I'm at a loss in trying to figure out why the Pentagon powers didn't see this coming when they planned the war--if they indeed did some planning.

Retention and recruiting are actually probably not that badly hit ... yet. At least the regular active duty folks are probably making the same calculations they made before. The reservists on the other hand most likely will have problems.

The economy is so bad that lots of active duty people are probably staying in just for the paycheck, even with the hostile fire.

But ... don't think for a minute they'll not take all this into account when they next have to re-up.

I'm talking primarily about the folks with 10 years or less in. The deal for them to stay and get any real benefit from the retirement is so pathetic now that they would really have to *LOVE* this military to stay in.

This sets us up for a hit to the gut in terms of readiness a few years down the line as they separate en masse.

Evan,

Are you suggesting the possible need to reinstitute the draft? Keep in mind Bush's National Security Strategy of maintaining America as No. 1 not only militarily but also economically, warning others not to challenge either of these positions. The draft may come up for discussion during the 2004 Presidential campaign but both parties in Congress will be reluctant to bite the bullet, until at least post-election. Meantime, what happens to national security?

I am not sure that we would have to institute a draft, unless the fiscal situation worsens dramaticallly (a possibility I suppose).

What we would need to do was spend lots more upfront cash on retention bonuses and incentive programs to keep the middle ranks on active duty.

The hardest hit from all of this ops tempo stuff would seem to me to be the middle ranks, O-3s, O-4s, E5s, and E6s.

These people will probably get out in droves as their separation dates come due over the next two years.

They can't be replaced with a draft anyway, so as the DoD starts seeing the numbers they will probably jack up retention bonuses and make them "offers they can't refuse" to keep the middle ranks in place. This has a substantial cost though.

An old Chinese adage sais: BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH
FOR....Well, I got my wish-- George Bush became
President. Now I am ready to go even with a Mrs.
Clinton- Gen. Clark ticket, leaving the Democrats to
take a crack at reviving America from the
exanguination of power and dignity resulting from the
influence of a shadowy cabal of not totally normal
immature self-centered ex-Commie "neoconservatives."
In obscure darkness, it seems, they rule American
foreign policy. THAT IS NOT GOOD, IT IS VERY
DANGEROUS. Yes friends, they bled it dry and ALL will
leave Washington when Bush leaves office a lot richer
than when they came in. That's because all these one
time Bolshevik revolutionaries, in their old age,
practice palm greasing baksheesh-seeking influence
peddling, all the while urging America to impose
"democracy" as if it were pork on the Muslims in order
to make the Middle East safe for Sharon 's GREATER
ISRAEL.

These neocons were never elected to anything. Their
existence is an unknown because they publish
exclusively for some slick Conservative journals that
no one reads. With the Red Danger of the 60s gone, the
corporate magnates that funded the youthful right
redirected their contributions. These slick
publications went belly up, as did a lot of these
right wing think tanks...The Iran-Contra scandal
caused a lot of Conservatives to slink back into
isolation. The sudden end of the Cold War confirmed
the wisdom of that decision. And so everything went
dead.

The world was fragmenting while Monika Lewinsky did
her thing. The right focused on President Clinton's
bellow-the-belt White House activities, all the while
China was making plans for its global hegemony 10
decades from now and Asian hegemony in the foreseeable
future. It is then that one time Red and later long
time anti-red Jewish activists-- labeled "neocons" as
a pejorative by their liberal-left colleagues when the
latter ostracized the former-- pulled together money
from a number of Likudnik Jewish American and Zionist
interests to take over the American right media.
Suddenly one time Buckley's NATIONAL REVIEW was
spewing racist anti-Palestinian pejoratives like the
WEEKLY STANDARD and the WALL STREET JOURNAL (paragon
of the upright angelic stockbrokers). Once the slick
side of Conservatism-- including a couple of moribund
"think tanks"-- were taken over, the neocons went to
the Southern-Yahoo anti-semite Christian right and
offered a coalition. A couple of Bible passages later,
presto...magic, alchemy...the laws of physics were
turned on their head: anti-Jewish became pro-Zionist.
Of course, for convenience sake, the second half of
the Bible babble is left out: that the Jews will all
perish when the Messiah RETURNS, for which a big fat
Israel is a necessary prelude (good God what
insanity!)

