Your Map To All The Security Features In The New American Embassy in Baghdad

Considering the multiple millions going into the new embassy headquarters for the U.S. in beautiful, brutal downtown Baghdad, you would think someone could have locked up the plans.

But they didn't which seems like a fatal flaw.

Of Hitler, Chamberlain, Iraq War I Revisited

[The reference to the "Neville Chamberlain Moment" was made in Keith Olbermann's Special Comment from Wednesday's Countdown on MSNBC available by transcript and video link here. Also, I strongly recommend - if you have the chance - to catch HBO's reshowing of the entry into the first war a Bush (Dubya's dribbling dad)... it's a POWERFUL retrospective compared against this Bush's war. And if you don't know who Neville Chamberlain is, shame on you and get thee to a Wikipedia immediately!] I happened to catch Keith and then flipped the channel to HBO-West which was just starting to show "Live From Baghdad", an HBO film of high quality that recounts CNN's days in Baghdad and Kuwait just as George Bush (the 41st) declared war with Iraq (from a book by Robert Weiner, part of the CNN production team on the ground and getting bombed in Baghdad). I also wrote about Olbermann's piece here and here.]

The degree of retrospective comparisons between THEN and Bush 43rd horrific NOW is astonishing, including:

• how quickly the American public was sold on lies of "dumped incubators" killing babies in Kuwait (disproven as any substantial event)
• how hard the press was bashed for everything from interviews with Saddam Hussein and high Iraqi officers (and we repeated this in March 2003, Dan Rather was hated for interviewing Saddam again and CNN's main war reporter in the Bush 1 Iraq War was hated then and during Bush 2's great adventure, fired from MSNBC for suggesting there might be two sides to the story)
• Bush 41's comparison of Saddam to "Hitler Revisited" (a powerful comparison, given that Bush 43, 41's son, may now be responsible for more deaths of Iraqi civilians than Saddam ever was) when I think a case can be made for seeing Bush 43 as a perpetrator of racial hatred (substituting Muslims for Jews in the terrible old saying, "When all else fails, gather up the Jews") against what Keith said about the Dems' Neville Chamberlain moment
• Just see the difference in the city then as opposed to now, after all those years of sanctions (estimated to have claimed the lives of UP TO one million Iraq children, primarily through incredible restriction on medical care and food that turned one of the most advanced countries in the Middle East into a shell of its former self)
• As Weiner wrote, "When the talking stops, that's when people die. So let's keep talking until we're old men."

"Lights! Camera! Killing! Action!"

From Reuters yesterday, a story that just stuns me re: a soldier filming after a very controversial killing of an Italian intelligence agent during the freeing of an Italian journalist held hostage:

A U.S. soldier on trial in absentia in Italy for killing an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq two years ago filmed the scene moments after he opened fire, an Italian television channel said on Tuesday.

Mario Lozano's lawyer said the U.S. soldier, who denies any wrongdoing in firing at agent Nicola Calipari's car, gave the video to TG5 channel, apparently after recording an interview with him in the United States. Italian prosecutors investigating the case immediately seized the tape, judicial sources said.

Hazy footage of the video showed a white car with bright headlights stopped at the side of a road with an open door, while voices of U.S. soldiers could be heard in the background.

Lozano went on trial in absentia in Italy last month for firing at the car carrying Calipari and newly freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena to Baghdad airport in March 2005.

The U.S. and Italian governments have said the shooting was an accident, but an Italian judge has charged Lozano with murder and two counts of attempted murder of those in the car.

The Bushies Breed Greed

Now the 20,000 or so extra soldiers they called up for Bush's felonious, futile, and foolhardy are not enough for Bush's surge/excalation. They want at least 35,000 MORE troops in beautiful, beaucolic, bright downtown Baghdad.

Hat tip to Buzzflash for the link.

