Barack Obama is ready to take on the enemy!

Senator Barack Obama has finally decided to forcefully take on the enemy!

Bush?

“I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breaches, and intentional breaches of the president’s authority,” he said.

USA Today

As opposed to the trivial breaches committed by Bush.

The war?

The leading Democratic White House hopefuls conceded Wednesday night they cannot guarantee to pull all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the end of the next presidential term in 2013.

I think it’s hard to project four years from now,” said Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois in the opening moments of a campaign debate in the nation’s first primary state.

CNN

Maybe for someone who is not ready to lead.

FISA?

Obama said only that “if the bill comes to the Senate floor in its current form, he would support a filibuster of it” — a transparent hedge given that it is virtually certain that the bill (being marked up this week by the Senate Judiciary Committee) will not come to the floor in its “current form.” That makes Obama’s statement virtually worthless, filled — as intended — with plenty of room for him to vote for amnesty if and when the Senate votes on it.

Glenn Greenwald

Following in Dodd’s footsteps, but not following all the way.

Bigots?

“First, Pastor McClurkin believes and has stated things about sexual orientation that are deeply hurtful and offensive to many Americans, most especially to gay Americans. This cannot and should not be denied.

At the same time, a great many African Americans share Pastor McClurkin’s beliefs. This also cannot be ignored.

Finally, we believe that the only way for these two sides to find common ground is to do so together.”

Huffington Post

Common ground? With bigots?

Well, okay- not those enemies. This enemy…

New York Times:

Senator Barack Obama says he will start confronting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton more forcefully, declaring that she had not been candid in describing her views on critical issues, as he tries to address mounting alarm among supporters that his lack of assertiveness has allowed her to dominate the presidential race.

Mr. Obama’s vow to go on the offensive comes just over two months before the first votes are cast for the Democratic nomination, and after a long period in which his aides, donors and other supporters have battled – and in some cases shared – the perception that he has not exhibited the aggressiveness demanded by presidential politics.

Here’s a clue for the Senator: the only people who care whether he takes on Hillary Clinton are people who already support his candidacy, or who really dislike Hillary. Those of us who are undecided, and who are looking for a leader, would prefer that he took on Bush, the war, FISA, and bigots.

I’m guessing that an increasing number of we undecideds have now decided on at least one thing: we won’t be voting for Senator Obama in the primaries.

Pony Party: Sunday music retrospective

Melange a folk


We Five: You Were on My Mind

Here are some favorite songs by people who will probably never get their own retrospective.


Left Banke: Walk away Rene


The Seekers:  I’ll Never Find Another You


Chad and Jeremy:  A Summer Song

Please do not recommend a Pony Party when you see one.  There will be another along in a few hours.

Docudharma Times Sunday Oct. 28

This is an Open Thread: Don’t Be Shy.



USA

Father gains sense of son’s last moments in Iraq

By James Ricci

Los Angeles Times

Darrell Griffin Sr. has gotten down to work on his final collaboration with his son and namesake.


The book taking shape is a compendium. It will blend an account of a father’s melancholy journey to Iraq with the dire experiences and searching meditations of a son, the latter written down by Darrell Griffin Jr. before a Sadr City sniper’s bullet pierced the back of his head in March.


Darrell Jr. was a Fort Lewis-based Army infantry staff sergeant, 6 feet 2 inches of muscled warrior. Married, with no children, he had been an emergency medical technician in Compton, Calif., before finding his life’s work as a soldier.

Feds Strike ID Deal Over NY Licenses

The Bush administration and New York cut a deal Saturday to create a new generation of super-secure driver’s licenses for U.S. citizens, but also allow illegal immigrants to get a version.


New York is the fourth state to reach an agreement on federally approved secure licenses, after Arizona, Vermont and Washington. The issue is pressing for border states, where new and tighter rules are soon to go into effect for crossings.

Calif. firefighters work to hold gains

LAKE ARROWHEAD, Calif. – Firefighters Sunday hoped to hold on to the strong gains they made against Southern California blazes, despite a forecast of warmer, drier weather and a continuing threat to some homes.

