jonas - October 23, 2010 | 11:08 am · Link

They do hate us for our freedom—particularly the freedom we have to kill innocent civilians in their country with no accountability. I’m sure if some foreign superpower were barging around our neighborhoods, shooting up our cars and killing our kids, we’d be a lot more understanding and take it all with gentle good humor. Not like those crazy towelheads over there.

Linda Featheringill - October 23, 2010 | 11:13 am · Link

Yes it is depressing. This one of the true costs of war.

American soldiers, when placed into a war situation, turn into something strange. Perhaps all soldiers do this.

But hey, it is more important to bitch about DADT. Gay people have the right to be killed or maimed or driven crazy or addicted to various substances or turn into monsters.

All of this absolute shit is what a lot of people are agitating to be an accepted part of.

I don’t understand.

Edited for grammar.

kdaug - October 23, 2010 | 11:17 am · Link

Said it on DougJ’s thread last night, and I’ll say it again – the fact that you (and Sully) have the insight and moral fortitude to see that you were, in fact, wrong, is why I read y’alls blogs.

There are many, many others who have neither (see Cheney, et.al.)

Omnes Omnibus - October 23, 2010 | 11:18 am · Link

@Linda Featheringill:

American soldiers, when placed into a war situation, turn into something strange. Perhaps all soldiers do this.

I am a bit curious as to why you would suggest that war has a different effect on American soldiers. It seems almost like negative American exceptionalism.

beltane - October 23, 2010 | 11:20 am · Link

Hoocouldaknown?

Cermet - October 23, 2010 | 11:23 am · Link

But get real – that least no dogs were murdered …

Omnes Omnibus - October 23, 2010 | 11:27 am · Link

@Davis X. Machina: God, that is a depressing thought.

me - October 23, 2010 | 11:29 am · Link

Saw this at reddit. Each dot is a incident showing the location of 1 or more deaths (one random dot said 50 civilian deaths and 60 wounded).

Montysano - October 23, 2010 | 11:31 am · Link

From the article:

The reports make it clear that most civilians, by far, were killed by other Iraqis.

I have to think that this refers to the period from 2004 (or so) on, after the Shock And Awe terrorist attack that began the war.

ChrisWWW - October 23, 2010 | 11:35 am · Link

@Montysano:
In any case, America unleashed the sectarian war. We’re at least partly responsible for all the evils that flowed from the decision to invade and turn their country upside down.

matoko_chan - October 23, 2010 | 11:37 am · Link

meh…..sillie cudlips.
no one is talking about the real headline.

Teh Hacker Nation Kicks Americas Ass.

The Hacker Nation

Uniting towards their ideal, the world’s most talented hackers have gravitated towards WikiLeaks and what it represents, forming the largest political hacktivist group in history. The U.S. found itself facing an enemy it had never prepared for.
The Internet has become a nation, a state, a perfect meritocracy—one that is currently in a state of war.
It has its culture—those who entertain, those who are heroes, those who produce media, those who report, those who play, those who work. It has built a net of mental inhabitants and it has become the first metropolis of its kind, of which a past example is inconceivable. That lack of a prior example is what makes the real world so wary of it.
By architecture, the design of the Internet is fundamentally different from the design of the real world. There cannot possibly be rulers, or any figure of authority in a world of information, but there can be power.
In the meritocracy of the Internet, the capable, astute, intelligent can rise to a position of fame or fortune. Ever since the early days of the Internet, that elite group has been comprised of hackers, because hackers gain knowledge through the usage of systems—meaning power through the inner workings of the Internet.
They rise over the Internet with knowledge of how their environment is built, and the skill to bend it to their own ends.
Thus did Appelbaum work on the Tor project, summoning out of the Internet’s architectural infinity a way for anonymous web access. Assange changed the face of classified political information with his ability to will the Internet’s design into releasing, into the real world, tens of thousands of secret truths.
The Hackers On Planet Earth conference—where both fallen heroes such as Adrian Lamo and digital superpowers such as WikiLeaks presented talks—was a conference of national power figures meeting to discuss the future of their country.
Their homeland, where they built and were built, had entered a state of war with another nation whose realm of existence was completely different—and in ways superior thanks to its dominance on physical reality.
The U.S. has recently been feeling attacked by the Internet in the only way the Internet could ever wage a war: with information. In a leaderless universe, Assange, a hacker himself in his earlier years, achieved what catapulted him into a position of dominance and respect in his homeland, and controversy and revulsion in the country he concerns himself with.
Unlike the Internet, the U.S. has rulers, and those rulers aren’t yet accustomed to how the people of the Internet see knowledge as free. In fact, they are threatened by it.
The behaviour of both parties concerned with this issue has indicated that they are currently in a state of war. The U.S. government attempts to antagonize the enemy, arouse public hatred and fear of it, uproot it, dissolve it, and even give its leaders the kill switch to completely annihilate all presence of the Internet from its country.
The United States seeks to use its dominance of space as an advantage over the Internet. The Internet, on the other hand, is seeking to use a complete opposite: the lack of space, the lack of time, in order to have complete control over what matters: information.
As WikiLeaks releases more information, they have received more threats from the U.S. governement. The U.S is responding to a war that it, in its opinion, did not initiate—WikiLeaks sees itself as on a mission to provide to the entire Internet the truth about the real world, in a spirit of justice. Those concerned in the real world see their constructs as being threatened by an independent, self-sufficient third party no one had ever imagined.
The resulting aggression we see today is a sign of a shock at the dimensions of the fight. No nation has ever fought, or even imagined, a war with a nation that has no homeland and a people with no identity. And thus does the U.S finds both its rulers and its laws punishing the truth-speaking and fighting those who stick by their own motto of truth and bravery.

Oscar Leroy - October 23, 2010 | 11:38 am · Link

a situation that is now being repeated in Afghanistan

Good job, Nobel Peace Prize committee.

morzer - October 23, 2010 | 11:40 am · Link

The saddest thing about the new leak is how little in it is really surprising. It tells us more about things we already knew from seeing the news and reading the papers – and fills in the blanks a little further. It will add to the disgust felt by much of the world when it contemplates our military adventurism, and it will have no impact on Middle America, much less the Beltway.

