(h/t Heather at VideoCafe)

From This Week with George Stephanopoulos, the Pentagon released the names this week of 25 servicemembers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Army SPC Eric N Lembke, 25, of Tampa, FL
Army PFC Kimble A Han, 30, of Lehi, UT
Marine Cpl Gregory MW Fleury, 23, of Anchorage, AK
Marine Capt Eric A Jones, 29, of Westchester, NY
Marine Capt David S Mitchell, 30, of Loveland, OH
Marine Capt Kyle R Van De Giesen, 29, of North Attleboro, MA
Army SGT Eduviges G Wolf, 24, of Hawthorne, CA
Army PFC Devin J Michel, 19, of Stockton, IL
Army SPC Brandon K Steffey, 23, of Sault Sainte Marie, MI
Marine LCpl Cody R Stanley, 21, of Rosanky, TX
Army SSG Luis M Gonzalez, 27, of South Ozone Park, NY
Army SGT Fernando Delarosa, 24, of Alamo, TX
Army SGT Dale R Griffin, 29, of Terre Haute, IN
Army SGT Issac B Jackson, 27, of Plattsburg, MO
Army SGT Patrick O Williamson, 24, of Broussard, LA
Army SPC Jared D Stanker, 22, of Evergreen Park, IL
Army PFC Christopher I Walz, 25, of Vancouver, WA
Army CWO Michael P Montgomery, 36, of Savannah, GA
Army CWO Niall Lyons, 40, of Spokane, WA
Army SSG Shawn H McNabb, 24, of Terrell, TX
Army SGT Josue E Hernandez Chavez, 23, of Reno, NV
Army SGT Nikolas A Mueller, 26, of Little Chute, WI
Army SFC David E Metzger, 32, of San Diego, CA
Army SSG Keith R Bishop, 28, of Medford, NY
Army SCP Robert K Charlton, 22, of Malden, MO

In addition, 3 agents from the DEA and an American UN security guard were killed in Afghanistan.

This week's casualties bring the total number of allied servicemembers killed in Iraq to 4,673; in Afghanistan, 1,502. During the same period, Iraq Body Count lists 69 Iraqi civilians killed. This has been the deadliest month for US forces in Afghanistan since the beginning of the invasion.

(Manuel Noriega 1989 - The smuggled cocaine turned out to be Tamales)

Twenty years ago this December we were busy overthrowing yet another government whose defacto head just happened to be on our CIA payroll. Sound familiar? Well, Manuel Noriega ran afoul of the Bush(Sr.) administration and, amidst a flurry of propaganda, set-ups and allegations, we landed a good sized invasion force in Panama and promptly unseated our former "buddy" and installed a more sympathetic head.

Face The Nation ran a q&a between Leslie Stahl, Deputy Secretary of State Bernard Aronson and Les Aspin (D-Wisconsin) on the fallout of the invasion and what was next.

Leslie Stahl: “Have we created a situation where he’s no longer the issue, and we’re the issue? I guess the main question right now is why didn’t our government plan for the situation that did develop, which was chaos and anarchy, and why wasn’t more done to build support or to anticipate the problems the new government would have? Endara, the man we did . . helped install says that when we came to him the night before or the night of our invasion it was like a punch in the stomach, he didn’t expect it, he hadn’t formed a government, he hadn’t thought about forming a government . . . .

Aronson: “That’s actually not true. He had done an awful lot of work in trying to form a government and plan a government. And I think one indication of that is in five days he’s named a senior Minister. He’s named a new commander for the public forces and a new deputy commander. His White House . . . U.S. Ambassador has already arrived in Washington, taking control of the embassy. His U.N. Ambassador has been named and gone to New York. His OAS Ambassador has been named. And in fact their new Ambassador told me they had a new economic team they wanted to send to Washington. So I . . what he was saying he didn’t know in advance that this military operation was coming and he was taken by surprise, and obviously he didn’t know, we didn’t know, it happened as a dangerously deteriorating situation.”

At the time of this broadcast (Sunday morning December 24), Noriega hadn't given himself up yet, and there was speculation this would be a drawn out operation with no plan in sight.

However, that changed within a matter of hours as Noriega gave himself up, and for some bizarre reason was arrested on a Cocaine charge (which turned out to be a bag of tamales . . .so go figure).

All part of our somewhat baffling foreign policy the last hundred or so years.

(h/t Heather)

Via Buzzflash. Yes, even the former Texas congressman who was single-handedly dragged us into our initial entanglement in Afghanistan thinks we should get out:

The U.S. military's ongoing conflict in Afghanistan is a movie Charlie Wilson has seen before, and he isn't thrilled with where the plot of this one is going.

"I think they're looking at us more and more like occupiers," he said.

[...] Out of Congress since 1997, Mr. Wilson is now 76 and two years removed from a heart transplant. Because of that, he has significantly reduced his public speaking schedule.

