Get out your checkbooks

...cause this is gonna cost, and there is no way tax cuts are gonna cover the tab.

Once again, the projected date for Iraqi security forces to take over from the American forces has been pushed further into the future, to at least July of 2007.

And doesn’t that just dovetail beautifully with the recent CBO report on the cost of occupying Iraq, as requested by Senator Kent Conrad?

I read the report.

Make no mistake about it…The cabal in charge right now is setting up the board for an occupation without end in Iraq. To their way of thinking, the only undecided is – will 55,000+ Americans be embroiled in the current combat role? Or will 55,000 be stationed at hardened bases, i.e. the Korea model?

The CBO reports that the former will cost $4-8 Billion up front, and $25 Billion per year thereafter; the latter $8 Billion up front, and about $8 Billion per year thereafter.

(Keep reading...)

In both scenarios, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) bases their projections on the long-term presence of

• A division headquarters
• Four Heavy Brigade Combat Teams (HBCT’s)
• Six Tactical Fighter Squadrons
• 10,000 training personnel

The stage is being set for a Permanent Security Arrangement.

George Bush – who deserted his unit in a time of war – has already decided that we are there forever (or until the oil runs out – whichever comes first) on his whim.

Meantime, the spineless cowards in Congress mewl most pathetically; then fall in line.

If you disagree with the policy of occupying that country for decades; if you disagree with the plan for children not yet born to patrol the same streets that our young men and women are dying on right now, make your voice heard today.

The time is now – this is election season – nail your candidates down – and if they fall in line with perpetual occupation, nail their political careers to a proverbial cross.

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Statistical Gymnastics Come Under Close Scrutiny, Outed as Bullshit

Recent assertions by the U.S. military that violence in Iraq has markedly decreased in recent months has come under severe scrutiny from experts both inside and outside the government. Consensus is that that statistics offered by the military are questionable at best, as the pattern emerged that the military simply ignores negative trends. (Before anyone screams "Outliers are tossed all the time!" let me save you the humiliation of a lecture - I actually know what an outlier is. For the record, an outlier is a data point that is more than three standard deviations from the mean. You can't just call any data point you don't like an outlier and omit it to get the result you want and expect your findings to be taken seriously.)

The administration has pinned everything on the reduction of violence metric to prove that finally they have a strategy that is working! That is what Gen. David Petraeus is going to say in front of congress next week when he comes to give his aWol's report on the state of security in Iraq. He is expected to try to convince the congress that there has been a 75% decrease in sectarian attacks. (Problem there: I do not think that word actually means what they want us to believe it means.)

When others look at the full range of data, they find that the military cherry-picks the data for positive indicators and ignores the negative. "Let's just say that there are several different sources within the administration on violence, and those sources do not agree," Comptroller General David Walker told Congress on Tuesday in releasing a new Government Accountability Office report on Iraq.

Meanwhile, military officials would have us believe that the CIA, DIA and GAO are all using flawed methodologies that give an inaccurate picture.

The intelligence community has its own problems with military calculations. Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in Washington. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," the official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal."

"Depending on which numbers you pick," he said, "you get a different outcome." Analysts found "trend lines . . . going in different directions" compared with previous years, when numbers in different categories varied widely but trended in the same direction. "It began to look like spaghetti."

One of the troubling trends is the ommission of violence attributed to Shia militias fighting other Shia militias, which has gripped Basra and last month resulted in the assassination of two southern provincial governors.

According to a spokesman for the Baghdad headquarters of the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), those attacks are not included in the military's statistics. "Given a lack of capability to accurately track Shiite-on-Shiite and Sunni-on-Sunni violence, except in certain instances," the spokesman said, "we do not track this data to any significant degree."

Attacks by U.S.-allied Sunni tribesmen -- recruited to battle Iraqis allied with al-Qaeda -- are also excluded from the U.S. military's calculation of violence levels.

Here it might be beneficial to remember that the Iraq Study Group report that was released in December identified "significant underreporting of violence," noting that "a murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the sources of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the data base." The report concluded that "good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals."

They are bringing their wares to the Capitol next week and the hucksters, pitchmen and carnival barkers are hocking the cherry-picked data in a most full-throated manner.

I just have two words for my countrymen, especially the 535 of 'em that control the pursestrings: Caveat Emptor.

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Occupation going badly? All you need is better advertising!

Image is everything

They have decided that what the military really needs in Iraq is…a new branding effort! To that end, they are looking into ways to repackage a hostile occupation to make it palatable and desirable for the occupied population. A veritable “must have” if you will.

“Well, why not?” They must be thinking. “The American sheeple sure bought the “greeted with flowers and candy as liberators” hokum.

Since the whole “show of force” thing has proven to be wildly unpopular with the targeted consumers – the citizens of Iraq – maybe repackaging the occupation will improve the market share. Even though every focus group conducted shows that the Iraqis simply want us to leave.

The key to boosting the image and effectiveness of U.S. military operations around the world involves "shaping" both the product and the marketplace, and then establishing a brand identity that places what you are selling in a positive light, said clinical psychologist Todd C. Helmus, the author of "Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation." The 211-page study, for which the U.S. Joint Forces Command paid the Rand Corp. $400,000, was released this week.

