Boykin watch....

Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin has apologized and says his words were misconstrued.

Awww, what a guy! We were wrong, he shouldn't be fired after all.

...When he spoke of the Somali warlord, he did not mean that the Somali's god was Islam, but rather "his worship of money and power — idolatry." Boykin said he did believe that "radical extremists have sought to use Islam as a cause of attacks on America."

As for his statement that God had installed Bush in the White House, Boykin said he meant that God had done the same for "Bill Clinton and other presidents."

Boy, I'll bet ya he gagged on that sentence!

Is the guy going to get away with this sham?

It seems so:

Though he defended his comments, Boykin has told others at the Pentagon that he will stop making speeches to religious groups and will try to tone down his remarks on the sensitive subject of religion. Defense officials said his job was not in jeopardy.[Emphasis mine.]

Once again, the L.A. Times focuses on the anger Boykin's remarks have caused in Islamic communities. Once again I ask, what about non-Islamic, secularist American constituents who don't want a religious nut like this in charge of hunting down bin Laden and Hussein? If the guy can't separate his religious extremism from his job, he shouldn't hold a government position.

Boykin should be fired.

L.A. Times story, sad disappointment that it is, here.

Is this site for real...?

Or an over-the-top parody?

It makes my skin crawl.

I can't believe the letters in the "hate mail" section are authentic. If I were a Right-Winger, trying to fake a "hate letter" from someone on the Left, I think I'd come up with something along the lines of what they have.

Creepy.

Pathetic....

That "defiance" of the Bush administration has been reduced to this.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 — The Senate defied the Bush administration on Thursday by insisting that Iraq repay up to $10 billion in reconstruction aid, even as a divided House took a different path and prepared to grant President Bush's $87 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan without conditions.

A bipartisan coalition of moderate senators, saying that American taxpayers should not bear the entire burden of rebuilding Iraq, prevailed against strong administration opposition in a 51-to-47 vote Thursday evening. Their amendment — approved shortly after Vice President Dick Cheney failed to bring wavering senators in line through a round of phone calls — would require half of the $20.3 billion in reconstruction aid to be a loan to Iraq, unless the administration persuaded other countries to forgive 90 percent of Iraq's existing debt.

This is the best that Congress can do, even given the "waves of opposition that their constituents have voiced in the five weeks since Mr. Bush announced his intention of spending $87 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan" and the "record-high deficits [that] have squeezed public-works projects at home."

What spineless wheenies!

A bit further down in the story is the truth:

The debate about loans versus grants, however, could not obscure the administration's overall success in persuading both chambers to endorse the basic framework of its postwar Iraq policy. The president is virtually certain to command solid majorities in both houses for a vast majority of what he is asking for — and a mandate for a strong role in overseeing Iraq's future.

We have no opposition party in the U.S.

Complete story here.

More about Boykin....

This story in today's L.A. Times misses the point.

Rather than raising the question of General Boykin's fitness (see below) for the position of deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, it suggests that someone should have "a quiet chat" with him, to get him to quit offending the Islamic world with all his religious posturing.

Forget the Islamic world! (For the moment only.) The issue here is not global public relations. As a secularist who believes strongly in the separation of church and state and as a citizen who wishes to prevent a repeat of 9/11/2001, I believe someone who has stated that the real enemy is Satan, not the bin Ladens of the world, should be disqualified for the position of deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence.

Period.

Fairy tales....

Some interesting quotes, uttered in June, by our nation's deputy undersecretary of defense, Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, whose mission is to aggressively combine intelligence with special operations and hunt down "so-called high-value terrorist targets," including Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein (both still missing, as you may recall):

“Well, is he [bin Laden] the enemy? Next slide. Or is this man [Saddam] the enemy? The enemy is none of these people I have showed you here. The enemy is a spiritual enemy. He’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan.”

Why are terrorists out to destroy the United States? Boykin said: “They’re after us because we’re a Christian nation.”

There's more:

Boykin also routinely tells audiences that God, not the voters, chose President Bush: “Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.”

Lest NBC seem too critical of the Bush administration, the article carries this "disclaimer."

NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin, who’s been investigating Boykin for the Los Angeles Times, says the general casts the war on terror as a religious war: “I think that it is not only at odds with what the president believes, but it is a dangerous, extreme and pernicious view that really has no place.”

Yeah, right. And I've got a pretty bridge for sale.

On the other hand, who really wants to believe that the finger on the button to the nation's nuclear arsenal belongs to a man who believes Satan walks the earth and that he was placed in office by divine intervention?

Complete story, such as it is (NBC doesn't do depth) here.

Saint George....

As Buzzflash asks, is the AP trying to sanctify Bush? By running this photo, the wire-service has lost a lot of credibility.

See for yourself here.

Krugman sounds another warning in the NYT....

During the 1990's I spent much of my time focusing on economic crises around the world — in particular, on currency crises like those that struck Southeast Asia in 1997 and Argentina in 2001. The timing of such crises is hard to predict. But there are warning signs, like big trade and budget deficits and rising debt burdens.

And there's one thing I can't help noticing: a third world country with America's recent numbers — its huge budget and trade deficits, its growing reliance on short-term borrowing from the rest of the world — would definitely be on the watch list.

One mystery I will never understand is how the Republicans continue to successfully present themselves as the political party of fiscal responsibility.

Complete story here.

A taste of our new governor's tactics....

California Governor-Elect Arnold Schwarzenegger gets back at one of the women who accused him of sexual-harassment.

Read about it here.

Fed up....

I rushed in late to a work meeting the other day, just in time to hear our HR representative winding up a talk on upcoming budget cuts, belt-tightening, heavier workloads and possible salary freezes.

Gloomy predictions have become commonplace at the large, state-funded California university where I work. The $20 billion state budget deficit lurks around every campus corner, an uninvited guest at the banquet, ravaging the buffet before anyone else can get to it.

After HR left the room, my fellow faculty assistants erupted into talk. We have to make the best of a bad situation, they said. Suck it up. Help one another when the workload gets too heavy.

No one questioned the basic premise of the situation. Not a word was uttered about fighting back if our workloads became unbearable or our workplace conditions intolerable.

Until finally I could take it no longer and piped up. “Hey, isn’t there a limit to how much we’ll take? After all, we do have a union…”

You would have thought I had suggested jumping off a cliff into the nearby Pacific. If only a fraction of the anti-union sentiment my remark occasioned would be channeled into campus labor organizing, our union wouldn’t be the well-meaning but ineffectual body even I agree it is.

Instead, the most vocal group members around the table damned the union and insisted that we have to take whatever the university dishes out because...well...that’s the way it is. Who can argue with a state budget deficit? Employers hold all the cards. Besides, we have it better than many others out there.

That the latter is true, makes me even angrier. I am so sick of low-paid workers getting the shaft, then being manipulated into turning against one another. The university has used the budget deficit for years to intimidate employees, keep lower-level wages low and excuse a host of ridiculous business practices.

Yes, California’s budget is in a colossal crisis—especially now that an inexperienced Republican actor has been placed in the governor’s mansion. (Remember what happened the last time this occurred.) The university, however, is a huge, pampered financial entity, rich in cash, land, facilities, resources and employees. Its wealth is anything but evenly distributed throughout the system.

A case in point. I recently saw one my boss’ federal tax returns. A relatively new faculty-member in electrical and computer engineering, he reported $149,000 in income in 2001. That's nothing compared to what senior U.C. administrators and other top academic leaders make. In 2001, the average salary of a UC chancellor was $280,610. And they've given themselves raises since then.

Yet, when I brought up wage-disparities in the meeting, without naming names or quoting salaries, and suggested that maybe fat could be cut from above rather than below, my fellow employees reacted more strongly than when HR had threatened to freeze their own salaries.

The faculty, they said, would go elsewhere if they aren’t paid enough. Not only that, they are "Ph.D.'s," the letters uttered as if discussing godly attributes. They have to study four years undergraduate, six years graduate, then take a post-graduate position, be an intern or whatever for even longer. Do you want to do that? someone asked.

You bet! I said. Only, I’m too broke, too indebted and most likely, too old.

