Rewarding Incompetence
Cindy Sheehan - Whose Son Died in Iraq - Responds to Time Magazine's Choice for "Man of the Year"

Dear Time Editors: My son, Spc. Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq on 04/04/04. This has been an extraordinary couple of weeks of "slaps in the faces" to us families of fallen heroes. First, the Secretary of Defense—Donald Rumsfeld—admits to the world something that we as military families already know: The United States was not prepared for nor had any plan for the assault on Iraq. Our children were sent to fight an ill-conceived and badly prosecuted war. Our troops were sent with the wrong type of training, bad equipment, inferior protection and thin supply lines. Our children have been killed and we have made the ultimate sacrifice for this fiasco of a war, then we find out this week that Rumsfeld doesn't even have the courtesy or compassion to sign the "death letters"—as they are so callously called. Besides the upcoming holidays and the fact we miss our children desperately, what else can go wrong this holiday season? Well let's see. Oh yes. George W. Bush awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to three more architects of the quagmire that is Iraq. Thousands of people are dead and Bremer, Tenet and Franks are given our country's highest civilian award. What's next?

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Fallujah: Little Stalingrad

According to people who have been there, Fallujah is not a very big city. You can walk across it in half an hour. Yet when the history of this miserable war is written, I suspect it may loom large. Like Stalingrad, it will mark the point where the war turned against the invader. You may recall that the U.S. Marine commanders on scene declared some weeks ago that the battle was won and Fallujah was ours. It now appears they were Panglissading through reality, in a way that seems universal among American generals. Fighting still continues in Fallujah. Far from fleeing, resistance fighters are now infiltrating back into the city. Sectors we have "pacified" spring back to life in IED attacks and ambushes. There is talk about letting a few civilians return to Fallujah's ruins, but only under conditions that would make normal civilian life impossible. Of course, Fallujah itself was largely destroyed in the American assault. The American military did the only thing a Second Generation military can do: it put firepower on targets. 2GW armed services are one-trick ponies: they only have one act, and they perform it regardless of whether it fits the circumstances or not. In Fourth Generation war, the usual result is what has happened in Fallujah: a moral victory for the other side. As Colonel Boyd argued, and as this column has pointed out time and time again, the moral level of war is the most powerful, the physical level the least powerful. Correspondent Patrick Cockburn, who is in Iraq, reports another result of Fallujah: "[J]ust at the moment that the US troops were moving into Fallujah, suddenly, most of Mosul – a city in the north, which is at least five or six times the size of Fallujah – fell to the insurgents…. This is far more important in some ways that what's happened in Fallujah."

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So they were in a big white tent
by Steve Gilliard

They just blew up your mess hall, you fucking nitwit. How the fuck are you going to have elections when you can't protect a fucking mess hall on a US base, surrounded by a couple of fucking battalions. This wasn't some backwater. David Petraeus ran around for a year pretending he was making progress. The 101 ABN had the occasional IED, but everyone accepted his word. Now, it sounds like stories from the Central Highlands, 1967. Daily rocket and mortar attacks.

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The begining of the end?
by Steve Gilliard

Blame? The US military still thinks because that Iraqis smile in their face and let them play with kids that they like them. I would bet that suicide bomber was well liked by his American bosses. A rocket attack is bad, but you can't control rockets. This? You are supposed to prevent this. But it's not the worst yet. A suicide bomber is not a military success. It may be a political victory, but my concern is an outright military victory where a US unit is trapped and destroyed like GM 100.

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Send your son to Iraq

OK, so planning on sending your children to die in Iraq? If you think we should proceed in Iraq, send your teenagers there. After all, you're asking other people to do the same. I mean, yank them out of college and send them to the recruiter. Otherwise, you're full of shit. All those "security moms" want security to be provided by other people's kids. Well, your turn is coming. When they take the class of Duke 2006 and ship them to Iraq, see how much you support Bush then. When people say Kerry should have run against the war, this is what he would run into, American stubborness. People think we "have" to win. Tell them we're losing, and they look at you like you're crazy. They don't get that the US is losing and there is no easy solution, like more allied troops. Kerry wasn't going to get them and Bush will be told to piss off. Who joins a losing war? You think anything short than a full corps of Egyptian and Pakistani units would do any good? And they aren't coming because the leaders of those countries are allegric to plastic explosives in their cars.

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Mosul attack 'an inside job'

The deadly suicide attack on a US military base in Mosul this week was an "inside job" carried out by insurgents who are part of the Iraqi armed forces, Asia Times Online has been told.

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