Fresh off Thursday’s rejection of an additional 0.5 percent pay increase for America’s active military, President George W. Bush has a better idea for how this country might honor our troops: A “moment of remembrance.”

President Bush asked Americans to pay tribute to veterans by pausing on Memorial Day for “a moment of remembrance.”

Bush had several suggestions for how to honor the sacrifices of those who have fought for the United States — place a flag at a veteran’s grave, go to a battlefield or say a prayer. He said the moment of remembrance would be marked Monday at 3 p.m. local time.

“At that moment, Major League Baseball games will pause, the National Memorial Day parade will halt, Amtrak trains will blow their whistles and buglers in military cemeteries will play taps,” he said in his weekly radio address.

The president said that as people “fire up the grill” and mark the unofficial beginning of summer, they need to honor the sacrifices that make freedom possible.

“No words are adequate to console those who have lost a loved one serving our nation,” Bush said. “We can only offer our prayers and join in their grief.”

No, Mr. Bush, sir, I believe we can offer a heck of a lot more than “our prayers.” You could start by paying the living that you and your folly have so needlessly placed in harms’ way something close to what they deserve. I don’t expect you to go so far as to pay the troops as much as you dole out to your elite mercenaries at Blackwater and the like, but surely you could spare the extra half-point approved by the Congress in the recent Defense Authorization Bill—an increase that would bring the entire raise up to a whopping 3.9 percent.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, that tiny added increase in troop pay would mean spending an extra $324 million next year—or less than the cost of one day of war in Iraq. It is 0.2 percent of the $165 billion requested by the White House for continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To put it another way, that money amounts to roughly a quarter- less than four percent of what a recent pentagon audit found was paid by the Army to private contractors—and for much of what was purchased with that $8.2 billion, there is no record that anything was received.

Or, Mr. President, you could drop your opposition to the new GI Bill that just overwhelmingly passed both houses of Congress. That small expenditure would offer much deserved medical and education benefits to returning veterans.

While you’re at it, you could really fix the VA. You could de-privatize all the programs you farmed out to your cronies and political benefactors. You could clean up and repair the hospitals and clinics, you could expand mental health services, you could stop your minions from purposefully minimizing the number of PTSD diagnoses, and stop them from classifying those still hampered by mental or physical injuries as fit for combat so that they can be sent back into your meat grinder.

Or, I’ve got an even better idea still. You could start bringing the troops home—for once, for all, for good. You could admit your mistake and end the occupation that needlessly adds—each and every day—to the list of those that we must memorialize.

Do that, and I’ll make you a deal—I’ll not only forgive you your patronizing, fatuous, callous, insulting “moment of remembrance,” I’ll agree to let you go back to your golf game.

Five years ago today, U.S. tanks rolled into downtown Baghdad and deposed Saddam Hussein, yet after five years of military involvement, life in Iraq looks no less bleak.

“A year ago, the president said we couldn’t withdraw because there was too much violence,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). “Now he says we can’t afford to withdraw because violence is down.” Asked Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.): “Where do we go from here?”

In Washington, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are receiving less than enthusiastic responses for their testimonies to the Senate and House committees. Petraeus’s testimony leaves little “wiggle-room” for withdrawal, experts contend.

Meanwhile, others are saying U.S. attention to Iraq is diverting attention from the larger threat in the “war on terror” — al Qaeda.

Poll results and expert testimony increasingly link problems with the failing U.S. economy to war efforts in Iraq. (Will the U.S. be able to manage a hundred years of military engagement in the region?)

Yet, all of the hoopla and the testimonies in the West seem to negate the problems that persist in Iraq–despite the U.S. invasion, despite the fall of Saddam, despite the surge.

Clashes in Sadr City have resulted in twenty deaths today.

Attacks inside the protected “Green Zone” are on the rise.

Moqtada al-Sadr is threatening to end his cease-fire with the U.S., though he decided to call off the “million man rally” through Baghdad today for fear of additional bloodshed.

A strict curfew was put into effect in Baghdad, marking the anniversary of Saddam’s fall with heightened security and increased restrictions.

