A Support the toops rally is occuring today in Washington DC:
Perspective:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00R3oylY9_M

Blue Star Mom Criticizes Gold Star Mom.
Blue Star Mom is upset that she isn’t getting the same attention as the Gold Star Mom.
Blue Star Mom accuses Gold Star Mom of attacking U.S. troops.
Brought to you, by the Fox Noise Channel.
?What did you expect, something of substance?

Here is a interview Brian Lamb dad with a reporter from Iraq:
http://www.jerrydoyle.com/pg/jsp/charts/streamingAudioMaster.jsp;jsessionid=00B90A41287FFC139E18A40DA1DFFC4C?dispid=306&headerDest=L3BnL2pzcC9tZWRpYS9mbGFzaHdlbGNvbWUuanNwP3BpZD0yNjcw

Here’s a little truth serum for one beekeeper who has been stung on the noggin one too many times courtesy of columnist Frank Rich…
(Not that I think this will even penetrate Brian’s fogged over brain cells)
TOMORROW night is the fourth anniversary of President Bush’s prime-time address declaring the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In the broad sweep of history, four years is a nanosecond, but in America, where memories are congenitally short, it’s an eternity. That’s why a revisionist history of the White House’s rush to war, much of it written by its initial cheerleaders, has already taken hold. In this exonerating fictionalization of the story, nearly every politician and pundit in Washington was duped by the same “bad intelligence” before the war, and few imagined that the administration would so botch the invasion’s aftermath or that the occupation would go on so long. “If only I had known then what I know now …” has been the persistent refrain of the war supporters who subsequently disowned the fiasco. But the embarrassing reality is that much of the damning truth about the administration’s case for war and its hubristic expectations for a cakewalk were publicly available before the war, hiding in plain sight, to be seen by anyone who wanted to look.
By the time the ides of March arrived in March 2003, these warning signs were visible on a nearly daily basis. So were the signs that Americans were completely ill prepared for the costs ahead. Iraq was largely anticipated as a distant, mildly disruptive geopolitical video game that would be over in a flash.
Now many of the same leaders who sold the war argue that escalation should be given a chance. This time they’re peddling the new doomsday scenario that any withdrawal timetable will lead to the next 9/11. The question we must ask is: Has history taught us anything in four years?
Here is a chronology of some of the high and low points in the days leading up to the national train wreck whose anniversary we mourn this week [with occasional “where are they now” updates].
March 5, 2003
“I took the Grey Poupon out of my cupboard.”
— Representative Duke Cunningham, Republican of California, on the floor of the House denouncing French opposition to the Iraq war.
[In November 2005, he resigned from Congress and pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from defense contractors. In January 2007, the United States attorney who prosecuted him — Carol Lam, a Bush appointee — was forced to step down for “performance-related” issues by Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department.]
March 6, 2003
President Bush holds his last prewar news conference. The New York Observer writes that he interchanged Iraq with the attacks of 9/11 eight times, “and eight times he was unchallenged.” The ABC News White House correspondent, Terry Moran, says the Washington press corps was left “looking like zombies.”
March 7, 2003
Appearing before the United Nations Security Council on the same day that the United States and three allies (Britain, Spain and Bulgaria) put forth their resolution demanding that Iraq disarm by March 17, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, reports there is “no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.”. He adds that documents “which formed the basis for the report of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic.” None of the three broadcast networks’ evening newscasts mention his findings.
[In 2005 ElBaradei was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.]
March 10, 2003
Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks tells an audience in England, “We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas.” Boycotts, death threats and anti-Dixie Chicks demonstrations follow.
[In 2007, the Dixie Chicks won five Grammy Awards, including best song for “Not Ready to Make Nice.”]
March 12, 2003
A senior military planner tells The Daily News “an attack on Iraq could last as few as seven days.”
“Isn’t it more likely that antipathy toward the United States in the Islamic world might diminish amid the demonstrations of jubilant Iraqis celebrating the end of a regime that has few equals in its ruthlessness?”
— John McCain, writing for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times.
“The Pentagon still has not given a name to the Iraqi war. Somehow ‘Operation Re-elect Bush’ doesn’t seem to be popular.”
— Jay Leno, “The Tonight Show.”
March 14, 2003
Senator John D. Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, asks the F.B.I. to investigate the forged documents cited a week earlier by ElBaradei and alleging an Iraq-Niger uranium transaction: “There is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq.”
March 16, 2003
On “Meet the Press,” Dick Cheney says that American troops will be “greeted as liberators,” that Saddam “has a longstanding relationship with various terrorist groups, including the Al Qaeda organization,” and that it is an “overstatement” to suggest that several hundred thousand troops will be needed in Iraq after it is liberated. Asked by Tim Russert about ElBaradei’s statement that Iraq does not have a nuclear program, the vice president says, “I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong.”
“There will be new recruits, new recruits probably because of the war that’s about to happen. So we haven’t seen the last of Al Qaeda.”
— Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism czar, on ABC’s “This Week.”
[From the recently declassified “key judgments” of the National Intelligence Estimate of April 2006: “The Iraq conflict has become the cause célèbre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.”]
“Despite the Bush administration’s claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to give Congress or the Pentagon specific information about the amounts of banned weapons or where they are hidden, according to administration officials and members of Congress. Senior intelligence analysts say they feel caught between the demands from White House, Pentagon and other government policy makers for intelligence that would make the administration’s case ‘and what they say is a lack of hard facts,’ one official said.”
— “U.S. Lacks Specifics on Banned Arms,” by Walter Pincus (with additional reporting by Bob Woodward), The Washington Post, Page A17.
