Hating the troops is sort of my calling card. The feeling of revulsion I have for people who sign up with an organization whose only purpose is to kill (considering the military hasn't been used for strict national defense in...well, ever) has tended to cover every member of the military, with notable exceptions: those who, though naive in joining, are horrified enough by the deeds of the military that they refuse to deploy to warzones. Most of them have just skipped country to Canada or hid out at home, which is fine, but lately the news has been full of the case of Lt. Ehren Watada, who publicly and loudly has proclaimed the illegality of and his opposition to the war in Iraq.

Now, I'm not a gooshy type that tears up at grand proclamations of principle, but this guy has balls and I am really amazed at his intellect and clarity. Fuck the douchebags occupying Iraq -- Watada is the hero.

"There was a long time when I went through depression because I told myself I didn't have a choice. That I joined the military and I had only one duty and that was to obey what I was told, regardless of how I felt inside. It really hurt me for a long time because I imprisoned myself by telling myself I didn't have a choice. It didn't matter that I might be sent to prison. I was already in prison, my freedom was already gone.

"When I told myself that I do have a choice, I have a choice to do what is morally right, what is in my conscience, and what I can live with for the rest of my life--even though that comes with consequences, I do have that choice. When I realized that, and when I chose what was right for me, I became free again. And I think everybody has to remember that and to realize that is what is important in life."

This, when most soldiers can barely scrawl their own names.

Problem: War in Iraq is fueling terrorism and Islamic radicalism.

Solution: Stay the course.

Translation: We started this fire and, by God, we are going to keep throwing gasoline on it 'til it goes out.

That's right, you heard it here first. Vietnam II is on its way.

Impossible you say?

Well, I say you are wrong. I think that Vietnam is the perfect contestant to be chosen as the next victim err... lucky winner in the neocon global democracy crusade. Here's how I see it,

1. Vietnam is ruled by an oppressive socialist party dictatorship. This alone means little to those seeking to use war for the spread of democracy, they need a more convincing impetus. Well, they got it. Vietnam has confirmed that they have arrested Cong Thanh Do a 47 year old Vietnameze born American citizen and democracy activist. Do's California congresswoman has said,

"The Vietnamese government has a track record of human rights violations against people who work to bring freedom and democracy to Vietnam through peaceful means...His incarceration is outrageous. I will do everything possible to guarantee Cong Thanh Do's prompt release."

Peaceful means have failed. It's time to bring out the guns.

2. The war makers have access to a large and passionate anti-communist Vietnamese Diaspora that could be called on to fabricate intelligence about WMD programs and to tell hyperbolic stories of torture and human rights violations.

3. The US "cut and ran" after getting their asses handed to them in Vietnam I (which, of course, led to the domino like spread of communism all across the globe.) Unfortunately, according to Bush this "send[s] the wrong message to the enemy. It would tell them that if they wait long enough, America will cut and run. It would vindicate the terrorists' tactics."

The US government cannot afford to look weak especially after 9/11. They must show the world how tough they are, how they will not cut and run and how they will stay in every fight no matter how long it takes to defeat every enemy. Clearly, Vietnam I is a thorn in the side of the American tough guy image.

So, that's it. In my opinion it's not a question of if but when. Bring 'em on!

However, there is one pressing conundrum that Washington's warmongering elite will have to solve. Much of the pro-democracy opposition to the current regime in Vietnam has been labeled terrorists by both Hanoi and Washington. That means that a war for democracy in Vietnam would give aid to terrorists or, conversely, fighting the terrorists would help prop up a violent and oppressive undemocratic regime. How would the impeccable, moral minds of the Washington war crowd ever deal with such a terrible contradiction.

BBC says "Hometowns mourn slain US troops":

Family and friends of two US soldiers taken captive and killed in Iraq have been paying tribute to them.

"Our son... died for the freedom of everybody in the United States," Thomas Tucker's father Wes told NBC.

No, your son died for NOTHING. He was in Iraq taking my freedoms and Iraqis' freedoms, and he paid for this with his life. Deal with it.

