, said failure will be blamed on anything and everything else but neoliberalism, and Net 2.0 related items.

===

Corey Robin has some interesting thoughts. While acknowledging that TNR was racist and warmongering, he says that's not what's caused its semi-demise. Rather, in what's probably going to be infuriating to Sully of my Photoshopping, down through the sacked Franklin Foer and everybody who quit in sympathy this week, Robin said that it ran out of intellectual steam.

I would modify that. I'd say that it was rather that its intellectual steam got adopted by so much of the modern GOP, as well as neoliberal Democrats, that its one big idea became an inside-the-Beltway commonplace.

Hitchens gets a hypocrisy beatdown

Acerbic political analyst Christopher Hitchens and former British prime minister Tony Blair debated in Canada last week whether or not religion was a general force for moral good. By voting of students at the debate, among other things, Hitch won a smackdown victory.

But, Josh Rosenau decided to engage in a little monkey-wrenching, asking how Hitch could talk about religion killing so many people when the Iraq war he still supports has done the same!

Touche!

My own take on whether this was a blow below the belt or not?

First, the more snarky take.

Ohhh, what a smackdown! But, surely, Hitch has sent millions of $$$ to his drunkenness-beloved Kurds, has he not?

As for Iraq and Hitch's knowledge, the man had been a correspondent/reporter in the Middle East for more than a decade, if not more than two, before the invasion. It was his ego that led him to portray himself as a special defender of the Kurds; it was his willful ignorance, or overlooking, of the existence of large Kurd populations in Iran and Turkey that blinded him to problems of writing Iraqi Kurds a blank check for independence; and it was his self-righteousness, IMO, that blinded him to the idea that the US government under George W. Bush was the entity to successfully pull this off.

Shorter anti-Hitchens rant? He made his bed, he now gets to sleep in it.

Shorter anti-Hitchens rant 2? If you sleep with dogs, you may catch fleas.

Now, the more serious take.

Can moral stances, or actions with moral consequences, be judged rationally?

Well, basically nothing of importance in terms of human actions is 100 percent rational, but many actions appear to be largely rational. Or, at least, could have been largely rational, given that the actors had a certain degree of consciousness and a certain amount of empirical and/or analytical knowledge.

Both Hitchens' support for the Iraq war and, say, the papacy's opposition to condoms in all cases (before Benedict XVI re-read Moroni's golden plates and decided that penile gloves could be worn in cases of prostitution) are instances of actions that fall under this sphere of judgment.

While deaths due to the Iraq war may not be as high as condom-preventable AIDS deaths in Africa (to use an example Hitch cited from his debate with Blair), the order of magnitude is similar enough for a charge of moral equivalence to be raised rationally against Hitch.

Tony Blair on the spot on British Iraq inquiry

Unlike in the U.S., with President Kumbaya content to follow in the tracks of George Pre-emptive Strike Bush, Great Britain actually exercises its democracy.

That includes a full-blown Iraq War run-up investigation that will have former Prime Minister Tony Blair on the witness stand. Unfortunately, the commission will have no sanctions power.

And, we do not know how much, if any, of the Blair testimony will be done in public. After all, Britain has official state secrets laws more draconian than here in the U.S.

US colonel – TOTALLY leave Iraq by 2010

Col. Timothy Reese, advising Iraq’s Baghdad command, says keeping U.S. forces in Iraq beyond 2010 will only foster a sense of dependency and delayed development in Iraqi forces. Therefore, even though corruption and other problems remain high, it’s time for us to get out:

“As the old saying goes, ‘Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.’ ” Colonel Reese wrote. “Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose.”

Reese said Iraqi troops have become “cooler” to U.S. advisors, imposed new restrictions on troops and done other things that make our presence less and less worthwhile.

Gen. Ray Odierno, Iraq theater commander, stressed, when questioned, that Reese’s comments were NOT official U.S. policy. Speaking of that, official policy calls for us to still have 50K troops there a year from now.

Russ Douthat tries out new Iraq War analogies

And he settles on settles on the 1899-1902 Filipino insurgency.

But, the analogy is weak in several ways. The Huks didn’t have IEDs or AK-47s. They probably did have a more unified population than Iraq’s various rebels do. They had no connections to an outside insurgency. They weren’t religiously based. And, the US was more unified on putting them down, even while using concentration camps, fake cease-fires and other things.

Except for those few errors, Douthat is right, of course.

Russ Douthat tries out new Iraq War analogies

And he settles on settles on the 1899-1902 Filipino insurgency.

But, the analogy is weak in several ways. The Huks didn’t have IEDs or AK-47s. They probably did have a more unified population than Iraq’s various rebels do. They had no connections to an outside insurgency. They weren’t religiously based. And, the US was more unified on putting them down, even while using concentration camps, fake cease-fires and other things.

