What If There Was a Nuclear War and No One Told Us?

Watch this video of all the nuclear explosions from 1945 to 1998.

Rachel Corrie Attacked

HIGH RES MV-Rachel-Corrie NAME ON SIDE, originally uploaded by freegazaorg.

The Irish humanitarian aid ship Rachel Corrie was attacked along with five other ships in the flotilla. The Rachel Corrie was named after American activist Rachel Corrie who was killed by Israeli Defense Forces as she tried to protect a Palestinian home.

We need to stop supporting the Israeli government. The Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip is a war crime. It needs to end.

Update: I am not sure witch ships were attacked Juan Cole is reporting it was the Turkish ship Marmara. His post is worth reading.

Helen Thomas National Treasure

Has some advice for President Obama.

Remember, the generals work for you. Think about how Harry Truman once proved the point. He had just fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur for publicly disagreeing with his policy against expanding the Korean War into China.

Truman elaborated on the decision for reporters in his typically blunt fashion:

"I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the president. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son-of-a-bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail."

We do not need war. We need health care!

Handsome Johnny

Ritchie Havens. The message is just as true today.

Courage

A Palestinian girl confronts Israeli soldiers shooting at kids.

Someone please explain what the Israelis hope too accomplish with this?

Via Susie

First Death

In this years war on Christmas. By the conspicuous consumption of wealth faction.

NEW YORK – Police were reviewing video from surveillance cameras in an attempt to identify who trampled to death a Wal-Mart worker after a crowd of post-Thanksgiving shoppers burst through the doors at a suburban store and knocked him down.

Criminal charges were possible, but identifying individual shoppers in Friday's video may prove difficult, said Detective Lt. Michael Fleming, a Nassau County police spokesman.

Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and customers stepped over him and became irate when officials said the store was closing because of the death, police and witnesses said.

At least four other people, including a woman who was eight months pregnant, were taken to hospitals for observation or minor injuries. The store in Valley Stream on Long Island closed for several hours before reopening.

War or Car?

What could we do with the money we are spending in the sands of Iraq? Buy every house hold a Prius. Cover Vermont and New Hampshire in gold. Or my favorite buy the Irish enough beer to last a millennium.

Could be fun to watch.

No Clue

He clearly does not understand Iraq. The Iraqi's will kill US troops as long as they are there Period.
Update: Steve Benen from the Carpet Bagger Report.

In fact, everything about McCain’s bizarre worldview is misguided. First, as recently as Monday, McCain reiterated his support for an indefinite war in Iraq. Coupled with this morning’s remarks, McCain believes the U.S. presence in Iraq has no end in sight, and bringing the troops home is “not too important.”

Second, his repeated comparisons to Germany, Japan, and Korea are not just foolish, they’re bordering on absurd. The more McCain makes the argument, the dumber it sounds. (Indeed, McCain himself has said his own comparison doesn’t apply well to Iraq.)

And third, there’s the pesky detail of the growing number of Iraqi officials who used to support a long-term U.S. security presence, but who are now ready to see Americans leave.

How Is The War Going?

According to the National Defense University not well. I do not know how to link to pdf's or copy and paste from them so I am stealing this from Fester at Newshoggers.

The following is from a recent National Defense University [big PDF, download at bottom of post] paper and it is an overview of the strategic quandry that the United States is in;

Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the
status of a major war and a major debacle. As of fall 2007, this
conflict has cost the United States over 3,800 dead and over
28,000 wounded. Allied casualties accounted for another 300 dead. Iraqi
civilian deaths—mostly at the hands of other Iraqis—may number as high
as 82,000. Over 7,500 Iraqi soldiers and police officers have also been
killed. Fifteen percent of the Iraqi population has become refugees or
displaced persons. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the
United States now spends over $10 billion per month on the war, and that
the total, direct U.S. costs from March 2003 to July 2007 have exceeded
$450 billion, all of which has been covered by deficit spending.1 No one
as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans’ benefits or the total
impact on Service personnel and materiel.

The war’s political impact also has been great. Globally, U.S. standing
among friends and allies has fallen.2 Our status as a moral leader has been
damaged by the war, the subsequent occupation of a Muslim nation, and
various issues concerning the treatment of detainees. At the same time,
operations in Iraq have had a negative impact on all other efforts in the war
on terror, which must bow to the priority of Iraq when it comes to manpower,
materiel, and the attention of decisionmakers. Our Armed Forces—
especially the Army and Marine Corps—have been severely strained by
the war in Iraq. Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there
were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at
least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to
expand its influence throughout the Middle East. [emphasis mine]

Just In Case

You get your news from a conservative news outlet like the Washington Post, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, I thought I would link to a good summery of the war hearings.