This week, there has been a piece of news that has captured the imaginations of media outlets the world over. Of course, I speak of the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

From salivating pundits on the various cable news stations to the gleeful heads of state, the death of this villain has united popular opinion in a way that we don't often see. President Bush, for his part, declared this a decisive victory in the war on terrorism.

Not decisive in the traditional sense of the term, it would seem. No sooner had the news hit the wire when various government officials began to temper the optimism with the fact that al-Zarqawi was just one man, and that in the grand scheme of things his death probably wasn't going to lead to a decline in violence in Iraq.

Brushing aside such a decided down note, we watched as the news outlets eagerly ran story after story about the elaborate planning that lead to this death. Oh, sure, it probably never would have happened without the apparent betrayal of al-Zarqawi by others within al-Qaeda, but even still, it required one of those stunning demonstrations of military might that make such great fodder for the evening news. At least many hundreds of personnel were involved, though if the CNN Headline News story is to be believed, it could well be considerably greater. Missiles ain't cheap, nor are umpteen planes and the unknown quantity of soldiers, I think we're safe in assuming this singular operation cost many millions of dollars, at a bare minimum.

That leaves me wondering, personally, what the point of all this was. Was it worth millions to kill a single man, especially when that death isn't going to bring an end to the war?

My fellow pacifist Michael Berg doesn't think so. Having lost his own son at the hands of al-Zarqawi, he still sees no cause for celebration in this death. This has led, rather predictably to some very public castigations of Mr. Berg for not being sufficiently happy.

But why should he be? Al-Zarqawi's death will not bring back his son. The death does not bring the war any closer to a conclusion, indeed the zeal that has sprung forth after finally managing to kill somebody, anybody, of import in the insurgency is if anything going to hurt the chances of an early withdrawal.

I would propose, instead, that perhaps the rest of you are a little too happy about this whole thing. One murderer is dead, killed by others, and thousands upon thousands yet remain to ply their trades upon their respective segments of the Iraqi populace. Is this truly cause for celebration?

Underscoring this, mourners in al-Zarqawi's hometown are hoping for a thousand more like him, to kill the enemies who kill them. Judging from the joy so many feel in one meaningless death of one high profile enemy, it's hard to imagine them not getting their wish, many times over in the future.

A couple of weeks ago, in a rather insignificant exchange on Anti-State.Com, the world famous Joe relayed a little anecdote that he picked up from his cousin whose husband is in Iraq. Apparently, or so the story goes, Iraqis are now throwing their babies in front of humvees so that the kind and gentle Americans will stop and make themselves vulnerable to roadside explosives. Stopping is obviously too dangerous and thus, the orders are in: run those babies over.

Now assuming they are true, though I am skeptical, it seems to me that most reasonable people would find such tales to be alarming and outrageous. I would. A parent has no right, at least that I know of, to choose to lay their young ones upon the sacrificial alter of a cause that their children are incapable of comprehending and much less capable of embracing. If a parent wants to give their own life for an ideal then fine but a child's life is not a parent's to give. This seems like a fair explanation of why most rational and sane people would find it offensive to throw babies in front of trucks.

But then I had a conversation with one of those self-proclaimed liberty lovers who insist that the war in Iraq is, or at one time was, a good thing on account of it being a so-called war of liberation. That got me thinking. Maybe these parents aren't murderous degenerates after all. Maybe they should be honored as heroic freedom fighters. Many do, at last, believe that they are fighting for freedom and isn't freedom worth dying for? Isn't it worth a life or two?

Such is the common justification given by war supporters when confronted with images, accounts or statistics of deaths and casualties among innocents. Aren't a few (hundred thousand) lives a fair price to be paid for freedom? I mean, live free or die! Right? Those innocents died for a good cause. They died for liberty.

So, can't those throwing their babies in the road make the same claim? After their baby's skull has been crushed by a humvee and their young brains splattered in the gutter, can't those parents pump their fists in the air and quote Patrick Henry, "give me liberty or give me death?" Can't they claim that it is worth it to lose one's life in the fight for freedom and, therefore, their baby's death is acceptable? Can't they just call it collateral damage and thereby grant themselves immunity from receiving the title of murderer?

