Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

In after Baud. Damn.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War / Meanwhile

Meanwhile

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Twenty-four coalition troops dead in the first four days of October. Attacks on U.S. forces have dramatically escalated in recent weeks.

Suicide attacks increasing in the Republic of Kabul, the part of Afghanistan effectively governed by Hamid Karzai.

The Secretary of State tours middle east nations and reaps the whirlwind. That would be Condoleeza Rice, who for other reasons may not be long for this government.

And lest we forget, the combined brains of our government’s intelligence agencies concluded that the Iraq war has already made the threat from terrorism much worse. We might be able to verify that independently if the State Department still released an annual terrorism report but they don’t do that anymore. I wonder why that is.

Reader Interactions

55Comments

  2. 2.

    ThymeZone

    Bill Maher had this right on CNN yesterday:

    Bush says, can’t pull out now.

    Bush, who along with his father has been wrong about EVERY SINGLE THING THEY HAVE SAID ABOUT IRAQ SINCE 1985.

    “I won’t steer you wrong” Bush says, can’t pull out now.

    Therefore, the only sane and prudent thing to do is to pull out now. Why in the world would anyone start listening to these people now?

  3. 3.

    Punchy

    What’s this “Iraq” thang again you’re talking about? Did we threaten Saddam again? I tell ya, I’m betting that bastard is hiding some chem weapons….I’m guessing north, south, and west someways…

    One day we need to take care of that despot. Until then…MORE FOLEY!!

  5. 5.

    p.lukasiak

    Condi’s not going anywhere. She’s the only cabinet member who is capable of making Rumsfeld look like something a little less than a complete embarrassment.

  6. 6.

    just sayin

    Apparently AlQ has decided they don’t want the GOP in power any more.

    And the best to be said about our Secretary of State is that she’s the other cabinet member who is a complete embarrassment.

  7. 7.

    Tsulagi

    Yeah, Frist, bring the Taliban into the government. That’ll fix things. Good thing somebody told him how stupid that was so he could start waffling before sharing his plan with large numbers deployed there.

    Suicide attacks in AF. Great. Suicide bombers getting proper indoctrination from al Qaeda in Pakistan and soon, if not already, sophisticated IEDs developed in Iraq. Republican free trade in action. Your military genius neocons at work.

    This time around the winter there could be nasty. Snow could be used to hide IEDs along the roadside.

  8. 8.

    Tax Analyst

    Condi’s 3rd trip to Iraq in about a year, isn’t it? Let’s see, once was to “tell them to govern” per GW Bush…really sage advice…like he would know…as far as I can tell these were/are just “show” appearances with nothing behind them. Attempts to show the folks back home that this Administration actually gives a damn. The Iraqi people are just props in these “Condi cameo/Photo-op” displays and I think some of them have figured that out by now. She’ll make some sort of nonsensical speech with no relation to reality from somewhere safe in the Green Zone and then just as quickly blow out of town to blow some more smoke up somebody’s skirts someplace else. She’s playing out the string on the lies of this fiasco because she’s so deep into the BS that she will be poison to any future Administration.

  9. 9.

    mrmobi

    Well, TZ, at least GHW Bush was smart enough to listen to Colin Powell about the aftermath of Desert Storm.

    You make an excellent point about their advice, though. Does anyone with a brain still believe these people?

    Bush really fought against having Condi testify before Congress. I guess he didn’t want to put her in a position where she would have to lie, which is what it looks like she did. But that’s cause for Medal of Freedom for this bunch. They should keep her, I fear who might be her replacement.

    Every day, a new low point.

  14. 14.

    Zifnab

    The Secretary of State tours middle east nations and reaps the whirlwind. That would be Condoleeza Rice, who for other reasons may not be long for this government.

    That’ll just give her more time to work on her ’08 Presidential bid.

  15. 15.

    Pb

    ThymeZone,

    Yeah, that’s old, and unoriginal, but probably still worth a chuckle the first time you hear it. There’s so much potential for comedy here, I imagine we’ll see more of it over time.

