Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for December 19, 2011

TSA- keeping America safe at $8 per hour.

TSA- feeling America up for $8 per hour.

“Remembering 4,500 servicemen and women and 100,000 Iraqis who died for a lie.” Let’s see now, 100,000 Iraqis who died for the Bush lie divided by 4,500 U.S. servicepeople who died for the Bush lie = more than 22 Iraqis who died for every 1 American who died! Whoopie yay-ki-yay! Don’t you see, my fellow Americans? We won! This is a BODY COUNT victory in our favor! A “body count” victory is the standard established by the great Vietnam War and the great victory we won in Vietnam. The great Ronald Ray-Gun said it best when he said that Vietnam was a “noble” enterprise. And in Vietnam it was the body count ratio that determined the standard of victory.Thus also in Iraq. What’s good for victory in Vietnam is also good for victory in Iraq: meaning the reason why we won in Iraq is the body count ratio in our favor: Twenty-two Iraqis died for every American warrior who did. Whoopie! Yippie yay-ki-yay for our side! In terms of body counts, the ancient Roman Empire had nothing on us. We’re much better killers than they were — what with our high-tech smart bombs and all. Hallelujah Fallujah! Now is the time to rejoice. Now is the time for theBush-Cheney-neocon New American Century to kick in at last. What sitting-cuck country is next? Iran! Obviously. Kick their glasses! Kick their brasses! Kick their molasses! Then on to Russia. Gosh darn it all to heck, we got more nukes than they do! Then China. With 22-to-1kill-ratios in our favor established in Iraq, we can rule the world in a 1000-year-reich far better than Hitler’s Germany ever could. Today Iraq, tomorrow the world! Bombs away!

It was all a lie.

I get the distinct impression that many of you commenting would not fight even to protect you and yours. I thank our troops who served and are serving anywhere they are.

The actual Iraqi body count was much closer to one million, so Sonny can feel even better about himself.

RSR,Likewise, I can only see half the final panel.PS.As a non-American what is TSA an ancronym for?Thanks

“To Western eyes, it seemed inconceivable that Ho would make the tremendous sacrifices he did. But in 1946, as war with the French loomed, he cautioned them, ‘You can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours, yet even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.’ The French, convinced of their superiority, ignored his warning and suffered grievously as a result. Senior American officers similarly nurtured the illusion that their sophisticated weapons would inevitably break enemy morale. But, as Ho’s brilliant commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap, told me in Hanoi in 1990, his principal concern had been victory. When I asked him how long he would have resisted the U.S. onslaught, he thundered, ‘Twenty years, maybe 100 years—as long as it took to win, regardless of cost.’ The human toll was horrendous. An estimated 3 million North and South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died.” —Time Magazine. Read more at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,988162,00.html#ixzz1gxf0iQHj

Every time rich white billionaires want young working-class people to die to protect their profits, they say we’re fighting for our freedom. And every time, they’re lying. The last time we fought to protect our freedom was World War II. The time before that was the War of 1812.

We still don’t know what President Obama’s up to except stay “in the region”. To protect profits. I feel betrayed by him. I went from passionate supporter to disillusioned. Yet I fear a GOP President, such as M.Romney, could be 10 times worse! So I could end up holding my nose and voting for Obama once more.

We knew Saddam had (past tense) chemical weapons, because we sold them to him for his war against Iran. We didn’t know he’d used them all up there & keeping his Kurdish minority & Shia majority in line. His lie kept everyone’s intelligence believing he still had some, was developing more, & was willing to use them, because it was the only thing keeping him in power. He was our mess & needed cleaning up.

“We didn’t know [Saddam had] used them [our chemical weapons] all up there & keeping his Kurdish minority & Shia majority in line.” What excrement! We didn’t know, huh? Whatever happened to our intelligence (in both senses of the word)?

It was weak. The cost benefit analysis of supporting Iraq against Iran turns out to have been as bad as supporting the Taliban against the Soviets.

The moral high ground was lost with the adoption of a means justify the end policy. Unfortunately, this policy, and the resultant decision not to disclose or prosecute those that committed those acts, has further shamed this country.

lucklouie, gotta disagree with you about the war of 1812. That was our attempt to take Canada away from the British. It was the United States getting cocky and full of itself, thinking it could confront, and beat England again. The trouble was, the Canadian British were much better soldiers, and had much better commanders, the dudes from England…..We were lucky to get out of that one with a tie….