If this seems strange to you-- and to me "strange" has
become a relative term since the days of "sexual
is-isms" and the "wide right-wing conspiracy"-- then
consider how weird has been the Bush Era, beginning
with the whole ballot chads issue. But Rice, Powell
and Papa Bush's old team put together a global
strategy for the son that neutralized China's takeover
of Asia by surrounding it and expanded NATO to the
Russian border, thus inhibiting both Euro
anti-Americanism and Russian machinations. All this
they did without charging the US Govt. a cent, simply
as good citizens. Bush's inauguration was indeed an
auspicious occasion. Who knew that the speech-writers
of his inaugural speech would soon set up shop in his
cavernous skull, to direct US foreign policy, fluff
becoming policy. The trouble started when, to "whiten"
up his black-made foreign policy, Bush injected into
the NSC the WASP Sleaze factor, proven incompetents
from the Vice President down .
How the neocons got into DoD is also a peculiar story.
Key to all this is a devoted American strategist and
thinker-- a brilliant Jewish American-- who made a
career speaking out his mind at DoD and to hell with
the consequences. Paul Wolfowitz was seen as an asset
by several administrations. Wolfowitz was never in
search of a pat on the head from Uncle Arik Sharon or
kudos from Cousin Netanyahu. He was/is/will forever
be, a totally patriotic American and a humanitarian
who feels great concern for all humans, including the
Palestinians, his family having been touched by death
and suffering in the Holocaust. Yet, when Rumsfeld
took the helm at DoD, he was not about to accept being
overshadowed by his Asst. Secretary. And so Rummy, as
he is disdainfully called by our men in uniform,
decided to dilute Wolfowitz in a sea of neocons. None
of them were hired for their experience, technical
expertise or mature outlook. All were so-so careerists
getting their testosterone activated by making up
formulas for how to barbecue Palestinians from a
helicopter a 1000 ft. in the air, and posting these
recipes on their Internet sites. Supporting Sharon--
whom Philip Habib (Reagan's peace envoy to settle the
Lebanon war) called a murderer and a liar-- made these
puny putzes feel like he-men. But this too they did
utterly incompetently, leaving themselves wide-open to
charges of "dual loyalty." However, ensemble, they
drown out the uniqueness of Wolfowitz, and that's what
Rummy wants. Now, everyone thinks that Wofowitz is
just one of Rummy's neocons...he is not, he never
was...Wolfowitz is Wolfowitz, the devoted American
civil servant. However, writing incessant grandiose
unrealistic hyperbolic memos for Rummy, they made
Rummy look at least more prolific if not as
intelligent as Wolfowitz. It took no time for
Rumsfeld's flow of memos-- called "Rummy snowflakes"
by the Pentagon staff-- to "snow" our "duhhhhh" Mr.
President. You see, despite the efforts of his press
staff to make him look decisive, Mr. Bush is a
determined but indecisive man-- he know's what he
wants done, but since he can't tell dumb from smart
and has too limited an attention span to both read
briefing papers and memorize fluff speeches, he can't
tell if the strategies he chooses to get done what he
wants to do are smart or dumb, making him look stupid.
And so, he gives one to one side of the debate, then
one to the other, then back again....That way, he
thinks, he can have his cake and eat it too. So it
went with the war in Iraq. First he went for the Rummy
snow job...Then he went with the Powell arguments for
multilateral ism...then he went with the "screw the
UN" Rummy neocons...then he went with the multilateral
force argument of Powell...(I could go on but I
wouldn't want the pendular swing to give you motion
sickness).

So, we're running out of soldiers, out of funds and we
are beating down the Arabs for being suicide
"terrorists" while fully supporting Sharon behaving
like a Zionazi. In the meantime, our nation is put
through color coded anxieties, timed to remind us that
it's not good to change horse-head midstream in the
middle of a war on terrorism. Like conditioned
Palvovian dogs, we are made to worry about what smart
terror tricks alQaeda will pull on us so that we don't
realize what dumb things the Bush Administration did
or what smart things they didn't do.

