Rob from the mercenaries and give to the troops

I teach writing at community college, and had a conservative student who was a Marine who had served in Iraq, and he seemed to hate Blackwater and the rest of the mercenaries as much as any lefty does.

Their presence is seriously demoralizing to our troops.

It occurred to me that even conservatives would support eliminating mercenaries from a ''support the troops'' angle.

Simply pledge to take the money from the mercenaries and give it to the troops.

And if we canceled the mercenary contracts and used every penny that had gone to them to raise the pay of our troops, especially those most at risk of being poached by mercenary companies, we would still end up saving money.

How?

Every former special forces, pilot, or other badass who leaves the military early to join a mercenary outfit cost a lot to train, and training their replacement will cost a lot. We would prevent that loss by retaining them in the regular military. (We would also cut off the gift of that taxpayer funded training to those companies).

Save money, support the troops, look like the good guys on the international stage...that would be tough for even the corrupt politicians who set up the contracts and get the kickbacks to argue against.

Iraqis democracy has beaten Bush & represented Americans better than our own Congress

While lately the news has mostly been about nothing and maybe some trivia about the boring establishment types Obama has picked for his cabinet, Bush has quietly been finishing up losing the war in Iraq.

Ironically, he is losing the real agenda, installing a regime obedient to the US and international oil companies, because he succeeded at what he thought was a purely propaganda goal, establishing a democracy.

The cabinet of the Iraqi government has been sufficiently compliant to Bush's wishes, approving a hydrocarbon law that would have given 88% of Iraq's oil income to international oil companies and leaving just 12% for Iraqis. However, the parliament as a whole refused to approve it even after they were offered millions in bribes each by the oil companies.

As a consequence of that law not passing, when Iraqi opened up bidding on some oil concessions recently they set the floor for bids at 49% royalties for Iraqis, which means they will likely get significantly more than that, and closer to what their neighbors with easily accessible oil like theirs get. The closer Iraq's royalties get to their neighbors, the more it looks like oil companies could have gotten to the same place in Iraq without us spending three-quarters of a trillion dollars invading and occupying Iraq, killing a million Iraqis, and wasting the lives of thousands of our troops who thought they enlisted to protect their country not expand oil company profit margins.

Now the cabinet has negotiated a withdrawal treaty with Bush that would pull US troops out of Iraqi cities by this summer, and out of Iraq altogether by 2011. It is unclear whether the Iraqi parliament will pass it since there is tremendous public pressure on them to end the occupation as soon as possible. If this agreement does not pass, a UN resolution allowing US forces to stay in Iraq will expire December 31, making the mere presence of our troops there a war crime, and requiring a quick withdrawal.

Even if the treaty is passed, it will be a crushing defeat for Bush. It allows no permanent bases in Iraq, Iraq may not be used as a base to invade neighboring countries, and US forces may no longer kick in doors in the middle of the night and take Iraqis prisoner indefinitely. Best of all, Bush's Blackwater and other mercenary army will no longer be immune from Iraqi law, which destroys the only argument for continuing to use them since they cost far more than regular US military and are far more hated by Iraqis because they commit atrocities with impunity.

Either way, the Iraqis win, Bush loses, and the Iraqi parliament will have done for America what our own elected representatives have refused to do in spite of overwhelming public support: end the war in Iraq.

KEY EXCERPTS:

This is no sop. It is a vote to end the occupation of Iraq
The total defeat of the US plan to install a supine ally in the Middle East is likely to be confirmed today in Baghdad

Jonathan Steele
guardian.co.uk, Thursday November 27 2008 00.01 GMT

The agreement stipulates that "all US forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31 2011". More remarkably, all combat troops will leave Iraqi towns and villages and go back to base by the end of June next year. Pause for a moment and take that in. Six years and three months after the invasion, Iraqi streets will be a US-free zone again.

