A Trillion There A Trillion There

The House had no problem with deficit spending today and voted to approve another emergency supplemental appropriation to fund the unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This appropriation takes the total Congress has allotted for these cluster fucks at over $1 Trillion with a capital T.

Among the countless tragedies both in cost and in human suffering is the reality that if the action in Iraq had not happened(and it shouldn't have) and distracted us from the 'real' mission we might actually have been out of the quagmire in Afghanistan by now. The minor trillion dollar distraction in Iraq has cost us failure in Afghanistan and nine years laters, it's still a mess with no foreseeable resolution.

Now that the GOP is busily trying to polish the turd of  George Bush and Dick Cheney's rule we should all remember one thing ... that $1 trillion is all deficit spending and it's money we could surely find a better use for if it is on the plastic.

Had to Be Done

I'm glad to see the President do the right thing with respect to General McChrystal.  Even though it is not acceptable to have a commanding general's in open disagreement with the president having a general and his key staff actually mocking the President is an unpardonable sin. If President Obama had left McChrystal in command it would have sorely weakened his status as commander-in-chief. The 'war' in Afghanistan is not one you can win. The Taliban and their drastic Islam is embedded in huge swaths of the population and they will never be gone. There is no Al-Qeada presence in the country and the Taliban won't allow them to reestablish it. We need to disengage ourselves with the utmost haste. The sooner we admit this the better.

Very Suspcious

The report the New York Times of newly discovered mineral deposits in Afghanistan just sounds weird.

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

While it is great for those interested I think I am justly suspicious of this. It sounds very much like the old 'WMD ploy' . I can just see 'protecting the Afghans while they create a mining industry' as very convenient excuse for maintaining a significant military presence there. We should be very alert that this is not used to allow the U.S. to back off its commitment to get the hell out of Dodge ASAP. Those minerals have been there a long time and will be there long after we leave and the Afghans have their civil war. Once all the brouhaha is over the Chinese can come in and get the mining underway.

Milestone Tragedy

The Pentagon now reports that 1,000 of our sons and daughters have died in Afghanistan. This is not a good milestone and certainly not one to celebrate. I only ask what benefit we will gather for this high price?
I'll steal a paragraph from Derrick Crowe at FDL:

Here is this wide altar, Afghanistan, on which our empire leaves its tribute to the true god of all empires. One thousand of the young, blown apart by rough-made bombs buried on roads to nowhere, shot by snipers, or worse, by their own. One thousand sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, neighbors, mentors, students, friends, husbands, wives, lovers. A thousand goats led into the wild to appease the spirit of the wilderness, the maker of weapons, sent to the desert for our impurities.

More here 

Progress In Afghanistan

Who says we aren't making progress in Afghanistan?

Long the world's largest producer of opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, Afghanistan has now become the top supplier of cannabis, with large-scale cultivation in half of its provinces, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

I guess it's something.

On the Horns of a Dilemma

Jim DeRosa has a post up this morning A Great Society or a Great War. You Can't Have Both.

I too, have been thinking a lot about the weight of the decision President Obama is having to make. While President Obama was left with hundreds of tough problems by the preceding administration none are more critical to the future of what America will become than the lingering disasters of these two wars. Millions upon millions of people both here and there will have to live with the consequences of our next steps.

The always eloquent Bill Moyers had this to say about where we are:

BILL MOYERS: Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face the prospect of enlarging a different war. But once again we're fighting in remote provinces against an enemy who can bleed us slowly and wait us out, because he will still be there when we are gone.

Once again, we are caught between warring factions in a country where other foreign powers fail before us. Once again, every setback brings a call for more troops, although no one can say how long they will be there or what it means to win. Once again, the government we are trying to help is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.

And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he's got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart.

And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision.

We will never know what would have happened if Lyndon Johnson had said no to more war. We know what happened because he said yes.

