WE REPORT WHAT MAINSTREAM MEDIA DOESN'T REPORT: ATTACKS SPIKE UPWARDS IN IRAQ

The mainstream media in the United States has become a one trick pony. Collectively the media has abandoned all coverage of the Iraq war leaving 160,000 US troops stranded in a country where there is no way a military victory can be achieved. On Sunday alone, this is what happened in Iraq:

SOURCE: http://antiwar.com/ Click on "BLUE" for detailed explanation.

Attacks Continue
Suicide Truck Bomb Kills One, Wounds 18 US Soldiers
Blast Kills Four Iraqi Police Recruits
Five Civilians Killed in Market Attack in Diyala
Sunday: 2 US Soldiers, 27 Iraqis Killed; 55 Iraqis Wounded

ANTI WAR.COM: 2 US SOLDIERS 27 IRAQIS KILLED, 18 AMERICANS, 55 IRAQIS WOUNDED

This blogger has found you have to have a long list of web sites from overseas to find out what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan because you will NEVER hear or read anything about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the mainstream media or on cable news in the United States.

The Anti-War.com web site is one of the best sources for documented evidence of what is happening in both war theaters.

Here is what happened on Sunday in Iraq as reported by Anti-War.com: http://antiwar.com/updates/?articleid=12960


Sunday: 2 US Soldiers, 27 Iraqis Killed; 18 Americans, 55 Iraqis Wounded

Updated at 7:00 p.m. EDT, June 8, 2008

A suicide bomber killed a U.S. soldier and wounded 18 more Americans in northern Iraq. Anoother U.S. soldier was killed during a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad yesterday.

At least 27 people were killed and 55 were injured across Iraq. Meanwhile, Turkey reported striking suspected Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in northern Iraq.

In al-Rashad, a suicide car bomber attacked a U.S. base, killing one soldier and wounding 18 more. Two Iraqis were wounded as well when the bomber drove a bomb hidden under a pile of animal skins into blast walls protecting the base. Police added five civilians to the tally of wounded. A conflicting report said that more soldiers were killed.


Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited Iran and reassured the Iranians that a proposed security deal with the U.S. will not turn Iraq into a launching pad for a U.S. attack on their neighbor. However, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Taqqi al-Mudaressi said that the agreement could start a popular uprising within Iraq itself.

In Baghdad, a explosion killed four police recruits and wounded 23 others at recruitment center in Mansour's Nisoor Square, only a day after another blast left casualties there. Outside the Ministry of Defense in the Green Zone, a mortar explosion killed three people and wounded seven more.

Two policemen and three civilians were wounded during a blast outside the Turkish embassy in Waziriya. In New Baghdad, a bomb targeting a police patrol wounded two policemen and two civilians.

A grenade injured two defense employees in Atifiya. U.S. forces arrested two people suspected of being Iranian-backed militants. Iraqi forces arrested 27 suspects. No casualties were reported after a bombing in Baladiyat.

A body belonging to a policeman was found in Hurriya, while at least three others were found elsewhere.

In Mosul, gunmen killed three policemen and wounded five people, including civilians. Two women were injured when U.S. soldiers conducted a raid that netted six suspects. An al-Qaeda leader was detained as well.

Gunmen fired upon a marketplace in Khanaqin and killed five people.

Gunmen in Aziziya killed six shepherds and set fire to two vehicles.

A roadside bomb killed one person and wounded two others in Iskandariya.

In Baquba, gunmen killed an Awakening Council (Sahwa) member. Seven suspects were arrested in a separate event.

Gunmen killed an Iraqi soldier in Kut.

Ten rockets struck the British base in Basra but no casualties were reported.

THIS SUCKS! WAR BILL WILL HELP IRAQIS, BUT COULD IGNORE KATRINA VICTIMS

War bill helps Iraqis, may ignore Katrina victims

Congress' war bill helps Iraqi refugees, could ignore homeless Hurricane Katrina victims

JOHN MORENO GONZALESAP News
Jun 08, 2008 11:30 EST
http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=203366

A long way from Iraq and the war debate in Washington, Herman Moore sat outside a tent in a downtown New Orleans homeless camp, trying to make sense of a proposal that helps Iraqi war refugees but will likely exclude Hurricane Katrina victims.

"Messed up is not the phrase. I think you know the phrase," Moore said. "This place has been forgotten, just forgotten."

The 56-year-old lifelong city resident is referring to Congress' plan to spend $212 billion to finance the war in Iraq. In the massive spending bill, $350 million is set aside to help Iraqi refugees while just $73 million has been allotted to help shelter physically and mentally disabled Katrina victims — and that money could be cut as early as Tuesday.

Along with funding the war through the first month of the next president's term, the bill provides Jordan's military $100 million and Mexico's armed forces $50 million. In response, lawmakers like Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu have attached over $30 billion to the proposal for what they see as domestic priorities.

However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must trim the bill or face a threatened veto from President Bush. While the California Democrat supports the housing money for 3,000 rent-aid vouchers, it is part of $2.9 billion in Katrina assistance that may end up being cut.

Landrieu said the housing assistance funds are vital to a city that has seen its homeless population double to an estimated 12,000 since the 2005 disaster.

WASHINGTON POST: IRAQ, NOT THE ECONOMY, WILL FRAME POLITICAL DEBATE

The Iraq war has been shoved to the sidelines for over six months now, but today the Washington Post reports Iraq is going to be back center stage when the race for the White House kicks into high gear after Labor Day.

Iraq, Not Economy, Frames the Presidential Debate-

By Perry Bacon Jr.Washington Post Staff WriterSunday, June 8, 2008; A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/07/AR2008060702124.html

With the country confronting a rising jobless rate, soaring gas prices and a shaky stock market, voters say their biggest concern is the economy. But it is the debate over Iraq that could define the contest between Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama.

While pocketbook issues worry many Americans and will be a recurring theme in the campaign, the sharp differences between the two candidates on the war provides the kind of contrast that each would like to emphasize in making his case to be president. The Democratic senator from Illinois is casting a McCain presidency as the third term of George W. Bush; the Republican senator from Arizona argues that Obama does not have the experience or the judgment to be commander in chief.