Iraq will have a veto over all US military operations. A clause added at the last minute after pressure from Iran says that Iraqi land, sea and air may not be used as a launch pad or transit point for attacks on other countries. The Iraqi government eagerly took up the point after US helicopters flew into Syria and attacked a compound there last month, claiming it was a base from which foreign fighters entered Iraq. Iraq joined Syria in protesting against the raid.

Under the withdrawal agreement, no Iraqi can be arrested by US forces except with permission from Iraqi authorities, and every Iraqi who is arrested in these circumstances must be handed to Iraqi forces within 24 hours. The tens of thousands of detainees in US custody must either be released or turned over to the Iraqis immediately. US troops may not enter or search any Iraqi house without an Iraqi judge's warrant, except if they are conducting a joint combat operation with the Iraqi military.

US contractors - the armed mercenaries in their SUVs whom Iraqis hate even more than the American military - will lose their immunity and be subject to Iraqi law, a development that is already prompting many security firms to start pulling out. US troops who rape Iraqi women or commit any other crime while off duty and off base will have to stand trial in Iraqi courts.

***

The deal gives Iraq's national resistance almost everything it fought for. How did Nouri al-Maliki's government achieve it? The main reason is that Iraqi nationalism and the occupation's unpopularity have become overwhelming. Opinion polls have long shown that a majority of Iraqis wanted the occupation to end. They found it humiliating and oppressive. Al-Qaida's infiltration, and the sectarian conflict which its supporters and recruits successfully provoked in 2006 and 2007, distracted many Iraqis for a time. Some saw the US as the lesser enemy. But al-Qaida's power has waned thanks to the Awakening movement of Sunni tribal leaders; and the primary issue, the US intervention, has returned to centre stage. Nationalist sentiment, articulated from the first weeks of the occupation by Sunni insurgents (many of whom later joined the Awakening movement) as well as Moqtada al-Sadr's Shia militia, has spread through the country's ruling elite. This summer Prime Minister Maliki began to realise that he had more to gain by posing as the man who achieved a US withdrawal than by trying to block it. It is a triumph for Iraq.

***

From the American point of view, the main thing the pact does is to allow the US to withdraw with dignity. No hasty Vietnam-style humiliation, but an orderly retreat from an adventure which was illegal, unnecessary, and a disaster from the moment of conception. Like most Iraqis, I am content with that. American neoconservatives will declare victory, as Frederick Kagan, one of the architects of the "surge", did this week. But the fact is that Bush and his ideologues wanted to make Iraq a protectorate and stay indefinitely so as to intimidate Iran and Syria. Now they have been forced to give up, and a newly confident Tehran has been helping its neighbouring Shia-led government in Baghdad to show them the door.

FULL TEXT

ARMY TIMES: "Not us. We're not going." Soldiers refuse to patrol in Iraq

This is an incredible story, and has echoes the incidents near the end of documentary SIR, NO SIR, about the troops who resisted the war in Vietnam. Near the end of the movie (and the end of the war) troops at forward bases near the North Vietnamese border refused to go on patrols that they rightly judged as suicidal. When they were replaced, the next unit also refused. The war couldn't continue if the troops refused to fight it.

In this case, 2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1-26 Infantry in the 1st Infantry Division, a mortar attack at a Burger King, watching a friend burn to death pinned under a Bradley, and their first sergeant putting a rifle under his chin and pulling the trigger because he felt responsible for the recent deaths of his men were some of the things that led to the incident below.

If that first sergeant had thought his mission in Iraq had anything to do with the safety of the United States, I doubt he would have killed himself.

KEY EXCERPTS:

‘Not us. We’re not going.’
Soldiers in 2nd Platoon, Charlie 1-26 stage a ‘mutiny’ that pulls the unit apart
Stories by KELLY KENNEDY - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Dec 8, 2007 14:32:57 EST

“I’m not getting killed at Burger King,” he thought, and he dived for a concrete bunker. People were screaming. DeNardi saw a worker from Cinnabon hobbling around, so he climbed out of the bunker, pulled shrapnel out of the man’s leg and bandaged him. The Pizza Hut manager was crying and said two more foreign workers were injured behind her stand — near the Burger King.

