Dont Forget Poland

Poland turned over control of an area south of Baghdad to American troops on Saturday, making it the latest in a string of countries to leave the dwindling U.S.-led coalition.

But even as Polish troops head home from Iraq, their government is boosting troop levels in Afghanistan and preparing for a U.S. missile defense base in Poland.

As a band played Poland's anthem, Polish soldiers hoisted their nation's red and white flag on a parade field at their main base, Camp Echo, just outside of Diwaniyah.

Maj. Gen. Andrzej Malinowski, the top Polish commander in Iraq, then knelt on the gravel-covered field and ceremoniously kissed a sky blue banner with the words "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and the image of a dove. -- AP

More work for the U.S. in Iraq, covering areas of our rapidly withdrawing allies. The surge worked, right? This war is over for everybody except the Iraqi people.

crossposted from FightingLiberals.com

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Brad Blog on Memorial Day

Brad Blog has gone to the trouble of listing all the folks who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Take a look.

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Senate Votes to Fund War Through 2009

On this memorial day weekend some good news and some bad. There was a vote to fund the GI bill BUT there is no timetable, no end in sight for the war, and plenty of money still going to fund this illegal and immoral fiasco.

The Senate has passed $165 billion to fund the war in Iraq until President Bush's successor takes over. The 70-26 vote came just minutes after a majority of Republicans voted to add tens of billions of dollars for veterans college aid and extending unemployment benefits to the war funding bill.

But Bush has promised to veto the bill if it contains the domestic measures, and the president still has enough GOP support to sustain a veto.

The Senate also voted 63-34 to block a Democratic plan to urge Bush to begin redeployment of combat troops and place other strings on his ability to conduct the war in Iraq.

The House still has to act on the bill. Last week, the House voted to reject money for continuing the war. - AP, Washington

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No More Money

The House of Representatives just voted 149 to 141 to cut off funding for the war in Iraq. This was followed by votes to put significant restrictions on President Bush's war policy, including a timeline for withdrawal, and creating a new GI Bill to help returning veterans.

100 republican congress-critters voted "present" rather than yes or no on funding. The fear of job loss in the GOP reaching a pretty fevered pitch. (from Open Left)

Find out how your rep. voted, and say thanks-- or give 'em what for!

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Ron English

via Wooster Collective.

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Bomb in Baghdad Kills 60

BAGHDAD, Iraq — BAGHDAD, Iraq _ At least 60 people died Thursday when bombers targeted the funeral of two Sunni Muslim tribesmen who'd belonged to a council that was fighting against al Qaida in Iraq, police said.

The men were members of the Sunni “awakening” movement, armed by the U.S. military to battle al Qaida in Iraq. -- McClatchy DC

At least 60 dead?! Damn, that's a big bomb.

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What Condition Our Condition Is In

They call Economics "the dismal science". If you've ever taken a basic econ class, you'll know why. The assumptions upon which economics are built are known to be faulty (people do not act "rationally" as defined by economists), the conclusions are often depressing, many of the important questions are left unasked, and the ability of economists to agree on how the world works (or an economy works) is extremely limited. These problems notwithstanding, we spend an appalling amount of time thinking about the economy, worrying about the economy, trying to effect the economy, trying to predict the economy, and generally obsessed with the economy.

So let's take a look at a few current "conditions"

Pricing the War

Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes suggest that the Iraq War is going to cost $3 trillion or even more. You can see the current direct costs of the war for the US, states, towns, or congressional districts at the National Priorities Project.

The Economist weighs in, largely with quotes from others, so I won't quote it. But check out this blog entry by Robert Reich.

According to the St. Petersburg Times, "Barack Obama says the war costs each household about $100 per month." Here's the math:

• Amount requested by the Bush Administration for 2008 War Funding: $196,400,000,000 (that's $196.4 billion)
• Number of households in the US: 126,316,181 (that's 126 million)
• Annual Cost per Household: $196,400,000,000 / 126,316,181 = $1554.83
• Monthly Cost per Household: $1554.83 / 12 = $129.57

That $1550 annual cost is the whole War on Terror, not just the Iraq War. What could you do with $1550 in your household? Of course, it's not evenly distributed. People who pay more taxes bear more of the direct cost.

