Bush Sanitized War By Censoring Photos

NYT: While the Bush administration faced criticism for overt political manipulation in not permitting photos of flag-draped coffins, the issue is more emotional on the battlefield: local military commanders worry about security in publishing images of the American dead as well as an affront to the dignity of fallen comrades. Most newspapers refuse to publish such pictures as a matter of policy.

But opponents of the war, civil liberties advocates and journalists argue that the public portrayal of the war is being sanitized and that Americans who choose to do so have the right to see — in whatever medium — the human cost of a war that polls consistently show is unpopular with Americans.

Journalists say it is now harder, or harder than in the earlier years, to accompany troops in Iraq on combat missions. Even memorial services for killed soldiers, once routinely open, are increasingly off limits. Detainees were widely photographed in the early years of the war, but the Department of Defense, citing prisoners’ rights, has recently stopped that practice as well.

4,000 soldiers dead, 90,000 Iraqis dead.
Independent photog Zoriah Miller's photos will break your heart. Zoriah's blog.

The military eventually tossed Zoriah out of a Marine unit for documenting the war.

These photos are graphic and hard to look at but maybe we should all see them and wonder what the hell? 

Why did we let Bush and his war mongers drag us into a war that didn't need to be fought. No wonder soldiers are coming back with PTSD.

We ought to be outraged. But ultimately, it isn't Bush's fault. It's ours. We elected him. We let it happen. 

Bush to Pull Iraq Troops for Afghanistan

All of a sudden it's possible to have a withdrawal timetable because of the growing need in Afghanistan. How slow is this president. Necessity breeds possibilities.

NYT: The Bush administration is considering the withdrawal of additional combat forces from Iraq beginning in September, according to administration and military officials, raising the prospect of a far more ambitious plan than expected only months ago.

Such a withdrawal would be a striking reversal from the nadir of the war in 2006 and 2007.

One factor in the consideration is the pressing need for additional American troops in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and other fighters have intensified their insurgency and inflicted a growing number of casualties on Afghans and American-led forces there.

Generation Kill

An HBO miniseries describes the first 40 miserable days of war in Iraq.

Swamp: HBO describes its new upcoming miniseries "Generation Kill" as a true account of how Marines in the first 40 days of the Iraq war battled the enemy, as well as "equipment shortages, incompetent commanding officers, ever-evolving rules of engagement and an unclear strategy."

The miniseries premiering Sunday is based on the book by journalist Evan Wright, whose story first appeared as a condensed series of articles in Rolling Stone. Wright was embedded with the Marines of the First Recon Battalion.

The show was produced by the makers of "The Wire," the HBO series about drug-dealing and police/government corruption in Baltimore.

Obama Says Critics Haven't Been Listening

Obama has always shunned labels, especially the "liberal" label.
The problem with the media is one media outlet follows the other like dominoes. Every single media outlet has claimed Obama moved to the center. The left media outlets are trying to make sure they keep Obama within their clutches and the right outlets are trying to make sure Obama doesn't get elected. There just isn't much room for independent thinking anymore. The truth isn't necessarily in the middle either.

NYT: “I believe in a whole lot of things that make me progressive and put me squarely in the Democratic camp,” he said. But, he noted, he does not believe that the active hand of government is a replacement, say, for parental responsibility in education.

“I believe in personal responsibility; I also believe in faith,” he said. “That’s not something new; I’ve been talking about that for years. So the notion that this is me trying to look” — he waved his hands around his head — “centrist is not true.”

Regarding his position on Iraq, he said, “Don’t be confused: I will bring the Iraq war to a close when I am president of the United States of America.”

John McCain: Al Quaeda Did It

john mccain is pulling a george bush, linking al quaeda to everything. but you know, george bush did a good job confusing everyone. sometimes i still get mixed up on why we went to war with iraq. there's the truth and there's what cheney and his sidekick bush told us.

but does anyone think we'd ever get truth from a mccain presidency? we all need to become well-versed on what's going on in iraq to defeat mccain in the general election because they're trying to fool us again. a couple of good sites to read up on: antiwar.com and icasualties.com.
both of these stories below are worth a full read at their respective sites.
from salon:

The New York Times today examines John McCain's very Bush-like propensity to run around slapping the "Al Qaeda" label on everyone we're fighting in Iraq, even though . . . it's completely false to describe them that way. The article, needless to say, asks war cheerleader and Extremely Serious Middle East Expert Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution what he thinks about that and he replies with one of the most striking statements in a while:

Some other analysts do not object to Mr. McCain's portraying the insurgency (or multiple insurgencies) in Iraq as that of Al Qaeda. They say he is using a "perfectly reasonable catchall phrase" that, although it may be out of place in an academic setting, is acceptable on the campaign trail, a place that "does not lend itself to long-winded explanations of what we really are facing," said Kenneth M. Pollack, research director at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
Absolutely. Poor John McCain can't be expected to be accurate in describing the identities and goals of all our Enemies while on the campaign trail. That's far too complex to bother the shallow American voter with. So it's "perfectly reasonable" -- that's really the phrase Pollack used -- to just call them all "Al Qaeda," because it's not as though that term packs any sort of emotional punch or is likely to mislead people in thinking about whether we should withdraw. It's just convenient shorthand for "Arabs who think that we shouldn't be occupying Muslim countries" and, notwithstanding the fact that it's completely false, there is no reason whatsoever to object to McCain's efforts to mislead Americans into thinking that Iraqi insurgents are the same people who attacked us on 9/11. They're all just Al Qaeda - so sayeth our Great Middle East scholar Kenneth Pollack. more

nyt:

As he campaigns with the weight of a deeply unpopular war on his shoulders, Senator John McCain of Arizona frequently uses the shorthand “Al Qaeda” to describe the enemy in Iraq in pressing to stay the course in the war there.

“Al Qaeda is on the run, but they’re not defeated” is his standard line on how things are going in Iraq. When chiding the Democrats for wanting to withdraw troops, he has been known to warn that “Al Qaeda will then have won.” In an attack this winter on Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the Democratic front-runner, Mr. McCain went further, warning that if American forces withdrew, Al Qaeda would be “taking a country.”

Critics say that in framing the war that way at rallies or in sound bites, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is oversimplifying the hydra-headed nature of the insurgency in Iraq in a way that exploits the emotions that have been aroused by the name “Al Qaeda” since the Sept. 11 attacks. more

Bush: History Will Show Iraq War was Good

is he nuts?