Four GOP Hypocrites reaffirm their ownership of the War In Iraq

Republican Senators like John Warner, George Voinovich, Richard Luger, and Pete Domenici say they have reached a point opposition to President Bush's present course on the war in Iraq. Yet, when it comes to delivering a vote to change this mistaken course, what do they do? They vote the President's party line. They are hypocrites. Every time they to vote to continue to keep the US smack dab in the middle of a sectarian war, propping up a government that shows no sign of ending critical differences between waring factions, and continues to commit billions of U.S. dollars and American lives, they reaffirm their personal ownership in the massive mistake that is the War in Iraq.

From my journal this week....

A few extracted bits from my journal:

• Though I'd like to remain an optimist... believing in that which is so minute / it leaves no shadow trailing.
• A hint of something greater / God sitting on a pin head.
• A dog whose gender was truncated / his head on a pillow keeping / his thoughts to himself.
• The boundary between them / more a smudge than a line.

~0~

At Age 92 - Ruth Stone deservedly is named Vermont's State Poet [here]

~0~

On the war.....

Bush's optimism is impossible to square with the situation in Iraq

Defying Bush, House Passes New Deadline for Withdrawal From Iraq

Read this....

A MUST READ for everyone.... What is Al-Qaeda?

There was a similar story on NPR today - If I can find the link I'll post it later.

Spend a day in the "real world"

US President George W Bush, facing new pressure to start bringing troops home from Iraq, says he will not consider it until he hears a fresh assessment of the war effort from his top commander there. "That's what the American people expect. They expect for military people to come back and tell us how the military operations are going," Bush said. "And that's the way I'm going to play it as commander-in-chief." (AP wire story)

I would challenge the President to spend a day out in the real world. Away from the pep rally crowds. Away from military bases and military schools. I believe he would be shocked to learn what the American people really expect. He is clueless.

I don't think it takes top military brass to figure out how the operations are going. It seems pretty obvious to everyone but the President, Vice President and a hand full of others. Even many of his most ardent GOP supporters of this war now understand the reality in Iraq.

Why should we continue this path until September's report. When that one looks bleak will he argue for another in January... April.... ?

Perhaps we are getting close

There is a growing sentiment among Republican members of the Senate that the American military action in Iraq has not, is not and will not work. One by one GOP Senators are leaving the ship. It is about time.

The handwriting has been on the wall for a very long time. The American people fell out of favor with this war long ago. The majority of Democrats in Congress have tried to deliver on an exit strategy but have lacked enough bipartisan support to do so. Many of those Republicans abandoning President Bush have been ardent defenders of this failed war. Their numbers are eroding so quickly that Defense Secretary Robert Gates today canceled a South American Trip as we approach the July 15 date for a report on the President's surge of troops. No doubt the President will argue he needs more time. More time equates to more deaths and more expense.
Few Americans have any idea what this war is costing the U.S.

I'm not referring to the money for military support and rebuilding Iraq (which has failed to do much but pad the pockets of contractors), those figures are readily available. And while they are shockingly high, I am talking about the intangibles... the things we cannot see, like:

• The loss of American respect overseas.
• The boost this war has given to recruitment of those terrorists who hate us the most.
• The stress that will be felt on our economy for years to recover from the unbudgeted hundreds of billions of dollars spent.
• The impact this war will have on the mental health of families of returning veterans.

It is true that the exit from Iraq will likely not be a pretty sight. As bad a the government was that we took out, it provided a minimal amount of stability in the region. I know all the arguments for overthrowing the government in Iraq. For every valid argument to take out Saddam Hussein, there are a half dozen equally bad or worse leaders of nations we do nothing about. The argument for overthrowing Saddam was just an add on to the otherwise misinformation that the Bush Administration used to build it's case for this war.

The men and women serving this country in uniform have not lost a war, they were given an unrealistic mission that was a mistake from the start.

The only questions that remain, are how to best extract ourselves from this. What kind of help can we realistically provide an unstable interum government that has been ineffective and struggles for legitimacy amid a civil war that has at the very roots a long history of religious disagreement, intolerance, and fear that spills blood on the streets daily, much less resist outside forces.

My hope is that in the next couple of weeks, enough Republican members of Congress can finally do the right thing and help put an end to our military presence and bring our troops home.

