Lest we forget…
BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed an American soldier in Baghdad on Saturday, capping the bloodiest week for U.S. troops in Iraq this year. Clashes persisted in Shiite areas, even as the biggest Shiite militia sought to rein in its fighters.
The U.S. military said the American soldier was killed in a blast Saturday [...]

Whether he’s emboldened by his “victory” against Sadr’s militias or a host of other reasons we could only guess at, Nouri al-Maliki wants the U.S. to continue to draw down their troops.
I’ll repeat that…the prime minister of Iraq wants U.S. troops to continue to leave his country.
From AP:
Petraeus wants the U.S. to complete by the [...]

National Priorities Project has a great website that illustrates how your money is spent by the federal government on a state by state average. (note: this doesn’t mean state tax dollars are being spent, just the average breakdown for federal taxes paid by residents of a certain state.)
The biggest finding? For every $42 we spend [...]

An interesting moment from yesterday’s testimony with Biden, Petraeus and Crocker.

And while some on the left and the right have been trying to make hay out of this, the segment does have my wondering why, if our highest priority targets are in Afghanistan, that we’re not trying to destroy them.
I understand we think we [...]

They know the surge is making conditions safer. They know Iran is involved in Iraq.
And yet…
A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 65% of Americans would like to see U.S. troops brought home from Iraq within a year. That’s the highest total recorded in the tracking poll which has been conducted regularly since August [...]

Why?
Well one reason that seems to be coming up over and over again is they want to get out of Iraq. And let’s not forget that even though Ron Paul was consistently placing 5th on the primaries and caucuses, he had the most donations from the military out of any GOP candidate. And at [...]

It’s real, it’s damaging and the Army is openly talking about it.
From NY Times:
WASHINGTON — Army leaders are expressing increased alarm about the mental health of soldiers who would be sent back to the front again and again under plans that call for troop numbers to be sustained at high levels in Iraq for [...]

The guy who first became famous for picketing the funerals of gay men and women, and then moved on to American soldiers, is in trouble with the law…again.
But this time it might actually hit him where it counts.
From Topeka Capitol-Journal:
A federal judge in Maryland on Thursday ordered liens on the Westboro Baptist Church building [...]

If you haven’t seen Frontline’s documentary about how we got into Iraq and how it all went wrong, you need to. It’s probably the most well researched piece I’ve seen so far, and the interviews with insiders are simply stunning. Many saw this train wreck coming, but Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld just didn’t listen.
In [...]

All 70+ pages of it.
Here’s the gist…
In the March 14, 2003 memo, Yoo says the Constitution was not in play with regard to the interrogations because the Fifth Amendment (which provides for due process of law) and the Eighth Amendment (which prevents the government from employing cruel and usual punishment) does “not extend to alien [...]

The award winning documentarian trains his patented eye on the events that happened at Abu Ghraib prison in a film coming out on April 25.
From watching the following clips, as well as Frontline’s searing Bush’s War, a pretty clear picture emerges and makes it incredibly difficult for the Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to put [...]

The more that comes out about the Iraqi government’s clash with the Mahdi Army, the more convinced I become that we should NOT have been involved in any way, shape or form. Not only that, our continued presence there will increasingly be used as a craven political tool instead of a force to fight terrorism.
From [...]

Good news for al-Maliki’s credibility, but this could be a brief pause if there’s not agreement on the elections in the Fall.
From MSNBC:
BAGHDAD - Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Sunday ordered his fighters off the streets nationwide and called on the government to stop raids against his followers and free them from prison.
The Iraqi [...]

From TPM:
In other encouraging news, Iraqi police in Baghdad are apparently deserting en masse to the Mahdi Army, thus leaving city police checkpoints to be manned by Iraqi Army soldiers, who are conveniently available because the US military is getting pulled in to take over the fight with the Mahdi Army.
Once again, if we give [...]

Looks like they’re offering $4M in grants to therapies like yoga, Reiki, Qi gong, spiritual ministry and transcendental meditation.
Groovy…
From Wired:
As many as 17 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, one congressional study estimates. Nearly 3,300 troops have suffered traumatic brain injury, or TBI, according to statistics [...]

I’m glad to see they stopped this before they wasted any more money, but this just goes to show you how much money can be wasted on weapons systems that we honestly don’t even need. It makes the lack of focus on domestic issues that much harder to swallow.
From Reuters:
The Navy says it has spent [...]

Here’s why…
The gun battles between soldiers and militiamen, who are all Shia Muslims, show that Iraq’s majority Shia community – which replaced Saddam Hussein’s Sunni regime – is splitting apart for the first time.
Mr Sadr’s followers believe the government is trying to eliminate them before elections in southern Iraq later this year, which they are [...]

The Pentagon throws some interesting logic on the table about the recent problems in Iraq.
From AFP:
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The Pentagon on Wednesday said an eruption of violence in southern Iraq, where US-backed government forces were battling Shiite militias, was a “by-product of the success of the surge.”
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said it showed that [...]

Basically, they have 72 hours to put down their weapons or they’ll face the consequences. What those are is not yet clear, but it’s a safe bet it won’t be good for either side.
From NY Times:
BAGHDAD — A day after launching a huge operation that ignited heavy fighting in two of Iraq’s largest cities, Prime [...]

3,232.
3,547.
3,689.
Anybody remember these numbers?
I don’t, and for that I’m a bit ashamed.
But 4,000, well, that one seems to give us pause. For some reason the sight of three zeroes makes us turn our necks long enough to pay attention, ask more questions and continue to find few real answers.
So here’s my question [...]