Guess what? Iraq Didn't Have WMD

Yes, I know that may come as a big surprise to half of Americans polled last year (yes - half), but the US and Russian governments have finally decided to state the obvious:

UNITED NATIONS -- The U.S. and Russia have agreed to dismantle the U.N. agency that searched Iraq for weapons of mass destruction and affirm that Saddam Hussein's government had no such arms at the time of the American invasion in March 2003.

The Security Council will adopt a resolution the last week in June to close the U.N. Monitoring, Inspection and Verification Commission, created in 1999 to search Iraq for biological and chemical weapons, Belgian and British diplomats said. The measure will also end the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency's mandate to look for nuclear arms in Iraq.

U.N. inspectors found no banned weapons before or since the invasion.

Feisal al-Istrabadi, Iraq's deputy ambassador to the U.N., said his country is "still dealing with the residue of having been a pariah state" and called the resolution a "huge symbolic step that will show we are taking steps forward to be reintegrated in the community of nations."

He said adopting the U.S.-drafted resolution would be a prelude to lifting all U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq during Saddam's reign.

So, despite the fact that the US illegally invaded Iraq and has had control of it for years now while democratically-held elections took place, the country is still under sanctions? Sanctions, by the way, have a habit of causing humanitarian nightmares.

And not only that:

Iraq has complained about paying $50 million since the invasion to maintain the agency, known as UNMOVIC. The agency, which withdrew the inspectors before the war, employs 34 people and prepares quarterly reports to the Security Council.

The Iraqi people have been ripped off in so many ways by the Bush administration's lies, with the biggest theft (besides the hundreds of thousands of lives lost) coming down the pike via the proposed oil law, that the entire disaster is practically beyond comprehension. Then again, I'm not an imperialistic warmonger raking in the profits so maybe that's why I'm having such a hard time seeing this as anything but one huge war crime.
 

Sunday Food for Thought: 'Nattering Nabobs of Negativism'

As much as I hate to borrow a phrase from a Spiro Agnew speech (written by right-wing propagandist William Safire), in this case, it truly fits.

Edward Wong writes in the NYT:

Iraq’s Curse: A Thirst for Final, Crushing Victory

PERHAPS no fact is more revealing about Iraq’s history than this: The Iraqis have a word that means to utterly defeat and humiliate someone by dragging his corpse through the streets.

The word is “sahel,” and it helps explain much of what I have seen in three and a half years of covering the war.

It is a word unique to Iraq, my friend Razzaq explained over tea one afternoon on my final tour. Throughout Iraq’s history, he said, power has changed hands only through extreme violence, when a leader was vanquished absolutely, and his destruction was put on display for all to see.

"Sahel" in Arabic means shore, border or coast of the Sahara desert) [and] is the boundary zone in Africa between the Sahara to the north and the more fertile region to the south, known as the Sudan (not to be confused with the country of the same name)." I wasn't able to find any online reference to it in relation to that purported Iraqi definition that Wong provides, so I guess I'll have to take him at his word.

Regardless, Wong then goes on to detail Iraq's history in a very abbreviated form to provide support for this conclusion:

“One day we’ll find that we’ve returned back to 1917,” said Sheik Muhammad Bakr Khamis al-Suhail, a respected Shiite neighborhood leader in Baghdad, referring to the installation here of a Sunni Arab monarchy by the British after World War I. “The pressure of the Arab countries on the American administration might push the Americans to choose the Sunni Arabs.”

Sitting in the cool recesses of his home, the white-robed sheik said he was a moderate, a supporter of democracy. It is for people like him that the Americans have fought this war. But the solution he proposes is not one the Americans would easily embrace.

“In the history of Iraq, more than 7,000 years, there have always been strong leaders,” he said. “We need strong rulers or dictators like Franco, Hitler, even Mubarak. We need a strong dictator, and a fair one at the same time, to kill all extremists, Sunni and Shiite.”

I was surprised to hear those words. But perhaps I was being naïve. Looking back on all I have seen of this war, it now seems that the Iraqis have been driving all along for the decisive victory, the act of sahel, the day the bodies will be dragged through the streets.

So, how do you think a blogger who labels himself as a progressive, liberal, Democrat would react to that idea?

Like this?

It gives me no pleasure to agree with this sheik. I wish it were not so that Iraq needs a ruthless leader, a Hitler or Franco or Muhbarak [sic], to restore order. But, it is either that, or it is this. And this isn't working.