Svensker - October 23, 2010 | 11:41 am · Link

@joe from Lowell:

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Bush had toppled Saddam and quickly left Iraq, the way his father did in Panama.

Why “topple” Saddam at all? Why was it our business? Who made the US the boss of everyone?

Holden Pattern - October 23, 2010 | 11:44 am · Link

Those of us against the war were against it for these reasons—this is what happens to heavily armed young men trained to kill who invade and occupy countries where they don’t speak the language and don’t understand the culture. That doesn’t even count the other reasons: the arguments for it were complete and transparent fucking lies, and even Dick Cheney (when he was Bush I’s SecDef, and didn’t have a political reason to create endless war) thought that invading and occupying Iraq would be a black hole into which we’d sink blood and treasure with no reward.

The invasion of Iraq was straight-up murder-by-soldier, committed by the political leaders of the country, with the enthusiastic and bloodthirsty support of most of our fellow citizens. It may the the low point in our history (which, like the history of any powerful nation, is full of bad behavior).

ChrisWWW - October 23, 2010 | 11:45 am · Link

@morzer:
The biggest difference is that this information comes straight from the military.

matoko_chan - October 23, 2010 | 11:46 am · Link

And all the stuff that gets Greenwalds panties in a wad….the Unipolar Power wants to extend its hegemony of the physical world into the cyberworld….

The FBI and the U.S. government joined forces, declaring its $9-million “Going Dark” program combined with an Obama-backed bill that would outlaw all encryption that the government can’t obtain backdoor access to, thus outlawing all encryption WikiLeaks depends on to provide security for its sources. The U.S. Government aimed to garner an “Eye of Sauron” of the Internet.
In late September, the U.S. government furthered its war against WikiLeaks with a new bill—the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act—which seems like an anti-piracy bill, if one doesn’t bother to closely examine the fine print.

“The list is for domains ‘dedicated to infringing activity’, which is defined very broadly,” said Aaron Swartz on his anti-web-censorship site DemandProgress.org. “Any site where counterfeit goods or copyrighted material are ‘central to the activity of the Internet site’ would be blocked.”
It doesn’t seem far-removed for a government that already plans to accuse WikiLeaks of espionage to accuse it of harboring “counterfeit goods.” The United States has launched a full-scale attack on the rights, privacy and freedom of its own people in a desperate, scrambling attempt to deal with WikiLeaks’s truth-speaking.
In March, WikiLeaks published a classified CIA document that discussed in detail various means the U.S. government could employ to destroy WikiLeaks.
“Websites such as WikiLeaks.org have trust as their most important centre of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insider, leaker, or whistleblower,” the report stated. “Successful identification, prosecution, termination of employment, and exposure of persons leaking the information by the governments and businesses affected by information posted to WikiLeaks.org would damage and potentially destroy this centre of gravity and deter others from taking similar actions.”
Many have realized the chilling similarity between the report’s suggested strategy for dismantling WikiLeaks and Manning’s recent arrest.
“It looks like we’re about to be attacked by everything the U.S has,” said WikiLeaks via Twitter in June. Those words were prophetic.

matoko_chan - October 23, 2010 | 11:48 am · Link

How do we fight this?
Dual citizenship.
:)
join the Hacker Nation and save Americas soul.

cleek - October 23, 2010 | 11:49 am · Link

@matoko_chan:

.the Unipolar Power wants to extend its hegemony of the physical world into the cyberworld

you do realize that governments all around the world have been involved in regulating the WWW since its inception, right ? in other words: welcome to 1992.

Jay in Oregon - October 23, 2010 | 11:52 am · Link

@jonas:

I’m sure if some foreign superpower were barging around our neighborhoods, shooting up our cars and killing our kids, we’d be a lot more understanding and take it all with gentle good humor. Not like those crazy towelheads over there.

Yet another example of American exceptionalism.

The same people who believe that we just need to bomb the Iraqis a little bit more and then they’ll fall in line will fall all over each other in the rush to claim that if some hypothetical invading force did the same thing to us, why, they’d never surrender! They’d never give up the fight!

Omnes Omnibus - October 23, 2010 | 11:52 am · Link

@WyldPirate: Explain again how Obama was involved in the invasion of Iraq.

morzer - October 23, 2010 | 11:53 am · Link

@Oscar Leroy:

He hasn’t failed yet, and I believe that we shall see DADT repealed and repealed for good in his first term.

Svensker - October 23, 2010 | 11:54 am · Link

@WyldPirate:

Did Obama escalate in Iraq? I thought it was only Af/Pak that he amped up. Did I miss something in my recent not-so-interested-in-reading-the-depressing-stuff stage?

Oscar Leroy - October 23, 2010 | 11:56 am · Link

@cleek:

LOL. This thread sure went from “too bad America makes mistakes just like everyone else” to “so what if America makes mistakes? everyone else does, too” real fast.

ChrisWWW - October 23, 2010 | 11:58 am · Link

@Jay in Oregon:
Hell, they are going crazy now over the ginned up “Mexican invasion.”

Cacti - October 23, 2010 | 11:58 am · Link

Good thing we’re out of Iraq…

Except for our giant, permanent imperial outpost…

And the 50,000 non-combat troops that are still there.

joe from Lowell - October 23, 2010 | 12:00 pm · Link

@WyldPirate:

Fix’d for accuracy.
Let’s spread the blame equally, shall we? Obama didn’t have to escalate

Obama escalated in Iraq?

Really?

Huh. You’d think something like that would have made the news.

Oh, no, I get it: he escalated from 170,000 troops all the way up to 50,000, as he continues towards his ultimate goal of a complete withdrawal of all the troops.

That bastard.

jonas - October 23, 2010 | 12:01 pm · Link

@WyldPirate: I don’t understand. Obama was not in the Senate when the AUMF resolution was voted on and frequently spoke out against it as a candidate.