As Obama was still engaged in his primary contest against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), McCain was hammering at him over Iraq -- criticizing his proposed timetable for withdrawing troops, his opposition to the "surge," his not having visited the country since January 2006 and his not having held one-on-one meetings with Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces there.

In turn, Obama has sharply criticized McCain for his willingness to commit U.S. troops indefinitely in Iraq, and Obama aides consistently speak of the "Bush-McCain" view of foreign policy.

"What's so interesting is, usually in presidential politics, there is some agreement between the parties as to which issues are good for which party," said William Galston, a former domestic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton. "What you have this time is two candidates, each of whom believes they can win the argument over defense and foreign policy."

Susan Rice, an Obama foreign policy adviser, said that "national security is a debate the Obama campaign welcomes," adding: "John McCain is a poster child for the Bush administration's failed foreign policy."

Tucker Bounds, a McCain spokesman, said Obama's positions on Iraq showed "weak judgment" and that he is "just not ready to be commander in chief."

Obama has called for withdrawing most troops from Iraq in his first two years in office, bringing home one or two of the more than 15 brigades there each month. He says he would leave some troops there to defend the U.S. Embassy and to form a special strike force to carry out anti-terrorism missions, although he has not detailed how many troops those initiatives would require.

McCain, in contrast, has adamantly opposed any kind of timetable, arguing that any troop withdrawal from Iraq should depend on the country's security and that setting a timeline would weaken the U.S. effort there.

For McCain, elevating security issues could be crucial to his chances. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll last month, 36 percent of voters said the economy was the top issue in the election, and 6 percent named health care, while about a quarter cited Iraq or national security and the fight against terrorism.

Polls show that voters favor Obama's positions over McCain's on the economy, health care and other domestic issues but that they view McCain as the stronger candidate for combating terrorism. And in last month's Post-ABC poll, 71 percent of voters chose McCain as the candidate with "better experience to be president" while 18 percent chose Obama. The poll showed McCain with a 41-percentage-point advantage on "knowledge of foreign affairs."

On the other hand, more than 60 percent of voters agree with Obama's position that the war in Iraq was not worth fighting. They are about evenly divided, however, about who would handle the war better once in office.

Both candidates seem aware of their vulnerabilities on the issue. In a recent speech, McCain made his first mention of a date for withdrawal, suggesting that he wants a large reduction of troops in Iraq by 2013. Obama has suggested that he will make a trip to Iraq before the election.

The willingness to engage on Iraq does not mean pocketbook issues will not be in the forefront of the campaign. McCain has already run television ads in Ohio touting his economic and health-care plans, while Obama has accused McCain of being out of touch with concerns of people at home and of offering discredited policies from the Bush administration to deal with them.

"This election is going to be dominated by the issues of Iraq and the economy," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

NEWS ALERT: US SOLDIER KILLED AND, 17 WOUNDED IN SUICIDE BOMBING IN KIRKUK

U.S. soldier killed, 17 wounded in suicide bombing in Kirkuk

Kirkuk - Voices of Iraq
Sunday , 08 /06 /2008 Time 11:42:37
http://www.aswataliraq.info/look/english/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrArticle=81811&NrIssue=2&NrSection=1

Kirkuk, Jun 8, (VOI)- U.S. army and Iraqi police said a U.S. service member was killed and 17 more wounded as well as seven Iraqis on Sunday afternoon, when a suicide bomber detonated a car crammed with explosives inside a residential compound near Kirkuk, northern Iraq.

“A U.S. soldier was killed and 17 more were wounded when a suicide bomber detonated a car rigged with explosives near their patrol in al-Rashad district, southwest of Kirkuk,” U.S. media adviser Abdellatif Rayan told Aswat al-Iraq- Voices of Iraq- (VOI).Ryan added “Two Iraqi contractors were also wounded in the attack.”Meanwhile, Brigadier Sarhad Qader of Kirkuk police said that a suicide bomber detonated a car rigged with explosives, this afternoon, targeting two Iraqi-U.S. bases inside al-Noor residential compound at al-Rashad district, 30 km southwest Kirkuk.“The explosion wounded five Iraqi civilians and left unidentified number of casualties among the U.S. troops,” Brigadier Qader said.Kirkuk is 250 km northeast of Baghdad.

WHY DO BUSH AND MEDIA TELL AMERICANS THINGS ARE BETTER IN IRAQ WHEN ALL THIS IS HAPPENING?

The Bush administration and their puppet mouthpiece, FOX NEWS, have long contended things are better in Iraq, but what bothers this blogger is why are the rest of the media going along with this BS when it is obvious to anyone who can read and knows how to do research re conditions in Iraq that Iraq is still a hotbed of violence.

Another U.S. soldier was killed on Sunday in Baghdad and violence and car bombings are going on in virtually every province in Iraq.

The mainstream media in the United States has totally sold out to the Bush administration and the people that are suffering the most for the lack of Iraq war coverage are the 160,000 troops in Iraq and their families back in the United States.

I count 6 bomb or mortar attacks on government forces in Baghdad today, all of them quite effective, plus one fatal attack on U.S. forces, yet the media continues to discuss the "lull in violence" in Iraq. (See below.) One has to wonder what a resurgence in violence would look like. -- C.

The mainstream media in the United States is a total disgrace.

COMMENTARY BY BILL CORCORAN, EDITOR OF CORKSPHERE

Reported Security IncidentsUpdate:
SOURCE: http://warnewstoday.blogspot.com/
NOTE: Click on BLUE for additional details of each death or incident of violence.

Rashad (near Kirkuk): Suicide truck bomb attack on a U.S. patrol base kills 1 U.S. soldier, injures 18.
BaghdadU.S. soldier killed by roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad. No further details at this time.

Mortar attack on Iraqi Defense Ministry compound inside the Green Zone kills 3, injures 7.Bomb planted near the entrance to a police recruiting center in al-Nosoor square, western Baghdad, kills 4 recruits and injures 23.Roadside bomb attacks on two separate police patrols injure 9 people.

First bomb in al-Jadidah, southeastern Baghdad, injures 2 police and 2 civilians. Second bomb in al-Waziriyah, central Baghdad, injures 2 police and 3 civilians.

