Am I the only one who wonders what that largest, hardened, embassy in the world will be used for now.

Or is it still part of the plan, part of the mission, part of the vision?

Who is going to account for that? Or is it impolite to ask? Or is it's cost, forget the mission, so much water over the dam?

It's all getting swept under the rug, isn't it?

When will it dawn upon all the vehement blind critics, among them Clemons, Kervick, and Norheim themselves, now that even the Obama administration acknowledges that ‘Bush’s war’ has brought a shining new dawn on Iraq and has been a resplendent success on the part of General Petraeus and General McChrystal? Or will they continue doggedly to persist, in their prejudiced political blindness, that it was a failure, and hence choose to be led by their dogs?

But the ultimate curse upon all the critics of the war will be cast by history which unquestionably will acclaim as Bush's victory.

So it's no longer a military operation, it's a dish soap?

I think it's a slogan made by Kim Jong-il or his father.

"a shining new dawn on Iraq " You do recognize, of course, Paul,that Kotz the obscene is baiting you. LOL.

Too bad it's not funny. I think I'll put Kotz on ignore. He's pretty much crazy.

"Shining New Dawn". Good one JJ. Got it Kotz? Just ask if you're confused.

What it will be used for?

It’s the "imperial Mother Ship” (the size of Vatican City; approximately 80 football fields) that Tom Engelhardt described.

It will be a large target.

It will be a constant reminder to the Iraqis of arrogant Americans.

It will serve as a stark contrast for Iraqis – the luxurious American quarters in the midst of the world’s worst city in which to live.
It will be a tragic $592 million symbol of cement and steel built at the cost of thousands of American and Iraqi lives.

It will cause us, who in are in the midst of our own slow-motion social catastrophe, what its operating costs totaling $1.2 billion a year, to question what this money could have done in our nation.

Don’t expect much the deficit hawks and deficit peacocks. So much water over the dam and under the rug.

I am a bit confused, DonS. As far as I can see, there are two
comments from you on this thread; one from just John; and one
from me, responding to just john.

Kotz baiting me? Are you referring to another thread, perhaps?

And of course DakotabornKansan, who posted while I wrote my
last comment. But i can't see comment by Kotzabasis on this
thread.

Paul, I've asked Steve to send my email address to you. I'm working
on a project that has nothing to do with politics.

Kathleen Grasso Andersen and easy e, whom I now consider
friends, know what it is. Don't worry, it's completely innocuous.
Anyway, I would like your advice. Please let me know if you don't
get my email address.

Paul, you don't see 8:04?

Outraged,

it's ok with me.

DonS, I do see 8:04, but not who've written it. Perhaps the fonts
are too small for me to read it? Do you think I should contact an
optometrist?

Well, when this clusterfuck blows up in Obama's face, we'll know what it was the "dawn" of.

Its not rocket science. If Obama's crack team of proffessional inepts and accomplished hypocrites woulda worked to inform the american public what a fuckin' con-job the so called "success of the surge" is, then Obama coulda laid the blame on Cheney, Bush, and Petreaus, where it really belongs. But instead, these feckless assholes have chosen to advance the scam, hoping it proves to be something other than the myth it is obviously becoming.

Watch over the course of the following year, while Iraq implodes, and the right wing pounces, screaming to high heavens about how Obama squandered "the success of the surge".

This whole clusterfuck in the middle east is one thin pubic hair from exploding beyond our government's ability to counter, control, or address. One false move from Israel, (as if it won't happen, eh?), and the whole thing can escalate to world war status.

These assholes in DC are completely and utterly OUT OF CONTROL, more concerned about framing what we are supposed to THINK they are doing than having concern for the effects of what they are ACTUALLY doing.

Too bad, if this country has to go down the tubes, that it can't be by an honest and sincere patriot making an honest mistake. Instead, we have a bunch of power hungry megalomaniacal corrupt pieces of shit selling us down the river to whomever is the highest bidder.

Hummmm...so we are getting out but staying..is that it?
How very Washington...Orwellington DC.

New Dawn - 47% cleaner than old Dawn.

Paul,It really doesn't matter who is 'right' in naming Obama's behavior. Steve calls himself a realist. Wigwag apparently has some need to call Obama a neocon.

What is significant is that Obama is governing in foreign affairs, with Iran being the most currently active example, in an increasingly confrontational manner. It would be hard to distinguish his rhetoric and actions from candidate Clinton. She's running her portfolio, aggressive, confrontational, neo liberal, not what Obama led us to expect.

I'm really not interested in parsing the nuances. The Obama behavior has continued to position the US as a unilateralist, exceptionalist nation -- with an occasional throwaway line by Obama about the different world he is aspiring to.

Here's a brief review of Obama's continuation of Bush disdain for the UN, as another example:

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/30516

I'm pretty much finished with it; Obama has to show me some change. I have zero trust in his words or actions. I can see why neocons could be happy though, of course, they have the continued problem of painting him as a liberal, left wing demon. What a joke, all of them.