He’s always been in favor of our mission in Afghanistan, however, which as been nearly as successful in making the Afghanis and Pakistanis admire us for our freedoms.

morzer - October 23, 2010 | 12:03 pm · Link

@joe from Lowell:

Addition by subtraction. It’s the Randy Moss trade as applied to warfare.

joe from Lowell - October 23, 2010 | 12:05 pm · Link

@morzer:

He hasn’t failed yet, and I believe that we shall see DADT repealed and repealed for good in his first term.

Quite right. And when it is repealed, I’d like to see all of the commenters who were so wrong treated a bit differently than those who were so wrong in their predictions about the Iraq War.

Sadly, I suspect we won’t, and that the people marching around screeching about Obama, the great homophobe, will continue to be treated as very serious people whose opinions need to be listened to, just like Bill Kristol.

Larry Signor - October 23, 2010 | 12:07 pm · Link

From the NYT article:

Civilians have borne the brunt of modern warfare, with 10 civilians dying for every soldier in wars fought since the mid-20th century, compared with 9 soldiers killed for every civilian in World War I, according to a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Cat Lady - October 23, 2010 | 12:10 pm · Link

@Jay in Oregon:

The same people who believe that we just need to bomb the Iraqis a little bit more and then they’ll fall in line will fall all over each other in the rush to claim that if some hypothetical invading force did the same thing to us, why, they’d never surrender!

Resolving that dilemma would require empathy, which would require admitting that brown skinned people might be just like white skinned people, and that would lead to some… uncomfortable… conclusions both here and abroad. Instead, it’s God Bless America Only, and only the white male part as God and the Founders intended, and everyone else up against the wall. QED.

joe from Lowell - October 23, 2010 | 12:11 pm · Link

@Omnes Omnibus:

It may not be happening as fast as some might like, but that does not mean it is not happening.

Apparently, to quite a few people, it does mean exactly that.

The withdrawal isn’t happening, and it never will be happening, right up until the last troops are withdrawn.

At which point, the issue will be in the past, and therefore irrelevant to any evaluation of this president, and the people for whom the withdrawal was never happening will move on to complaining about how something else they want isn’t happening fast enough, and therefore isn’t happening at all.

Theoretically (perhaps when the last soldier in the rear guard is actually crossing into Kuwait), there will be an instant when the withdrawal is actually happening, but now we’re down to the quantum level.

Omnes Omnibus - October 23, 2010 | 12:13 pm · Link

@wilfred:

Such things were not reported by the Western press, with a few exceptions, but they were certainly reported by the hundreds of Arabic language television channels, which routinely broadcast images censored by the American press. They still do.

You are right about this. The problem is that I don’t think anyone is going to have his or her mind changed by these documents. I paid attention as these events were happening, I was against the war, and I am horrified by the torture and the general brutality. The Wikileaks documents don’t change that. Someone who approved of the war, hates muslims, and want the US to torture won’t have his mind changed either. A person who paid not attention probably won’t pay attention now. There is the possibility that someone will look at these documents and have a road to Damascus moment as John Cole did with Terri Schiavo, but these effects will be on the margin. I think the primary value of Wikileaks is as an addition to the historical record.

joe from Lowell - October 23, 2010 | 12:14 pm · Link

@morzer:

I imagine they’ll move on to complaining that he hasn’t married another man.

Ah, but when he does, how long do you think it will take before we hear about his intolerable, heteronormative endorsement of marriage?

joe from Lowell - October 23, 2010 | 12:16 pm · Link

@Cacti:

The war in Iraq was sold on a pack of lies.
Congressional dems were complicit.

Some Congressional Dems were complicit. Tom Daschle and Dick Gerphardt, for instance.

Others, like Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi, led the charge against the war.

Ultimately, Congressional Democrats voted against the AUMF by a 58%-42% margin.

And that record will never being expunged. That’s just how our representative Democracy rolls.

Ross Hershberger - October 23, 2010 | 12:24 pm · Link

Michael Moore, if you can stand him, actually had something really clear and direct to say about our reckless disruption of Middle Eastern countries degrading our national security. It was W/R/T the Williams kerfuffle but it’s relevant in a larger context.

matoko_chan - October 23, 2010 | 12:25 pm · Link

Cole…..do you see what is happening?
Just like that fucking WEC retard Bush was fooled into an immoral, unjust and UNWINNABLE war in Iraq…..Obama is being fooled into an immoral, unjust and UNWINNABLE war on the Hacker Nation…...and by extension….any citizen of the Web.
in the guise of protecting us.
all the slaughter and torture and bombing was done in our name with our approval.
we need to acknowledge that….its healthy for us to see this.
maybe if we get our noses rubbed in it enough it wont happen anymore.

And now our government is planning to become the America-Fuck-Yeah Internet Police and shutdown any crits of America.
we are on our way to becoming China, politically if not economically.

war on the Hacker Nation is unwinnable, you know. we will just degrade ourselves and become a police state in trying.

Did you see Serenity? I was following the WL twitter stream yesterday at 3pm MST when wikileaks tweeted

See TBIJ, IBC, Guardian, Spiegel, NYT, Le Monde, Al Jazeera, Chan4, SVT, CNN, BBC and more in the next few hours. We maximise impact.
about 21 hours ago via web

For me that was just like when Mal broadcast the Miranda video from Mr. Universe’s secret terminal.

From here to the eyes and the ears of the ‘Verse, that’s my motto, or it might be if I start having a motto.

Can’t stop the signal.

Nick - October 23, 2010 | 12:27 pm · Link

@joe from Lowell:

Quite right. And when it is repealed, I’d like to see all of the commenters who were so wrong treated a bit differently than those who were so wrong in their predictions about the Iraq War.

When it’s repealed and the homophobes in the military respond by beating up and raping gay soldiers, Obama will be accused of coddling them and allowing it.

