bt’s Weblog

In December 2000 after the Supreme Court effectively made ‘Dubya’ president, his right wing supporters began calling Gore supporters “sore losers.” If was very adolescent but hurtful nonetheless to those who saw their assumed right to vote taken away as (paid) Republican hoodlums attacked polling offices in Florida screaming “Shut it (the recount) down.”

A hallmark of Karl Rove’s low-life methods is to denigrate his opponents by accusing them of having a fault which his candidate has. Recall the “Gore is a liar” campaign. We know now that Shrub lies like a rug (as my father used to say). Recall the hired Swiftboat assassins who attacked Kerry’s Vietnam service. We know now that while Kerry was being shot at Shrub walked away from his cushy Texas Air National Guard post with two years left in his ‘commitment.’

The “sore loser” taunt reminded me of something I read during the 2000 campaign about Shrub. It was an anecdote about his hating to lose so much that he would change the rules or keep upping the points needed to win until he either won or the game was called. This is not unusual with some teenagers who have yet to develop enough confidence in themselves to be able to admit defeat without fear or rancor.

It seems that once more Rove labeled the opposition with his patron’s weakness and that Shrub has never gotten beyond that adolescent flaw. It wouldn’t be so bad if he weren’t also commander-in-chief of the armed forces who are currently engaged in the Iraq killing fields. Shrub continues to talk about ‘winning’ and ‘victory’ and ‘not quitting’ as if he were playing a game of one-on-one and losing. Now as in his youth he keeps the ‘game’ going until either time runs out or he scores the winning point. Apparently thousands of needless deaths and their attendant pain and suffering mean nothing to this stunted individual for whom (his) winning is everything.

Think about it because it isn’t so far fetched as it seems at first reading.

I am grateful to Lisa Adams whose article “Is Bush a Sore Loser or Merely Simple?” convinced me I wasn’t alone in my belief about Shrub, Sore Loser-in-Chief.

Part I : Sunni and Shiite Muslims, two sects of one religion.

Sunni Muslims comprise 85% of the world’s Islamic population. Shiites make up most of the remaining 15%. The six million Muslims in the U.S.A. (2% of the population) are found in the same proportion. BUT in Iraq the proportion is much different.

In Iraq the Muslim population is 2/3 Shiite and only 1/3 Sunni. Got that? Two-to-one in favor of the Shiites.

Under Saddam Hussein the mostly secular Sunni Baath Party ran the government and the army while the majority Shiites got shat on.

I realize both the names start with “s” but so do “shit” and “shine-ola” and those who can’t tell them apart are considered stupid (another ‘S’ word like “Shrub”).

Okay, now Shrub and Dick fake, mislead and even lie to us (Americans) about Saddam’s weapons potential. On March 20, 2003 they unleash a hellfire storm of missiles under the operational name of “Shock and Awe.” I kid you not. After launching more firepower than was used in Europe during the entire Second World War the troops go in and in three weeks Baghdad ‘falls’ while Shrub and his fellow boobs believe it will all be wrapped up in a few months. Pretty wrong, yes?

So Saddam is gone, the government and army are disbanded and the Baath Party is outlawed. That means the minority Sunnis are up Shit Creek without a paddle. OTOH the Shiites are dancing in the streets because they are the majority and they are going to make up for all the wrongs done to them by those (insert bad thing here) Sunnis.

So there the Sunnis were - out of power and outnumbered two-to-one by Shiites. What is amazing is that the current blood bath didn’t start until much later. It was called ‘civil war’ by everyone but Shrub & Dick et al and then ’sectarian violence’ but the war’s instigators seemed to be in total denial about all of the demons their unprovoked war had released in Iraq. We are seeing a re-run of the Serb vs Bosnian genocide of not so long ago. Remember Bosnia?

Part II: Sunnis, Saudis and alQaeda

I’ve quoted this before and I’m doing it again. This is one of the LIES President Shrub told in his “Mission Accomplished” speech. “We’ve removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding.” Je repete, il est faux. I’ll back up just a bit.

The notorius Osama bin Laden is (was?) a Saudi national. Saudi as in, Saudi Arabia loaded with oil, rich as a bitch and the site of Mecca, THE holiest place in Islam with an overwhelming majority of Sunni Muslims. Osama is an ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim who either left or was thrown out of Saudi Arabia and took up residence in Afghanistan toward the end of the Russian army’s occupation. It is said that his organization which became known as al-Qaeda (the ‘foundation’ or ‘base’, as in military base) was one of those funded by the CIA as proxy fighters against the Russian occupation.

