Letters to the Editor
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Lameman
The president is mandated by congress to report on Iraq, and Bush has wisely chosen someone else to do that for him. I say wisely, because Bush himself might well confuse congress with parliment, thank them for hosting this meeting at the Indianapolis Rotary Club, and then exit via a closet door.
So Petraeus has no choice does he. Nor does Bush. They are required to report by the first branch of govt.
And it won't do Congress any harm to listen to Petraeus.
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Surely SOMEONE Can Put Up...
It's time, folks. Our ability as _citizens_ to influence the actions of the US government has diminished to the point where we are not functioning democratically.
This happens from time to time, and it's never been the end of the republic before. It needn't be the end this time either.
There's something that people can do. And it'll be viewed as insane by all the "serious" people, but it's been done before to good effect.
Stop paying taxes.
As the law stands, any legal wage earner can ask an employer for a simple little form called a "W-4." It's a form that adjusts your claimed deductions for tax withholding purposes. "Taxes withheld," are, of course, the dollars that this current government never lets you SEE.
Not everyone has the courage to stand up for their convictions like this, but if 50,000 people do, or, bless my heart, 150,000, I feel pretty confident in saying that Congress and Beltway pundits and the MSM and the Right-wing noise machine and the IRS and the Treasury and The Fed and just about every godforsaken interest group that has anything to do with who's running the show...
...well, they'll NOTICE.
It's up to us, folks, and we need to get the right person elected in '08, but it's a sad sorry shame if We the People are as complacent as the enablers who permitted the policies of the past 7 years.
And if this is all too impossible, well, hell...then it's true that the American public is ruled by its fear, and you may as well shave, sterilize, and destroy all of us, because the Great Experiment is about at an end.
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Wait a minute
Pantanal--unless you are Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst,you should credit him in your post comparing Petraeus and Westmoreland.
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General Betray us
the way I see the problem is this:
they thought they could break Saddam's legs at the knees, get the thanks of the Iraqis (of all stripes) and do their pseudo-legitimized looting-game under the name of liberalizing the Iraqi economy.
With this success under their belt, Iran, Syria and various others would have the same 'regime change' treatment meted out to them.
it's the insurgency that put paid to this over-arching fantasy. Insurgencies are 'nearly' [but not totally] always impossible for conventional armies to fight. So all that has happened since then, is the administration's refusal to accept reality and responsibility for getting it wrong. They don't want to go for the obvious symbolic reasons of the years of malaise it will cause to the rampant militarism that infects the US body politic and also because it looks bad to be a loser.
But losing is what has happened. The US has lost in Iraq, at great cost in arms and men and in Iraqi civilians and insurgents' lives. a veritable avoidable and totally futile mass killing spree.
What an eviscerating disaster it has been. And what's worse is that it won't be over until the very adults in the US political system decide that enough is enough.
When Petreaus does his smooth act on the hill, the insurgents will have to think up something even more disgusting to weaken the will of the US political classes, and on the needless suffering will continue.
Until America is driven out of Iraq, the American military and the collateral damage in the form of Iraqi bystanders will be put through a horrific meat-grinder.
let's hope that history is very very unkind to this administration. If there is any justice that at least is surely a foregone conclusion.
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Reason not the need
I didn't ask Glenn, and have no need to. -- Mona
Yes, you do know Glenn personally, and presumably therefore know his positions on many subjects not relevant to his posts on Unclaimed Territory. On the other hand, we do not, except what we can sometimes infer from the content of the posts themselves. My point was only that he is wise to restrict the content of his posts to that which is relevant to the point he is making. Folks who for ideological reasons wish to draw broader inferences than are warranted by the evidence, or simply wish to be overbearing jerks, are certainly welcome to do so, don't you think?
Of course when they do, it speaks more about their agenda than Glenn's, and most of us are capable of making that distinction, even when we don't draw attention to it ourselves.
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The people who read Glenn seem to be everywhere these days
Check this out:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2165768,00.html
Neither Michael Tomasky nor The Guardian credit Glenn, but none of the regular readers of Unclaimed Territory could miss the provenance of this essay.
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@WT
My point was only that [Glenn] is wise to restrict the content of his posts to that which is relevant to the point he is making. Folks who for ideological reasons wish to draw broader inferences than are warranted by the evidence, or simply wish to be overbearing jerks, are certainly welcome to do so, don't you think?
Well, sure; ain't no law against it(nor should there be). But don't you think it is pretty hilarious that rtf 100 and others have -- all over the intertubes -- derided Glenn as some sort of radical, raging, Commiesymp leftist based only on his blog record and his published books? Glenn doesn't quote Marx or even Chomsky; he repeatedly makes recourse to Publius and Tom Paine. How, then, does anything in his written record justify this ubiquitous assertion that he is "far left," other than that must now mean "opposes Bush and neocons?" THAT was my point. And I think taunting the rtf 100s of this world to address that issue serves a purpose.