http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/saul_relative15/Euphemisticly christened Operation Iraqi Freedom, this political and military quagmire has not only produced a rift among the people of the United States, but a widening gulf between the United States and the rest of the world. "It is time to come home, America. Time to look within our own borders and within our own souls. There are many questions to be answered and many missions to accomplish right here on our own soil. We cannot force-feed democracy to Iraq. We cannot resolve Iraq's internal issues. It is time for the United States to begin to bring our troops home." -- Senator Robert C. Byrd, speech to the Senate, 2005hourly12000-01-01T12:00+00:00http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/saul_relative15/532482Just three days after the United States marked its fifth year in Iraq, four American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, bringing the total of American military personnel killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war in March 2003 to 4000. According to the Associated Press, at...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/saul_relative15/521871As the nation has been caught up in the daily drama of the unexpected excitement generated by this year's political campaigns, something seems to be missing. With all the worries generated by a downturn in the housing market and the subprime mortgage collapse, something that once was commonplace...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/saul_relative15/511247Something is amiss. Something is going on. I fear reprisal. I fear a renewed insurgency. But if it never comes -- so much the better. I do not think for a second that the "surge," the lauded military "build-up," has actually done anything to alter things in Iraq (except to increase our troop...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/saul_relative15/505614The president and the Pentagon unveiled plans that would result in the drawdown of American troops in Iraq, if things continue going the way they are now, to a stable and continuous presence of 50,000 to be stationed there indefinitely. Shades of Korea and Germany... And it's a bad idea. Iraq is...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/saul_relative15/500241We've seen it before. Pentagon officials, generals on the ground in Iraq, actual statistics, and the Bush administration talking up the successes of our troops in Iraq, al Qaeda near defeat, and optimism that the war in Iraq was finally becoming manageable. But, then, the insurgency would renew...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/saul_relative15/496809While chasing Kurd rebels into the mountains along the border of Turkey and Iraq, the Turks have amassed 60,000 troops, ready to invade. The Turkish parliament passed legislative measures today that give the military their approval to attack across the border. The PPK (the Kurd rebels, Partiya...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/saul_relative15/495681Retired Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez told a conference of military journalists in Arlington, Virginia, yesterday that it was a "neglect and incompetence" by the National Security Council that got us into and continues to keep us embroiled in a "nightmare with no end in sight." He also said that,...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/saul_relative15/494881The "Coalition of the willing", as Dubya once euphemistically called the handful of countries that went to Iraq with the United States (well, actually, after we took the country), has become a shadow of its former self, if you can even get a shadow from an anorexic. Yesterday, Gordon Brown, the...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/saul_relative15/492612With all the doubletalk, the official speak, the misdirection, the outright lies, the corruption, the failed policies given fresh spin, the pure ideology clouding the issues, the demagoguery, the pontificating and the rhetoric, how is one to figure out the swirling cauldron of crap that is Iraq?...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/saul_relative15/491666So far, we're almost at $800 Billion, once they approve this new amount. Five years after taking the damned country in a matter of weeks, Iraq still hasn't produced a military and police force worth a damn, nor is the government stepping up to our government's expectations of it (which may be the...