Mrs. Clinton may be a total phony and have a heart
colder than a witch's tit, but she is not an idiot.
Gen. Clark may not be another Ike, but his heart
produces more than 1/3 the amount of blood needed to
come up with a sensible thought. Consequently, we can
expect him not to be taken in by Nathan Shcharansky's
Zionazi babble as was VP Cheney.

I expect that Wolfowitz will remain in his DoD post
under a Clinton-Clark Administration because, well,
she's mean but not stupid. Certainly he and VP Clark
can do better than VP Ceney and the neocons.

For me the Bush election was like a Second Coming. I
was moved by his modesty, forthrightness about his
past Schwarzenegger-like behavior in his younger years
and was especially satisfied with his foreign policy
team-- all of which will soon be out of the picture,
resigning in disgust. On March 18, 2003, I realized
that Bush is a ventriloquist's dummy. And, the
ventriloquists are that bunch of shady types that are
to this day too immature to separate out self-interest
from national interest. Like Podehretz, claiming that
by declaring "World War IV" on behalf of America
against the Arabs he no longer feels himself the
scrawny little Jewish boy getting his a*s kicked by
muscular back teens, they feel tough calling for
"preemptive war"-- give me a break!!!!Finally, Bush's
inability to bring "killer-liar" Sharon's war crimes
under control, allowing him to say that what the
Zionazis do in the Palestinian territories is the same
as what we do in Afghanistan and Iraq, convinces me
that his presidency has been as dubious as his
election.

I URGE PRESIDENT BUSH TO PUT NATIONAL INTEREST ABOVE
HIS OWN, RECOGNIZE THAT HE'S NOT UP TO THE JOB, AND
ANNOUNCE THAT HE WILL NOT SEEK ANOTHER TERM IN TIME
FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY TO FIND ANOTHER WORTHY
CANDIDATE. HE OWES THAT TO THE MANY DADS, MOMS, SONS,
DAUGHTERS, UNCLES, AUNTS AND FRIENDS WHO DIED AND ARE
DYING NEEDLESSLY IN IRAQ.

ON THE OTHER HAND, IF HE PUTS CHENEY TO PASTURE-- HE
AIN'T NO SEABISQUIT!-- REPLACING HIM WITH CONDI RICE
AS HIS VP AND CONVINCES POWELL TO STAY ON, MAKING
WOLFOWITZ SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, AND SENDS RUMMY AND
THE NEOCONS BACK INTO THEIR HOLES ON WALL STREET, THEN
I WOULD SUPPORT HIM FOR A SECOND TERM.

But none of this is likely to happen. The Democrat
field is straight out of the political cemetery and
the bottom of the IQ list. Dean, for example, would
leave the White House marked up by graffiti "art"!!
So, considering this dismal array of Gingrich-like
hollowness, Mrs. Clinton is beginning to look
unappetizingly good. Together with Gen. Clark, they
would make the future seem somewhat hopeful. Perhaps,
as the first female President, she might acquire
personality and gratitude for the opportunity ...might
develop humility!

Mrs. Clinton is a determined fighter. She's a
pit-bull. She wants to get things done, not like Bill,
only looking like she gets things done. She's not
likely to be too preoccupied with her below the belt
anatomy and has enough testosterone in her to scratch
binLaden's, Kim Junil's and Katamnei's eyes out. She,
probably, like none other, can cower Sharon as well.
All in all, unlike the other Democrats vying for the
Presidency, she has experienced the White House at a
time of great personal humiliation. Yet she stayed
steady on course.

The lesson I learned is that post-Cold War politics
are weirder and more unruly than anything any of us
knew before. During the Cold War, the MAD system
assured that no one would do something reckless. Those
days are gone. Now, anything is possible.
Consequently, we can't afford stupid leaders anymore.
We need men-- or women-- who are wise and very
knowledgeable. We need presidents who control their
staff, not staff who control the president.