So Osama is a Saudi Sunni Muslim, ultra-conservative to the point of wanting to rid Islamic countries of Western influence, rid the world of Israel and establish an Islamic Caliphate (something like a golden age for Sunnis).

Saddam Hussein was a secular leader “whose government gave women added freedoms and offered them high-level government and industry jobs. Saddam created a Western-style legal system, making Iraq the only country in the Persian Gulf region not ruled according to traditional Islamic law (Sharia). Saddam abolished the Sharia law courts, except for personal injury claims.” (Wikipedia) For this and other “blasphemys” he was disliked (hated?) by Islamic conservatives. However, his power base was the minority Sunnis who made up the working class of the country.

Saddam relied on the Sunnis to shore up his control of the country but he was an enemy to Sunni conservatives like Ossama bin Laden who despised secularism. The feeling was mutual and al-Qaeda never had a prayer (pun) in Saddam’s Iraq. As for supporting terrorists with cash, Saddam had no use for the likes of Ossama bin Laden. The fact is that our own CIA and our “friend” Saudi Arabia were the ones who funded Ossama’s al-Qaeda.

Part III: Conservatives vs. secularists

The main branches of Islam, like those of Christianity and Judiasm, all contain their conservative and reactionary elements. Thus it is not a simple case of Sunnis vs. Shiites in Iraq. Both sides have their conservatives who happen to be the ones who want to kill the “other” side. Al-Qaeda lines up with the Iraqi minority Sunnis. The majority Shiites have a number of religious leaders who are in control of virtual and actual armies of followers. Moktada al-Sadr being the most prominent and powerful.

What the Shrub Administration is doing is getting the word “al-Qaeda” in every place it can. The propagandists want to reenforce the false premise that all “enemy” Iraqis are really al-Qaeda terrorists. However the organization calling itself “al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia,” is “a homegrown Sunni insurgent group with some foreign operatives” according to Stephen Farrell of the NY Times. It is a fact that the spread of al-Qaeda’s influence in Iraq was directly caused by Shrub’s invasion and subsequent neglect of the country.

You will note that the repitition of “insurgent,” “militant,” “terrorist,” “al-Qaeda” give the impression that we are really fighting terrorism, as Shrub continues to blare at everyone he can. He relies on our ignorance of Sunni-Shiite  and religious-secular tensions. Our troops also fight Shiites who are responsible for killing mostly Sunnis and recently each other. From an Iraqi point of view our military is more or less helping rid the country of Sunnis while the Shiite clerics call for our withdrawal and/or death.

Did you notice that the stories about the 36% decrease Iraqis killed in June were on the wires and in the papers on July 1st? Apparently someone stayed up late and at the stroke of midnight in Baghdad they collated all the data on dead persons and got it out in time for the papers to publish. Amazing!

And did you notice that there wasn’t just one AP release but three over the next half day and that they were either published directly, as in our local paper, or worked over by a reporter in papers like the NY Times.

So I did a search for “Iraq” + “June 1″ and guess what? There was nothing on the previous month’s casualty figures. On June 2nd there was a NY Times article by Richard A. Oppel Jr. et al titled, “Number of Unidentified Bodies Found in Baghdad Rose Sharply in May.” The number of ‘unidentifed bodies’ shot up from 411 to 726. The number of identifiable victims fell from 495 to 344. Pretty much the same as the July 5th article Body Count Up In June
Oppel reported that “The Bush administration and military have cited a decline in sectarian killings as proof that the troop escalation is working. And despite May’s increase in corpses, the numbers remain far below the peak of sectarian executions last year.” But (says I) last year has nothing to do with the surge which Bush announced in January and according to the “generals in the field” was completed in either May or June.

The next day Oppel and Khalid W. Hassan had a piece headed “7 More U.S. Soldiers Are Killed in Iraq.” They write, “At least 22 American soldiers were killed in Diyala during May, more than any other province except Baghdad, where 60 died…” and “Altogether, 75 American troops have been killed so far this year in Diyala, compared to 20 during all of last year.” Not good news which according to the pseudo-conservatives is proof of the NY Times’ liberal bias.

The appearance of stories on the “36% decrease” sounds like a public relations operation typical of the backroom style of Karl Rove. Maybe he got help from Karen Hughes who is earning a large U.S. government salary as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. The State Department blurb says of her, “(Hughes) has been tasked by President Bush with leading efforts to promote America’s values and confront ideological support for terrorism around the world. She oversees three bureaus at the Department of State: Educational and Cultural Affairs, Public Affairs, and International Information Programs, and participates in foreign policy development at the State Department.” Can you say “Minister of Propaganda?”

