One Utah

This is basically a re-post from Think Progress, for which I apologize. However, the message is important: Senator John McCain hasn’t got a clue about Iraq strategy. I can cite specifics, but why take it from me? Listen to CNN’s Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware, who has been closely following developments in Iraq [...]

If you missed “60 Minutes,” then you ought to watch this now. Scott Pelley interviewed Bob Woodward about his new book on the so-called “surge” in Iraq.
Now, normally I wouldn’t hit the keyboard to run the risk of helping Woodward– he’s a smug s.o.b. who wrote adulatory books about President Bush until [...]

Flag of Iraqi Kurdistan
While the U.S. presidential election is about to go into full swing, few Americans know that the Iraqi elections originally scheduled for this October have been postponed indefinitely. They may have a war instead.
Jonathan Steele of The Guardian reports that growing tensions between Nouri al-Maliki’s Green Zone Government [...]

Condi Rice has agreed to a troop withdrawal timetable to end the occupation of Iraq.
The cowardly defeatocrats and cut ‘n’ runners have kicked ass. Declaring that the deal means “the left won the Iraq debate,” Spencer Ackerman notes that the withdrawal plan is nearly identical to the plan offered by the Center for [...]

Last night, Bill Moyers interviewed Andrew Bacevich, author of The Limits of Power. It’s worth the time to read the whole transcript. In particular I was struck by this exchange - it began with Moyers reading a quote from Bacevich’s book:
BILL MOYERS: I was in the White House, back in the early 60s, [...]

A little over a year ago, a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) entitled The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland. concluded that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has fueled Sunni radicalism around the globe and has caused the terrorist threat to grow. While the Bush administration sent the bulk of our nation’s ground forces [...]

In Mistakes were made (but not by me) , Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson discuss the psychological process of self justification as it relates to initiation.
In particular, they cite a study in which students, to join a conversation, had to go through an initiation process; for one group it was relatively easy, for [...]

It’s important to observe that the USA is not fighting a war in Iraq. The reason I say that is that it’s an occupation, and the fighting that takes place involving the U.S. military is all in support of the occupation. As far as I can tell, the Iraqis who are fighting Americans [...]

A few years ago, the youth group from my congregation participated with the youth group from the mosque on a service project. At the end of the night, the kids returned to HUCC for debriefing. The Muslim youth later complained they felt it was wrong for boys and girls to sit together in [...]

As any honest person knows, the idea the the surge worked, in any sense of the word as meant be the Pentagon, is a bold-faced lie.
h/t Down With Tyranny!

This four and a half minute video was made by an Iraqi journalist in Baghdad. “Five years of war… and we live like this?… Tell the world. [...]

Spencer Ackerman tackles the Bush administration’s Orwellian assault on the English language as it applies to Iraq:

Few governments have relied more on euphemism than the Bush administration. Euphemism is different from spin. Spin puts the best face forward on a given policy; euphemism uses its opposite to describe itself. Hence the Clear Skies Initiative to [...]

I reprint this article in its entirety. Rich alerted me to conspiratorial possibilities and suddenly, the guy commits suicide. Read it here or there, and lets see what ABC does.
(Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V - Update VI)
The FBI’s lead suspect in the September, 2001 [...]