Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Idiots?

Yet another reason that John McCain should not be president. Our four possible options in Iraq that might succeed are (a) draft and train 500,000 Arabic-speaking military police, (b) pay somebody else's price for them to commit 500,000 Arabic-speaking military policy, (c) strike a deal with Iran and Syria, (d) pull out and leave it to the Iraqis. John McCain is for none of the above:

Unfogged: Today's edition of Hating on John McCain is brought to you by Glenn Greenwald:

So, to recap McCain's position: (1) in order to win in Iraq, we need to expand our military by 100,000 more troops; (2) we don't have anywhere near 100,000 troops to send to Iraq, and nobody suggests that we do; (3) a draft is absolutely unnecessary.I don't think McCain even knows what to say about Iraq at this point -- the Straight Talker refuses to admit that it was wrong because he was one of the loudest cheerleaders for it, but there are also plainly no viable options to change what is occurring -- so all he does is babble incoherently about it.

As best I can tell, his position is that we need 100,000 more troops to win, and that young Americans one day are going to realize this and there will be a spontaneous and massive wave of volunteers eager to go to Iraq and fight in combat there because they will realize -- like McCain and the President do -- just how Very Important it is that we win.

So we'll just wait until that happens.

And then those 100,000 troops will charge across Anbar province on their magical armored ponies.

Comments

[eyelessgame]

I don't know where he's getting those troops.

But one thing's for sure. He ain't f--king getting my sons. If I have to pick up my family and leave the country I will.

[Ken Houghton]

As Greenwald notes, McCain explicitly ruled out a draft.

The possibilities for troops would then appear to include (1) prisoners--already NILF so, unlike NatGuard members, there won't be stories in hometown papers about business failing while they're being patriotic, (2) continuing the "recovery" at its current negative-jobs-for-population-growth levels, which will force more people to join the Army, or (3) hiring Hessian troops.

I'm betting on the latter.

Declaring people "enemy combatants" and sending them to the R/u/s/s/i/a/n/ Sunni Front is probably beyond even the pale of the current G-d=led Rumsfeldites.

[anne]

Actually the situation in Iraq is so difficult, even beyond the point that we have lost morally, we were morally lost from the beginning, and there is no reclaiming such a loss, but the situation is so difficult we have lost actual control of almost all of Iraq. We can destroy what we wish, but almost nothing else is possible. We must leave Iraq, immediately.

[Jim Dandy]

Perhaps McCain is taking advice from those two great Washington fountains of wisdom (Max Boot and Michael O’Hanlon) who yesterday bravely recommended formation of a new mercenary force by offering citizenship as an incentive to attract immigrants to sign up for a stint in the killing fields in Iraq.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/18/AR2006101801500.html

[Robert the Red]

Maybe all the men in prison on drug possession charges could be sent to Iraq? Solves 2 problems at once!!!

[save the rustbelt]

The proud Third Infantry Division is shipping to Iraq without enough troops and without enough equipment.

When they arrive they will pick up whatever workable equipment was left by departing divisions. They will patch it together and hope for the best.

Pathetic, truly pathetic.

[typekey pseudonym]

I like the magical armored ponies. Can I get one? I'm willing to go into debt for it:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.indebted20oct20,0,3714013.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines

[anne]

There are times I think to the beginning days of Iraq, when convoys of soldiers rushed through the countryside and from time to time there were abstract scenes of firefights, all clean as clean could be. No American casualties and who could know what was happening where our bullets or bombs landed. All triumph and ease, though reporters complained of heat. While in Kuwait reporters practiced putting on and taking off shiny suits to protect against terrible weapons that never were. War was pleasing, then it wasn't.

[C. L. Ball]

I'm lost. McCain wants to reduce reliance on the National Guard and Reserves by increasing the regular Army and Marines. He thinks more troops should be deployed to Iraq, but he is not saying that 100,000 additional troops need to be deployed. He thinks the regular force should be increased by 100,000.

The NG and Reserves should be used for emergencies and unexpected deployments, not planned ones, like Iraq and Afghanistan are at this point. Over 100,000 people are mobilized from the NG and Reserves right now, mostly from the Army.

It is the AR and NG that are seeing the below-target recruitment. The regular services are doing OK. See http://www.defenselink.mil/Releases/Release.aspx?ReleaseID=10057

It is the Navy Reserve that is having the hardest time recruiting and retaining sailors, and they are not doing much of the fighting.

[Jonathan King]

anne writes:
> Actually the situation in Iraq is so difficult, even beyond the point
> that we have lost morally, we were morally lost from the
> beginning,

Quit your belly-achin', you bird watcher! Didn't you see the part where the new troops not only get ponies, but magical armored ponies? Surely it is unreasonable to claim that we are morally lost if our side gets the magical armored ponies.

[Levi]

Brad, McCain is right on this count: we need 100,000 more troops to win in Iraq. We will not get 100,000 more troops.

We will not win in Iraq.

So we must leave. Apologize, leave, and contain. We have more important things to worry about -- you might note that Iran's crazy leader has plans for a bomb, and though they will never materialize, due to Israel's security interests, the resultant war will be far more bloody and destabilizing than this Iraq mess.

Split it up, federalize, and get out: that's all we can do.

McCain is right, though: if we want to win, we need 100,000. Who knows? Perhaps when we begin to remove our troops, the other world powers who will also bear the negative externalities of a crumbling Iraq will step up and find those 100,000 for us.

