Happy anniversary . . .

As a scattered few thousands among us protested in cities around the country, the rest of us seemed to observe the fifth anniversary of our foolish foray into Iraq in a kind of numbed resignation yesterday. Iraq Body Count offered this scathing assessment.

Anyone who's paying attention should note that the invasion has led to the death of approximately 90,000 civilians directly (And a Lancet account of casualties places the figure much higher at 650,000 in 2006); as of March 19, 3,992 Americans have been killed in action and nearly 30,000 wounded, many grievously. The war so far has cost almost $505 billion and it's long-term costs estimates now exceed $2 trillion. And. There. Is. No. End. In. Sight.

Yesterday our President, finding new non-ground in the shifting quicksands of his increasingly demented justifications for this war, simply noted that it would help the economy and contain the hyperacceleration of the price of gasoline. Told that two-thirds of the American public want the war to end, our Vice President, responded, "So?" Bin Laden meanwhile romps freely across the media landscape--and the plains of of Afghanistan? caves of Pakistan? coffee shops of Saudi Arabia?--issuing threats against Europe and the Pope, apparently unconcerned that he will ever be called to account for 9/11. Why should he be, when American forces are bogged down in the war he hoped they'd fight in Iraq, a war BTW, whatever else is said about its specific strategic or moral failures, which will certainly bankrupt our treasury just as it has already bankrupted our standing in the world and whatever remains of our ethical good judgment.

Another day, another pointless death in Iraq

"A vehicle got close to them, and they opened fire on it randomly as if they were in the middle of a confrontation," said Ahmed Kadhim Hussein, a policeman at the scene. "You won't find a head. The brain is scattered on the ground."

He added: "I am shaking as I am trying to describe to you what happened. We are not able to eat. These were innocent people. Is it so natural for them to shoot innocent people?"

"Is it so natural . . . " I can only become profoundly depressed when I read stories like this and imagine the day-to-day mayhem our pathologically casual attitude toward use of force has unleashed on the Iraqi people. The unacknowledged permanent surge that has been the "professional" private force at work in Iraq since the beginning of the invasion represent perhaps history's costliest mercenary army. These mercs appear to behave little better than Hessians in the colonial times or the "black and tan" in Ireland and are generating about as much love and affection. They are doing long-term harm to America's reputation and strategic position in the world. It is clearly beyond time that this entire outsourcing enterprise received exhaustive congressional scrutiny. Iraq is already a mess for the real military personnel on the ground and the mercs, in the above instance, slaughtering two wholly innocent and defenseless Armenian Christian women on their way home from work, are making the jobs of the real soldiers so much harder--and dangerous.

Meanwhile, more rotten news emerges from woe-benighted Burma . . .

War to end all fiscal restraint

The U.S. seems destined to be stuck between Iraq and an even harder place as Democrats basically throw up their hands on any sort of accelerated withdrawal plan while high-level U.S. brass have begun evincing unprecedented uneasiness over the military's ability to absorb much more punishment in Iraq, which is beginning to look a lot like Afghanistan to our Soviet Union.

The cost of the invasion, which Paul Wolfowitz intially projected at about $3 billion a year for 10 years--an amount, he blithely suggested, that could easily be covered with a rebate of Iraq oil revenue--now appears headed past a previously deemed preposterous $1/2 trillion mark (and much more when future costs are factored in) as Bob Gates appears before Congress with a request for $190 billion for next year; $42 billion more than originally projected this year.

A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money. Fortunately the lion's share of the tab seems destined to be absorbed by our great grand children. Would that I could pull off the same scam at a Chicago restaurant sometime: "Oh, no. Just leave the check here. There'll be a family by in 2037 to pick it up for me."

Between Iraq and a hard head

While the International Red Cross documents the deteriorating conditions on the ground in Iraq and yet another report documents the misuse of intelligence in the build up to the U.S. invasion, Vice President Dick Cheney persists in what can only be described as the Iraqi Big Lie strategy, asserting once again, despite all evidence to the contrary, that some meaningful connection existed between Al Qaeda and the Hussein regime as a justification for this disastrous war.

What has been odd about the coverage of the so-called failure of intelligence that led America into its unfortunate adventure in Iraq has been the apparent reticence of the media to call a spade a spade and a lie, well, a lie. At least to these skeptical eyes it appeared from the inception of the public relations campaign to sell the invasion to U.S. citizens in 2002-03, one not dissimilar to the current Iranian campaign, that information was being cherry-picked or distorted to build an illicit case for war.