"I actually committed to this one a long time ago. I don't make so many anymore," he said during a recent phone interview from his home in Texas.

Most of his talk will center on Afghanistan, from his covert dealings there in the '80s to its present situation. No doubt he'll be comparing and contrasting the Soviets' experience to what the American military is going through now in its fight against the Taliban.

"I want to make them understand the dilemmas the (Obama) administration is under," Mr. Wilson said. "It's a very tough situation."

Mr. Wilson was better known for his hard partying ways - his nickname was Good Time Charlie - than for his policy credentials when he became deeply interested in Afghanistan a couple of years after the Soviets' 1979 invasion.

"I decided the Afghans were really going to put up a fight," he said. "Basically, I just wanted to embarrass the Soviets as much as possible. Then I got into it big time."

Using his seat on the House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, he was able secure enough funds for the CIA to arm the mujahideen freedom fighters with automatic weapons and Stinger missiles.

"It was harder than it sounds," Mr. Wilson said. "We had to buy Russian-made weapons. We had to deal with Poland and Romania. That was all pretty intricate."

The weapons paid off for the Islamic fighters, and the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. Mr. Wilson's efforts were documented by author George Crile in the book "Charlie Wilson's War," which was adapted into the 2007 movie starring Tom Hanks as Mr. Wilson.

Of course, the story didn't end with the withdrawal. Mr. Wilson believes that the United States' failure to invest in Afghanistan's recovery following the war led in large part to the ascension of the Taliban, who provided a refuge for Osama bin Ladin, who had fought with the mujahideen against the Soviets, and Al Qaeda in the years leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"We (screwed) up the end game," Mr. Wilson said. "It would have been very easy and done for a minuscule amount of money. We should have done the basic things for a backward country that's trying to come out of (a war) and have a reasonable hope of economic success."

As President Obama considers whether to send tens of thousands of more troops to Afghanistan, Mr. Wilson worries that the war could become "another Vietnam."

"It's probably best to make a calculated withdrawal," he said. "If I were the president, I'm not sure what I'd do. I'd probably shut it down, rather than lose a lot of soldiers and treasure."

He says this as someone who knows as well as anyone just how fierce and tenacious the Afghan fighters are.

"I'd rather take on a chainsaw," Mr. Wilson said. "They're the world's best foot soldiers, best warriors. And they're fearless.

"They're fearless, and they've got nothing to lose. And they have a pretty serious hatred for those who try to occupy their country."

Leonard Cohen played last night at Ramat Gan stadium in Tel Aviv last night, despite pleas from protesters pleas that he not play Israel in boycott of its last invasion of Gaza. Cohen, ever the class act, responded by offering to play in Ramallah and having the proceeds from both shows go to Israel-Palestine peace organizations.

From a protest in New York with a very un-subtle parody of Cohen's "Democracy":

(h/t CSPANjunkie)
The Afghan war is going very badly and support is shrinking. I heard Michael Ware say on CNN (above clip) that the big multimillion dollar Highway #1 which runs from Kabul to Kandahar that we repaved has been almost destroyed and the Taliban can attack at will. Drivers are left completely exposed to attacks, but what choice do Afghan truckers have?
More troop losses are mounting....

Eight soldiers have died on a bloody day for US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Three died in a roadside bombing in northern Iraq - the US military's deadliest single incident in five months - and one died in Baghdad.

Four soldiers died in what was described as a "complex attack" in Kunar province, eastern Afghanistan.

Violence in Afghanistan is at a record high, while attacks have increased in Iraq since a US-led pull-back in July.
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In Afghanistan, violence has surged to a record high eight years after the US-led invasion which toppled the Taliban.

Some 820 US soldiers are thought to have died in Afghanistan in those eight years.

The Bush administration mishandled their other war so badly that violence has spiked almost eight years laterand accusations of voter fraud are flying around.

Afghanistan’s UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission ordered a recount and examination of some ballots in the Aug. 20 presidential election, saying it had found “clear and convincing evidence of fraud” in the vote.

The order came as results released by the country’s election authority showed President Hamid Karzai nearing the majority of votes required -- 50 percent plus one vote -- to be elected. It was the first official confirmation of fraud that independent election monitors say risks undermining the credibility of the vote and the next Afghan government.

The media would like us to forget that this is another Bush/Cheney disaster, but it is and the troops have to pay the ultimate price for getting us into another quagmire. This is the next political battle after health care in DC, but we're hitting it on the net now. After eight years the war is in even worse condition no matter what Joe Lieberman has to say.

Rachel Maddow doesn't back down an inch in what was really a pretty amazing interview with Tom Ridge. Amazing in that we haven't seen enough of them and how sad it was these kind of questions weren't asked of the Bush administration by anyone in the press before we invaded that country. At the end of what was a three part interview, Rachel calls Ridge out for his attempt at revisionist history.