The blistering Santa Ana winds that whipped fires over more than a half-million acres earlier in the week were replaced by light breezes and even some rain on Saturday but another change in direction was expected to bring drier weather to Orange and San Diego counties.

Child sweatshop shame threatens Gap’s ethical image

Amitosh concentrates as he pulls the loops of thread through tiny plastic beads and sequins on the toddler’s blouse he is making. Dripping with sweat, his hair is thinly coated in dust. In Hindi his name means ‘happiness’. The hand-embroidered garment on which his tiny needle is working bears the distinctive logo of international fashion chain Gap. Amitosh is 10.


The hardships that blight his young life, exposed by an undercover Observer investigation in the back streets of New Delhi, reveal a tragic consequence of the West’s demand for cheap clothing. It exposes how, despite Gap’s rigorous social audit systems launched in 2004 to weed out child labour in its production processes, the system is being abused by unscrupulous subcontractors. The result is that children, in this case working in conditions close to slavery, appear to still be making some of its clothes.


Middle East

A haven for Kurdish rebels who await the Turks

By Asso Ahmed, Special to The Times

October 28, 2007

MARDU, IRAQ — It is a land of resistance, the mountain peaks and winding valleys where Iraq’s Kurds battled Saddam Hussein for decades. Now another generation of guerrillas is bunkered down waving the flag of Kurdish nationalism in the Qandil mountains, this time in a fight against Turkey.


Iraqi Kurds and members of the Turkish separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, live together in this vast mountain range that straddles Iraq, Turkey and Iran. The haven provided to the Turkish Kurd rebels here infuriates the Turkish government in Ankara, which has been locked in an intense conflict with the Kurdish separatist movement that has cost thousands of lives since the 1980s.

Turkey: We will make Kurd rebels grieve

ANKARA, Turkey – Turkey’s top military commander promised Saturday to make Iraq-based Kurdish rebels “grieve with an intensity that they cannot imagine,” while the prime minister said his nation would fight “when needed,” regardless of international pressure.

The military chief, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, said Friday that Turkey would wait until Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with President Bush in Washington on Nov. 5 before deciding on any cross-border offensive.


But Erdogan said his country could not be pinned down by dates in deciding whether to attack.

Explosive charge blows up in US’s face

By Gareth Porter


WASHINGTON – When the United States military command accused the Iranian Quds Force in January of providing the armor-piercing EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) that were killing US troops, it knew that Iraqi machine shops had been producing their own EFPs for years, a review of the historical record of evidence on EFPs in Iraq shows.


The record also shows that the US command had considerable evidence that the Mahdi Army of Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr

had received the technology and the training on how to use it from Hezbollah, rather than Iran.


Asia

Inside rebel Pakistan cleric’s domain

SWAT, Pakistan – Long-haired militants with assault rifles and walkie-talkies guard the approach to the stronghold of Maulana Fazlullah, the radical cleric whose mission to spread fundamentalist Islam has provoked a bloody showdown with Pakistan’s government.

Beyond the checkpoint, down a narrow track winding through orchards and by the clear blue waters of the Swat River, an Associated Press reporter was granted access to a sprawling seminary beyond state control, behind the new front line in Pakistan’s faltering campaign against Islamic extremists.

Hu’s ‘olive branch’ breaks in Taiwan

By Ting-I Tsai


TAIPEI – At the height of the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic in May 2003, China’s former representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Sha Zukang, was asked by Taiwanese reporters why China had again blocked Taiwan’s bid to join the World Health Organization as an observer.


“Who cares about you?” he responded, putting a final exclamation point on another diplomatic victory for Beijing.


But four years later, China might be finding that its hardline policy has had negative consequences.


Asia-Pacific

We said our brave son was invincible

THE father of Matthew Locke, the Special Air Services soldier who was killed in action in Afghanistan, left his NSW property last night to make the long journey to Perth to comfort the dead soldier’s wife and son.


