fletcher's folly



July 15, 2006 Iraq war tally likely to hit 500 billion dollars or more CAPITOL HILL. Congressional auditors say the war in Iraq has cost almost 300 (b) billion dollars so far and will total almost a half (t) trillion dollars even if all U-S troops were withdrawn by the end of 2009. Congress has approved 432 (b) billion for military operations and other costs related to the war against terror since Nine-Eleven. The new study by the Congressional Budget Office is the first analysis by the agency of how much of that has been allocated for the Iraq war. The nonpartisan C-B-O analysis comes after congressional debate over whether to set goals or timetables for U-S troops to withdraw from Iraq. Congress has declined to set a timetable. But the Pentagon hopes to start drawing down forces by the end of the year. Copyright 2006 Associated Press. July 14, 2006 Bill Clinton: Dems Shouldn't Be Divided By Differences Over Iraq by Arianna Huffington ---snip--- There is no way a politician as savvy as Bill Clinton could be this clueless about just how seismic a division Iraq is for Democrats, so I can only assume it was the guilt talking -- the former president trying to make up for the wrong-headed advice he's been giving Hillary about adopting a Bush-lite, "centrist" stance on the war. A stance that means she has to keep assuming, in the face of all evidence, that everything will turn out okay in Iraq -- an assumption that with each passing car bomb explosion and sectarian massacre becomes more and more divorced from reality and puts Hillary, and all those who agree with her, on the wrong side of history. more... July 13, 2006 Baghdad Burning ... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend... Atrocities... It promises to be a long summer. We're almost at the mid-way point, but it feels like the days are just crawling by. It's a combination of the heat, the flies, the hours upon hours of no electricity and the corpses which keep appearing everywhere. The day before yesterday was catastrophic. The day began with news of the killings in Jihad Quarter. According to people who live there, black-clad militiamen drove in mid-morning and opened fire on people in the streets and even in houses. They began pulling people off the street and checking their ID cards to see if they had Sunni names or Shia names and then the Sunnis were driven away and killed. Some were executed right there in the area. The media is playing it down and claiming 37 dead but the people in the area say the number is nearer 60. The horrific thing about the killings is that the area had been cut off for nearly two weeks by Ministry of Interior security forces and Americans. Last week, a car bomb was set off in front of a 'Sunni' mosque people in the area visit. The night before the massacre, a car bomb exploded in front of a Shia husseiniya in the same area. The next day was full of screaming and shooting and death for the people in the area. No one is quite sure why the Americans and the Ministry of Interior didn't respond immediately. They just sat by, on the outskirts of the area, and let the massacre happen. more... July 12, 2006 An Illegal War Degenerates Iraq: Raped By RAED JARRAR A few months ago, Abir Al-Janabi was just another 14-year-old Iraqi girl in a small town called Al-Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad. Both of her parents are from the Al-Janabi tribe, one of the biggest tribes with Sunni and Shia branches. ---snip--- Unlike the case of Haditha, where Iraqi public opinion was furious about the massacre months before it reached to the U.S. mainstream media, the Iraqi press had not even heard of Abir until the U.S. army accidentally found out information about her while investigating another incident. This raises questions about the number of other similar cases that were never investigated and were blamed on non-occupation parties instead. According to Iraq Body Count, a credible project documenting Iraq's civilian casualties, the occupation armies are directly responsible for killing more than one fourth of civilians in Iraq since the beginning of the war. This makes the assumption that Abir's case is just one of many even more plausible. more... July 11, 2006 A Republic or an Empire? By Paul Craig Roberts Gentle reader, did you know that in April President Bush went to Stanford University to speak to the Hoover Institution fellows at the invitation of former Secretary of State George Shultz but was not allowed on campus? The Stanford students got wind of it and blocked Bush's access to the campus. The Hoover fellows had to go to Shultz's home to hear Bush's pitch for war and more war. A person might think that it would be national news that Stanford University students would not allow the President of the US on campus. It happened to be a day that hundreds of prospective freshmen were on campus with their parents, many of whom joined the demonstration against Bush. I did not hear or read a word about it. more... July 10, 2006 NYC Tunnel Plot Just Online Chatter By Larisa Alexandrovna One former intelligence field officer says, and two other CIA officials confirm, that the alleged plot by Muslim extremists to bomb the Holland Tunnel in New York City was nothing more than chatter by unaffiliated individuals with no financing or training in an open forum already monitored extensively by the United States Government, Raw Story has learned. "The so-called New York tunnel plot was a result of discussions held on an open Jihadi web site," said Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer and contributor to American Conservative magazine, in a late Friday afternoon conversation. Although Giraldi acknowledges that the persons involved -- "three of whom have already been arrested in Lebanon and elsewhere -- are indeed extremists," their online chatter is considerably overblown by allegations of an actual plot. "They are not professionally trained terrorists, however, and had no resources with which to carry out the operation they discussed," Giraldi added. "Despite press reports that they had asked Abu Musab Zarqawi for assistance, there is no information to confirm that. It is known that the members discussed the possibility of approaching Zarqawi but none of them knew him or had any access to him." Two other intelligence officials with experience in the field on extremist operations concurred -- and expressed concern that what could have been an operation to eventually track known extremists (should they eventually make actual contact with funds and training,) seems to have been exposed for political gain. more... July 9, 2006 "Packing It In" By Dahr Jamail ÊÊ Surprise, surprise. In an interview with John King from CNN last Thursday, Dick Cheney said that withdrawing US forces from Iraq would be the "worst possible thing we could do." ÊÊÊ Doing his best to stoke the always simmering fears of so many US residents (let us be careful how we use the word "citizen"), Cheney said of the terrorist groups in Iraq, "If we pull out, they'll follow us." ÊÊÊ Because according to Cheney, "This is a global conflict. We've seen them attack in London and Madrid and Casablanca and Istanbul and Mombasa and East Africa. They've been, on a global basis, involved in this conflict. And it will continue - whether we complete the job or not in Iraq - only it'll get worse. Iraq will become a safe haven for terrorists. They'll use it in order to launch attacks against our friends and allies in that part of the world." ÊÊÊ Lovely to watch how people like Cheney, and the minions who support his ilk, conveniently forget that there was no terrorism in Iraq prior to the US invasion/occupation. And one must love his "logic." For according to Cheney, "whether we complete the job or not in Iraq" his beloved "terrorism" will "continue" ... "only it'll get worse." ÊÊÊ Then why stay in Iraq, Dick? ÊÊÊ Because when Dick said, "only it'll get worse," if he'd been referring to the situation on the ground in Iraq, he'd have been 100% accurate. more...	(Click on icons to see larger images.) 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San Francisco, Ca., January 18, 2003 San Francisco, Ca., February 16, 2003 Home Contact This site consists of original photographs and composites by Fletcher Oakes, unless otherwise credited. photoblogring \| Join \| Random \| List