Bush never learned that power is respected only when
it is so respected that it never needs be used. The
ancient samurai would feel dishonored and would kill
himself if he had to draw his sword to cower a
commoner. The fact that he drew his sword only proves
that it was the sword, not him, that people respected.
Bush has shown himself unable to distinguish between
American greatness and Sharonist thuggery. He thus
came to admire Sharon as everything his moral
upbringing won't allow him to be. But when Sharon
leaves office disgraced for his financial skulduggery,
Bush will have to realize that he let himself be
pushed into a war against one killer just to find
himself endorsing the bloody crimes against humanity
of another. It is not himself that he shamed in doing
that, but the nation he represents. All his great
ideas and successes, if any, are eclipsed by this
sordid stance. Everyday that an American soldier dies
in Iraq without advance on the Israel-Palestine peace
road map is a day when American lives are shamefully
wasted. The Zionazis, despite the massive support of
Bush's road map by the Israelis and American Jews,
have said that they will not allow the existence of a
Palestinian state. Yet Bush goes on calling for terror
to stop, as if it were all one-sided. Anyone who
challenges Sharon-Likud on that gets branded an
"anti-semite" or a "self-hating Jew." Instead of
bringing this waste of American blood to an end by
squeezing killer Sharon, Bush has repeatedly
capitulated, betraying his own road map and his own
soldiers in the field. Bush could never stand up to
his Cabinet of proven incompetents and say: I'm in
charge and I want peace now! Instead he makes musical
chairs of policy, following no rhyme or rhythm. The
neocons are nothing but conmen who brag to a few but
sneak about in the shadows not to have to face the
consequences of their policies or the scrutiny of the
American public. Yet they have begun to pin the tail
on the donkey, blaming Bush for not doing what they
told him to do. That he is the representative of the
American people matters little to them, they see
themselves as prophets whose word is not to be
challenged...Those who challenge them cannot have any
legitimacy...they can only be one
thing...ANTI-SEMITES....While I share the popular
outrage with Bill Clinton's obscene behavior in the
White House, I find equally obscene the foul presence
of the neocons in the White House and the visits of
killer-liar Sharon therein to intimidate the President
of the world's largest power.

I KNOW that neither the neocons nor Sharon would get
away with any of this under President Hillary Clinton.
When Sharon told the press, after his first meeting
with Dr. Rice that it was hard for him to follow what
she said because he was gazing at her beautiful legs,
Dr. Rice said nothing. But had he said the same thing
about President Hillary Clinton, I KNOW that
killer-liar Sharon would have left the White House
with a black eye. That is why I am willing to support
her candidacy. She would not let America's honor be
compromised by the shenanigans of a soon to be indited
shyster. Mr. Bush had his chance, and he muffed it.
None of Carl Rove's tricks can change that...I don't
think he can win under present circumstances, so Mrs.
Clinton is at the very least, the lesser of two
evils....at the very most, the sky's the limit
because, for better or worse, she is her own man!

Daniel E. Teodoru

THROWING BACK THE BUSH-T!

I can think of no one in Wash. DC who would consider
Richard Clark anything but an honorable man with no
personal ambition other than to serve his nation. Yet,
after his "60 Minutes" appearance in advance of his
book's release today, the Bush White House has
mobilized all sorts of staff from Rice at the top on
NBC's "Today" show to Bartlett, the PR guy, on Fox-TV,
attacking Clark about the way TV adds for prescription
drugs attack the symptoms from diseases. It all seems
to be based on the viewer's ignorance about both the
pathology of the disease and the pharmacology of the
treatment. Consequently, the ads resort to "passion
plays" such as the woman who suffered severe arthritis
but thanks to *prescription only* drug X was able to
attend her daughter's wedding and dance all night; now
her daughter too has arthritis but "thank goodness
that she won't have to suffer as I did," because she
has been put on this same drug early in life. They
tell you to "talk to your doctor and ask if you are
not a candidate for drug X."

What in God's name are you to say? A doctor has five
minutes for each patient thanks to HMO standards and
is not about to discuss TV Rx with patients.

