Free Iraq

Our nation is in its annual grip of holiday fever. We spend money we cannot afford. We pretend we are what we are not. We forget - though, truly, we never in the first place did acknowledge - what may indeed be our most significant national attribute. We are a nation of murderers. That long has been so.

At the moment it is Iraqis earning our special favor. No fewer than 655,000 dead, according to recent estimate. But that figure doesn't begin to document the true reign of terror brought to Iraq by our good selves. And our national self image allows for no other image: good selves. The lie cannot be admitted to. For what would we do then? Send all of ourselves to the gallows? And would it be so strange if hundreds of thousands - millions? - around the world had precisely that wish for us? For how ever do we atone for what our hand has wrought?

Writing about another not-so-long-ago experiment in national self-importance, Robert Parry says of Ronald Reagan's Bloody 'Apocalypto' : "An honest accounting of what actually happened under Reagan's presidency became a political taboo in the United States. Even when hard evidence surfaced about those human rights crimes, the information was quickly brushed aside and forgotten."

Nothing has changed. What will stop the avaricious, indifferent bloodletting?
 

Blair on surprise Baghdad visit: He travelled from Baghdad airport to the heavily-fortified Green Zone ...

British authorities had imposed a news blackout on journalists travelling with Blair to keep his movements secret for security reasons.


Gunmen stage mass kidnapping in Baghdad


Blair says UK troops to stay in Iraq till job done: "There's a very strong obligation which is set out in the U.N. resolution for all countries in the region to be supportive of the Iraqi prime minister and his government ... and not undermine them," he said.
 

(There's a special place in Hell for you, too, Tony.)
No 10 sidesteps inquiry after WMD claim: Mr Ross's damning three-page testimony raises fresh questions about Tony Blair's justification for the war and states that there had been "no intelligence evidence" that Saddam had chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. He added that British officials had repeatedly warned the US that the dictator's overthrow would trigger "chaos".
 

MI5 chief quits as full story of July 7 is about to emerge: 'Everything there is to know about how MI5 handled the 7/7 bombings, and what happened before, has been presented to the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee,' a source said.

'There are no surprises in store that will alter the view of how the Security Service worked. Her departure is a routine event, long arranged. The Home Secretary has full confidence in her.'
 

Army chief accused of lying about Britain's readiness for Iraq war: Sgt Roberts ... was shot by a soldier ... who was trying to protect him but did not know his gun was inaccurate at short range.
 

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, The March to War: Political Crises in Lebanon and Palestine: The duplicity of the foreign policy of the United States and its allies is becoming crystal clear in regards to “democratization” in the Middle East. The goal is not to spread democracy, but to establish a series of puppet, client governments that serve Anglo-American financial, military, and strategic interests in the region. These governments for all intents and purposes are undemocratic in nature, but termed as “moderate.” The situations in both Lebanon and Palestine share startling similarities, although Palestinians face military occupation and the Lebanese face strengthening foreign induced sectarian tension(s).

The Anglo-American military roadmap can not go forward until both Palestine and Lebanon are pacified; this means that the Opposition and Resistance Movements of both states must be defeated. ...

The investigation into the assassination of the late Al-Hariri has been politicized and is being fashioned into a pretext for furthering the Anglo-American roadmap in the Middle East and creation of the “New Middle East.”

U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice sums up the “game plan” in regards to the international tribunal:

“The Hariri tribunal has got to go forward. First of all, it’s under Security Council resolution. (…) Third, it’s a matter of showing that people who assassinate leaders can’t do so with impunity. (emphasis added) ...

Ms. Rice ... demonizes all forces opposing the domination of the United States in the region and labels them as extremist forces. She additionally demands that the street protests stop in Lebanon and depicts the mass protests, which has involved more than a quarter of the Lebanese population, in Beirut as illicit. In contradiction to what Ms. Rice claims, the street protests in Lebanon are a genuine sign of democratic expression and the will of the Lebanese people against foreign domination and manipulation of their country.