But we all bear the secondary costs, like current and future interest expense for the money we're borrowing to pursue the war. We also all bear the opportunity cost. According to the National Priorities Project site, taxpayers in the state of Washington (my nearest US neighbor) will spend $1.9 billion for Iraq War funding in FY 2008. That money could have bought:

• health care for 300,000 people
• health care for 767,000 children
• Head Start for 214,000 children
• 35,000 public safety officers
• 30,000 music & art teachers
• 31,000 elementary school teachers
• 317,000 scholarships to university
• 179 elementary schools
• 25,000 port inspectors for shipping containers
• 10,000 affordable housing units

In FY 2009, projected spending for the taxpayers of Washington state will be $3.2 billion (168% of the FY 2008 spending.

According to Zachary Coile of the Chronicle:

In historical perspective, the Iraq conflict is already one of the most expensive conflicts in U.S. history.

The price tag in Iraq now is more than double the cost of the Korean War and a third more expensive than the Vietnam War, which lasted 12 years. Stiglitz and Bilmes calculate that it will be at least 10 times as costly as the 1991 Gulf War and twice the cost of World War I.

Only World War II was more expensive. That four-year war - in which 16 million U.S. troops were deployed on two fronts, fighting against Germany and Japan - cost about $5 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars.

In early 2003, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels said a war with Iraq could cost $50 billion to $60 billion. Even Congressional Democrats suggested it would cost only $93 billion (although they specifically excluded peacekeeping costs).

The Economist article linked above is quick to note that "suggestions that the war is responsible for current economic malaise are misguided--to the contrary, given under-utilised capacity, the war is probably helping to keep the economy moving". Their contention is that we're not using our full production capacity because of current problems with the dollar and demand and the credit crunch and so keeping the machines operating by having a war is reducing our economic problems. IF that is correct, and I doubt it is, surely we could do at least as well by spending that money here in the US, perhaps fixing some of the crumbling infrastructure in which Republicans don't believe we should invest money.

Home Foreclosures

California, Nevada, Colorado, and Florida are experiencing foreclosure rates of more than 1 in 150. If you click through to the zoomable map, you can examine your region, or downtown Tampa, or wherever. Some neighborhoods are getting very hard hit. Absolutely great map.

During the peak of the Great Depression (1932-33), foreclosure rates reached roughly 10% (pdf). That's 10% of all mortgages, not 10% of all houses. Our current rate is about 1% of all households. About 1.3 million homes entered foreclosure in 2007, with 1 to 2 million households predicted to face foreclosure in the next 18 months or so. The US home-loan market was about $3 trillion in 2006. About 1 million new single family homes were sold in 2006. The average house sold in 2006 cost $305,000. If all houses were fully financed (not likely), $3 trillion / $300,000 = 10,000,000 houses sold in 2006. If 1.3 million homes entered foreclosure in 2007, that's equal to 13% of the houses sold in 2006. If half of all home purchase costs were financed, then $3 trillion / $150,000 = 20,000,000 houses sold in 2006 and 1.3 million foreclosures represents about 6.5% of the houses sold in 2006. Without better data I can't get more precise, but we appear to be below the 10% foreclosure rates of the Great Depression, but within an order of magnitude and possibly in the vicinity of half of those rates. Too close for my comfort, certainly.

Real Wages

Real wages are down for this generation of adult Americans. Taking men in their 30s as a generational proxy, real wages are 12% less than in 1974. According to the EMP American Dream Report, released in May 2007 (WSJ article quoted here, gated version here):

Beginning with a comparison of men ages 30-39 in 1994 with their fathers' generation, men ages 30-39 in 1964, we see a small, but fairly insignificant, amount of intergenerational progress...Adjusting for inflation, median income increased by less than $2000 between 1964 and 1994, from about $31,000 to under $33,000 -- a 5 percent increase (0.2 percent per year) during this thirty-year period.

The story changes for a younger cohort. Those in their thirties in 2004 had a median income of about $35,000 a year. Men in their fathers’ cohort, those who are now in their sixties, had a median income of about $40,000 when they were the same age in 1974. Indeed, there has been no progress at all for the youngest generation. As a group, they have on average 12 percent less income than their fathers’ generation at the same age.

Bottom line, our condition ain't everything it should be. It's pretty clear that the experiment in relatively unbridled capitalism over the last 30 years or so has failed many Americans. It's time for change.

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Bulldog

Whew, it was a long 7 months. Nothing compared to some of the Army bubba's I worked with, who are there for 15 months, though.

Bulldog is back from the big sandy... Alive and in one piece...

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The Basrian Situation

I don't think anyone could have put it better than David Kurtz at TalkingPointsMemo has:

BRILLIANT

Within less than a week the Basra offensive has gone from "a defining moment" in Iraqi's history, in the President's words, to an operation conceived by Maliki that the U.S. didn't plan, had little warning of, and couldn't control.

heh, indeed and stuff.