And, as too many Democrats are prone to do these days, the hope falls on an imaginary scenario that is never going to happen:

We'll keep defeating politicians that support this war until there are no politicians that support this war left in office.

So, going back to the first choice which Booman thinks the Iraqis "need" : a strong-arm dictator who is supposedly going to bring order to Iraq by "killing all extremists". Well, that assumes numerous unsaid myths.

- that the Iraqis are completely incapable of fashioning their own peaceful, democratic state.
- that continued militarism is the solution.
- that Iraqis have absolutely no imagination, intelligence or hope and are people who must be ruled with an iron fist in order to be kept under control.
- that it's even possible to kill all extremists which, as we already know, is Bush's grand idea.
- that the solution to Iraq's current nightmare involves just Sunnis and Shiites. Kurds? Christians? Outside influences? What exactly would the new dictator do about them?
- that the US will actually leave Iraq at some point, physically or politically, leaving it to sort out its issues on its own. (One word: oil. The US isn't going anywhere until it bleeds the country dry.)

On it goes...

That attitude shouldn't be surprising though. Take a look at the top 3 Democrat candidates' foreign policy positions and their unflinching support of the military-industrial complex. They all prefer to see militarism as an Olympic sport: who can be better, stronger, faster.

John Edwards

Via Meet the Press, February 2007:

I had internal conflict because I was worried about what George Bush would do. I didn’t have—I didn’t have confidence about him doing the work that needed to be done with the international community, the lead-up to a potential invasion in Iraq.

I didn’t know, in fairness, that he would be as incompetent as he’s been in the administration of the war. But I had—there were at least two things going on. It wasn’t just the weapons of mass destruction I was wrong about. It’s become absolutely clear—and I’m very critical of myself for this—become absolutely clear, looking back, that I should not have given this president this authority.

Those 2 highlighted words are an extremely important clue to his thinking - not that Edwards hasn't been quite open about the fact that he supports military intervention.

Barack Obama. Just see if you can distinguish his position from Bush's.

And Hillary? Are you going to trust a politician who voted for the AUMF on Iraq when she didn't even read the NIE before she uttered her "yay" - sending over 100,000 American troops into harm's way - to be your next commander-in-chief?

Earlier this year, on the presidential campaign trail in New Hampshire, Clinton was confronted by a woman who had traveled from New York to ask her if she had read the intelligence report. According to Eloise Harper of ABC News, Clinton responded that she had been briefed on it.

“Did you read it?” the woman screamed.

Clinton replied that she had been briefed, though she did not say by whom.

The question of whether Clinton took the time to read the N.I.E. report is critically important. Indeed, one of Clinton’s Democratic colleagues, Bob Graham, the Florida senator who was then the chairman of the intelligence committee, said he voted against the resolution on the war, in part, because he had read the complete N.I.E. report.

Graham said he found that it did not persuade him that Iraq possessed W.M.D. As a result, he listened to Bush’s claims more skeptically. “I was able to apply caveat emptor,” Graham, who has since left the Senate, observed in 2005.

Beyond what any of these Democratic candidates might actually do to end the Iraq war (and they rarely, if ever, speak about the Afghanistan war anymore - as if that's running itself) or to bring their troops home (which will not happen for many years to come with permanent bases established in Iraq), the truth is that the current top 3 picks can ensure their supporters of one thing: continued militarism or "New & Improved Militarism Lite".

Interventionism. Exceptionalism. Continued arms sales (overt and covert). Refusals to participate in international treaties or the ICC (International Criminal Court). Plundering of "American interests" (ie. oil) around the world. Extraordinary renditions, torture and kidnappings (do you really think they're going to end covert CIA programs?). Continued, unconditional support of Israel via money and arms. Supplying weapons to whichever government of the day is an ally against some perceived American "enemy". Proudly proclaiming supremacy from the mantle of "The Leader of the Free World" while further dismantling the civil, legal and human rights of their own citizens and others around the world that they deem to be "enemy combatants" or potential threats to US security while leaving open gaping holes in domestic security by not properly funding necessary protections (which enables whoever is in power to perpetuate the fear meme endlessly, thus always necessitating the need for a mythic saviour/hero/heroine in the form of "a strong leader").

"Nattering nabobs of negativism".

I see no hope or optimism in the idea that the disease of militarism can be cured by being even more or more efficiently militaristic and violent or in believing that some strong-armed dictator is going to save Iraq by killing more people.

