998 American military dead as of this morning, many more injured, countless Iraqis dead and injured.
This story ran in the Hampton Road, VA paper yesterday – to my surprize, actually. Hampton Roads is home to a lot of military and former military folks.

Former reserve colonel criticizes Iraq war
By the Associated Press
Here is an excerpt:
September 6 2004
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The Iraq war was a mistake and as long as it continues to use up military resources the United States will be increasingly less safe, says a recently retired colonel who commanded West Virginia’s largest Army Reserve unit, which served in Iraq and Kuwait.
“I feel we were not told the truth. I do not think we should be there,” said Col. Lew G. Tyree of Charleston. “We tend to ignore that there are well over 1,000 dead and well over 7,000 injured. We use many of the soldiers time and time again. Where are the replacements going to come from? We’re getting re-enlistments, but not recruits. Where is the strength for defending this country in another arena?”
Tyree said using so much military manpower in Iraq has left fewer forces to deal with terrorist threats, “so America is at a greater risk than before.”
“We put our uniforms on with the clear expectation that we have to do our job to protect the interests of our country and our allies, and we do that willingly, although it is very frightening. What is bothersome to us is that we depend on our leadership not to use this resource lightly. We have all served honorably, but the judgment has not been good here.”
Tyree told The Charleston Gazette that his troops in Iraq wondered “what we were doing there,” and he was forced to change his answer repeatedly.
An invasion must have a clear mission and an exit strategy, but “those things didn’t exist” he said.
“Shaking the saber at someone is not the approach to world diplomacy. It’s extremely important that we bring other countries back to the table to work on peaceful solutions. We can’t bring them to the plate under the current administration. We have to show them that we are willing to change this administration and come back to the table as part of the world community.”
Tyree said he can’t understand veterans who “continue to support a leader who would lead us in this direction with these kinds of miscalculations. ”

Posted by: maxcrat | Sep 7 2004 12:45 utc | 3

where is billmon?

Posted by: curious | Sep 7 2004 14:28 utc | 5

@MDM I believe this was mentioned in a recent letter to Mike Riviero’s http://www.whatreallyhappened.com site ,
so it is merely hearsay, albeit quite plausible.
I’ve written to Riviero to ask him to re-post the letter.