Rachel asks him if he still believes that Iraq had WMD and Ridge says he does not. She asks him if he really doesn't believe that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld "had any role in skewing the intelligence to a foregone conclusion" and "an intelligence community error and not a politicized decision". Ridge of course says that no one in the Bush administration would have done something like that and that he believed that they just wanted to keep the country safe.

Maddow: I think that is an eloquent argument and I have to tell you….I think you making, I think you making that argument right now is why Republicans after the Bush and Cheney administration are not going to get back the country’s trust on national security. To look back at that decision and say we got it wrong but it was in good faith and not acknowledge the foregone conclusion that we were going to invade Iraq that pervaded every decision that was made about intelligence, looking back at that decision making process, it sounds like you’re making the argument you would have made the same decision again.

Americans need to believe that our government would not make that wrong a decision, would not make such a foregone, take such a foregone conclusion to such an important issue that the counter, the intelligence that proved the opposite point was all discounted, that the intelligence was combed through for any bit that would support the foregone conclusion of the policy makers. The system was broken and if you don’t see that the system was broken and you think that it was just that the Intel was wrong, I think that you’re one of the most trusted voices on national security for the Republican Party, and I think that’s the elephant in the room.

I don’t think you guys get back your credibility on national security until you realize, that was a wrong decision made by policy makers, it wasn’t the spies fault.

Ridge: Well, I think you’re suggesting that it was only being driven by quite obviously, the people who made the decision knew more about the threat than you and I do, and again I think it’s a, it’s a pretty radical conclusion to suggest the men and women entrusted with the safety of this country would predicate a decision upon any other basis than to keep America safe. Late on it may have proven that some of the information was inaccurate, but there were plenty of reasons to go into Iraq at the time, the foremost were the weapons of mass destruction. That obviously had proven to be faulty. But the fact of the matter is at that time, given what they knew, they knew more than you and I did, it seemed to be the right thing to do and the decision was made in what they considered to be the best interest of our country.

We’ve been litigating it now for about five or six years. I guess we’re going to continue to litigate it and historians and the final history hasn’t been written because of Iraq. If some form of self government, some form of democracy ultimately is achieved in Iraq and it’s not going to look exactly like ours, but you know, the Muslim world does admire freedom of speech. The Muslim world does admire democracy. As difficult as it is over there, the notion that we went in improperly will be obviously reversed and the history is yet to be written. Democracy in Iraq…

Maddow: Reversed?

Ridge: Well, yeah. Democracy in Iraq will make a huge difference not just for the men and women and the people and the families in Iraq, but for the entire region for a lot of reasons.

Maddow: If you can go back in time and sell the American people on the idea that 4000 Americans ought to lose their lives and we ought to lose those trillions of dollars for democracy in Iraq, you have a wilder imagination than I do. We were sold that war because of 9-11. We were sold that war because of the threat of weapons of mass destruction and this guy didn’t have them and our government should have known it and frankly, a lot of people believe that our government did know it and that it was a cynical decision and maybe everybody wasn’t in on it and maybe that is a radical thing to conclude...

Ridge: Well, I don’t share that point of view. I know you do. I’m not going to convince you and you’re not going to convince me, but I really appreciate the civil way we’ve had this discussion. In frankly I think it would advance our interest as a country a lot further and a lot faster if we could have the discussion such as this.

(A little close to home)

I think I heard this song once when it first came out in 1970 and only on an FM station. Needless to say, it didn't race up the charts.

From the best I can figure out, Fresh weren't actually a real band, but the brainchild of producers Ray Singer and Simon Napier-Bell, producers responsible for a lot of 60's hits in Britain. The musicians listed were Roger Chantler, drums Kevin Francis, bass and Bob Gorman, guitar. There were only two albums issued by this "group": Fresh Out Of Borstal and Fresh Today. And then nothing.

So Stoned In Saigon was an anti-war anthem that came out just around the time anti-war sentiment was at a high. In 1970 we had the invasion Cambodia and the shootings at Kent State and word back in the states was drug use was rampant in Vietnam.

So needless to say, I think the song's heart was in the right place, but it's sentiment was probably a little too close to home for the casual Rock Radio listener.

In any event - here it is.

So we'll see. It's quite a mess we've created over there, and this is only the first step on the long road back to anything approaching normal:

BAGHDAD, June 30 -- This is no longer America's war.

Iraqis danced in the streets and set off fireworks Monday in impromptu celebrations of a pivotal moment in their nation's troubled history: Six years and three months after the March 2003 invasion, the United States on Tuesday is withdrawing its remaining combat troops from Iraq's cities and turning over security to Iraqi police and soldiers.

While more than 130,000 U.S. troops remain in the country, patrols by heavily armed soldiers in hulking vehicles as of Wednesday will largely disappear from Baghdad, Mosul and Iraq's other urban centers.