Suicide car bomber attacks a police patrol in Nisoor square, killing 1 police officer and 1 civilian, and injuring 5 civilians. As far as I can tell this AP report does not correspond to any other incidents reported elsewhere. I'm not sure whether "Nisoor square" is the same as "Nosoor square," but in any case the events described are very different.

Bomb attack on the convoy of police Brig. Gen. Nazar Majeed kills 3 police and 1 civilian, injures 18 people including Gen. Majeed. Again, this does not appear to the correspond to the attack in Al-Jadidah reported by VoI.


U.S. says it has captured a "special groups" leader from Basra, in Baghdad. They claim he was sending "criminals" to Iran for training.Four bodies dead of gunshot wounds found in various places.

KutUnknown gunmen kill an Iraqi soldier. (Kut is the capital of Shiite Wassit province, in the south of Iraq.)AziziyaGunmen kill 5 shepherds and burn two of their vehicles. Not clear what this is all about -- could be sectarian violence, or a clan feud, or common criminality, e.g. an extortion racket. VoI says the attackers were riding on motorcycles, identifies the location as "al-Nahrawan area," northern Wassit.

MosulGunmen attack a police patrol, killing 3 police and injuring 2 police and 3 civilians.

IskandiriyaRoadside bomb kills 1 person, injures 2. The Reuters report does not characterize the target. BaqubaSahwa fighter killed in a drive-by shooting.

Basra British base at the airport attacked with 10 Katyusha rockets, no casualties.

MORE VIOLENCE IN IRAQ. BRITISH BASE IN BASRA HIT BY ROCKET ATTACK

Once again violence is on the rise in Iraq. The Iraq Defense Ministry in the fortified Green Zone was hit by a mortar attack Sunday morning, and also on Sunday rockets were fired into the British base in Basra. No reports of injuries in the Basra attack so far, but three people were killed and seven injured in the Green Zone attack in Baghdad.

British base at Basra airport rocketed

Basra - Voices of Iraq
Sunday , 08 /06 /2008 Time 3:31:28
http://www.aswataliraq.info/look/english/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrArticle=81747&NrIssue=2&NrSection=1

Basra, Jun 8, (VOI)- British forces’ base at Basra airport came under Katyusha rocket attack on Sunday morning with no reports of casualties or damage, a British spokesman said.

“The British base at Basra International Airport was attacked this morning with ten Katyusha rockets,” Captain Chris Ford told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq- (VOI).Captain Ford added “the rockets, which were launched from an area south of Basra, left no casualties or damage.”This is the second time the British base came under attack since 25 March 2008, a day that a large-scale military operation, dubbed Charge of Knights, started in the Shiite predominantly city of Basra with the aim of hunting down “outlaws”, a term used by the Iraqi government to describe the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militiamen.Basra is 590 km south of Baghdad.

MORTAR ROUND KILLS THREE IN GREEN ZONE AND INJURES SEVEN. SHARP RISE IN VIOLENCE IN IRAQ

Mortar kills 3, wounds 7 at entry to Iraqi Defense Ministry building

Baghdad - Voices of Iraq
Sunday , 08 /06 /2008 Time 3:31:28
http://www.aswataliraq.info/look/english/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrArticle=81760&NrIssue=2&NrSection=1

Baghdad, Jun 8, (VOI)- At least three people were killed and seven more wounded on Sunday when a mortar round fell near the gateway to Iraqi Defense Ministry building in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, a police source said.

“A mortar fell onto the Defense Ministry compound inside the Green Zone, today, killing three persons and wounding seven,” the source, who spoke on anonymity condition, told Aswat al-Iraq- Voices of Iraq- (VOI).The fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad is the seat to Iraqi government, parliament and some ministries as well as the foreign embassies in Iraq including the U.S. and British.SK

A PHOTO YOU JUST HAVE TO SEE

Well, well, well. Look who Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is meeting with in Tehran, Iran.

They say a photo is worth 10,000 words and this photo bears out the truth of the old bromide.

One can only wonder if Iraqi PM al-Maliki demanded pre-conditions be met before meeting with the Iranian leader.

http://article.wn.com/view/2008/06/08/Iraqs_Maliki_says_wants_stronger_ties_with_Iran/

CHENEY WANTED TO BOMB IRAN BUT PENTAGON NIXED THE IDEA

Vice President Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney isn't happy that he helped start one war, the Iraq War that so far has cost 4,090 American lives, he wanted to launch an air strike on Iran last summer but the Pentagon put their foot down and stopped the madness.

Cheney, who used six deferments to avoid military service during the Vietnam War, is only to eager to send young Americans into the Middle East in some cockamamie idea of his that we can establish a democracy in the Middle East.

Apparently Cheney never reads the foreign press which shows most of the Iraqi people want the U.S. military OUT of Iraq ASAP, and the plan to set up permanent U.S. bases in Iraq has been met with loud screams from not only members of the Iraqi parliament, but from the Iraqi public as well who do not want the U.S. occupying Iraq forever.

Cheney is a warmonger who ran from putting himself in the uniform of the military of the United States, but he is eager and willing to send as many young people as possible to die or end up wounded in either Iraq or Iran.

BTW: When was the last time Vice President Dick Cheney visited Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital to see what his handiwork has done? You never read about Cheney going to visit the wounded troops. He ONLY makes appearances before troops who have yet to be sent into combat in Iraq or Afghanistan and they are prompted to applaud him on cue.

COMMENTARY BY BILL CORCORAN, EDITOR OF CORKSPHERE

US/IRAN:Fearing Escalation, Pentagon Fought Cheney Plan

Analysis by Gareth Porter*
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42696

WASHINGTON, Jun 6 (IPS) - Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W. Bush administration official.

J. Scott Carpenter, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled in an interview that senior Defence Department (DoD) officials and the Joint Chiefs used the escalation issue as the main argument against the Cheney proposal. McClatchy newspapers reported last August that Cheney had proposal several weeks earlier "launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran", citing two officials involved in Iran policy.

According to Carpenter, who is now at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, a strongly pro-Israel think tank, Pentagon officials argued that no decision should be made about the limited airstrike on Iran without a thorough discussion of the sequence of events that would follow an Iranian retaliation for such an attack.

