i say the democrats are bunch of gutless servants of the bush administration. lets start there.

I agree with Seattle98104, for starters.

Also, this seemed a good place to post this story, which says so much about what's wrong with this war: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060320/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_joe_johnson

From the dead son to the 9-11 revenge fantasies to the ignorant hatred of islam to the weary resignation . . . I honestly don't know what to think about someone like this.

Yes, and let's not forget that we will all (most of us) be voting for those spineless servants again, because after all, we want to be pragmatic, and don’t want to be like those loony lefties, and we don’t want to be blamed for helping "them" win. Shame on us all. That is the legacy of "our pragmatic generation"

Any hope in the Mid East was destroyed by the Bushies and the Dems, Israel’s latest and illegal incursion into a Palestinian Prison, will give the nut jobs at Hamas an excuse to begin their bloody and senseless campaign against Israel’s right to exist. I say one more year before another Infatada as the hopelessness and oppressive conditions caused by the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories continues to breed more terrorists in their senseless war.

Iraq’s civil war has already started, and it’s silly to say otherwise. Its nonsense to call it anything other than a civil war. Iran will go back to its Khomeini days and the small democratic movement which gave us such great films, writing and ideas will be crushed. Darfur’s genocide will spread into Chad. Afghanistan’s Taliban will return. And Terrorists havens will be plentiful. The UK will come to its senses and run for the hills.

When the US leaves, it will hand over a nation in complete chaos, with a destroyed infrastructure, a demoralized and traumatized population, a legacy of torture and thousands and thousands of Iraqis will die. The war will continue long after the US leaves, the Shiites death squads will grow and they will begin their revenge campaign against the Sunnis, Iraq will become what Lebanon was in the 80’s: Hell on earth. And generations of future terrorists will blame all of us in the so called West.

And the Iraqis can thank Bush, the Republican Party, Maria Cantwell and her lot for not standing up and stopping the human suffering.

Call it a hunch, but I doubt you're going to find many war supporters among SLOG readers.

The invisible wounded bother me. We hear the death toll figures almost daily now (I remember soldier body counts on the news during the Vietnam war when I was a kid). But that figure paints a rosier picture than reality reflects. Why? Fewer soldiers actually die than in previous wars. Between the dual advances of body armor and medical technology, many soldiers who would have died in previous wars are merely wounded instead. So when we compare to previous wars, we can get the impression that we really aren't doing all that badly. Not that 2,300 dead soldiers isn't bad, but it could be a lot worse. And if not for body armor and better medical technology, we would be doing a lot worse. It is a good thing that we can now save many of these soldiers and I'm glad they weren't killed, but I don't think we should ignore this critical statistic.

For the record, then, as we begin our fourth year, there have been over 17,000 soldiers wounded in addition to the 2,300 killed.

Cantwell and the Democrats were and are powerless to do anything about Iraq. You people simply have not absorbed the new political realities in Washington. The Democrats have NO SAY IN ANYTHING anymore. The traditional role of the opposition party is dead, and the Democrats now have far less impact on what happens in Washington than the Republicans did in their darkest days in the mid-sixties -- because now that they're in charge they've changed all the rules.

You might as well demand that the guy sitting at the bar next to you produce gold coins out of his mouth.

As for the progress of the war, I am reminded of something George Bernard Shaw wrote after visiting General Douglas Haig at the front in 1916: "He was, I should say, a man of chivalrous and scrupulous character. He made me feel that the war would last thirty years, and that he would carry it on irreproachably until he was superannuated".
No one in the Bush Administration can display even a small fraction of the splendid determination of Sir Haig of course, but they have his ability to competely disregard reality down to a tee.

So let's assume you're right and the Democrats have no say in the matter. OK, that sucks, but does that mean they should just roll over and play dead? Does that mean they should actually *support* what W and his gang are doing? Because that's what Cantwell and others like her are doing. How can you criticize an administration and claim to offer an alternative when you're actually voting in favor of half the crap they're serving up?

I call Bullshit on your surrender strategy FNARF. The democrats represent more than half of this country. Yes, they lost the presidency, but they garnered more votes than republicans in the 2004 congressional races (the gerrymandered districts make it hard for either party to replace the party in power, but look at the numbers. Dems got more votes.) and they have much broader support than they're willing to use. They could have stood up to Bush, they could have demanded more accountablility, and they could still support efforts to censure or ITMFA. But they're not. They're not powerless, they're just chickenshit. And it's unforgiveable.

Supposedly 65% of Americans no longer support this war. We all need to stand and let it be known. Don't give your elected leaders a pass!

FNARF: While what you say about the Democrats and Cantwell might be true, she still should not have supported this charade. A principled stand would have been to oppose the war in light of flimsy to non-existent evidence and irrelevance to the fight against terrorism.

Or a principled stand would have been to support the overthrow of Saddam as a bad despot who had to go.

She should not be allowed to have it both ways by voting for the war, then whining that she was lied to about the facts. There were plenty of people who disputed or questioned the "facts" presented about so-called WMD. It was her duty to seek out those voices and weigh them against the administration's. Then, she would still have to explain relevance.

because democrats lack spines, the bush administration continues to plod on. censure bush over warrantless wiretapping? the majority of democrats go "woah now, lets not get crazy now". impeachment over the Iraq war? democrats go "hey, now, bush didn't have sex with no interns, ya hear?".

the democrats have no power because they have no guts, not because republicans have a majority.

if you take oppression from the majority willingly, you stay oppressed. if you fight the majority while "powerless" your oppression subsides.

War, war, war, la, la, la

Is this not the most messed-up press-conference photo you've ever seen? http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/03/19/politics/bush.large.jpg

insanity is repeating the same thing over and over, year after year, and expecting different results.

pull the plug.

I just wanted to point out that the "more than 33,000" dead Iraqis figure only counts confirmed civilian deaths to date (33,679 - 37,795 as of this post).

Estimates for the total Iraqi dead indicate we are killing Iraqis far more efficiently than Sadaam was.

But I suppose "efficiency" has different measures in this case. How many dead Iraqis does it take to fill America's gas tanks for one day?

54,000 more deaths and we'll have matched Vietnam's death toll.

That little factoid aside, I thinkwe can all agree that a plan and timetable for withdrawl is long overdue.

Iraq originated as a confederation of rival cultures and tribes anyway. I think that nation is doomed no matter what we do. Even without a civil war, there is just too much sectarian hatred for that country to live under one government.