I just found your site - it's great. I'm an infantry vet. My blog is Come by and visit.

Here is an example from . You can read the whole thing there.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

War isn't glorious. Sure everybody knows that. They claim.

War is evil and ugly and at worst you see people you love in pain and dying, and at best you kill other human beings who were once cute little 3-year olds whose parents loved them too.

War is the infliction of suffering until one side says "enough." You can't take the suffering out of it for that is what war is - suffering. Sometimes, though, the alternative to not fighting is worse. That is usually rare, much less often than the number of times we've been to war.

It isn't parades and nobility - its being under fire and having to take a dump. You never see that in the movies - some guy having to take a dump.

It's being so filthy that the bugs just stop biting.

It's seeing Panamanians so happy and excited that they run into the street to give you water and thank you for kicking out Noriega - and some PDF assholes shoot down the street and a mother drops dead in front of her little kids, and they scream in horror and run out there too, and there is nothing you can do except burn in rage and hatred for such evil. And continue the mission.

It's being on a casaulty notification team and seeing a mother and father turn dead inside, aging before your very eyes, watching a man sink to his knees and a mother just stand there and say in a monotone "when will he... his body... come home?" And then seeing the news identify him as a Marine instead of a soldier and none of the civilians around you understand why you care.

And then some asshole says years later "you ever kill anybody?" or "I'd wouldn't serve because I wouldn't want to kill anybody" or WORST OF ALL "I love the military. You guys are great. I didn't serve because I had opportunities, but I always wanted to..."

Sure I'm glad Noriega is gone, so are the Panamanians. Perhaps we were right to go in - we didn't have to stay long and we turned the country over to the Panamanians quickly. And Noriega had been begging for it for some time. But the family of SPC Philip Lear, B 2/75, would gladly re-install Noreiga if it meant Butch could come home to them. He died at Rio Hato and nobody knows where that is.

Maybe it was worthwhile to the nation, especially to those who don't have to pay the price. I think it was the right thing to do. But it isn't something to be happy about. I wish there had been another way.

hah. The name of our weblog is "Available Light" which was intended as a somewhat ironic play on 'the light at the end of the tunnel' (is it an oncoming train) and the notion that this administration tries to keep things as dark and hard to see as possible.

Your discovery just brings whole new depths of meaning to what we had in mind.

The problem with buying the "light at the end of the tunnel" is in the small print: "Batteries Extra". For most politicians, the tunnel ends at the next election; alas, the tunnel continues on. If Bush Jr. wins in November, does anyone seriously believe that Iraq will be resolved in his second term, keeping in mind all the mistakes he has made? Bush Jr. would be a lame duck and the immediate concerns to the RNC would focus upon finding a credible Republican candidate to run in 2008, by which time the Republican party could be in shambles ... unless there are more dogs to wag.

To Win Re-election in 2004 Bush took the United States to the War in 2003

Many people underestimate Bush's political smarts and ruthlessness. Bush was smart enough and ruthless enough to seize the opportunity of a war in Iraq to win re-election in 2004.

The conventional reasons for going to war in Iraq aren't good enough, especially as evidence supporting these reasons got weaker and weaker in the period leading up to the start of the war. Nor is there any conventional explanation for why the Bush administration made such obvious and terrible errors in the days, weeks and months following Saddam's overthrow.

Without the war in Iraq, Bush would not win re-election in 2004. Winning re-election in 2004 is the hidden reason for both going to war in Iraq and the lack of interest in a post-Saddam Iraq. If Bush wins re-election in 2004 it will because he chose to go to war with Iraq, using an all-volunteer army.

Bush's overwhelming need to be re-elected is the missing piece in the explanation of why this President chose to go to war in Iraq.

Just imagine the period since September 11th without the war in Iraq. Without the diversion of political, economic and military capital into Iraq all of the following would be true:

- The situation in Afghanistan would be much, much better
- Osama bin Laden would most likely have been captured or killed by the end of 2002,
- Al-Qaeda would be much weaker
- The media would strongly praise Bush for making America safer
- The people of the United States would be less fearful of the future and believe the country was much safer from terrorist attack
- There wouldn't be an argument that failing to re-elect Bush shows terrorists that the United States doesn't have the resolve to stay the course, to win the war
- Bush wouldn't have the situation in Iraq to show how strong, how determined a president he was
- Bush's domestic policies would be under much greater scrutiny
- National Security would be much less important to the public

And Bush would be much, much less likely to be re-elected in 2004.

Politicians want to be re-elected. Beyond that, there are two reasons why re-election was so overwhelmingly important to Bush. First, winning a second term proves he's a better politician, a better man, than his father, President George H.W. Bush who did not win a second term, even though he won the Gulf War of 1991.

Almost as important, without a second term, Bush couldn't put his radical domestic program into law. He couldn't go down in history as the man who won the culture war for the social and religious conservatives. He'd lose his chance to reform Social Security, drastically re-write tax law, overturn Roe v. Wade and remake the Supreme Court.