There's a reason that people who are antiwar are seen as being on the fringe. That lesson was learned by the illumination of the fact that most Americans turned against the Iraq war because it wasn't 'winnable' - not out of any desire to reverse the damaging affront that US military might has wrought upon the world or to stem its future ambitions. The Democrats know that and they have no reason to change their stripes. They're just trying to come across as the kindler, gentler warmongers.

If Wong's interpretation of the word "sahel" is to be taken at face value, it certainly can't be seen as a concept that is in any way foreign to the United States military or its supporters. They may not literally drag their "kills" through the streets for all to see but they certainly do so metaphorically via gung-ho speeches and the dehumanization of the victims whom they can't even bring themselves to assign anything more than numbers too. And, as far as that's concerned, they can't even be honest about just how many corpses they're really claimed except to proclaim that at some future point "victory" will be at hand and this will all have been just a blib on the radar screen. There's always collateral damage, you see. How unfortunate.

I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma...
- George W Bush

The Democrats have had their chance to storm the gates of congress. They've failed. And it's not just because they hold a "fragile" majority in the senate. The real reason is that there just isn't much difference between the two major parties on foreign policy issues. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to think long and hard about that.

And when you have a so-called progressive, liberal, self-identified Democratic blogger caving to the defeatism that says that Iraqis are too weak to understand anything but more tyranny and killings, I think it's safe to say that he is probably speaking for perhaps millions of Americans who have just given up on either party being able to provide a rational outlook on the future of a country their president illegally invaded and turned into a rotting nightmare.

But, as far as I'm concerned, no American has the right or luxury to give up at this point. This war belongs to all of you.

Get your troops home, but don't abandon the spirit and will of the Iraqi people who stand for peace and justice. They deserve far more than that.

Iraq is not cursed to have a future of "extreme violence" and neither are its people.

h/t to Marisacat for her posts on Edwards and Hillary.
 

Iraq: Lowering Expectations to Define "Success"

Bush defined "success" in Iraq on May 2, 2007 as this:

"Either we'll succeed, or we won't succeed," he said. "And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not no violence."

While saying "succeed," Bush appears to chuckle.

The president then compared Iraq to the United States, saying that there were parts of the US with "a certain level of violence," but that "people feel comfortable about living their daily lives" in those areas. That level of violence, said Bush, is what the US is aiming to achieve in Iraq.

Earlier this month, Jon Stewart featured a montage of Bush clips featuring his ever-changing definitions of success. He seems to have a new vision of that every other week.

Now, according to the LA Times, that definition has been dressed down once again. Interesting, considering the Dems jumped on the "let's see if the surge works and things look better in September" bandwagon. Yes, after decrying the surge, they are now supporting it.

BAGHDAD -- U.S. military leaders in Iraq are increasingly convinced that most of the broad political goals President Bush laid out early this year in his announcement of a troop buildup will not be met this summer and are seeking ways to redefine success.

In September, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, is scheduled to present Congress with an assessment of progress in Iraq. Military officers in Baghdad and outside advisors working with Petraeus doubt that the three major goals set by U.S. officials for the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki will be achieved by then.

Enactment of a new law to share Iraq's oil revenue among Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish regions is the only goal they think might possibly be achieved in time, and even that is considered a long shot. The two other key benchmarks are provincial elections and a deal to allow more Sunni Arabs into government jobs.

With overhauls by the central government stalled and with security in Baghdad still a distant goal, Petraeus' advisors hope to focus on smaller achievements that they see as signs of progress, including deals among Iraq's rival factions to establish areas of peace in some provincial cities.

"Some of it will be infrastructure that is being worked, some of it is local security for neighborhoods, some of it is markets reopening," said a senior military official in Baghdad who spoke on condition of anonymity in discussing military tactics.

After 4 years, the best they can offer is the small stuff to try and prove what a glorious march for freedom this failed experiment in American imperialism has been.

Military officers said they understood that any report that key goals had not been met would add to congressional Democrats' skepticism. But some counterinsurgency advisors to Petraeus have argued that it was never realistic to expect that Iraqis would reach agreement on some of their most divisive issues after just a few months of the American troop buildup.

It's been years. They've had years to work these things out. The Democrats never should have bought the fantasy that somehow things would change in September. Seriously, were they even paying attention?

So in September, Petraeus will share his happy fuzzy puppy stories about Iraq, the Dems will be all up in arms as if they're completely shocked and, once again, they'll agree to further fund the war. Oh but they'll have the small stuff to fall back on as some sort of consolation prize for the blank check they wrote Bush last week.