Ten years ago, I tried to better my circumstances through education. I worked like a maniac and went into $20,000 in debt to earn first a B.A., then a master’s degree from U.C. Berkeley. Only to graduate and be offered $9 an hour to pursue my field, journalism, in one of the most expensive regions of the country, the San Francisco Bay Area. With a child to support and no savings or investments to fall back on, I had no choice but to turn the job down and return to higher-paying office work.

So much for my attempt to escape the admin-support ghetto.

But those poor Ph.D.’s! To hear my coworkers talk, it’s as if schooling, followed by interesting, creative and highly-paid work are sacrifices, not amazingly good fortune.

While grad students out there are studying and making, what, $25,000? Other workers are earning the same or less, pushing coffee, pumping gas, stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart, cleaning motel rooms and performing other less-than-desirable labor. Rather than rosier futures to look forward to in a few years, they have bunions, blown spinal-discs, hundreds of rude, disrespectful and filthy customers, mind-numbing boredom and no healthcare or dental benefits. Vacations? Hell, most working-class Americans are lucky now if they can get by holding down only one job.

People in the privileged classes consider several years of making less than $100,000 an economic hardship, above and beyond the call of duty.

The rest of us call it Life and consider ourselves lucky if we ever break $35,000.

Sad day for Ca-lee-for-nya...

How's this for a quote from the governor-elect of the largest state (population-wise) of the union?

"I will not fail you. I will not disappoint you, and I will not let you down," Schwarzenegger said to cheers from the crowd.

Well, he already has by uttering the same thing three ways without saying anything of substance.

A true protégé of President Bush in this regard, Schwarzenegger promises to go far!

What's more, don’t feel too smug from the safety of faraway states and foreign countries. He will soon be heading your way.

His celebration last night was held in the ballroom of the Century Plaza Hotel on Avenue of the Stars in LA, where Republicans have toasted Reagan election-night victories for two decades.

Want more proof the Republican Party is grooming him for the Oval Office? In July, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah introduced what he hopes will become the 28th Amendment to the Constitution, permitting foreign-born nationals to be elected president.

Time to wake up!

According to the LAX, Hummers clogged the Avenue of the Stars last night, as invitees to the victory celebration searched for nonexistent parking places. Security was tight at the super-swank affair: if you weren't on the list, you didn’t get in. And that seems to have included a fair number of disappointed reporters.

Well, what do you expect from a multi-millionaire Republican actor-cum-politician-cum-governor?

Pandering to California voters’ basest instincts, Schwarzenegger’s first move will be to overturn a law granting drivers' licenses to undocumented immigrants. But make sure you somehow get a ride to the fields, nurseries, kitchens and laundry-rooms!

Just as quickly, he’s promising to undo the unpopular tripling of the car tax. And balance the state budget.

Oh well, we all know when he fails, the Democrats will somehow be blamed.

By the way, someone ought to tell Maria Shriver to ease up on whatever chemical substance has been smoothing her way on those late nights on the campaign trail. In every recent photo, she looks like a Stepford Wife on coke.

Election story here.

So much for Bush's tax-cut for the working people...

From the Harper's Index, October 2003.

Percentage of Americans who will save less than $100 on their 2006 federal taxes as a result of this year's tax cut: 88
Average amount these Americans will save: $4

Unfortunately the current index is not available online: you must buy the magazine. Rather steep at $5.95/issue, it's well worth the $16 yearly subscription rate.

Why...?

From today's NY Times:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 20 — In the first attempt to assassinate a member of Iraq's interim government, nine gunmen this morning shot and critically wounded Akila al-Hashemi, one of three women on the governing body, as she was being driven to work by a driver and three bodyguards

The first thing I thought when I heard this story on NPR this morning was that Aquila al-Hashimi was targeted because she's a woman who dared to serve on Iraq's Governing Council. Yet other than mentioning that she is one of three women on the council, neither the NY Times, nor the A.P. story in the LA Times even raised the question that her assailants could have been motivated by a resurgence of sexism in a country which, under Saddam Hussein, offered women much more freedom and civil rights than our famed ally, Saudi Arabia.

NY Times story here, LA Times here.

Global warming....

The Earth has never been so warm in the last 2000 years. That is the conclusion of the most comprehensive study of climatic history ever undertaken and which was released last week, by two scientists already generally recognized as leading authorities on the subject.