“Lightning doesn’t strike twice,” DeNardi said, “so I went back. But there were body parts everywhere.” The first man’s leg had been blown off, his other leg was barely attached and he had a chest wound. “He was going to die,” DeNardi said.

***

It was just another bad day to add to many — and DeNardi’s platoon had already faced misery that seemed unbearable. When five soldiers with 2nd Platoon were trapped June 21 after a deep-buried roadside bomb flipped their Bradley upside-down, several men rushed to save the gunner, Spc. Daniel Agami, pinned beneath the 30-ton vehicle. But they could only watch — and listen to him scream — as he burned alive. The Bradley was far too heavy to lift, and the flames were too high to even get close. The four others died inside the vehicle. Second Platoon already had lost four of its 45 men since deploying to Adhamiya 11 months before. June 21 shattered them.

***
But within days, he would lose five men, including a respected senior non-commissioned officer. Master Sgt. Jeffrey McKinney, Alpha Company’s first sergeant, was known as a family man and as a good leader because he was intelligent and could explain things well. But Staff Sgt. Jeremy Rausch of Charlie Company’s 1st Platoon, a good friend of McKinney’s, said McKinney told him he felt he was letting his men down in Adhamiya.

According to Charlie Company soldiers, McKinney said, “I can’t take it anymore,” and fired a round. Then he pointed his M4 under his chin and killed himself in front of three of his men.

***

On July 17, Charlie’s 2nd Platoon was refitting at Taji when they got a call to go back to Adhamiya. They were to patrol Route Southern Comfort, which had been black — off-limits — for months. Charlie Company knew a 500-pound bomb lay on that route, and they’d been ordered not to travel it. “Will there be route clearance?” 2nd Platoon asked. “Yes,” they were told. “Then we’ll go.”

But the mission was canceled. The medevac crews couldn’t fly because of a dust storm, and the Iraqi Army wasn’t ready for the mission. Second Platoon went to bed.

They woke to the news that Alpha Company had gone on the mission instead and one of their Bradleys rolled over the 500-pound IED. The Bradley flipped. The explosion and flames killed everybody inside. Alpha Company lost four soldiers: Spc. Zachary Clouser, Spc. Richard Gilmore, Spc. Daniel Gomez and Sgt. 1st Class Luis Gutierrez-Rosales.

***

“A scheduled patrol is a direct order from me,” Strickland said.

***

“We said, ‘No.’ If you make us go there, we’re going to light up everything,” DeNardi said. “There’s a thousand platoons. Not us. We’re not going.”

They decided as a platoon that they were done, DeNardi and Cardenas said, as did several other members of 2nd Platoon. At mental health, guys had told the therapist, “I’m going to murder someone.” And the therapist said, “There comes a time when you have to stand up,” 2nd Platoon members remembered. For the sake of not going to jail, the platoon decided they had to be “unplugged.”

FULL TEXT

how to pressure GOP Sen. Stallurker Fascistpants to give up Iraq War, even if he's not your rep

Send them a letter or postcard (email from non-constituents are filtered out) to their campaign headquarters or district offices that simply says,

Dear Sen. or Rep. Stallurker Fascistpants,

My Democratic senator or representative seems to be in no danger of defeat, so I have decided to donate money and/or time to your opponent instead because you are ignoring the will of the American people and continue to support keeping troops in Iraq.

Although you usually win by a comfortable margin, you will probably be defeated since two-thirds (or whatever the current number is) of the American people want us to pull out of Iraq. Since over 70% know the Iraq War is about oil and Alan Greenspan recently confirmed this, I doubt more propaganda will help.

