Sacrifice = Surge + Accelerate (ominous Olbermann)

Politics International Politics
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From Olbermann…

[quote]…
If in your presence an individual tried to sacrifice an American serviceman or woman, would you intervene?

Would you at least protest?

What if he had already sacrificed 3,003 of them?

What if he had already sacrificed 3,003 of them – and was then to announce his intention to sacrifice hundreds, maybe thousands, more?

This is where we stand tonight with the BBC report of President Bush’s “new Iraq strategy,” and his impending speech to the nation, which, according to a quoted senior American official, will be about troop increases and “sacrifice.”
…
But from our impeccable reporter at the Pentagon, Jim Miklaszewski, tonight comes confirmation of something called “surge and accelerate” – as many as 20,000 additional troops --f or “political purposes” …
[/quote]

This is interesting. Is Bush testing the waters before diving in? I guess everyone knows what he’s gonna do.

This related (motivationally speaking) link goes to the tenth-most popular article on AlterNet last year. It basically exposes how Bush has almost already acomplished his true mission of delivering a really sweet deal to his real employers.
Bush’s Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq’s Oil

Sorry, just for fun, I want to quote this bit of Olbermann wrath:

[quote]Then there is the argument that to take any steps toward reducing troop numbers would show weakness to the enemy in Iraq, or to the terrorists around the world.

This simplistic logic ignores the inescapable fact that we have indeed already showed weakness to the enemy, and to the terrorists.

We have shown them that we will let our own people be killed for no good reason.

We have now shown them that we will continue to do so.

We have shown them our stupidity.[/quote]

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I guess that the midterm elections have really changed things right? We are going to see a whole new power paradigm in Washington as the Democrats have swept both houses, right? haha

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Woot! Woot! Woot!

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Impeachment, as ever, is the only hope.

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Impeachment? But Pelosi has been speaker not even a day!

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Olbermann hits the nail on the head here – how much longer are people going to sit by idly while Bush and his diehard “Bush can do no wrong” Republican supporters continue to kill American servicemen? I know the word “kill” is a bit “sensitive” to the GOPpers, but I think it’s warranted.

Nobody blames NASA for the occasional astronaut death given the extraordinary effort that they put into astronaut safety. If they get blamed for anything, it’s perhaps the economic costs of all these safety efforts, but nobody realistically argues that NASA is careless, cavalier or cowboyesque in their consideration of risks and efforts to avoid loss of American lives.

Bush wants to fight wars “on the cheap” but it’s clearly pound-foolish thinking. Time and time again we’ve seen an administration that doesn’t want to listen to anybody – not the 9-11 Commission, not the Iraq Study Group, not their own generals, not anybody. When you tote it up, the Bush administration has done a great job of playing right into OBL’s hands – lots of mistakes, many of them which either decreased our ability to fight al Qaeda, helped terrorist recruitment, or put Americans into the way of needless harm. So while Bush refers to the next invasion he’s got planned as a “Crusade”, shouts for the terrorists to “bring it on” and otherwise leaps before he looks, my sense is that we’ve all got fair warning about his tendency to do things that get American troops killed in ways that only add to the dangers faced by the American nation and its people.

Given this tendency of Bush and his solid record of failure, I can only surmise that Bush’s unflagging supporters – either those who support “staying the course” or for simply adding more troops as a stopgap measure – are taking ghoulish delight in the deaths of Americans. Shame on them.

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I don’t think you really believe this, but it sure does sound dramatic, doesn’t it? :unamused:

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I don’t think you really believe this, but it sure does sound dramatic, doesn’t it? :unamused:[/quote]

Unflagging supporters? Seems that they’re pretty scarce these days. Even the neocons are starting to cry foul, saying that Bush didn’t properly implement their grand imperial plans – whining along the lines of Perle and Kristol’s claims that poor execution was the only flaw. Still, it’s important to consider them as they form the nucleus of the Bush government.

Taking the NASA comparison a bit further – the loss of a capsule and a couple of space shuttles has been accepted with the understanding that they are not cavalier with the lives of Americans. How would we feel after the 3005th astronaut had died after being launched into space on the failed plan of strapping a Buick to a rocket booster? Would we not then accuse the NASA folks of being ghoulish in their dogged pursuit of a failed plan?

If Bush and his diehard followers (a dwindling and rare number but, based on his premium placed on staff loyalty, still an essential part of his inner circle) wish to disregard nonpartisan experts’ analysis of the Iraq situation, then of course it’s their fault. However, what is the responsibility of average Americans to intervene – to protest, to demand change, to take action – when we see our president and his key “advisers” taking further actions that hurt our entire nation. Deliberate pursuit of a Buick-strapped-to-a-rocket strategy in the face of all logic and national interest may require an intervention.

Impeachment, anyone?