Similarly, the White House spokesmen took advantage of
the fact that no one read the book nor knows anything
about Clark's former functions in the anti-terror
bureaucracy. So they throw doubts such as: "A search
of White House records shows that, in fact, no such
meeting took place." Or, "the President, according to
the record, never said such a thing." Or, "Dick was
not in on the later Camp David meeting and could not
have known that this WAS INDEED discussed." (Could we
see these records, by the way?) Then, the attack goes
from challenge of spacial contingencies (the President
was not there, he was as Walapagnambialyiertiyxvnville
for an important meeting on alQaeda.") to challenge of
temporal ones: "You must ask yourself why this book
appears NOW, of all times." The implication,
ipso-facto is that Clark is bucking for terrorism Czar
in the Kerry Administration (especially given whose
office is near Clark's at Harvard U!).

But the very issue to which Mr. Clark contributes is
the issue that has been around for all the days since
9/11-- why in Iraq medicine in such big doses and in
Afghanistan in such small doses? If your doctor
erroneously mispositioned the decimal point in a
prescription, the patient is supposed to say: Gee Doc,
isn't that about 100 times (more/less) what you gave
me last time, QID (3x a day)?

So, for a year now media, citizens and retired Govt.
and military officials haver been asking-- along with
Afghanistan's head of State: Mr. Bush, why so big an
effort after Saddam and to "rebuild" Iraq and why so
small an effort to get binLaden-- still at large three
years later-- and "rebuild" Afghanistan?

Sen. Biden never tires of telling about the girl
student who grabbed his arm when he visited her new
school in Kabul, insisting, "You can't go. You have to
stay here and protect my school. If you go away the
Taliban will come back and I won't be able to go to
school anymore. I want to become a doctor, like my
mother. I want to help people; so you must help me by
staying and making sure that my school doesn't close
and the Taliban doesn't return..." I don't recall Mr.
Bremer ever telling such a story!

The point is that Mr. Bush wants bragging rights for
his war on terror in Afghanistan AND Iraq. But then he
has to take responsibility for the side-effects of his
policy. Now that Afghanistan is made up of a Govt. of
multi-billion $$$ drug dealing warlords and Iraq is
about to join with Iran to make up the "Greater Shi'ia
Empire," Mr. Bush has to face the issues brought up by
Dick Clark. He can't say: "why now?" It is NOW,
because Bush is NOW running for re-election of what he
did in Afghanistan and Iraq THEN, promising more of
the same; remember: "I am a war president..."?

This administration is as secretive as the drug
companies are about their products. Almost everything
is CLASSIFIED. Yet, middle level security-cleared
bureaucrats are spilling their guts out to journalists
allover Wash DC, as if the reporters were
father-confessors, trying to assuage their own guilt
and disgust over the actions taken and secretly stated
motivations in "secret" memorandum ad nauseum of this
administration on the Middle East. Invariably, it's
all coming out. But it is only press scuttlebutt until
high ups like O'Neill and Clark come forward. The
retort from Bush-Cheney & Co. then is that it's all
lies. And, when independent sources confirm, as did to
CBS's Leslie Stalh about Clark meetings with Bush, the
PR "damage control" crew merely sais: I stand on what
I said. Too bad you can't read their pulse rate, blood
pressure, pupillary size and hands sweating!

Then there is the question trumpeted ad nauseum by
Neil Cavuto on Fox-TV, a Wall Streeter-- you know, the
guys who brought you ENRON, Global Crossings and
Worldcom etc. Cavuto asks why on "60 Minutes" Clark
said so little about how "Bill Clinton dropped the
ball on alQaeda." The answer is obvious: because
Clinton is NOT running for four more years as chief of
national security, Bush IS!

Lastly, when all else fails, our Homeland Security
Czar gets on TV and tells us that his department is
taking new measures to "protect" us. It is giving more
supplies and guidelines for local police, after
Madrid, for dealing with a subway or train
catastrophe...Well, what do you expect? Would you
expect a drug company executive to come up with
preventive regimens or treatments?