Norm Locke will wait with his daughter-in-law Leigh Ann and 12-year-old grandson Keegan at Perth for the arrival of Sergeant Locke’s body.


The soldier died after being shot in the chest in a firefight with Taliban extremists in Oruzgan province on Thursday. He was the second Australian casualty this month. A roadside bomb killed trooper David Pearce on October 8.


Europe

Ukraine reburies Stalin’s victims

Ukrainian authorities have reburied near the capital, Kiev, the bodies of some 2,000 people killed by the Soviet secret police more than 60 years ago.


Relatives of the victims watched as red coffins were lowered into graves and blessed by a priest at the ceremony.

War shame ended by plea of a daughter

Henry McDonald, Ireland Correspondent

Sunday October 28, 2007

The Observer


The tears and testimony of a 93-year-old woman whose father was shot for cowardice during the First World War led to a pardon for him and other soldiers, a new book reveals.


In October 1916 Irish-born Private Harry Farr was executed for cowardice while serving with the West Yorkshire regiment. Ninety years later an emotional encounter between his daughter, Gertie Harris, and a British government minister started the process of overturning decades of Ministry of Defence policy.


Latin America

Briefing: Wife of Argentine president on course for election victory

Voters today are likely to let the Kirchners keep the top job in the family

By David Usborne

Published: 28 October 2007


Argentina goes to the polls today and, barring an unexpected revolt, voters are likely to choose the wife of outgoing President Nestor Kirchner as his successor. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is already being compared to another female icon of Buenos Aires, Evita Peron. Oh, yes, and to Hillary Clinton, too.


Is there something fishy about President Kirchner hand-picking his wife to succeed him?

Iglesia ………………………….Episode Five

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(Last weeks episode)

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She finished her flakes, did the dishes, and poured the rest of the coffee into her Teenage Mutant Ninja travel cup. She went to the wall safe and loaded up her belt and her bag and her boots with the tools of her trade. Since their surveillance of Tan’s henchmen was over, she was headed downtown to HQ to fill out paper work and wait for her next assignment. At least it was warm. She grabbed her shades and her car keys and headed out the plastic front door.

Ten million years ago, give or take, a Winnebago sized rock fell free from its orbit in the asteroid belt and started a new and exciting journey. Well. An exciting journey for a rock. Touring the Solar system as it pursued an explicitly non-meandering path, but still dancing, as much as a rock can dance, through cold black space in time and in tune to the siren square dance call of the Sun’s gravitas. Other rocks and such had gravity, the sun had gravitas, a bright doughty gravitas, considering how unexceptional a star it was, compared to all the other stars especially. As is true for all of us in life, the path of the Winnebago size rock to its ultimate destination was not straight or true.

It had once been part of a larger rock, until its path brought that rock into contact and conflict with another. Now apparently free to find its own path, it was still swayed and redirected by every other body it came close enough to relate to, their respective gravitational fields entwining and influencing each others movements and directions for the time that they were close enough together to be of any real importance to each other. The Winnebago sized rock met and danced with and communicated and influenced and was influenced by other rocks and asteroids and moons and planets, each encounter changing it subtly, each meeting changing both bodies orbits and destinations, if even an infinitesimal amount. Each and every small or large entity of whatever shape it came close to changed it permanently, effortlessly and irrevocably.

And….pulling back and looking from afar, one could see indeed how each and every one of the billions of rocks and asteroids and planets and moons affected each and every other one of the rocks and asteroids and planets and moons….all in their own gravity field, and all in each others gravity fields as well, so that even the movement of one rock way over here effected that other rock way over there, sooner or later. And all of them dancing together in a perfect (for rocks) sphere around our doughty Sun. All of them in a symphony of movement, with only a huge and fiercely and steadily burning ball of flaming white hot hydrogen as their conductor, apparently.