Carpenter said the DoD officials insisted that the Bush administration had to make "a policy decision about how far the administration would go -- what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks."

The question of escalation posed by DoD officials involved not only the potential of the Mahdi Army in Iraq to attack, Carpenter said, but possible responses by Hezbollah and by Iran itself across the Middle East.

REUTERS REPORTS: IRAQI PM AL MALIKI MEETS WITH LEADERS OF IRAN WITHOUT ANY PRE-CONDITIONS

The Republicans have been screaming their heads off that Barack Obama should not meet with anyone from Iran without some pre-conditions in place, but the puppet Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has flown to Iran to meet with the leaders of Iran and try to cement ties between the two countries and there wasn't even a hint of any pre-conditions before the meeting.

So while all our young men and women are dying in Iraq in hopes of establishing some kind of democracy for Iraq, the leader of the Iraqi government (if you can call it a government) Prime Minister al-Maliki flys off to Tehran, Iran to ass kiss the Iranian leaders.

Will somebody please tell Sen. John McCain and the Republicans to knock off all the talk about not sitting down with Iranian leaders unless pre-conditions have been made because al-Maliki, who the United States place in charge of the lackey Iraqi government, takes off and meets with Iranian leaders with zero pre conditions.

Does anyone else see what a fool the United States is played for by al-Maliki and now Iran?

It isn't bad enough Iraq wants to limit U.S. troop movements in Iraq (see post below on this blog) but now the puppet Prime Minister of Iraq goes behind the backs of the Bush administration and GOP candidate for President, John McCain, and meets with the leaders of Iran to insure both countries are on the same page.

The United States had been made to look like a fool----AGAIN!

COMMENTARY BY BILL CORCORAN, EDITOR OF CORKSPHERE

Iraq's Maliki says wants stronger ties with Iran

REUTERSReuters North American News Service
Jun 07, 2008 15:53 EST
http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=202608

TEHRAN, June 7 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Saturday that Iraq wanted to strengthen ties with Iran, a news agency reported.

Maliki arrived in Tehran on Saturday evening for a three-day visit. Iran is accused by the United States of supporting Shi'ite militias in Iraq.
"All groups ... in Iraq emphasise strengthening ties with Iran in all fields," state broadcaster's Web site IRIB quoted Maliki as saying after a meeting with Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

"We will not allow Iraq to become a place (used) for harming Iran's ... security." Maliki is scheduled to meet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday, according to Iranian media, and he last travelled to the Islamic state in August.

Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war in the 1980s that left about a million dead. Relations have improved, and Iran's influence in Iraq has risen, since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

The United States has accused Iran of trying to destabilise Iraq by funding, training and equipping Iraqi militias. Iran blames the presence of U.S. troops for the instability.

Iraq's government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said last month Maliki had ordered the formation of a committee to compile evidence of Iranian "interference" in Iraq that would then be presented to Tehran. It is not clear if that evidence will be handed over during Maliki's visit to Tehran.

A delegation from Iraq's ruling Shi'ite alliance went to Tehran at the start of May to show Iranian officials evidence of the Islamic Republic's backing for Shi'ite militias in Iraq.

The Iraqis have repeatedly said they do not want their territory to become a battleground for a proxy war between the United States and Iran, which are also at loggerheads over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

NEW VIDEO: IRAQI POLS DON'T WANT U.S BASES IN IRAQ

http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=1643

This video from the The REAL NEWS NETWORK clearly shows how Iraqi politicians are totally opposed to President Bush's plan to establish permanent U.S. bases in Iraq.

US TROOPS IN IRAQ ARE PLACED IN "ATROCITY PRODUCING SITUATIONS"

The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing. The savagery and brutality of the occupation is tearing apart those who have been deployed to Iraq.

What it means when the US goes to war

By Chris Hedges
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JF07Ak01.html

Troops, when they battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are placed in "atrocity producing situations".

Being surrounded by a hostile population makes simple acts, such as going to a store to buy a can of soda, dangerous. The fear and stress push troops to view everyone around them as the enemy.

The hostility is compounded when the enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find.

The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed, over time, to innocent civilians who are seen to support the insurgents.

Civilians and combatants, in the eyes of the beleaguered troops, merge into one entity. These civilians, who rarely interact with soldiers or marines, are to most of the occupation troops in Iraq nameless, faceless and easily turned into abstractions of hate.

They are dismissed as less than human. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral leap. It is a leap from killing - the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm - to murder - the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you


As news reports have just informed us, 115 American soldiers committed suicide in 2007. This is a 13% increase in suicides over 2006.

And the suicides, as they did in the Vietnam War years, will only rise as distraught veterans come home, unwrap the self-protective layers of cotton wool that keep them from feeling, and face the awful reality of what they did to innocents in Iraq American marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity.

The killing project is not described in these terms to a distant public. The politicians still speak in the abstract terms of glory, honor and heroism, in the necessity of improving the world, in lofty phrases of political and spiritual renewal. Those who kill large numbers of people always claim it as a virtue. The campaign to rid the world of terror is expressed within the confines of this rhetoric, as if once all terrorists are destroyed evil itself will vanish. The reality behind the myth, however, is very different.

The reality and the ideal tragically clash when soldiers and marines return home. These combat veterans are often alienated from the world around them, a world that still believes in the myth of war and the virtues of the nation. They confront the grave, existential crisis of all who go through combat and understand that we have no monopoly on virtue, that in war we become as barbaric and savage as those we oppose.

This is a profound crisis of faith. It shatters the myths, national and religious, that these young men and women were fed before they left for Iraq. In short, they uncover the lie they have been told. Their relationship with the nation will never be the same.

These veterans give us a true narrative of the war - one that exposes the vast enterprise of industrial slaughter unleashed in Iraq. They expose the lie.

