NYTimes article: US Central Command believes Iraq sliding into chaos

[TayTay]

This is devastating. The NYtimes has published a chart that it got from someone in Central Command. It shows the US military assessment that Iraq is sliding into chaos and that this slide has been accelerating since the Grand Mosque blew up in Samarra in Feb of this year.

Chart:



Story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/world/middleeast/01military.html?hp&ex=1162443600&en=ae294d1d13aed188&ei=5094&partner=homepage

No wonder these folks want to talk about a botched joke and pretend it means something. OMG, the truth is just incredibly horrible. This is what our $500 billion has bought us in Iraq.

[spanone]

1. kick & r

[acmavm]

2. Well, I wonder how the board of directors of the NYT feels now

about the invasion and occupation that they did all the could to promote?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Repubs will be all over the NYT for reporting the truth.

Why do you hate America, NYT?

[papau]

4. I wonder if this will make evening news on the 3 networks? n/t

n/t

[whistle]

5. And as our troops get further bogged down in Iraq and U.S. casualties

...mount, George Bush and the republicans will continue to blame their failed policies on the war on everyone but themselves. Cowards, empty suits, puppets, that's what these republicans are!

[TayTay]

6. You know, every so often, this issue just kicks me in the head

Then it becomes not about the Democrats or the Republicans, about a particular pol I like or one I don't. It's about those kids I saw at my son's graduation last June, those three kids who stepped forward to received their acknowledgement from the US Marines that they were accepted and were going to boot camp in the summer. Everyone in that high school graduation crowd understood, these 18 and 19 year olds were going to be in Iraq before the end of the year.

Sometimes, just sometimes, Iraq makes me cry. I think of one of those young inductees and how their enlistment was cancelled because their older brother was killed in Anbar Province in Iraq in May and the mother didn't want her only surviving son to also possibly die in Iraq. I think of the young girl who was smiling as she took her Marine letter and her brother who lost a leg in Fallujah.

George Bush and the Republican Party in Congress do not deserve the service of our young. They do not deserve the trust of parents who let their kids join the military. They do not deserve the support of the American people.

$500 Billion dollars, 104 Amrican soldiers dead in October alone, thousands and thousands of wounded and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, and the GOP wants to focus on a botched joke. Pardon me for a second as I cry. This is not from defeat, not from sorrow for any one Dem pol, it's sorrow for those two kids I saw graduate this summer and the lack of support and the lack of plan to back up what they are doing in Iraq. I cry for their families. I cry because George Bush doesn't deserve this. He is an utter failure and he doesn't care about these people.

Every so often, Iraq hurts more than I can bear. Then I remember those kids and I remember I have to bear it, because those kids need someone to speak for them. So you dry the tears and you fight again.

[Jacobin]

7. Wow. They're a perceptive bunch

They have a pretty colored graph and all to tell them what's happening. If they left the graph blank and let George color it in all by himself, I still don't think he'd get the picture

[Theduckno2]

8. Never mind what Kerry said, THIS is important.

All those lives lost, all that treasure spent (I believe off-budget) and for what? Chaos? :grr:


On the lighter side, it is nice to see that RED, ORANGE, YELLOW and GREEN had their contracts picked up after being dropped at DHS. No word on BLUE.

[TayTay]

9. I cannot even imagine what it's like to see something like this

if you have a loved one serving in Iraq. Bush says he is listening to his 'General on the ground' right now in Iraq.

I hope to hell, for the sake of all those people on the ground in Iraq that he is listening to this.

[Theduckno2]

10. Yes, you reminded me of what is important.

There really is no room for humor in this grim news. I just hope the results of this upcoming election force Bush to listen to this and not to Cheney.

[TayTay]

11. Humor is often the only way we get through stuff like this

I, for one, welcome it totally. (And I liked your joke. I am just stunned by this news this morning and my laugh meter is a little low. My apologies.)

I laugh sometimes so I won't cry.

[Theduckno2]

13. No need for an apology.

As far as the crying goes it is hard not to when one considers the ramifications of Bush's intergenerational War on Terror.

One only has to read Riverbend to know that chaos looms in Iraq.

For what it's worth, I have a copy of The Nation's Alfred E. Neuman cover in a frame next to my screen. That keeps me from being too gloomy.

[gfnrob]

12. Where do you suppose

civil war is on that scale? Before or after chaos, just wondering

[JudyM]

14. If this any real press coverage, the WH will make it all about the leak

of the info, like they always do.

[TayTay]

15. The story about the weapons that can't be traced

getting 'lost' in IRaq got no media tractions.
Imagine that, our media doesn't think that our mistaken arming of our enemies with weaponry that can be used to shot at, wound and possibly kill 'our troops' is not worth a follow-up.

There are no places in hell hot enough to put these people.

[AntiFascist]

16. K&R