MikeJ - October 23, 2010 | 12:31 pm · Link

@morzer: I was depressed last night to see that there were people who just couldn’t be happy with the Yankees losing and had to complain that they didn’t like the people who beat them.

There are people who complain that the gold they find is too heavy.

Dave Trowbridge - October 23, 2010 | 12:34 pm · Link

Check out the interactive coverage in Der Spiegel if you want to really get into the data, and understand what it can and cannot tell us.

morzer - October 23, 2010 | 12:35 pm · Link

@matoko_chan:

Can’t stop the signal screeching.

Fixed it for you, Tokie.

morzer - October 23, 2010 | 12:37 pm · Link

@Dave Trowbridge:

Der Spiegel is a misunderestimated treasure.

Comrade Luke - October 23, 2010 | 12:38 pm · Link

So of course the current headline article at the NY Times site is how the Wikileaks founder is on the run and “chased by turmoil”.

Ignore the leak, attack the leaker.

morzer - October 23, 2010 | 12:39 pm · Link

@Comrade Luke:

Has anyone interviewed this turmoil of which they speak?

joe from Lowell - October 23, 2010 | 12:41 pm · Link

Don’t damn yourself, JWL.

That war would have ended four or five years sooner if Kerry had won, regardless of his cowardice in voting for the AUMF.

Omnes Omnibus - October 23, 2010 | 12:43 pm · Link

@matoko_chan: The printing press was new technology once. Bound books as opposed to scrolls were new technology. This is entirely the same fight.

Nick - October 23, 2010 | 12:45 pm · Link

@wilfred:

People want justice. They won’t get it

No, they got the justice they wanted, that’s the problem.

Omnes Omnibus - October 23, 2010 | 12:46 pm · Link

@morzer: The turmoil declined to comment and referred all further questions to its publicist.

morzer - October 23, 2010 | 12:48 pm · Link

@Omnes Omnibus:

It must have been busy trying to buy the governorship of California….

PIGL - October 23, 2010 | 12:50 pm · Link

@Omnes Omnibus: I think it depends on training. Professional soldiers do not act that way. Bloodthirsty gung-ho rascist storm-troopers do.

I do not have any information on which sort of training American soldiers receive, but I have read remarks from British and European soldiers about ‘poor fire discipline’.

Given how some Canadian forces have acted in historical times (WW1, Somalia), I can’t point too many fingers. Except that, when the First Airborn was shown to have engaged in gratutious torture of prisoners, the Prime Minister did the honourable thing, and the regiment was disbanded in disgrace. I’d like to see something similar happen in the United States….

joe from Lowell - October 23, 2010 | 12:53 pm · Link

@BobS.: Ended the war quickly. Ceased carrying out operations. Did not try to pacify or control the country.

Clear enough now?

Tell you what – can you come up with any differences on your own between what our military did in Panama after Noreiga was overthrown, and what Bush II did in Iraq after Saddam was overthrown?

J sub D - October 23, 2010 | 12:54 pm · Link

@joe from Lowell:

That war would have ended four or five years sooner if Kerry had won, regardless of his cowardice in voting for the AUMF.

Would have or might have? I find the discrepancies between what elected politicians campaign on and what they actually do make it difficult to state what a politician would have done if elected with any certainty whatsoever.

morzer - October 23, 2010 | 12:58 pm · Link

@Omnes Omnibus:

The first reference to the codex as a format is in Martial (first century AD), who praises it for being convenient. The scroll remained the dominant form for non-Christian writings until the 4th century. I have never seen a reference to anyone actually disliking the codex as opposed to the scroll. Scrolls were unwieldy, inconvenient, tore easily… and you needed arms like an NFL lineman to get to the end of your “book”. Also too, there was no change of content implied in the shift from one to the other. It wasn’t really a radical shift in technology, the way that email was versus a letter.

James E. Powell - October 23, 2010 | 1:00 pm · Link

@Holden Pattern:

this is what happens to heavily armed young men trained to kill who invade and occupy countries where they don’t speak the language and don’t understand the culture

And, let’s not forget, have been submerged in propaganda that tells them that the culture is inferior and hostile to Americans, and that the people are in some way responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

BobS. - October 23, 2010 | 1:05 pm · Link

@joe from Lowell: Like I wrote Joe, sorry for my not realizing that “quickly left” is synonymous with “stopping a war”, “Ended the war quickly”, “Ceased carrying out operations”, or “Did not try to pacify or control the country”.

Omnes Omnibus - October 23, 2010 | 1:08 pm · Link

@morzer: Pedant.

Davis X. Machina - October 23, 2010 | 1:10 pm · Link

@morzer: But there was an indeterminate loss of texts—the ones that never got copied over onto codices, and as a result failed to even get to run the preservation gauntlet of Late Antiquity. (I have had ‘Dark Ages’ dinned out of me, finally, but it’s a struggle.)

morzer - October 23, 2010 | 1:17 pm · Link

@Davis X. Machina:

Yes, but that has almost nothing to do with the shift to the codex. Books were lost before the codex appeared – in fires, due to rarity, the cost of copying, lack of interest, low literacy rates, the habit of anthologizing famous/key passages and dumping the rest of a text etc etc.

What mattered in the preservation of texts was their function, the institutions they served, their cultural significance, the climate in which they were produced and in which they existed, and sometimes pure luck.

I would add that what makes the difference in preservation of texts now is printing – that’s the radical technology that changed the game. In the days of the hand-written codex you find books being lost – and sometimes we can even say who was the last person to see a complete copy of a given text. Michael Choniates, for example, was almost certainly the last person to own complete copies of the Hecale and Aitia of Callimachus – and lost them when the Franks took Athens in the early 13th century.

Svensker - October 23, 2010 | 1:20 pm · Link

@Nick:

People want justice. They won’t get it
No, they got the justice they wanted, that’s the problem.