March 17, 2003
Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, who voted for the Iraq war resolution, writes the president to ask why the administration has repeatedly used W.M.D. evidence that has turned out to be “a hoax” — “correspondence that indicates that Iraq sought to obtain nuclear weapons from an African country, Niger.”
[Still waiting for “an adequate explanation” of the bogus Niger claim four years later, Waxman, now chairman of the chief oversight committee in the House, wrote Condoleezza Rice on March 12, 2007, seeking a response “to multiple letters I sent you about this matter.”]
In a prime-time address, President Bush tells Saddam to leave Iraq within 48 hours: “Every measure has been made to avoid war, and every measure will be taken to win it.” After the speech, NBC rushes through its analysis to join a hit show in progress, “Fear Factor,” where men and women walk with bare feet over broken glass to win $50,000.
March 18, 2003
Barbara Bush tells Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that she will not watch televised coverage of the war: “Why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it’s going to happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?”
[Visiting the homeless victims of another cataclysm, Hurricane Katrina, at the Houston Astrodome in 2005, Mrs. Bush said, “And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — this is working very well for them.”]
In one of its editorials strongly endorsing the war, The Wall Street Journal writes, “There is plenty of evidence that Iraq has harbored Al Qaeda members.”
[In a Feb. 12, 2007, editorial defending the White House’s use of prewar intelligence, The Journal wrote, “Any links between Al Qaeda and Iraq is a separate issue that was barely mentioned in the run-up to war.”]
In an article headlined “Post-war ‘Occupation’ of Iraq Could Result in Chaos,” Mark McDonald of Knight Ridder Newspapers quotes a “senior leader of one of Iraq’s closest Arab neighbors,” who says, “We’re worried that the outcome will be civil war.”
A questioner at a White House news briefing asserts that “every other war has been accompanied by fiscal austerity of some sort, often including tax increases” and asks, “What’s different about this war?” Ari Fleischer responds, “The most important thing, war or no war, is for the economy to grow,” adding that in the president’s judgment, “the best way to help the economy to grow is to stimulate the economy by providing tax relief.”
After consulting with the homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge, the N.C.A.A. announces that the men’s basketball tournament will tip off this week as scheduled. The N.C.A.A. president, Myles Brand, says, “We were not going to let a tyrant determine how we were going to lead our lives.”
March 19, 2003
“I’d guess that if it goes beyond three weeks, Bush will be in real trouble.”
— Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel teaching at Boston University, quoted in The Washington Post.
[The March 2007 installment of the Congressionally mandated Pentagon assessment “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq” reported that from Jan. 1 to Feb. 9, 2007, there were more than 1,000 weekly attacks, up from about 400 in spring 2004.]
Robert McIlvaine, whose 26-year-old son was killed at the World Trade Center 18 months earlier, is arrested at a peace demonstration at the Capitol in Washington. He tells The Washington Post: “It’s very insulting to hear President Bush say this is for Sept. 11.”
“I don’t think it is reasonable to close the door on inspections after three and a half months,” when Iraq’s government is providing more cooperation than it has in more than a decade.
— Hans Blix, chief weapons inspector for the United Nations.
The Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that 71 percent of Americans support going to war in Iraq, up from 59 percent before the president’s March 17 speech.
“When the president talks about sacrifice, I think the American people clearly understand what the president is talking about.”
— Ari Fleischer
[Asked in January 2007 how Americans have sacrificed, President Bush answered: “I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean, they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night.”]
Pentagon units will “locate and survey at least 130 and as many as 1,400 possible weapons sites.”
— “Disarming Saddam Hussein; Teams of Experts to Hunt Iraq Arms” by Judith Miller, The Times, Page A1.
President Bush declares war from the Oval Office in a national address: “Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly, yet our purpose is sure.”
Price of a share of Halliburton stock: $20.50
[Value of that Halliburton share on March 16, 2007, adjusted for a split in 2006: $64.12.]
March 20, 2003
“The pictures you’re seeing are absolutely phenomenal. These are live pictures of the Seventh Cavalry racing across the deserts in southern Iraq. They will — it will be days before they get to Baghdad, but you’ve never seen battlefield pictures like these before.”
— Walter Rodgers, an embedded CNN correspondent.
“It seems quite odd to me that while we are commenced upon a war, we have no funding for that war in this budget.”
—Hillary Clinton.
“Coalition forces suffered their first casualties in a helicopter crash that left 12 Britons and 4 Americans dead.”
— The Associated Press.
Though the March 23 Oscar ceremony will dispense with the red carpet in deference to the war, an E! channel executive announces there will be no cutback on pre-Oscar programming, but “the tone will be much more somber.”
March 21, 2003
“I don’t mean to be glib about this, or make it sound trite, but it really is a symphony that has to be orchestrated by a conductor.”
— Retired Maj. Gen. Donald Shepperd, CNN military analyst, speaking to Wolf Blitzer of the bombardment of Baghdad during Shock and Awe.
[“Many parts of Iraq are stable. But of course what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everyone.”
— Laura Bush, “Larry King Live,” Feb. 26, 2007.]
“The president may occasionally turn on the TV, but that’s not how he gets his news or his information. … He is the president, he’s made his decisions and the American people are watching him.”
— Ari Fleischer.
[The former press secretary received immunity from prosecution in the Valerie Wilson leak case and testified in the perjury trial of Scooter Libby in 2007.]
“Peter, I may be going out on a limb, but I’m not sure that the first stage of this Shock and Awe campaign is really going to frighten the Iraqi people. In fact, it may have just the opposite effect. If they feel that they’ve survived the most that the United States can throw at them and they’re still standing, and they’re still able to go about their lives, well, then they might be rather emboldened. They might feel that, well, look, we can stand a lot more than this.”
— Richard Engel, a Baghdad correspondent speaking to Peter Jennings on ABC’s “World News Tonight.”