  16. 16.

    SeesThroughIt

    Has anybody compiled a list of all the reports, data, etc. that the Republicans are suppressing, if not outright eliminating? Like Tim mentions in this post that the State Department no longer releases its annual terror report (because the facts are biased against the president). They also are suppressing the Census data on poverty (again, facts are biased against the president). So what are the others?

  18. 18.

    Darrell

    That would be Condoleeza Rice, who for other reasons may not be long for this government.

    Did Tenet warn Condi that an impending Al Queda attack was a “slam dunk”?

  19. 19.

    Tsulagi

    In Iraq, we should have taken Sadr out years ago. When we had arrest warrants issued for him before our friend Chalabi convinced the Bush idiots to drop them. I think that was just before we issued arrest warrants for Chalabi when we found he sold us out to Iran. But the fluffers for Chalabi couldn’t stay mad at him so we dropped those too.

    You could see Sadr was positioning for civil war before the very first vote in Iraq. He’s done nothing but foster that ever since.

    Now people he chose have been elected into the Maliki government. So Sadr effectively is part of the elected government and was a power broker in getting Maliki chosen. We’ve told Maliki to crack down on militias like Sadr’s Medhi Army, but that’s not happening.

    Over at PJ Media affliated Iraq the Model, a reliably pro-Bush blog written from Iraq by two brothers, they offered this last week about the recent curfew and barricading of Baghdad…

    Others believe the situation is connected to the threat a senior aide to Sadr made during the Friday prayers. Hazim al-Aaraji, one of the closest aides to Muqtada al-Sadr warned the government on Friday that the Sadr movement would “start a revolution to topple the government if anyone dared arrest or harm Sayyed Muqtada

    This guy has all the potential and desire to be the next Saddam in Iraq.

    I also liked this description by the two brothers who write Iraq the Model of a typical early evening in Baghdad…

    Right now Mohammed and I are sitting in the garden, smoking and sipping tea and trying to analyze the sounds of the explosions and gunfire to figure out the dimensions and rough coordinates of the battlefield… I can see and hear all kinds of military aircrafts in the skies but I can tell that none was engaged in any of the clashes so far, at least that’s the case in my part of Baghdad.

    Like the trained apologists say, no different than Anytown, USA. A heckuva job. Stay the course.

  20. 20.

    Pb

    SeesThroughIt,

    Has anybody compiled a list of all the reports, data, etc. that the Republicans are suppressing, if not outright eliminating?

    I doubt you’ll ever see a comprehensive list. I’ll just mention the M3 money supply, the Fed stopped publishing that not too long ago.

  21. 21.

    chriskoz

    Did Tenet warn Condi that an impending Al Queda attack was a “slam dunk”?

    Because Condi couldn’t recognize the danger unless it was presented as a basketball analogy?

    Would “home run” or “slap shot” been dire enough?

  22. 22.

    Pb

    Right now Mohammed and I are sitting in the garden, smoking and sipping tea

    Mission Accomplished!

  23. 23.

    jg

    Darrell Says:

    That would be Condoleeza Rice, who for other reasons may not be long for this government.

    Did Tenet warn Condi that an impending Al Queda attack was a “slam dunk”?

    Weak. You’re obviously not a serious commenter.

  24. 24.

    Wil Morat

    The “terrorists taking harbor in Iraq” – the “reason” the U.S. invaded Iraq – was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    In a few years, with the help of the allegedly “liberal media,” everyone will simply take the Bush administration’s line as fact. They will have created their own reality, so to speak.

    Such things as terrorism reports only make creating an alternative reality more difficult. The truth is what you make it.

  25. 25.

    Leo

    Hmm, gee, a huge upswing in terrorist attacks in the weeks before the US election. It’s almost like they know that there is an election coming up or something.

  27. 27.

    sglover

    Hey, lay off Condi. She’s in Baghdad to arrange the balloons and streamers for the big “Victory in Iraq” bash. You want Cheney to do the decorating?!?!