I think he’s talking about the Iraqis, who certainly have had absolutely no say in what was done to them by us. THEY did not get the justice they wanted and probably never will. Unless they come over here and slaughter us in retribution—which we, of course, we would find reprehensible.

sparky - October 23, 2010 | 1:22 pm · Link

@joe from Lowell: um, no, there is no real withdrawal, unless you mean that Iraq is the new South Korea.

NYT:

The withdrawal, which will reduce the number of American troops to 50,000 — from 112,000 earlier this year and close to 165,000 at the height of the surge — is a feat of logistics that has been called the biggest movement of matériel since World War II. It is also an exercise in semantics.

What soldiers today would call combat operations — hunting insurgents, joint raids between Iraqi security forces and United States Special Forces to kill or arrest militants — will be called “stability operations.” Post-reduction, the United States military says the focus will be on advising and training Iraqi soldiers, providing security for civilian reconstruction teams and joint counterterrorism missions.

Democracy Now transcript (edited):

ANDREW BACEVICH: The Obama administration will insist that those are not combat soldiers engaged in a combat mission. But if you’ve got twenty or thirty or forty thousand foreign troops stationed on your soil, I mean, if it looks like an occupation, and it smells like an occupation, and it sounds like an occupation, it’s an occupation.

JACQUIE SOOHEN: The current Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq requires a full US withdrawal and an end to the occupation. And the US military and State Department are busy planning for what they call an “enduring presence” after the treaty’s deadline on December 31st, 2011. But on bases like this one in Balad, Iraq, the military continues to invest hundred of millions in infrastructure improvements, and it is difficult to imagine them fully abandoning everything they are building here.

...

ANDREW BACEVICH: My guess is that the US government and the Iraqi government will find some way of finessing this promise to close down US bases. You know, we’ve had Air Force bases in the United Kingdom for the last half-century. They’re not called US Air Force bases. They’re called Royal Air Force bases. But they’re owned, lock, stock and barrel, by the United States Air Force. So there are ways—ways to work around what might seem like an airtight commitment.

JACQUIE SOOHEN: In addition to several thousand special operations forces and an unknown number of Air Force personnel, the US State Department has announced that it will hire an army of as many as 7,000 mercenaries to be deployed on five enduring presence posts across Iraq.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yes, a lot of US military forces are going to be leaving the country, but what we’re seeing happen right now, the US State Department is beginning a militarization of its operations in Iraq. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has asked for a doubling of the number of armed private security contractors in the country. The State Department has also put in a request from the Pentagon for military-grade equipment, including Black Hawk helicopters, armored vehicles. What we’re seeing in Iraq right now is a downsizing and a rebranding of the US occupation.

no doubt there will be people here and elsewhere who will continue to defend Obama no matter what, as party loyalty is more important than, well, anything else including pesky facts, apparently. fortunately for americans, Obama is continuing the grand Bush II tradition of saying that reality is whatever he says it is.

morzer - October 23, 2010 | 1:25 pm · Link

@Svensker:

No, you prove it. I don’t know of a single person who objected to the introduction or use of the codex. There are no recorded satires, no texts de codicibus, no mentions of debates pro and con. If you want to make an argumentum ex silentio, be my guest.

Update: I accept your concession. BTW how will you survive now the Jets have a bye week? What will you do with your Sunday afternoon?

Omnes Omnibus - October 23, 2010 | 1:29 pm · Link

@matoko_chan: How is it winning if the information is getting out?

Svensker - October 23, 2010 | 1:32 pm · Link

@morzer:

BTW how will you survive now the Jets have a bye week? What will you do with your Sunday afternoon?

It could be a problem and, indeed, the day won’t have quite the normal shine. But I am OK with watching men in tight pants who play for other teams run around and hit each other, so I should be able to get through it just fine.

Omnes Omnibus - October 23, 2010 | 1:34 pm · Link

@morzer: My use of the development of the codex was poorly chosen. The printing press and the invention of writing were better analogues.

joe from Lowell - October 23, 2010 | 1:35 pm · Link

@BobS.: You should be sorry, since playing dumb is the mark of a low and dishonest person.

If you don’t actually have anything to say about the very clear, unambiguous point I made, kindly stop bothering me.

Omnes Omnibus - October 23, 2010 | 1:36 pm · Link

@J sub D: How many are there now? How many were there before? Do you have any evidence that the plan to remove troops by the end of next year is not proceeding?

joe from Lowell - October 23, 2010 | 1:40 pm · Link

@sparky:

um, no, there is no real withdrawal, unless you mean that Iraq is the new South Korea.

We’re in the midst of withdrawing all of our troops from South Korea, after having reduced them by over 2/3 in the past year and a half?

Really?

That’s funny; you’d think something like that would make the news.

Nice goalpost-moving, though. Now that you realize you are utterly, completely wrong in your doom-saying about Obama continuing the occupation of Iraq, you’re reduced to pretending that the State Department employees having security details means the war is ongoing.

You should just stop talking about the subject, and try to salvage some dignity. This weasel-word behavior is embarrassing.

joe from Lowell - October 23, 2010 | 1:42 pm · Link

@J sub D:

joe from lowell – I get it. John Kerry was uniquely moral, honorable and trustworthy in your eyes.

Nice strawman. Let me know if you have any response to anything I actually wrote.

For instance, the part where I explicitly stated that my opinion was based on what he said during the campaign.

You could have just written nothing, you know.

morzer - October 23, 2010 | 1:47 pm · Link

@joe from Lowell:

Sometimes I wonder whether J sub D is seeing the same words on the screen as you and I. How on earth did he get the idea that you felt any such sentiments towards Kerry?

joe from Lowell - October 23, 2010 | 1:52 pm · Link

@morzer:

How on earth did he get the idea that you felt any such sentiments towards Kerry?

I had the temerity to support him in the 2004 campaign, rather than borrowing Nick Gillespie’s leather jacket, leaning against a wall, blowing out a stream of smoke, and muttering “It’s all just bullshit, man.”

Ergo, I light a candle to him every night at the shrine I built in my bedroom.

