From the Washington Post... Bush's Optimism On Iraq Debated Rosy View in Time Of Rising Violence Revives Criticism By Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, June 5, 2005; A01 President Bush's portrayal of a wilting insurgency in Iraq at a time of escalating violence and insecurity throughout the country is reviving the debate over the administration's Iraq strategy and the accuracy of its upbeat claims. While Bush and Vice President Cheney offer optimistic assessments of the situation, a fresh wave of car bombings and other attacks killed 80 U.S. soldiers and more than 700 Iraqis last month alone and prompted Iraqi leaders to appeal to the administration for greater help. Privately, some administration officials have concluded the violence will not subside through this year.........

As the Iraq war drags on, it's beginning to look a lot like Vietnam

 

But to hear President Bush tell it, the war in Iraq is going very, very well.

 

In mid-April, appearing before 25,000 U.S. soldiers at sun-drenched Fort Hood, in Texas, Bush declared that America has succeeded in planting democracy in Iraq, creating a model that will soon spread throughout the Middle East.

 

‘That success is sending a message from Beirut to Tehran,’ the president boasted to chants of ‘USA! USA!’ from the troops.

 

In private, however, senior military advisers & intelligence specialists on Iraq offer a starkly different picture.

 

Two years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq is perched on the brink of civil war.

 

Months after the election, the new Iraqi government remains hunkered down inside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, surviving only because it is defended by thousands of U.S. troops. Iraqi officials hold meetings & press conferences in Alamo-like settings, often punctuated by the sounds of nearby explosions.

 

Outside the Green Zone, party offices and government buildings are surrounded by tank traps, blast walls made from concrete slabs eighteen feet high, and private militias wielding machine guns and AK-47s.

 

Even minor government officials travel from fort to fort in heavily armed convoys of Humvees.’

 

The Rolling Stone’s, Robert Dreyfuss paints a chilling picture of Iraq: The Quagmire

First, a comment on the new-look comment composer. It looked beaut on my WinXP-Mozilla 15in LCD, but on this Win95-Mozilla-15in CRT the grey panel with the buttons is 2in deep. Maybe it will self-correct.

But, look. While we are waiting for the 'toon, Ole Rummy has found what he's been looking for. Remember how he prophesied that no less than 70 countries had the capability to built vast underground bunkers? He used that observation about 3 weeks ago, to justify the development of bunker-busting nukes. Like, why would they be trying to hide from prying eyes, if they weren't up to no good? And the US is all good, so they must be Eeeevil.

Like a dream come true, a vast underground complex has been found in Insurgent-land in Iraq. Rummy must have been wearing those X-ray glasses. They are not to be confused with Camp Xray, of course. Now, I predict that evidence will be found that the tunnels were dug out with shovels supplied by USAma bin Laden. Maaa-ma, I want my mammy.

[This had paragraph breaks, so if it displays without them, don't blame me.] 

US author explains 'suicide attacks' Saturday 04 June 2005, 5:59 Makka Time, 2:59 GMT A surge in "suicide attacks" in Iraq and elsewhere around the world is a response to territorial occupation and has no direct link with "Islamic fundamentalism", a political science professor has said. Robert Pape, associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, has spent 25 years creating a database of such attacks and has chronicled them in his new book, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. An intersting analysis of the problem follows. in that article...

Is Bush an Idiot?

According to the BBC President bush says that America won’t rest until the “war on terror

While the French and the Germans argued against the war but did not argue strongly against the manufactured evidence (although they did), is that unless agencies were blindly following a political agendas, the "intelligence" of the caliber of people employed could not have been so dumb as to fall for the hoax. The WMDs in Iraq was a hoax. Since mid 2002 many people including Gus knew with certainty that there were no WMDs in Iraq. And many of us let newspapers and politicians know not to fall in the trap. In Australia, Andrew Wilkie blew the whistle on the flimsy "evidence" and paid a dear price for it. In England, David Kelly would have had to know about the fabrication and he nearly manage to blow the thing out of the water until his untimely death.