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What's In A Number?

“Sure Hope There's A Bottomless Pretzel Bowl In Hell!”

It was last April when I began a post on “The Math” of Iraq's awful, destructive numbers thusly:

"Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas." —Albert Einstein, 1935

"Math class is tough!" —Teen Talk Barbie, 1992

"You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math. I'm entitled to 'THE' math." —Karl Rove, November 2006

In that post, I crunched, deconstructed, re-processed and then ground out the brutal numericals as best I could—even using mathematical anecdotal evidence offered by a family member with some hands-on experience in dealing (in a law-enforcement manner) with “bad” numbers.

But let's go back to Iraq's numbers--and ugly numbers they are. Look past if you can for a moment at the simple U.S. forces casualty number of 3,317 dead and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead. Hard as that may be, let's focus on some of the other hard numbers of this war.

25,000,000.
That's the approximate number of Iraq's population.

150,000.
That's the approximate number of U.S. forces presently in Iraq.

Now, in spite of my aversion to hard math, I do enjoy the minutiae of statistics. It's probably from the sports nut in me. But in all seriousness, some of the numericals involving Iraq are plain, old riveting. The above numbers are examples of it. A few years ago, I sat with a cousin of mine, a former (as of now) NYPD Internal Affairs Detective. It was around the time of the trial for the cops involved in the Amadou Diallo shooting, and I noticed an oddly ramped-up police presence as we rode around.

"They're getting ready for people to spazz the f*ck out, huh?", I opined.

"Total waste of time.", my cousin said ruefully. "If things really got stupid, we couldn't do a Goddamned thing to stop it. It's a show. An expensive, overtime-sucking show."

"That's kinda rough.", I said.

"It's f*cking reality. Eight million people versus 35,000 cops?", he mused. "Please. You saw what happened in L.A. LAPD couldn't do sh*t. They booked. The numbers couldn't work. And it ain't like they actually had everybody in town in the streets buggin'. You can't really police a big number like that when they wanna tear sh*t up. What's it? Ten million people over there? Say five percent get froggy and jumped--that's like...half a million people--versus 10,000 officers--maybe 6,000 on call at any given moment. 6,000 versus half a million. You see why that sh*t went down the way it did? That's why Five-O couldn't do a damn thing when stuff blew up in the 60's. Or even now. Yeah, 35,000 NYPD's gonna stop eight million people. Or let's keep it real--20-25,000 cops--real cops on peak call are gonna shut down half-a-million people out for blood. It's cosmetic. Fighting the numbers is f*cking cosmetic."

It is now a year from that time. The reported U.S. casualties in Iraq were as of that day, April 20th...3317.

The total today, April 1st, 2008? 4012 Just about 700 more soldiers dead since that day. Averaging about two soldiers a day, blown to bits, shot down in streets, captured and tortured to death...mutilated till the heart simply spares the body by saying...enough, and mercifully gives out.

And for what? The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens snuffed out? Blown up, phosphorus scalded and bulldozed en masse into ignominious, lime-dusted trenches. For them? Their lone freedom is from life itself.

Is it the remaining populace...who want us out of there in the absolute worst way? To where a sizable percentage of the country's twenty-five million people support the efforts of the militarized thousands who pick our troops off like so much ripe fruit? What exactly are we doing for them? What is that positive thing that we can look on with pride?

Was it taking down Saddam Hussein? How long ago was that, pray tell? Five years ago this month? Captured him that winter? “Mission Accomplished” was declared that Spring. Happy Crocus Day...War is over!

And ninety percent of the U.S. military casualties have occured since that “victory”.

For what?...the deaths of 4000 American soldiers.

A number denigrated by the soul-dead, no-skin-in-the-game cheerleaders for this abominable conflict. Some like to say that all things being relative, the figure's not so bad, while others simply pooh-pooh the carnage and callously blurt a “So?” when confronted with the people's discontent with the wastefulness of the conflict.

What's four thousand lives gone, really? I mean, what's in a number, really?

If you took every Major League baseball player who appeared in a game last year—just under a thousand players, and every NFL gridder, from Tom Brady to the most obscure “suicide squadder” whose cleats brushed turf for a down—some 1700 players, then threw in every NBA rim-hanger, brick-tosser and superstar—about 500 people and finally topped it off with the total of all whose feet cleaved ice professionally for the NHL las t year—about 950 padded, gap-toothed zoomers, put them all in an arena at once and then caved the roof in while setting the place ablaze...you'd end up with about 4,100 dead. Not a far cry at all from the senseless Iraq total thus far.