Stillwater - October 23, 2010 | 1:55 pm · Link

@matoko_chan: The side that wants control of the information is winning, in case you didnt notice.

Yes they are. But America’s soul (what’s left of it) certainly isn’t hanging in the balance of a decision to require back-door access to encrypted data transfers. And the police state is already here, which will be further demonstrated by the enactment of a law requiring back-door access to encrypted data transfers.

MC, the war you want to wage was lost long ago.

morzer - October 23, 2010 | 2:03 pm · Link

@joe from Lowell:

But do you use scented candles? That’s the point that requires bi-partisan investigation by Joe Lieberman and Ken Starr.

morzer - October 23, 2010 | 2:06 pm · Link

@J sub D:

The slow among us? Do we need your spiritual autobiography as well as your egregious misreadings of what Joe from lowell was saying?

joe from Lowell - October 23, 2010 | 2:07 pm · Link

@J sub D:

Joe responded that, no, he was certain what a politician he has likely never met, certainly not closely assciated with, would have done.

BZZZZZT Let’s go to the tape:

Fortunately, I don’t have to base my estimation of Kerry on “what he campaigned on,” but am familiar with his record as a political activist and officeholder, going back thirty years.
So, I can use the phrase “would have” with a high level of certainty.

Basing predictions of a politician’s future behavior on his past behavior, and having a sufficiently-long record to draw a confident conclusion, is now “fanboy bullshit.”

Whatever.

Omnes Omnibus - October 23, 2010 | 2:11 pm · Link

@matoko_chan: The WikiLeaks info is getting out on the internet, to newspapers, and to those people interested in seeing it.

The Assange criminal investigation is irrelevant to the value of the data. Wagner was a horrible person, but he wrote quality music. Assange may or may not have done anything prosecutable under Swedish law, but no one challenges the accuracy or validity of the documents he is releasing.

If you are concerned that people will spin data… Well, they will. Data is always subject to interpretation. It is out there now and people are using it. You can’t get pissed that people are using in ways that you don’t like and still be taken seriously.

joe from Lowell - October 23, 2010 | 2:15 pm · Link

@morzer: The problem here is, J sub D is a “pox on both houses” libertarian.

Like most of these people, he is entirely caught up in a process of using his partisan narrative as a means of judging whether something is true, or whether someone is reliable.

Partisans of the left and right are at least aware of the possibility of confirmation bias – of the possibility that their judgement may be skewed by a desire to believe ideas or people who adhere to their preferred storyline, and to disbelieve those who depart from it. They at least recognize, on a theoretical level, that their partisan narrative can lead them astray.

For people like J sub D, however, their “pox on both houses” partisan story line is seen as an inoculation from the possibility of such confirmation bias. An opinion that a Democrat would do something right where a Republican did something wrong must be wrong – must be biased, in fact – because it doesn’t fit the “two peas in a pod” narrative. The “both sides are just the same” position on any argument must be the right one, because it’s the one that isn’t influenced by partisanship in favor of one side or another.

So, for me to say that John Kerry’s bio provides ample evidence that he would have withdrawn from Iraq upon becoming president must be a reflection of my own bias, because for that to be true, it must also be true that the choice between the Democrat and the Republican was a meaningful one.

matoko_chan - October 23, 2010 | 2:22 pm · Link

@Chyron HR: read the article or be quiet.

Nick - October 23, 2010 | 2:28 pm · Link

@J sub D:

Does anybody still believe that US “combat troops” have all left Iraq?

What’s your definition of “combat troops?”

If you’re definition is the military definition of troops sent on combat missions, then yeah, that’s pretty obvious they are left Iraq.

If you’re definition is any single American serving in the military, then, hell, we still have combat troops in England.

WyldPirate - October 23, 2010 | 2:35 pm · Link

@joe from Lowell:
Surprise, surprise. Another terminal, dumb-fuck Obama apologist.

Go fuck yourself sideways. Same shit is happening in Afghanistan. It was sheer idiocy to escalate there. History—fucking centuries of it—indicated it would be a waste.

Obama flippantly wasted lives over a stupid campaign comment that was solely geared to demonstrate he wasn’t “weak on defense”.

He’s wasting hundreds of billions of dollars and destroying thousands of lives with fucking posturing.

Get in line to behind Omnes Obnoxious-fuck to go find some Obama underwear to sniff.

WyldPirate - October 23, 2010 | 2:41 pm · Link

@Nick:
It’s the rationale. It was never going to work to begin with. Those people in Afghanistan like living the way they do. They like the warlord shit.

And what they don’t like is us over there kicking in their goddamned doors, trampling their crops and blowing up their fucking wedding parties and leaving cluster bombs and shit like that to blow up their children

It’s a waste of lives and money. That’s the goddamned point.

How fucking stupid are you? What the fuck do you think the result is going to be next year when the draw-down starts? Peace, flowers and candies thrown at the troops?

Omnes Omnibus - October 23, 2010 | 2:42 pm · Link

@WyldPirate:

@Jay C:
“Gee, ya mean that getting rid of Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party won’t cause “ordinary” Iraqis to love America FOREVAH! and tie their fortunes to us? And all because of a few million hundred thousand civilian casualties? Ungrateful bastards…...

Heckuva job, Dubya and Obama.
Fix’d for accuracy.”

Let’s spread the blame equally, shall we? Obama didn’t have to escalate—rather he wouldn’t have had to unless he wasn’t the nutless wonder that he is and wasn’t fearful of the wails from the Idiocracy about “weak on defense”.

There was no reference to Afghanistan in your comment. You were responding to a comment about Iraq and you stated that Obama escalated. I can’t be asked to determine what you meant to say. I simply responded to what you said.

joe from Lowell - October 23, 2010 | 2:43 pm · Link

And what is it with the gay-sex imagery from the firebagger?

Grow up, little boy.

joe from Lowell - October 23, 2010 | 2:45 pm · Link

@WyldPirate:

Those people in Afghanistan like living the way they do. They like the warlord shit.

Wow.

Now do black people!