“than the dudes from England.” Seriously, is supplying an editing function that hard?

The conclusion is: USA has never been so hated and despised all over the world in all its history. Ironically enough, the most faithful (surviving) allies are the “English dudes”.

PS If the "detention without trial " law passes, USA will be the first and only Country in the world to officially abolish the Magna Charta since 1215. And this, in addition to re-introducing torture on prisoners, is one of the greatest accomplishments of USA 2.0

“This ain’t conspiracy theory, it’s history.” It lacks evidence. It’s rubbish.

if you live to be 1000 years old, and looking back to this time, what was the damn point?

Evidence.

Citing websites ≠ providing evidence.

Carl Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”47 47 “Encyclopaedia Galactica”. Carl Sagan (writer/host). Cosmos. PBS. December 14, 1980. No. 12. 01:24 minutes in. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan

Your journalism has yellowed a bit.

In my comment immediately above, the first graf presents the evidence — a comment by Carl Sagan that makes a relevant point regarding conspiracy theories. The second graf presents the location where I got the piece of evidence.

I sincerely hope that the next step is to being our troops home from Afghanistan

It may have cost $1 trn, but ask where the money went. Back through the Pentagon and a nine year beanfeast for dozens of US corporations, no doubt many that had bankrolled George Dubbya and Co into power. This Iraq war was all about BUSINESS! Where did the $1 trn come from? US Tax payers, US Treasuries, US Debt that will eventually be paid by the US tax payer. This was just a giant exercise tranferring funds from the pockets of many to the pockets of few, those that control the levers of power in USA Inc. Spin off benefits? Enhancing the skills and professionalism of the US Military machine. As for the head counts no record was made of Iraqi lives lost or numbers displaced.

I believe the the war MAY have served the Bush administration perfectly: while the country’s attention was focused on Iraq, Bush released his cronies into the US treasury like a fox guarding the henhouse. Mission Accomplished!

“There never was a good war, or a bad peace.” — Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, July 27, 1783. And I’ll bet General Sherman would agree. War is never justified, in the sense that it is never good. But it is, sometimes, the lesser of evils. Sherman said there was no glory in war. He knew that no war was ever fought honorably. War is about murder, not honor. And that is why war should never be fought because it is to your advantage to fight it, it should never be fought because you want to fight it. War should not be used as an instrument of state policy, or to protect ones “interests.” It should only be fought because you have no other choice. There is a difference between killing a burglar who has entered your house in the night and therefore threatens you and your family, and learning after a burglary the name and address of the burglar, and going to his house to murder him to ensure he never burgles again. But even if you buy “there is not such thing as a good war” how can you possibly buy “there is no such thing as a bad peace”? If you think that “peace” is nothing more than the absence of active war, I don’t think you can. But peace is not the absence of war, but rather the presence of law, and law cannot exist outside the consent (if grudging consent) of the governed. War is rather the state that exists outside of law. But that is another tale…

The military industrial complex won just like it won in Viet Nam and will continue to win. What I mean is win=profits.

People, the 62% figure means that a third of Americans do NOT think it WAS worth it, and SOME of them probably don’t even work for Halliburton. So, cut sonny1 some slack. He may SOUND like an idiot, but, uhhh, well, I mean, look at all the positives to come out of it. There’s, uhhh, well, uhhh, … , and then there’s – uhhh…. Uhhhhh!

There are actually two sizes of the comic stored in GoComics’ system and the smaller one appears to be sized wrong for the panel. Someone fuh-upped in preparing today’s page. I would expect that to all be automated, but perhaps not.

From one of Chad Mulligan’s classics like “You: Beast” or “You’re an Ignorant Idiot,” I presume…?.I haven’t re-read Brunner’s masterpiece in years. I suspect if I picked it up today I’d be disappointed at how 2010 turned out to be even worse than a 70’s-vintage sci-fi dystopia (sigh)…

Oh for crying out loud! Zionists want to take over the world? What century are you living in?