Aside from the fact that there are thousands, if not millions of lives at stake there is also a terrible political impact to the impending decision. There is a very strong likelihood that should President Obama choose to not escalate the conflict in Afghanistan and, in effect, walk away he will most likely be a one term president. If the President chooses, instead of war, the almost impossible domestic problems which he inherited, he will pay for it with his Presidency. The charges from the war mongers and wingnut right will be poisonous. He will be labeled as weak and unpatriotic. He will be accused of betraying our dead and casting aside all of the lives and treasure we have invested in these misguided wars and it will be relentless. Trust me, it won't matter one whit to the mouthbreathers if we move toward energy independence, reduce the deficit, enact health reform or any other of the myriad opportunities we have to improve life in America. The only thing that will matter is that Obama quit. It won't matter that it was fruitless to continue. It won't matter that we were crushing ourselves under mountains of debt for no reason. The only thing they will see is quitting which they will see a losing.

This is the choice President Obama faces and it is a mighty dilemma. Is there a way to end the quagmire that was deliberately left for him in Afghansitan and still serve two terms? I, for one, believe the choice should be to end our engagement in a conflict we cannot and never will win even it means a return to power of the right. As much as I hate the idea of a return to incompetence of the GOP I have come to the conclusion that we can't, as a nation, continue on our present course. Escalating the Afghanistan conflict will just amplify the disaster. Abandoning it will be the political ruin of Obama and the Democratic party. Withdrawing from Afghanistan will add high octane fuel to the efforts of the extreme right to tear this country apart. If you think the insanity displayed since the election has been spectacular just wait until they have this to batter the President with.

The sad thing is that President Obama will probably bow to the pressure and escalate in some fashion and, in effect, turn his back on the mountain of domestic problems we face. Thousands more American and Afghan lives will be sacrificed until someone comes along and makes the right decision. I just hope that if and when the escalation comes it is wrapped in clear and decisive terms with respect to goals and exit strategy. I think it is a mistake to kick the ball down the field one more time no matter how the process is defined but it will probably happen.

None of us should delude ourselves about the reasons either. Escalating the war in Afghanistan is strictly about politics and the President's desire to not be a one term President. It will be about not ceding political power to the extreme right in the next presidential election. We have been here before and to paraphrase Bill Moyers, it is "de ja vu all over again". President Obama is in the same position as President Johnson when it came to Vietnam. Johnson chose war out of political expediency even though he chose not to run for a second term. Would that President Obama take a lesson from that dilemma and the results of the wrong decision.

Those of you that have been coming around here for any length of time know how much I loathe the far right and what they have done and are doing to our country. As much as I hate to say it, I would rather see them return to power than see us spend any more lives and treasure in the pointless conflicts in the Middle East. It was a mistake in the beginning and it is even more of a mistake now. If ending this costs us a return to the fascism of the right then so be it.

Don't get me wrong. I do believe that we should be engaged in the world and especially the potential hell hole that could erupt in the Middle East. I just don't think we should be doing it with bombs and bullets. Pakistan is trouble squared and Iran could be as well. Palestine and Israel will ever be a sucking wound on the world until we settle the issue of the West Bank and settlements. Who knows what will become of Iraq and Afghanistan if we disengage militarily. We and many before us have proven conclusively that bombs and bullets don't work in Afghanistan and the same can be said for the rest. We can't ignore the hole but we should at least stop digging.

Change in the Air?

There have been scores of anonymously-sourced reports alleging one thing or another about President Obama's next step with respect to the future of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. I may be completely wrong but it seems to me as if the President is finally beginning to realize that he is in a 'no win' situation and that the old axiom that says "Afghanistan is where empires go to die" is the hard truth and throwing more American blood and treasure onto the sands there is not the answer. Couple this with the latest 'leaked' cable from Ret. Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, who has put in writing his "reservations about deploying additional troops to the country." Eikenberry is not just some diplomatic functionary, he was recently the top American military commander in the country and his concern lends credence to the this AP report suggesting that the president has been presented with a series of options, none of which he finds compelling.

President Barack Obama won't accept any of the Afghanistan war options before him without changes, a senior administration official said, as concerns soar over the ability of the Afghan government to secure its own country one day. [...]