Bush's Wars: Strangely, They Can Only One In Three Direction: Worse, Worser (eh?), And Worst

While Afghanistan's Taliban (the same people Bush and Cheney claim to have annihilated six years ago) adopts President Bush's rule to only allow journalists and the rest of what calls itself media to report lies, the violence in Afghanistan and its neighbor, Iraq, only continues to defy all laws of basic statistics by worsening each and every day (even a lame coin toss should give you the occasional "win" but Bush makes us lose each and every damned time).

Here's what I noted at All Things Democrat:

April was the nation’s bloodiest overall month (we set terrible new records there all the time) since we arrived and May is off to a tragically busy start; many U.S. soldiers along with more than 100 Iraqi civilians were killed in operations just this past weekend.

It’s not a case that this escalating violence is completely about Bush’s so-called surge or escalation of military actions in Iraq. First, we already sent many of the “surge” troops in already and second, many forces are already working on new “surge” orders on the ground. So it’s a fabrication to claim that the heightened violence is only because “insurgents are scared and doing what they can now because they know that Bush means business THIS time.”

Hugely nasty attacks occurred yesterday (Sunday) in Iraq, with bodies found all over Baghdad, including those of at least eight American GIs. [Afghanistan worses every day as well.] At the same time, a major general, in a piece in the Boston Globe, says Iraq will get FAR deadlier still (quite the effortless slam dunk promised):

BAGHDAD — A US Army general yesterday forecast a rise in deaths among American forces in the coming months, a prediction underscored by the announcement that a roadside bomb had killed six US soldiers and a foreign journalist north of Baghdad. Five other American troops died elsewhere over the weekend.

Major General Rick Lynch, commander of the Third Infantry Division, said casualties will climb as American troops dig into enemy territory as part of a stepped-up military operation ordered by President Bush in January. Lynch, who oversees a swath of territory to the south and east of Baghdad, gave his bleak prediction on the heels of the deadliest month this year for American forces in Iraq.

In April, 104 troops were killed, the fourth time since the beginning of 2005 that US deaths exceeded 100 in a single month. At least 25 troops have been killed in May, a grim start to a month in which Democrats are expected to keep up pressure on the White House to plan a withdrawal from Iraq.

The Surreality World of John McCain

Brought to us by Think Progress:

"That is utter rubbish. It’s electoral propaganda.”

CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey on McCain’s remarks about his trip to Baghdad: “It’s disgraceful for a man seeking highest office, I think, to talk utter rubbish. And that is utter rubbish. It’s electoral propaganda. It is simply not true. No one in his right mind who has been to Baghdad believes that story.”

UPDATE: According to McCain adviser Max Boot, the U.S. embassy’s security coordinator “refused to sign off on McCain’s visit because he thought it was too risky.”

More Of The Great Iraq Improvement Bush Talked About Today

At least six American soldiers were killed in a blast north of Baghdad.

WTG, Bush. ::sigh::

So Much For Claims Bush's Surge Has Quieted Iraq

From today's news:

Militants struck back Sunday in their first major blow against a U.S.-led security clampdown in Baghdad with car bombings that killed at least 63 people, left scores injured and sent a grim message to officials boasting that extremist factions were on the run.

The attacks in mostly Shiite areas — twin explosions in an open-air market that claimed 62 lives and a third blast that killed one — were a sobering reminder of the challenges confronting any effort to rattle the well-armed and well-hidden insurgents.

Instead, it was the Iraqi commanders of the security sweep feeling the sting.

Just a few hours before the blasts, Lt. Gen. Abboud Qanbar led reporters on a tour of the neighborhood near the marketplace that was attacked and promised to "chase the terrorists out of Baghdad." On Saturday, the Iraqi spokesman for the plan, Brig. Gen. Qassim Moussawi, said violence had plummeted by 80 percent in the capital.

Will they blame this on Iran, too? If so, Iran is killing its own (as in Shi'ites), no? Seems a tad counter-productive, but what makes sense in Bush's fantasy land of ever bigger guns and war?