Roman’s Website

“In Friday’s presidential debate on foreign policy (assuming the show still goes on), we can be sure that Barack Obama will hit John McCain hard for supporting what Obama has called a ‘dumb war’ in Iraq. But in doing so, Obama has at least one major handicap to overcome: his running mate.

In October 2002, Sen. Biden voted to authorize the Iraq war. ‘I made a mistake,’ he now says - he had ‘vastly underestimated’ how incompetent the Bush administration would be in prosecuting the war.

So has Biden changed his position on Iraq? Not really. In October 2002, when the congressional vote was held, Biden, like most members of Congress, was in favor of avoiding accountability and punting the question of war or peace to the president. And Biden remains firmly in favor of avoiding accountability for Iraq today. That tells us something about Joe Biden’s judgment and integrity. More importantly, it tells us a lot about the health of Congress as a political institution, and about the erosion of Congress’s power to declare war.” (Read more from the Cato Institute)

“But the U.S. Army, eager to fill its ranks amid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, doesn’t see them as dropouts. They are recruits who only need a GED before they’re ready to begin basic training. And so, the Army formally opens its first prep school Wednesday.” (Read more from apnews.myway.com)

Read more at NYPost.com (NYPost!?)

Heckling is good, but I can’t help feel nostalgic toward what I’ve read about tar and feathering.

From an interview with former CIA agent, author Robert Baur in Mens’ Journal May ‘08:

“We’re going on seven years in Afghanistan, and the Taliban are still closing down schools in Kandahar. It’s a joke. And Iraq is a corpse that Petraeus keeps putting lipstick on to make it look like it’s still alive. All the Iraqis are doing is cooperating to get American arms. Petraeus says it’s thanks to Iran that they’re keeping the peace. That’s an extraordinary statement: Our main Middle Eastern enemy is keeping the peace for us? We’re fucked. What to do? Come home. Just come home. Impose visas, make sure you know who’s coming into your country, lock the cockpit doors, and be nice to Muslims here. The worst thing to do is to continually shed Muslim blood.”

You said it bro. “Just come home.” I’ll point out, however, that Ron Paul said it first.

That about sums it up.

Read more from huffingtonpost.com

“I have now been called antisemitic and intellectually unstable and a whole bunch of other silly things by the folks over at the Commentary blog. They want Time Magazine to fire or silence me. This is happening because I said something that is palpably true, but unspoken in polite society: There is a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who unsuccessfully tried to get Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, and then successfully helped provide the intellectual rationale for George Bush to do it in 2003. Their motivations involve a confused conflation of what they think are Israel’s best interests with those of the United States. They are now leading the charge for war with Iran.

Happily, these people represent a very small sliver of the Jewish population in this country. Unhappily, their views have had an impact in the highest reaches of the Bush Administration–and seem to have an influence on John McCain’s campaign as well.

. . . .

I am not going to make the same mistake twice. I don’t think a war with Iran is coming, thank God, but this time I am not going to pull any punches. My voice isn’t very important in the grand scheme of things, but I’m going to do my job–and that means letting you know exactly where I stand and what I believe. I believe there are a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who are pushing for war with Iran because they believe it is in America’s long-term interests and because they believe Israel’s existence is at stake. They are wrong and recent history tells us they are dangerous. They are also bullies and I’m not going to be intimidated by them.”

(Read more from www.time-blog.com’s Joe Klein)

“According to an Associated Press report, when Kucinich tried to introduce similar articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney last November, “Republicans, seeing a chance to force Democrats into an embarrassing debate, voted to bring up the resolution. Democrats countered by pushing through a motion to scuttle the bill from the floor.”

The bullshit they are trying to make us swallow is that Democrats are shunning Kucinich because they think a debate about impeachment would harm their chances of winning the presidency.

In reality, as far back as November 2005, polls showed that the majority of Americans supported impeachment on the basis of Bush lying about the invasion of Iraq, which is specifically what Kucinich’s single article of impeachment that he will present on Friday addresses.

Likewise, latest polls show that almost 70% of Americans oppose the war in Iraq, with anti-war sentiment swelling the longer the occupation drags on.

Support for a withdrawal from Iraq and the impeachment of George W. Bush is wildly popular with the majority of the electorate that will vote in November, so why are top Democrats doing everything in their power to prevent Kucinich from drawing attention to the matter?”

Read More from prisonplanet.com

This great article from thepeoplesvoice.org discusses the economic impact of Iraq and includes many book excerpts including the following:

One of the most pernicious economic myths is the idea that war helps the economy. In reality, war is destructive and it always results in economic retrogression and misery. The US economy didn’t really recover until 1946, when the immediate postwar period witnessed the dismantling of the command economy in favor of a much more liberalized market economy. Peace brought military demobilization, deregulation, and perhaps most importantly, a seventy-five percent reduction in government spending. This was a genuine peace dividend and it set the stage for America’s legendary post-war economic boom.
–War and Economic Decline

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has blamed the Iraq war for sending the United States into a recession. On Wednesday, he told a London think tank that the war caused the credit crunch and the housing crisis that are propelling the current economic downturn. Testifying before the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee the following day, he said our involvement in Iraq has long been “weakening the American economy” and “a day of reckoning” has finally arrived.
–Is the Economy a Casualty of War?

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has blamed the Iraq war for sending the United States into a recession. On Wednesday, he told a London think tank that the war caused the credit crunch and the housing crisis that are propelling the current economic downturn. Testifying before the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee the following day, he said our involvement in Iraq has long been “weakening the American economy” and “a day of reckoning” has finally arrived.
–Is the Economy a Casualty of War?

For big government we now have “The Perfect War,” everywhere and nowhere, secret and interminable. The war will justify ever expanding police powers, higher taxes, and more controls over the citizenry. You can see easily how Washington thrives on war. Since Sept 11th, there have been no nasty challenges to government spending and waste, no tedious debates over things like social security “lockboxes,” nor “political” attacks upon the Presidency. Congressmen and Think Tank experts get lots of TV time and most everyone jumps to obey government orders and support more regulations. Any groups opposed to American military interventions overseas appear unpatriotic and are marginalized, while press coverage of the war is restricted, using the last Gulf War as a model. Big Government, as Orwell wrote, thrives from unwinnable wars; it doesn’t get any better than this.
–John Basil Utley, Alternative to Unending War, Ludwig von Mises Institute

“U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency, according to senior U.S. officials, effectively leaving talks over an extended U.S. military presence there to the next administration.

In place of the formal status-of-forces agreement negotiators had hoped to complete by July 31, the two governments are now working on a ‘bridge’ document, more limited in both time and scope, that would allow basic U.S. military operations to continue beyond the expiration of a U.N. mandate at the end of the year.” Read more from washingtonpost.com

The negotiation will be left to the next administration. My translation: Bush and company want to rule Iraq, stay indefinately, and use it as a staging ground to attack Iran, and the Iraqis said no.

Iraqi Drones May Target U.S. Cities

Monday, February 24, 2003

WASHINGTON — Iraq could be planning a chemical or biological attack on American cities through the use of remote-controlled “drone” planes equipped with GPS tracking maps, according to U.S. intelligence.

The information about Iraq’s unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) program has caused a “real concern” among defense personnel, senior U.S. officials tell Fox News. They’re worried that these vehicles have already been, or could be, transported inside the United States to be used in an attack, although there is no proof that this has happened.

Secretary of State Colin Powell showed a picture of a small drone plane during his presentation to the U.N. Security Council earlier this month.

“UAVs outfitted with spray tanks constitute an ideal method for launching a terrorist attack using biological weapons,” Powell said during his speech. “Iraq could use these small UAVs, which have a wingspan of only a few meters, to deliver biological agents to its neighbors or, if transported, to other countries, including the United States.”

Powell said there is “ample evidence” that Iraq has dedicated much time and effort to developing and testing spray devices that could be adapted for UAVs. “And of the little that Saddam Hussein told us about UAVs, he has not told the truth,” Powell said.

Read more from FOX”News”.com