Tuesday Flashes~

• Cheney was central voice in torture debate -He helped lay path for Gitmo interrogations / The Washington Post
• Editorial -Soft on Crime - New York Times or, it all depends on who the criminal is. Guess what Paris Hilton and Scooter Libby don't have in common.
• I see Paul Wolfowitz has a new job. Hey maybe he can get his girlfriend yet another plum job....
• Mary Ellen Solt, Poet of Words and Shapes, Dead at 86 /New York Times
• World-wide reading against the regime of Robert Mugabe
• "War and Peace Art Exhibit" - More than 100 artists and writers have contributed their work toward a "War and Peace Art Exhibit" this month at a gallery in Makawao, Hawaii. The exhibit includes a signed poem titled "Ogres" by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet W.S. Merwin and several prints about the war in Iraq by nationally known artist Sandow Birk. The exhibit attracted more than 500 people on opening night and has had crowds in excess of 150 people on several other nights. / Star Bulletin

Tuesday Misc News...

Poetry fans gather for Ted Hughes's festival.

On a sad note: The poet Rahim al-Maliki wrote about his dreams of Iraqi unity in a place where such appeals are drowned out by daily bombings. One of them took his life on Monday.

NPR feature / More on Guantanamo Poetry. Plus more on the book of poems from Nafeesa Syeed here.

Dick Cheneny fails at American Civics.

Senator Richare Lugar changes tune on Iraq. Lugar called on Bush to "downsize" the U.S. military's role in Iraq and place more emphasis on diplomatic and economic options

Andrew Ervin reviews The Age of Huts (compleat) - By Ron Silliman

Stick Poet went over the 29,000 unique visitors milestone this past weekend. Thanks to all the SPSH readers. By the way, if you are not getting our syndicated feed of each day's posts by email and would like to, see the box in the sidebar to sign up to receive it that way. It's easy.

The Iraq War Experience

An Op-Ed piece in the L.A. Times by CHRISTOPHER J. FETTWEIS (assistant professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College) provides some interesting insight to the complexities within society of losing a war.

Fettweis writes in his piece titled Post-traumatic Iraq syndrome of the lasting impact the earlier Soviet war in Afghanistan had on the Soviet Union and societal effects of defeat linger to this day in our own country as a result of Vietnam.

While Fettweis talks of the finger pointing from politicians on all sides, he acknowledges that the American people as a whole see this war pretty much as it was.... "The American people seem to understand, however — and historians will certainly agree — that the war itself was a catastrophic mistake. It was a faulty grand strategy, not poor implementation. The Bush administration was operating under an international political illusion, one that is further discredited with every car bombing of a crowded Baghdad marketplace and every Iraqi doctor who packs up his family and flees his country." Did you catch that? Our troops did not fail us, the war itself was a mistake.

Like Vietnam, which clearly divided my own generation- Iraq syndrome will be no different.
Fettweis points out that while Vietnam was far more costly in American lives, in the end it was strategically irrelevant. While Saigon fell, there were no dominoes that followed, and in the years that followed, communism became less relevant to to the power structures of the world, not greater. He is correct to point out that the situation in Iraq perhaps could be more costly. Iraq could soon collapse into an uncontrollable, lawless, failed state that destabilizes the region.
So the cost of this mistake could be far worse than that of Vietnam.

In spit of this, Fettweis suggests there is an outcome which will not have made this all have been in vain. Read his Op-Ed piece and see for yourself [ Post-traumatic Iraq syndrome ]

Monday Meanderings

Excellent editorial by George Wallace, former Suffolk poet laureate & my appreciation to Jilly - I have to give her credit as my source for finding it. By the way congratulations for her nomination for Thinking Blogger Award.

Few notes about some poetry I read this weekend [here]

VALPARAISO The spring/summer edition of the Valparaiso Poetry Review, Valparaiso University's online journal of contemporary poetry, is now available online

Powell Calls for Closure of Military Prison at Guantanamo

And finally, I find Sen. Joe Lieberman more than a little disturbing these days.

Months Later - Curtains Finally Go Up in Connecticut

A story about censorship reported here earlier this year has an upbeat ending. Wilton High School students were finally able to preform their play, "Voices in Conflict" at a nearby theater to a packed house. This following being forbidden by their School principal and District superintendent to do so. After receiving much attention over the matter, the school district’s lawyer ruled that the production could go forward as long as it was not presented as a school-sponsored event.

A standing-room-only audience of 225 people turned out for the 50 minute performance!

New Peace Index Ranks US Among Worst Nations

A new study ranks Norway as the most peaceful country in the world. The United States on the other hand did not fair so well ranking near the bottom - 96 out of 121 nations. Iran ranked 97 - the next worse spot on the list behind the U.S. The very worst country was Iraq.

Researches used 24 criteria to determine rankin, including

• the amount of money a country puts into military expenditure
• local corruption
• domestic crime

The Report stresses U.S. involvement in international conflicts, high levels of incarceration and homicide contributed to our low ranking.

Other nation scraping the bottom are listed as Russia, Israel and Sudan.

