Fresh Loaf

The terms on which 150,000 American troops will remain in Iraq are none of your business.

The Bush Administration has yet to release an English version of the Status of Forces Agreement approved last week by Iraq’s parliament.

Agence France-Press:

But three officials in Washington said the administration of US President George W. Bush has withheld the official English translation of the agreement to suppress a public dispute with the Iraqis until after the parliamentary vote.

Bookmark It

— For our friend at the Daly Briefing, who has faithfully documented his stay in Iraq, he has 17 days left before he comes home. And on his calendar, X marks the spot.

— DriftGrift started with his Morning Wooten, then lost all inspiration.

— What if they did a debate and nobody showed up? If you live in Atlanta, you probably saw no televsion coverage of Thursday’s debate in the ever-tightening Senate race. Live Apartment Fire, not only notes the lack of coverage, but chides the one station that did cover it (WXIA-TV) for never actually showing footage from the debate.

— Speaking of campaigns, is it all about race in the presidential election between J-Mac and “that one?” At My Urban Report, A.man.I complains the mainstream media is focused on all the wrong things. The other night, he was watching a news show that delved into the question of whether Obama will suffer from the “Bradley Effect,” where white people say they’re going to vote for a black candidate and then lose their nerve in the voting booth. He’s more interested in making an intelligent choice based on what the two candidates will do once elected. Maybe that’s, like, too much work for them.

— And poor Reporter Cub is suffering from information overload. For him, there’s 57 channels and nothin’ on.

— Over at In Decatur, there’s a great parable for the times … all over a parking space in New York City.

Bookmark It

Who wants to think about war and suffering when we’ve got Heidi Klum’s leggy “Project Runway” to distract us?

Martha Rosler does, and you’d be hard-pressed not to as well after a look at her Bringing the War Home series. Rosler’s cutting photomontages layer media clippings of iconic American images with scenes of social and political unrest.

It’s a challenge to chew on the issues our self-indulgence would keep us from thinking about.

The Emory exhibit includes work from the original Bringing the War Home (1967-1972), a commentary on the Vietnam War, and its contemporary counterpart Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful (2004), in response to the Iraq War and Bush administration.

The show opens tonight with a reception that lasts until 7:30 p.m.

Bringing the War Home. Through Oct. 17. Free. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Sat., noon-4 p.m. 700 Peavine Creek Drive. 404-712-4390. visualarts.emory.edu/events/index.html.

(Photo “Hooded Captives,” 2004, by Martha Rosler)

Bookmark It

PETS AND DEBTS: The NYT reports on foreclosures and layoffs leading Georgians to part with their pets, which is overcrowding no-kill shelters.

CRESCENT BOON: In trying to draw more attention to Georgia’s life-sciences corridor between Atlanta and Athens, the state has dubbed the region the “Innovation Crescent.”

CLAYTON: Two candidates for the school board have prior arrest records — one was busted for selling cocaine when he was 22 and the other was charged with two misdemeanor counts of deposit-account fraud two years ago.

SURGE: U.S. Government Accountability Office reports that soldiers with injuries and medical conditions that should have prevented them from being sent to war were nonetheless deployed from forts Stewart, Benning and Drum to Iraq and Afghanistan as part of last year’s troop surge.

DYLAN: The Georgia Aquarium’s former celebrity sea turtle, who was rescued a decade ago on Jekyll Island as an infant, will be released back into the wild near Brunswick Monday.

COLLEGE WORLD SERIES: UGA loses to Fresno State in the rubber match.

TURNING OVER A NUDE LEAF: A Savannah man is released from jail, then rearrested less than a mile away walking naked down a busy road.

Bookmark It

The National Priorities Project (NPP), a non-profit research organization that examines the local impact of federal spending policies, just sent out a release that says that 42.2 percent of every federal tax dollar we paid in 2007 went to the military.

By comparison, 8.7 percent went towards anti-poverty programs, 4.4 percent towards education, training and social services, and 2.6 percent towards the environment, energy and science programs.

On the organization’s web site, you can break down how much each state and each major city will contribute to paying for the Iraq War if the fiscal 2008 budget is approved.

According to the NPP figures, Georgians will pay more than $4.4 billion for the Iraq War.

Of that, $186 million will come from Atlantans.

Maybe Mayor Shirley Franklin should take a different approach in solving the city’s budget crisis: Convince Haliburton to come fix Atlanta. After all, there are terrorists in Gainesville.

Bookmark It

IRAQ WAR PROTEST MARCH ON PONCE DE LEON AVE.: Crappy Anniversary

(all photos by Joeff Davis)

Hundreds of Atlantans marked the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War with a march down Ponce de Leon Avenue during afternoon rush hour Wednesday.

Accompanied by a marching drummer and a chorus of honking horns from passing cars, the marchers sang and chanted demands for peace. Their destination was the U.S. Army recruitment center at Midtown Plaza, where two days earlier, 10 local grandmothers were arrested for trespassing while trying to enlist. The grandmothers participated in Wednesday’s march, as well.

When the march reached the enlistment center, participants laid five mock coffins at its front door. Written on the coffins were the words “Truth”, “Justice,” Iraq” “Troops” “Economy” – all casualties of this war, according to organizers.

(more photos after the jump) (more…)

Bookmark It

Last night, President Bush released excerpts of the speech he’s going to give today about Iraq on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war.