Wow. That kind of money could have allowed us to have decent healthcare, schools that work, and an infrastructure that isn’t falling apart.

4,484 American lives lost.Estimated 100,000 Iraqi lives lost.God only knows how many injured.`Eh . . . big deal. No one I know.(And, for the vast majority of the readers, no one you know.)

I agree with “DylanThomas”. Viet Nam was a waste, as the best that could have been obtained was a Korean war type standoff. Again, based on the faulty “domino theory” of communism.Iraq was an even worse f-up by our leaders – based on faulty information (no WMD’s after all) and Bush’s burning desire to eliminate Saddam (who’s impact had been, and could have continued to have been, contained) in retribution for threatening the life of Bush senior.

Afghanistan was/equally a waste – a knee-jerk reaction 9/11 with no underlying proof to support, in essence, an invasion.

So what has been accomplished? Lost lives, a ton of money, further support for terrorists, further distrust and bad relations in the Mideast, and an Iraq in anarchy.

And why the hell is the US still sending financial aid to Egypt, Pakistan, et al?

“hmmm, As I remember it, WWII started with Hitlers big lie!”

World War! Parts 1 & 2 (Boxed Set edition now available on Blu-Ray for Christmas) started long before that. The lengthy gap between the original and the sequel (More and crazier villains! Bigger and better weapons! And it ends with a BANG!) was because both sides needed to breed a new generation of extras.

@sonny1, your “impression” has no basis in fact.

I see the anti-Semites- Dandwriter1- and racists- helloimjohnnycat- are out today. They are not worthy of a response or any form of engagement.

You can also go to Doonesbury.com to read the strip.

Daddy Bush didn’t finish the job. My thought, not necessarilly popular, is that we had every right to go finish the job. Remember what Sadam did, right?

WOMD evidence: I believe this is no conspricy. This is just a case, common in business, of the underlings knowing what answer their boss wants, finding nothing substantial either way, and each spins the data toward the ‘right’ answer, assuming that others will have hard confirming data.

It seems like recent US history in foreign affairs amounts to 1) Going into a country with a despot, toppling the government, despot gets replaced with someone worse. 2) Supporting a despot as a ‘better dead than red’ option, despot is replaced with someone worse, and the US is blamed for having supported a repressive regime.

Correction: W said, “bring them on,” referring to the attacks on US troops.

Greetings, Everyone, from one of the “poor schmecks” in the US military.

One of the things I fight for is to preserve Your Constitutional Right to free speech. I, for one, shall NOT “slink away” for treasonous comments. As a person who truly appreciates the American foundation, I love it so much that I WILL do whatever it takes to protect my family, my friends, and the country as a whole.

Believe what you want. Call it “The Great Lie”. You have the right to voice your opinions about whomever you wish. That’s what I’ve sacrificed MY freedoms for. I may not have lost MY life, or even been wounded, but until you’ve actually gone through the hardships of military life, then you simply DO NOT UNDERSTAND what it means to be away from your family for a year, if not years at a time. You don’t know what it’s like for your family to wonder if you’re okay whenever they hear a news report of an IED explosion somewhere in the Middle East.

Yes, there were over 4,000 American soldiers’ lives lost in the war in Iraq. There were over 3,000 lives lost on 9/11. Was the reason of “WMD” THE legitimate reason to go into Iraq? Probably not. Was the war in Iraq tied to the war against Al Qaeda? Probably, and more than the average American knows.

But you go ahead, bitch about the Great Lie, but be thankful that the actual war being fought against those who wish to do harm to you and your family is being done on THEIR soil, not OURS. Be grateful that I and my soldier buddies willfully spend months away from our wives, our children, our lives here in the US, so that you can sleep well at night, and be well-rested to coherently bitch about the powers that be. Try spending some time doing research about the way of life in OTHER countries, and see what happens if you bad-mouth the government. Even though Jong-il is dead, if you had made your statements in N. Korea, they would have not only imprisoned you, they would have imprisoned your entire family one generation in either direction. Sounds harsh and unbelievable? Sorry, it isn’t. FACT.