If you actually believe what the Bush administration says about Iraq, consider that every poll of Iraqis, even those taken by the Coalition Provisional Authority and the British Ministry of Defense show the Iraqis want the occupation to end.

You guys did do a nice job of setting up a democracy in Iraq, and that parliament is showing their independence by demanding mercenaries be withdrawn and that the occupation end.

You are obviously free to do what you want, but if you continue your present course, the GOP could face an epic route in the 2008 election. A defeat on that scale will mean your services as a lobbyist or corporate board member won't be so valuable. Maybe you won't even find another job. Jimmy Carter could use your help building houses for poor people.

Be smart. I know it's painful to give up a cash cow like Iraq that has made so much money for your corporate patrons, but consider it a "corporate restructuring" where you shed divisions that could bankrupt the whole company. If you cut your losses in Iraq, you will still have a seat in Congress and be able to line your and your friends pockets another day in other ways.

Sincerely,



PS: I was going to keep that awkward incident when you misinterpreted my nervous toe-tapping in the mens room between us. Now I'm not so sure.

NOTE: You might want to include a photocopy of your check to the opponent. Black out your address and account number though, so they don't send someone to kill your dog.

WONKETTE: hooker going to Iraq Green Zone says NO troops--private contractors ONLY

Wonkette did a generally snarky piece on sending escorts over to entertain the hired guns, but one part of the escorts post stood out:

My apologies but at this time I am unable to plan any meetings w/active duty military. (*The members of PMC community has an exclusive arrangement during this visit*) Kisses ~Tori

http://wonkette.com/politics/sex-on-the-breach-dept\'/i...

I would not necessarily advocate sending hookers over to Iraq, but if some were going anyway, they should offer their services to every soldier before a single mercenary or dickless ass weasel from Liberty University cowering in the Green Zone while he privatizes Iraq's water or something.

Maybe that's how Democrats could end the war--simply stop funding escorts being flown into the Green Zone until it turns into one big blue ball on the map with the righties begging for the helicopter on the roof to take them home.

What threatens the lives of our troops? an OIL law Bush loves and Iraqis HATE

When Democrats or others propose a timeline for pulling out of Iraq or say anything that disagrees with Bush, they are accused of endangering the lives of our troops and enboldening those fighting us in Iraq. But is that really what's inflaming the insurgency?

When the invasion of Iraq was complete, Bush appointed Gen. Jay Garner, who had successfully administered the Kurdish region between the wars (it's the only part of the country where the majority likes us) to run all of Iraq. He said the Bush plan to privatize and sell off everything in Iraq, especially the oil, would inflame resistance to the occupation:

General Garner: In fact, I think you’d be hard pressed to go up north and convince the Kurds that all the… they had to be privatised. Now you can convince the Kurds that they don’t own the oil fields, but the privatisation? I don’t think you can do it, and that’s just one fight that you don’t have to take on right now....I’m a believer that you don’t want to end the day with more enemies than you started with.

VIDEO (about two minutes in) TEXT OF INTERVIEW CONTEXT

He was right.

He was also fired.

Fast forward a couple of years, and Bush is pressing on the Iraqis an oil industry written Hydrocarbon Law that lets oil companies take up to 80% of Iraq's oil wealth out of the country. Iraqi scholars, oil workers, and former oil bureaucrats who have read the law strongly oppose it to the point that the oil workers are threatening to strike. The Bush picked Iraqi prime minister said Bush will fire him if the is Hydrocarbon Law isn't passed, and the Iraqi parliament has gone on vacation rather than vote on the law, knowing that if they passed it, it would earn them a bullet from the insurgents, and if they rejected it, Bush's displeasure could be at least as lethal.