One day, the Winnebago sized rock had yet another encounter that changed its direction, just as had happened many, many times before, when it came to close to yet another moon. The Winnebago sized rock was very, very old after all, as old as anything…that matter, made at the beginning of time. It’s jaunty and refreshingly new direction put it on a course that then led it then eventually to collide with a football stadium sized rock…and now it was a Volkswagen sized rock. It didn’t notice, really. This new development in its circumstances eventually led it to fall into the gravity well of a big blue planet.

She checked her hair in the mirror and left the house, putting her bag down to lock the door ….she realized she had left he coffee on the counter.

The Volkswagen sized rock hit the atmosphere of the big blue planet and changed direction one last time….and it began to burn. And shrink. Ablation is a bitch.

She retrieved her coffee cup and went back outside and locked the door, picked up her bag and turned and headed to her car. She bent over and unplugged it and stood back up just in time for the now pinhead sized rock to pass at a slight but distinct angle through the her brain and heart and guts and bones and exit her body through the bottom of her right foot. It finally burned up in the earth below the sidewalk….thus ending its journey.

She died instantly and painlessly.

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(Tune in on Tuesday at Midnight for the next exciting episode!)

Nano Science: Something “goofy” happens

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
‘ya hang around some of the less savory places I do on occasion and you’re bound to bump into this sweet-smelling bad actor named, Trichloroethylene, or TCE. You might recall that this bad actor had a lead in the book and movie “A Civil Action”, about contaminated wells in Woburn, MA. Well, if you do bump into this character in a dark  alley, grab your kidneys and liver and get outa town. Or maybe not…

TCE lingers like a bad houseguest, especially if handled carelessly. It accumulates in soil and can persist for years in groundwater. In a report last year, the National Research Council found that TCE was a potential cause of kidney cancer; it’s also associated with liver problems, autoimmune disease and impaired neurological function.

Enter King Midas–usually known as Michael Wong–with his miracle gold nanoparticles dusted with palladium.  According to The Smithsonian Magazine in a piece by William Booth of the Washington Post, Mr. Wong has discovered somewhat of a cure that even he doesn’t fully understand.

And just what is it? “We don’t know!” says Wong. “We don’t understand the chemistry. But we don’t understand it in a good way,” meaning he believes that his team will figure it out soon. “Our catalyst is doing something really goofy.”

No expensive endless inefficient pump and treat? That’s just positively goofy.

Goofy it may be, but Wong’s nanodetergent breaks TCE down into relatively harmless ethane and chloride salts. He and his team are now working with engineers to build a real-sized reactor to field-test the nanoparticles at a polluted site. They hope to be scrubbing TCE in about a year, and then they’ll see whether they have the cost-efficient cleaner they seek.


Just to get an idea of the pervasive nature of this chemical, consider these facts:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified 1,428 hazardous waste sites as the most serious in the nation, and these sites make up the National Priorities List (NPL, or Superfund) targeted for long-term federal clean-up. Trichloroethylene has been found in at least 861, or 60%, of the NPL sites, and there are tens of thousands of other cleanup sites across the country. The full extent of TCE contamination nationwide is unclear. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) reports that trichloroethylene is the most frequently reported organic contaminant in groundwater, and estimates that between 9 and 34 percent of drinking water supply sources have some trichloroethylene contamination.

Well, I’m not in any position to evaluate some goofy nanodiscovery by a post-doctorate chemist but if he’s got himself a gold-plated magic bullet to clean up the mess we’ve made of our diminishing fresh water supply here on earth, let it rain down!

Feel better, Buhdy, from T&P!

AntiWar Rally Today: Seattle Reporting (Photos)

(Anti-Occupation Rallies today. 11 pm – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Dsc05643I headed off to the “staging area,” which was Judkins Park, in a quiet area of town mostly populated by minorities.  Participants organized with their respective groups, mostly “usual suspects” (ie. committed and brave and patriotic in the best sense of caring truly about humanity) BUT with a notable lack of community participation.  If 60% or more oppose the war nationally, and 90% or so here in Seattle before it even started, where were the rest?