War as betrayal "This unit sets up this traffic control point, and this 18-year-old kid is on top of an armored Humvee with a .50-caliber machine gun," remembered Sergeant Geoffrey Millard, who served in Tikrit with the 42nd Infantry Division. "

And this car speeds at him pretty quick and he makes a split-second decision that that's a suicide bomber, and he presses the butterfly trigger and puts 200 rounds in less than a minute into this vehicle. It killed the mother, a father and two kids. The boy was aged four and the daughter was aged three. "

And they briefed this to the general," Millard said, "and they briefed it gruesome. I mean, they had pictures. They briefed it to him. And this colonel turns around to this full division staff and says, 'If these f---ing hajis learned to drive, this shit wouldn't happen'."

Millard and tens of thousands of other veterans suffer not only delayed reactions to stress but this crisis of faith. The God they knew, or thought they knew, failed them. The church or the synagogue or the mosque, which promised redemption by serving God and country, did not prepare them for the awful betrayal of this civic religion, for the capacity we all have for human atrocity, for the stories of heroism used to mask the reality of war. War is always about betrayal: betrayal of the young by the old, of idealists by cynics, and of troops by politicians.

This bitter knowledge of betrayal has seeped into the ranks of America's Iraq War veterans. It has unleashed a new wave of disillusioned veterans not seen since the Vietnam War. It has made it possible for us to begin, again, to see war's death mask and understand our complicity in evil. "And then, you know, my sort of sentiment of, 'What the f--- are we doing, that I felt that way in Iraq,'" said Sergeant Ben Flanders, who estimated that he ran hundreds of military convoys in Iraq.

"It's the sort of insanity of it and the fact that it reduces it. Well, I think war does anyway, but I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for people. The only thing that wound up mattering is myself and the guys that I was with. And everybody else be damned, whether you are an Iraqi - I'm sorry, I'm sorry you live here, I'm sorry this is a terrible situation, and I'm sorry that you have to deal with all of, you know, army vehicles running around and shooting, and these insurgents and all this stuff."

The Hobbesian world of Iraq described by Flanders is one where the ethic is kill or be killed. All nuance and distinction vanished for him. He fell, like most of the occupation troops, into a binary world of us and them, the good and the bad, those worthy of life and those unworthy of life. The vast majority of Iraqi civilians, caught in the middle of the clash among militias, death squads, criminal gangs, foreign fighters, kidnapping rings, terrorists, and heavily armed occupation troops, were just one more impediment that, if they happened to get in the way, had to be eradicated.

These Iraqis were no longer human. They were abstractions in human form. "The first briefing you get when you get off the plane in Kuwait, and you get off the plane and you're holding a duffel bag in each hand," Millard remembered. "You've got your weapon slung. You've got a web sack on your back. You're dying of heat. You're tired. You're jet-lagged. Your mind is just full of goop. And then you're scared on top of that, because, you know, you're in Kuwait, you're not in the States anymore ... So fear sets in, too. And they sit you into this little briefing room and you get this briefing about how, you know, you can't trust any of these f---ing hajis, because all these f---king hajis are going to kill you. And 'haji' is always used as a term of disrespect and usually with the F-word in front of it."

The press coverage of the war in Iraq rarely exposes the twisted pathology of this war. We see the war from the perspective of the troops or from the equally skewed perspective of the foreign reporters, holed up in hotels, hemmed in by drivers and translators and official security and military escorts. There are moments when war's face appears to these voyeurs and professional killers, perhaps from the back seat of a car where a small child, her brains oozing out of her head, lies dying, but mostly it remains hidden. And all our knowledge of the war in Iraq has to be viewed as lacking the sweep and depth that will come one day, perhaps years from now, when a small Iraqi boy reaches adulthood and unfolds for us the sad and tragic story of the invasion and bloody occupation of his nation. As the war sours, as it no longer fits into the mythical narrative of us as liberators and victors, it fades from view. The cable news shows that packaged and sold us the war have stopped covering it, trading the awful carnage of bomb blasts in Baghdad for the soap-opera sagas of Roger Clemens, Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears in her eternal meltdown. Average monthly coverage of the war in Iraq on the ABC, NBC and CBS newscasts combined has been cut in half, falling from 388 minutes in 2003, to 274 in 2004, to 166 in 2005. And newspapers, including papers like the Boston Globe, have shut down their Baghdad bureaus. Deprived of a clear, heroic narrative, restricted and hemmed in by security concerns, they have walked away. Most reporters know that the invasion and the occupation have been a catastrophe. They know the Iraqis do not want us. They know about the cooked intelligence, spoon-fed to a compliant press by the Office of Special Plans and Lewis Libby's White House Iraq Group. They know about Curveball, the forged documents out of Niger, the outed Central Intelligence Agency operatives, and the bogus British intelligence dossiers that were taken from old magazine articles. They know the weapons of mass destruction were destroyed long before we arrived. They know that our military as well as our National Guard and reserve units are being degraded and decimated. They know this war is not about bringing democracy to Iraq, that all the cliches about staying the course and completing the mission are used to make sure the president and his allies do not pay a political price while in power for their blunders and their folly. The press knows all this, and if reporters had bothered to look they could have known it a long time ago. But the press, or at least most of it, has lost the passion, the outrage, and the sense of mission that once drove reporters to defy authority and tell the truth. The legions of the lost and damned War is the pornography of violence. It has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it "the lust of the eye" and warns believers against it. War allows us to engage in lusts and passions we keep hidden in the deepest, most private interiors of our fantasy lives. It allows us to destroy not only things and ideas but human beings. In that moment of wholesale destruction, we wield the power of the divine, the power to revoke another person's charter to live on this Earth. The frenzy of this destruction - and when unit discipline breaks down, or when there was no unit discipline to begin with, "frenzy" is the right word - sees armed bands crazed by the poisonous elixir that our power to bring about the obliteration of others delivers. All things, including human beings, become objects - objects either to gratify or destroy, or both. Almost no one is immune. The contagion of the crowd sees to that. Human beings are machine-gunned and bombed from the air, automatic grenade launchers pepper hovels and neighbors with high-powered explosive devices, and convoys race through Iraq like freight trains of death. These soldiers and marines have at their fingertips the heady ability to call in airstrikes and firepower that obliterate landscapes and villages in fiery infernos. They can instantly give or deprive human life, and with this power they become sick and demented. The moral universe is turned upside down. All human beings are used as objects. And no one walks away uninfected. War thrusts us into a vortex of pain and fleeting ecstasy. It thrusts us into a world where law is of little consequence, human life is cheap, and the gratification of the moment becomes the overriding desire that must be satiated, even at the cost of another's dignity or life. "A lot of guys really supported that whole concept that, you know, if they don't speak English and they have darker skin, they're not as human as us, so we can do what we want," said Specialist Josh Middleton, who served in the 82nd Airborne in Iraq. "And you know, 20-year-old kids are yelled at back and forth at Bragg, and we're picking up cigarette butts and getting yelled at every day for having a dirty weapon. But over here, it's like life and death. And 40-year-old Iraqi men look at us with fear and we can - do you know what I mean? - we have this power that you can't have. That's really liberating. Life is just knocked down to this primal level of, you know, you worry about where the next food's going to come from, the next sleep or the next patrol, and to stay alive. "It's like, you feel like, I don't know, if you're a caveman," he added. "Do you know what I mean? Just, you know, I mean, this is how life is supposed to be. Life and death, essentially. No TV. None of that bullshit." It takes little in wartime to turn ordinary men into killers. Most give themselves willingly to the seduction of unlimited power to destroy. All feel the peer pressure to conform. Few, once in battle, find the strength to resist. Physical courage is common on a battlefield. Moral courage, which these veterans have exhibited by telling us the truth about the war, is not. Military machines and state bureaucracies, which seek to make us obey, seek also to silence those who return from war and speak to its reality. They push aside these witnesses to hide from a public eager for stories of war that fit the mythic narrative of glory and heroism the essence of war, which is death. War, as these veterans explain, exposes the capacity for evil that lurks just below the surface within all of us. This is the truth these veterans, often with great pain, have had to face. American Historian Christopher Browning chronicled the willingness to kill in Ordinary Men, his study of Reserve Police Battalion 101 in Poland during World War II.