Or perhaps...perhaps if you sold out the world-famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem for three straight nights, but instead of a stunning show, had a team of assassins simply mow down everyone seated in the theatre. Fill 1400-plus seats three times over and have those people blown away and tou get to 4000 easily.

My high school graduating class consisted of 508 students. Multiply that by eight and you're at...4000 yet again.

Let's take a page from the poison book of our “So?”-spouting vice president if you will for a moment and link 9-11 to Iraq, shall we? Take the number of people killed at the World Trade Canter on September 11th, and then add to that ghastly total another 300 firefighters.

Then add 300 more policemen.

And then, tack on 300 more civilians to the death list and you're right there again—at the heart-sinking and un-magical 4000 number.

When you put it in that perspective, it's not such a piddling number, is it?

That question's really for our tough-guy veep—the flightless bird and defenseless friend-shooting Mr. Cheney.

But people like him and his “boss”, and the oleaginous Michael O'Hanlon, the wattle-full-of-deceit Fred Kagan, and the “Stratego™-is-like-real-life” believing Victor Davis Hanson see lost American lives as blurry, non-corporeal haze. Vapors and dust to be burned off with the light of never-ending, hubris-driven war.

These are people. Real people in that 4000 who are dead...and gone, and will speak no more. Individuals with as much to give as anyone else, only to be sacrificed as human fucking kindling to stoke a senselessly burning fire.

I've seen Steven Spielberg's “Saving Private Ryan” maybe four times. But I've only watched its frightful first twenty minutes once. The film didn't depict those carried off in death's bottomless satchel as the typical faceless wave of falling bodies in costume department camo.

You remember those awful deaths individually.

The soldier blown in half as Tom Hanks is dragging him across the beach to “safety”.

The poor bastard who takes a fatal bullet to the forehead after cheating death moments before thanks to his then still-on-his-head helmet.

The beach's radio operator, frantically dialing for back-up one second, and then—little more than a blast-emptied skull a moment later.

Every death is an individual one, no matter how those who wish to wave away and downplay them as a collective, faceless lump of sacrifice to an unnameable “greater good” may try to. Parts yes, of that bigger than you think it is “4000” number, but individuals nonetheless.

Like Sgt. Matt Maupin of Batavia, Ohio. Captured four years ago in Iraq and classified as missing ever since. Up until this past weekend that is—when his remains were found and identified.

Just one of four thousand. Or five thousand. Or hey, why not TEN thousand if the likes of the dangerously flawed John Sidney McCain should ascend to power and opts to make this a “Hundred Years War 2.0”.

I said it this weekend when that death was added to the scrolling tally...

“Just...Goddamn the waste of it all. How do people sleep at night behind this out-of-control meat-grinder of a war?”

Those who cheered. Who signed off. Who to this very day will NOT see it for the historical clusterfuckery that it is. I realize now that these people don't sleep. To sleep you must be alive. And these people are dead. Soul-dead as a hunk of petrified wood or a shard of rough brick in a pile of refuse. They may close their eyes and lay down to “rest”, but it is a vampire's rest.

And 4,000 lives sucked away is nothing to them at all. A mere apéritif...before an eternity if there is such a thing as “Karma”, of dining hopefully as bellowed in the movie “300”...in hell.

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Cheney goes a travelling, a tale.

al Sadr had decided to go and study the Koran. To do his academic duty as a Islamist. He put his AK down and picked up a book. No he hadn't been drilling and training. He had been waiting. He loved his father as much as they both loved Iraq. He wanted his country to be peaceful. Sunshine, bustling marketplaces where people would buy their food before going home to cook for their families without the glowering oppressive image of Saddam. Probably he had hoped against hope that the Americans would just, stop.

Yes, Basra was not in good shape, his control was not that good. That Police Chief was constantly complaining. But, it was getting better wasn't it?

Cheney arrived in a plane that spiraled to the ground to avoid the missiles that waited. His ancient carcass wheezing and focused. He had something to do. Time was running out. Like some frenetic ball of energy he went from meeting to meeting increasing the tension, tightening the springs, poking and prodding. Time was running out.

He saved the Saudis for last, like junior did. "Don't worry", he said. We will beat back the Shi'a. "Spring offensive" he said. Iran is not a problem. He had to go though, time was running out. He had to head back. Leaving the end of the peace in his wake. The quiet broken by the sound of his aircraft in a high angle ascent to avoid the missiles.