DonS,

I may give you my personal views later, but my point in the actual
comment was simply to refer to Steve's concern: that Obama risks
to end up in dangerous and unexpected places due to a lack of
strategy - reacting to events as they unfold, instead of long term
and broader considerations of what to achieve and how to
achieve it.

This in contrast to WigWag's view, which I found interesting.

BTW: perhaps you should post your comment in the thread below
this one - where it actually belongs?

kotzabasis - poor mans frum....

iraqi freedom name change reflects something akin to mcdonalds - 'you need a break today'.... ought to work on those kultured amerikan's...

New Improved Dawn, with Surgeoline!

With all of the security built into the place, we should be able to convert the US Embassy in Iraq into a casino. It's already got the safes built in the cellar to store the cash an operating casino needs and all of the security wiring built into the structure to keep tabs on the customers and staff. With all of that space inside the compound, we can put up theme parks and water displays, bring in Cirque de Soleil for perfomances, and even have enough room left over for the stand which will constitute our real embassy after this is all over. At least this way we might be able to pay off this white elephant of a structure before it totally crumbles into dust.

"With all of the security built into the place, we should be able to convert the US Embassy in Iraq into a casino. It's already got the safes built in the cellar to store the cash an operating casino needs and all of the security wiring built into the structure to keep tabs on the customers and staff"

Good idea. And can we add monster trucks, booze, and hookers too? Then perhaps, one of Steve's guest bloggers can write a glowing endorsement about how "modern" Iraq has become, like he did about Dubai.

At first, they wanted to call this "operation iraqi liberation", but when they realized what the acrynom spelled they changed the name. O.I.L. was probably more truthful, but what the heck, let's do New Dawn now. Personally, I like Ivory.

And the following is what Iraq has been all about with Iran on deck:

Fragmentation of Iraq Was Israel’s Strategy

http://america-hijacked.com/2010/02/18/fragmentation-of-iraq-was-israels-strategy/

Former CIA Bin Laden unit head Michael Scheuer on coming war with Iran

http://tinyurl.com/MichaelScheueroncomingIranwar

New Coke?

Anyway, I find the scan of the letter itself, fascinating. It's curiously
crude (note the rubber stamped date, upper right hand corner) (I
don't even know where you buy those little rubber stamps
anymore); the inability to tab over on the cc: line at the bottom.

It's clearly a hand-stamping-&-carry-this-to-interoffice-mail
memo -- it could be from Mad Men, technologically. I would have
thought they'd have given .pdfs and email a shot by now.

Child Leukemia in Iraq Triples, Nerve Agents Could Be to Blame
Friday, February 19, 2010

Print ShareThisRates of leukemia in children around the Basra area of Southern Iraq have almost tripled in the last 15 years according to calculations by public health experts. Research published in the American Journal of Public Health documents 698 cases of leukemia among children under the age of 15 in the period to 2007. There was a peak of 211 cases in 2006.

Rates increased from three to almost 8.5 cases of the disease per 100,000 children over the time period. This is more than double the rate of leukemia in the European Union.

The researchers, who studied hospital cancer registries in Basra, said that more analysis was now need to identify triggers for the surge. They speculated that increased exposure to substances related to childhood leukemia might be responsible — such as byproducts of regional petroleum fires and benzene, which comes from gasoline sold by children at the side of the road as a result of disrupted fuel supplies. War-related nerve agents and pesticides, and the widespread use of depleted uranium munitions, might also be factors, they said.

During the period studied, Basra and its highly populated surrounding area, which includes farmland and oil fields, was exposed to a series of wars and military occupations, including the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and two United States-led invasions, in 1991 and 2003. British forces were based in the city, the largest in Southern Iraq, for six years, with combat operations officially ending in April last year. Located on the Shatt Al-Arab River, the city is the terminal point for oil pipelines, and petroleum refining is a major industry.

continues........

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,586861,00.html

Truth is, we will NEVER know the true numbers of Iraqi's murdered by these pieces of shit in Washington DC. The deaths will go on for generations, with no one held accountable. In all honesty, I would like to see Dick Cheney and George Bush HUNG on the lawn of the White House, with the event televised internationally.

drew,
I don't agree that it's "curiously crude" to stamp the date on a letter after it's signed. Signed documents are justifiably important, the Secretary travels a great deal making approval dates imprecise, and so the date stamp makes sense to me, your reference to Mad Men notwithstanding.

By PATRICK E. TYLER The New York Times

TUWAITHA, Iraq (news - web sites), June 7 For Iptisam Nuri, a mother of five who was sick with typhoid, the arrival of the barrels in her home at first seemed a godsend.