He remains close to announcing his revamped war strategy -- troops are just one component -- and probably will do so shortly after he returns from a trip to Asia that ends Nov. 19.

Yet in Wednesday's pivotal war council meeting, Obama wasn't satisfied with any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, one official said.

The president instead pushed for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government. In turn, that could change the dynamic of both how many additional troops are sent to Afghanistan and what the timeline would be for their presence in the war zone, according to the official.

The DoD is trying to push the president into escalating the U.S. presence with help from Clinton, Gates and others. President Obama seems to realize that he is being rushed and he is pushing back and that is a good thing. Somewhere I read that the President is seriously concerned with seeing results and getting out or put another way "wants to know where the off-ramps are."

The Pentagon and 'chickenhawks' aren't going to like this and you are going to see another round of complaints about 'dithering'. So be it. I am firmly convinced that Afghanistan is a lost cause and that we should be pulling out as fast as we can. Our efforts in the area should be at stabilizing Pakistan, a nuclear threat, and leaving Afghanistan to its own miserable devices. It's nice to be the 'Lone Ranger' to the world when there is hope of accomplishing something positive but a lost cause is a lost cause and the sooner you stop digging the better.

Can you Say Quagmire?

I'm beginnning to have serious doubts:

Reporting from Washington – U.S. officials are planning to add as many as 14,000 combat troops to the American force in Afghanistan by sending home support units and replacing them with “trigger-pullers,” Defense officials say.

The move would beef up the combat force in the country without increasing the overall number of U.S. troops, a contentious issue as public support for the war slips. But many of the noncombat jobs are likely be filled by private contractors, who have proved to be a source of controversy in Iraq and a growing issue in Afghanistan.

I was originally kind of "OK" with our presence in Afghanistan but I am beginning to think we have lost our way. I can't really discern exactly what our strategy in Afghanistan is anymore? What is it, exactly, that we are trying to accomplish? Add to this that I think increasing the number of private contractors is ridiculous and has proved over and over again to be a waste of money and dangerous for the actual military. Electrocution in the shower anyone? How about a little sewage in your iced tea?

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope all of you have a Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy your families and the good food that so many of us are blessed and lucky to have. Take a moment and remember those of our fellow Americans that are doing without or needing help this year. Also remember that we have more than 180,000 young men and women deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and even though there may be turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce in the chow hall they are far from home and in harm's way.
Maybe next year we can welcome the majority of the them home and share this holiday in person.

I have to go get my pie in the oven and get going on the dressing. See you back here tomorrow maybe.

The Real 'Surge'

While most of us have a sense that things are not going well in Afghanistan the following puts it in a little more sobering perspective:

There have been 556 Americans killed in Afghanistan since 2001. 64 of them--nearly 12 percent--have been killed in the last six weeks.

'Bring it on Bush' is spilling the blood of our men and women needlessly. He needs to be impeached and imprisoned for lying to the American people, killing Americans in a useless war and ignoring the real threat posed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. His incompetence has allowed them to rebuild and his ill advised 'surge' in Iraq is resulting in a real 'surge' of dead American soldiers in Afghanistan.


crossposted at SteveAudio

A Crime Any Way you Look At It

Here's "Bring 'em On" Shrub in September 2004

The Taliban no longer is in existence.

Yesterday:

Taliban insurgents carried out a bold assault on a remote base near the border with Pakistan on Sunday, NATO reported, and a senior American military official said nine American soldiers were killed.

The attack, the worst against Americans in Afghanistan in three years, illustrated the growing threat of Taliban militants and their associates, who in recent months have made Afghanistan a far deadlier war zone for American-led forces than Iraq.

This is monumental failure 'writ large'. What a tragedy...and the only ones paying the price are our soldiers.

Sad Anniversary

I've got tons of work to do but I can't let today go by without noting that today marks the five year anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Ignoring the protests of millions of people in the U.S. and around the world today, 5 years ago, we learned that George Bush and Dick Cheney in concert with their incompetent band of "chickenhawks" had begun their "shock and awe" campaign against Baghdad.