As expected, it’s a collage of lies and spin:

“In Iraq, we are witnessing the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden, his grim ideology, and his terror network.”

Osama bin Laden doesn’t now, nor has he ever controlled Iraq. Bush is conflating the Iraq war with the man responsible for 9/11.

The only reason Iraqis have the had the opportunity to turn against al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq is because we created the chaos that allowed them to operate.

It’s true that many Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq have turned against extremists in Iraq like al Qaeda, but Bush is taking credit for Iraqis tackling a problem that his invasion created.

“The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around — it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror,”

That’s like chopping off a man’s arms and calling yourself a doctor because you brought him paper towels and Bactine.

The troop escalation, known as the surge, has been a skillful refinement of tactics. But even its architect, Gen. David Petraeus, acknowledges it’s a strategic failure so far because Iraqi leaders will not reconcile.

The declared purpose of the escalation was to slow violence enough to facilitate political progress in Iraq. No such progress has been made.

“The successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable,”

Millions of Iraqis have fled since the invasion. Millions more were forced from their homes and live as refugees in their own country.

The lowest estimate of Iraqi war dead is 81,000. Iraq is 1/12 the size of the U.S. A similarly deadly war in this country would leave 1 million people dead.

Undeniable success.

(Illustration by Jeremy Fuerst)

Bookmark It

Years since U.S. invasion of Iraq: 5

Total number of U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan: 7,284

American troops killed in Iraq: 3,987

American troops from Georgia killed in Iraq: 123

American troops from metro Atlanta killed in Iraq: 36

American troops from Georgia wounded in Iraq: 858

Youngest Georgian killed in Iraq: 19

Oldest Georgian killed in Iraq: 57

Sources: Military Times, Brookings Institution, U.S. Dept. of Defense, National Archives

Bookmark It

The surge is working so well, the president felt comfortable announcing ahead of time his visit to Iraq.

Unfortunately, it was this president.

Bookmark It

If you’re driving near Midtown Promenade this weekend, be on the lookout for protesters holding signs saying, “Support Our Troops.” You may have to look really hard. Why? Because Landmark Midtown Art Cinema will be showing Brian De Palma’s Iraq war drama Redacted, a fictionalized account of the rape and murder of Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi in Iraq in 2006. Orwellian Big Brother Fox News host Bill O’Reilly has singled out Redacted for picketing for “inciting hatred against the United States.”

Frankly, I suspect that any fervor for or against Redacted cooled off over Thanksgiving, with more pop-culture interest focusing on the return of “Project Runway” and whether you can see anyone’s CGI naughty bits in Beowulf. Thanks to the Internet Wayback Machine, however, we can recall the Redacted feud of early November. Primarily it involved volleying insults between Redacted producer/Dallas Mavericks owner/Internet zillionaire Mark Cuban and O’Reilly, who went after Cuban on “The O’Reilly Factor” Nov. 12. Incidentally, note the way an O’Reilly producer uses yellow-journalism tactics along the lines of “Are you still beating your wife?” in the segment. Imagine what they don’t actually put on the air.

In response, Cuban articulated an answer to O’Reilly and a defense of Redacted on his blog (“Bill O’Reilly just a wonderful, confused guy”), while MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann derided O’Reilly’s fulminations on “Countdown” Nov. 13:

I have my own criticisms of Redacted and, at any rate, suspect that the conservative protesting bloc is getting more wound up about the anti-religious content in the upcoming fantasy epic The Golden Compass. The fact that O’Reilly is so much more concerned with a low-budget indie film about the Iraq war inciting hatred against America than he is about, you know, the actual Iraq war inciting hatred against America is an irony that will be lost on no one capable of experiencing irony.

Bookmark It

By Heather Gray

On Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, I was in Washington D.C. after arriving from Atlanta, Ga., the evening of Sept. 10. I was there for an agriculture meeting. On that fateful day I met colleagues from Arkansas and South Carolina for a breakfast meeting at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill. It was to be the start of a daylong session on sustainable agriculture with agriculture advocates and members of Congress. As we walked into Rayburn on the morning of 9/11, our world was transformed. It was a time when the best and worst in America rose to the surface.

Coming into Rayburn, we passed guards whose eyes were transfixed on the television. We asked what was happening. “A plane flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York,” they said. We thought it was a fluke–an error of some sort by a misguided plane. We looked briefly at the television and then continued to the cafeteria in the basement where we met two of our friends. There were not a lot of people in the cafeteria at the time, but those who were there already seemed rather bleak. People were on their cell phones and not looking directly at anyone. Then we heard that the second World Trade tower had been struck, and we knew that something orchestrated and sinister was at play.

Suddenly, there was an announcement in the cafeteria that Rayburn was being evacuated. We joined the throng of employees who rushed out of Rayburn and the surrounding buildings. A few hundred yards from Rayburn we heard what sounded like a bomb — everyone around me bolted and then ran faster from the scene. I looked back to see that the sound was likely from military jets that were already flying over the city and breaking the sound barrier as they flew close to the buildings. (more…)

Bookmark It

Our good friends at SolarPowerRocks.com provided an eye-popping graph comparing the cost of the Iraq war to that of research and design of different types of energy.

Because of its sheer size, I’ve placed it after the jump. Please remember that energy is fundamental to national security. Your tax dollars at work …

(more…)

Bookmark It