"The Army of the U.S. is out of my country," said Ibrahim Algurabi, 34, a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen now living in Arizona who attended a concert of celebration in Baghdad's Zawra Park. "People are ready for this change. There are a lot of opportunities to rebuild our country, to forget the past and think about the future."

On Monday, as the withdrawal deadline loomed, four U.S. troops were killed in the Iraqi capital, the military announced Tuesday. No details about the deaths were provided. Another soldier was killed Sunday in a separate attack.

Some American troops have expressed concern about becoming more exposed after the withdrawal, because Iraqis will have unprecedented authority over U.S. military operations. U.S. commanders have said they were bracing for an uptick of attacks from extremist groups during the transition period, which occur almost daily, and will rely heavily on Iraq's security forces for protection in the months ahead.

The withdrawal has also created enormous fear and uncertainty among many Iraqis, who believe that the U.S. military pullback will open the door for insurgents to increase their attacks. On Monday, some normally congested streets were virtually deserted after dark, as Iraqis appeared to heed warnings of impending attacks by insurgents. But city streets were also largely empty of Humvees and U.S. troops.

Those Iraqis who ventured out were in the mood to party, celebrating a moment that the Iraqi government has said represents its return to full sovereignty.

From Washington Journal June 4, 2009. Lindsey Graham is told by a caller that the Republican party should apologize for the invasion of Iraq. Graham refuses to apologize and defends the invasion.

Graham: I am very proud of what we've been able to accomplish in Iraq and I am very sad that we made so many mistakes on the way. We never had enough troops. We were stubborn about adjusting our policies on the ground, but we finally did. I am very proud of President Obama understanding that we have to get it right in Iraq.

I am glad Saddam Hussein is out of power. I am glad he's dead. And I am glad the Iraqi people, Sunni, Shia and Kurds have a chance to start over. I think it would be a wonderful thing for this world to have a representative democracy in the heart of the Mid-East in the Arab world and I wish, quite frankly, in Cairo President Obama would have acknowledged the bravery of the Iraqi people to turn on al Qaeda. I think we underestimate what happened in Iraq.

One of the great stories of the Iraqi war here has been that the population in Iraq took up arms against al Qaeda and that's the way we win this war. We can't kill all the terrorists to win the war. We try to empower moderate people. People like exist in Iraq of different groups to stand up against these thugs and murderers that would oppress women and children and people all over the world that would take us into the dark ages.

So I have no apology for what we're doing in Iraq. I regret the mistakes we made, but I'm proud of the Iraqi people and I'm proud of our soldiers who have helped them chart a new way that will make you safer and make me safer and President Obama has got I think the correct view about how to move forward.

By Senator Graham's standards, just how many other countries would it be alright for the United States to invade? Graham of course is still trying to conflate Saddam Hussein with the attacks on 9-11 without coming out and saying as much. Graham also refuses to address the number of dead and displaced Iraqis that are a result of the U.S. invading a country that was never a threat to us.

There is plenty of blame to go around and a great number of people on both sides of the aisle in Washington D.C. who owe the Iraqis an apology for invading their country. Senator Graham is not willing to accept any of it. Color me not surprised but still disgusted. It would have been nice if the caller had some time left in the show to follow up with him.

  At a press conference today in Tbilsi, Georgia, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a six point deal brokered by French President Sarkozy that would require the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from the disputed territories.

Download | play   Download | play   (h/t Heather)

"The Russian attack on Georgia had profound implications and will have profound implications for Russia's relations with its neighbors and with the world. But our most urgent task today is the immediate and orderly withdrawal of Russian armed forces and the return of those forces to Russia. France has brokered a six part cease fire accord that will achieve that result if it is indeed honored."

Local Georgian news outlet Civil has more.

UPDATE: Georgian President Saakashvili has signed the cease-fire deal.

Rough transcript below the fold:

Continue reading »

Jon Stewart recaps the current situation in Georgia (and the media's ridiculous coverage of it), and calls out President Bush for having the chutzpah to condemn Russia for invading and disrespecting Georgia's sovereignty -- because only reckless bully countries with no disregard for international standards do that kind of stuff.

Download | play Download | play

Stewart: "It'll be very interesting to see what the United States does here. Our invasion of Iraq somewhat hamstrings our options in Georgia, not just militarily, but also dimplomaticly, and I guess you would say, morally? Let's watch our UN Ambsassador Zalmay Khalilzad dance the delicate dance...

Khalilzad: We want to make sure our Russian colleagues understand that the days of overthrowing leaders by miulityary means...

Stewart: Careful, Khalilza. Steady...steady...

Khalilzad: The days of overthrowing leaders by military means in Europe, those days are gone...

Stewart: Yes! He did it! Those days are gone...in Europe. In the Middle East, it's morning in America.