Full story here.

Sept. 11, 1973....

And let's not forget all those who lost their lives--not least, Salvador Allende--in the U.S.-formulated coup in Chile 30 years ago today.

Will we never learn from history?

My op-ed....

No mainstream newspaper that I queried opted to publish this. So I'm publishing it here today, in memory of the people who needlessly lost their lives two years ago.

"Black September Revisited"

In the two years since the attacks of 9/11, I have searched through mountains of U.S. commentary and commemoration for mention of a 33-year-old terrorist strike that chillingly prefigured the 2001 attacks.

Without success.

On September 6, 1970, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) simultaneously hijacked four airliners bound for New York. Two—TWA Flight 741 of Frankfurt and Swissair Flight 100 of Zurich--were forced to land at Dawson's Field, a former RAF airstrip in the Jordanian desert. The third, Pan American Flight 93 of Amsterdam, was too large for Dawson's, so hijackers forced it down in Cairo, where passengers and crew were evacuated and the plane blown up.

In uncanny parallel to what happened 31 years later, the PFLP’s fourth hijacking attempt was foiled in flight. At the outset, the pilots of El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York plunged their jet into a steep dive, throwing the hijackers off their feet. One, Leila Khaled, 24, was overpowered by passengers. The other, Californian Patrick Arguello, 27, was fatally shot by an El Al onboard security guard.

Unlike United Flight 93, which on September 11th, 2001, plunged to the ground in Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board after passengers tried to regain control from hijackers, El Al 219 landed safely in London.

Yet the drama was far from over. On September 9th, PFLP operatives hijacked a fifth jet, adding it to the two planes in Jordan. Passengers were exchanged for Leila Khaled. Then, on September 12, 1970, the three empty airliners were blown up on the ground while television crews broadcast the spectacle to the world.

The diplomatic embarrassment spurred King Hussein of Jordan to declare military rule, provoking a bloody civil war between Palestinian refugees and the Jordanian army. Some 15,000 people died before the Palestinians, under Yassir Arafat, fled Jordan. The debacle spawned the infamous Black September Movement, responsible for killing 10 Israeli athletes and their coach at the Munich Olympics—two years later, again in early September.

The PFLP spelled out their motive for the 1970 hijackings as retribution for American arms-sales to Israel—sales which continue to this day. Since Israel’s founding in 1948, America has given the state a staggering $97 billion in foreign aid, a sizeable portion of which has gone towards weapons.

With such an investment, are we closer to peace in the Middle East? Is terrorism waning?

You judge: in 1970, one person was killed in five hijackings over six days. In 2001, some 3,044 people died in four hijackings in a matter of hours.

Those numbers expose a terrible trend. Noncombatant casualties are growing in lock-step with “get tough” policies of governments towards extremists. The policy of “No negotiation with terrorists” has escalated into all-out war, frequently pitting professional armies against civilians.

U.S. Predator drones track automobiles across Afghani deserts, obliterating alleged Taliban ringleaders and passengers alike. Israeli missiles target Hamas operatives, slaughtering bystanders in crowded Palestinian alleyways. “Coalition Forces” pulverize Iraqi cities, maiming tens of thousands who have nowhere to flee. In response, terrorists strap on explosives and board crowded busses. Civilians die regardless, “collateral damage” to one side or another.

History could have played out differently. What if Americans had paid heed to legitimate Palestinian concerns after the first hijackings and reassessed foreign policy in the region? Might 9/11 have been averted?

These questions are not even being posed. In contrast to al Qaeda, who one can assume studied the 1970 hijackings, U.S. leaders have “disappeared” them. President Bush publicly treated 9/11 as if it came out of nowhere—which is curious, given his neocon advisors are steeped in Middle Eastern history.

Take neocon godfather, Irving Podhoretz. On September 13, 1970, he signed a letter to The New York Times condemning the PFLP hijackings. More recently, he signed the statement of principles for the Project for the New American Century, with Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. Podhoretz is also father-in-law to Elliott Abrams, director of Near Eastern & North American Affairs in the National Security Council.