There was a conspiracy to go to war no matter. Whether the president himself knew about it or not could be debated but the odds are that he knew or should have known. Re-writing history has to be done in order to find where the fake documentation and information originated from, and to define the true relationship between the porky-makers and the president. From reliable documentation it is possible to deduce that the Pentagon and the CIA were at the origination of the hoax at the deepest secret levels. Upper levels of these organizations may not have known and to some extend could not have known but should have guessed because of the unreliability of the sources..

Strategically, all the participants in the coalition of the willing HAD TO AND DID KNOW IN ADVANCE there were no WMD in Iraq. The French and the Germans knew that too, although the White House is trying hard to implicate them in the "belief there was". For those of you who have not read the three blogs about "selling the war in Iraq" there are a lot more detailed account of why: Someone somewhere told big Porkies to suit the war mongering desires of the President. Did the president lie?
99 per cent chance he did and I feel generous. But he can do nothing but deny it.

Is the public division of opinion of this matter giving ammunition to the enemy? Try a few thousand tonnes of bombs on your cities... and/or also losing a privilege status for an inferior role... like the Sunnis... Or simply remove the infrastructure of a country whether it is good or tyranical.

From the BBC

Iraqi police recruits found dead

At least 28 bodies of police recruits have been discovered in two areas of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
The bodies of 15 young men were found in a truck in Abu Ghraib on the western outskirts of the city on Sunday, according to police.
The rest were discovered in the district of Baghdady. All had been shot, officials said.
Meanwhile on Monday, a series of car bomb attacks in Baghdad left at least eight people dead and dozens injured.
There were seven attacks in all, the most deadly of which was a double car bombing near the Mustansiriya University in the east of the city in which five people died and 25 were injured.

read more at the BBC
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See cartoon at head of line of blog...

From the ABC

Prodi confirms troop withdrawal from Iraq
By Europe correspondent Stephanie Kennedy

Italy's new Prime Minister has described the invasion of Iraq as a "grave error" and confirmed that his country's troops will be withdrawn.

Outlining his program to Parliament after his Government was sworn in, Romano Prodi criticised the war in Iraq.

He insisted the invasion and the occupation was a grave error that has complicated rather than resolved the security situation.

Mr Prodi says he will seek immediate approval from Parliament to withdraw Italy's 3,000 troops from Iraq.

He did not give a date for the withdrawal, saying a technical time frame will have to be agreed to in consultation with allies.

The previous government under Silvio Berlusconi had already announced that Italy's forces would be withdrawn in phases before the end of the year.

Read more at the ABC

From the ABC

Rumsfeld extends tours of 3,500 troops
The Pentagon has extended the tours of about 3,500 US troops in Iraq for 120 days in a move that dashed hopes of a reduction in the US force this year in the face of surging sectarian violence.

The Pentagon also identified four other brigades with 25,000 troops for deployment to Iraq late this year and early next, enough to maintain the US force at about 130,000 troops for a year.

"Additionally, the Secretary of Defence approved a request by the commander of Multi-National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I) to extend the deployment of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team operating in Iraq for up to 120 additional days," it said.

The move indicated that US commanders have effectively given up hopes for even a gradual reduction in the US force this year on account of a bitter insurgency and spiralling [http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200607/s1699207.htm|sectarian violence].

Secret Reports Dispute White House Optimism
By Bob Woodward
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/30/AR2006093000293.html|Washington Post Staff Writer]
Sunday, October 1, 2006; A01
On May 22, 2006, President Bush spoke in Chicago and gave a [http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/1103|characteristically upbeat] forecast: "Years from now, people will look back on the formation of a unity government in Iraq as a decisive moment in the story of liberty, a moment when freedom gained a firm foothold in the Middle East and the forces of terror began their long retreat."
Two days later, the intelligence division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated a secret intelligence assessment to the White House that [http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/2265|contradicted the president's forecast].