Well, according to those good supporters of liberating wars, the answer to all of the above questions is "NO!"

You see, it is only the state, particularly the global hegemon, who can make such claims. It is not ok for a parent to throw their own babies under a truck but it is ok for Americans to throw someone else's babies underneath bombs, tanks, bullets and maybe a few boot heels. Hell, Americans don't have to stop at babies either. Oh no, we get to make the choice between liberty and death for men and women as well as children. By god, we Americans love liberty so damn much that we won't hesitate to kill you in order to set you free. You may not be willing to lay down your life for freedom but don't worry, we'll make you.

Wow, what an honor, what a responsibility. I'm so glad I'm an American.

But seriously, I don't think I can stand to hear one more person claim that the war in Iraq is, or was, one of liberation. That may have been a charming and almost believable bromide in 2003 but 3 years into this catastrophe can we please call it what it is? Throwing babies in front of trucks.

I know I should really expose the bloodthirsty dirtbags who populate our state's military wing more often, but sometimes it takes an extraordinary piece of outrage (plus the fact that it's Fleet Week here in New York, and the place is swarming with killers) to help me get my thoughts together. The Haditha Massacre that is just being exposed now is awful, but I just assume, despite a Joint Chief's assurances, that this is par for the course in Iraq.

But today I came across a nasty piece of filth from (where else?) Texas, a story about one of the Marines whose death sparked the slaughter of innocent people in Haditha.

The father of a U.S. Marine killed by a roadside bomb in western Iraq in November believes his son's comrades did nothing wrong despite a criminal investigation into events that left more than 20 Iraqi civilians dead, including women and children.

"It's very hard for me, I don't even listen to the news," Martin Terrazas said of reports of the mass killings in Haditha, in Iraq's Anbar province. "The insurgents were hiding in there with the kids."

He doesn't listen to the news, but he knows the insurgents were hiding with the kids. That's because he thinks anything America or its agents do is by definition good. Nuking Japan was good because WE did it. Belgrade's 9/11 was good because WE did it. Butchering a house full of people minding their own business is good because this guy's son's friends did it.

These are the kind of people we are dealing with. You can't reason with them; the only way to neutralize their credibility is to demonstrate to the rest of the rational world that the military is made up of, and backed up by, monsters.

I get so much shit for my views on the troops, but one cannot ignore the menace that masses of returning troops present to civilized society. There are plenty of stories of Iraq vets coming home and killing their wives, each other, robbing and raping -- and the war is still going on. It's not just Iraqis and Americans who are suffering at the hands of these animals, as they are also stationed all around the world in US bases. From Tuesday's Washington Post:

A U.S. soldier who raped a Nigerian woman in Italy was given a lighter sentence because the court deemed his tour of duty in Iraq had made him less sensitive to the suffering of others.

The crime would have earned him an eight-year sentence, but the judges reduced the penalty due to the "extenuating circumstances" of the psychological effects of Brown's year of service in Iraq, the document said.

He beat her and raped her in every orifice she had and then dumped her to wander the streets of Italy, a black woman, completely naked. I understand the reason to feel sorry...possibly...for this disgusting creature, probably some kind of borderline-inbred piece of trailer trash shoved into the military by the lethal combination of patriotism and a sharp recruiter, but I certainly don't see a reason to return him to the streets. If he can't be remanded into a psychiatric ward for the rest of his life, I plead to the Italian authorities, on the basis of the acute danger this person poses to the innocent inhabitants of this world, to summarily execute James Michael Brown. Thank you.

As the news emerges that the past week's death toll is actually three times what the US and so-called Iraqi government originally claimed -- that's over 1300 people -- another 41 people and 3 US troops are blown to smithereens today. I have noticed a trend. As time goes on, I see more articles citing "experts" who bemoan Iraq's slide in "anarchy."