I lived through the Cold War-- three shooting wars in
it-- and have never heard so much flim-flam absurdity
from the national leadership. On the other hand, never
in all my years of being "exceptionally well informed"
did I ever see a time when a bungling administration
lied so much while living in so much of a glass house.
The press seems to know so much about the Bush
medicine that it can successfully predict the
side-effects. In fact, a recent essay in NEW YORK
REVIEW OF BOOKS, "Now They Tell Us," argues that what
we don't know, we don't know because the press doesn't
want or doesn't care if we know. I hope you all read
it:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16922

Never in our history had we ever been privy to so much
detail-- so accurately presented-- on how our
leadership stumbles about trying to run America while
enriching its "base." Those who haven't got a clue as
to what all the brouhaha is all about, don't know
because they don't want to know. As an American by
choice, not chance, please let me tell you all, NOW IS
THE TIME FOR YOU TO FIND OUT, or live with the
consequences.

Daniel E. Teodoru

"BREAKING DOWN" THE "BAD GUYS" IN IRAQ

I sometimes wonder if Seymour Hersch and I are tasked by the same ".gov" people to make the public aware of what is being done at the Defense Dept. (DoD) under Sec. Rumsfeld and his neoconservative cabal. For, within days of eachother, we have been both loaded with similar evidence that there is something rotten in the Pentagon, paraphrasing Shakespear.

My earlier indication was one of what seemed like a hastily put together war without much planning. But, of course, much planning had gone into an Iraq invasion for several years, starting with the Clinton Administration. These plans, to minute details, based on all the avialable facts, proved very well informed. The trouble was that they all indicated that the cost in life and treasure for us to remove Saddam and "deomcretize" Iraq (a term which turned all of the former academics in DoD into utter babblers)demanded far, far more that either adminstration deemed prudent to spend. So Mr. Rumsfeld, by the prestigiditory powers infered on him, presumably by Merlin, did a real "snow job" on this president, with a blizzard of "Rummy snowflakes" that made visibility into the future of such a war totally impossible. Then, this hawkish advocate, suddenly turned into a stingy pencil pushing accountant, cutting down everything the Joint Chiefs required. I leave the details to the Gen. Franks' book that will be a real blast. When asked to take the post of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs after "victory," he told Rumsfeld: no thanks, I'm going to write a book instead-- the message was loud and clear, sir-- stay tunned. Finally, the Rumsfeld DoD civilians, in all their hubris, decided to take a Napoleonic approach: first we advance; then we see. The concequences that almost everyone(and I) predicted were the same, in many case with far far less hard info than others.

But I felt far more alone when I sought to serve as transmitter of British press reports on the American attitude towards the Iraqis after America came to "own" them, per Sec. Powell's "Pottery Barn rules." It is that in their desperation, Mr. Rumsfeld and his civilian neocons at DoD chose to resort to Middle Eastern methods in order to replace Middle Eastern ends with that muddled thing, "Western Democracy."

Totally unprepared for the growing resistance to an incompetent and negligent "liberation," the American Proconsul Bremer refused to admit that the pipeline of "reconstruction" was empty for six moths because the war on Iraq was run on funds stollen from the war on terror in Afghanistan, the one approved by Congress. Thus, many Iraqis who trully saw the Americans as "liberators" came to see them as "occupiers" motivated by oil. I would say here that if one develops a network of informers amongst the dispersed Iraqi medical profession, one gets reports of every step along the pathologic path of anti- Americanism. As one who watched up close America turning the war in Vietnam into its own, I can only say that since we respected our Vietnamese enemies, most of whom we also killed, we tended to treat those who survived with respect-- expressing outrage when stopping their Saigon army compatriots from humiliating or hurting them. But in over our heads, in an occupation running out of supplies, we turned to another nation with over half of a century experience in occupying Arabs at minimum cost. The Israeli occupation of the conquered Palestinian territories made them ideal trainers in Middle Eastern ways of occupation; hence the large proportion of civilian casualties along with the killing of the resisters we call, "the bad guys"-- "criminals, perverts and murderers" all, per Gens. Myers and Sanchez; and, hence also the abuse and humiliation of prisoners swept up randomly in dragnets and in need-to-be-"broken down"-so-that-they-will-talk Arabs. It is often forgotten by our zealous "intelligence" units that these anaonymous "bad guys" have brothers, fathers, cousins and friends ready to avenge them at any cost-- life included. The stoicism of the Vietnamese is not to be found in Iraq. And so, the more Iraqis we kill and/or humiliate and "break down," the more come out to kill us. Being as low-casualties- tolerant as the Israelis, we might find ourselves choosing between "ethnic cleansing" or "transfer," like the Israelis, in order to secure "our" Iraq. But by then the "coalition of the willing" may be limited to one-- US.