for all our our sister/brothers on the planet who are learning and sharing love and respect … not more fraudulent political predatorship taking the guise of democracy or activism!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=2A2Jt4WOxN8
arohanui, enfolding love …
Millennium Twain

Evan,
Don’t you think if the troops are pulled out now that it will make the situation in Iraq really really bad for the Iraqi people?
Brian

no Brian, i dont. you know what i think is bad for the Iraqi people? BOMBS.
i’d say lots and lots of bullets and bombs are really really bad for the Iraqi people. ESPECIALLY ones with the letters U S A on the sides.

Would that the Brians of these good old United States could be more like our “enemy”, who despite being pounded day after day, night after night by our bombs and bullets, their women and girls raped, their men and boys disappeared and murdered, quite clearly want nothing more than to get our illegitimate occupation troops out of their land so they can attempt to rebuild whatever is left of their lives.
If Brian and his ilk were even ten percent right about human nature and reality, he’d be tucked in a bomb shelter ducking bombs right now. He ought to get out and see the world. Then maybe he’d come home and truly support the troops, by helping put this criminal administration in prison and ending the war made on the world in our names. I know it is unfathomable to Brian and the chicken hawks, but nevertheless true: if we stopped bombing, invading and threatening, and truly supported real democracy at home and in the world, we would see more peace and prosperity around the world, not less. Sure, Dick Cheney and Halliburton’s new CEO might have to find out how to do something that actually adds value to this world in order to have their fifteenth home and security detail, but that is not really such a bad thing.

Brian, I wasn’t saying that you are pro all war, but you do seem to be pretty pro this war in Iraq and I was just wondering why.

Stopping tyranny starts at home.
Like many things, Saddam was terrible until you look at the alternative – the horror we have wrought. There are more mass graves today in Iraq than when we arrived.
If we pulled all our troops out now, undoubtedly the mass of Iraqis would be happier than they are now. And Iraq would be more peaceful. That should be obvious.
If China and Russia join forces to invade the U.S. to liberate us from George W. Bush, a proven mass killer, would you welcome their occupation troops?
If not, why the hypocrisy? Why would you expect Iraqis to welcome our troops?
“We are going after killers who are tryng to kill us…” Name a single Iraqi who has tried to kill “us”? They like any human want a chance to raise their children in their own country according to their own traditions, without George W. Bush bombing them in the night. Who is the real terrorist?
Hint: Not the Iraqis.