Doomsayers long have warned that Iraq was turning into a failed state like Somalia or Taliban-era Afghanistan, a regional black hole. It's far too early to write Iraq off as a quagmire, but the threat of contagious instability looms large.

Mark Sedra, a researcher specializing in rebuilding post-conflict countries at the Bonn International Center for Conversion, a German think tank[, says] "Now the main goal is just creating a state that controls instability and contains the high levels of violence that prevail at the moment and prevents that violence from spilling over into neighboring states or destabilizing the region."

[Just a note to mention that Afghanistan wasn't a failed state until the US made it fail -- ask any woman forced to put on a burqa any time she needed to buy a chicken.]

"All of this is creating great, great decentralization and a failure to provide services," said Phebe Marr, an Iraq specialist at the United States Institute for Peace, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

Will Iraq's increasing violence, fed by obviously intentional acts of sabotage, spread into the more rural areas of iraq and then into neighboring Syria and Iran? I guess Dick and Condi might hope so, but to me it doesn't seem likely, since this violence is based on some very local rivalries that go beyond mere Sunni and Shi'ite. But the interesting part of the analyses is that they all seem to fix on an expectation that current trends will bring Iraq into anarchy -- or that Iraq already is in anarchy.

Look in the pockets of Iraqis whose jobs take them around Baghdad every day and you are likely to find a clutch of passes and identity cards, one for every police, military or militia checkpoint they may run into.

"This one is says I'm Badr, this one I show to police, and I have the American press pass and my ordinary ID. I applied for a Mehdi Army pass on Friday but it hasn't arrived yet," said one Iraqi driver working for a foreign media organisation.

Anyone notice anything rather...Hoppean about this situation?

The sheer proliferation of armed groups -- some official, some unofficial and some that operate in the murky middle ground -- underscores the lawlessness of Iraq, where neither U.S. forces who invaded in 2003 nor the Iraqi armed forces they trained have been able to impose their authority on the whole country.

I think it rather underscores an overdose of law in Iraq. Even so, it is obvious that the people who are supposed to be the state in Iraq -- the US forces and their Iraqi quislings -- are simply not. They have no authority except where they actually outnumber everyone else, like in Baghdad's Green Zone. That's less control than the mob has in New York. Iraqis see them as just another militia/ministate for which they need to carry just another ID. The curfew put in place after the first day of attacks, despite reports saying they kept violence down, had nearly no effect.

It is perfectly clear that no bunch of former exiles posing as a state is going to rein in the violence that beseiges Iraqis daily. Iraqis will have to realize this and finally begin to do something more about it than merely carrying a weapon. Lone guns can't hold back an army of fanatics who are trying to ignite a civil war. Iraqis are going to have to create their own associations and organizations to provide security and services and banish the warlords and militants. They will have to create anarchy to banish the chaos. We'll see if the market will push them along the way.

In his welcome to Yemen's President Saleh, George Bush clearly admitted to the world that he and the US war machine are the enemy.

The bombings should remind all of us that there is an enemy in this world that is willing to kill innocent people, willing to bomb a wedding celebration, in order to advance their cause.

He is clearly making reference to his willingness to order the killing of tens of thousands of innocents (if not hundreds of thousands) and to even stoop low enough, as he did in July of 2002, to bomb a wedding party in order to advance his cause.

For terrorists like Bush and the violent psychopaths who follow him, spreading their empire is far more important than the lives of a few (hundred thousand) measly brown skinned third world Muslim peasants.

The work in Iraq is difficult and it is dangerous. Like most Americans, I see the images of violence and bloodshed. Every picture is horrifying, and the suffering is real. Amid all this violence, I know Americans ask the question: Is the sacrifice worth it? It is worth it.

So, even though I disagree with George "WMD" Bush and the heartless killers in the US military that it is "worth it" to sacrifice the lives of tens of thousands of innocents in order to spread democracy and American imperialism, I must say that I applaud ol' George for having the courage and integrity to stand up and identify the regime for what it is: the enemy.