Gee, you can’t imagine how hurt I am that you don’t respect me.

You know what? I think you should expect to see that quote a whole lot if you keep commenting here.

Nick - October 23, 2010 | 2:48 pm · Link

@WyldPirate:

It’s the rationale. It was never going to work to begin with. Those people in Afghanistan like living the way they do. They like the warlord shit.

The goal to bring democracy to Afghanistan is stupid, to goal to crush Al-Qaeda there is not. Unless you want to make the argument that we should just forget about terrorists who are organizing to kill us (for whatever reason) because it’s just too expensive or we’ll never win anyway.

or am I sounding like a neocon now?

Omnes Omnibus - October 23, 2010 | 2:52 pm · Link

@WyldPirate:

Omnes Obnoxious

That’s very clever. Did it take you long to come up with it or did you get help?

Omnes Omnibus - October 23, 2010 | 2:56 pm · Link

@Svensker: Not only that, the people who do care already know a lot about what happened.

Omnes Omnibus - October 23, 2010 | 3:08 pm · Link

@Mark S.: There was some nuance that the experts from the Guardian found (did the people unequivocally indicate that they wanted to surrender, did they get into a vehicle that might have weapons, etc.), but that statement is mind-blowingly dumb.

Amir_Khalid - October 23, 2010 | 3:14 pm · Link

@Mark S.: I take it that you also dream of courts-martial for the fuckstains aboard that helicopter gunship, who killed two guys waving the white flag just because it wasn’t convenient to accept a surrender.

J sub D - October 23, 2010 | 3:33 pm · Link

@Martin:

You’re suggesting that we should have left people behind in Iraq defenseless?

I’m suggesting, no, I’m stating, that 21 months is enough time to do a complete withdrawal of all forces from Iraq and leave the Iraqi government to take care of its own interests.

I’m completely unconvinced that Iraq will be any stabler come December 2011 or that the Iraqi government will be any more able to maintain the fledgling democracy we installed at gunpoint.

The whole mission had fail written all over it when Bush the Lesser started it and delaying Iraq’s return to an authoritarian government by another 18 months is a waste of treasure and goodwill.

It turns out that, this really came as surprise to some, that some cultures are not fertile ground for secular democracy with respect for human rights, that attempting to plant democracy in such an environment is a fool’s errand.

Brief note from John Cole « Later On - October 23, 2010 | 3:38 pm · Link

[...] John Cole writes at Balloon Juice: I started to read the Times coverage of the wikileaks dump, and this was just too depressing to continue: The documents also reveal many previously unreported instances in which American soldiers killed civilians — at checkpoints, from helicopters, in operations. Such killings are a central reason Iraqis turned against the American presence in their country, a situation that is now being repeated in Afghanistan. [...]

morzer - October 23, 2010 | 3:44 pm · Link

Before everyone dives back into the hacker nation hands-in- panties-athon or Obama is Dr Evil circle jerk, it’s worth reading this neat little primer on reality as opposed to teabagger/glibertarian fantasy:

http://ourfuture.org/blog-entr.....ey-go-vote

1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush’s last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama’s first reduced that to $1.29 trillion.
2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the “stimulus” was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.
3) President Obama bailed out the banks.
Reality: While many people conflate the “stimulus” with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be “non-reviewable by any court or any agency.”) The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.
4) The stimulus didn’t work.
Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.
5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.
6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.
7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is “going broke,” people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.
8) Government spending takes money out of the economy.
Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on “welfare” and “foreign aid” when that is only a small part of the government’s budget.

J sub D - October 23, 2010 | 4:00 pm · Link

@Nick:
You’re making some sense. Al-Queda is gone from Afghanistan. They’ve been gone for years. We are fighting the Taliban for control of their country. Al-Queda is now in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and other dysfunctional states. Time to exit was 5-7 years ago.

What we should have done in Afghanistan is a punitive expedition, fuck up their infrastructure, kill all of the government and al-Queda we could find and gone home with the reminder that we can do this anytime we fucking want to.

I’m a johnny come lately on the internet (2006 I believe) so I have no internet proof that this was my position back in 2001/02, thus I am subject to being criticized for displaying 20/20 hindsight. You can take me at my word that it was. Or not.

The best we can do, not an ideal scenario by any means, is play whack-a-mole with these folks (stateless terrorists) and beat the crap out of the chicken shit countries that harbor them. Sucks for everybody, doesn’t it?

kay - October 23, 2010 | 4:08 pm · Link

@morzer:

Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.

I can’t believe we’re still rebutting this particular conservative lie.

People may die, but this lie never does. It’s back! A whole new generation of conservatives can now repeat it.

It was completely debunked in 2005, when former President Bush ran around the country for weeks repeating it.

He finally, finally dropped it from his spool ‘o lies about Social Security, but only because he took it too far and claimed the stat meant that African Americans were being “cheated” by Social Security, because he twisted the truth that African Americans have a higher infant mortality rate, and presented that as having something to do with average longevity, which are, of course, two different things.

That’s when people noticed, because that’s so patently ridiculous even the press couldn’t cover for him.

Here’s Paul Krugman, with his usual clarity, in 2005.

In addition to misrepresenting his goals, Mr. Bush repeatedly lied about the current system. Oh, I’m sorry – was that a rude thing to say? Still, the fact is that Mr. Bush repeatedly said things that were demonstrably false and that his staff must have known were false. The falsehoods ranged from his claim that Social Security is unfair to African-Americans to his claim that “waiting just one year adds $600 billion to the cost of fixing Social Security.”

Cacti - October 23, 2010 | 4:23 pm · Link

@joe from Lowell:

Another way to look at would be 29 of 50 senate democrats voted for it.

With Lincoln Chafee’s nay vote, the dems could have defeated the Iraq Resolution on a party line vote. But 58% of them wanted to get their war on.

Nick - October 23, 2010 | 4:40 pm · Link

@J sub D:

Al-Queda is now in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and other dysfunctional states. Time to exit was 5-7 years ago.