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 7 2004 14:41 utc | 7

Via Yankee Doodle at “Today in Iraq”
The Bushies never publicly offered any clear objectives for the war in Iraq, so it’s difficult to measure success by their own standards. Instead, they offered a constantly shifting set of rationales to support their war, offering a new reason as each previous reason was debunked. First, they claimed Iraq possessed an arsenal of “weapons of mass destruction” that threatened the US and our allies, which devolved into “WMD programs” and finally became “program-related activities.” Then they claimed links between Saddam Hussien and Al Qaida. Condi Rice even offered her ridiculous “flypaper strategy” to support their war. Now they justify their war because Saddam was a bad, bad man.
They predicted the US invasion force would be welcomed with “flowers and music.” Instead, the Republican Guard fought a bitter – if ultimately futile – defense of Baghdad. An insurgency followed. In May 2003, Lieutenant AWOL dressed himself up in a pilot’s costume and proclaimed “an end to major combat operations.” The insurgency grew, but the Bushies said it was all the fault of Ba’athist “dead-enders” and everything would be peaceful when US troops rounded up all the bad guys pictured on Rummy’s deck of cards.
In July, Saddam’s sons Usay and Qusay were killed in a raid near Mosul and the Bushies claimed a significant victory. In August, insurgents bombed the UN mission in Baghdad, gained increasing ability to interdict US convoy operations, and staged a coordinated series of car bombings in Baghdad. Now, the Bushies blamed “foreign fighters” as well as dead-enders.
In September 2003, Richard Perle prophesied that grateful Iraqis would name a “grand square” in central Baghdad after George W. Bush.
In December, US troops captured Saddam Hussein near Tikrit. The Bushies again claimed victory, as they mocked Saddam with videos of his dental exam and tales of his “spider hole.” At a press conference, Rummy crowed, “Here was a man who was photographed hundreds of times shooting off rifles and showing how tough he was, and in fact, he wasn’t very tough, he was cowering in a hole in the ground, and had a pistol and didn’t use it and certainly did not put up any fight at all. In the last analysis, he seemed not terribly brave.” The Bushies’ strutting, preening and gratuitous humiliation of Saddam played well with their electoral base, but enraged Iraqis in particular and Arabs in general.
The insurgency grew during the winter and spring until it exploded in a major uprising in April, provoked by a poorly conceived raid to punish the city of Fallujah for the grisly murders of four American contractors, and by a bungled attempt to arrest (and possibly assassinate) Moqtada al-Sadr. The bloody uprisings in Fallujah and Najaf ended with negotiated settlements, which the Bushies touted as victories and presented the “Fallujah Solution” as the future model for success.
Instead, the insurgency persisted. The Bushies scrambled to find a fig leaf of success before the election campaign. They adopted a plan to transfer “sovereignty” to “the Iraqi people.” As the Bushies announced their new plan, they repeatedly warned of more violence “in the run-up to the handover of sovereignty,” implying that violence would abate after the handover.
Each and every time the Bushies announced a new victory, predicted imminent success or changed their multiple stories, the US media dutifully and uncritically parroted the Party line.
From the moment US troops crossed the LD on March 20, 2003 until Lieutenant AWOL made his “end of major combat operations” proclamation on May 1, 139 US troops died in Iraq. Between May 2, 2003 and the transfer of “sovereignty” to the Allawi government on June 28, 2004, 715 US soldiers died in Iraq. Since June 29, 142 US soldiers died in Iraq, more than during the high-intensity fighting during the invasion and the initial aftermath.
During all this carnage and courage, we were treated to the laughable spectacle of L. Paul (Jerry) Bremer III, parading around at multiple photo ops fashionably attired in Gucci suits and combat boots and accompanied by phalanxes of heavily armed security contractors. Meanwhile, young conservatives recruited from the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute rotated in and out of the Green Zone every 90 days, punching their tickets and padding their resumes with short-tours at the CPA. The CPA itself accomplished almost nothing of public value during its short and miserable existence, but apparently proved itself a considerable source of private and corporate enrichment.
Bush-lovers criticize John Kerry because they claim Kerry has never announced his intended Iraq policy. I don’t know what Kerry intends to do about Iraq, but it’s clear that domestic American regime change is the first step to end this disaster. And Kerry’s quite right to keep his cards close to his chest. I have no doubt that if the Bushies learn his plans, they will preemptively screw them up regardless of the cost in American and Iraqi lives. These people are just that vicious.
In the absence of clearly stated war aims and objectives from the Bush administration, we may not have a yardstick to measure the Bushies’ success in Iraq. But we damn sure have the data to measure failure. The revelation that the attack rate against US troops and allies has mushroomed to a whopping average of 87 per day clearly demonstrates that Bush’s Iraq policy is no longer going to hell in a hand-basket – it’s now traveling on a rocket sled.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Sep 7 2004 16:01 utc | 9