Brian -
Obviously there is some clear disagreement on the necessity of going to war in Iraq in the first place.
Might I just offer that the reasons you give (murderous dictator, people trying to kill us) are a simplistic Fox News perspective – we were in no danger from Saddam, who had no WMDs, with ZERO connection to 9/11. Your reasons parallel the shifting rationales given by this administration that lied us into war, and its sympathizers like Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, etc.
Second, the people conducting this war – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield who have ZERO military experience whatsoever – have been grossly incompetent in their conduct and wrong about everything they have said to Americans. This war is an absolute disaster, and its only getting worse. Show me how incompetent people dumping more troops into Iraq are going to fix what they f’ed up in the first place.
Regarding the learning curve, this administration was warned by many, many smart military people what would happen if we went in on the cheap and didn’t plan for sectarian strife. They IGNORED good advice because they WANTED this war – oil and money – it has NOTHING to do with a “bad man”. It’s not that none of this could have been predicted – it was ALL predicted. So those who were against the war were RIGHT, and it was not an accident.
Regarding the “liberal media”, please. There is no liberal bias, in fact take a look at a recent report showing the extremely high conservative bias on Sunday talk shows across the board:
http://mediamatters.org/sundayshowreport/
An excerpt: On the Sunday after the midterm elections, in which Democrats took control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years, viewers tuned in to NBC’s Meet the Press to hear what the Democratic win meant for the country — only to discover that host Tim Russert did not have any Democrats on at all. Instead, Russert’s guests were Republican Sen. John McCain (AZ) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (CT), who ran in the general election as an Independent after losing the Democratic primary. And after an election in which the public’s opposition to the Iraq war was a central issue, Meet the Press hosted two guests who support the war.
In fact, to cite NBC in particular is laughable, when you consider that the parent company GE is a huge cheerleader of the war, having made billions on contracts in Iraq. Just because CNN, NBC and ABC aren’t as absurdly and blatantly Bushie Cheerleaders as FOX doesn’t mean they are “liberal”.
Good seeing you at the Farmer’s Market today!
Tyler

To shift the focus a bit: Anyone have a report on the anti-war marches?
Someone, maybe Mother Teresa, is quoted as saying something to the effect of “I don’t have time for an anti-war rally, but if you have a pro-peace rally, I’ll come.”
I think there is a lot of value in that idea. We spend so much energy telling each other (as evidenced by the 20 posts above this one) about the ideas and actions we don’t like, we hardly have time or energy to voice and act on ideas we do like.
I’ll be serving dinner at the homeless shelter (www.ovfs.org) at the end of the month, because I like it when people eat wholesome, nutritious food. I am volunteering a little time with the Ojai Valley Youth Foundation (www.ovyf.org) because I like it when community members feel connected to one another and when youth have adults they can count on. What do you do to promote the ideas you like?

…as for reports on the marches/rallies:
you have to “register” and log in to use the Star’s website first, but once you’re there:
“Fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq”
“County contingent adds its voice to L.A. event”
“Hundreds join in peace rally in Ventura”
Ventura County Life & Style magazine was there too…though i’m not sure how often their publication comes out or where it’s available.

Evan,
I’m concerned as well about the state of our country! A country that has approximatly 47 murders per day and 1700 abortions a day is in a sorry state. Why don’t we hear about all the murders in our country on the news every day, I guess it’s only interesting if it’s local. We have more abortions than the Aztecs had sacrafices per day! And we’re civilized? There is a culture of hatred that is being taught in the Islamic countries and it has nothing to do with us. There are some bright spots in some areas like the Kurds and other places.

Here’s that link again if it didn’t work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDABe8AOuCQ