In reality, the United States has been supporting mass protests and calling them expressions of democracy only when they are in the favour of U.S. foreign policy and economic objectives; the United States has supported or covertly initiated street protests or “velvet revolutions” in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Latin America, and as recently as early-2005 supported the Cedar Revolution or Intifada-al-Istiqlal (also called the Arab Spring) in Lebanon itself. ...

In respect to the Palestinians, the international principles that Condelezza Rice also talks about in regards to the Hamas government of the Palestinians are in essence the principles of collaboration and [ac]cepting foreign manipulation—which is the road that Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas have accepted. Finally, Condoleezza Rice neglects to mention that the United States is helping arm Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas’ presidential guard and would support Fatah if they take undemocratic control of the occupied Palestinian territories and surrender further land and sovereignty to Israel.
 

US accused of using aid to sway UN votes: The United States uses its aid budget to bribe those countries that have a vote in the United Nations Security Council, giving them 59% more cash in years when they have a seat, according to research by economists.

When there is a controversial vote in prospect, the premium for countries with a Security Council seat is even higher. US aid surges by as much as 170%, bringing in a £23-million windfall, while the UN spends an extra £4-million.
 

Kurt Nimmo, General Reveals Residual Neocon-Likudnik Haunting at Pentagon: ... “I don’t care about the politics. I care about people understanding the facts of what’s our enemy is thinking about, what’s our strategy to defeat them, and for [Americans] to understand that it will take a long fight, mostly because our enemy is committed to the long fight…. One of my concerns is how to maintain the American will, the public will over that duration,” that is to say 50, 100, 200 years, however long it takes to reduce the Middle East to a smoldering backwater.

“Our enemy,” naturally, just so happens to be Israel’s, as well. ...
 

Groups Mute Criticism of Iraq Report: Jewish and pro-Israel groups, after initially greeting the report of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group with outrage, have begun to mute their criticisms on the basis of assurances that the Bush administration will not adopt the report’s proposed linkage between Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
 

UN okays registry to process damages claims tied to Israel's West Bank barrier: By a vote of 162 in favor, seven against -- including Israel, the United States and Australia -- and seven abstentions, the Assembly Friday endorsed a resolution to establish the registry with an office in Vienna made up of a three-member board and a small secretariat.

The resolution, adopted in a special session called by Arab states, said the registry was to serve as "a record, in documentary form, of the damage caused to all natural and legal persons concerned as a result of the construction of the wall by Israel, the occupying power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around east Jerusalem."

It said Israel was obliged to return to their righful owners any land, orchards, olive groves and other immovable property seized as part of the barrier's construction.

Should restitution prove materially impossible, Israel has an obligation to compensate those suffering losses or material damage due to the barrier's placement or construction, it added.
 

Israeli PM brushes off Assad's call for talks
 

The Truth About The Tehran Holocaust Conference - By One Who Was There: Contrary to the Western media's assertions, the conference did not declare the Holocaust a myth, although some individual participants were surely of that opinion.
 

U.S. preparing surge of forces into Iraq? The 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division is expected in Kuwait shortly after the new year, a senior Defense Department official told The Associated Press on Friday. The official requested anonymity because the plans had not yet been announced.

The 2nd Brigade, made up of roughly 3,500 troops, is based at Fort Bragg, N.C., and would be deployed in Iraq early next year if needed, the official said. ...
 

Free Arab Voice, Statement in Support of Saddam Hussein: We call upon every Head of State as well as every private individual throughout the world to condemn unequivocally this mockery of justice and to protest against the impending murder of the President of the Arab Nation in Iraq. It is the equivalent of a mob lynching, clothed in legal trappings. Condemn the true war criminals, the so-called Heads of State of the U.S., Great Britain, and all who have allied themselves against the people of the Arab Nation. Condemn the foreign Occupation of Iraq and Palestine instead of pursuing phantom threats of 'nuclear capacity' against legitimate nations. If you have any interest in real peace and justice, you must act against the Zionist entity with its huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and support the legitimate aspirations of those who seek to end the foreign Occupation of their lands.
 

Women Lose Ground in the New Iraq; Once They Were Encouraged to Study and Work; Now Life Is 'Just Like Being in Jail'
 

We did not murder an entire country. An entire country murdered itself.

Use your head. Look around you.