    Therefore, the only sane and prudent thing to do is to pull out now. Why in the world would anyone start listening to these people now?

    I recently heard a very good idea about Iraq from Brad DeLong. He points out that if we’re serious, we need to train and deploy 500,000 Arab-speaking MP’s. That will take a while, even assuming the assholes in Congress don’t fuck around with it. However, countries like, say, Egypt have the necessary manpower available. Maybe we should arrange for the largest mercenary arrangement in history? I’d be surpised if it cost any more than what we’re already pissing into the Tigris under the current “plan”.

    Unfortunately, DeLong also points out that as long as President Fuckwit and his Clown Posse are in charge, things are going to drag on pretty much as they have. When 2009 rolls around — hopefully sooner — we need to extradite the entire top 2-3 tiers of the government to an international war crimes tribunal. I hope we can find one that follows the Texan approach to punishment, if you get my drift.

  28. 28.

    sglover

    In Iraq, we should have taken Sadr out years ago. When we had arrest warrants issued for him before our friend Chalabi convinced the Bush idiots to drop them.

    Errrrmmmmm…. I dunno about that. At the time we were playing chicken with Sadr, he could count on 100,000 followers to hit the streets on command. Last I heard, though, his influence has waned.

    Anyway, it’s probably useless, now, to put too much emphasis on any one figure. It probably always was. We keep looking for an indigenous savior to pull our bacon out of the fire, or an evil mastermind who’s pulling the strings for “the insurgency”. It’s childish. In fact, we were always profoundly ignorant of Iraqi society. I don’t think we’ve ever had more than the dimmest idea of what’s really going on there.

  29. 29.

    BlogReeder

    Tim F. you partisan ghoul!
    No death tally during September? There weren’t enough dying for you? You don’t think this being Islam’s holy month of Ramadan has anything to do with it?

    Like the last three years around this time when attacks increased.

    Look, if you did something useful with your statistics that would be one thing.

  30. 30.

    Pb

    BlogReeder,

    You want some statistics? Fine, maybe this will get you started for once.

    At least 23 US troops (and one Brit–a Lance Corporal in the Royal Army Medical Corps, lost to a mortar attack) died in the first four days of October 2006–that’s nearly six a day. Meanwhile, 72 US troops died in all of September 2006. 18 of them died in the first four days of September, which was probably also the bloodiest four day period of the month–4.5 per day as compared to the month-long average of 2.4 per day.

    And that’s not even counting the Iraqis–a minimum of 27 Iraqi police/military and 246 Iraqi civilians have also died thus far, this month. And that’s not a comprehensive list–rather, it’s literally ripped from the headlines. This also exceeds September’s average. And as for consistent cyclical patterns in the data, if you know about any, I’d like to see them–feel free to share with the rest of the class!

  32. 32.

    BlogReeder

    You want some statistics? Fine, maybe this will get you started for once.

    You seem to have misread me. I said do something useful. Pb, you are also a partisan ghoul.

  33. 33.

    BlogReeder

    This is a story about what is happening in Baghdad. See? It’s an operation. This is a story from the AP at that.

    Ghouls are beings that feed on the dead. When you list just numbers without background as to what they were doing, I think ghoul is the appropiate term. Especially during October.

  35. 35.

    John S.

    Ghouls are beings that feed on the dead.

    Yeah, in comic books.

    Which presumably is the same source for your views on current events and foreign policy. Iraq is really going swell…because Superman is going to destroy the evil terrorists with his x-ray vision! That’s why we don’t need body armor…he’s bulletproof!

  36. 36.

    ThymeZone

    Iraq, meanwhile, is continuing to be a problem for the Republicans. Only 38% of respondents in the TIME poll now support President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, down from 42% three months ago. A similar number believe that the new Iraqi government will succeed in forming a stable democracy, while 59% believe this is unlikely. Almost two-thirds (65%) of respondents disapprove of President Bush’s handling of the war, while 54% believe he “deliberately misled” Americans in making his case for war — a figure that has increased by 6 points over the past year. President Bush’s overall approval rating, according to TIME’s poll, now stands at just 36%, down from 38% in August.