Already the great muddler of English, Bush, and the great disember of English, Cheney, are speaking of our "occupation" instead of our "liberation" of Iraq. As the June 30th deadline appears and we run out of "add water and stir" instant-Iraqi-leaders from near and far, we may find that no one given that post can any longer be trusted to express gratitude for our presence-- instead, demanding that we leave forthwith. Then, it will be like South Vietnam circa 1963-65: revolving door governements; as we removed one for negotiating a "entre nous les vietnamiens" deal, offering to kick us out, replacing it with another that assures us that it will never deal with the enemy, we found ourselves kicking it out for secret talks with the Vietcong and again we were looking for another no-negotiations alternative. But in Iraq, there may not be any Thieu and Ky available. Even Chalabi has today expressed refusal to have anything to do with Israel, according to Salon.com. His is a position held by every other DoD darling Iraqi. Since we secretly demanded a pledge of "love thy neighbor"- Israel, we may now be back where we were in Vietnam, 1964.

Yet, I hear no outrage at the fact that for 3/4 of a year the President and his cabinet had no idea how much Iraq "reconstruction" would cost, nor how long our troups would be there. I hear no outrage that the Asst. Sec of Defense had no updated casualty figures on hand when asked in a Congressional hearing and so he low-balled it. I hear no outrage that the President told a press conference that while we are doing well in Iraq, alQaeda "is still coming after us"-- the reverse was supposedly the purpose of our war on terror begining two years ago. I cannot help but think that America's "higher education" teachers, are just not teaching the President or the public the "higher" realities that somehow don't get into the campaign ads.

Perhaps finally, Americans looking at the pictures of the abused Iraqis, Hersch made public, will in their shame and fear of retribution seek answers to the question: how is it that our kids so hate the people they are supposed to die "liberating"? They may discover that this hate comes from Israeli training based on the principle often heard in Israel: the only good Arab is a dead Arab.

Daniel E. Teodoru

"BREAKING DOWN" THE "BAD GUYS" IN IRAQ

I sometimes wonder if Seymour Hersch and I are tasked by the same ".gov" people to make the public aware of what is being done at the Defense Dept. (DoD) under Sec. Rumsfeld and his neoconservative cabal. For, within days of eachother, we have been both loaded with similar evidence that there is something rotten in the Pentagon, paraphrasing Shakespear.

My earlier indication was one of what seemed like a hastily put together war without much planning. But, of course, much planning had gone into an Iraq invasion for several years, starting with the Clinton Administration. These plans, to minute details, based on all the avialable facts, proved very well informed. The trouble was that they all indicated that the cost in life and treasure for us to remove Saddam and "deomcretize" Iraq (a term which turned all of the former academics in DoD into utter babblers)demanded far, far more that either adminstration deemed prudent to spend. So Mr. Rumsfeld, by the prestigiditory powers infered on him, presumably by Merlin, did a real "snow job" on this president, with a blizzard of "Rummy snowflakes" that made visibility into the future of such a war totally impossible. Then, this hawkish advocate, suddenly turned into a stingy pencil pushing accountant, cutting down everything the Joint Chiefs required. I leave the details to the Gen. Franks' book that will be a real blast. When asked to take the post of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs after "victory," he told Rumsfeld: no thanks, I'm going to write a book instead-- the message was loud and clear, sir-- stay tunned. Finally, the Rumsfeld DoD civilians, in all their hubris, decided to take a Napoleonic approach: first we advance; then we see. The concequences that almost everyone(and I) predicted were the same, in many case with far far less hard info than others.

But I felt far more alone when I sought to serve as transmitter of British press reports on the American attitude towards the Iraqis after America came to "own" them, per Sec. Powell's "Pottery Barn rules." It is that in their desperation, Mr. Rumsfeld and his civilian neocons at DoD chose to resort to Middle Eastern methods in order to replace Middle Eastern ends with that muddled thing, "Western Democracy."