When our elected officials and most of the media talk about the Hydrocarbon Law, they stick closely to how it divides oil income among the various Iraqi ethnic group and even made it a benchmark in the Iraq appropriation bill, but avoid like a spider any question of how the law divides the money between Iraqis as a whole and oil companies. A handful, like Dennis Kucinich and Jim McDermott have spoken out on this in Congress. If the rest of them were serious about ending the war, they would be talking about this every day and doing everything they could to let the Iraqis know we don't want to steal their wealth.

Iraqis know that oil is the primary and nearly only source of wealth in their country. If it is taken from them, they are essentially Bangladesh without the flooding.

Now ask yourself, what is going to make an Iraqi more likely to attack our troops: talk of a timeline for pulling out of Iraq, or a plan to rob their country for decades to come?

MORE OIL motive for IRAQ WAR resources

iraq oil contracts oil concessions hydrocarbon law vacation iraq war privatization jay garner oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican antonia juhasz greg palast GOP timetable occupation support the troops hydrocarbon law withdrawal kucinich professor smartass iraq insurgency propaganda corporation democracy war on terror worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news

GRAPHS: Iraq troop surge vs. Vietnam peak troop level

One fairly dispassionate way to predict the success of Bush's surge is to compare it to the number of troops we had in Vietnam, a war which we also lost.

DougD at Edwards blog crunched the numbers on this and provided a couple of graphs, but I like 3D ones, so the following are his words and my graphs.

Bush "surge" pointless - far too little - far too late

In 1968 we had 585,000 troops stationed in South Vietnam which had a population at the time of 16 milllion South Vietnamese. This meant there was 1 American soldier stationed in South Vietnam for every 27.35 South Vietnamese.

By comparison in Iraq today we have approximately 130,000 soldiers or only about 22.2% of the number of soldiers that we had in Vietnam in 1968.

These 130,000 soldiers must protect and pacify a population of 26,000,000 Iraqis which is 62.5% more Iraqis than there were South Vietnamese during the Tet Offensive.

Thus today we have 1 American soldier in Iraq for every 200 Iraqis vs. 1 American soldier for every 27.35 South Vietnamese. This means a soldier in Iraq today has 7.35 times as many people to be responsible for as the soldier did in 1968.

After the President's "surge" of 21,000 troops these numbers and ratios will not appreciably change. Instead of being responsible for 200 Iraqis, each soldier will be responsible for 172.2 Iraqis. This will still be 6.29 times as many as the soldier in 1968 had to deal with.

See the rest of DougD's excellent analysis

Iraq is not Vietnam. One is a large desert and the other is a small jungle.

But what is the same in both is you cannot win if the people who live there don't think you are there to help them. You can kill them until there are too few left to fight back, but then it will be hard to pretend to the American people and the rest of the world that you are there to help.

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REPORTER MUST ASK BUSH: If Dems cut off war money, will you leave troops in Iraq until last bullet?

I think there is a good chance Democrats are just worried if they cut off funding they will be blamed for "losing" the Iraq War for a couple of decades just as they are blamed for Vietnam.

But a worse scenario is he will leave the troops there until they are out of water, food, and bullets, let them be killed, then blame the Democrats.

He essentially implied a threat to the troops when he said something that made no sense the other day: if Democrats delay the money, troops will have to go sooner and stay longer in Iraq, saying in a speech to an American Legion post April 10:

In March, Congress was told that the military would need to take money from military personnel accounts, weapons and communications systems so we can continue to fund programs to protect our soldiers and Marines from improvised explosive devices and send hundreds of mine-resistant vehicles to our troops on the front lines. These actions are only the beginning, and the longer Congress delays, the worse the impact on the men and women of the Armed Forces will be...

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, recently testified that if Congress fails to pass a bill I can sign by mid-April, the Army will be forced to consider cutting back on equipment repair and quality of life initiatives for our Guard and Reserve forces. The Army will also be forced to consider curtailing some training for Guard and Reserve units here at home. This would reduce their readiness, and could delay their availability to mobilize for missions in Iraq and Afghanistan...