Except for those few errors, Douthat is right, of course.

Hitchens – latest apologia pro Iraq

Christopher Hitchens is never going to apologize for his drunken boo-hooing for Kurds and his blanket support for invading Iraq.

His latest off-the-wall claim? Invading Iraq was the catalyst for Iran’s new reform push.

Oh, that’s a goodie. Not true, but a goodie.

Was Obama irresponsible on Iraq before election?

Perhaps so, if you follow Just.Another.Politician.™ to the logical conclusion of a statement he made during his surprise visit to Iraq today.

President Obama was asked if, now that he’s in office, he isn’t more like his predecessor, former President George Bush, than he’d care to admit. His response:

“I have a responsibility to make sure that as we bring troops out, that we do so in a careful enough way that we don’t see a complete collapse into violence,” Mr. Obama said. “So some people might say, wait, I thought you were opposed to the war, why don’t you just get them all out right away? Well, just because I was opposed at the outset, it doesn’t’ mean that I don’t have now responsibilities to make sure that we do things in a responsible fashion.”

In other words, the die-hard Obamiacs who are still drinking the Kool-Aid, your man admitted that he is, indeed, Just.Another.Politician.™

Brits even more secretive on Iraq than U.S.

British Defense Minister Jack Straw has officially vetoed publication of British Cabinet minutes about the run-up to the Iraq war.

That action is a first under Britain’s Freedom of Information Act.

And, here’s your hypocrisy alert pull quote:

He added that the public interest in disclosure of the minutes could not "supplant the public interest in maintaining the integrity of our system of government.”

Actually, Jack, I think you just threw government integrity under the bus.

Read the whole story for more.

Chris Hitchens backed invading Iraq because of THIS

Remember how Snitchens boozily bemoaned in late 2002 and early 2003 that nobody understood the Kurds like he did?

And, the "THIS" is?

Kurdistan's disturbing proclivity for female genital circumcision mutilation.

As the story notes, it is the only part of Iraq to practice the barbaric feature.

McCain behind Iraq war push conspiracy?

Raw Story stars connecting the dots about the Bush Administration’s use of the October 2001 anthrax attacks for beating the drums of war against Iraq.

The key is from this Think Progress post.

On October 18, 2001, McCain appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman. When asked how the war in Afghanistan was progressing, McCain volunteered that the invasion of Iraq would be the “second phase” of the War on Terror. He preyed on the public’s fear at the time by claiming that the anthrax “may have come from Iraq” …

Concluding the interview, McCain warned once again that Iraq was next. “The crunch time will be if – and emphasize if – we have to go after Iraq, and then that coalition could be strained,” he said.

There you go – Schmuck Talk Express™ the warmonger.

The ‘real’ price of oil – about $85 per barrel

I put “real” in scare quotes because, of course, the actual real price of oil is what is being paid for it today.

That said, here’s my take on all the burdens, with price, a barrel of oil carries in the way of overhead.

• Speculation — $15
• Dollar inflation — $10
• Iraq invasion premium — $10
• U.S. military oil use in Iraq — $5
• Iran-related instability — $10
• Instability in Nigeria, etc. — $5

That’s a total of $55/bbl, which would give us a price of $85 a barrel, otherwise.

Of that, we can pin about half that on Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Obviously, we have $15 directly related. I’ll add $5 each from Iran instability and speculation, and another $5 as negative feedback from that to dollar inflation. That makes $25 as a broader-market war premium.

That said, the other $10 of speculation money is legitimate, if you’re a speculator. It’s largely based on Peak Oil fears gaining broader acceptance, despite the efforts of traditional Big Oil and part of OPEC to sweep that under the rug.

And, speaking of that, to look at things from the demand side, speculators are exactly right, also.

Kevin Drum somewhat trumpets a relatively minuscule 2 percent drop in highway miles, albeit while admitting it’s just a drop.

And, that’s the whole point. The American public is comfortable with the denialism of American political leaders and oil companies on Peak Oil. As for the latter part of the equation, it’s easier to blame Big Oil conspiracies (even if ExxonMobil is selling all of its gas stations), or now, the conspiracy of speculators, rather than admitting that worldwide discovery and production of halfway easy oil has definitely peaked.

In other words, the small minority of Americans who have actually heard more than two sentences about Peak Oil and tried to listen for more than 2 minutes have stopped listening soon enough thereafter, for the most part.

The sheeple want Washington leaders, above all a president who, as their “civic religion” leader, will soothe them with anodyne, rather than, like Jesus or an Old Testament prophet, actually challenge their complacency and self-delusion.

Call it a spin-off of American exceptionalism.