You say they are here to liberate you, but why do they attack you? You say they stand for Iraqi, but why do they kill those not like them but who are still Iraqis? And all these "Free Iraq types," they speak of bad intentions on the part of the US, but they never say what they were. They use super dramatic poetic language like "The moment I saw the dark sad shadows of the tanks and the gunmen," but this tells us nothing.

You have closed your mind. You have been disappointed. I understand, or at least I'm trying too. But reason must prevail, especially in trying times like these. The US is here to win a war, but that war is to make Iraq free and prosperous. If we wanted oil, we could've headed south and taken a much larger stash in Saudi Arabia, with far more international justification, or we could've taken Iran, who refuses to export to us. By making Iraq a free, stable, successful country, our aim was to stop terrorism by offering the Middle East a path of life instead of a path of death.

As for Evelyn's claim that we are a nation of murderers, here's somehting for her to consider: "What country isn't a nation of murderers?" No people, including the Iraqis, who settled in the lands that they live in today did so without first killing and raping those who came before them. For the Iraqis this meant the Assyrians, for the Americans this meant the Indians, and the list goes on. Not that its a bad thing: Without war, political power cannot exist, without political power society cannot exist, and genocide is nothing, as the doctrine of Muturally Assured Destruction shows, but the ultimate extreme of war. We live, as Iraq highlights, because of those we murdered before us, just as a Tiger sustains itself from a downed Gazelle. For something to be a national attribute, it must be unique.

Delete this if you like, but this is the truth.
 

Interesting observation: "By making Iraq a free, stable, successful country ..."

As for which nation has the most blood on its hands, Jeremy, our national claim to exceptionalism is based on a rather different self-image. Namely, we are better than everyone else. Everyone surely admires and wants to be us. Culture of life, and all that. Simply, we are the best.

You ask, "What country isn't a nation of murderers?" And I ask, Isn't it time we found a better way? That would be something uniquely worth attempting.
 

Wayne Madsen, December 18, 2006 -- Intelligence agencies are looking closely at the Environmental Crime Prevention Program (ECPP) of the World Environmental Security Organization, a contrivance put together by Alexander Litvinenko colleague and Silvio Berlusconi interlocutor Mario Scaramella. [ . . . ]

The ramifications of organized crime (Russian-Israeli, Chechen, and Camorra mafiosi) penetration of environmental regulatory agencies cannot be overstated -- the regulators, if compromised, are in an ideal position to enable the shipment of radioactive waste materials around the world. The Litvinenko affair may be merely the tip of an iceberg of a huge international nuclear smuggling operation -- one with hooks into the EPA and possibly the White House.
 

Anat Bereshkovsky, Israeli Member of Knesset: US will attack Iran and Israel must dismantle Palestinian Authority
 

American Woman beaten on Jerusalem bus for refusing to move to rear seat
 

Report: Pentagon planning Navy buildup as 'warning to Iran'
 

“Leave Us Alone,” Iranian Reformers Say
 

Iraq on brink of collapse: report
 

60 Minutes: CIA Official Reveals Bush, Cheney, Rice Were Personally Told Iraq Had No WMD in Fall 2002

... Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA’s Europe division, revealed that in the fall of 2002, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others were told by CIA Director George Tenet that Iraq’s foreign minister — who agreed to act as a spy for the United States — had reported that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction program. Watch it:

BRADLEY: According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high level meeting at the White House.

DRUMHELLER: The President, the Vice President, Dr. Rice…

BRADLEY: And at that meeting…?

DRUMHELLER: They were enthusiastic because they said they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis.

BRADLEY: And what did this high level source tell you?

DRUMHELLER: He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program.

BRADLEY: So, in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authority from a source within Saddam’s inner circle that he didn’t have an active program for weapons of mass destruction?

DRUMHELLER: Yes.

BRADLEY: There’s no doubt in your mind about that?

DRUMHELLER: No doubt in my mind at all.

BRADLEY: It directly contradicts, though, what the President and his staff were telling us.

DRUMHELLER: The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.

Read the full transcript HERE.
 