The bottom line is this: Congress's failure to fund our troops will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines. Others could see their loved ones headed back to war sooner than anticipated. This is unacceptable. It's unacceptable to me, it's unacceptable to our veterans, it's unacceptable to our military families, and it's unacceptable to many in this country.

FULL TEXT OF BUSH THREATENING TROOPS SPEECH

How could he make the troops stay longer without funding? Likely what he meant was either:

1. The troops are going to stay no matter what.
   
   
2. He has the power to do what he likes with the troops and they will suffer if he is not catered to.

Oddly, he didn't mention anything about being forced to withdraw, or be late on payments to some of his defense contractor cronies, only that he would make the troops suffer if he was not obeyed.

This would almost be acceptable hardball politics if the war was about our safety and freedom.

It is not.

It is increasingly clear that the only measure of success for this war is the Hydrocarbon Law that puts most of Iraq's oil wealth in American oil company hands, and they have a poor track record of sharing the profits with us. If they did not control Iraq's oil, whoever did would be unlikely to cut us off since we use 25% of the world supply.

Ironically, one of the things that freaked out the Bushies about Saddam was not that he would cut off our oil, but that he would open the spigot wider and drive down profits for the Saudis and American oil companies who enjoy maximum profits for minimum work.

Our troops and tax dollars are being used to pad their bottom line, and Bush has no regard for the lives and dollars spent since it doesn't come out of the pockets or families of his friends.

Someone needs to call Bush's "support the troops" bluff.

I know he would leave the troops in Iraq until the last bullet, and won't pull them out until there's a government in place that will protect his oil deals or until the last drop of oil is sucked out of the ground.

OIL MOTIVE for Iraq War resources
http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2006/09/iraq-oil-war-resources.html


iraq hydrocarbon law supplemental appropriation hostages support the troops iraq war privatization oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips smedley butler antonia juhasz greg palast GOP corruption occupation colonialism hydrocarbon law professor smartass iraq peak oil propaganda corporation democracy war on terrorworst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news

POLL: 72% of troops say leave Iraq in a year

Maybe we should support the troops the same way we should support Iraqi democracy--by actually listening to them.

• 72% think we should leave within a year.


• 29% of those say leave IMMEDIATELY.


• 23% support Bush's position of staying as long as necessary (until last drop of oil is pumped)


• Additionally, most troops said they are fighting disgruntled Sunnis not the mythical al Qaeda or jihadis, and only 26% think keeping foreign fighters out will end the war.

The public doesn't support the war. Our troops don't support the war. Iraqis themselves have said in poll after poll they want us to leave. The rest of the world didn't even want us to go in the first place.

How is ignoring the majority opinions of so many people teaching anyone democracy?

This is a good one to forward to newspapers.


KEY EXCERPTS:

http://rawstory.com/admin/dbscripts/printstory.php?stor...

Poll: 72 percent of troops want out of Iraq in a year

02/28/2006 @ 9:38 am
Filed by RAW STORY

The poll is the first of U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq, according to John Zogby, the pollster. Conducted by Zogby International and LeMoyne College, it asked 944 service members, "How long should U.S. troops stay in Iraq?"

Only 23 percent backed Bush's position that they should stay as long as necessary. In contrast, 72 percent said that U.S. troops should be pulled out within one year. Of those, 29 percent said they should withdraw "immediately..."

While the White House emphasizes the threat from non-Iraqi terrorists, only 26 percent of the U.S. troops say that the insurgency would end if those foreign fighters could be kept out. A plurality believes that the insurgency is made up overwhelmingly of discontented Iraqi Sunnis...

By a 2-1 ratio, the troops said that "to control the insurgency we need to double the level of ground troops and bombing missions." And since there is zero chance of that happening, a majority of troops seemed to be saying that they believe this war to be unwinnable.

The full Zogby poll is available here:
http://zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075

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Letter to Sean Hannity, as heard on Guy James Show

Err on the side of life





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