Why was it that I counted ONE BUS (belonging to “Pastors for Peace,” who travel to Cuba, Mexico, Central America – though not necessarily in the bus) but on the way home I counted MORE THAN NINETY busses of University of Washington football fans?  I know that football is immensely popular in the fall and tailgate parties are a tradition, along with Jack’o’Lanterns but what about our country?  Our future?

The rally was intended to go from Judkins Park down (or up) Jackson Street to Occidental Square, which may not mean anything to someone who doesn’t live in Seattle.  To me though, it is a traditional labor march route, much as the one from Place de Nation to Place de Republique has been in Paris, via the site of the storming of the Bastille.  In both cases, the routes are now off to the side of the zones of commerce, and the populist marches for justice no longer seem to strike fear in the hearts of the bourgeoise.  In both instances, the media appears to be aligned with the increasingly more right-leaning government, contrary to what the far right says.

It seem, like Tom Hayden warns, that the antiwar movement was discouraged from developing after 9/11, through the use of fear.  Once it developed, a huge PR campaign has been forged on the right, to try to marginalize protesters as “goofy.”  Indeed, I did a “search” for antiwar at MySpace and found military spouses who wanted protesters to impale themselves on the sticks of their protest signs.  Pressed further, some of them still appeared to believe the 9/11-Saddam link or that civil warring factions were intending to somehow head through the skies to attack rural America.

More pictures below- ek

Sadly, I keep attending, and I was gratified to see many young people today.
Dsc05648
Dsc05661
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Global Environment Outlook

The UN just published their 2007 Global Environment Outlook.

In a phrase, it is “beyond depressing.”  All 567 pages, or so, which I only uncritically and rapidly previewed.  I already know it.  So does everyone else.  Let’s face it: Population size has surpassed Earth’s carrying capacity several times over.  The atmosphere, oceans, rivers, and lands are all collapsing.  Rising demand meets failing supplies.  In the best of all possible scenarios, millions if not billions must die.  Perhaps we will all die.  Problem solved.  In the meantime, population growth drives extraction and economic growth.  Economic growth drives consumption, as well as our politics.  Globalization simply accelerates the process.  The oil is collapsing, so we start wars over the commodity that is killing us most.  What can we do about it?

I have no idea.  I quit driving.  It will be three years in January.  It’s a pretty useless thing as a lone act.  I know for certain that until this war in Iraq ends, the conversation cannot change to more useful discussions.

Arendt’s thesis of the banality of evil is interesting, but stupid.  People don’t simply commit evil because they are told to, or enter “agentic states” under the influence of authority, as Milgram suggested.  Serious conflicts of interest entice, enjoin, and entrain people to behave in evil ways.  Then people become further transformed by the institutional traps.  Such is Congress.  Their inaction on the genocide occurring in Iraq is evil.  Nancy Pelosi, while not Adolf Eichmann, is nonetheless evil for being a bureaucratic collaborator with evil.  Much the same can be said of the rest of Congress for enabling genocide.  What they know is bad enough, but if only they knew the full extent of that evil.  It’s difficult to believe that many don’t already know, and are therefore fully committed to the world domination scenario of carrying capacity.

When the full scale of the collapse strikes, it will be the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and then some.  That, too, will be considered evil, but it will have been a preventable evil.  Some of it will happen no matter what, because of what we have already wrought, through our own selfish somewhat ignorant and wholly unthinking narratives and conflicts of interest.

Nothing will happen until we stop this war.  Continuing the war only deepens our problems, and kills time and opportunities for preventative action.  Quit being evil, Nancy, and impeach the fuckers. 

William F. Buckley on Impeachment

Yahoo News Opinion
William F. Buckley
IMPEACH BUSH?
Fri Oct 26, 7:57 PM ET

What stands out this time around is that there are no serious people urging impeachment. By “serious” is here intended, men and women of sobriety who weigh conscientiously what constitutes impeachable presidential behavior.