U.S. soldiers' suicide rate in Iraq doubles in 2005
 

Why we stand for immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq (Signed by Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy, Howard Zinn and many others)
Sign the Petition
 

Wayne Madsen (permanent links)
- U.S. link to Litvinenko affair
- Litvinenko & Scaramella reportedly linked to former EPA criminal enforcement official
 

Ulrike Putz, A Glimpse at Daily Misery in the Gaza Strip
 

White House Forbids Publication Of Op-Ed On Iran By Former Bush Official ( CLICK HERE FOR AUDIO )
 

U.S. Not Winning War in Iraq, Bush Says for 1st Time: ... [T]he president said he did not interpret the Democratic election victories six weeks ago as a mandate to bring U.S. involvement in Iraq to an end. Instead, he said, he considers the outcome a call to find new ways to make the mission there succeed. Bush confirmed that he is considering a short-term surge in troops in Iraq, an option that top generals have resisted out of concern that it would not help.

... "I've got more consultations to do with the national security team, which will be consulting with other folks. And I'm going to take my time to make sure that the policy, when it comes out, the American people will see that we . . . have got a new way forward."
 

(The odd lie here, the odd lie there. Presto. "We have murdered an entire country.")
UK: Beckett admits 45-min claim was wrong: The claim – that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) could be used within 45 minutes of Saddam Hussein giving the order to deploy them – was contained in the Government's dossier in September 2002 making the case for the conflict.

It became infamous after a BBC report suggested in May 2003 that it had been inserted into the dossier against the wishes of the intelligence services, as Number 10 sought to "sex up" the case for war.

That BBC report prompted a row between the government and the BBC, which ended with the death of the source for the story, government chemical and biological weapons expert Dr David Kelly.
 

Esteemed Professor and Law Expert Warns Of Police State: With regards to 9/11 itself the professor asserted that it is clear Bush, Rice, Tennet, Ashcroft and other Bush Administration officials all knew a terrorist attack was coming and that the attacks were at the very least allowed to go ahead.
 

Iran Seeks UN Condemnation of Israeli Nukes
 

israel speeds up building in Golan: Quick - grab every hilltop in sight!
 

Felicity Arbuthnot, Lame Duck Visits Dead Duck Walking: Tony Blair pitches up in Iraq to assure quisling 'Prime Minister' Maliki, of Britain's continued support

Saddam Hussein has reportedly been offered his life back from the 'coalition' kangaroo court, if he calls off the resistance fighters. He has reportedly refused and will probably hang, with those of his legitimate government. And I am reminded again, of Tareq Aziz, Iraq's Christian Foreign Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, who said to me in an interview for Middle East International during the rumblings of war, back in 1999: "Madam Felicity, when I was ten years old, I was handing out leaflets on the streets of Baghdad and putting them through peoples' doors, to stop Britain getting their hands on Iraq's oil. I am not about to give up on Iraq now." He never did.
 

13 companies with the worst record for supporting Israel’s policies
 

Wayne Madsen, December 20, 2006 -- There is more evidence that the same neo-con perpetrators who forged the infamous Niger "yellowcake" uranium documents ... and other fabrications designed to "prove" Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction were also behind the forgery of a package of e-mails, written in English and claiming to be from a source within the Russian Federal Security Bureau, that the Kremlin had a hit list of opponents to be eliminated through assassination. These included assassinated Russian journalist Anna Politovskaya, poisoned ex-KGB and FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, right-wing Italian Senator Paolo Guzzanti, Russian-Israeli mob tycoon Boris Berezovsky, and the man who showed Litvinenko the e-mail forgeries, Italian operative Mario Scaramella.

The same capitals that were involved in the Iraqi war forgeries are part and parcel of the Russian FSB e-mail forgeries: Rome, Tel Aviv (where the Russian mobsters are primarily based), and London.

... There is now clear evidence that the FSB forgeries were intended to create a crisis for the government of President Vladimir :Putin and alienate Russia much in the same way that the neo-cons have used similar forgeries and disinformation to marginalize the reformers and pragmatists in Iran, the government of Syria, and those in the former Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein who tried every approach to avoid a war with the Bush administration.

In the world of the neo-cons, one establishes his or her bona fides by creating the most sustainable lies. The neo-cons continue to lie and seek to embroil even greater numbers of U.S. troops into the hell known as the Iraqi Civil War, a war of the neo-cons' making.
 

