“Every woman in Iraq is better off because the rape rooms and torture chambers of Saddam Hussein are forever closed.” -
They were replaced by the Halliburton Rape Containers, apparently. Because private industry can do things so much better. . .
He’s now apparently going by the name, “Anne Tyrrell” and employed as a spokesperson for Blackwater International. We can tell it’s Bob by the dissonance between .
The New York Times cited unidentified civilian and military officials in reporting for Wednesday’s editions that the killings of at least 14 of the 17 Iraqi civilians shot by Blackwater personnel guarding a U.S. Embassy convoy were found to have been unjustified and violated standards in place governing the use of deadly force.
Responding to the Times report, Anne Tyrrell, a Blackwater spokeswoman, said the company “supports the stringent accountability of the industry. . . .”
In an industry where mercs are exempt from the USCMJ and Iraqi law, have been granted immunity by the State Department, and there is no accountability.
Although the report disclosed that:
No evidence supports assertions by Blackwater employees that they were fired upon by Iraqi civilians. . . .
Bob/Anne was unfazed:
“Without a doubt, the teams were faced with deadly force that day,” the Blackwater spokeswoman said.
“Without a doubt, the teams were faced with deadly force that day”
President Bush, November 8, 2007:
“If you lived in Iraq and had lived under a tyranny, you’d be saying, god, I love freedom — because that’s what’s happened. “
Except if you lived in Iraq, you might not be living in Iraq, because you were one of the hundred(s) of thousands of people killed by the violence there, or one of the 1.2 million Iraqis who have fled the country.
Or you might be one of the 2.3 million internally displaced Iraqis, who have been chased from their homes by ethnic cleansing. In which case, you might be saying, “I wish I still had a home.”
Or you might be a newly orphaned child saying, “I miss my Mommy and Daddy!”:
My guess: whatever she is saying, it’s not “God, I love freedom!”
If you didn’t catch it, Andrew Bacevich had an in the LA Times the other day, good enough to waft away the putrescence of Jonah Goldberg for a while:
Don’t expect to hear this from the White House any time soon, but the global war on terrorism conceived in the wake of 9/11 has effectively ended. As President Bush travels from one military post to the next giving pep talks to soldiers, he manfully sustains the pretense that V-T Day is just around the corner. Yet events have shredded the strategy that his administration was counting on to produce its victory over terrorism.
War requires adherence to principles. Once a conflict becomes an exercise in improvisation, it ceases to be meaningful. It becomes the antithesis of war — killing without political purpose or moral justification.
Going into the Iraq war, the White House at least had theoretical objectives: remaking the middle east into an eden of budding democracies which would be progressive, economically vital, and pro-Western. As Bacevich precisely notes, all pretense to any maintaining these objectives is well past. The Middle East has become less stable and more radicalized, and the only recognizable policy now is trying to keep the disorder and chaos Bush started from exploding on his watch. After he leaves office, the focus will no doubt shift to trying to blame his successor for the mess he or she inherits.
Bacevich also articulates 5 realistic goals for US policy which are, shortly:
* Rather than squandering American power, husband it. . . .
* Align ends with means. . . .
* Let Islam be Islam. The United States possesses neither the capacity nor the wisdom required to liberate the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims, who just might entertain their own ideas about what genuine freedom entails. Islam will eventually accommodate itself to the modern world, but Muslims will have to work out the terms.
* Reinvent containment. . . .
* Exemplify the ideals we profess. Rather than telling others how to live, Americans should devote themselves to repairing their own institutions. Our enfeebled democracy just might offer the place to start.
The massive hubris of the Bush administration has been matched only by its nonpareil incompetence. When an adult is back in charge, the goals Bacevich articulates will be difficult enough to obtain by themselves.
“The Prime Minister and I have talked about a variety of concerns. And I assured him we want his security forces well-trained, mobile and capable of handling Iraqi security on their own. ” — George W. Bush
Yet another bump on the road towards the naming of a town square in Baghdad after George W. Bush. The shooters in Blackwater’s mass killing — in a Baghdad square — were :
Potential prosecution of Blackwater guards allegedly involved in the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians last month may have been compromised because the guards received immunity for statements they made to State Department officials investigating the incident, federal law enforcement officials said yesterday.
FBI agents called in to take over the State Department’s investigation two weeks after the Sept. 16 shootings cannot use any information gleaned during questioning of the guards by the department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which is charged with supervising security contractors.
Some of the Blackwater guards have subsequently refused to be interviewed by the FBI, citing promises of immunity from State, one law enforcement official said. The restrictions on the FBI’s use of their initial statements do not preclude prosecution by the Justice Department using other evidence, the official said, but “they make things a lot more complicated and difficult.”
The Iraqis might not be , with 17 of their own dead:
The Iraqi government on Tuesday approved draft legislation lifting immunity for foreign private security companies, sending the measure to parliament, a spokesman said.