    Time magazine.

  37. 37.

    Tim F.

    Tim F. you partisan ghoul!

    I see that you’re back to ad hominems again. Too bad, for a while it almost seemed like you threatened to become a reasonable person. Must have been a blip.

  38. 38.

    Pb

    BlogReeder,

    This is a story about what is happening in Baghdad. See? It’s an operation. This is a story from the AP at that.

    I think I’m going to die of shock. A source? Thank you, that is progress!

    Now, on to step two: actually reading it. You see, then you might note that even this specific ‘operation’ isn’t new–actually, it’s been in place for months now. And the phenomenon isn’t new either. Check out this story from June:

    Government forces fanned out across Baghdad on Wednesday, setting up checkpoints, frisking motorists and causing huge traffic jams on the first day of the largest security operation in Iraq’s capital since Saddam Hussein’s ouster three years ago.

    Sound familiar? Well, we know how it turned out now, but it gets worse:

    Tackling Baghdad’s tenuous security has been the aim of several past counterinsurgency operations — including one a year ago. That operation, code-named Lightning, failed to have any impact on the bombings, shootings and killings that have become daily fare in Baghdad.

    So there’s your history. It has been said that one sign of insanity is “repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results”. Well, that’s what we’re pointing out here. These strategies have been tried before, and if they have achieved anything, they have made things worse. The statistics we’re citing are basic metrics which clearly demonstrate how bad things have gotten and are getting.

    Ghouls are beings that feed on the dead.

    Then I’d expect that your ‘ghouls’ would be quite welcome in today’s Iraq.

    When you list just numbers without background as to what they were doing, I think ghoul is the appropiate term.

    What’s the appropriate term for someone who spouts ridiculous, inappropriate, and unsubstantiated ad hominems without regard to reason, logic, or history?

    Especially during October.

    Do tell. Halloween? Are Vampire attacks up too?

  39. 39.

    mrmobi

    BlogReeder, yesterday’s good news…

    BAGHDAD – A total of 30 bodies, most of them shot and tortured, were found in different districts of Baghdad during the past 24 hours, a source in the Interior Ministry said.

    BAGHDAD – A car bomb killed two people and wounded eight in Hurriya district in northwestern Baghdad, a source in the Interior Ministry said. The target of the explosion was not clear.

    BAGHDAD – A roadside bomb wounded 20 labourers as it exploded near a crowd of men waiting for day jobs in central Baghdad’s Tayaran square, a source in the Interior Ministry said. . .

    RAMADI – Four people were killed and six wounded in clashes between insurgents and U.S. forces in the insurgent stronghold city of Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad, Doctor Ahmed al-Rawi, head of Anbar health directorate said.’

    Emphasis mine. Above is from Juan Cole today. He also points this out:

    The rate at which the security situation in Iraq is declining can be guessed from this candid report by ABC’s Terry McCarthy. Excerpts:

    ‘ . . . After six weeks away from Iraq and returning to Baghdad, I find the city appears much worse than when I left. Last week, according to a U.S. military spokesman, Baghdad experienced more attacks from car bombs and improvised explosive devices than at any other time this year. In the last five days, 14 U.S. soldiers have died in Baghdad, numbers that haven’t been seen in the city since the 2003 invasion. ABC’s local Iraqi staff tell us there are an increasing number of neighborhoods they no longer dare to visit. . .

    For ordinary Iraqis, life has become ever more difficult. Many women are now afraid to leave their homes to go shopping, children are kept indoors to play, men sleep with guns next to their beds — if they can sleep at all. The physical violence is horrific, but even more widespread is the psychological damage . . .

    The U.S. military said the situation in Baghdad would probably get worse before it gets better, and Iraqi citizens wonder how long they can stay alive before their lives improve. ‘

    McCarthy suggests that the spike in US military deaths in the city has coincided with a push into Shiite areas, which probably means they are getting hit by Mahdi Army or splinters thereof.

