Unbelievable...
by Riverbend

“Not only can they not find WMD in Iraq,” I commented to E. as we listened to the Bush speech, “But they have disappeared from his speeches too!” I was listening to the voiceover on Arabiya, translating his speech to Arabic. He was recycling bits and pieces of various speeches he used over two years. E., a younger cousin, and I were sitting around in the living room, sprawled on the relatively cool tiled floor. The electricity had been out for 3 hours and we couldn’t turn on the air conditioner with the generator electricity we were getting. E. and I had made a bet earlier about what the theme of tonight’s speech would be. E. guessed Bush would dig up the tired, old WMD theme from somewhere under the debris of idiocy and lies coming out of the White House. I told him he’d dredge up 9/11 yet again… tens of thousands of lives later, we would have to bear the burden of 9/11… again.

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The war continues
by Steve Gilliard

The US is facing a slow, steady upsurge in resistance forces. We aren't talking 10 or 20,000, but upwards of 30,000 actives and maybe that many part-timers. Enough so that Iraqi commanders can plan to lose entire companies and not sweat it. At the same time, they are ripping apart the Iraqi auxillary force apart. 30-40 dead in each attack, which makes recruiting difficult. And it does something else: make it easier to turn Iraqi units to the resistance. If a little information sent the car bomb somewhere else, well, that's not your problem. They are breaking the morale of the Iraqi forces with every attack. They kill their leaders, shoot recruits and the US is powerless to stop this. I'm watching Black Hawk Down, which is set in Somalia, but feels way too much like Iraq, except for one thing. The US can use helicopters there., well until they get blown from the sky. In Iraq, it's all ground movement.

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The Vietnam Solution

Comparisons between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq are coming fast and furious now, so let's consider one more. There is an apt parallel between the way we got out of Vietnam and the way that we will get out of Iraq—sooner or later. Public opinion is turning sharply against the war, even though mainstream Democrats and most Republicans are mostly sticking with the victory-in-Iraq strategy. The conditions in Iraq and here at home are strikingly similar to those we saw surrounding Vietnam at the end of the Johnson administration. Those looking for an exit strategy, take note. In Vietnam, by the spring of 1968, it was clear to just about everyone—including our intelligence agencies—that the war was lost. The Tet Offensive made it obvious that the combined forces of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong weren't being defeated or decimated. The United States insisted that it would never talk directly or negotiate with the communist North and their allied partisans in South Vietnam, insisting that the quisling regime in Saigon was the lawful government. So the war dragged on for another five years, killing tens of thousands more Americans and hundreds of thousands more Vietnamese. Finally, during 1972-1973, the United States did what it had previously said it wouldn't do: it essentially abandoned its puppet government in South Vietnam and began direct talks with the Vietnamese communists. The communists were magnanimous enough to give the United States a face-saving way out, rather than forcing Washington to admit that it was surrendering. And we left. And today?

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  thanks to Antiwar.com

The Not-So-Long Gray Line

JUNE is the month in which West Point celebrates the commissioning of its graduating class and prepares to accept a new group of candidates eager to embrace the arduous strictures of the world's most prestigious military academy. But it can also be a cruel month, because West Pointers five years removed from graduation have fulfilled their obligations and can resign. My class, that of 1969, set a record with more than 50 percent resigning within a few years of completing the service commitment. (My father's class, 1945, the one that "missed" World War II, was considered to be the previous record-holder, with about 25 percent resigning before they reached the 20 years of service entitling them to full retirement benefits.) And now, from what I've heard from friends still in the military and during the two years I spent reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems we may be on the verge of a similar exodus of officers. The annual resignation rate of Army lieutenants and captains rose to 9 percent last year, the highest since before the Sept. 11 attacks. And in May, The Los Angeles Times reported on "an undercurrent of discontent within the Army's young officer corps that the Pentagon's statistics do not yet capture."

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  thanks to Brad DeLong's Website

Dangerous Incompetence
by Bob Herbert

The president who displayed his contempt for Iraqi militants two years ago with the taunt "bring 'em on" had to go on television Tuesday night to urge Americans not to abandon support for the war that he foolishly started but can't figure out how to win.

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