One of the little lies the mainstream media seems willing to accept is that the president was somehow wronged by the intelligence community, thus leading to our disaster in the desert. What was pretty obvious from the beginning, however, and what has now become well-documented, is that a team of self-appointed intelligence experts run out of the Vice President's office and led by the appalling then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith was deliberately twisting intelligence toward war. Why these liars have not been called on the carpet and their distortions better brought into the light of day (how many Limbaugh listeners, after all, still believe the VP when he makes a case for the war) remains a mystery to me. Surely this administration has demonstrated that it does not deserve such over deference, that it in fact only encourages the care and feeding of the reality distortion field that envelopes the White House.

Meanwhile, no one appears to have the slightest idea how to "win" in Iraq or even how to get out while maintaining the semblance of order. The White House seems bent on soldiering on to an ever-distant and unlikely moment of victory, though it is finding it increasingly difficult to enlist the military elite in this effort even as the volunteer army buckles under new costs. But few even now are willing to acknowledge that the U.S. presence in Iraq may only guarantee a perpetuation of the mayhem and the only sensible plan (Joe Biden's) for reaching a political stasis that could lead to an orderly military drawdown remains essentially off the table. While right wing pundits have already laid a solid "blame the messenger" case for the eventual failure of the U.S. adventure in Iraq, current policy seems perversely driven to repeat the shockingly awful spectacle of a complete, chaotic collapse a la Saigon '75.

Who wants to be the last man to die for a mistake?

While VP Cheney and members of the Bush administration try to poker-face their way through assertions that the British draw-down is, in fact, evidence that things are going well in Iraq, British media and politicos seem to have developed the erroneous perception that the withdrawal indicates an acceptance of the ultimate failure of the democratization mission there.

The British military appears most interested in getting out of Iraq with a semblance of dignity, while across the pond U.S. leaders seem bent on deja vu-ing Vietnam right up to the final stampede at the embassy. After launching a war of dubious merit against the wishes of at least half the electorate, a war that essentially all planners agreed from the beginning could not sustain public support for too long or after too many casualties, the Bush administration now seems poised to make a face-saving, last ditch effort (how much does anyone expect the addition of 21K troops to change the march toward chaos we are witnessing?) before getting out and blaming the media, the fickle American public, and traitorous peace-mongering Democrats for the failure of the Iraq adventure.

Folks old enough to remember when The Andy Griffith Show was the runaway hit of the new season will feel a sense of nostalgia (and nausea, no doubt) when this cultural sleight-of-hand begins playing through the conservative media. Note to guys planning the next war: strategy should include realistic estimates of how much mayhem the US public will endure before they'll want to call it quits . . . like the British did this week.

Here's my take on the continuing crisis.

Escalating woes, escalating worries, escalating cost

No fewer than 8 candidates have already signed on for the 2008 campaign even as our current president, enduring some of the worst ratings in presidential history, makes a final stab at escalating his historical legacy to something above awful. Unfortunately, the president may have sealed his historical fate when he launched this ill-conceived war, an "adventure without return," back in March 2003. Even as it has engulfed the Iraqi people in a nightmare of dislocation and violence, it has swallowed up the Bush presidency as one bad decision has "logically" led into the next.

The cost in national treasure and lives for this escapade appear about the only thing certain to escalate, and though some are beginning to wonder at Bush's almost pathological inability to acknowledge the depth and breadth of the Iraqi quagmire or the flawed decision-making process which landed us there, apparently none dare call the president out on his failures. I'll have more thoughts on the war's most recent turn in the next (March) issue of U.S. Catholic.

Some other issues of note: even as war drums begin to sound along the persian gulf, more evidence emerges that diminishes the validity of some claims that are propelling the Iran confrontation, America's apparent next debacle in the region. Sound familiar?

Other news worth tracking: Hillary's choice to decline public financing for her campaign, (matched by other 2008 campaigners and ironically enuf likely to be matched by John McCain himself, the heretofore champion of campaign finance reform) may doom the whole effort to diminish the influence of $ in America's political process. Look for campaign finance reform to continue, however, at the state level.

And speaking of states, the state of Illinois, perhaps queasy about running a ginormous numbers racket and sucking dry the meagre savings of Illnois' poor, will offer up its Lotto system to the highest bidder, opening up a new vista in robbing-Peter-to-Pay-Paulism. They should make just enough $ to pay for the state's new universal gamblers' anonymous program.

Welcome to the Margin Notes blog!

I fear that my initial post is bound to prove underwhelming as I am currently wrestling with putting the January issue of Salt of the Earth e-zine to bed (Do stop by!). Enuf excusifying though, here's some issues I'm following today: US Bishops speak up on min. wage and stem cells, and while the prez puts the finishing touches on his well-leaked "surge" speech, anti-war folks are firming up their plans for resistance to same.