    Emphasis mine. Yesterday, Rice’s flight was delayed because of mortar attacks on the airpoint. Three years in, and the airport is still not secured. During her meetings, there were power failures. Three years in, and there is still no reliable power in Baghdad.
    BlogReeder, did you know that Ghoul is derived from Arabic legends?

    Ghul is also the name for a desert-dwelling, shapeshifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal, especially a hyena. It lures unwary travellers into the desert wastes to slay and devour them.

    If Tim were really a Ghoul, he would, like you, be reporting only the good news, (wherever that might be) because if he were a Ghoul, he would want us to do what we are doing. That is, denying the reality of the situation and allowing our courageous men and women to be caught in the middle of a civil war for no fucking good reason.
    You must be drinking the strongest of the Kool-Aid to be unable to see that we have lost this struggle. Even Senator Warner said yesterday that the Iraqi government has “90 days” to get the violence under control. I thought the Party of Torture doesn’t believe in deadlines.

    The truth is, the real Ghouls in this situation are the craven and incompetent originators of this catastrophic policy. Brave soldiers are dying while they desperately try to hold onto power. But be sure to vote Republican in November, because Nancy Pelosi is just too dangerous to be Speaker of the House.

  40. 40.

    ThymeZone

    Excellent writeup, Mister Mobi, but you are making an appeal to reason, in hopes of persuading an unreasonable correspondent.

    The gift that the BlogReeders and Darrells and Macs bring us is the gift of unreasonableness.

    The “ghoul” thing is not a reasonable proposition, it’s just a schoolyard putdown. It’s the act of the machine, which wishes only to paint its adversary as bad with anything that will stick. If gay bashing works, use that. If weakness on defense works, use that. If a twisted “argument” that it is ghoulish to examine the only reality of war that truly describes war in the first place … casualties … if that works, use it.

    Just win, baby.

  41. 41.

    mrmobi

    Thanks TZ. Yep, right now, winning is very important.

    I try to visit Juan Cole’s site every day. It can be grueling, but it’s very important to know what is happening in this catastrofuck, as Jon Stewart calls it.

    I kind of feel bad for BlogReeder and Mac and Darrell these days. The wheels have fallen off, and the Party of Torture is reduced to throwing shit that they wouldn’t have bothered to pick up in their more powerful days. Stewart last night was really good, covering the Fox News mistake of identifying Foley as a Democrat.

    This isn’t the October surprise I was expecting, but I hope we run with this all the way to a House majority. The beauty part is, we don’t have to do much, they are going to keep Hastert out in front on this and try to ride it out. It’s a beautiful thing.

  42. 42.

    ThymeZone

    Iraq? The braniacs running the country now can’t even handle something as simple as a no-fly list.

    Gary Smith, John Williams and Robert Johnson are some of those names. Kroft talked to 12 people with the name Robert Johnson, all of whom are detained almost every time they fly. The detentions can include strip searches and long delays in their travels.

    “Well, Robert Johnson will never get off the list,” says Donna Bucella, who oversaw the creation of the list and has headed up the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center since 2003. She regrets the trouble they experience, but chalks it up to the price of security in the post-9/11 world. “They’re going to be inconvenienced every time … because they do have the name of a person who’s a known or suspected terrorist,” says Bucella.

    Courtesy WaMo, a blurb from a Steve Kroft story.

    If these geniuses can’t protect the airport in Centralia any better than this …. any wonder that they can’t secure the airport in Iraq in time for Condi’s plane to land on time?

    I don’t know about you, but I feel a lot safer knowing that somewhere a guy named Robert Johnson is being strip searched to protect me from terrorists. Thanks, Bob.

  43. 43.

    Andrew

    Sullivan has a really good point:
    Condi got off the plane wearing a bullet proof vest.

    They still haven’t secured the fucking airport?

  45. 45.

    sglover

    I don’t understand why folks are actually bothering to read “blogreeder’s” comment, much less reply to them. The only people still shilling for the administration are flesh-craving zombies.