While each day that we occupy Iraq it is a tragedy, it is on anniversaries like today that we must acknowledge the true burdens of war: 3,990 American troops have been killed, some 30,000 have been wounded in action, about 145 have died of self-inflicted wounds and 308 foreign troops have also died. No one can seem to agree on the number of Iraqis dead but it is legion. We have also created some 4 million Iraqi refugees across the Middle East. We have also bankrupted ourselves, our children and our grandchildren.

In spite of the above we are still been told daily that "progress is being made". We even have a Presidential candidate telling us that it doesn't matter if we are in Iraq for another 100 years and trillions of taxpayers dollars. We are not told of the billions of dollars simply lost. We are not reminded that only 3 of the 18 benchmarks have been met by the Iraqi government. We are not reminded that this war has lasted longer than WWII. We are not reminded that it has now cost more than Vietnam. We are not reminded that global terrorism has increased every year since the invasion. We are not reminded that the early gains made in Afghanistan are now virtually reversed by the resurgent Taliban. We are not reminded that opium harvests are setting new records. We are not reminded that last year was the most deadly for American troops since the beginning. We are only told that we are "making progress" and that is a lie.

This year, we Americans will have an opportunity to choose our future in Iraq. We have an election in which we will have the opportunity to decide if next March 19th we are marking a more tragic list of the costs of war or acknowledging as a nation the tragedy of our mistake and making plans to right the wrongs and heal the wounds. The choice is up to us and it is my dearest wish that we not squander this glorious opportunity.

Thank You - Bernie Marcus

Some good news in the AJC this morning. Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, has stepped up to so what the Congress and Shrub have failed to do. It is just tragic that this necessary support for our wounded vets has to come from the private sector. Maybe this action will embarrass someone into doing what's right. Thanks Bernie for taking the lead.

In a move meant to help injured soldiers and send Washington a message, Atlanta businessman Bernie Marcus stepped up Monday to help veterans get top-flight medical care. But he warned there was a limit to his generosity.

Marcus got involved in January after he heard of a soldier who was treated at the Shepherd Center and was improving, but faced the loss of funding.

"It angered me," said Marcus, a co-founder of Home Depot and now a billionaire philanthropist. " It is disgraceful and it is not something that we should have to tolerate in this country."

Marcus offered to underwrite the costs — care, transportation and housing — of any wounded soldier, sailor or Marine whom the Shepherd Center, a renowned Atlanta clinic for brain and spinal injuries, approved for treatment.

At a press conference Monday at the Shepherd Center, Marcus said he wanted to set an example for his fellow philanthropists. He aims to bring financial help and possibly shame the Pentagon and Congress into covering all medical treatment costs for its vets.

"We can't take care of everybody in the military, that is obvious, but perhaps we can set a standard for around the country," he said. "I expect that the government is going to take care of them eventually. It is their obligation.

Rocks Down a Sinkhole

I am just asking what we have to show for it? A Peaceful and prosperous Iraq? Afghanistan? A new and revitalized Middle East eager to move forward as part of the world community? How about a global turn toward prosperity and improved lives for everyone?

In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the "burn" rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.

Beyond 2008, working with "best-case" and "realistic-moderate" scenarios, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion -- or more -- by 2017.

Interest on money borrowed to pay those costs could alone add $816 billion to that bottom line, they say.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has done its own projections and comes in lower, forecasting a cumulative cost by 2017 of $1.2 trillion to $1.7 trillion for the two wars, with Iraq generally accounting for three-quarters of the costs.

Regardless of who is elected this fall a lot of this has already been committed and spent. We still have the injured to care for. We still have a hopelessly destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan that we have some responsibility for helping. We still have to pay off the debt accrued during this mess because not one bullet was paid for out of cash on hand and very little of the spending was even in the Federal Budget.

Drudge Tries to Kill Prince Harry

Try an imagine the outrage and accusations if Firedoglake or Dkos had outed details of our war in Afghanistan, putting at risk the lives of US coalition soldiers? That's what just happened, except it was the conservative Matt Drudge who did it.