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Impeachment is intended for actual crimes, not for policies (even unpopular ones). The U.S. Constitution assumes that the president (even an unpopular one) ought to control foreign policy, and Congress has been reluctant to be seen as interfering with this. If he had asked to double troop levels they wouldn’t have funded it, but a 20 % “surge” is hard to say no to. They don’t want to give the impression of interfering with his prerogatives as Commander-in-Chief.

I saw a fascinating analysis of the situation a few days ago at juancole.com, by a Russian chess-player. Her take on this was Saddam’s execution was timed so as to cause maximum uproar among Muslims. Soon we can expect some sort of attack to be blamed on Iran, leading to an expansion of the war to that country. The forces necessary to a counterattack will be in place, she says, after the first two weeks of January. She goes on to predict a loss not only for the U.S. forces, but for various U.S. interests in the Middle East (including Israel and Saudi Arabia).

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EDIT: mispost, apologies. Nothing to see here, move along…

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[quote=“Screaming Jesus”]Impeachment is intended for actual crimes, not for policies (even unpopular ones). The U.S. Constitution assumes that the president (even an unpopular one) ought to control foreign policy, and Congress has been reluctant to be seen as interfering with this. If he had asked to double troop levels they wouldn’t have funded it, but a 20 % “surge” is hard to say no to. They don’t want to give the impression of interfering with his prerogatives as Commander-in-Chief.

I saw a fascinating analysis of the situation a few days ago at juancole.com, by a Russian chess-player. Her take on this was Saddam’s execution was timed so as to cause maximum uproar among Muslims. Soon we can expect some sort of attack to be blamed on Iran, leading to an expansion of the war to that country. The forces necessary to a counterattack will be in place, she says, after the first two weeks of January. She goes on to predict a loss not only for the U.S. forces, but for various U.S. interests in the Middle East (including Israel and Saudi Arabia).[/quote]

When Bush attacks Iran this year while we’re mired in Iraq will that be an impeachable offense? Is there no defense in a democratic society against national suicide at the hands of a religious fanatic?

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If the current crop of Dems in Congress scratch the surface of the Bush administration boil, my sense is that there will be quite an eruption. Compared to the GOP’s view that Clinton’s weenie* was worthy of impeachment, there are plenty of valid questions about what Bush has been up to with his NSA snooping, the torture of prisoners, and even the tight relations between top White House officials and the Abramoff gang.

*by this I mean Clinton’s penis, not George Stephanopoulos or Paul Begala, of course

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Spook:

In order to “impeach” him, they’d have to accuse him of a crime. Invading another country wouldn’t qualify, though I’d imagine they could find something else to pin on him (like financial corruption).

If he goes crazy–I mean, clinically speaking–then there is some sort of contingency plan. I can’t remember how it goes, but I believe some combination of the vice president and the cabinet would have to vote on it. You know–his own people.

If Congress really, really doesn’t like what he’s doing, they could (a) refuse to fund it, and / or (b) pass a law against it. That would leave the U.S. without any effective foreign policy whatsoever. I mean, worse than it is now… (Oh, you know.)

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[quote]The American officials said Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, formally agreed in a long teleconference on Thursday with Mr. Bush to match the American troop increase, made up of five combat brigades that would go in at a rate of roughly one a month, by sending three more Iraqi brigades to Baghdad over the next month and a half.

Nonetheless, even in outlining the plan, some American officials acknowledged deep skepticism about whether the new plan could succeed.

They said two-thirds of the promised Iraqi force would consist of Kurdish pesh merga units to be sent from northern Iraq, and they said some doubts remained about whether they would show up in Baghdad and were truly committed to quelling sectarian fighting.[/quote]

nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/middleeast

Really? While I have no doubt that the peshmerga would happily take out as many Baathist insurgents as they can, does anyone really think that Maliki is going to turn them on the Shiite militias- or that they’d listen if he did?

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Hey, better the Pesh Merga than anybody else.

I guess this means the U.S. will owe Kurdistan one…?

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There is so much wrong with the Bush presidency that I think once a few investigations/oversight get underway it will be no problem to find something impeachment-worthy under the much-lowered bar set by the Republicans in their impeachment of Clinton. “High crimes and misdemeanors” is fairly broad. With 6 years of lockstep protection from a Republican congress, one can reasonably suspect that where there’s smoke there’s probably some fire. Once some of the heinous truths start to emerge, that 2/3 of the Senate necessary for conviction should fall into place.

Perhaps go for a “two for one” deal – impeach both Bush and Cheney at the same time.

As to Iraq contributing troops, they’ve got plenty of “troops” if one counts in the militias that hate us and the people who have been brought into power through Maliki and his gang. From the hanging of Saddam Hussein we can see that many of the execution guards are strong adherents of al Sadr – the same group of folks who killed Casey Sheehan and many other Americans, by the way.

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On what options the U.S. Congress has (for restricting President Bush, if that’s really what they want), here’s an article from the Christian Science Monitor:

csmonitor.com/2007/0111/p01s03-uspo.html