Click on link above to read the full story.

WOMEN SUICIDE BOMBERS IN IRAQ USE NEW TACTICS

Women bombers show shifting tactics in Iraq

(AP)7 June 2008
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2008/June/focusoniraq_June28.xml&section=focusoniraq

IRBIL, Iraq - A girl strapped with explosives approaches an Iraqi army captain, who dies in the suicide blast.

A woman posing as a mother-to-be to disguise a bulging bomb belt strikes a wedding procession as part of a coordinated attack that kills nearly three dozen people.

The attacks last month were among the latest blows by female suicide bombers and further evidence of shifting insurgent tactics amid an overall drop in bloodshed around Iraq.

U.S. military figures show the number of female suicide attacks has risen from eight in 2007 to at least 16 so far this year not including a suicide bombing Friday near Ramadi that Iraqi police believe was carried out by a woman. That compares with a total of four in 2005 and 2006, according to the military.

Some female bombers appear motivated by revenge, like the woman who killed 15 people in Diyala province on Dec. 7. She was a former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath party whose two sons joined al-Qaeda in Iraq and were killed by Iraqi security forces.
But activists and U.S. commanders also believe al-Qaeda in Iraq is increasingly seeking to exploit women who are unable to deal with the grief of losing husbands, children and others to the violence.

Al-Qaeda is preying on those who don't have jobs, who don't have education and who are feeling despair,' said Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling told The Associated Press on the sidelines of a conference this week on women's issues.

The use of women as suicide bombers is a relatively new phenomenon in Iraq, although it has been used by militants elsewhere, particularly in Sri Lanka.

Click on link above to read full story

MARINE SNIPER CHARGED IN DEATH OF TWO IRAQI CIVILIANS

Marine sniper charged in Iraqi deaths
Charges allege sniper killed them in 2007 during combat mission

The Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25011867/

SAN DIEGO - A Marine sniper has been charged with two counts of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting deaths of two civilians in Iraq.

Sgt. John Winnick II also has been charged with aggravated assault against two other civilians and failing to adhere to the military's rules of engagement.

Winnick's attorney, Gary Myers, said a hearing will be held to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to court-martial the Marine.

The charges allege Winnick killed the civilians on June 17, 2007, during combat operations near Lake Tharthar in Iraq's western Anbar province. The charges also allege he fired at two others without first determining whether any of the civilians posed a threat, Myers said.

Winnick is a member of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force based at Camp Pendleton, Alvarez said. Winnick was working with the base's 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit at the time of the shootings.

The charges carry a maximum 40-year sentence and a dishonorable discharge.

The case against Winnick, whose hometown and age were not immediately released, comes on the heels of other cases in which Camp Pendleton Marines were charged with wrongdoing in Iraq, including the shooting deaths of 24 Iraqis in Haditha and the fatal shooting of a civilian in Hamdania.

CNN REPORTS: IRAQI MOTHER DESCRIBES HOW HER DAUGHTER BECAME A SUICIDE BOMBER

Iraqi woman describes daughter's descent into suicide bombing

"God willing, she went to heaven," said the woman, whose son also was a suicide bomber in 2004. "She told me, 'Mom, I want to do it.' "

Story Highlights
U.S. military reports 19 female suicide bombers in Iraq this year, up from 8 in 2007
Authorities say al Qaeda in Iraq targets desperate women who seek revenge
Many women bombers have lost male relatives to the war, officials say
Iraqi and U.S. officials fear more women will turn themselves into bombs

By Arwa DamonCNN
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/06/06/female.bombers/index.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The mother's voice lacks emotion as she recalls how her daughter became a suicide bomber.

"She wanted to die in the name of God," she says on a videotape, her face peering out from under a dark brown head scarf.

"She told me she is sick of this life. ... So she spoke about the Americans. I told her, 'Where will you get Americans?' She said she will go after the Americans." Watch as the mother tells her story »

The daughter is one of 19 female suicide bombers this year, a number much higher than in previous years. According to the U.S. military, women carried out eight bombings in all of 2007.

In the February 13 attack, the daughter posed as a journalist with an English-speaking male accomplice, claiming that they had an interview with a prominent Iraqi tribal leader who works with U.S. forces.

Four guards protecting Sheikh Ifan al-Isawi were killed in the attack. Al-Isawi brought the mother in for questioning, and CNN obtained the video of the interrogation.