Here’s the bottom line: You want the War to be fought on THEIR soil or YOURS? Do you want to be able to go to work every day, and NOT be fearful if your commuter train, or bus could get blown up, or your car get hit with an IED? Would you like to go to work every day and wonder if YOUR office is going to get hit with some type of attack?

Why don’t you spend some time perusing through some of the radical anti-US sites out there, and see what we are up against. I think you might be taking a different position if you truly understood what types of enemies we have. But, I highly doubt you will spend that time as I have suggested, and I instead believe you shall continue to spout your left-wing dribble that does nothing more than cause division within your American brethren.

Please accept my apologies if this post was not directed at you. And if you, for some reason, took offense to anything I’ve said, then I apologize for your hurt feelings, but I do not apologize for MY patriotism and love for MY country.

Thank you, and God Bless.

How many war supporters here never went to the sandtrap?!

The TSA is a bunch of goons and bullies.

Kudos to Trace Gillaspy! I feel much the way you do. Banana Oil to DylanThomas and his “greatest intel in the world blather.”

I was a linguist in the Air Force when the first Gulf War began. For 45 years our intelligence agencies were largely focused on one target: the Soviet Union. In the linguist field Russian speakers were royalty. Everyone else mopped the floors. There were Arabic linguists, but their numbers were small compared with the Russian linguists and nobody cared about what they did.

Then came the war to free Kuwait. Suddenly commanders were fighting each other to get Arab linguists to help them carry out their missions. Some people thought you could send a Russian linguist to a two-week course and they would come out of it a fluent Arab speaker (I’m not kidding about this).

At the No Such Agency the people in charge were astonished at the small amount of Iraqi Order of Battle information that was readily available. Untold tons of data about the Soviet Union had long been loaded into easily accessible computerized files. Much of the information about Iraq was not even on paper—it was in somebody’s head.

After the First Gulf War things settled down. In the ensuing years Saddam would test the Air Force and Navy planes keeping him “in his box” every year (usually around Christmas), but he more or less faded off the radar screen as a threat worth worrying about. Based on my experience, I believe it is quite possible that intelligence about WMD or other matters was weak.

I contributed to the “body count” in Viet Nam. I also had a wise old Vietnamese man, who was with Ho fighting for us, against the Japanese, tell or Captain, "You aren’t here to “save us” from Communism, we’ve been communists for 3,000 years, we’re small village farmers it’s our lifestyle. We’re NOT “Marxists” and you don’t know the difference. You leave us alone, we leave you alone."

My son helped build the body count in Iraq. One day he was on the sat phone when an IED went off, it sounded all too familiar, as I’d sent a tape home from ‘Nam where I didn’t stop talking just because of a mortar attack. My dad said, “Don’t send any more tapes!”

Both these “current” wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, were fraudulently entered into by our administrations, as was Viet Nam. We do NOT need to look for a fight with Iran, period.

That both my son and I are combat disabled vets, I reflect today on the death of Kim Jung Il. I am reminded of wars, and despots as “family heritage”. There is indeed the Kims, the Husseins, the Assads, and Bushes. Descending lines of nuts to chickenhawks are not unique, in many nations. When I hear support for war, I hear the ka-kaw! of the chickenhawk, ready to send others, while they buy stock in the “military industrial complex”.

From Sharuniboy to @D.T.Pi: All of the opinions above. From DT3.14159265 . . . . . infinity to Sharuniboy: I haven’t a clue why you addressed your remarks to me. Happy Holidays anyway!  dtπ

I’m one of the ones who does think Bush was evil, as well as incompetent. While Saddam posed no threat to us, and in fact, had abu Nidal murdered to show us he no longer harbored terrorists, Bush wanted to attack Iraq from day one of his reign. Meanwhile, when he received a CIA document saying “bin Laden determined to attack within US”, he said, “You’ve covered your ass, now get out”. Too bad he couldn’t have protected us from that, but then we wouldn’t have had two wars to enrich the already wealthy.

Paul Newman as Cool Hand Luke said it best: What we have here is a failure to communicate. People on both sides of the issue of whether the war was worth it are not communicating. And we and Al Qaeda don’t communicate. Rather than body counts or oil or whatever, we could maybe justify our presence in Iraq as a chance to somehow get some communication going.

