i always read you badger, you are on my tool bar. my interest in iraq does not ebb and flow. right now there is a huge concerted effort by the ptb to frame everything as ‘better’ and calmed down. i think it is the quiet before the storm. the situation is massively fucked as far as i’m concerned, and the iraqi blogs reflect this. the rhetoric on the right is totally jacked up right now.

Posted by: annie | Dec 13 2007 23:51 utc | 4

annie and r’giap, just to be clear, what struck me today wasn’t just b’s remark but also remarks elsewhere today from people you expect to be on the progressive and alert side of things (H Cobban’s JWN, and an academic blog called Crooked Timber), also saying in effect: Nothing happening in Iraq. Let’s think nice thoughts. I thought it strange. Not just the ptb. Maybe it’s the NIE that has served as a soporific?

Posted by: Badger | Dec 14 2007 0:39 utc | 6

You seem to forget that Iraq is about suppressing the production of the lowest production cost crude oil on earth, one, and two about promoting perpetual war on
the terror of having to find a retail job for 100,000’s of American DoD welfare
gaggers lodged in perpetuity in tax space, until their made-20-pension rollover.
You’re just not reasoning, you’re reacting, like the poor rape victim, when the
beating stops, hey, might as well let the show go on. Roll over and accept life.
If you want to understand the Federal defense welfare system, in your gut,
simply replace the word “of” for every “on” the Administration uses. Global War
on Terror, really? Global War OF Terror. War on Drugs? War OF (Prescription) Drugs.
War on Poverty? War OF (perpetual-social-welfare-for-the-wealthy) Poverty. Capiche?
Iraq is all paid off, all the mullahs, all the government corroborators, lining
their purses made of human scrotums. Iraq is Goombah Land now. Numbers runners.
Crimps. Gribbles. Perpetual welfare for the Defense elites, along with perpetual
non-production of cheap oil, which inflates stock returns, which enriches elites.
America has been conned into a PNAC version of Israel:Palestine by the Neo-Zi’s.
40 years now, Israel’s still at it. 2043, American’s will still be dicking M.E.!
Different players, different flavors, same masa para pizza.
Sheesh. Kindergarten!
Meanwhile, ADM and ConAgra are busy turning your food, distilled essence of
60,000 years of aboriginal plant breeding, into GMO denatured and adulterated
bacterial jelly that will propagate like a pandemic across the earth, bringing
malnutrition, disease, species-transfer and then Norden’s Ultimate Solution.
But by JHM Almighty, Michael Vick and Barry Bond’s have got to do time!.

Posted by: Bambi Leightner | Dec 14 2007 2:20 utc | 8

Seems that the Surge hs worked: it kicked up the noise level from Iraq to the point that it has become a background hum that we have learned to tune out.
We still hear the occasional quick report of another suicide bombing between news of the housing collapse and celebrity misbehavior, but it does not affect our higher consciousness.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Dec 14 2007 7:05 utc | 10

The U.S. has simply put its foot on a “bouncing Betty”, you know the booby trap spring loaded mine that once you remove the pressure (your foot) it lofts up a grenade charge just high enough up to do the most damage. The rest of Iraq watching thinks mmmmm, they’re not going anywhere soon, so why not latch on to that eight billion dollar a month teat for some refreshment if not rearmament. By the end of last year it was pretty clear that the U.S. strategy in Iraq was a failure – that in spite of its overwhelming firepower advantage it could not enforce either political or military security on the country, necessary to realize its neo-colonial objectives. To create the appearance (for domestic political purposes) of a reversal of fortunes they opted to essentially pay off their immediate enemies (& stepping on Betty in the process) while continuing to support their enemies, the DAWA and SIIC government. They’re simply paying everyone off. And I think everyone in Iraq knows that real score – that the U.S. is stuck in place – and so are planning and building for the future. Which as r’giap reminds us of, may include pushing the U.S. off Betty before its quite ready. Because if my memory is correct, the Tet offensive in Vietnam (also) just so happened to cast another texas war president (and his party) into the dust heap of history, just when things looked like they were turning around. So if history is any instruction, look out.

Posted by: anna missed | Dec 14 2007 8:18 utc | 12

I read you sometimes Badger. To me the quiet is horrific – it represents habituation, normalization. Iraq? What? Oh yes, the Americans are still there!
I don’t see the quiet as prelude to a storm of any kind. I see it as a state of affairs set to last.

Posted by: Tangerine | Dec 14 2007 10:55 utc | 14

Pretty quiet on the “homeland” front too,
But the internal distruction continues.

Posted by: pb | Dec 14 2007 17:32 utc | 16

as far as anhilation is concerned – others might think that i am being merely metaphoric; the facts of course tell the real story.
one of these facts is the country that was el salvador in the 80’s to the present. here the death squads under the instruction & orders of american administrations liquidated the population. at first by massacres on a scale that were never told in the western media except when they concerned the murder of american nuns & priests. in john pilgers new film he has a small interview with one of the nuns who survived the rape & torture which was carried out on her by americans. she is very bitter – you feel that strongly & she speaks of the americans ignorance of abu ghraib as criminal because she says in a non rhetorical way the administration after administration systematised this torture & murder
the country itself possessed no sovereignty & was used effectively as a base against nicaragua though the oligarchy – the 40 families that run el salvador benefited from the massacre of their compatriots but it must be pointed out that the americans were the initiators of the massacres. it was the american administrations who sought to make muder a political & military strategy – the front for the liberation of el salvador was never in the same ball game
a million people escaped el salvador
there are many parallels with what is happening in iraq
& the most murderous practices were carried out in the quiet. with the whispers of a certain john negroponte who has become familiar to us all
arabs must know, persians must know – that they are the ‘non-people’ or worse – that their liquidation as a people is being used as the only way that can quiet the fear of the priveleged in the west. & if the resistance is not capable of delivering significant military & political defeats on the u s & its vassals then thehistory of the modern middle east will become as eduardo galeaono once spoke of latin america – as a history of loss. pysical oss on a scale theat the 20th century has made us only too familiar with