The latest bombing involving a female came Friday, when a man and woman targeted an Iraqi police checkpoint in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The explosion wounded three police and two civilians, said an official with the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

Authorities said that al Qaeda in Iraq actively is recruiting women and that increasing numbers of women are offering themselves up for missions. The officials said the women are desperate and hopeless. Most have pre-existing ties to the insurgency, and their main motive is revenge for a male family member killed by U.S. or Iraqi forces in the war, authorities said.

"We do see certain members of cells attempting to persuade women, specifically in many cases wives or those who have been killed as terrorists, to conduct suicide operations," said U.S. Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, whose area of operations includes the volatile province of Diyala.

"Since October, there have been nine suicide bombers who were female, seven of whom were recruited in the last 90 days," Hertling said.

Hertling's troops in Diyala have launched operations targeting members of families of suspected female bombers trying to break up the rings that are recruiting the women and girls. The U.S. military said it has six females in custody who were would-be suicide bombers. The youngest is 14, one U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

Intelligence gathered from detainees indicates that al Qaeda in Iraq is looking for women with three main characteristics: those who are illiterate, are deeply religious or have financial struggles because most likely they've lost the male head of the household.

OUR GUYS ARE STILL DYING IN IRAQ. 6 MORE GI DEATHS CONFIRMED BY DOD

Six more U.S. soldiers died in Iraq as the Iraq war has taken a backseat to the ongoing political saturation coverage of the race for the White House in the United States.

The following is a list of U.S. casualties in Iraq with names, hometowns and cause of death.
To obtain more details click on the part in BLUE.

Source: http://icasualties.org/oif/

Latest Coalition Fatalities
06/06/08 DoD Identifies Army Casualties (3 of 3)
Sgt. Shane P. Duffy, 22, of Taunton, Mass...died June 4 in Tikrit, Iraq, of wounds suffered in Sharqat, Iraq, when their unit was attacked by enemy forces using small arms fire and hand grenades. They were assigned to the 1st Battalion...

06/06/08 DoD Identifies Army Casualties (2 of 3)
Spc. Jonathan D. A. Emard, 20, of Mesquite, Texas...died June 4 in Tikrit, Iraq, of wounds suffered in Sharqat, Iraq, when their unit was attacked by enemy forces using small arms fire and hand grenades. They were assigned to the 1st Battalion...

06/06/08 DoD Identifies Army Casualties (1 of 3)
Sgt. Cody R. Legg, 23, of Escondido, Ca...died June 4 in Tikrit, Iraq, of wounds suffered in Sharqat, Iraq, when their unit was attacked by enemy forces using small arms fire and hand grenades. They were assigned to the 1st Battalion...

06/05/08 DoD Identifies Army Casaulty
Pfc. Joshua E. Waltenbaugh, 19, of Ford City, Pa., died June 3 in Taji, Iraq, of injuries sustained in a non-combat related injury. He was assigned to the 4th Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Fort Hood, Texas.

06/05/08 Georgian Soldier Killed in Iraq
A Georgian soldier was killed on a combat mission in Iraq on June 4, the Georgian Ministry of Defense said on Thursday. Squad commander Irakli Kordzaia, 28, was killed when a checkpoint in the province of Diyala came under repeat fire...

06/05/08 MNF: MND-C Soldier attacked by small arms fire
A Coalition force Soldier was killed by small arms fire June 4 during a patrol south of Baghdad. The Soldier's name is being withheld pending notification of the next of kin and release by the Department of Defense.

06/05/08 DoD Identifies Army Casualty
Spc. Quincy J. Green, 26, of El Paso, Texas, died June 2 in Tikrit, Iraq, of injuries sustained in a non-combat related incident. He was assigned to the 601st Aviation Support Battalion, 1st Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan.

THIS TAKES THE CAKE!: IRAQ WANTS TO RESTRICT U.S. TROOP MOVEMENTS

It is not bad enough that Iraq can't get their act together with their two-bit government, but now they are dictating what the United States military can and cannot do in their country.

The moguls who run the U.S. puppet government in Iraq have issued a decree saying they want the U.S. military to report to the Iraqi government any troop movements before they are made.

Considering the Iraqi government is infiltrated with all kinds of radicals who can't stand the United States the idea of letting Iraq dictate U.S. troop movements is a prescription for disaster.

If the United States agrees to such an "order" from the Iraqi government, it would put every GI and Marine in Iraq right in the cross hairs of every insurgent and anti-American Iraqi in all of Iraq.

It would also be the first time a fledgling government told the United States military what is could do and not do.

COMMENTARY BY BILL CORCORAN, EDITOR OF CORKSPHERE

Iraq says it wants to restrict movement of U.S. troops

By Michael Georgy 42 minutes ago
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080606/ts_nm/iraq_usa_military_dc

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq said on Friday it would not grant U.S. troops freedom of movement for military operations in a new agreement being negotiated on extending the presence of American troops on its soil.

Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih said the United States wanted its forces to operate without any restrictions, but this was not acceptable to Iraq.

The United States, which invaded Iraq in 2003 to oust Saddam Hussein, is negotiating an agreement with Iraq aimed at giving a legal basis for U.S. troops to stay in Iraq after December 31, when their United Nations mandate expires.

The negotiations are the subject of heated debate both in United States and Iraq, where thousands have answered anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's call for weekly protests after Friday Muslim prayers.

While the Iraqi government has confirmed there are major differences between the two sides in the negotiations, few details of the sticking points have been made public.

"What I can confirm now, with no hesitation, is that there will not be freedom of movement for American (forces) in Iraq," Salih told Arabiya television.

U.S. officials said this week they would not comment on the content of the negotiations.
But Western diplomats say it is unlikely the Americans would agree to any deal that would require them to seek permission from the Iraqi government for every military operation.

NEW VIDEO: CHENEY BLOCKED TALKS WITH IRAN

Paul Jay, Senior Correspondent for The Real News Network interviews Larry Wilkerson about how Vice President Dick Cheney blocked any talks with Iran.

Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff Larry Wilkerson on how Cheney turned down talks with Iran

SEE VIDEO HERE: http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=1617

Wilkerson says what Dr. Rice has been saying is fairly consistent with what the administration‘s position has been and that is, that Iran must stop enrichment before talks can happen. I think that’s absurd. Setting such conditions is a route to no talks at all, which is why Cheney advocates such a policy. Iran made a serious approach in 2003 to talk, Cheney made the State department turn it down. The plan was for regime change throughout the Middle East.

Bio
Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson is an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. He also instructs a senior seminar in the Honors Department at the George Washington University entitled "National Security Decision Making."

JUAN COLE REPORTS: BUSH BLACKMAILING AL MALIKI WITH 50 BILLION IN U.S. FED

The intrepid Patrick Cockburn reveals that the White House is more or less blackmailing the Iraqi government into signing a security pact with George W. Bush. At stake is $50 bn. of Iraqi money held in the US Federal Reserve, at least $20 bn. of which could be lost to Iraq if the government of Nuri al-Maliki declines to sign on the dotted line.

Bush Blackmailing al-Maliki with $50 Bn. in US Fed
http://juancole.com/

Cockburn also reveals that the Iraqis wanted to diversify their receipts from oil sales away from dollar holdings into euros, and that the Americans vetoed the move. Bush wants 50 bases in Iraq and the prerogative of the US military to act unilaterally and with impunity inside the country.

Although the Bush administration is playing hardball to get this wideranging set of commitments from Iraq before July 31, and although Iraqis are eager to escape Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which limits their government's sovereignty, the negotiations may collapse in the face of widespread opposition to the baldly neocolonial terms sought by Washington.

Even remaining under the UN Security Council, under Chapter 7, may be preferable to Baghdad. There were large demonstrations against the security agreement, barely covered by the US press, last Friday, and Iraqi religious and political leaders are coalescing against it. Postcolonial states of the Arab world, which only attained real independence from Britain and France with great difficulty and in living memory, are touchy about being seen as kowtowing to imperial demands. The Shah's government was overthrown in 1979 by huge crowds and a wide cross section of the public precisely on these grounds.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has issued a 170-page report accusing Bush and Cheney of exaggerating the intelligence on the threat posed by Iraq, in the build-up to the Iraq War.

A big explosion in north Baghdad killed at least 15 [late reports say 18] persons and wounded 75 on Wednesday. Iraqi police said it was a suicide bombing. The US military said it was an accidental explosion of munitions a Shiite militia was moving up for an attack on US forces. Robert Reid writes, "The force of the blast crumbled several two-story buildings, buried cars under rubble, sheared off a corrugated steel roof and left a large crater on the residential street." There were several other bombings and attacks, making Wednesday a particularly violent day in Iraq (details below).Sadly, Reid notes, "The three American soldiers died when gunmen opened fire on them near the town of Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, a U.S military statement said. No further details were released.

IRAQ REPORT UNDERMINES BUSH'S CLAIM HE IS "CREDIBLE LEADER" BECAUSE HE "READS THE INTELLIGENCE"

Iraq Report Undermines Bush’s Claim That He Is A ‘Credible’ Leader Because He ‘Reads The Intelligence’»

Today, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee released the final two sections of its pre-war intelligence report.

http://thinkprogress.org/?tag=Iraq

As Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) said, the report concludes “that the Administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence.”

In today’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino was dismissive of the report, explaining that President Bush made false statements before the Iraq war simply because he was kept in the dark:

PERINO: That dissent amongst experts within the intelligence community at some level did not reach the president.

Watch VIDEO of DANA PERIINO: http://thinkprogress.org/?tag=Iraq

In reality, Bush kept himself in the dark. As the report notes, the intelligence reports did contradict the administration’s hawkish statements. In fact, the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002, which the White House used to make the case for war, also included a “clear dissenting views” section:

The Estimate itself expressed the majority view that the program was being reconstituted, but included clear dissenting views from the State Department’s Buerau of Intelligence and Research, which argued that reconstitution was not underway, and the Department of Energy, which argued that aluminum tubes sought by Iraq were probably not intended for a nuclear weapon.

The revelations pour cold water on Bush’s rationale as to why he makes a good wartime leader. In 2007, he said that he is credible as Commander-in-Chief because he “reads” the intelligence:

Q: Can you explain why you believe you’re still a credible messenger on the war?

BUSH: I’m credible because I read the intelligence, David.

“All of the intelligence I looked at…the Congress looked at, said the same thing,” Bush said in 2004. Unfortunately, it seems that Bush only selectively “looked at” the intelligence.

VETERANS ADMINISTRATION CHIEF LIKENS PTSD TO "HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL INJURY"

VA Chief Likens PTSD to "High School Football Injury"

By ItsNeverOver - June 4, 2008, 6:48PM
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/06/va-chief-likens-ptsd-to-high-s.php

I recently traveled to Madison, WI, to interview Rachel and Josh, two young Iraq War veterans about the health issues they've dealt with, due to poor accountability for both the private contractors who are supposed to be supporting our troops, and for the mental health needs of returning soldiers.

When I interviewed Josh about his difficulties seeking help for his PTSD, he recounted the whole horrific process with a smile on his face and a self-effacing laugh. It took me a while to realize that Josh laughed about his troubles because the seriousness of the situation was overpowering. Unfortunately, even the VA is starting to turn its back on the gravity of this problem, even as it escalates to frightening proportions.

Apparently, VA Secretary James Peake is not troubled by the fact that one in five veterans are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or that every day, 18 veterans commit suicide.

In a statement last week, Peake first referred to the growing concern surrounding the veterans' mental health crisis as “overblown,” then went on to say, “Many of the brain injuries are serious but some of them are akin to what anyone who played football in their youth might have suffered.”

Peake continued to belittle the devastating effects of war-induced brain injuries and mental disorders by saying, "Just because someone might need a little counseling when they get back, doesn't mean they need the PTSD label their whole lives."

Addressing the stigma of PTSD is one thing; downplaying the prevalence and devastation of this problem in order to deflect any responsibility of the VA is another. PTSD is an effect of our troops living through horrific scenes, burdened with stop-loss and extra tours of duty; left untreated, it can mark the lives of these young men and women for years and even decades.

The fact that the VA's mental health services are grossly insufficient is a problem that the VA needs to address before more veterans slip through the cracks .