Kerry is trying to drag awareness of the Iraq war out into pubic.
He forced Bush into saying this yesterday:
————-
On Iraq, “suddenly he’s against it again,” Bush said. “No matter how many times Senator Kerry changes his mind, it was right for America and it’s right for America now that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.”
————-
It is such a dirty nasty thing to change your mind in American politics, as I suppose it implies that you have a mind to change.
Apparently “Stay the course” is a message that must cause apes, gone tipsy on testosterone, to salivate.
I keep thinking of the sheep in Orwell’s Animal Farm chanting:
“Four legs good, two legs bad.”
“Four legs good, two legs bad.”
“Four legs good, two legs bad.”
Drowning out dissent until all that was left was the agrressive posture of pure pigheadedness.
Bush will have us waking up the next four years with Iraqi blood on our hands, death in our eyes, and the chant of “stay the course” on our lips.
For sure Bush will stay the course. That’s a guarantee.
For Bush Iraq is not his version of the movie Ground Hog Day–because we all know he will never get it right.
Rather–this production is Bush’s nightmare version of Ground Hog Day taking place on Baghdad’s version of Elm Street.
Not only is there “no exit” there is “no plan,” “no hope,” and “no peace.”
All that said, I’d love to see the focus between the two candidates drawn sharper.
I heard Kerry yesterday poking fun at the W-swastikas:
“W is for wrong”…”the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
That’s the kind of rhetoric I want to hear.
How about “W is for wrongheaded and weak-minded and wasteful and aWol.”
I think Kerry is coming around. He may not win, but he won’t play punching bag anymore to these thugs. And perhaps even better–he is showing himself willing to polarize the country.
A few more blowups in Iraq, like yesterday’s news, and Kerry’s message will begin to resonate.
Will Bush further hunker the troops down until Nov. 3rd?
That’d be a smart thing to do, but somehow, I don’t think that thought fits into the fists of apes drunk on testosterone.

Posted by: koreyel | Sep 7 2004 16:23 utc | 11

I’m worried that the violence against US-citizens will not remain limited to soldiers in Iraq. What if US-citizens become targets in large parts of the world? Perhaps that is to a certain extent already the case, but it could get much, much worse. (In the sense of “kill them wherever you meet them.”) Apart from the unnecessary suffering, this would probably engender isolationist and/or highly aggressive tendencies in the US. Not what the world needs at the moment.

Posted by: teuton | Sep 7 2004 16:30 utc | 13

“The probability of Israel striking Iran is very real. That could happen at any moment.”
The p(israel stike| before 11/2/04) =
1 – (bush poll numbers expressed as a percent)

Posted by: koreyel | Sep 7 2004 17:22 utc | 15

“Apart from the unnecessary suffering, this would probably engender isolationist and/or highly aggressive tendencies in the US. Not what the world needs at the moment.”
Too late teuton.

Posted by: beq | Sep 7 2004 17:47 utc | 17

About that Day Four, b: It may be that in the event of a coup in Pakistan, that country’s nuclear weapons are rendered inoperable. The Bush administration is said to have sealed the deal that began negotiation under Clinton to secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in the (not unlikely) event of another home-grown regime change. (Too bad they couldn’t “secure” A. Q. Kahn.) It would certainly be one of the more startlingly logical and urgently-needed steps either administration took to prevent a nuclear nightmare.
The chain of events would be bad enough, however, without input from nuclear-armed Islamists in Pakistan.
Osirik was, I believe, a wide-open site and easy target. The Iranians would have studied the successful IDF strike and designed their own facilites to present the most problematic targets. They have additionally protected themselves, unlike Iraq, by being signatories to the NPT and through cooperation with the IAEA.
Any such non-preemptive strike within Iran by Israel would be an unsanctioned act of war. Iran would be allowed, under international law, to respond in kind, and have every incentive to.
The US has a defense treaty with Israel that it would not, under the circumstances, be able to honor.
Iran’s nuclear program is a genuine source of national pride and the popular reaction to its destruction would be extraordinary.
The popular reaction within Iraq would in all probability be the tipping point against the US and the transition gov’t.
US and UK troops and civilian personnel within Iraq would be exposed to reprisal.
US and NATO troops in Afghanistan would also be severely threatened.
If an Israeli strike were to take place, it would not indicate gross strategic incompetence on the part of the US (not to mention Israeli) Administration, but rather frank insanity. My bet is against it.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 7 2004 19:31 utc | 19

My bet is against it too (agreeing with Pat.) No way. Not now and not soon, maybe never.