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 14 2007 19:00 utc | 18

Well I have to admit I don’t read badger’s page – nothing personal just I don’t go to many blogs outside of here.
Some time a couple of years, maybe longer, back, the fascination most blogs had with the process of war (ie what men and weapons were sent by what political boss, or who was in favour and who wasn’t, or whether amerikans thought the war was good, bad or indifferent) rather than the outcome of war (lotsa people injured and dead, raped and tortured in their home country by a bunch of ill trained-savages from the other side of the world) had me wondering if the motive for study of the process was more about avoiding reality by studying the soap opera than confronting the reality of their nation’s depravity.
The fact that most amerikans are ‘changing the channel’ now; ie now they have become bored by the sameness of the Iraq story, they are more interested in other ‘news’ kind of suggests it was just avoidance all along.
As Anna Missed, Remembering Giap and others have pointed out, this ‘quiet time’ is unlikely to last for long. Now that that Iranian Oil really has slipped from amerika’s grasp into the paws of China the pressure will be on the Iraqi puppet government with the tangled strings to cede control of Iraqi oil to amerika.
Even Maliki the marionette has been unable to bring himself to sell his nation out that bad, but amerika will try and persuade the leaders of a nation at least 10 times older than their own, 10 times more experienced in distracting the eye from what the hand is really doing, that a few million dollars to be spent where directed now, in the short term, is a better deal than hanging out for long term control of a commodity that gives them power over the entire planet.
Good luck with that greedheads – I just don’t see it happening. Especially not when one considers that understanding of the amerikan political process by Iraqi leaders (puppet and resistance) post invasion has always been far ahead of any amerikan leader’s insight into the Iraqi political culture.
A well timed insurrection during the amerikan election campaign will take most bets off the table. That is why ‘the enemy’ (ie Iraqi patriots) are being paid off with money and arms. The dingbats imagine Iraqis can be bought off as easily as a Central American ‘state’ that has been around in current format all of 150 years and whose ‘national identity’ was largely a figment of spanish colonists’ imagination.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 15 2007 3:58 utc | 20

One More Cruel Hoax: Iraqi Refugees Return
By John Ross
The entire article is a good read, but some highlights are snipped and pasted below:

[snip]
The 1600 families who had reportedly returned daily during October were more like 50, a representative of the bus line chartered by the Maliki government to bring them home, told Cave. Once more, thousands were still fleeing Baghdad – more than were returning according to a bulletin issued by the Iraqi Red Crescent. Those on the run were mostly being forced into internal displacement – traffic between Baghdad and Damascus has been greatly diminished because the Syrian government is no longer issuing temporary visas to Iraqis seeking sanctuary. In fact, some of the would-be refugees being turned back at the border may have been counted into Moussawi’s numbers.
[snip]
The internally displaced are the most vulnerable. Herded into ragtag desert camps where violence and disease are epidemic, they face a harsh winter with little resource – UNHCR calculates that half the refugees are children. Some, having been refused residency by 11 out of Iraq’s 18 provincial governments, have taken up Maliki’s offer of a million dinars ($800 USD) and are returning to Baghdad but nowhere in the numbers that Maliki claims. According to the displacement ministry, only 4300 families, 25,000 Iraqis, have availed themselves of the stipend. UNHCR tallies indicate that 28,000 Iraqis, 3000 more than returned, left Baghdad in October.
[snip]
Given the difficulties and disappointments of exile, some refugees have packed up and gone back – but they are driven by desperation rather than the false promises of improved security in Baghdad, one Iraqi activist in Amman affirms. An UNHCR survey of 110 Iraqis returning from Syria in October found that most were on the bus because they had run out of money or the stress of making a living had grown too onerous or simply because their visas had expired. “This is not the time to promote, organize, or encourage return,” UNHCR spokesperson Jennifer Paconis told a Damascus press conference. “There is no sign of large scale repatriation as the security situation remains volatile in many parts of Iraq.”
The stories that Sasha Crow and Mary Madsen, the founders of the Pacific Northwest-based Collateral Repair Project, have been hearing as they trudge the sewage-strewn back streets of Amman, are heartbreaking. But despite the hardships they face, few families will be going home soon.

Posted by: Rick | Dec 15 2007 7:15 utc | 22

& if people are nervous about perceiving this as a war if anhilation – then i would like to move to another continent where this war of anhilation i clearly in progress. b real & others have been exhaustive in their researches here to make this clear. their evidence of this war of anhilation follows the facts with great precision
4 million people have died in zaire – democratic republic of congo – 4 fucking million – & the imperialists role in this slaughter is categoric. in africa imperialism is harvesting death cultivating corrupt clans as the singer fema kuti so clearly sang
the slaughter in the sixties in south east asia -whether it was indonesia or the phillipines gave birth to the kinds of suppliant tyrannies that still rule from the roll of dollars
but of course numbers mean nothing to the imperialists – they don’t do body counts
& their media have great difficulty with numbers – wherever they are – today their was a demonstration – where the camera clearly show hundreds of thousands – they say there is a thousand or two
in their coverage of venezuela – they had someone do close shots in all the demonstrations of support for chavez because it would have exposed their lies
but in the end the mass of people don’t matter. if they do not become potential consumers then they are better off dead
that is the real calculus of capitalism

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 15 2007 19:12 utc | 24