Helmus and his co-authors concluded that the "force" brand, which the United States peddled for the first few years of the occupation, was doomed from the start and lost ground to enemies' competing brands. While not abandoning the more aggressive elements of warfare, the report suggested, a more attractive brand for the Iraqi people might have been "We will help you." That is what President Bush's new Iraq strategy is striving for as it focuses on establishing a protective U.S. troop presence in Baghdad neighborhoods, training Iraq's security forces, and encouraging the central and local governments to take the lead in making things better.

Many of the study's conclusions may seem as obvious as they are hard to implement amid combat operations and terrorist attacks, and Helmus acknowledged that it could be too late for extensive rebranding of the U.S. effort in Iraq. But Duane Schattle, whose urban operations office at the Joint Forces Command ordered the study, said that "cities are the battlegrounds of the future" and what has happened in Baghdad provides lessons for the future. "This isn't just about going in and blowing things up," Schattle said. "This is about working in a very complex environment."

Can you even stand it? They went rushing into a country, destabilized the entire region, gave the Iranians a long-awaited victory in their war with Iraq, and fomented a civil war…now they are convinced that all they really need is to rebrand the whole thing. That’ll be just the ticket…That is what the Joint Forces Command paid the Rand Corporation $400,000 dollars to conclude.

"Certain things do not translate well," the study warned. "Danger lies behind assumptions of similarity." A gesture Bush made during his 2005 inaugural parade -- the University of Texas "hook 'em horns" salute with raised index and pinkie fingers -- stands for the "sign of the devil" in some cultures and an indication of marital infidelity in others. A leaflet dropped to intimidate Iraqi insurgents, the study noted, "also reached noncombatants" and "gave everyone who picked it up the 'evil eye.' "

I bang my head on my desk in frustration. It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?

The arrogant bastards who ignored reality in favor of the alternate one they created think they can salvage this whole fiasco with a new image?

There is only one explanation…They must think Iraqis are as gullible and stupid as most Americans.

There's more: "Occupation going badly? All you need is better advertising!" >>

Wanker of the Night: Faux Filibuster Edition

[h/t Atrios]

I have been listening all night long, and I am getting ready to turn in.

But before I do, I have to anoint John Thune the biggest wanker in the Senate.
The Junior Senator from South Dakota has secured the title. That is quite an achievement when one has both of those double-digit I.Q. chuckleheads representing Oklahoma, Lieberman and Mad Jack Insane to battle for that dubious honor.

Thune is obliviously willfully ignorant if he is unaware of the Military Times poll from last winter that shows only one in three members of the armed services approve of the president and his conduct of the war.

That would almost seal the deal for him all by itself. But there is more...

He actually said to Jim Webb, a combat veteran himself, and the father of a Marine who served in Iraq...that he knows better what the boots on the ground think, because he has been to Iraq on three different taxpayer-funded junkets (and disrupted operations like visits by potentates always do) and Webb hasn't!

Really!

He said that!

Let me just clear something right the hell up...Visits by potentates are a pain in the ass stateside during peacetime. In a war zone they are an obscenity.

Webb has a very good source. The best source available...He has a son who fought there, recently. He is also a highly decorated combat veteran.

Jim Webb has the decency to not subject the troops in harms way to the added strain of a dog-and-pony show that is always precipitated when a potentate comes a-calling.

Stateside, during peacetime, it's a gigantic pain in the ass when those pricks come to visit. In a war zone, those little juggernauts are an affront to decency.

Remember that a mile away from Lindsey “I bought five rugs for five dollars” Graham when he got such a killer deal on those rugs last April, six G.I.'s who did not have those Apache gunships and Blackhawks hovering overhead giving them cover, were killed.

Remind everyone of that.

And remind 'em that when a Republican says he is behind the troops - the bastard likely has one hand on his fly and lascivious intent.

There's more: "Wanker of the Night: Faux Filibuster Edition" >>

You know this already...the Occupation of Iraq is a catalyst for terrorism

As if you needed more evidence that I am consistently right when I say things like this:

...when the whole thing is a mere 800 words in length, and if you read it carefully, the conclusion is, this administration has done everything wrong and allowed the Al Qaeda terror network to regroup.

Well, I am not alone.

Paul R. Pillar, a former CIA analyst who has been involved in previous intelligence estimates, said that the administration has correctly identified the danger posed by al-Qaeda in Iraq and that there are indeed links between the Iraq group and the larger international terrorist network. But he said the White House is drawing the wrong conclusion, and argued instead that it is the U.S. presence in Iraq that is fueling the terrorists' cause. [emphasis added]

"Iraq matters because it has become a cause celebre and because groups like al-Qaeda in Iraq and al-Qaeda central exploit the image of the United States being out to occupy Muslim lands," Pillar said.

Referring to al-Qaeda in Iraq, Clinton administration official Daniel S. Benjamin, who has written books and articles on international terrorism, said: "These are bad guys. These are jihadists." He added: "That doesn't mean we [should] stay in Iraq the way we have been, because we are not making the situation any better. We're creating terrorists in Iraq, we are creating terrorists outside of Iraq who are inspired by what's going on in Iraq. . . . The longer we stay, the more terrorists we create." [emphasis added]

So riddle me this, Batman...


Why the hell would I even trust these chumps - who have been absolutely wrong about absolutely everything - to even be able to do something so basic as order lunch without fucking it up?


And these jokers have the audacity to tell me I need to be patient?


Four and a half years in?


Patience my ass.


I'm gonna kill something.


Hows about we start with the entire damned Defense Authorization Bill for FY 2008 if a binding exit date is not mandated therein?

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