Posted by: Blackie | Sep 7 2004 20:45 utc | 21

But then, why attribute sanity to them? Is there not enough evidence that sanity has been temporarily suspended over the last years?

Posted by: teuton | Sep 7 2004 22:06 utc | 23

But the sycophants in the media have given up the ghost and lost interest in the boys being killed. After all, the media pigs come from the best homes and not from the rural areas or inner cities that contribute to the most deaths. What a shame the media elite have no-one close to the death.
Actually jdp it is material worse than that. They aren’t giving Bush a free pass on the Iraq mess…they are paying him money for it.
Here is a snip from an AFP story:

“It sucks. The newspapers glorify it. Everyday, reporting the numbers going up and up, trying to push a point,” said Captain Gregory Wingard, 39, at the 1st Infantry Division’s Camp Warhorse near Baquba, north of Baghdad.
“Sad as it is for those 1,000 families and their friends, they’re nothing to the number of Iraqis that get killed trying to defend their own families,” he added, smoking a cigar with friends under the stars.
“There’s one word you have to push back at them. Gettsburg: 63,000 killed in a single day,” said Sergeant Kimberly Snow, 35, from Ohio, refering to the US civil war battle.

The fact that this story made Yahoo’s headline queue is really damning.
And then to hear Kissinger on the Leher hour tonight prevaricating about how Iraq is not a mess…
I shouted at that sterile intellectual visage: “Someone give that ruin of a man a helment and a kevlar jacket and send him to Baghdad.”
What a moral cripple.
And as far as Captain Gregory Wingard and Sergeant Kimberly Snow in the above clip are concerned: They obviously have found their true calling in life. And no doubt…they are enjoying themselves.

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 8 2004 3:17 utc | 25

@JDP:
As always you are on target:
A Little Song:
If I die in a combat zone
Tag my toe Wolf Blitzer, and ship me home.
Don’t really care about all of the rest.
Tell CNN I did my best.

Posted by: Old Songster | Sep 8 2004 3:34 utc | 27

@All
Sorry about that. Plead poetic license.

Posted by: A/Old Songster | Sep 8 2004 3:54 utc | 29

Karl Rove has decided that the Iraq war will rest until after the election:
U.S. Toll in Iraq Crosses 1,000 Milestone

Myers said yesterday that coalition forces plan to delay offensive moves in such cities until a full complement of Iraqi forces are trained and ready to defend their nation, something he said he believes can be accomplished by December. He said the “strategy for the cities” being developed by Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. relies on working with the Iraqi government to send in joint forces.

U.S. Conceding Rebels Control Regions of Iraq

“While U.S. forces or coalition forces can do just about anything we want to do, it makes a lot more sense that it be a sustained operation, one that can be sustained by Iraqi security forces,” General Myers said. “By December, we’re going to have a substantial number of Iraqi security forces equipped, trained and led to conduct the kind of operations I was talking about.”
…
A two-month hiatus before major force is applied to rebel areas would also mean a delay until after the American presidential election, but senior officials insist there is no domestic political calculus in the decision to wait – only a conviction that time is needed for negotiation and for Iraqi forces to gain strength.

Posted by: b | Sep 8 2004 8:04 utc | 31

“And as far as Captain Gregory Wingard and Sergeant Kimberly Snow in the above clip are concerned: They obviously have found their true calling in life. And no doubt…they are enjoying themselves.”
Let me tell you something about old Captain Gregory Wingard;
He is 39…and still a Captain, usually NG Officers are LTC’s by the time they are 39. That should tell you something right there. He was kicked out of the Maryland National Guard’s 20th Special Forces Group for refusing to train, and sleeping with other SF soldiers wives while they were deployed.
Enjoying it? Probably. Good at it? LMAO! Nope. I doubt he has even fired his weapon. He is getting his 15 minutes of fame, but those of us that know the drill are laughing like hell at his incompetence and braggart wannabe killer statements.

Posted by: SGM Fury | Mar 3 2005 15:23 utc | 33