Totally unprepared for the growing resistance to an incompetent and negligent "liberation," the American Proconsul Bremer refused to admit that the pipeline of "reconstruction" was empty for six moths because the war on Iraq was run on funds stollen from the war on terror in Afghanistan, the one approved by Congress. Thus, many Iraqis who trully saw the Americans as "liberators" came to see them as "occupiers" motivated by oil. I would say here that if one develops a network of informers amongst the dispersed Iraqi medical profession, one gets reports of every step along the pathologic path of anti- Americanism. As one who watched up close America turning the war in Vietnam into its own, I can only say that since we respected our Vietnamese enemies, most of whom we also killed, we tended to treat those who survived with respect-- expressing outrage when stopping their Saigon army compatriots from humiliating or hurting them. But in over our heads, in an occupation running out of supplies, we turned to another nation with over half of a century experience in occupying Arabs at minimum cost. The Israeli occupation of the conquered Palestinian territories made them ideal trainers in Middle Eastern ways of occupation; hence the large proportion of civilian casualties along with the killing of the resisters we call, "the bad guys"-- "criminals, perverts and murderers" all, per Gens. Myers and Sanchez; and, hence also the abuse and humiliation of prisoners swept up randomly in dragnets and in need-to-be-"broken down"-so-that-they-will-talk Arabs. It is often forgotten by our zealous "intelligence" units that these anaonymous "bad guys" have brothers, fathers, cousins and friends ready to avenge them at any cost-- life included. The stoicism of the Vietnamese is not to be found in Iraq. And so, the more Iraqis we kill and/or humiliate and "break down," the more come out to kill us. Being as low-casualties- tolerant as the Israelis, we might find ourselves choosing between "ethnic cleansing" or "transfer," like the Israelis, in order to secure "our" Iraq. But by then the "coalition of the willing" may be limited to one-- US.

Already the great muddler of English, Bush, and the great disember of English, Cheney, are speaking of our "occupation" instead of our "liberation" of Iraq. As the June 30th deadline appears and we run out of "add water and stir" instant-Iraqi-leaders from near and far, we may find that no one given that post can any longer be trusted to express gratitude for our presence-- instead, demanding that we leave forthwith. Then, it will be like South Vietnam circa 1963-65: revolving door governements; as we removed one for negotiating a "entre nous les vietnamiens" deal, offering to kick us out, replacing it with another that assures us that it will never deal with the enemy, we found ourselves kicking it out for secret talks with the Vietcong and again we were looking for another no-negotiations alternative. But in Iraq, there may not be any Thieu and Ky available. Even Chalabi has today expressed refusal to have anything to do with Israel, according to Salon.com. His is a position held by every other DoD darling Iraqi. Since we secretly demanded a pledge of "love thy neighbor"- Israel, we may now be back where we were in Vietnam, 1964.

Yet, I hear no outrage at the fact that for 3/4 of a year the President and his cabinet had no idea how much Iraq "reconstruction" would cost, nor how long our troups would be there. I hear no outrage that the Asst. Sec of Defense had no updated casualty figures on hand when asked in a Congressional hearing and so he low-balled it. I hear no outrage that the President told a press conference that while we are doing well in Iraq, alQaeda "is still coming after us"-- the reverse was supposedly the purpose of our war on terror begining two years ago. I cannot help but think that America's "higher education" teachers, are just not teaching the President or the public the "higher" realities that somehow don't get into the campaign ads.

Perhaps finally, Americans looking at the pictures of the abused Iraqis, Hersch made public, will in their shame and fear of retribution seek answers to the question: how is it that our kids so hate the people they are supposed to die "liberating"? They may discover that this hate comes from Israeli training based on the principle often heard in Israel: the only good Arab is a dead Arab.

Daniel E. Teodoru

1. Timely
   
2. Strategery
   
3. Webb wins
   
4. Huh?
   
5. Bunnypants in Bagdad
   
6. Outage
   
7. Filthy Lucre Watch
   
8. Playing the numbers
   
9. My letter to Countdown
   
10. Jefferson's Nigerian Scams