““Well ‘sir’, the reason the terrorists haven’t followed us back is because we blew a large number of them to Hell THERE before they could do the same to us here, AGAIN.”” You don’t seem to know where “there” is. As Gertrude Stein said (about her childhood home in Oakland), “There is no there there”. Source: Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein

" From 1954-1956 I lived in the French colony of Morocco and then independent Morocco."I was there then, too, Baslim. We lived in Port Lyautey, now again know by its name Kenitra. My father was at Sidi Slimane AB near there.The rest of your comment is spot-on, also.

Patriotic American’s have always answered the call of their Commander in Chief, regardless of his political persuasion. In battle soldiers fight to protect their brother’s in arms, not for some noble cause that carries them through. Regardless of what your sentiment is on the war and who got us into it, the people who answered the call of their country do not deserve the denigration displayed here. Now with many heaping criticism on the war and the loss of lives, the money spent and the gains from our efforts we cheapen their sacrifice. It saddens me to see Americans so polarized that they are seemingly unable to compromise and come together for our common good, regardless of their political affiliation.

“Those Americans who went to Vietnam fought for freedom, a truly noble cause. It is a cause that continues.”
 
—Ronald Reagan, Chicago Tribune http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-06-01/features/8801030826_1_vietnam-lessons-watching-full-support-and-understanding/3 In a very real sense, then, President Reagan began to set the stage for George W. Bush to have the mindset to invade a country that POSED NO THREAT WHATSOEVER TO US. History has proven Reagan wrong: his misperception of the world and freedom. Befuddled with the domino theory he perceived the world world (except our closest allies) to be a threat to our freedom. Thus we could invade anywhere we wanted and, even if we lost (as in Vietnam), we were still righteous defenders of OUR FREEDOM to body-count our way into an earth made new just for us. In other words, to destroy the freedom of others in the name of protecting our own freedom. Big problem: asymmetric warfare tends to balance the equation. We only “get out” when forced out. In Vietnam, it was the ever-increasing flood of Vietcong from the north. In Iraq, it was impending financial collapse.  

I think the professor dyed his hair. Check the November 4 strip.

“Once Americans were respected. Now we are blamed. We’re not blamed because we are Americans, we are blamed because our leaders have made it official policy to try to organize other nations as they want.”

Extremely well said sir! As well as the rest of your post.

First, my thanks to all of you who served our nation. Regardless of the politics of any particular military operation, the men & women in uniform are serving the noble cause of freedom.

As far as Iraq goes… there is plenty of evidence showing that GW Bush was placing a lot of faith in what was obviously suspect evidence. I haven’t seen anyone mention Hans Blix, who was in Iraq at the time & was saying that it looked like the WMDs were gone before we invaded. Saddam was allowing the inspectors access that they had been denied previously. He seemed to have come to the same conclusion that Gaddaffi had reached: if he didn’t cooperate, he was a goner.

The “war on terrorism” is not a war that should be fought with uniformed troops. Bush made a huge mistake in trying to confront Al Qaeda with troops on the ground & completely missed the mark by invading Iraq. Saddam was hardly an ally of Al Qaeda. They hated him & saw him as a secular despot, which is exactly what he was. Saddam saw them as pawns to be used against the US and Iran, but knew they would cut his throat at the first opportunity. He certainly was not giving them any substantial support.Bush managed to squander all of the International good-will we received after 9/11. Terrorism is going to continue to be one of the biggest problems facing the world, but it needs to be confronted for what it is: organized crime. Our military is ill equipped to manage the task. Eradicating terrorism requires a combination of espionage, small scale covert operations and working political angles to remove popular support for terrorist acts. That method actually worked pretty well in Al Anbar once we realized that convincing the Sunni to worry more about the Shia & Iran than our forces…

The USA military machine did not kill the majority of the Iraqis killed; the Sunnis killed Shiites, the Shiites killed Sunnis, they killed Kurds, Kurds fought back and the Taliban just killed. And yes, 1 million is closer to the truth. Most non-American media are saying 300,000 and there are over 500,000 unaccounted.

“One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade—-if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”

-War Shrub

sounds like we should have done iran instead

There was no LEADERSHIP at the highest level.

And if you believe that then you’ll be interested in unclaimed Nigerian fortunes.