Mr. Bush is swimming in very low political tides. Although he beat down with ease the outrageous and insulting charges of Rep. Pete Stark of California, it is striking that a member of Congress felt free to indulge in that level of public obloquy. There was enough of that for Bush in the election of 2006, which was interpreted, reasonably, as a repudiation of his leadership.

If ours were a form of government patterned after that of the Europeans, Bush would probably have been replaced as leader of his party. But the majority of the American people still think of him as a man of good will and very stout heart who is pursuing his duties as he sees them, a man, moreover, of conspicuous incorruptibility. Let the people pronounce on his stewardship in November 2008.

Well if you ever needed to have it spelled out for you there it is.

We are not serious people.

We are not “men and women of sobriety who weigh conscientiously what constitutes impeachable presidential behavior.”

And just so you know what “serious” is?

Lying about a blow job.

Zombi Condi

condi zombi t

Boo!
Click on the image to get your own fair-use copy.

Anti-war rally in Minneapolis: Don’t bomb Iran edition (photos)

(Anti-Occupation Rallies today. 11 pm – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Several hundred people turned out for an anti-war rally in Minneapolis at the intersection of Lake and Hiawatha streets. I found out about this rally after reading Bikemom’s diary here on Docudharma.

Nearly all of the participants at the rally expressed concern that Bush is planning a war with Iran. I compared the tally for the Kyl-Lieberman Bill that declares part of Iran’s army a terrorist group to the vote for the Iraq war authorization. The votes were 76-22 and 77-23 for Iran and Iraq bills, respectively.  We haven’t made any ground since the killing began. The last photo shows the US flag flying upside down which is a sign of distress.  Indeed it is…..


More pictures below- ek

The orange “Don’t Bomb Iran” banner below was made at Coleen Rowley’s place. She is the former FBI whistleblower who ran for congress in Minnesota in 2004. She’s having a sign-making party at her place tomorrow. The plan is to have a freeway display of these signs around the state. 


Quotes for Discussion: Anarchist Edition

In existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. If the road between two villages is impassable, the peasant says, “There should be a law about parish roads.” If a park-keeper takes advantage of the want of spirit in those who follow him with servile obedience and insults one of them, the insulted man says, “There should be a law to enjoin more politeness upon the park-keepers.” If there is stagnation in agriculture or commerce, the husbandman, cattle-breeder, or corn- speculator argues, “It is protective legislation which we require.” Down to the old clothesman there is not one who does not demand a law to protect his own little trade. If the employer lowers wages or increases the hours of labor, the politician in embryo explains, “We must have a law to put all that to rights.” In short, a law everywhere and for everything! A law about fashions, a law about mad dogs, a law about virtue, a law to put a stop to all the vices and all the evils which result from human indolence and cowardice.

~Peter Kropotkin, “Law and Authority”

Perhaps most fundamentally: government is not a solution to the public goods problem, but rather the primary instance of the problem. If you create a government to solve your public goods problems, you merely create a new public goods problem: the public good of restraining and checking the government from abusing its power. “[I]t is wholly owing to the constitution of the people, and not to the constitution of the government, that the crown is not as oppressive in England as in Turkey,” wrote Thomas Paine; but what material incentive is there for individuals to help develop a vigilant national character? After all, surely it is a rare individual who appreciably affects the national culture during his or her lifetime.

To rely upon democracy as a counter-balance simply assumes away the public goods problem. After all, intelligent, informed voting is a public good; everyone benefits if the electorate reaches wise political judgments, but there is no personal, material incentive to “invest” in political information, since the same result will (almost certainly) happen whether you inform yourself or not. It should be no surprise that people know vastly more about their jobs than about their government. Many economists seem to be aware of this difficulty; in particular, public choice theory in economics emphasizes the externalities inherent in government action. But a double standard persists: while non-governmental externalities must be corrected by the state, we simply have to quietly endure the externalities inherent in political process.

Since there is no incentive to monitor the government, democracies must rely upon voluntary donations of intelligence and virtue. Because good government depends upon these voluntary donations, the public goods argument for government falls apart. Either unpaid virtue can make government work, in which case government isn’t necessary to solve the public goods problem; or unpaid virtue is insufficient to make government work, in which case the government cannot be trusted to solve the public goods problem.