There’s the argument I was looking for.

This is perhaps very true, but that means we either need to send troops to the aforementioned places or give up militarily and just hope we can swat them like flies.

Amir_Khalid - October 23, 2010 | 5:01 pm · Link

@J sub D: Europe in feudal times definitely did not look like fertile ground for secular democracies with a concern for human rights. But they do have them there now.

I’m wary of the condescending notion (held by people like Svensker’s rightwing kin and, it must be said, some lefties too) that there’s something about the Afghans, or anybody, that makes them not care much for democracy and human rights. I mean, come on man, what human doesn’t want his human rights?

Amir_Khalid - October 23, 2010 | 5:04 pm · Link

@J sub D: Europe in feudal times definitely did not look like fertile ground for secular democracies with a concern for human rights. But they do have them there now.

I’m wary of the condescending notion (held by people like Svensker’s rightwing kin and, it must be said, some lefties too) that there’s something about the Afghans, or anybody, that makes them not care much for democracy and human rights. I mean, come on man, what human doesn’t want his human rights?

tkogrumpy - October 23, 2010 | 5:41 pm · Link

@Amir_Khalid: That’s a winner comment.

REN - October 23, 2010 | 5:50 pm · Link

@cacti

When the oil is gone we will leave.

And in the meantime the people that Jullian keeps on the run from ,will eventually catch up to him.

matoko_chan - October 23, 2010 | 6:01 pm · Link

@Mnemosyne: actually it is impossible to proselytize judeochristian democracy in 99% + muslim nations. Islam is EGT immune to christian proselytization.

Mnemosyne - October 23, 2010 | 6:08 pm · Link

@matoko_chan:

Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world and yet, strangely, they have a secular democracy. To look at non-Judeochristian countries, India has been a democracy for over 60 years and is still majority Hindu.

It’s almost like the problems democracy has in the Middle East have more to do with the politics and history of the Middle East than it does with the religion of Islam, isn’t it?

Mike G - October 23, 2010 | 6:37 pm · Link

@Svensker:

You keep talking as though Arab/Muslim cultures/people were normal, regular folks. That’s crazy. We all know that they are subhuman demonoids who are at once stupid and incompetent, yet fiendishly clever and immensely powerful. They don’t even love their children! The only thing those kind of people understand is force of arms.
Edited to add: at least, that’s what some of my wingnut rellies seem to “think”.

Twenty years ago they crossed out “Russian commies” from the aforementioned sentence and replaced it with “Arab/Muslim cultures/people”. That was their last intellectual exercise and they don’t want to go through such a thing ever again.

Being a wingnut means not having to hold more than one idea in your head per lifetime, and apply it to every single situation regardless of what happens in the world.

Mnemosyne - October 23, 2010 | 6:54 pm · Link

@Mike G:

Twenty years ago they crossed out “Russian commies” from the aforementioned sentence and replaced it with “Arab/Muslim cultures/people”. That was their last intellectual exercise and they don’t want to go through such a thing ever again.

I wish you were joking, but I swear I read somewhere that during the Iranian Revolution, the US State Dept. folks kept referring to them as “Commies in turbans” and trying to figure how Moscow was controlling them. Because, of course, it was impossible that the Iranians finally got fed up with the abuses of the Shah and rebelled. Nope, it had to be the Commies inspiring them to do it!

matoko_chan - October 23, 2010 | 7:27 pm · Link

@Mnemosyne: please dont be thick.
Iraq is an islamic democracy. Turkey is an islamic parlimentarian republic evolving from a Kemalist dictatorship—AKP is an islamic party.
Indonesia is a presidential republic with majority islamic parties. Israel is a jewish democracy. India is a hindu democracy.
democracy means the consent of the governed.
there are no truly secular democracies that i know of.
Germany claims judeochristian status too.
France maybe?........

matoko_chan - October 23, 2010 | 7:54 pm · Link

lets battle

Odie Hugh Manatee - October 23, 2010 | 8:19 pm · Link

@Bob Loblaw:

In the rare interest of anti-glibness, it’s the American energy consumer producer that’s to blame. Every single foreign policy and military choice we our politicians make stems from the way we big oil make wants our society work and move to profit at the expense of everyone else on the planet.

Fix’t.

Amir_Khalid - October 23, 2010 | 11:41 pm · Link

@Nick: It only takes one psychiatrist to change a light bulb; but the light bulb must really want to change.

Odie Hugh Manatee - October 24, 2010 | 12:47 am · Link

@The Institute For A Meaningful Apocalypse:

Gee, who could have guessed that they have internet access in Afghanistan? Assange must be really surprised about this development.

I’m not.

@Mnemosyne:

That’s right, I forgot I was talking to someone who makes up her own terms and then acts like the rest of us are dumb because we don’t buy into a term that only she uses.
 
Please point me to the place in political science where they give specific definitions for “Judeochristian democracy,” “Hindu democracy,” and “Islamic democracy” and give us all of the points of difference between the three. Otherwise, you’re just making shit up, as usual.
 
ETA: Also, shouldn’t Israel fall into the “Judeochristian” democracy camp? Or are you unable to even keep the theory you made up straight in your own head?

Fix’t.

Amir_Khalid - October 24, 2010 | 3:21 am · Link

@patrick II: There’s a difference between wanting one’s rights as a human, which is what I was referring to, and wanting unfettered power over others, which is what too many people in power want.

matoko_chan - October 24, 2010 | 4:13 pm · Link

@Mnemosyne: there is no such thing as secular democracy.
give me proof by contra-positive if you can.

@Amir_Khalid: problem is, America is still just the latest version of Big White Christian Bwana.
Missionaries with guns.
sure, rule of secular law would be great instead of fundie reactionary shariah…...but it cant be done.
we just spent a trillion dollahs, 5000 soljah lives and killed one or two hundred thou civilians.

The result is another islamic state with shariah in the constitution and religious political parties where the mullahs still call the shots….which is gettin buddybuddy with Iran.

What was the mission again?