A bandaid on a gaping head wound. That's all they have. And I truly believe that Bush sees "success" in the Iraq war as his leaving office while it's still going on - never having been impeached for his lies and never having to face prosecution for war crimes.

Monday: 123 Iraqis Killed, 233 Wounded

Ignorance really is bliss:

WASHINGTON — Confronted with strong opposition to his Iraq policies, President Bush decides to interpret public opinion his own way. Actually, he says, people agree with him.

And not just that 28%.
 

Damage Control

There's a sucker born every minute.

Over at GNN, Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber have co-authored a post titled 'Democratic Spin Won't End the War in Iraq'. No, it certainly won't, and the meltdown and continual attempts to control the damage done by Democratic sellouts who voted to fund the emergency war spending bill on Thursday is going to take much more than continual pep talks from the front pagers at places like Daily Kos and MyDD, where they really do believe they can spin gold from straw or victory from more dead bodies.

As Rampton and Stauber point out:

The bottom line, however, is that MoveOn until now has always been a big “D” Democratic Party organization. It began as an online campaign to oppose the impeachment of President Clinton, and its tactical alliances with Democratic politicians have made it part of the party’s current power base, which melds together millionaire funders such as George Soros and the Democracy Alliance, liberal unions like SEIU, and the ballyhooed Netroots bloggers like Matt Stoller, Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of the Daily Kos. At a personal level, we presume the members of this coalition genuinely want the war to end, but their true and primary priority is winning Democratic Party control of both houses of Congress and the White House. Now that the war in Iraq hangs like a rotting albatross around the neck of the Bush administration, it has become the Democrats’ best weapon to successfully campaign against Republicans. From a “shrewdly pragmatic” point of view, therefore, they have no reason to want the war to end soon.

That is echoed by the "just wait until September - we'll nail Bush then" meme that bloggers like kos are now pushing. And, to add insult to injury, he and Bowers have the audacity to continue to shill for donations to the Democratic party in the midst of a major meltdown in which several Dem party members have expressed that they've had enough and are finally ditching the party (despite the fact that poor kos finds that embarassing. It hurts his feelings, you see.)

If progressive grassroots activists are too demoralized to make small donations, the party becomes more reliant on large donors.

Thousands of Dem party supporters actually believed the party mouthpieces when they promised that a Dem majority would bring an end to the Iraq occupation so they opened their wallets, even if some couldn't afford to. Which "donors" do you think the party leadership listened to?

And, as if that wasn't insulting enough to the party's anti-Iraq war base (only a very small minority is actually anti-all war. See: war, Afghanistan - which no one has made a peep about there and which also received funding via that bill), kos (who along with his other front pagers have written an amazing flurry of posts the past couple of days to try to force his readers/members to still support the party) is dredging up 3 days old news about Lieberman threatening to leave the party (because, you know, if it weren't for Lieberman, somehow the Dems could have automagically ended the war yesterday) while making excuses for Jim Webb's 'yes' vote because Webb was one of kos's chosen people to win.

Webb, like most of his colleagues, bought into the b.s. right-wing frame that voting against this supplemental was voting against our troops.

He's talking about Jim Webb - Secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan - as if he's some sort of political simpleton who was just fooled by right-wing talking points.

Does it get any clearer than that that kos et al are in absolute desparation mode? No wonder he titled his post 'Moving Forward'. He can't put this behind him soon enough.

This vote was a bloody trainwreck of massive proportions - but - it was no accident, that's for sure. The Democratic party is not an antiwar party. It's not even an anti-Iraq war party. It's amazing that so many people are only now awakening to that reality and those who have allowed themselves to be fooled should have paid more attention to history.

From that GNN article:

There is an organized anti-war movement in America that is not an adjunct of the Democratic Party. Up until now, it has been weak and divided and unable to organize itself into an effective national movement in its own right. In its place, therefore, MoveOn and its Netroots allies have become identified as the leadership of the anti-war movement. It is vitally important, however, that a genuinely independent anti-war movement organize itself with the ability to speak on its own behalf.

In the 1950s and the 1960s, the civil rights movement was most definitely not an adjunct of the Democratic or Republican Parties. Far from it, it was a grassroots movement that eventually forced both parties to respond to its agenda. Likewise, the movement against the Vietnam War was not aligned with either the Democratic or Republican parties, both of which claimed to have plans for peace while actually pursuing policies that expanded the war.