This is one of a series of ‘blips’ in the news that are meant to create the impression that things is lookin’ up in Iraq. You know, the ordinary Joe who can name all the teams in the NFL, NHL, NBA, NL and AL will vaguely remember that he heard somewhere that deaths in Iraq are going down and the surge is working. God Bless America. Gimmie a beer.

So goes a line from the Monty Python movie, The Holy Grail.

After writing the previous comment (below) I recalled seeing the number of Iraqi soldiers and police who were killed in the past two months (May and June 2007). So I searched the NY Times and Washington Post and found (in the Post) the article I was looking for. The July 1st article was headed, “Iraq: Civilian Deaths Down 36 Percent” and among other numbers it reported that 190 policemen and 31 soldiers were killed in June as compared to 127 policemen and 47 soldiers the month before.

The number of U.S. military killed was 101 in June and 126 in May. A chart will help you see the implication of those numbers; Civilian numbers include both “official” sets of numbers.

Note that it didn’t go well for the police (50% increase in fatalities). The other groups decreased by percents in the low thirties. BUT compare U.S. and Iraqi army deaths and then answer the question, “How well are we doing with training Iraqis to take over from us?” Not very well, you say? I agree. When the occupying army suffers three times the casualties of the home army there is something really, really rotten going on.

Aside from that the numbers are horrible no matter how you look at them.

In June, at best, 1,500 people were snuffed out in Iraq. The high official figure is 2,400 people. And what for? Shrub says we’re fighting ‘terrarists over there’ so we don’t have to do it here. What a crock of shit that is. He created the insurgent, terrorist, al-Qaeda murder-fest and instead of crawling away in shame he tells a friendly group in West Virginia that this horrible situation, “will require more patience, more courage and more sacrifice.” Who the fuck is doing the patiently courageous sacrificing Junior? Most certainly it is not you or any of your war-monger support group. You, Mister President, are dragging out this needless slaughter until you can skip out of the White House and go back to your Texas ranch and get stone drunk or clear brush or both. Then you will blame the next president, who you assume will be a Democrat, for losing your war. Talk about lowlife.

Might as well join the millions of bloggers and such who are getting their two cents worth in on this auspicious (or not) date.

Over the past week I’ve noticed a couple of articles with headlines that say tensions are easing and killing is down in Baghdad. Reading the articles shows that the headlines aren’t completely accurate. It depends on who is talking and what constraints they put on their statistics.

On July 1 the headline was, “Officials Say Civilian Casualties in Iraq Declined” and the statistic given by the government was a 36% decline from May to June. “Only” 1,200 civilians were (estimated) killed in Iraq in June. Or according to the Iraqi Health Ministry the number was actually 2,097 down from 3,190 in May. Less than 100% difference in the two “official” estimates (he said sarcastically).

A rather downbeat article appeared on July 5 in the NY Times with the headline “Body Count In Baghdad Up in June.” Those bodies were the ones found dumped in the street or where ever and that number was up 41% since January.

Today the banner was “Tensions easing in some Baghdad neighborhoods.” The article gave a number of (anecdotal) comments from Iraqis about the improving situation. The statistics given were that from June 30 until July 5th, 472 civilians had died in attacks in Baghdad,” a dip of 2% from the previous 16 day period. Deaths from bombings fell 17% to 96 and bodies found dumped in the streets decreased 11% to 279 over the same period.”

Few read the statistics and fewer calculate what the percentages indicate. For example if 96 deaths from bombings is 17% less over a two week period that is a drop of 20 people dead. Wow! An 11% decline in dumped bodies to 279 comes out to 34 fewer dead. That’s absolutely better than the bombing deaths although the fact is in one city that has half as many people as New York City 279 bodies of tortured and sometimes beheaded bodies were dumped in the streets over a two week period.

In other words, you can find “good” news that O’Reilly of Faux News tells us is being covered up by the fucking liberal press. But how good is it when on average you are going to find 19 dead bodies a day somewhere in the streets of Baghdad. That’s the ones that are found. Now WTF is so good about that?

Just for the record:

It took me under two minutes to download and install the latest Firefox version (2.0.0.4).

It took twenty-one minutes to do the same for Internet Explorer version 7. Had to verify my Windows installation first even though it has been done, it seems, weekly for quite some time.

So tell me which of the two is bloated?