“If you look at our history with Sadamm with the first Gulf war, he was a very destablizing factor. He was killing the Kurds and other people of his own country…Don’t you think it is our obligation to stop tyranny when we can?”
Brian,
If you look at our history with Saddam you’ll see a lot more than that.
You’ll see, for example, that there is evidence that Saddam was on the CIA payroll as early as 1959, and we knew just what kind of man he was. Said a U.S. government official: Saddam “was known as having no class. He was a thug — a cutthroat.”
You’ll see that the U.S. government handed over a list of suspected Iraqi communists to the Baath Party (Saddam’s party). Mass killings resulted. What was the U.S. response? A senior U.S. State Department official: “We were frankly glad to be rid of them.”
You’ll see that the U.S. government supplied Saddam with many assets, including chemical weapons, in the 1980s. You’ll find that the Reagan Administration provided Iraq with assistance even after it knew Saddam was planning to use those chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war. The Reagan and H.W. Bush Administrations publicly condemned Iraq for using these weapons while at the same time working to prevent Congress from officially chastising Saddam, and instructing the CIA and State Department to say that Iran was partly to blame. Col. Walter P. Lang, retired, the senior defense intelligence officer during this time period said: “The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern.” Intelligence officers claim that the U.S. wasn’t directly involved in the deployment of chemical weapons against the Kurds, and we probably weren’t. But when you give weapons to a cutthroat you have to suspect he might use them on civilians too.
I could go on, but I think there is enough here to make my point. Brian, I would be quite a bit happier with U.S. foreign policy if its’ guiding principle was to “stop tyranny when we can.” Unfortunately most of our leaders (Republican and Democrat alike) are guided by what is called realpolitik – the use of any means necessary to achieve economic and political goals. These goals are often short-term in nature and are amoral at best. Part of the reason so many other people around the world hate the U.S. is that they are often more aware of our hypocrisy (freedom and democracy lip service coupled with very different covert and not so covert actions) than we are. Why should the Iraqi people welcome us with open arms when we supported Saddam for decades? When we encouraged Shiite rebellion and then allowed Saddam to brutally put down the uprising? Saddam is not the first or the last brutal dictator the U.S. government has supported. For a partial history of realpolitik in action since WWII, see Killing Hope by William Blum.
I think ceasing to support brutal dictators around the world will help stop tyranny. I think creating and/or supporting such regimes is a lot more harmful to our troops than an anti-war rally.
As a side note, if the links I have cited are too liberal for anyone’s tastes, you might try digging around through the National Security Archives. The Archives consist of collections of declassified U.S. government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. I was able to spend a lot of time pawing through records during my pursuit of degrees in Political Science and History. With some diligent effort you can learn things about our history that will make your head spin. You can also go directly to the virtual reading rooms of the CIA, FBI, and other government departments and agencies or submit a FOIA request yourself. You can start with a book like Blum’s and request some of the primary source documents he quotes from – just be prepared to be persistent as it can take months or even years to receive the information. The nice thing about the Archives is that they often type up summaries whereas the CIA et. al link to grainy pdfs with lots of redacted lines.
(UPI, 2003: http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/history/2003/0410saddam.htm)
(New York Times, 2003: http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/history/2003/0314history.htm)
(New York Times, 2002: http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/history/2002/0818officers.htm)
(Washington Post, 2006: http://www.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/tribunals/iraq/2006/0827morality.htm)
(International Herald Tribune, 2003: http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/history/2003/0117gas.htm)
(Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik)
(National Security Archive: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/)
(Google “FBI FOIA” “CIA FOIA” and so on to get to the reading rooms of individual departments and agencies)

Tanya, your intellect and clarity of word inspire me!
Brian, you’re very clever.
we share many of the same fears!
do you think that war makes you more safe? do you fear for your safety? do you think that war creates justice? do you have a strong need for justice? does war make you feel strong?
genuine questions, for which there are no wrong, genuine answers.

Hello Dana,
I have thousands of sites bookmarked. Here are some off the top of my head sites where I’ve found useful news and information:
alternet.org
truthout.org
commondreams.org
fair.org
slate.com
tompaine.com

antiwar.com
and, for fun: Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O’Reilly

D&A -
“the far right shows, as in bringing guest on to sand bag them, interrupt every answer, with a vehement pontificating rant devoid of true facts. But that is not enough, they are compelled to insult their guests.”
It’s not just on the talk shows – did you see Senator Inhofe “question” Al Gore yesterday? It was insulting.

this list technically comes from the Union of Concerned Scientists’ The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices (not as a correction, simply more info).
my favorite phrase so far of the No Impact project is this: “Just participating in society makes us responsible for the negative environmental impacts of society’s functioning, even if our personal lifestyle does no harm.”
time to up the ante.

hey Tyler, are we close to breaking any records here? this’ll be the 43rd post on this one thread, and without a major hijacking! lol

Dana,
add truthdig.com and Democracy Now! to your list as well…
-e

Add: HuffingtonPost.com
Evan, I commend your efforts. You are doing great things.

Just a reminder, you can see our military might up close and personal at the Point Mugu Air Show !
March 31st and April 1st, Saturday, and Sunday.
The F/A-22 Raptor will be there !! Awesome !

I went to that glumbert site and witnessed the dolphin massacre. More truth. I never knew about that.
Thanks Khrista

Also here, and you can make donations to help spread the word.