After September 11th, going to war in Afghanistan was obvious. And the political benefits that accrued to Bush for going to war in Afghanistan were just as obvious. Politically, winning in Afghanistan was too easy. As the war there wound down, it would become harder and harder to use it and the War on Terror to win in 2004.

Bush realized that going to war in Iraq in late 2002 or early 2003 was a no-lose proposition.
He knew that overthrowing Saddam would be easy. He also knew that no matter how well the war went, substantial American military forces would still be in Iraq in the summer and fall of 2004 ensuring the War in Iraq, the War on Terror and National Security would be the defining issues of the 2004 Campaign.

The fictitious Administration seeking re-election in the movie "Wag the Tail" waits until the very last days before the election to fake a military confrontation with Albania and draw public attention to National Security issues. The ploy works: the President is re-elected.

Bush is smarter. He doesn't wait until the last minute. And his military confrontation with Iraq is much more plausible. It's "Wag the Tail" with a much better script.

Did Bush think the overthrow of Saddam would be so easy? No. The military expected an easy victory over Saddam, but not as quick a victory with so few American casualties. Similarly, Bush didn't expect the war in Iraq to go so badly after the overthrow of Iraq. But both results are good enough to re-elect Bush in 2004. Bush's goal was to overthrow Saddam and keep the United States sufficiently involved in Iraq in 2004 to win re-election. American casualties in Iraq would just be part of the price of re-electing Bush in 2004. How else can anyone explain why the Bush administration had so little interest in a post-Saddam Iraq?

Everyone with any experience told the Bush administration not to disband the Iraqi army. Yet the decision to do so was taken lightly. And 400,000 men who would have had a stake in ensuring the success of the United States in Iraq were now unemployed and available to fight against the Americans. Similarly, the decision to force out of their jobs almost everyone connected to Saddam's regime, meant that the expertise needed to run the country was gone.

The Bush administration was told in no uncertain terms, that it had to guard and protect the vital infrastructure of Iraq once Saddam was gone. They could have done so, even with the small number of troops available. Instead, in the weeks following the fall of Saddam, the electrical system, the water system, the bureaucratic system and the museums of Iraq were looted and destroyed. Only the oil ministry and the oil fields were protected.

People tend to underestimate George W. Bush. Whatever his deficiencies, he's a smart and ruthless politician. Why should we be surprised that he understood early on how to win re-election.

The conventional wisdom is that a bad war weakens the president in power and hurts his chances of re-election. After all, that's what happened to Lyndon Johnson or so it seems. Bush realized that the Vietnam experience would not apply to Iraq. He looked at the 1991 Gulf War, where an amazingly easy victory with extremely low American casualties didn't help his father get re-elected in 1992.

LBJ was weakened by the war in Vietnam because the war had dragged on for years, with a strong anti-war movement, fuelled by university students who didn't want to be drafted to fight and die in Vietnam. But an all-volunteer army would fight the war in Iraq. Without a draft, students would not strongly oppose the war. The sons of the rich and the powerful and the politicians joined the Army and National Guard in very small numbers. So the dead and wounded and maimed wouldn't be brought home to the rich and the powerful and the politicians.

Bush also understood the changes to the media since Vietnam. Media concentration and deregulation meant there was much less local news and thus much less coverage of American casualties. The rise of right-wing partisan talk radio and right-wing partisan television meant Bush could get his message out to people without much analysis of its accuracy. And most important, September 11th and the popularity of Bush's war in Afghanistan changed the mainstream media and made them more of a cheerleader than they had been for many, many years.

Bush understands secrecy better than any president before him. Any documents linking the war in Iraq to re-election in 2004 are very well hidden. The inner circle that discussed and decided to go war in Iraq for partisan, political reasons is very small; perhaps as small as Bush, his wife and Karl Rove. The neo-conservatives that wanted the war, for other reasons, are almost certainly in the dark.

For Bush, deciding to go to war in Iraq was a political no-brainer. All that was needed was to keep Iraq in the headlines in 2004.

If, in 2004, the war was going well, Bush points to his success in the war as proving he was keeping America safe and doing a great job on National Security. If, in 2004, the war was going badly, Bush could describe how difficult it was to keep America safe and how the enemy was searching for signs of American weakness and changing America's leadership was a terrible sign of weakness. In either case, National Security and having a strong president and staying the course would be the election issue.

Only if the war in Iraq was more successful than anyone dreamed would Bush be in trouble in 2004. He would be same situation as his father, he would have been too successful.

Now in 2004, the war in Iraq is going poorly. There isn't strong, determined opposition to the war. And as planned, the issue of the campaign is Iraq and National Security.

In 1945, Winston Churchill was not re-elected Prime Minister of Great Britain. Churchill was a great war time Prime Minister. But the war was almost over. And without the war, the British public would use other issues to choose a Prime Minister.

Bush drew the correct conclusions from Churchill's failure in 1945 and his own father's failure in 1992. Without a war, the American people would use other issues to choose a President in 2004. And Bush would have a much harder job winning.

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