v US je povstani - spisovatele, intelektualove - neco jako chartisti - Washington DC je "Green Zone" daleko od naroda.

rsteinback@MiamiHerald.com One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help. If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled. Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat -- and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated. If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas -- and call such procedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them. If someone had predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marie Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy -- and that the populace would be more interested in whether Angelina -- I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy. ..we've been through too much, to be led down such a twisted path.  large portion of this country appears more concerned that saying ''Happy Holidays'' could be a disguised attack on Christianity.

Porovnejte propagandisticky clanek Ulce (a patetickeho neocona Friedmana) s analytickym clankem H.D.S. Greenway z Boston Globe

a ti idioti ve Washington DC pokracuji - deficit je 2.8 miliard dene

"usetrili" jsme 400 milionu na studentech a nemocenskem - o tom se congress hadal mesic, ale hned dalsi den schvalil $600 milionu pro Israel na rakety - USA kontroluje hnizdo spionu z Israele.

 

Bremmer, and his young ideologues ran Iraq in blissful ignorance. I am told that making sure that there was no room for abortion in Iraq's Constitution was a goal -- likewise a flat tax for Iraq.

Americans in Iraq live in near total isolation with few Arab speakers and very little contact with Iraqis outside their fortified compounds. The civilian theorists and intellectuals that came to power with George W. Bush, and promoted this war, had almost to a man no military experience. Today the training of an Iraqi Army is being pushed at a frantic pace so that we can withdraw, much in the same way President Nixon's ''Vietnamization" was supposed to prop up Vietnam so that we could bring our armies home

 

Melvin Laird wrote that, in Vietnam, ''elections were choreographed by the United States to empower corrupt, selfish men who were no more than dictators in the garb of statesmen." It may be too early to make that same judgment in Iraq, but it is clear that too many Iraqi politicians are cast in the same mold as were our Saigon politicians.

And that old chimera the ''body count," which the Americans first avoided in Iraq, is creeping back into usage -- as if the number of insurgents we killed today had any bearing on whether we are actually winning the war.

US involvement in Iraq will not end with American helicopters flying from the roof of the embassy. But it may end badly with Iraq split among ethnic and sectarian warlords, empowering those who wish America ill -- destabilizing the Middle East rather than transforming it.

How will the Iraq war end?

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/12/27/how_will_the_iraq_war_end/?p1=MEWell_Pos5

 

In Vietnam then and in Iraq now, the administration finds itself engaged in a war it is unable to win and reluctant to lose. The American people are walking away from this war, as they did in Vietnam, and the Bush administration knows that staying the course is not a long-term option. The recently announced troop drawdown is a reflection of this domestic pressure, not conditions in Iraq.

But Bush today, as did Lyndon Johnson before him, vows to fight on until victory, and some of the same ridiculous rhetoric prevails -- such as that we are fighting them there so we won't have to fight them at home. In Iraq, war is actually helping Al Qaeda to recruit terrorists to one day attack us at home.

Both Vietnam and Iraq saw monumental miscalculations on the part of our war leaders. Hubris played a big role in both. It seemed inconceivable to both Johnson's and George W. Bush's defense departments that these weak opponents could stand up to America's modern arms. In both cases it was thought that the Americans could prevail quickly and go home

Melvin Laird, recently wrote: ''Both the Vietnam War and the Iraq war were launched based on intelligence failures and possibly outright deception."

McNamara, would confess years later that he didn't know anything about Vietnamese culture and history, but as far as I know he hasn't confessed that he went out of his way to ignore people who could have informed him as to the difficulties ahead.

Likewise, Donald Rumsfeld went out of his way to ignore the advice of those who knew something about Iraq. In both cases any information that would get in the way of doctrine was unsought and unhe

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