Given the striking parallels, these men must discuss the earlier hijackings? Yet posing before news cameras, all Bush can ask is, “Why do they hate us?” Our rejoinder should be, “Why play dumb?” Why conceal the fact we were warned decades ago that our foreign policy, if unaltered, would result in devastating blowback?

Obscuring the fact that 9/11 was a by-product of corporate greed, arms sales and America’s unquenchable thirst for oil is fundamental to the pursuit of Bush’s foolhardy, expensive and ineffectual “War on Terrorism.” This never-ending conflict, with its lucrative war profiteering and curbs on civil liberties, advances both the fortunes and longstanding political aims of Bush’s closest supporters.

An even more dangerous obfuscation, however, is that we can deter future attacks through a “get tough” military strategy. If that were true, Israelis and Palestinians would not be dying at a rate of nearly 100 a month since the outbreak of the second Intifada in September—there’s that month again—2000.

We now have more than 33 years experience to demonstrate the futility of force as a deterrent to terrorism. Isn’t it time to try something new? Maybe refurbishing hospitals, schools, roads and power plants, instead of bombing them into rubble. How about offering Palestinians, ancient regional inhabitants, a standard of living comparable to that offered Jewish immigrants the minute they step foot on Israeli soil? Not only would these measures prove less expensive in money and lives in the long run, but Islamic fundamentalists have won over the Middle East’s poverty-stricken inhabitants by offering far less in the way of social services.

Or we can continue our present course of action: disregard the past, feign innocence and hope for the best. Just keep in mind, though, what the next escalation could involve. Can you imagine the death toll were a determined martyr to detonate a nuclear device in Manhattan?

Horrific as 9/11 was, it was also a second opportunity to change our ways. I, for one, am still hoping for a miracle, that we take the chance and avoid being condemned to relive history.

END

As far as I can ascertain, until Tuesday of this week when Walter Chronkite did a piece on NPR, this story remained essentially uncovered in the mainstream American media.

I can't help but wonder if circulating my piece wasn't the spark that finally got someone with access to cover it.

The NPR story, by the way, was gutless. Rather than making any points about American foreign policy, the media's lack of historical memory, or questioning why the 1970 hijackings have been ignored for two years, the best Chronkite could do was claim the event represented "the moment when the jet plane first became an instrument of international terror."

Which is not only absurd, but historically inaccurate. What a total waste of the public's airwaves!

Krugman vets Bush's speech....

And, as usual, is right on.

In his Sunday speech President Bush made a call for unity: "We cannot let past differences interfere with present duties." He also spoke, in a way he hasn't before, about "sacrifice." Yet, as always, what he means by unity is that he should receive a blank check, and it turns out that what he means by sacrifice is sacrifice by other people.

Complete op-ed here.

A "decent and democratic society" in the making...?

Christian Parenti describes an Iraq going from bad to worse:

…Here the criminal is king. Saddam emptied the prisons and the United States disbanded the police, while 60 percent of people are unemployed. As a result, carjacking, robbery, looting, and murder are rife. Marauding men in “misery gangs” kidnap and rape women and girls at will. Some of these victims are dumped back on the streets only to be executed by their “disgraced” male relatives in what are called “honor killings.”

Many women and girls stay locked inside their homes for weeks at a time. And increasingly those who do venture out wear veils, as the misogynist threats and ravings of the more fundamentalist Shia and Sunni clerics have warned that women who do not wear the hijab should not be protected.

According to the city morgue, there were 470 fatal shootings in July, up from 10 the year before. Not surprisingly, most people in Baghdad are armed and edgy.

[...]

As for the American troops—whom Iraqis call the kuwat al-ihtilal, or forces of occupation—they are stretched too thin to deal effectively with such crimes. And they have little understanding of Iraqi culture or politics. They are adrift in a sea of unintelligible Arabic, where even the street names are a mystery. At crime scenes they can just as easily arrest the victims as the perpetrators. Their small convoys are under constant assault.

Officially there are, on average, 13 attacks on Coalition Forces in Baghdad every day. Since May 1, when the war “ended,” more than 404 U.S. soldiers have been permanently removed from action due to wounds, while more that 60 have been killed in attacks.

[...]