When the electricity went out during the war, the water-pumping station that serves this area 30 miles southeast of Baghdad shut down, and people were thirsty. Then men from a village near here broke through the fence guarding
"Location C" at Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s nuclear complex. "We had to find something to bring water," said one of the men, Idris Saddoun, 23.

They say they broke into the warehouse, emptied hundreds of barrels of their yellow and brown mud, took them to the wells and canals and filled them with water for cooking, bathing and drinking. For nearly three weeks, hundreds of villagers who live in the shadow of the
high earthen berm and barbed wire fences that surrounded the labyrinth of the Iraqi nuclear program here bathed in and ingested water laced with radioactive contaminants from the barrels.
The barrels, Iraqi and foreign experts say, had held uranium ores, low-enriched uranium "yellowcake," nuclear sludge and other byproducts of Mr. Hussein's nuclear research.
Some villagers fell ill with nausea. Others developed rashes that made them itch.
Although no qualified medical experts have examined them, some contracted ailments that they now attribute to radioactive contamination. It may take years to determine the health effects from the radiation poisoning that
occurred here before American military forces arrived to seal off this nuclear complex.
Questions have been raised by international inspectors about why, despite Washington's assurances that allied forces had secured this facility, an army of looters roamed here freely for days, ransacking vaults and warehouses that contained ample radioactive poisons that could be used to manufacture an inestimable quantity of so-called dirty bombs. Tuwaitha has been the most conspicuous element of Iraq's nuclear research program since its inception in the 1970's. Twenty-two years ago today, Israeli warplanes bombed its main plutonium production reactor after Menachem Begin, then Israel's prime minister, became convinced that Mr.
Hussein was determined to produce nuclear weapons. Today, the first inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency
arrived here to look into the loss of control over Iraq's nuclear program that occurred when allied forces bypassed this complex during their drive on Baghdad. Under restrictions imposed by the American and British occupation authority,
the inspectors will not be allowed to survey the levels of contamination in villages like this one, where survival instincts drove the residents into a compound where radiological dangers awaited them.

continues...

http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2003/msg02939.html

This story really lends the lie to the bullshit that Saddam needed to go to Niger to purchase yellowcake, doesn't it? And again, it underscores how fucked up dishonest the stated objectives of the Iraq invasion were. There were about twelve such sites in Iraq, and these fuckers didn't even send troops to secure them. Nor were the Iraqi armories secured, effectively arming an insurgency that used the looted weapons to kill American troops.

The comical aspect to this, if one can be found, is that these assholes like Nadine must say "But the yellowcake was secured by UN monitors, which is why Saddam had to go to Niger to purchase yellowcake" to explain why we should find the Niger forgeries credible. Buit in so arguing, they are actually saying "The UN sanctions were working". Its their own private little Catch 22.

But getting beyond how inept, criminal, and treasonous George Bush and Dick Cheney were, the REAL story here is the GENERATIONS of Iraqis that have been genetically damaged by our malfeasance. We have turned Iraq into an environmental nightmare of toxins and radioactivity with our prolific use of DU weaponry and clusterfucks such as the Tuwaitha debacle.

So now the Sunnis are boycotting the Iraqi electoral process. I guess Petreaus stopped cutting them bribery checks to be good little Baathists, eh? Oh my, how fragile are these houses we build from cards. Will it crash down during Obama's tenure? Bet on it.

But fear not, Chalabi has slithered back out from under his dungheap, so he can nourish himself off the blood of his own people. What other actor so perfectly fits into the plot George Bush and Dick Cheney wrote together? One would be hard pressed to discern the slimiest of the three.

Okay, Ahmed Chalabi is a snake, but a snake with chutzpah. Now is telling the US to take a hike -- imagine that!

Ahmed Chalabi has accused Washington of putting pressure on the commission in charge of vetting the candidates. He decried the interference in Iraqi affairs by people "like (U.S.) Vice President Biden" and "the American ambassador in Baghdad." --Press TV

Looks like when the US liberated Iraq it also liberated Chalabi, which shouldn't be a surprise to other reptilian people like Biden who connived to get the US into Iraq.

Speaking of Mad Men, here's the title of the Pentagon Iraq casualty report I just pulled off the web.

What's wrong?

OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF) U.S. CASUALTY STATUS *
FATALITIES AS OF: February 19, 2020, 10 a.m. EST
http://www.defense.gov/NEWS/casualty.pdf

Don, my point was that time-stamping documents in corporeal
form is very 1963, and that I was surprised that the secdef doesn't
have the ability to issue a verified time-stamped memo in digital
form, yet.

They're printing out stuff and using a rubber stamp to verify its
date and authenticity. Why not use wax and a ring-seal?

"They're printing out stuff and using a rubber stamp to verify its date and authenticity. Why not use wax and a ring-seal?"

Theres a shortage of wax at the Pentagon. They used it up, melting it and dripping it on Muslim testicles.