Over 80 US Dead in Iraq per Month for 5 Months Now

Arianna's excellent dissection of Republican Petraeus Praising Points (typical Republican tactic to alter plotlines to fit their political ideology) set me off like Hunter Thompson on adrenal extract. In her story, she mentions a little tid-bit that has apparently been missed by the main stream and tributary media (my apologies to anyone who already diaried this).

For the first time since the war began, we've just had five straight months with 80 or more U.S. fatalities.

And it's getting worse. Nine more soldiers were killed yesterday and today, meaning

April has been the deadliest month for U.S. soldiers in Iraq this year. The latest deaths raise to nearly 100 the number of U.S. soldiers killed this month.

I get sick thinking about it. Nearly 100 US Troops dead in April. That's a VT almost every week. If Iraq got half that coverage every week, we'd be re-deployed by now.

Instead, we have more BS from the obfuscator in chief, who the Fox Playback Megaphone and other co-conspirators hoist up, praising the brave men and women who are Making the Surge Work. As if Bill Moyer's didn't exist.

We have a team of liars, who have been at this Military Industrial Game for a long time now. The Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal is very adept at convincing Rubes to spend billions on military boondogles. They've had lots of practice. In fact, their life-long goal of privatizing the military has been met with Blackwater and Halliburton (et al). Now they can retire and fight little private wars anywhere, without answering to anyone. Corporations are taking over, and soon we'll have Rollerball to keep our minds off the annoying little things like statistics of military dead in faraway places, and how much those adventures cost.

No substitutions, no penalties... and no time limit!

The financial black hole of Iraq has provided enough US Taxpayer dollars to fund black ops until the Rapture, or at least Armageddon. Team B has succeeded in milking America for exactly what they need to continue murdering whoever they want, and this time there won't be any Iran-Contra scandal or Pentagon Papers to screw things up.

In light of all these putrid facts, which no one outside the progressive net roots seems to give a flying fuck in a rolling unarmored humvee about, I'd like to think about 80 a month for 5 straight months.

What are they dying for? If, as I heard Mitch McConnell saying on NPR yesterday, we are fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq, then why are they getting a pass in Pakistan? And if the answer is, well, we need to be smart about Pakistan, because we need Musharaff, then why isn't it the same answer for Iraq? Don't wee need to be smart about hunting Al Qaeda there too?

And didn't the Democrat's funding bill make an exception for going after Al Qaeda? I mean, hey, I just saw Flight 93 too. Made me cry. Made me want to kill the bad guys. Made me wish we had a smart government that would have gotten Bin Laden, no matter where he was.

But it didn't make me want to put American hands on the heads of two sides in a civil war and try to hold them apart like two well-armed 10 year olds. It didn't make me want to watch over 80 coffins per month come back wrapped in flags that will be carefully folded with military precision and handed to a mother or widow.

The McCain escalation in Baghdad has nothing to do with Al Qaeda. To go after those guys, we need special forces. We need allies. We need quick response teams. All the things the Democrat bill allows for.

So, we're not one signature from ending this war. We are one signature from putting the focus back where it needs to be: on the people who attacked us on 9-11. You know, like the one George Bush said this about:

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."

I think I'm going to hide in the mountains too, so Republican meat grinder feeders can't find my 12 year old son 6 years from now. I hear Colorado is turning blue and getting warmer...

US Military Coup in Progress - takeover by Christion Zionist Theocratic Fascists

This is a quote from Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, from a debate Wednesday night:

Now I know I'm at war, and my legions are at war. We are not at war with Christianity and we are not at war with evangelical Christianity. Ah, but we are at war with a subset of evangelical Christianity with a long technical name that I hope won't take the rest of my time. I'll say it just one time today: it's premillennial, dispensational, reconstructionist, dominionist, evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity. I know it's a long name. We'll just call them Bob. Dominionist Christianity - the leaders you know very well: Robertson, Dobson, used to be Haggard - he's had a career change - D. James Kennedy, John Hagee, alot of people that I won't be going out to dinner with, and for a long time.

As Troutfishing's diary at the Daily KOS points out, these freaks are taking over the US Military. I wonder how many people at the White House, with their finger on the button, believe in this Rapture shit too?

More Weinstein from the debate:

"What you do when you have a 3 star general that’s ordering his staff to put together a Powerpoint presentation showing the direct parallel between the Book Of Revelation and all of our movements in the AOR ? ( for you civilians - area of responsibility, Iraq and Afghanistan )

What do you do when have a four star general who favors the distribution of a pamphlet in his commander’s bulding, his palace, advertising in all faiths and why "Jesus vs. Mohammed, An Examination of The Life of Both Prophets and Why Jesus is Superior To All" ?

Why was the most popular joke here at the Air Force Academy in 2004 "Why do Jews make the best magicians ?" Anyone know ? Show of hands ? We make the best magicians, apparently because we have the magical ability to walk into a red brick building and come out the smokestacks in a puff of smoke."

These people put God and Family before their country, in direct opposition to their oaths. As one woman who was tormented by these fascist racists put it:

"Their participation and promotion of this group is in direct violation of their oaths to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. One officer said that God, his family, and then the US were his priorities.

I ran into this "God First, orders second" attitude when I served in the USAF. There were people in charge of the communications facilities who felt that they should do what God and the Bible told them, not what their commanders said. And if God told them to do something to launch a nuclear holocaust, they would do it. Yes, they actually told me that.

Sleep well tonight: your military wants to bring about the Rapture". - Talk To Action contributor Lorrie Johnson

Kurt Vonnegut Died: So It Goes

Vonnegut on GW Bush:

The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected.

George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were.

Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler.

Honestly, I wish Nixon were president. Bush is so ignorant.

By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas in December.

Vonnegut was a master of irony. He used it lethally, often imperceptibly to those not quite his equal, as this exchange from Vonnegut's Wikipedia Page illustrates:

In 2005 Vonnegut was interviewed by David Neson for The Australian.[18] During the course of the interview Vonnegut was asked his opinion of modern terrorists, to which he replied "I regard them as very brave people." When pressed further Vonnegut also said that "They [suicide bombers] are dying for their own self-respect. It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's [like] your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing ... It is sweet and noble - sweet and honourable I guess it is - to die for what you believe in." (This last statement is a reference to the line "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" ["it is sweet and appropriate to die for your country"] from Horace's Odes, or possibly from Wilfred Owen's ironic use of the line in his Dulce Et Decorum Est.) David Neson took offense to Vonnegut's comments and characterized him as an old man who "doesn't want to live any more ... and because he can't find anything worthwhile to keep him alive, he finds defending terrorists somehow amusing." Vonnegut's son, Dr. Mark Vonnegut responded to the article by writing an editorial to the Boston Globe in which he explained the reasons behind his father's "provocative posturing" and stated that "If these commentators can so badly misunderstand and underestimate an utterly unguarded English-speaking 83-year-old man with an extensive public record of exactly what he thinks, maybe we should worry about how well they understand an enemy they can't figure out what to call."

Vonnegut was scheduled to speak at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion's Speaker series in June. I hope they get his son instead.

Poo-tee-tweet...