  46. 46.

    Pb

    If weakness on defense works, use that. If a twisted “argument” that it is ghoulish to examine the only reality of war that truly describes war in the first place … casualties … if that works, use it.

    Indeed. Observing that our troops are still dying over there? Ghoulish. Ignoring this and doing nothing different whilst continuing to send them over to die? Patriotic. In other news, War is Peace, and Freedom is Slavery.

  48. 48.

    Pb

    Andrew,

    They still haven’t secured the fucking airport?

    They haven’t secured the fucking airport, nor have they gotten basic utilities reliably up and running, not even for Condi, let alone the rest of Iraq. From the New York Times article:

    It began inauspiciously when the military transport plane that brought her to Baghdad was forced to circle the city for about 40 minutes because of what a State Department spokesman later said was either mortar fire or rockets at the airport.

    On Thursday evening, during her meeting with President Jalal Talabani, the lights went out, forcing Ms. Rice to continue the discussion in the dark. It was a reminder of the city’s erratic — and sometimes nonexistent — electrical service.

  50. 50.

    Andrew

    DO NOT WORRY!

    WE HAVE A PLAN!

    That is a totally awesome plan. Still, I prefer my plan for Mideast peace, which involves everyone becoming a Scientologist and praying for the second coming of the Mad Overlord Xenu to unite us in out battle against the newly corporeal thetans.

  51. 51.

    Tsulagi

    DO NOT WORRY!

    WE HAVE A PLAN!

    Good God. Yeah, that’ll work. Simply redraw the borders in a region. Fixed. They may bitch a little, but they’ll go along. Tommy DeLay did it with districts in Texas, why not there? And they call the left looney.

  52. 52.

    Tsulagi

    For “THE PLAN,” we wouldn’t have to worry about Iraq. The Iraqi troops standing up while we stand down will take care of things. Well, that is unless they’re on vacation.

    I have no doubt there are some in the Iraqi forces who desire a fair, democratic Iraq, but I liked the description of a typical Iraqi battalion in the Army Times…

    An Iraqi army policy that allows up to a third of a unit’s troops to be on leave, combined with the fact that troops do not sign enlistment contracts and can quit whenever they want, means the battalion has no more than 30 percent of its troops available for action, said Marine Maj. Tony Marro, the military transition team leader in Rawah.

    By U.S. Army standards, Marro acknowledged, the battalion would be considered “combat ineffective.”

    Yep, we’ll stand down as they stand up. Unless there are too many incidents like one where the car of an Iraqi battalion commander blew up while he was in it and all but 30 of the 700 or so under his command decided to seek other employment while taking their weapons and other gear with them.

    Okay, don’t be cynical. Push in on eyeballs until you see the vision. Stay the course.

  53. 53.

    BlogReeder

    Tim F. sometimes you seem soo thin-skinned for someone who writes

    The president is an emotional infant.

    I was using ghoul as a metaphor.

    Last night I realized what was bothering me about all these death counts that are bandied about. You guys are just feeding on them. The more the better. You might say you’re aghast but it doesn’t look like it when you jump on any new total you can use for your cause.

    These are American soldiers that are dying. They’re not just statistics. What they’re involved in is historically important. This is history in the making. Soldiers fight battles and when their deaths are reported, some space should be given to what they were doing. That’s all I’m saying. You are disrespecting them when you use them like that, IMO.

    Generally when there is a spike in deaths, something is happening. Soldiers just don’t stand around. This is history, understand what they were doing. I’m not saying you have to agree.

  54. 54.

    Barry

    ” You guys are just feeding on them. The more the better. You might say you’re aghast but it doesn’t look like it when you jump on any new total you can use for your cause.”

    And the supporter of treason decries pointing that treason out as treason….

  55. 55.

    Person of Choler

    Balloon Juice, condensed:

    Everything bad that happens is caused by Republicans in general and George Bush in particular.

    Everything that happens is bad.

    I am extremely intelligent and those of you who disagree with me are morons.

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