That’s the sort of movement we need again, if we wish to see peace in our lifetime.

That is exactly what Scott Ritter wrote about in 2006:

It's high time to recognize that we as a nation are engaged in a life-or-death struggle of competing ideologies with those who promote war as an American value and virtue.
[...]
Despite all of the well-meaning and patriotic work of the millions of activists and citizens who comprise the anti-war movement, America still remains very much a nation not only engaged in waging and planning wars of aggression, but has also become a nation which increasingly identifies itself through its military and the wars it fights. This is a sad manifestation of the fact that the American people seem to be addicted to war and violence, rather than the ideals of human rights, individual liberty, and freedom and justice for all that should define our nation.

In short, the anti-war movement has come face to face with the reality that in the ongoing war of ideologies that is being waged in America today, their cause is not just losing, but is in fact on the verge of complete collapse.

And those competing ideologies cannot be described as simply being Republican v Democrat - as more people on the so-called left have now realized as a result of Thursday's vote. Take the case of the much-heralded Jack Murtha, who voted in favour of yesterday's bill - again to some Democrats' surprise. Ritter had him pegged:

Americans aren't against the war in Iraq because it is wrong; they are against it because we are losing.

Take the example of Congressman Jack Murtha. A vocal supporter of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq, last fall Mr. Murtha went public with his dramatic change of position, suddenly rejecting the war as un-winnable, and demanding the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. While laudable, I have serious problems with Jack Murtha's thought process here. At what point did the American invasion of Iraq become a bad war? When we suffered 2,000 dead? After two years of fruitless struggle? Once we spent $100 billion?

While vocalizing his current opposition against the Iraq War, Congressman Murtha and others who voted for the war but now question its merits have never retracted their original pro-war stance.

The bottom line is this: the real antiwar movement is not to be found on the big box blog sites like Daily Kos or their various spinoffs. In fact, many antiwar activists have either been ridiculed to no end, bullied, labeled as "radicals" and/or banned from those sites for having the audacity to go against accepted Democratic war policy. Code Pink members and antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan have been repeatedly insulted (you know - the people who are actually out there doing something to end these wars). And kos has decried any talk of impeachment as "impeachment porn". That's what's insulting to democracy - not vocal antiwar activists who have better things to do than to sit around figuring out 50 ways to apologize for the blow their spineless elected representatives dealt to them this week, like kos is currently up to.

It's amazing that a well-coordinated antiwar movement hasn't emerged after all of these years in the US. Perhaps this will act as one of those many "wake up calls". That depends, of course, at how successful Dem apologists are at spinning this latest catastrophe so they can lull people back into complacency. That road, however, looks much more rocky than it has in decades but it's time they felt some of that real pain that families of the dead and injured - Iraqi, American and coalition forces - have had to deal with in the face of the Democrats' utter failure to stand on principles instead of worrying about whether or not they'll be re-elected in '08.

And always remember: War is a Racket. Again, which donors do you think the Democratic party is listening to?
 

Video: More Olbermann

This is, in fact, a comment about… betrayal.

Few men or women elected in our history—whether executive or legislative, state or national—have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear:

Get us out of Iraq.

Yet after six months of preparation and execution—half a year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:

* The Democratic leadership has surrendered to a president—if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish, in our history—who happily blackmails his own people, and uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that the Democrats “give the troops their money”;
* The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans;
* The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.
* The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised, are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq.

You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions—Stop The War—have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.
You may trot out every political cliché from the soft-soap, inside-the-beltway dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about how this is the “beginning of the end” of Mr. Bush’s “carte blanche” in Iraq, about how this is a “first step.”
Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning... is our collective hope that you and your colleagues would do what is right, what is essential, what you were each elected and re-elected to do.
Because this “first step”… is a step right off a cliff.

Read on...

Video: Olbermann - Iraqus Interruptus

Olbermann: Which of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow?

Iraq funding compromise. The Democrats get benchmarks, the president has the right to waive the benchmarks. What the hell kind of benchmarks are they if the president can just waive them?
[...]
And you thought that big statue of Saddam Hussein fell over quickly and symbolically and with surreptitious help.

Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, right up there with the fall of Baghdad itself, you can now add the fall of the Democratic Congress, agreeing to fund the conflict in Iraq without any timelines for withdrawal, with mere benchmark, which the president can waive, Democrats in the White House reaching a so-called bipartisan agreement to keep funding the war through September without holding President Bush accountable.