Is It Now Illegal To Link To Other Websites? Landmark Sydney legal ruling sets precedent for wholesale devastation of Internet news websites and blogs
 

Chris Floyd, A Chronicle of Escalation Foretold: The Red Crescent Assault: Less than a mile from where British Prime Minister Tony Blair was gripping and grinning during a surprise visit to Baghdad on Sunday, agents of the extremist factions that he and George W. Bush have empowered, paid and heavily armed were raiding the offices of the Iraqi Red Crescent Agency and rounding up some of the few remaining relief workers in the country who attend to the suffering of all sides. This bold, broad-daylight assault came less than 48 hours after top Red Crescent officials publicly accused U.S. military forces of conducting a series of attacks on the agency's offices around the country during the course of the war.

The "armed men in police commando uniforms" were, of course, police commandos, in this case almost certainly under the control of the Interior Ministry, one of the Shiite enclaves in the sectarian-riddled government. As the NYT notes, "control of the district, in the heart of Baghdad, was given to the Iraqi police in November." The Interior and Defense Ministries, which control the bulk of Iraq's security forces, are in the hands of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the militant Shiite party whose leader, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, was given a warm White House welcome by Bush earlier this month. SCIRI was formed in Iran by Iraqi exiles and touts Khomeini-style clerical rule. Yet because of its long-time willingness to wheel and deal with America's "security organs," it has been a favorite of the invaders throughout the occupation...

The Red Crescent raid was a leisurely affair, carried out by dozens of men who arrived in two police cars and about 20 other vehicles, the Los Angeles Times reports. In order to reach the normally quiet area where the Red Crescent offices are located, the raiders had to pass through several checkpoints controlled by SCIRI's "official" government security forces. Once in, the attackers fanned out to warn local shopkeepers to stay inside, then entered the building and began a room-by-room search. They were evidently not worried about interference from local law enforcement officials

Female employees of the agency said the raiders were apparently looking for Sunnis; they asked for family names (one of the quickest ways to discern Shiite from Sunni) and tribal identifications. ...

... These quasi-official death squads – who receive most of their training, money and weapons from the United States and Britain – have been increasingly brazen in carrying out a broad-based ethnic cleansing campaign in Baghdad. Their Sunni equivalents – with less official backing – are carrying out a similar if smaller-scale consolidation in the areas they control.

...[I]t beggars belief to imagine that Blair and Bush (or at least the latter's chief advisers) do not know that they have helped form many of the very militias they now rail against daily, and that their much-trumpeted support for Iraq's "security forces" is in fact one of the main engines driving the sectarian civil war. One can only conclude from this that Bush and Blair have decided that the sectarian war should be played to their own advantage, and pushed toward the only result that now offers even the slightest chance of "success" from their war of aggression: the triumph of a Shiite extremist faction willing to cut an acceptable deal on the all-important "oil law" and perhaps allow a continued U.S. military presence in the country, if only a few "lily-pad" skeleton bases.

In these past weeks following the November elections, Bush and Blair have set about trying to build a new coalition around Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is dependent for his political power on the support of hardline Shiite cleric and fierce nationalist Motqada al-Sadr and his mass "Mahdi Army," which already controls several areas of the country, including large swathes of Baghdad. Sadr, who along with his martyred family stayed in Iraq and fought Saddam's repression, has long been at odds with Hakim and SCIRI, who fled to Iran and whose forces even fought for Iran against their fellow Iraqis in the 1980s Iran-Iraq War. This conflict has often flared into violent battles, especially in the last year, forming yet another front in Iraq's multi-sided civil war. Sadr, whose army has already led two uprising against American forces, will never accept a continued U.S. presence in the country. Nor is anyone with his nationalist beliefs to be trusted to do right by Bush's oil patrons.

Thus it seems increasingly clear that Bush and Blair have decided to wage all-out war on Sadr, with the help of the "surge" troops now being put together. ...

Sunday's attack on the Red Crescent is a harbinger of what's to come, and a microcosm of the great atrocity that is the war itself: a vicious assault by torturers and murderers on innocent people while self-proclaimed liberators look on, mouthing pieties, talking tough, and daintily cleansing their hands of blood.
 