Iraq Rebuild: Your Tax $ At Work (Not), American Investment in Iraq Reconstruction Projects At Risk, Inspector General Report Finds - CBS News

Iraq Rebuild: Your Tax $ At Work (Not), American Investment in Iraq Reconstruction Projects At Risk, Inspector General Report Finds - CBS News



An inspector general report on Iraqi reconstruction projects found that of 8 sampled projects declared successes and turned over to Iraqi control, 7 are no longer functioning properly, if at all.


Sites suffered from deterioration, poor or no maintenance, or were not even being used by the people for whom they were built, at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of approximately $150 million.

Begin Every Line With Capital Letter

"A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose." ~ Samuel McChord Crothers

It's Friday, thank God! I have a headache this morning - a recurrence of one from last night in fact. I suspect is is sinus related and it's bad. It is not an attempt at sympathy but an affirmation to myself that today I need to not let things drag me down.

I have a Writers Conference tonight and tomorrow to look forward to. It appears that most of it is directed towards prose and not poetry though there is one session that is on poetry. That said, I chuckle at today's quote above.

Now some odds and ends...

• A big thumbs up for the House and Senate making a firm statement on the War in Iraq in spite of Bush's threat to veto the bill.
• Rudy Giuliani flip-flops on civil union laws. Geeze, is he running for President or something?
• Former CIA Director George J. Tenet accuses the White House of making him a scapegoat and of ignoring early CIA warnings that Iraq was sinking into chaos. Tenet also leveled criticism at Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that the two had destroyed his reputation by repeatedly using the "slam-dunk" line to pin blame on him for the decision to go to war.
• Franz Wright is a poet whose work I have admired. Here is an interesting interview of the son of poet James Wright. Both by the way are Pulitzer Prize winners. I love the story of the note from his father, I had heard it prior to reading this piece.
• So who is author Anne Lamott reading?
• Tombstone case may bury free speech.

David Halberstam

David Halberstam on Poetry... "I came to it gradually as an adult when I found that people I respected — Bobby Kennedy, whom I covered as a young man — loved poetry. I mean, really. He quoted it naturally. He found comfort in poetry, and that was important to me."

Halberstam on President Bush... "Very simply, it's a national tragedy. It's not just a tragedy for him, that he will have gone down as such a failure. It's a great national tragedy to have at that moment somebody who has been so deeply, so much in over his head. It's so sad for us, as a country, for him. It's really dark out there. And we have a year and a half to go. This will be seen as a tragic moment in American life."

David Halberstam journalist, and author of scores of books died Monday at the age of 73. Halberstam, who a Pulitzer in 1964, for his reporting on the Vietnam War was the passenger in a car that was broadsided by another vehicle.

Stopping to think....

"A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become." ~ W. H. Auden

And a few thoughts today:

• The Amnesia General had over 70 forgetful spells at his Senate Hearing Thursday and yet Dana Perin, White House spokesperson, said Bush called Gonzales after returning from a trip to Ohio on Thursday in a fresh show of support for his longtime Texas friend.
  Wow, the President really had no shame.
• Gov. Christine Gregoire this week marked National Poetry Month by signing legislation that creates the new post of poet laureate for the state of Washington. Forty other states currently have poet laureates. Yeah Washington!
• Poetry doubles as therapy for N.M. teenager. [story]
• War on Terror Reaches the Poet ~ A poetry professor in a small college in the Northeast decides to recycle old manuscripts and becomes an object of suspicion. [story]

Thursday thoughts....

I'm not into reality shows. Why they have not caught my fancy I can't say. Perhaps it is due to the stark reality we live in day to day. I mean if we could vote Bush off the Island, I might start to get interested.

Are you aware that we are burning $9 billion a month on the Iraq war? That's $108 billion a year. Any thoughts as to how much longer this could go on? Who is going to pay for this war that was an expensive lie to the world? It is not in any fiscal budget. Our children will be paying for this for years to come. Not only financially, but in loss of credibility around the world. Our foreign policy has become a joke.

The war in Iraq has not made America any safer. If anything, it has fanned the already existing flames of hate among some in the Middle East. Bush is the best recruiter extremists could ever have.

Digesting the morning

Saturday morning, post instant Maple & Brown Sugar Oatmeal. The dishwasher is churning in the kitchen and I sit in the great room holding court over Barry, Mo and Klaus (the boy's as we refer to them... dogs). They are all happy from the most part. Resting quietly, for which I am grateful. No doubt they are conserving energy for an afternoon romp.

Siting back and surveying the news and whatnot around the world, (who knows what fodder this may give me in the weeks ahead for NaPoWri Mo) a number of interesting things pop up.