The question of immunity has been one of the most serious dispute between the U.S. and the Iraqi government since a Sept. 16 shooting involving Blackwater USA guards that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.
~~~
Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the draft law approved Tuesday would overturn an immunity order known as Decree 17 that was issued by L. Paul Bremer, who ran the American occupation government until June 2004.
“It will be sent to the parliament within the coming days to be ratified,” he told The Associated Press.
Al-Dabbagh did not single out Blackwater but said: “According to this law, all security companies will subjected to the Iraqi criminal law and must obey all the country’s legal regulations such as: registration, customs, visas, etcetera.”
I can’t really add much to :
‘I Don’t Think This Place Is Worth Another Soldier’s Life’
A bomb crater blocks one lane, so they cross to the other side, where houses are blackened by fire, shops crumbled into bricks. The remains of a car bomb serve as hideous public art. Sgt. Victor Alarcon’s Humvee rolls into a vast pool of knee-high brown sewage water — the soldiers call it Lake Havasu, after the Arizona spring-break party spot — that seeps in the doors of the vehicle and wets his boots.
“When we first got here, all the shops were open. There were women and children walking out on the street,” Alarcon said this week. “The women were in Western clothing. It was our favorite street to go down because of all the hot chicks.”
That was 14 long months ago, when the soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, arrived in southwestern Baghdad. It was before their partners in the Iraqi National Police became their enemies and before Shiite militiamen, aligned with the police, attempted to exterminate a neighborhood of middle-class Sunni families.
Next month, the U.S. soldiers will complete their tour in Iraq. Their experience in Sadiyah has left many of them deeply discouraged, by both the unabated hatred between rival sectarian fighters and the questionable will of the Iraqi government to work toward peaceful solutions.
Asked if the American endeavor here was worth their sacrifice — 20 soldiers from the battalion have been killed in Baghdad — Alarcon said no: “I don’t think this place is worth another soldier’s life.”
Actually, I can add this: some , who didn’t have to serve in Baghdad and see his buddies killed, thinks it was worth it, and attacks the Post for publishing the views of soldiers who fought and bled on the subject.
Yessirree, them wingnuts be lovin’ their Michael Yon. Yon’s latest missive is a at the “MSM” for misreporting all the wonderful success we’re having in Iraq and creating a misimpression that Iraq is, you know, a major clusterfuck:
But it wasn?t until I spent that week back in the States that I realized how bad things have gotten. I believe we are witnessing a conspiracy of coincidences conflating to exert an incomprehensibly destructive force on the free press system that we largely take for granted. The fact that the week in question also happened to be when General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were delivering their reports to Congress makes me wonder if things are actually worse than I?ve assessed, and I returned to Iraq sadly convinced that General Petraeus now has to deal from a deck clearly stacked against him in both America and Iraq.
The free press is being destroyed because the free press should be sharing Yon’s “Iraq is a success” narrative and backing General Petraeus’s views (shared by the Bush administration) that we’ve taken a 180 degree turn in Iraq from bad to good, even though most conservative narratives never conceded that it was bad in the first place.
Further problems arise because the press’s “misreporting” has (in his view) created an unfavorable impression of America’s good deeds in Iraq:
As I travel around the world, I see that even many of our close allies have a false impression of American soldiers as brutally oppressive towards people. Even our great friends in Singapore and the United Kingdom, and the pro-American people on the island of Bali, Indonesia, think we are savaging people. This loss of moral leadership will be costly to Americans on many fronts for many generations to come.
This loss of moral leadership, naturally, stems not from the false accusations which led to this war, not from incidents like the recent Blackwater shooting spree, not from the Abu Ghraib scandal, not from policies legitimizing torture, not from our boorish and immature Chief Executive, and not from the inevitable civilian casualties which result from the use of bombs and rockets in an urban guerilla warfare. Naturally, it is the press’s bad coverage of these events, and the failure to cover the good stuff, which is responsible for America’s image.
Wingnuttia up like this.
Naturally, the only place to turn for real, unadulterated-by-conspiracy-of-conincidences news is places like Yon’s site, which, coincidentally is expanding and needs money:
The only antidote for this toxic press is a steady dose of detailed stories about the amazing men and women who serve in the United States military.
Amazing men and women, it turns out, whose accounts are very favorable towards the war, and are published on Yon’s site. But it turns out freedom isn’t free.
As with the syndication project, there will be costs. The total reworking of the website including accrued bills, and the initial translation from past and up to about six months in the future, is roughly $100,000. One thousand people supporting the effort with $125 contributions would make it all happen.
In Right Blogostan, Yon holds a special place, dearer to God even than General Petraeus. His narrative is scripture, unquestioned and unimpeachable. At least as long as the message is one the right wants to hear.
