'This Is the Freedom America Has Brought Us'
by Dahr Jamail

The mayhem continues in Iraq, with at least 40 people dead today including five U.S. soldiers in Diyala province, as the meltdown of the failed U.S.-led occupation continues.

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Good Intentions Gone Bad
NEWSWEEK's Baghdad bureau chief, departing after two years of war and American occupation, has a few final thoughts.

Two years ago I went to Iraq as an unabashed believer in toppling Saddam Hussein. I knew his regime well from previous visits; WMDs or no, ridding the world of Saddam would surely be for the best, and America's good intentions would carry the day. What went wrong? A lot, but the biggest turning point was the Abu Ghraib scandal. Since April 2004 the liberation of Iraq has become a desperate exercise in damage control. The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib alienated a broad swath of the Iraqi public. On top of that, it didn't work. There is no evidence that all the mistreatment and humiliation saved a single American life or led to the capture of any major terrorist, despite claims by the military that the prison produced "actionable intelligence." [...] The most powerful army in human history can't even protect a two-mile stretch of road. The Airport Highway connects both the international airport and Baghdad's main American military base, Camp Victory, to the city center. At night U.S. troops secure the road for the use of dignitaries; they close it to traffic and shoot at any unauthorized vehicles. More troops and more helicopters could help make the whole country safer. Instead the Pentagon has been drawing down the number of helicopters. And America never deployed nearly enough soldiers. They couldn't stop the orgy of looting that followed Saddam's fall. Now their primary mission is self-defense at any cost—which only deepens Iraqis' resentment.

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  thanks to Juan Cole

U.S. death toll in Iraq surges amid rebel violence

The death toll for American troops in Iraq rose in May to the highest level since January, with the U.S. military saying on Tuesday insurgents have doubled their number of daily attacks since April.

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  thanks to Antiwar.com

When the Funk Hits the Fan

Michael Ledeen, who was the only kid in elementary school with a Machiavelli lunchbox, is peeved. President Bush isn't prosecuting the war on terror and implementing the neoconservative shake-and-bake agenda in the Mideast as hard and fast as he would like. He hates when that happens.

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Pilot Training Time Slashed

Tight budgets are forcing the Air Force's combat squadrons to cut back their training hours by nearly 60 percent -- "leaving frontline units unprepared to go to war," according to Defense News. [...] This is bad news -- another sign of how the Iraq war is slowly grinding down American military readiness. But are times really that tight at the Air Force? I mean, if the generals there wanted to save $272 million, couldn't they just take a F-22 Raptor or two out of the budget, instead of staging a giant PR campaign for the dubious stealth jet? Is an extra fighter plane that much more important than every pilot's training time?

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