Shut Your Fucking Face 3rd ID Soldiers Currently Stationed In Iraq
I earlier posted Lacking Intelligence May Be A Lot Worse Than Lying that included quotes of depressed and homesick 3rd ID servicemen in Iraq that was broadcast on ABCs "Good Morning America". Now the "Bring It On" White House is hopping mad, playing Hardball and fighting dirty.
SHOOT THE MESSENGER. This White House, it seems, is all about punishing people who make it look bad -- even if those people happen to be American soldiers sweating it out in Iraq, wondering why the administration won't be straight with them about when they can go home. According to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the careers of those soldiers who spoke to Good Morning America for its segment on low troop morale are essentially over. "It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top of us," one officer told the Chron. "At least six of us here will lose our careers." The troops in question are from the Second Brigade, Third Infrantry Division, which has been in Iraq almost from the beginning, and who have been promised twice that they would be going home soon.
It wasn't as if the Bushies were happy with Blount from the start of the war, and his now infamous quote "we wargamed against a different enemy".But the comments flowing from the troops have probably sealed his fate. But they still want to go home and still hate the Iraqis.
I see that the wife of Maj. Gen Blount of the 3rd Infantry sent an email to all of the families of the soldiers telling them that if they continue to dare to criticize Dear Leader and the Pentagon it´s going to be their fault if their loved ones get shot because by speaking up they are encouraging the enemy.
"I realize many of you are upset. I am too," Anita Blount, wife of Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, wrote in an anguished E- mail to the wives of soldiers under her husband's command.
"I will also admit that when I heard the recent news about another delay in redeployment, I was angry," she said in trying to console the spouses. "I want my husband home just as you do."
Her remarkable E-mail, however, urged the families not to go public with their anger for fear of encouraging the enemy. The Iraqis, she wrote, "believe that their continued attacks on American soldiers are having the desired affect and are diminishing the resolve of the American people to complete the task in Iraq."
I thought a lot of Iraqis didn't have a lot of electrical power, so I'm not sure *how* they would get this news anyway.
I do sense that a devoted wife is trying to save her husband's career. Is that career more valuable than the men of the 3rd ID?
Isn't this the line used to suppress dissent leading up to war?
According to Cursor, the White House was so hopping mad about ABC News correspondent Jeffrey Kofman's Tuesday report on flagging morale among U.S. soldiers in Iraq, in which one called on Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to resign, that a White House operative informed Matt Drudge that Kofman is gay and Canadian. Drudge tells the Washington Post that "someone from the White House communications shop tipped me" to the story along with an Advocate profile of Kofman.
Isn't it clear that Koffman must have used his homosexual wiles to seduce the members of the 3rd ID and brainwash them into claiming they want to go home? I think this incident makes clear why gays must be kept out of the military and why it's so important to continue kicking them out, even if they speak Arabic. At least they did NOT say that Kofman looked FRENCH.
Whoever thought that this would stop the flow of bad news and improve morale, or thought that this move would not itself hit the press, is as dumb as a box of hair.
Of course, if the neo-cons hadn't promised us all a cake-walk... And if we hadn't gotten guerilla warfare instead ... And if bungled Bush diplomacy hadn't made international troops a fantasy... And if the Bush lies that got us into the war weren't so insultingly transparent to anyone with half a brain, and if Bush hadn't pulled that shark-jumping Mission Accomplished stunt... Maybe morale of our troops would be a little bit better?
You know, it's getting harder to pick the dumbest political move of the day, there are so many lovely choices . . .
File this under "holy shit": there's a reason Cheney was so adamant about keeping the deliberations of the Energy Task Force secret. The energy policy and the Iraq war was the same thing.
No wonder Cheney didn't want to have these records exposed. I expect that now that the Iraq war is "over" and the contracts are in place, it doesn't much matter. I mean, who is going to hold them accountable?
Judicial Watch, the conservative legal group that bedeviled the Clinton Administration has effectively done the same for Cheney and Bush:
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, said today that documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under court order as a result of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.”
Judicial Watch has been seeking these documents under FOIA since April 19, 2001. Judicial Watch was forced to file a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Department of Energy, et al., Civil Action No. 01-0981) when the government failed to comply with the provisions of the FOIA law. U.S. District Court Judge Paul J. Friedman ordered the government to produce the documents on March 5, 2002.
So were such documents used for truly innocent purposes? It'll be interesting to see the tortured explanations as to why the Task Force would have pondered over who held the contracts to Iraq's oil wealth in 2001. Given the Iraq sanctions, those oil wells could not play any role in the formulation of US energy policy when we had no access to them.
If this is on the level, the implications are extraordinary. I always had it in the back of my mind that Cheney was stonewalling on the energy task force to hide the corruption, the ties to Enron, ANWAR plans and so on. But what if the sons of bitches were sitting around deciding how to divvy up Iraq? What if that most reductionist of slogans is a simple statement of fact: it's all about the oil?