Robert Parry, A Very Dangerous New Year: The first two or three months of 2007 represent a dangerous opening for an escalation of war in the Middle East, as George W. Bush will be tempted to “double-down” his gamble in Iraq by joining with Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair to strike at Syria and Iran, intelligence sources say.

President Bush’s goal would be to transcend the bloody quagmire bogging down U.S. forces in Iraq by achieving “regime change” in Syria and by destroying nuclear facilities in Iran, two blows intended to weaken Islamic militants in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

The Israeli army and air force would carry the brunt of any new fighting albeit with the support of beefed-up U.S. ground and naval forces in the Middle East, the sources said. Bush is now considering a “surge” in U.S. troop levels in Iraq from about 140,000 to as many as 170,000. He also has dispatched a second aircraft carrier group to the coast of Iran.
 

(One insanity after another)
Bush "Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons" for Offensive Use
 

(Imperial insanity)
Bombing civilians from the air
 

U.N. adopts treaty banning countries from secretly abducting perceived enemies: The world body received reports of about 535 disappearances last year. Rights experts say they doubt the U.S. will ratify the pact.
 

(An American hero)
U.S. army officer who refused to deploy to Iraq rallies support in Hawaii before his military trial
 

Time.com, Syria in Bush's Cross Hairs - Exclusive: A classified document suggests the Administration is considering a plan to fund political opposition to the Damascus government. Some critics say it would be an unwarranted covert action (Unwarranted, but entirely normal)
 

Tariq Ali, The war is already lost
 

Suicide bomber kills 15 at Iraq police academy


Record number of bodies turns up in Baghdad
 

(Iraqi Truth Tellers as heroes)
In Iraq, journalist deaths spike to record in 2006: Violence in Iraq claimed the lives of 32 journalists in 2006, the deadliest year for the press in a single country that the Committee to Protect Journalists has ever recorded. In most cases, such as the killing of Atwar Bahjat, one of the best-known television reporters in the Arab world, insurgents specifically targeted journalists to be murdered, CPJ found in a new analysis.
 

xymphora, All interested parties except Israel
 

Secret US Mass Graves of Green Card Hopefuls.. a scoop in progress: Did the Pentagon order the assassination of a journalist in order to cover up secret mass burials of dead U.S. soldiers and U.S.- contracted mercenaries in the deserts around Baghdad?

What is really behind the killing of my colleague and friend, the Palestinian Reuters cameraman, Mazen Dana, in Bagdad? Is the Pentagon really scared of the media telling the U.S public what is really going on in Iraq? ... (YES.)
 

Gilles Munier, IF THE AMERICANS REALLY INTEND TO NEGOTIATE WITH THE RESISTANCE, THEY SHOULD FIRST LIBERATE TAREQ AZIZ ! ... "We have never invited the Americans to Iraq, therefore we do not invite them to leave, we are kicking them out! There will be no honourable way out for them. They must negotiate their withdrawal if they are eager to reduce their casualties and the sooner the better. As a matter of fact, they really need to find the right people to talk to."
 

Alive In Baghdad, Baghdad Is Like Grand Theft Auto
 

US military to announce charges against marines in Haditha case
 

(Season's Greetings)
Video (4 min), Death Star by The Arab League
(More - in 2 weeks)
 

If you try to find a way to eliminate war, you will never find it.

And I can assure you that the insurgents will not even try, because war is the single cause for their existance. At least Americans have something besides killing that they serve.

And anyways, Evelyn, you are not listening. I did not say Iraq had become a stable, successful democracy, I said that was our goal. And if we had achieved it, the Iraqi people would be happy. They, as a people, ruined their own future. Yes, it is a difficult situation, but you have to keep your head at times like this, and you alone are responsible for knowing your own best interest, and if you don't, it is a rule of nature, among humans as among animals, that you shall be the first to die. The insurgents have proved themselves unfit to live in this world, and they will perish by the sword, one way or another, either in our hands, or in the hands of their insurgent brothers. Let's just hope not too many innocents are taken with them.