For example, Barack Obama is in the news not for some major policy statement, but for poetry he wrote in his student years. [click here]

D. Thomas Jenkins in an op-ed piece asks a very simple but profound question about the future of the United States commitment to the war in Iraq. [click here]

When one of the nation's leading ethanol research and development companies too on the name- Poet, it sure seemed like a bunch of hot air to me. [click here]

My Sweet Lord [click here] a nude, anatomically correct chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ was canceled Friday amid a choir of complaining Catholics that included Cardinal Edward Egan.
Ok, when I first heard this story yesterday before it was cancelled, I e-mailed the link to all of my immediate family asking if they felt this was distasteful art. Since we are all Catholic, I wondered if my family members looked at it the same way. I said nothing about my thoughts one way or the other not wanting to influence their responses. Not one of them was shocked or outraged. One said they don't know it they would chose to display an anatomically correct Christ in their home, but saw nothing per say wrong with someone using chocolate as a medium for the artwork or that it was nude. Another made a very good point, saying... " that people who get mad about this better also be mad about the American Flag on a magnetic sticker for cars or beach towels made to look like the flag."

Misc on my mind

From my deck this morning, the ornamental tree that rises next to it is praising spring.

A few items of note:

Let me add Wilton Public Schools Superintendent Gary Richards to my 5 thumbs down award for his part in the Wilton High School cancellation of Voices In Conflict. [see earlier post] It appears that Richards along with school principal Timothy H. Canty were both in decision making roles with respect to cancelling this performance by students.

I have taken the dive into NaPoWriMo / a poem a day for thirty days in April.

Yesterday, I read Autobiography and Poetry in Slate. Dan Chiassonto and Meghan O'Rourke tackle confessional or autobiographical poetry, or if you will, the presumptive reader in some cases. I found the commentary between these two (if it really happened) to be thought provoking. Both making interesting points. Wonder what others are thinking out this piece? I'm going to sit on my thoughts for the time being. Anyone else who read it wanna share?

Play About Iraq War Divides a Connecticut School - New York Times

Play About Iraq War Divides a Connecticut School - New York Times

Natalie Kropf, 18, Seth Koproski, 17, Devon Fontaine, 16, and James Presson, 16, are students at Wilton High School in Wilton, Connecticut. Timothy H. Canty is the principal at Wilton High. These are a few principal players in an off stage drama about an on stage drams, "Voices in Conflict."

Wilton students in an advanced acting class were taking on the challenge of creating an original play about the war in Iraq. Last week, principal Timothy H. Canty canceled a play to be put on by the school's advanced theater class citing questions of political balance and context. Efforts were made to make some concessions in the script by the students. Even the thought of doing the performance off campus at night was out. Students say Canty had indicated that the material was too inflammatory, and that only someone who had actually served in the war could understand the experience. “He told us the student body is unprepared to hear about the war from students, and we aren’t prepared to answer questions from the audience and it wasn’t our place to tell them what soldiers were thinking,” said Sarah Anderson, a 17-year-old senior.

Two things come to my mind about this story....

• From a purely artistic point of view, principal Timothy Canty is way out of line. I'd have to give him my tops of 5 thumbs down for censorship of a piece of creative work by students that no doubt took significant commitment on their part. Perhaps (and sadly) their greatest learning experience from all this is the distaste for censorship in art when they could have been taking away more positive life experiences.
• Outside my artistic mode, I have to again give Mr. Canty my maximum 5 thumbs down for like many, sticking there head in the sand (I had another place in mind) with respect (and I emphasise the "R" word here) to treating these students in such a demeaning manner. Students like Natalie Kropf are old enough to be serving in Iraq, and of course many other students are not far behind. Why hide in the safety of comfort and pretend this war in not in the room. It is a fucking elephant he wants to pretend it is not there. Gives these students a lot of credit for wanting to undertake this and ask the hard questions that too many adults in this country are afraid to ask. Maybe if people had asked more questions earlier and engaged in meaningful dialogue there would not be 3234 U.S. serviceman dead and we would not have spent $410 billion plus on a war the has no end in sight. A war that has left deep divisions and civil-war strife between the Iraqi people themselves. Give these you people a little respect. We ask them to fight our wars, don't talk down to them like we know what we are doing. If we did, things would be a lot different after four years.

Congress Can Make This The Last Anniversary

Congress Can Make This The Last Anniversary


"As we mark the fourth anniversary of the most insane military misadventure in American history--yes, even worse than James K. Polk's invasion of Mexico for the purpose of spreading slavery--there is now more than enough blame to go around for the death and destruction that has not merely killed thousands of Americans but that has left hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis dead, emptied the US and Iraqi treasuries into the pockets of unscrupulous contractors and corrupt politicians, and done severe harm to the reputation of the United States as an honest player on the world stage." (read the entire commentary)