There was an agreement with the media that this would be kept quiet until Prince Harry returned in another 4 weeks. This is a treasonous act and should be dealt with accordingly.

In Your Name

Nicholas Kristof has an op-ed in the NY Times this morning that is extremely upsetting. Yeah, I know we have been doing bad things in Gitmo for years and a lot of the "prisoners" aren't really guilty of trying to kill us but were just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place when the "liberators" came along but when it gets this specific and you can put a name and details on the absolutely unbelievable things being done in our name as Americans it gets your stomach in knots.

The most famous journalist you may never have heard of is Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who is on a hunger strike to protest abuse during more than six years in a Kafkaesque prison system.

Mr. Hajj’s fortitude has turned him into a household name in the Arab world, and his story is sowing anger at the authorities holding him without trial.

That’s us. Mr. Hajj is one of our forgotten prisoners in Guantánamo Bay.

[snip]

After Mr. Hajj was arrested in Afghanistan in December 2001, he was beaten, starved, frozen and subjected to anal searches in public to humiliate him, his lawyers say. The U.S. government initially seems to have confused him with another cameraman, and then offered vague accusations that he had been a financial courier and otherwise assisted extremist groups.

[snip]

Most Americans, including myself, originally gave President Bush the benefit of the doubt and assumed that the inmates truly were “the worst of the worst.” But evidence has grown that many are simply the unluckiest of the unluckiest.

Some were aid workers who were kidnapped by armed Afghan groups and sold to the C.I.A. as extremists. One longtime Sudanese aid worker employed by an international charity, Adel Hamad, was just released by the U.S. in December after five years in captivity. A U.S. Army major reviewing his case called it “unconscionable.”

Mr. Hajj began his hunger strike more than a year ago, so twice daily he is strapped down and a tube is wound up his nose and down his throat to his stomach. Sometimes a lubricant is used, and sometimes it isn’t, so his throat and nose have been rubbed raw. Sometimes a tube still bloody from another hunger striker is used, his lawyers say.

“It’s really a regime to make it as painful and difficult as possible,” said one of his lawyers, Zachary Katznelson.

Mr. Hajj cannot bend his knees because of abuse he received soon after his arrest, yet the toilet chair he was prescribed was removed — making it excruciating for him to use the remaining squat toilet. He is allowed a Koran, but his glasses were confiscated so he cannot read it.

You would think that in a country with so much information flowing on radio, TV and the Internet that I would have heard about Mr. Hajj before this since I do pay attention. Wrong! Something is terribly wrong. Oh, and John McCain thinks this is OK.

Down the Rat Hole

There is something deeply wrong in this country and a very clear example of it is displayed rather clearly in the growth of the defense budget. It is absolutely staggering. When you put it up against all of the things in this country and the world that could be solved with just a bit of money it makes my blood boil. Health Insurance, hunger, education, infrastructure decay, homelessness and myriad more are just sitting there waiting for the money that is being frittered away on defense and we are not talking about the 10 billion a month being wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan either.

Lorelei Kelly of Democracy Arsenal puts it all in perspective. Again not counting the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

Last week, both houses of Congress approved the conference report on the Fiscal Year 2008 Defense Authorization bill, H.R. 1585. The bill includes $506.9 billion for the Department of Defense and the nuclear weapons activities of the Department of Energy....The amount of Cold War lard is truly astonishing, especially given the fact that the military itself is hollering from the hilltops that it can't be responsible for all of our national security needs and that today's problems just don't have military (read "Cold War weapons systems") answers.

....Keep in mind, today's defense spending is 14% above the height of the Korean War, 33% above the height of the Vietnam War, 25% above the height of the "Reagan Era" buildup and is 76% above the Cold War average

In fact, since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the annual defense budget — not including the costs of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan — has gone up 34%. Including war costs, defense spending has gone up 86% since 2001.