After weeks of refusing to back down to the White House, today Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pretty much did just that, only days after rejecting a measure put forward by Republican John Warner as too weak, today Mr. Reid accepting an agreement that looks remarkably like the Warner war supplemental funding bill.

The agreement would fund the Iraq War through September, requiring President Bush to give Congress reports on Iraq‘s progress. As for benchmarks, yes, there are benchmarks. And the president has the ability to waive the benchmarks, the only possible fly in that ointment, emphasis on the word “possible,” Speaker of the House Pelosi saying earlier this evening she would not be likely to vote for anything that does not have timetables in it, adding she would wait to see what the final draft of the legislation actually says.

No, freedom is not on the march

Via Reuters:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The Iraqi government raised the death toll on Saturday from a truck bomb in the town of Tal Afar to 152, making it the deadliest single bombing of the four-year-old war.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier Abdul Kareem Khalaf said 347 people were wounded in Tuesday's attack on a Shi'ite area. There was another truck bomb in the mixed northwestern town on Tuesday, but it was small.

Khalaf said 100 homes had been destroyed in the main blast, which officials have blamed on al Qaeda. The explosion left a 23-meter (75-ft)-wide crater.
[...]
The past week has been the bloodiest in Iraq since the government launched a security crackdown in Baghdad in February aimed at halting the country's slide toward civil war.

Bombings blamed on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda have killed 400 people in Shi'ite areas across the country in the past week.

Now, first of all, it is a civil war. Let's all agree about that, shall we? Just how much more evidence do you need when attacks like this are not aimed at the occupiers but are squarely targeting other Iraqis?

Meanwhile, as Democrats are more than eager to continue funding the war and the failed "surge", Bush was busy complaining on Saturday about all of the pork attached to the supplemental spending bill as if his Republicans have never added their own bacon to previous bills. And, while Bush has been crying about how the troops will run out of money and that an acceptable bill must be signed "within weeks", the truth is that the military has more than enough funds to last until July.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a House panel on Thursday that after April 15, without emergency funding, the Army would have to begin curtailing some troop training, which "could over time delay their ability to go back into combat."

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that if the funds were not approved by May 15, the Army might have to extend some soldiers' tours, because other units would not be ready, and reduce equipment repair work, among other things.

But...

WASHINGTON, March 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. Army has enough money on hand to finance the Iraq war through most of July, according to a congressional study that challenges President George W. Bush's assertions that an infusion of funds is needed more urgently.

According to a Congressional Research Service memo dated March 28 and sent to the Senate Budget Committee, "The Army could finance the O&M (operations and maintenance) of both its baseline and war program ... through most of July 2007" by shifting around money in existing accounts.

Poor Bush. Having to veto the Dems' generous war-funding bill because he doesn't like not getting his way. Very few in congress though seem to actually want to end this war as soon as possible. How many more people will die thanks to the Democrats refusing to stand up to the most corrupt commander-in-chief ever? Why would they take impeachment "off the table" as Nancy Pelosi did in a bargain of Faustian proportions when this president clearly deserves it? What, exactly, are the Democrats waiting for (besides the '08 election, which brings absolutely no guarantee that this war won't go on endlessly)? Why are they continuing to fund this war at all?

I say the entire congress should be forced to go and spend a month in Iraq - outside of the Green Zone - and then come back to their constituents and explain why they think continuing this war into March '08 or whenever is in anyone's best interests. This idea that hell will descend on Iraq after US troops leave belies the fact that hell actually has already descended on that country with a fury.

Saturday: 1 GI, 59 Iraqis Killed; 94 Iraqis Wounded.

That is Iraq, day after day, month after month, year after year. Every single congressperson owns that now unless they are calling for an immediate pullout. It's been 4 years and it's getting worse, not better.

There is no "winning" to be had. Everybody has lost. There is no glory in continuing a bloodbath when your very presence escalates the nightmare and gore. War for war's sake is the privilege of those who are never touched by it directly. For millions of others who actually have to live through it, it's the worst curse imaginable.

Tortured mangled bodies, dead children, extreme pain, grief and trauma. That is what war is on a daily basis. It certainly is no glorious display of humanity. It's a scourge perpetrated by the powerful against the powerless. It's a crime of the highest order. Yet some attempt to stand on their pedestals of moral purity while proclaiming they are the righteous when they are in fact the morally bankrupt who continue to drag their followers into a pit of endless destruction. It's all a lie. All of it. There is nothing "just" about war.

Why is peace so threatening?