Barack Obama Tumblr: The End of the War in Iraq
It means so much. Having an Uncle that spent 13 months overseas fighting for what he believes in is already a great thing, but watching my Aunt raise two young girls and be pregnant with another while he was away is spectacular within itself. It means the world that finally other families can have their loved ones home just like we were fortunate to get when he came back a few years ago.The president is tumbling testimonies from families of Iraq War vets.
“And now we get to prematurely place behind us another quite troubling incident in our recent history. Secret prisons? Eh, let’s forget about those. Torture? Let’s just move on. A incredible transformation of huge chunks of the military into a privately contracted mercenary army? La la la la la! Years and years of National Guard reservists being unexpectedly called up for active duty in Iraq? Oh well! Thousands of soldiers having had their service contracts forcibly extended, creating a stop-lossed conscription army, under a policy that somehow no judge would find illegal? Sorry guys and gals! (And sorry families of dead guys and gals.) Operation New Dawn: the war we had after the war? Deadly. A decade of a wildly, wildly, crushingly expensive invasion, that involved more than a million Americans in combat, and the occupation of a country under false pretenses? Let’s just agree to not talk about it anymore. The CNN crawl says ‘Ceremony Ends Nine Years of Conflict,’ which isn’t actually what happened either: we actually didn’t have a ‘conflict.’ America’s great at putting things behind us, so guess we’ll just file this under “things that are already over,” though we still have billions of dollars to spend in ongoing operations. But at least we should let the Iraq War have an asterisk for ‘things that should never have happened.’”
(via markcoatney)
“Our troops in Iraq will definitely be home for the holidays,” President Obama said today when announcing a complete troop withdrawal from Iraq by the end of the year.
Here’s the video if you missed it.
(via motherjones)
President Gore and 9/11: A glimpse into an alternate past, and the way forward - The Smirking Chimp
You may be reluctant to be dragged back into thinking about Sept. 11, now that we’ve just completed a weekend of wallowing in remembrance of the tragedy that killed nearly 3,000 people. No, nobody breathed a word, so far as I can tell, about the more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians who died as a consequence of our actions following the terrorist attacks. Nor did anyone say much about the nearly 7,000 U.S. soldiers and “contractors” who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since, in wars still going on for no apparent rational reason. That doesn’t mean Sept. 11’s victims of irrational Islamic terror shouldn’t be remembered. Just that we should not forget that their families aren’t alone in suffering, or that countless other nameless families weep in nameless villages as a result. And we should remember too, that it could have been very different. What follows is what I wish I could have written this week: (see above link)
“By that time I had moved from the Op-Ed page into a job — executive editor — in which I was obliged to keep my opinions to myself lest they be mistaken for the newspaper’s agenda or influence our coverage. I’m pretty sure the reporters who have covered Iraq with such distinction in the ensuing years could not tell you whether I still believed the war was just or necessary. I’m not sure I knew myself at that point. It is the job of news to recount, clear-eyed, what is, and questions of what should be are an occupational distraction. In any case, I declined to participate in Slate’s collective examination of conscience.”
“This is what it looks like when wars end.” - Rachel Maddow
Egypt inspires Iraq protests
Ongoing protests in Egypt are inspiring anti-government demonstrations in Iraq.
The ongoing pro-democracy protests in Egypt are also inspiring smaller anti-government demonstrations in Iraq.
People on the street are angry with the lack of public services and widespread corruption.
(via theatlantic)
“There’s no security here. I was near a female suicide bomber a couple months ago. Then I was in my brother’s truck when insurgents opened fire on a bridge. My friend was killed in front of me with a knife.”
This is a speech about the economy, titled “Iraq.” - Keith Olbermann
Casualties chart of troop injuries by state. Click to enlarge.
“Nowhere was the difference between the cable news networks on starker display than in prime-time coverage on the night the last American combat brigade left Iraq following a war that started seven years and five months ago.
MSNBC devoted its entire prime-time footprint to the story, with Richard Engel riding with the troops in a specially equipped vehicle and host Rachel Maddow based in Baghdad. Keith Olbermann anchored the coverage from a New York studio.
Fox News Channel devoted just under 10 minutes to the story, much of it during Shepard Smith’s 7 p.m. newscast. The network spent 45 minutes discussing the potential construction of an Islamic cultural center near ground zero, while that story wasn’t mentioned on MSNBC at all. CNN, meanwhile, spent an hour on each story.
The news decisions led critics of Fox and MSNBC to suggest politics was at play in the coverage decision.
…Fox representatives had no immediate comment on the criticism.”
“President Obama deserves zero praise for this borderline accomplishment. After all, if it weren’t for President Bush ordering the initial invasion of Iraq and making it his central foreign policy initiative, we wouldn’t be here right now awkwardly celebrating the muddled outcome of whatever the hell it is we’ve been doing over there for the past seven years.”
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on formal combat operations ending in Iraq
“We’re leaving because we negotiated with Iraq to leave, not because of conditions on the ground.”
Rachel Maddow