Baghdad also suffers from the less dramatic structural violence of epidemic poverty. War, sanctions, and Saddam’s greed have left a large destitute class with no work, medicine, or schooling. Exploring the rubble of some government ministry, two colleagues and I meet Ibrahim Kadum, who lost his foot in the Iran-Iraq war, then he lost his home and now squats in these ruins with his wife, nine children, and a shaggy and bleating ewe.

[...]

A young woman, through a translator, explains the details of her work. She sells herself to American soldiers for $15 a session. She’s seventeen, wants to go to college and leave Iraq.

“Do you use protection with the soldiers?”

She blushes and pauses. “She says she takes the pills,” explains our translator Ahmed. Does she know about AIDS? “No condoms?” I ask. She blushes even more deeply and answers directly in English. “Sometimes.”

Read more here via Common Dreams.

Bush's speech deconstructed....

An excellent critical analysis of Bush's Sunday speech. A must read, by Stephen Zunes, associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.

A sample:

...“We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness.”

Again, there are no doubts among extremists in the Middle East regarding America’s military strength. The perceived weakness is in regard to America’s moral strength. Millions of people in the Middle East and beyond believe that it is morally wrong for the United States to support Arab dictatorships and Israeli occupation forces. They believe it is morally wrong that the amount of U.S. military aid to the Middle East is six times that of its economic aid. They believe it is morally wrong that the #1 U.S. export to the region is not consumer goods, high-tech equipment or agricultural products, but armaments. They believe it is morally wrong that a powerful country from the other side of the world would invade a sovereign Arab nation and justify it by falsely claiming that its government currently had weapons of mass destruction and was supporting Al-Qaeda. They believe it is morally wrong that U.S. bombing and sanctions against Muslim countries has killed far more civilians than have the terrorists themselves.

The unfortunate reality is that the more the United States has militarized the Middle East, the less secure we have become.

“And the surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans. We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities.”

It is absurd to believe that those Iraqis and Afghanis currently fighting U.S. occupation forces in their own countries actually want to somehow sneak into the United States to fight Americans here. Indeed, no Afghans or Iraqis are known to have ever committed an act of terrorism against Americans on American soil.

The president’s statement is essentially a retread of the line used by supporters of the Vietnam War that “If we don’t fight them over there, we will have to fight them here.” However, more than 28 years after the Communist victory in Vietnam, we are yet to fight the Vietnamese in our streets and there is no indication that we ever will. The Iraqis and Afghans, as were the Vietnamese, are fighting Americans because U.S. troops are in their country and, like the Vietnamese, will stop fighting Americans once U.S. troops leave their country.

Complete story here via Common Dreams

Every pol for himself....

FRESNO — In a significant shift of campaign strategy, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante on Sunday moved away from urging a "no" vote in the Oct. 7 recall election, abandoning Gov. Gray Davis to fight alone and focusing instead on the merits of his own candidacy.

This really doesn't surprise me, I have such low expectations of all professional politicians.

Yet it does repel me.

Let's just hope his political aspirations don't fatally fracture the Democratic vote and put The Terminator in office.

Complete story here.

Bitter pill, indeed....

We feel angry about the money--and justifiably so! But we still have it better than the Iraqis.

I just wish the members of Congress would grow a collective spine and stand up to the petulant bully in the Whitehouse.

WASHINGTON -- Members of Congress are preparing to swallow hard and approve the $87 billion President Bush has requested for U.S. operations in Iraq, but it will be a more bitter pill than earlier votes to authorize the war against Saddam Hussein and to begin funding the enterprise, legislators and political analysts said today.

In the year since Congress authorized the war and the six months since it passed the first, $79 billion installment of funding, the political and fiscal picture has changed significantly in a way that will prompt greater scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

The federal budget deficit has soared. Few allies have offered to help with postwar troops or funding. U.S. casualties have mounted. No caches of unconventional weapons have been found. Even some members of Bush's own party have openly complained that the administration had inadequately planned for the rebuilding of Iraq after an unexpectedly rapid military victory over Saddam Hussein. [Emphasis mine.]

What irritates me about the tone of this article is the sense of surprise. Like no one could have seen these developments coming. When, in fact, the situation in Iraq is unfolding just as many anti-war activists predicted.

Complete story here.