photo courtesy of College Humor.
The Petraeus Report is coming! The Petraeus Report is coming! Today it is hard to miss the calls echoing Paul Revere’s famous ride. For indeed we will soon have the White House report all have been waiting for since the surge began……. only a click away…….Of course we originally thought it would be written by Petraeus himself……(we were so naive.)
Since objectivity is out, I decided to search around and catalog the opinions of those who support the continued surge, and those who want us to withdraw.
First the Good. These will see the Petraeus report as representing what is actually going on in Iraq…….and recommend that we stay.
Bush/Cheney, Israeli lobby,Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and other high level republicans. Mike Castle, the lobbyists being paid to support the war, Lieberman (I-CT). 12% of Americans, corporate mainstream media, defense contractors, and trolls.
I am sure there may be some more, but Google couldn’t find them. (It did include Delawareonline: how funny?_)
On to the bad. Ever since Milton’s Paradise Lost in the seventeenth century, studying bad has been much more fun. This group believes the opposite of the White House report. They see Iraq a imploding and think we should get out……sometime….eventually.
The British, Democrats, all Democratic presidential candidates, 85% of Americans, 99.9% of other nations, all of Delaware’s bloggers, Keith Olberman, Hollywood, the GAO, Association of Catholic Nuns, Vietnam Vets, US Labor, poets, environmentalists, the city of Austin, Texas, historians, military families, the NIE report, the General Jones report, artists, women, 1 million New Yorkers, West Point Graduates, lawyers, the City of Rochester, NY, librarians, and a (shock) surprising number of Republicans on the Armed Services committee listening to David Walker testifying in defense of his GAO report.
Thus we can judge by the support, that this war seems to be supported solely by one political party; and no one else. It is quite an odd situation to be in, the country which once was the standard the whole world looked to, now intently venturing down a path supported by only a handful of people. We will be paying for our mistake a long time.
As for the ugly? We touched on that with the picture at the top of this post…..Enough is enough. We have seen enough ugliness for a day…….
kavips 
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September 8, 2007 at 12:23 am
Ken Larson
I am a 2 tour Vietnam Veteran who recently retired after 36 years of working in the Defense Industrial Complex on many of the weapons systems being used by our forces as we speak. I believed another Vietnam could be avoided with defined missions and the best armaments in the world.
It made no difference.
We have bought into the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). If you would like to read how this happens please see:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703
Through a combination of public apathy and threats by the MIC we have let the SYSTEM get too large. It is now a SYSTEMIC problem and the SYSTEM is out of control. Government and industry are merging and that is very dangerous.
There is no conspiracy. The SYSTEM has gotten so big that those who make it up and run it day to day in industry and government simply are perpetuating their existance.
The politicians rely on them for details and recommendations because they cannot possibly grasp the nuances of the environment and the BIG SYSTEM.
So, the system has to go bust and then be re-scaled, fixed and re-designed to run efficiently and prudently, just like any other big machine that runs poorly or becomes obsolete or dangerous.
This situation will right itself through trauma. I see a government ENRON on the horizon, with an associated house cleaning.
The next president will come and go along with his appointees and politicos. The event to watch is the collapse of the MIC.
For more details see:
http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2006/11/odyssey-of-armaments.html