Time was running out.

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High Risk Strategy

Roger Hardy has some analysis:

The crackdown in Basra is fraught with political significance, writes the BBC Middle East analyst Roger Hardy.

Sadrists are convinced it is an attempt to weaken them ahead of provincial elections due in October - elections they are confident will strengthen their grip on the south.

Mr Maliki has embarked on a highly risky strategy, our analyst notes.

For one thing, it is far from clear that it will succeed.

The Sadrist movement enjoys widespread support, especially among the young and the poor, and is well entrenched in Basra and many other predominantly Shia towns and cities in the south.

For another, if the ceasefire which the Sadrists have largely followed since last summer were to collapse, that would seriously undermine claims by the government - and by the Bush administration in Washington - that Iraq had somehow turned a corner and was moving from civil war to political reconciliation. -- news.bbc.co.uk

I would agree, this one has a real pucker factor. Stay tuned.

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Sadr Ceasefire Over

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's leaders faced their gravest challenge in months Tuesday as Shiite militiamen loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr battled government forces for control of the southern oil capital, fought U.S. and Iraqi troops in Baghdad and unleashed rockets on the Green Zone.

Armed Mahdi Army militiamen appeared on some Baghdad streets for the first time in more than six months, as al-Sadr's followers announced a nationwide campaign of strikes and demonstrations to protest a government crackdown on their movement. Merchants shuttered their shops in commercial districts in several Baghdad neighborhoods.

U.S. and Iraqi troops backed by helicopters fought Shiite militiamen in Baghdad's Sadr City district after the local office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party came under attack, the U.S. said. Residents of the area reported intermittent explosions and gunfire in the area late Tuesday. -- Associated Press

Oh, yeah. It's over. I can't help but think this is the U.S. promoting a Iraqi civil war. They are actively sending Iraqi troops against the Mahdi army in Basra. Of course Sadr's people in Baghdad will have reprisals, I wouldn't be surprised if we have full scale fighting in Baghdad.

What was it McCain said? We are winning in Iraq, Sorry, that was yesterday Senator. Pay attention.

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Sadr Ceasefire Over?

As usual McClatchy has the scoop.

BAGHDAD — A cease-fire critical to the improved security situation in Iraq appeared to unravel Monday when a militia loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al Sadr began shutting down neighborhoods in west Baghdad and issuing demands of the central government.

Simultaneously, in the strategic southern port city of Basra, where Sadr's Mahdi militia is in control, the Iraqi government launched a crackdown -- McClatchyDC

Sounds like Sadr is tired of the lip service he has been getting from the Iraqi government and this "crackdown" in Basra is the straw that broke the camels back. Which was a U.S. forced action. They wanted the Brits to do something about security down there, but they were not interested, so Petraeus made the Iraqis do it. I don't know if Sadr is serious, whether he will let slip his dogs of war or not is unclear, but if I slept in the Green Zone I would sleep with my flak jacket and helmet on. I expect there are going to be quite a few more rocket attacks.

I guess we now know why Dave Petraeus just announced he was leaving the current surge troop levels were they are. He probably figured something like this would happen when he told the Iraqis to start busting heads in Basra.

Going to be a hell of a Spring. Break is over, back to work.

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Happy 4,000 KIA in Iraq Day!

4,000

The phenomenal success in Iraq has caused only 4,000 U.S. KIA...

Congratulations to everyone involved! Here is to a thousand more, before we end this stupid fucking war, that we are fighting so we can fight them over there instead of over here, because Saddam was a bad guy, and so the Iraqi's can stand up while we stand down, while we are bringing peace to the middle east, fighting the islam-o-nazi's and Al Qaeda and the dirty Iranian sneaks. I only hope we can finally put to rest the fantasy that nation building doesn't work, I mean, it's truly phenomenal! Sure there was a mass of bombings yesterday, but consider them celebratory explosions of joy!

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Phenomenal!

This is a picture of the clean up from the bomb in Shiite city of Karbala, over 52 dead and close to 100 wounded.


And we have McCain wandering around talking about Iranians hiding under desks... These people are blithering idiots.

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McCain in Baghdad

So, if its so safe in Baghdad, if the "Surge" is working so well why couldn't Baghdad John get over to Shorja market? Couldn't they get some more Apaches? Or did they have a hard time getting any of the boys from the 101st to "volunteer"?

Our answer comes from CNN:

They didn’t believe it was safe for an American to be in that area. -- CNN Reporting.

That seems like it should be the description of the whole damn country.

Iraq, Not Safe for Americans©

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