[anne]

No; John McCain is not and could not possibly be right. There is no right in being a part of or being responsible for years of physical and psychological and material destruction in a country that we have no right to be occupying.

War in Iraq was needless, occupation of Iraq was more needless and beyond moral rationale. There are the deaths and physical and psychological wounds that will always be there; always to no moral right. We must leave Iraq immediately.

[anne]

The very idea of winning in Iraq is tragic lunacy. What is won with hundreds of thousands of physical and psychological deaths and wounds? What is won after a trillion dollars and more is spent on needless destruction rather than domestic and international development? Imagine the lunacy of setting an American Viceroy over Iraq and thinking of winning. There can be no winning in Iraq if the continual tragedy were to come to an end this very day. We must leave Iraq immediately.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/21/world/middleeast/21statistics.html

October 21, 2006

U.N. Says Iraq Seals Data on the Civilian Toll
By WARREN HOGE

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations office in Baghdad says that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has ordered the country’s medical authorities to stop providing the organization with monthly figures on the number of civilians killed and wounded in the conflict there, according to a confidential cable.

The cable, dated Oct. 17 and sent to United Nations officials in New York and Geneva by Ashraf Qazi, the United Nations envoy to Iraq, says the prohibition may hinder the ability of his office to give accurate accounts in its bimonthly human rights reports on the levels of violence and the effect on Iraqi society.

Concern over the numbers of civilians who have died in Iraq has risen sharply at a time when organized attacks by insurgents are swelling the numbers of victims and when a new report from a team of Iraqi and American researchers shows that more than 600,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion.

Mr. Qazi, a former Pakistani diplomat, says that the order to let the prime minister’s office take over the release of the numbers came down a day after a United Nations report for July and August showed a serious upward spike in the number of dead and wounded....

[anne]

There is no winning in or of Iraq. Iraq is not ours to win. The very idea that Iraq could ever be won by us was tragic lunatic fantasy. John McCain continues with the lunacy. We must leave Iraq immediately, as we should have left each day these last tragic years and months and days.

[anne]

Remember too, John McCain has given us the astonishing Military Commissions Act:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/opinion/19thu1.html?ex=1318910400&en=d9587f86501794fc&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

October 19, 2006

A Dangerous New Order

Once President Bush signed the new law on military tribunals, administration officials and Republican leaders in Congress wasted no time giving Americans a taste of the new order created by this unconstitutional act.

Within hours, Justice Department lawyers notified the federal courts that they no longer had the authority to hear pending lawsuits filed by attorneys on behalf of inmates of the penal camp at Guantánamo Bay. They cited passages in the bill that suspend the fundamental principle of habeas corpus, making Mr. Bush the first president since the Civil War to take that undemocratic step.

Not satisfied with having won the vote, Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, quickly issued a statement accusing Democrats who opposed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 of putting "their liberal agenda ahead of the security of America." He said the Democrats "would gingerly pamper the terrorists who plan to destroy innocent Americans' lives" and create "new rights for terrorists."

This nonsense is part of the Republicans' scare-America-first strategy for the elections. No Democrat advocated pampering terrorists — gingerly or otherwise — or giving them new rights. Democratic amendments to the bill sought to protect everyone's right to a fair trial while providing a legal way to convict terrorists.

Americans will hear more of this ahead of the election....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/20/opinion/l20detain.html

Bush, the Prisoners and Our Rights

To the Editor:

"A Dangerous New Order" is a much-needed reminder of how much the Bush administration has eroded the Constitution. It has replaced habeas corpus for all with a system that operates at the whim of the executive branch.

The actual "war on terror" declared by this administration has been waged ineptly at best. The invasion of Iraq, repeatedly stated to be part of that war, has created more dangers for America both overseas and at home.

This, the pandering of fear, and the craven passage of the military tribunals law, provide proof that the "war on terror" is actually the war against the Constitution.

This is a "war" we can stop by voting.

Carl Ian Schwartz
Paterson, N.J., Oct. 19, 2006

[anne]

[No magical ponies were harmed making these comments, since we all adore magical ponies.]

[ilsm]

McCain is dead wrong about 100,000 troops.

We do not need any more troops.

The solution in Iraq, as in Korea in 1950 and Vietnam in 1965 is nukes.

We have entered a hostile territory, with a population with a totally different moral perspective.

We will not win the 'hearts and minds', with 100,000 or 500,000 more troops, so McCain and crew need to get real.

The answer is kill them all.

Fast and cheap.

[kid bitzer]

you forgot--

riding magical ponies, while wearing Ghost Shirts.

You cannot make sense of the current pro-war psychotic break from reality, without invoking the mass hysteria that was the Ghost Dance.

If your thoughts are pure, the bullets cannot touch you. If the bullets touch you, you did not clap sorry pray loud enough.

[matt wilbert]

Ignoring the fact that the 100,000 additional troops are imaginary, I would be curious on what basis he believes those troops would be sufficient, as it would only bring our total strength to something under 250,000.

Before the war, Gen. Shinseki suggested on the basis of historical experience that 350,000 would be necessary. It would be interesting to hear Senator McCain explain why fewer would be needed today. Perhaps he expects the magical armored ponies to demoralize the insurgents.

[CC]

Magical armored ponies won't be enough. We need flying magical armored ponies.

But I understand that Haliburton is working on this. On a time and materials basis.