Five years after the “fall”, what have we, the U.S., the people of Iraq, the world gained from the fall of Saddam?

This is an open thread. Share your thoughts below.

As I’ve been arguing for months, there is a false choice presented to the American public on the way forward in Iraq. We’ve been told the options are to “cut and run,” withdraw precipitously, and leave chaos in our wake, or, as John McCain prefers, stay in Iraq forever.

It doesn’t have to be like that.

We deserve more from our leaders - more thought, more discussion, and more imagination. There are more than two ways to proceed with respect to Iraq. Instead of withdrawing no matter the consequences - and instead of staying forever - we can withdraw in a careful and responsible way.

Last week, ten challengers running for Congress presented such a plan. It was well researched, drew on the expertise of groups like the Iraq Study Group that preceded it, was endorsed by policy experts and military generals, and presented a comprehensive solution not only to withdraw responsibly from Iraq, but to prevent “future Iraqs” from every taking place.

Clearly, the idea is catching on.

A Responsible Plan To End The War In Iraq was released last week with ten challengers endorsing it. As of today, forty-two candidates have endorsed the Plan from districts and states all over the country - red, blue, and purple. If all these candidates get elected, almost 10% of Congress next year will have already endorsed the Plan.

“We’re succeeding. I don’t care what anybody says.”

Those are the words of Republican presidential wannabe John McCain (Asshole-AZ) giving what he insisted was a “major” policy speech on Iraq, and he wanted all of us to hear those words over cable news. . . but the facts got in the way.

You see, while John W. McCain was busy talking—and not listening—Iraqis were busy killing each other with such a reenergized ferocity that MSNBC cut into the live feed of McCain’s speech to present breaking news on the rising violence in Basra. (Crooks and Liars has the clip.)

And this morning brings us more news that McCain’s version of success is on the march as Basra’s violence escalates and spreads to Kut and Baghdad. There is even a report that one of Iraq’s two main oil pipelines has been blown up near Basra.

Of course, our man in Baghdad, Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki has things under control. He’s even given the Sadrists a 72-hour ultimatum.

How are things going? Well, NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston says, “Things are not going well.” She even tells us that members of Bush/McCain’s much-touted Iraqi security force—a force supposedly under the authority of al-Maliki—are stripping off their uniforms and switching sides, joining the Mahdi militias. (Sorry, link not yet up on NPR site.)

Now that’s what I call success! Well, no, I don’t—that’s what John W. McCain calls success. And he don’t care what I, or anybody, says.

Isn’t it nice to know that after two terms of fact-free, incurious, lie-a-minute leadership, we have a man that promises us the kind of continuity and seamless transition of power that today’s Iraqis can only dream about?

Is it Bush or McCain? It’s McMore of McSame.

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(cross-posted on guy2k)

Last night I went out to Dupont Circle to ask a few folks on the street what they thought of the latest grim milestone in the Iraq War. The video is below. What struck me is a sense of mystification. The respondents all were against the war from the beginning but were also mostly against pulling out immediately. They were instead looking for a responsible end to the war, without knowing where that may come from.

When five US combat brigades depart Iraq in July—because their over-long, 15-month rotations are up, and not because of any actual strategic decision—it will represent the end and sum total of what George W. Bush not-too-long-ago called our “return on success.” As reported in today’s New York Times (via Think Progress), it “now appears likely that any decision on major reductions in American troops from Iraq will be left to the next president.”

In other words, what the Bush Administration successfully branded as a “surge” proves to be exactly what I insisted it was over a year ago, an escalation.

Even though most of this escalation in forces will remain in Iraq through the end of Bush’s term, I will bet that most in the establishment media will continue to call it a “surge”—just as the same scribe corps continues to parrot and push the never true and constantly disproved myth that “the surge is working.”

Just to reiterate, because it seems that we all have to, the latest escalation has not worked. It certainly didn’t promote any kind of grand political reconciliation—its purported strategic goal—and even the claim that it decreased overall violence is extremely suspect.