~Bryan Caplan, Anarchist Theory FAQ Version 5.2

It is with some irony that I realize that I am becoming more absolutely anti-government the more time I spend on political web sites, most particularly progressive web sites.

A Tale of Two Iraqs

As touched on in today’s Four at Four, there are two very different stories coming from Iraq in today’s (October 27) U.S. papers. I think these two different stories, one from Baghdad and one from Ramadi, help explain a lot to why the United States’ occupation in Iraq continues, why the U.S. Congress remains divided on what to do, and why the issue of the Iraq occupation may be slowly fading as the primary issue in the 2008 elections.

The first story comes from Joshua Partlow of the Washington Post who reports Members of one U.S. unit are tired, bitter and skeptical after 14 months in a Baghdad district torn by mounting sectarian violence.

“Their line of tan Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles creeps through another Baghdad afternoon… 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…”

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.

The second story is from Tina Susman of the Los Angeles Times with Marines declare war on garbage. The U.S. Marines see “trash pickup as the key to maintaining security in Ramadi, where a decision last year by Sunni Arab tribal leaders to turn against insurgents has brought calm to the once-violent capital of Anbar province… The desire for clean streets and pleasant surroundings has overtaken security concerns in Ramadi, where the population has declined by 100,000 residents since the war began four years ago.”

“This is the fight — sewage, water and trash,” Lt. James Colvin said as he showed the landfill to a visitor. “I was a poor math major in college. I come here and they tell me: ‘OK, fix the sewage system!’ ” said Colvin, remembering how shocked he was to return to Ramadi and find that he could walk down streets that he once dreaded crossing in an armored vehicle. “But there’s no enemy to hunt down now, so this is our line of attack.

So in Baghdad, troops are dying. While in Ramadi, troops are bored. There is news for those who want to end the occupation and there is news for those who believe the occupation is working. So should we stay or should we go? Congress cannot make up its mind. There are not enough Democrats to force a decision and, as the Los Angeles Times reported last week, Republicans who now oppose the war are being punished by their party and their war-loving constituents.

Most Americans, if recent polls this year are to be believed, want the U.S. troops out Iraq and think the war was a bad idea. But, as the Financial Times reported earlier in the week, Iraq is fading as a hot political issue. “A well-placed bomb in Baghdad’s Green Zone could change everything but, for the time being, the war in Iraq has ceased to be the US’s hot political issue.”

So who benefits with Iraq as a cold political issue? Likely politicians who supported the Iraq war and occupation. Candidates who have advocated troop redeployment or complete withdrawal may seem less relevant to American voters and other concerns may surface in importance — such as health care, immigration, or terrorism. (I have little hope my prime concern, the climate and the environment, will be a significant issue in the 2008 presidential race.) Or, perhaps Americans have learned to live with ongoing war? Since, for the most part, the pain of war is borne by a very small few. Or, perhaps Americans are focused on the next war the Bush administration and Congress is selling?

But certainly, what these mixed news stories do is work against a clear argument for leaving Iraq. This helps the Bush administration’s goal of prolonging the war until George W. Bush leaves the White House.

As Iraq fades from the headlines, the status quo prevails with the United States losing about 2 soldiers a day and is borrowing and sending to keep the occupation going. In the more than four years of Iraq war and occupation, 3,838 soldiers haved died so far and 28,171 wounded. $463,420,000,000 already borrowed and spent and more being borrowed and spent every day.

America is in a war we cannot afford anymore. When a friend or loved one goes so far down a path of self-destruction, those who care for that person try to intervene. My fellow Americans seem hellbent on destruction — in the Middle East and with our planet’s climate — and if trends continue, neither will be of primary significance in 2008. If Americans prove incapable of even admitting we have a problem, let alone working on solutions, in the coming months, then America might be in need of an intervention.

Cross-posted from the European Tribune.

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