It's February 2006 in Iraq...

link for those who haven't seen it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4738472.stm

the al-askari mosque is supposedly the resting place of the 10th + 11th imams. i don't think the 12th imam has a tomb since he mysteriously disappeared as a teenager. the split between sunni and shi'a islam comes down to who accepted the authority of the imams (shi'a) and who followed the authority of the caliphates (sunni).

this is, in essence, like protestants bombing the vatican or something.

Amongst the many dead, a prominent reporter for al-Arabiya TV who went to cover the bombing story.

This just shows once more that by any reasonable standard we have not won, nor can we win this war without escalating it to the level of a war of national survival such as WWII. Of course, this was never politically feasible because it was never a question of Iraq threatening our national survival.

In case this is not clear enough to everyone: we don't have sufficient forces on the ground to win, we never did, and any chance we ever had to snuff this violent insurrection was squandered in the first year after the invasion, while the Provisional Authority fiddled. The release of the Abu Ghraib photos was probably the point of no return.

Donald Rumsfeld has a lot to answer for.

But I will say that we need to do a much better job of making the message clear that old grievances cannot be allowed to sabotage the chance for a better future for the country. Unfortunately, we can’t count on our own media to push that message—and any attempts by the military or intelligence to get that message out will be vilified as unethical, un-American propaganda, and will be used, yet again, as a bludgeon with which to beat down this seminally important attempt at bringing to the Arab world the precepts of freedom that can once and for all begin to breakdown the medievalism that will stop at nothing to gain control of the region.

It's a steady line of complaint these days but it exists in a willfully weird vacuum.

"According to Zogby, which conducted the poll with New York's Le Moyne College, 85 percent of the troops say a major reason for the U.S. mission is "to retaliate for Saddam's role in the 9/11 attacks."

m.

Listen! The president is failing because he, personally, guided us to failure. His stated goals were perfectly acceptable. What we object to are his methods, means and judgement all of which (as was repeatedly pointed out to him by experts) were likely to lead us just exactly where we are today. Nevertheless, calmly, boldly, forthrightly, Bush led us to where we are today in Iraq.

How often do we need to to say this before these people accept the obvious? Bush couldn't have screwed up much worse in Iraq if he'd wanted himself to fail. He never needed our help. We have been kept out of the process all the way along. Sheesh.