Conyers and Murtha get it. Feinstein needs to read Norman Solomon.

[understandinglife]

Reps Conyers and Murtha:

In ... Washington Post, Secretary Rumsfeld, when he was not comparing the conditions in Iraq to Nazi Germany, explained that "The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq ...the terrorists are determined to stoke sectarian tension and are attempting to spark a civil war." Except that former Prime Minister Allawi (remember him, we gave him that job), has come forward to admit that there is already a civil war in Iraq, as reported by the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4821618.stm).

So who are you going to believe? Allawi actually lives there.

For the administration to admit there is a civil war, they would have to admit that our presence in Iraq is not having a positive effect and that our soldiers are dying for a mission that will not be accomplished. John Murtha expressed this very succinctly on Meet the Press this morning and has been echoing these sentiments from senior military commanders for months. It's time to for the news coverage to catch up with this reality.

REP. MURTHA: Let me, let me tell you how they mis-characterize these kinds of things. For instance, we’re caught in a civil war. What, however you want to look at it, first of all, they said there was no insurgency. Then they said it’s not a civil war. It is a civil war. Twenty-five thousand insurgents are fighting with each other inside the country for supremacy. That’s the definition of a civil war. There’s less than a thousand al-Qaida. And when he says turning it over to al-Qaida—and that’s what he means, he, he’s inferring it’ll be turned over to al-Qaida—I don’t believe that for a minute. The Iraqis will get rid of al-Qaida the minute that we get out of there. And 60 percent of the people in Iraq believe the sooner we get out, the more stable Iraq will be, and that’s what all of us want.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe that the president made some fundamental misjudgments about Iraq?

REP. MURTHA: Oh, absolutely.

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Link to more of the interview:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11823851/page/4

Link to Congerssman Conyers' blog:
http://www.conyersblog.us/archives/00000405.htm

Norman Solomon is trying to help Senator Feinstein "get it":

On Saturday, during her national radio response to the president, Senator Dianne Feinstein accused the Bush administration of “incompetence” in the Iraq war. What would be a competent way to pursue the war in Iraq? How would you drop huge bombs on urban neighborhoods in a competent way? How would you deploy cluster munitions that shred the bodies of children in a competent way?

How would you take hundreds of thousands of people from their home land and send them to a country to kill and be killed -- based on lies -- in a competent way?

How do you ravage the housing and health care and education of communities across the United States, while war-profiteering corporations post bigger profits -- how would you do that in a competent way?

Senator Feinstein went on to say that it’s so important, for the war in Iraq, for the United States government to “do it right.” How does one do this war right, when every day it brings more carnage? The only way to do this war right is to not do it at all.

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More at the link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-solomon/why-are-we-here_b_17584.html

A crime is a crime; committing more crime is simply more crime. How hard is that to understand?

We will never do the war in Iraq right; it is a war of aggression - a crime. The very action of planning it, was a crime.

The only "right" actions are for us to leave, completely and in a logistically efficient manner and then to charge and prosecute all those who participated in the crimes committed against the people of Iraq. No amount of spin will erase those crimes from the history of America.

What we can do - "We the People ..." that is - is to be competent in our pursuit and prosecution of those Americans who participated in the crimes.

"We the People ..." can be historically competent in making what "America" is supposed to represent real and not merely slogan.

"We the People ..." can be competent in our adherence to the rule of law.


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