Petraeus and Crocker repeatedly quoted Osama Bin Laden and his deputies that Iraq was the central fron in the war on terror. But as Senators Bayh and Feingold pointed out we shouldn't take our marching orders from Al Qaeda, as their strategy is to bleed and bankrupt the United States in Iraq.[...]
Petraeus and Crocker repeatedly quoted Osama Bin Laden and his deputies that Iraq was the central fron in the war on terror. But as Senators Bayh and Feingold pointed out we shouldn't take our marching orders from Al Qaeda, as their strategy is to bleed and bankrupt the United States in Iraq.

Read it all. There is no reason to stay in Iraq.

What War?

The media has decided to disappear the war that John McCain wants to keep going for a hundred years.

Since the start of last year, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a part of the nonprofit Pew Research Center, has tracked reporting by several dozen major newspapers, cable stations, broadcast television networks, Web sites and radio programs. Iraq accounted for 18 percent of their prominent news coverage in the first nine months of 2007, but only 9 percent in the following three months, and 3 percent so far this year.

Why report on something that makes McCain look bad.

McCain

CNN tried in vain to find an Iraqi that supported John McCain. It seems the Iraqi people know what is best for them. The 2008 presidential election is a matter of life and death for the Iraqis. They do not want a republican.

Also while McCain was in Iraq CNN tried to go to the market that was a sign of Iraqi progress a year ago. It was too dangerous.

Be The Media

Several blogs have noted that the American public has not been paying attention to the Iraq war. So Juan Cole says to post this.

Here is what Professor Cole has to say.

f you’re reading these words, you are better informed about US casualties in Iraq than most Americans, for whom it has become a forgotten war. If it is not on television, it does not exist.

Why don’t bloggers do more posting of pieces like this AP video, below, about the 8 US troops killed on Monday. We are after all a tv network if we want to be.

The Cost Of War

Bob Herbert in the New York Times.

The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are like a cancer inside the American economy.

On Thursday, the Joint Economic Committee, chaired by Senator Chuck Schumer, conducted a public examination of the costs of the war. The witnesses included the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz (who believes the overall costs of the war — not just the cost to taxpayers — will reach $3 trillion), and Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International.

Both men talked about large opportunities lost because of the money poured into the war. “For a fraction of the cost of this war,” said Mr. Stiglitz, “we could have put Social Security on a sound footing for the next half-century or more.”

Reagan

Juan Cole has a great article about MLK and modern warfare. I want to high light Reagan's failure.

As for Reagan's Jihad in Afghanistan, it clearly was a world-historical blunder. Had the communists stayed in power in Afghanistan, their regime would probably have just evolved after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 into a Kazakhstan-style state. Not a democracy, but stable enough and with schooling for all and an investment in development.

Instead, Reagan and his Saudi and Pakistani allies funneled the lion's share of their covert war aid to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the most radical of the Mujahidin leaders. They forced the Soviet Union out, and destroyed the Afghanistan communists, but the ultimate result was a) the rise of al-Qaeda and b) the rise of the Taliban.

Reagan won the Afghanistan war, but it was a Pyrrhic victory that came around to bite the US on the posterior on September 11.

So you have to ask whether any of these wars -- Vietnam, Nicaragua, or Afghanistan-- should have been fought. Either we lost, or the victory was temporary, or we contributed to a blowback that hit our society on 9/11.

I Predict Riots
Kaiser Chiefs

My first thought this morning when I saw that Bhutto had been killed was I predict riots. I do not mean to make light of the situation. An unstable nuclear armed country is a genuine threat to the US and the world. Throw in some Al Queada and you have a recipe for disaster. From Reuters:

LONDON (Reuters) - Benazir Bhutto's killing will boost perceived risk in nuclear-armed Pakistan, analysts warned on Thursday, but some said it was not in itself surprising enough to substantially change investor sentiment.

News of her assassination in a suicide gun and bomb attack outside a political rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi sent global gold and oil prices higher, also unsettling global foreign exchange markets.

"The killing of Bhutto will likely lead to further political and social instability in Pakistan and across the subcontinent," Swiss investment bank UBS said in a research note.

What Do We Win?

The Republican framing on withdrawal from Iraq is something like this "Why do you want to loose the war?" I guess they still think it is possible to win. My question is what do we win?Or what due the supporters think they will win? In the Second World War we won peace. We fought until the nations that attacked us stopped and said no more. In Iraq we already had that. The Iraqis were not attacking us, so even if they stop what do we win? I mean we should get something for the blood and treasure we spent. What is it?