US Mercenaries (oh of course we mean "contractors") gone wild.

Here's a shock. When you hire mercenaries who have no stake in Iraq other than making huge gobs of tax-funded money, they really don't care who they kill. Just another reality of war that has been ignored for years by the Bushie dreamers.

The Iraqi "government" is making threats that they will kick the company involved (most likely Blackwater USA) out of the country. Yeah, that'll happen.

This is so sadly true:

This is floating around in the email-verse. Don't know who wrote it. It's a tad long but it says a lot about the psychology of our tenure in Iraq:

Economics professors have a standard game they use to demonstrate how apparently rational decisions can create a disastrous result. They call it a "dollar auction." The rules are simple. The professor offers a dollar for sale to the highest bidder, with only one wrinkle: the second-highest bidder has to pay up on their losing bid as well. Several students almost always get sucked in. The first bids a penny, looking to make 99 cents. The second bids 2 cents, the third 3 cents, and so on, each feeling they have a chance at something good on the cheap. The early stages are fun, and the bidders wonder what possessed the professor to be willing to lose some money.

The problem surfaces when the bidders get up close to a dollar. After 99 cents the last vestige of profitability disappears, but the bidding continues between the two highest players. They now realize that they stand to lose no matter what, but that they can still buffer their losses by winning the dollar. They just have to outlast the other player. Following this strategy, the two hapless students usually run the bid up several dollars, turning the apparent shot at easy money into a ghastly battle of spiraling disaster.

Theoretically, there is no stable outcome once the dynamic gets going. The only clear limit is the exhaustion of one of the player's total funds. In the classroom, the auction generally ends with the grudging decision of one player to "irrationally" accept the larger loss and get out of the terrible spiral. Economists call the dollar auction pattern an irrational escalation of commitment.

We might also call it the war in Iraq.

We will probably hit the "exhaustion of...total funds" in blood, treasure and the patience of the American people in the next year o r so. But if the GOP wins in 08, exhaustion won't matter, only disaster.

As usual, FOX sucks

Guess which broadcast network refused to air the Democratic response to W's blah-blah-blah last night? Can they be more blatant?

A new Crusader state in the MIddle East

So last night W. said that we will have a long-term pact of some sort with the government in Iraq. Here's what that means, in non-Texan: The US will take over whatever government is there, and pretty much run the show that the Iraqi's can't (yeah, that'll work.) At least 130,000 of our troops will stay in Iraq, pretty much forever.

I cannot but be reminded of the doomed kingdoms that Europeans set up after 1099 in the Holy Land. The Kingdoms were run by nobles who eventually assimilated to the Islamic world, basically because the West bailed on them. Even so, the Islamic world, starting with Saladin and finishing up with the Mamluks, encapsulated and eventually smothered the Latin lands.

Like a Crusader King, Bush is intent on creating a doomed Western state in a region that will not tolerate it. The Islamic world, for all its volitility, is patient. Far more patient than we are.

Bush has made a thousand-year-old mistake. He's about to make it even worse.

Your Modern Republican Party: GOP Activist get five years for sexual assault

Remember the name Erin Flory. This guy is a sleaze and a pathetic wimp. And oh yeah, the long-time leader of the Michigan Federation of Young Republicans. Read the whole article (even if you have to give them your zip and age to read page 2) and prepare to be outraged. This big he-man cried like a baby in front of the judge at his sentencing, whining that his son needed his father. The boy is better off without this a-hole, that's for sure. First he "assaults" a totally drunk young woman, then slimes her in the state GOP. Nice. (The state dropped the rape charge in the plea deal. You know what that means...)

Chivalry, thy name is Republican. Here's hoping that five years in the big house opens this guys eyes to what sexual assault is really all about.

BTW, I wonder how many other cases like this there are? Just like Larry Craig and the other closeted GOPers, you gotta know there are probably more like this. Even locally, there are some rumors...

HITYLHMIDTRP?

And The right-wing nutjobs say that dissent is unpatriotic!

Well eat this , you sanctimonious, cowardly, stay-at-home armchair generals: two of the eleven brave soldiers who wrote an article dissenting from our Iraq policy have JUST DIED SERVING THEIR COUNTRY IN IRAQ!

They understood duty, but they also understood their right to dissent, and that they fight to protect OUR right to dissent.

So Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, sign up or shut up! The deaths of these two fine soldiers is the final straw. The coffins of these heroes rest on the doorstep of the Republican Party. Their lunacy, incompetence, fear-mongering and right-wing utopianism make a mockery of our soldiers' sacrifice.

I try not to give in to hate. Today's news makes it almost impossible, really.

Please join me in making the Republican party a figment of the past, a fading nightmare, in 2008. It is the only hope our nation has.

HITYLHMIDTRP?

Dark Future

Well, I've been having some dark premonitions, given what is out there on the wires. The Neocon spin amchine is whirring away on Iraq, and I think the fear-conditioning that the right-wing has put over on the Dems is going to do the trick again. The Bush Report (NOT the "Petreus Report". The good General will be telling Congress exactly what Bush wants him to.) is due Monday. It will be a total whitewash, but it will drive policy and we will keep troop levels high in Iraq until the middle of next year. Then the gopers will get scared and try and get W to bring some more guys home.

Now, you know I am susceptible to the argument that it is our moral duty to fix Iraq to the extent that we can, but at the same time, we can NEVER forget who caused this horrible nightmare: REPUBLICANS! We must make them pay for their folly with powerlessness for the next several generations. And after they do regain power, we must knock them down again. The world cannot survive their zenophobia, greed, incompetence, and mendacity.

Back to the premonitions: After Bush gets the spineless Congress to give him another gazillion bucks for Iraq, he WILL bomb Iran. That will happen before he leaves office, perhaps even early next year.

I have learned that we can often over-estimate the power of nations we invade or bomb, only to be reminded of the invincible power and incredible skill of our conventional armed forces. Where we have problems is in asymetrical war. Iran may be smart enough to be planning for asymmetry from the get-go. They may be preparing a huge PR campaign to make the most of 'co-lateral damage' ie: dead women and children. They may have cells in place in Lebanon and Syria to inititate all sorts of horror. They may clog the Straits of Hormuz. They may do everything they can to turn an attack on them into a region-wide firestorm. And if they are not working with Bin Laden now, they certainly will be after we bomb them.

Mark my words. Bush will bomb Iran. Then the real darkness will come.