THE BEST NEWS IS FROM IRAQ!

I have ignored it since returning from vacation, but the best news I’ve heard in a long time came out of Iraq.

I never thought I’d say that. The very word Iraq has become synonymous with pain and suffering in my mind. I have also equated it with everything I despise about BushCo, their goals, and the way they go about achieving them.

I’ve always thought that one of those goals was to establish a dependent, if not puppet, government in Iraq that they could manipulate into furthering their quest for permanent military bases and control over oil and water resources.

The great news from Iraq, though, is that they have apparently failed in that attempt. The government of Iraq, apparently as disgusted by the blatantly greedy and inept power-grabbing efforts of this conscience-less administration as the rest of the world is, has, through the mouth of al Maliki, basically told BushCo to shove it.

Like those of us who have been the brunt of attacks from the right for our “unpatriotic” support of troop withdrawal, the government of Iraq has forthrightly said that they want us to set a timetable for withdrawal and give them back their country. Included in this position are the denial of the right to a permanent military presence in Iraq and the assumption of the right of the Iraqi government to contract with whomever it choses to manage its oilfields.

Of course, BushCo has long held that a withdrawal should be in accord with “conditions on the ground” and not some arbitrary timetable, but we have long known, and now the Iraqi government has made known, that conditions on the ground are such that a timetable for withdrawal is appropriate. The reason BushCo isn’t ready to withdraw is that they did not come there thinking that they would ever withdraw. The written goal as stated two years before the war started in the neo-con paper “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” was to establish a permanent military presence in Iraq as a means of establishing western control over the Middle-East.

Now, faced with the Iraqi demand for a withdrawal timetable, what will BushCo do? I think there is a simple, one-word answer – nothing. So far, they have just ignored it, and that is what they will continue to do in the hope that they can stick to the status quo and then hand the problem over to the next administration.

The fact is that any administration that was at all interested in removing our soldiers from harms way would immediately have dispatched at least the Secretary of State to meet with representatives of the Iraqi government and begin working out the details for withdrawal.

The fact that this administration has failed to react to this demand is clearly further proof of their lack of interest in removing our troops from harms way. Their interest is in furthering their imperialistic goals and nothing else.

Perhaps it is on this front that groups like our Peace Network of the Ozarks should now focus their efforts. If the Iraqis want us out, on what grounds can we to refuse to honor their wishes?

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” – Patrick Henry


Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR

The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle