4 G.I.’s Among Dead in Iraq; McCain Cites Progress

Mortar attacks, suicide car bombs, roadside bombs, ambushes and gun battles killed at least two dozen people on Sunday, including four American soldiers, the authorities said.
…
The attacks coincided with a visit to Iraq by a Republican Congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain, who declared at a news conference that the new American security plan was “making progress” and that there was cause for “very cautious optimism.”
In sometimes testy comments to reporters in the heavily fortified Green Zone, Mr. McCain said the American public was not receiving “the full picture about what’s happening,” and he described the delegation’s visit to a downtown market where scores of people have died this year in multiple car bombings and other attacks. There, the members of Congress said, they strolled around, haggled with merchants and drank tea.
But the outing was far from carefree. The delegation traveled in a convoy of armored military vehicles and was accompanied by a large contingent of heavily armed soldiers. The politicians wore body armor while they shopped.

Posted by: b | Apr 2 2007 6:15 utc | 4

Meanwhile, Outside Camp MadMen, ZBig- makes some intelligent suggestions @Duke:
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Specifically, the country has to avoid getting into an armed conflict with longtime nemesis Iran, said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carter’s top adviser on foreign affairs throughout Carter’s four years in office, including the 444-day Iranian hostage crisis.
“If the war is enlarged in the next 20 months to include Iran — if that happens — for the next 20 years the United States is going to be bogged down in a war which spans Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and then you can forget about American global leadership,” he said.
…
But Brzezinski reserved his harshest criticism for the current president, George W. Bush, saying he’d helped cultivate “a self-paralyzing culture of fear” after the Sept. 11 attacks, squandered the government’s credibility and fed anti-Americanism in many parts of the world by failing to recognize “it is absolutely futile for the United States to be waging what is in essence a colonial war in a post-colonial age.”
In response to a question, Brzezinski compared Bush’s post-Sept. 11 leadership unfavorably to President Dwight Eisenhower’s calming influence at the height of the Cold War.
“Both he and [President John F.] Kennedy infused confidence in America,” Brzezinski said. “I would have thought that’s what presidents are for. Today the opposite is the case, and that I find very, very troubling because I think that weakens us and makes us more susceptible. In fact, I think it increases the temptation to commit terrorist acts in America. The case for a little more maturity and a little more responsibility is very strong.”
…
As for the broader issue of terrorism, Brzezinski counseled a case-by-case attack on al-Qaida and similar groups, in cooperation with many other countries, rather than trying to spread democracy abroad with bayonets and stoke the sort of fear at home that’s led to intrusive security measures in every major building in New York and Washington.
“Since 9/11, which killed 3,000 Americans, 200,000 Americans have died violently — in car accidents,” Brzezinski said. “We accept that as a necessary aspect of our way of life. But I’m sad to say that perhaps terrorism may be a necessary aspect of our way for life for some time to come. It shouldn’t affect the totality of the national culture.” Brzezinski: Avoid disaster with Iran
You read this & realize that GODDAMN LUNATICS ARE RUNNING/RUINING THE COUNTRY (& The World). And the only sane folks around here are those of us howling in the vast wastelands outside of DC for IMPEACHMENT NOW…. I’m sure that Zbig agrees w/that sentiment.

Posted by: jj | Apr 2 2007 6:43 utc | 6

Cool! That looks just like my new SUV, the GMC Suburban Avenger!

Posted by: Dick Durata | Apr 2 2007 19:05 utc | 8

@annie – 9 – No. 1, 2 and 3 of these “narrow exceptions” are 100% underwriting a continuous imperial occupation – “just keep us out of your civil war, meanwhile, we will watch the oil …”

Posted by: b | Apr 2 2007 19:46 utc | 10

b #10, yep. a no brainer

Posted by: annie | Apr 3 2007 0:59 utc | 12

Mother fuck McCain that pig jowled incubus…
Truck bomb kills Iraqi schoolchildren

The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress.

Also see, McCain Wrong on Iraq Security, Merchants Say

A day after members of an American Congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain pointed to their brief visit to Baghdad’s central market as evidence that the new security plan for the city was working, the merchants there were incredulous about the Americans’ conclusions.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 3 2007 16:47 utc | 14