From the New York Times

As G.O.P. Mopes, Bush Adds the Title of Optimist in Chief

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and JIM RUTENBERG
Published: October 23, 2006
WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 — The capital is filled with Republicans convinced that they will lose the House and maybe the Senate. So last week, the White House and party leaders convened a “friends and allies” teleconference to dispute what Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, considers flawed conventional wisdom.

For 20 minutes, Mr. Mehlman and the White House political director, Sara Taylor, tried to lift the cloak of gloom that has descended on the top ranks of Republican strategists, using what one of the dozens of lobbyists, donors, party aides and other supporters who listened in later called “happy talk.”

President Bush and his political strategists may be the most outwardly optimistic Republicans in Washington these days, and perhaps the only ones. They are doing their best to fend off the sense of impending doom within their party that they fear will become a self-fulfilling prophecy on Nov. 7.

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Gus: probably the optimist in chief is not only wearing his favorite shades (see cartoon at the head of this line of blogs) but his Majesty Bushit the lesser is confident his electronic voting machines will deliver the result he wants... Not only that, there is a bit more scaring to do between now and the elections,and who knows some "terrorists" will oblige to deliver the goods...

 

From the Huffington Post

Any health savvy person knows by now that one of the best ways to protect your body from harmful UV rays is to slather on the SPF -- but you might be forgetting one important part: your eyes.

"Obviously you can't put sunscreen on them," says Anne Sumers, M.D., a spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology who is in private practice in Ridgewood, New Jersey. "[Sunglasses are] the only way to protect your eyes."

Exposing your peepers to the sun could trigger a host of serious health problems, including painful sunburns and cataracts. What's worse, buying sunglasses can be a complicated, cryptic process (what do those labels mean, anyhow?). So we asked Sumers and William Brown, O.D., Ph.D., of the department of ophthalmology at the Mayo Clinic, to help us break down what's happening to the naked eye when it's exposed to the sun -- and exactly how to choose the right sunglasses to protect it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/28/how-to-buy-sunglasses_n_3826859.html

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I have blue eyes... Yet I remember when being about 12, the family GP told me and my mum to NEVER EVER wear sunglasses... Kids should not wear sunglasses he said with extreme conviction... I must say that in those days sunglasses were not as sophisticated as those available today. The filtering of harmful ultra-violet (UV) light was not a feature... It was the days when the X-ray machine was naked and no-one wore protective leaded clothing. My X-ray doctor was eventually killed by his machine...

Here I am, many years years later not being the "real owner" of a pair of sunglasses. I mean the "real owner" because I have a couple of pairs of sunglasses that I rarely use when I paint white in bright sunlight, or travel on small planes where the clouds are reflecting a bit much... And I wear the sunglasses no more than five minutes at a time. That's all... And to say the least I can even paint white in bright sunlight, squinting a tad, sure but, I wear the sunglasses mostly so that when I get out of the sunlight, I can see in the shade (I take the glasses off of course)... The eyes take a while to readjust to the darker areas...

Without proper filtering, the sunglasses that allow the eye pupil to be larger than if exposed to bright light would let more harmful rays through to the retina. Result: much quicker damage. 

I don't wear glasses either. I was told that my eyesight would fade at age 40, 50, 60, 70... That I would need reading glasses, long distance glasses, coke bottle glasses, yet my eyesight is as good if not better than when I was 12 years old... I don't know if it's good genes or not having worn sunglasses... or having performed eye exercises daily... including obligatory shut eye... Who knows. I am lucky...

My hearing to the contrary is not good at all: I have acquired what is called "selective hearing". I hear what I want.

See toon at top...

And by the way I do not wear any SPF..ing cream when I show my nakedness to the sun-god... I only do it for a few minutes to get vitamins D, then I place my clothes back on... I had rickets when I was a young lad...