The golden question is defense against whom? Are we spending all this money trying to defend ourselves from a bunch of rag tag Muslim extremists? How much does the bill for "Homeland Security" add to the pile?


h/t Kevin at Washington Monthly

Beyond Belief

Somehow between feeling up their granddaughters, spanking the monkey and boinking their secretaries(both male and female) Don Wildmon and the American Family Association have found time to get their thongs in a knot over another crisis facing America. I kid you not, they are lobbying Congress over U.S. troops’ access to adult materials.

Ten years after Congress banned sales of sexually explicit material on military bases, the Pentagon is under fire for continuing to sell adult fare, such as Penthouse and Playmates In Bed, that it doesn’t consider explicit enough to pull from its stores.

Dozens of religious and anti-pornography groups have complained to Congress and Defense Secretary Robert Gates that a Pentagon board set up to review magazines and films is allowing sales of material that Congress intended to ban.

“They’re saying ‘we’re not selling stuff that’s sexually explicit’ … and we say it’s pornography,” says Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association, a Christian anti-pornography group. A letter-writing campaign launched Friday by opponents of the policy aims to convince Congress to “get the Pentagon to obey the law,” he adds.

I must be missing something here. American soldiers both male and female are fighting two wars and dying in each thanks to the incompetent leadership of Bush and company. Both wars are being lost and our boys and girls are dying and being mutilated daily and the American Family Association’s biggest concern is what kind of magazines the troops can purchase on base?

Let me explain the reality...those wearing the uniform and putting their lives on the line for their country can read anything they want! If they want to see naked ladies, naked men or Goddess forbid naked ladies and men together on the same page possibly pretending to have sex then go for it boy and girls. It is none of the christianist's business even if the magazines show the Apostle Paul strapping on Jesus or Jesus going down on Mary Magdalene. None of your fucking business people.

If they are so worried that someone, somewhere might have some fun then maybe they should spend some time getting their holier than thou preacher's hands out of the pants of the Sunday School kids.

Sterile Death

I know let's make war sterile. No heavy gun, no flak jacket, no travel to hell holes, no dust, no IEDS, no blood on your hands, no enemy you have to look at in the face, no burned women and children you have to step over. You can do it all from an air conditioned room somewhere...hell it's just like a video game. You can go home at night to the family just as if you had been assembling engines all day. No fuss no muss.

The airplane is the size of a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet. It's outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles.

The Reaper is loaded, but there's no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada.

The Reaper should begin to appear in both Afghanistan and Iraq by this fall. How effective do you think it is gong to be in dealing with street level, house-to-house combat? How is a robot attack plane screaming past at 50,000 feet, dropping bombs controlled from 7,000 miles away going to deal with the realities of house to house combat of the kind we are seeing in Afghanistan and Iraq? It won't, of course, it will just be a way to kill innocent civilians without getting your hands dirty while doing on the cheap. It is a sin against all that is human.

The Reaper won't be the first flying drone to take out human targets, that "honor" goes to the Predator. But the Reaper is faster, larger, and far more deadly.

The arrival of the outsize U.S. "hunter-killer" drones, in aviation history's first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill.

If you don't think the the operators of the Reaper sitting all comfortable in their sanitary room with nothing but a video screen and a joystick won't treat war like a video game then your are very naive. How are we going to explain to the civilized people of the world what we are doing? There is no justification for this. How are the people of Iraq and Afghanistan going to feel about being bombed from 50,000 feet by robots?

This is a terrible, terrible thing. Taking the pain, blood, death and sacrifice out of war just makes it easier to wage and this something we should all rage against.

h/t Kos

Is It Toast Yet?

Think Progess has a few facts for the Senate to think about as they discuss Iraq over the next couple of weeks:

Bloomberg notes, "Four thousand U.S. service members have died in U.S. President George W. Bush’s ‘war on terror’ in Iraq and Afghanistan 5 1/2 years after American forces ousted the Taliban in December 2001." AP adds, "All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion." The wars cost approximately $12 billion a month, according to a new Congressional Research Service report.

Over 34,000 American troops have been injured with thousands permanently disabled and even though they don't register on the Republican adding machine, you can add in the hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of this ghastly disaster and if that doesn't make a perfect argument for ending this debacle then I don't know what does. Get the hell out!