I don’t doubt Yon’s sincerity, but I have serious doubts about his infallibility. Mostly because the whole “media is getting it wrong” and “Good News From Iraq” memes have been so badly overplayed, for years and years and years. Yon may be an optimist, looking for things to improve, or an ideologist who believes that framing positively the narrative forms the reality.
It was a compliant press which helped pave the way for this invasion. It was the failure of the press to question assumptions voiced by the administration that this war would be cheap, quick, and easy. If the press is, as Yon claims, stuck focusing on the past failures in Iraq, this is so because it was duped, over and over, broadcasting administration memes of “dead enders” and Iraqis “standing up” during campaign cycles. If the press, and the American people, aren’t as trusting and positive as Yon would like, it is because both have been lied to repeatedly, and because the latest, greatest story of success in Iraq seems over-scripted, and, despite all the effort put into differentiating this from all the previous claims of success through new faces, all too familiar.
Like , I would like to believe Yon’s account, but too much has transpired, and too many dissonant voices conflict with his narrative. 2.2 million Iraqis aren’t living abroad because of what ABC, the Post, or the New York Times reports. And hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, more didn’t flee their homes and become internally displaced because Paul Krugman made a harsh assessment on Iraq.
to the killing of civilians in Baghdad:
Blackwater Guards Fired at Fleeing Cars, Soldiers Say
Blackwater USA guards shot at Iraqi civilians as they tried to drive away from a Baghdad square on Sept. 16, according to a report compiled by the first U.S. soldiers to arrive at the scene, where they found no evidence that Iraqis had fired weapons.“It appeared to me they were fleeing the scene when they were engaged. It had every indication of an excessive shooting,” said Lt. Col. Mike Tarsa, whose soldiers reached Nisoor Square 20 to 25 minutes after the gunfire subsided.
His soldiers’ report — based upon their observations at the scene, eyewitness interviews and discussions with Iraqi police — concluded that there was “no enemy activity involved” and described the shootings as a “criminal event.” Their conclusions mirrored those reached by the Iraqi government, which has said the Blackwater guards killed 17 people.
The soldiers’ accounts contradict Blackwater’s assertion that its guards were defending themselves after being fired upon by Iraqi police and gunmen.
~~~~
“It was absolutely tragic,” said Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division and the Army’s top commander for Baghdad. “In the aftermath of these, everybody looks and says, ‘It’s the Americans.’ And that’s us. It’s horrible timing. It’s yet another challenge, another setback,” he said.
And regarding the claim that Blackwater’s personnel were ?
At least two cars, a black four-door taxi and a blue Volkswagen sedan, had their back windshields shot out, but their front windshields were intact, indicating they were shot while driving away from the square, according to the photos and soldiers. The Volkswagen, which crashed into a bus stand, had blood splattered on the inside of its front windshield and windows. One person was killed, soldiers said.
U.S. soldiers did not find any bullets that came from AK-47 assault rifles or BKC machine guns used by Iraqi policemen and soldiers. They found evidence of ammunition used in American-made weapons, including M4 rifle 5.56mm brass casings, M240B machine gun 7.62mm casings, M203 40mm grenade launcher casings, and stun-grenade dunnage, or packing.
So they basically unload automatic weapons fire and grenades at civilian vehicles all over the place because they thought a car was approaching them, but no evidence of taking hostile fire.
Wingnut blogger Confederate Yankee, from pro-war blogger/reporter Michael Yon to an article in Newsday reporting chaos in Basra in the wake of the British Army pulling its forces out of Basra and halting military operations in that city:
Basra is not in chaos. In fact, crime and violence are way down and there has not been a British combat death in over a month.
Of course, as noted above, the British army pulled out of Basra just over one month ago. Could there be a connection between the in Basra and the fact that the troops who aren’t in Basra weren’t killed there?
Meanwhile, today’s :
In the southern city of Basra, there are already signs of religious extremism being used to rein in women. Police say gangs enforcing their idea of Islamic law have killed 15 women in the last month. “There are gangs roaming through the streets . . . pursuing women and carrying out threats and killing because of what the women wear or because they are using makeup,” the Basra police commander, Maj. Gen. Abdul Jaleel Khalaf, said this month.
Sometimes notes are left on the women’s bodies saying they were killed for violating religious law or social traditions.
“This is a mockery for us, when you speak about freedom,” said Hanaa Edwar, who heads the Iraqi Amal Assn., a human rights group opposing Article 41. “There will be no choices for women if a man makes a decision that he wants to live a certain way. Step by step, we will end up in a religious state.”
Sounds like chaos to me. Naturally, Right Blogostan will have to instantly devote itself to proving that Maj. Gen. Abdul Jaleel Khalaf doesn’t exist, or lives in too nice a house or goes to a pricey private school.
MORE: get a load of the comments below. Wingnuttia goes from simply dumb to incomprehensibly stupid.
