On last week's McLaughlin Group, John predicted that the next time Bush asks congress for money for the Iraq war, he won't get it! That's a pretty bold prediction, especially given how docilely they rolled over for him this time.

Apparently, however, the negative reaction from the public has both sides reconsidering.

The only money that should be spent on the war should be spent on ending it and bringing the troops home.

Kucinich on Letterman

Dennis Kucinich will be on the Late Show this Friday. Definitely Must See TV. Lettermen clearly has no patience with Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the Gang of Idiots. Let's see if Dennis can escape the media marginalization with this.

In a discussion this weekend, someone else brought up the point that disbanding the Iraqi army was a bad thing. Clearly it is worked out that way, and if your goal was nation building, it is obvious. But if you plan is to stay for decades, you would definitely want to remove potentially strong oppositon.

The Surge is Working!

The AP's Kim Gamel writes that Marine Brig. General John Allen predicts that al Qaeda will be expelled from Fallujah by August. Quote: "We're going to finish off those neighborhoods by August." For some reason, that doesn't sound like a good thing for the people of Fallujah. I don't want to hear anyone talking about finishing off my neighborhood.

If true, this suggests that in the middle of August, when they have gotten rid of al Qaeda, the Sunni insurgents that we are arming will turn on the other foreign fighters in Iraq, the U.S. Army and Marines.

Gen. Allen also says they will clear Karmah by the end of July. Make sure to check on these predictions.

I wonder if the General remembers George Bush saying 'Bring 'em on'.

No amount of spin will change the fact that the Green Zone is subject to mortar or rocket attacks all the time.

Ethics and Torture

So the poor prosecutor Mike Nifong has been disbarred for daring to bring charges against rich white kids with insufficient evidence.

I was on a jury once on a felony assault case. The evidence was very poor, it took us very little time to acquit. But the defendent was a mechanic, not some entitled jock, so the prosecutor didn't suffer. The prosecutor asked me afterwards why we didn't convict. I just told him that we didn't think the evidence was very good. I should have asked him why he wasted the taxpayers money bringing such a lame case.

If Nifong had declared the lacrosse players to be 'enemy combatants', held them incommunicado for four years, and had them tortured, he would be considered a hero in the war on terra.

We don't have to votes to stop the war

Jerrold Nadler was on Ed Schultz's radio show yesterday, mostly talking about the good work he is doing on illegal use of National Security Letters by the FBI. Unfortunately, he repeated the Democratic talking point that they do not have the votes to stop the war.

Well, I do not buy it. The Democrats are saying that the veto and the insufficient majority means they cannot just pass whatever legislation they want. That part is true. But what is wrong is saying that they do not have the votes to stop the war. They do have the votes to stop the war, they just cannot do it by the means they would prefer.

They passed a bill to fund the war, but with a timetable. Bush vetoed it. This left the Democrats with 3 alternatives. 1) Keep sending a funding bill with timetables to Bush. 2) Do nothing and let the war go unfunded. 3) Roll over and write a blank check just like the Republican controlled congress.

Look, if the Democrats were scared about being portrayed as not supporting the troops, all they have to do is point at the bill funding the troops that THEY passed and that BUSH vetoed. It is bad enough that they chose alternative 3), but then to insult our intelligence by saying "we don't have the votes" is despicable. The slim majority does close off some means of acting to end the war, but it doesn't close off options 1) or 2).

In any case, why are the Democrats so eager to roll over and play dead for the Republican minority's tactics when they didn't do shit when they were in the minority? Why weren't the Democratic war Senators blocking cloture on all the blank check votes from 2003-2006? They could have been pushing timetables all that time. If they had, they might have got them, or they might have set the stage to get them now that they are in the majority.

If you really want to stop the war, you better think twice about voting for Edwards and Clinton, who voted for the war, or Obama, who seems to be triangulating his antiwar position. There are two clear cut antiwar candidates out for the Democrats, Kucinich and Gravel, and Kucinich will get my vote because he has been voting and speaking consistently against the war.

Support the Troops

My 3 year old t-shirt with the slogan "Support the Troops: Bring them home" is getting worn out before it is getting irrelevant. So what are some snotty new slogans?

"Support the Troops: Send them to Iran"
"Support the Troops: Send them to Crawford"
"Support the Troops: Send them Food"
"Support the Troops: Send them Water"

Now for ones that represent actual U.S. government policy:

"Support the Troops: Leave them in the desert to get shot at and bombed"
"Support the Troops: No timetable"
"Support the Troops: No honorable discharge if you speak the truth about the war"
"Support the Troops: Diplomacy is for wimps, not chickenhawks"

And the worst one of all:

"Support the Troops: Send weapons to Sunni insurgents"

Lieberman wants to attack IRAN

What the hell is he thinking? Will Al Gore repudiate picking this numskull as vice president? When will the Republican idiots complain about this bozo trying to micromanage foreign policy?

Bad limerick

There once was a surger from Yale,
With skulls and bones turning pale.
His friends the bin Ladens
could smell his Rose Garden
For they knew that his plan would fail.

A: Things will get worse before they don't get better

Q: What is George W. Bush's expectation lowering position on the outcome of his 'surge'?

Curiosities from the Iraq poll

The following items from the D3/ABC/ARD/BBC/USA Today poll from March struck me as curious.

53% of Iraqis think Saddam's execution harmed reconciliation efforts.

The percentages that think the following countries are encouraging sectarian violence are:
Syria, 66%; Iran, 71%; Saudi Arabia, 56%.

30% would move to another country if they could.

94% think forcible separation along ethnic lines is a bad thing!

Only 9% have never tried to avoid U.S. forces as a way of staying out of trouble.

The percentages that think the following countries are playing a negative role:
U.S., 77%, Iran, 67%, Syria, 63%, Saudi Arabia, 56%, Turkey, 46%, Russia, 13%.

If only 6% think forcible separation is a bad thing, who is doing all the ethnic cleansing?

For a supposedly Shiite dominated country, the negatives towards Iran seem very high. But this is consistent with Juan Cole's writings about the politics of the Sadrists.