After fourteen months of this tactic, the occasion of reaching 4,000 dead troops serves to underscore the escalation’s abject failure. Not only does that number promise to go ever higher for the rest of Bush’s reign, the last two weeks got us to this tragic milestone much faster than expected. The 25 killed in the last fortnight represents the highest death rate for a two-week period since September 2007 (which came at the end of the bloodiest summer of the war).

Iraqi deaths are also creeping back up, Sunni and Shiite militias appear to be growing restless, and the US still has no set plan for transitioning out of this occupation.

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have both proposed more rapid US troop redeployments, but John W. McCain has a different idea. . . or, rather, he has the most un-different idea. To quote the Times: “The Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, has advocated following a policy close to that of President Bush’s.”

Four more years of an over-stretched military, mission drift, and continued escalation—overseen by a guy that doesn’t even seem to understand the conflict? Sounds like the Republicans are offering McMore of McSame.

We’re now five years into the tragedy that is the Iraq War, and the Bush administration, as well as all the cowards who remain callously loyal to the official White House line, are touting its “successes.”

That fact is galling. It reduces five years of lies, death, destruction, protests, vigils, public dissent and public outrage to background noise, as easily dismissed as it is ignored. Frustration is appropriate. Despondency is understandable, but unacceptable.

This week at Take Back America, which concluded today, I had the pleasure of sitting in on a panel discussion between the Reverend Jesse Jackson, former assistant attorney general to LBJ and civil rights leader Roger Wilkins, and MLK historian Taylor Branch. All three men shared experiences from their dogged efforts in the Civil Rights Movement, which was ignored and repressed in equal measure. They offered encouraging words and sound advice from that most noble of 20th century American ventures.

Their message was clear; keep up the pressure on the government in the face of any and all failures. Let nothing sap your will, energy or determination when fighting the good fight. Some choice quotes:

Wilkins: “Oftentimes people are skeptical about how effective their protests are around the country, but even if the government pretends they’re not listening, they are. They may not react, but it weighs on them.”

“When you become silent, the government concludes that your silence as acquiescence, and you should never let that happen.”

“Change will come, but only if Americans take seriously their citizenship in this country … people say the only thing certain is death and taxes. That’s a lie. The only certain things are death, taxes, and change.”

Dear President Bush,

I listened to your speech today and heard you praise the many “successes” the United States has had in Iraq. Just to make sure we’re talking about the same war, I have a few questions:

Is this what you’re calling success?

Is this what you’re calling an economic necessity?

And what about the unspoken costs of the war? Overseas and at home?

Is this why we continue to invest in Iraq?

Is this why the U.S. is better than Saddam?

Is this why you criticized Saddam for attacking Iraq’s neighbors?

Is this why we need to stay the course?

Or maybe this is why we need to stay the course?

Are these the “voices in Washington” whose desire to change the course in Iraq you consider defeatist?

And what about Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and the rest of the world this war on terror continues to alienate against U.S. interests?

The U.S. might be bigger, it might be stronger, it might have more military strength than the rest of the world combined, but that does not mean America is winning. Beating your chest and praising the might of the U.S. military, you sounded so confident, yet the numbers, stories, and “successes” don’t seem to add up. What am I missing, Mr. President? It seems the more successes you praise, the more failures I find.

Might it be time to change our approach, change our rhetoric, change our black ops strategy, change our aid giving, change the way we “fight” for peace, stability, and democracy in the twenty first century?

I think so.

It was March 19th, 2003, when George W. Bush let slip the dogs of war on Iraq. I seem to remember something about “Shock and Awe,” something about WMDs, something about being “welcomed as liberators” with candy and flowers, and something about the war paying for itself.

Ohhhhh Kayyyyyyyyyy. . . .

Well, five years and over one-half trillion dollars (and counting) later, what do we really have?

If you were in Washington, DC, on Monday evening, perhaps you were lucky enough to attend the official release of A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq (I was not so lucky—so, h/t Jason).

I know what you’re thinking: another plan, another press event, another way to say nothing and do less. . . but in this case, you are quite possibly thinking wrong.

You might want to read the whole report (available as a pdf—see link on this page) and decide for yourself, but let me try to quickly explain why I think this plan might be different.