Don't Believe Everything That You Read

In the next couple of weeks, there is going to be a lot of spin, whitewashing if one will. This will come primarily from the White House on the War in Iraq. The Bush administration is writing its own report, and that report is most likely not going to jibe with the GAO's report. The GAO believes that the war is pretty much an unmitigated disaster.

From The Washington Post:

Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.

The strikingly negative GAO draft, which will be delivered to Congress in final form on Tuesday, comes as the White House prepares to deliver its own new benchmark report in the second week of September, along with congressional testimony from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. They are expected to describe significant security improvements and offer at least some promise for political reconciliation in Iraq.

The GAO is non-partisan. The Bush administration is partisan on the other hand. Who are you going to believe? The side that cares about how this war goes or the side that could care less on either side? I'm going to go with the dispassionate side.

Yet Again, The Military Is Right

This was originally posted at ThinkProgress. This is a comment from Army Sgt. Jim Wilt. I have printed the entirety of the comments below:

Why don’t we honor our fallen servicemembers?

By Army Sgt. Jim Wilt
Combined Joint Task Force-82 Public Affairs Office

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan - Following the deaths of 32 Virginia Tech students, the President of the United States ordered that all American flags be flown at half-staff for one week.

In accordance with the president’s order, the U.S. flag at Bagram Airfield was raised to half-staff.
The deaths of the 32 students are a tragedy that was felt throughout the world. Even Afghan President Hamid Karazi gave his condolences to the U.S. on the loss of so many young lives. The president of a country, which has seen more than its fair share of young deaths, tipped his proverbial hat to these young people.

But I find it ironic that the flags were flown at half-staff for the young men and women who were killed at VT yet it is never lowered for the death of a U.S. servicemember.

Is the life of Sgt. Alexander Van Aalten, a member of our very own task force, killed April 20 in Helmand province not valued the same as these 32 students? Surely his death was as violent as the students.

Aalten’s death lacked the shock factor of the Virginia massacre. It is a daily occurrence these days to see X number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq or Afghanistan scrolling across the ticker at the bottom of the TV screen. People have come to expect casualty counts in the nightly news; they don’t expect to see 32 students killed.

Also, more parents have children in school than children in the military. This makes the deaths hit closer to home for a lot people.

The deaths of our friends and family members in the military are not forgotten by the citizens of our great country. We see this as people line the streets to honor those who lost their lives fighting for the freedom of our country and the freedom of other countries.

Individual states have taken it upon themselves to raise their flags to half-mast when one of their children dies.
I think it is sad that we do not raise the bases’ flag to half-staff when a member of our own task force dies.
Department of Defense directives mandate we honor our fallen leaders from former presidents to the state governors, but there is no provision for the men and women who die preserving our way of life.

I can understand not lowering flags across the country for the death of a single servicemember. But shouldn’t the servicemember’s state lower the flag to show their respect to the fallen trooper, if only for one day? Some states do, but not all of them.

At the very minimum, the servicemember’s forward operating base and the installation of his or her parent unit should show their respect by lowering the flag for one day.

We line the sides of Disney Drive here when one of our brothers or sisters in the service dies, but we don’t lower the flag they fight under. A person can argue that we have Memorial Day for this but tell that to the people who knew the person.

We walk down Disney Drive everyday and salute the ranks above us, and those above us salute back. This is a sign of respect.

The U.S. flag is more than a piece of cloth. It is a symbol, a symbol which represents the people of America.
Hundreds of thousands of men and women have died under our flag, preserving its people.
When we honor the flag by saluting it, we are honoring what it stands for. We honor freedom, the people it represents and a way of life.

Isn’t it time our flag saluted back when a person makes the ultimate sacrifice? Shouldn’t the flag, which represents our society, tip its hat when someone dies to ensure it will fly another day?

If the flags on our FOBs were lowered for just one day after the death of a servicemember, it would show the people who knew the person that society cared, the American people care.

A poignant reminder of how we forget about our military and the struggles that they undergo. More tragic than their struggle is the struggle of Iraqis in Baghdad, which was profiled in a fantastic piece in this past week's 60 Minutes. I didn't catch the reporter, but she was not of the regular stable of 60 Minutes reporters.

While the deaths of those students in Blacksburg was tragic, it was a one-time occurrence. Young Americans, the same age as those killed in Blacksburg, are dying in Iraq for just as senseless reasons everyday. Young Iraqis are also dying in Iraq everyday, Iraqis with just as much promise as those who were slain in Virginia. I don't want to change your mind; I just want you to think about the 800-lb gorilla in the room.

Posing at the Rotunda

The American governmental system is one that is a good idea. Its principles of bicameralism and discussion are ones upon which other countries have based their governments on or had forced upon them. Some of its ideas are not very good (Electoral College), but, on the whole, it is a generally good system. For the system to work, there have to be people who are willing to play together in the sandbox of Washington, D.C. Today, The New York Times ran two articles on two specific issues that the government has been fighting over: election reform and the war in Iraq.

The Republicans and Democrats, on both of these issues, are engaged in a very, very innocuous game of Chicken. The Republicans are insisting that there are huge election fraud issues that need to be solved with things like the Read ID Act. There are not. There are issues of disenfranchisement, but those happen through ridiculous acts such as those of Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio in 2004 as Secretary of State mandating 120-lb index paper thereby disallowing the thousands of voter registration applications that were printed in state papers such as The Cleveland Plain Dealer and people being turned away at the ballot box due to their name being removed from the voter roll. For the record, Blackwell is a Republican. These issues do not ADD people to the voter roll as the Republicans suggest.

The War is one that has divided this country on multiple lines. What is right? What is wrong? What is right is supporting the troops. What is wrong is playing politics with their lives. Both parties are playing politics with the lives of the troops. Bush is unwilling to recognize the fact that Iraq is engaged in a civil war with Sunnis killing Shi'ites and Shi'ites killing Sunnis while the American troops sit in the middle and are killed as well. The Democrats are just as guilty of playing politics. While I do not disagree with their position, I do believe that the lives of troops is more important than making an ideological, "i told you so" stance to Bush. They need to give the money to the troops so they can assure that they don't get killed because they were improperly protected.

War is not the time to play politics. Bush needs to accept that we will have to end this war soon because it is going nowhere. The Dems need to understand that the way to play politics is not with the lives of young Americans. Hopefully, everyone can work on this and get it done.