The war continues to be something fairly abstract to Americans because of the lack of gritty coverage (which occurred during Vietnam).

So we have happy, happy people. 

Like Barbara Bush:

http://americablog.b...

Barbara Bush tells Diane Sawyer on ABC's "Good Morning America" that she will not watch televised coverage of the war: "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it's going to happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

Just liken the administration, which didn't want us to see the torture pictures, or the caskets coming back home.

But then people doing or condoning evil never want you to see the pictures.

A couple of years ago I came to realize that Barbara Bush is the parent who taught G.W. that he comes from a family answerable to no one.

It has been well known publicy for a long time that G.W. was never able to do anything that would have caused his father to praise him, unlike his brother Jeb.

I have no idea if his mother taught him that he should never consider that people will die as a result of his wrong decisions so long as they aren't among the wealthy elite,  nor if he might receive some modecum of fatherly praise if he'd follow her teachings. But whatever specific and dispicable basics of behaviour she may have taught him, it has become abundantly clear that he has always followed those teachings.

He has been constantly trying to prove his own manhood to his father without success, and seems to have become even more dependent on his mother for "moral" (really, immoral) support. A classic proof of this theory is that Bush has repeatedly stated that his disastrous and, yes, immoral ideas and decisions came from God directly to him. I have no doubt that his mother taught him from infancy that it's acceptable to use his claims of religious beliefs to further his political ambitions. If true, this would be among the worst of inconvenient truths (and I do believe it's true) - even worse than Pat Robertson claiming that his insane and evil pronouncements came from God. I believe that there is a special place reserved in hell for those who use God's name falsely for their own immoral purposes.

There are very few mothers who should be blamed for the immoral behaviour of their children. But I must make an exception for this mother, and for the father who allowed her to teach her son such things.

Sorry for the excessively long posting. Many of you can say this far better and more concisely than I, and I ask that you do so.

  T.C.

Honored to be a Kate Wilder and Jim Webb Democrat

What happens if the U.S. leaves precipitously?

Precipitously, adverb: Extremely rapidly, hastily, or abruptly.
Almost four years after "Mission Accomplished," I don't think there's anything we could do, including leaving, that could possibly be done "precipitously."
Anyway, I guess if we do leave, the Washington Post will write another bunch of gibberish, explaining how they were right all along, because now there's sectarian violence in Iraq.  Violence in the Middle East ... who could have imagined?

I don't advocate leaving "precipitously."  Neither does Jim Webb, by the way, and I completely agree with him on this.  We got IN precipitously, we need to extract ourselves carefully.

Precipitously was obviously the wrong adverb.  So, what constitutes carefully?  And what should our departure be predicated on?

From your diary, I got the sense you disagree with the Post's assertion that:

"Walking away is likely to make a bad situation worse. A patient, sustained U.S. commitment, with gradually diminishing military forces, could still help Iraq to move in the right direction."

Or: They Don't Keep Just Violins in Those Violin Cases

Lowell,
  Editorials such as the one that you highlight here put me in a fairly despairing mood, the upshot of which is this title and the imagined (so far) scenario below:

Satisfying as it has been to watch the rapid unraveling of the Bush/Cheney/Rove/Gonzales/Rice web of deceptions and outright criminality, I suspect that Democrats and the public are becoming too giddy to remain alert. With an Administration run like a mafia, is it really beyond the realm of the possibility for the mafiosos-in-charge to strike back savagely at their critics--and not merely with words but with acts?

If these people have until now had no regard for law or the Constitution and if they have brooked no oversight of, or limits on, their "unitary executive," is there any reason to expect them to give up their authority meekly and complaisantly now?

Let us imagine one scenario:

--Sometime soon, perhaps in mid-April or mid-May, a third aircraft carrier strike force (perhaps the USS Reagan Carrier Strike Force, which recently made a port call in Hong Kong) will join the Eisenhower and Stennis Carrier Strike Forces in the Arabian Sea/Persian Gulf area.

--Embattled at home, the increasingly defensive Bush Administration, perhaps in collusion with Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, will conjure up a pretext to launch air strikes against Iranian targets.

--Iran, no matter how hard it is hit, will have some ability to respond. It will sink at least a few U.S. ships with its arsenal of Exocet, Sunburn, and Yakhonts anti-ship missiles. It will urge its sympathizers in Iraq to strike against the occupying U.S. and British forces. It will urge its sympathizers in Lebanon and Pakistan's Baluchistan to create turmoil. It will try to sabotage oil pipelines and storage facilities in Saudi Arabia. It will rain ballistic missiles on the U.S. command facility at the Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE. It will effectively close the Straits of Hormuz. Oil prices will skyrocket. Financial and capital markets throughout the world will plummet.

--A few Democrats (and most of the world outside of Israel, and perhaps Poland) will complain. But most of the American public will once again be snookered into "supporting their commander-in-chief." The reliable establishment press will follow Karl Rove's talking points to trumpet its patriotism in the face of the "existential threat" from Iran, which will have had the effrontery to sink some of our ships and kill some of our sailors after having itself been attacked by massive "shock and awe" air strikes.

--For those few who will refuse to be silent (Keith Olbermann, Ariana Huffington, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Juan Cole, Jack Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, Russ Feingold, maybe even Barack Obama, the bloggers at dailykos.com and similar sites, and editors at "The Nation" and TruthOut.org) there will be post-midnight knocks at the door.

--President Bush will address the nation and declare a "State of Emergency." He will call the expanded conflict in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Lebanon (and soon, Syria) the "defining struggle of our century." He will suspend habeas corpus. He will place restrictions on the media to prevent the dissemination of "falsehoods which could hamper the war effort or negatively affect the morale of our troops in the field." He will call for a massive expansion of the military, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security (the better to monitor domestic e-mails and phone calls). And he will declare that all of these extraordinary measures are only intended to be "temporary, until the victory against Islamo-fascism has been won."

--Harry Reid will revert to form and "go along" in the Senate. Steny Hoyer will become the new, more compliant Speaker of the House. Hillary Clinton will voice her public approval for this next "conquest" in the neocon agenda and thereby solidify her corporatist support for a Tweedledum-Tweedledee election in 2008. After all, it really will not make any difference which political faction wins in what will have become essentially a one-party state.

Impossible, you say? The public would not stand for such a coup? Millions would be out in the streets marching? There would be civil disobedience on a grand scale, just like in Poland with Solidarity and in the Ukraine with the Orange Revolution?

Really? And who would be organizing it? The Democratic Party apparatus, which lacks the courage and discipline even to defund the debacle in Iraq or to set a deadline for U.S. withdrawal from this self-generated quagmire?

See what I mean?

Am I predicting that Bush Administration, as it is increasingly backed into a corner, will touch off this nightmare scenario? No, but I am suggesting that the people who have sanctioned the use of torture, imprisoned suspects for years without charge or trial, kidnapped and tortured innocent people without allowing them any legal recourse, fabricated pretexts to justify invading Iraq, outed a covert CIA officer in an effort to undermine her husband's trenchant criticism of those very fabricated pretexts (i.e., Cheney's "yellow cake" lie), implemented  warrantless wiretapping, suppressed the vote in unfriendly precincts, stuffed the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division with political hacks who oppose civil rights, and obstructed justice and perjured themselves in the political firings (and retentions) of U.S. Attorneys are the very same kinds of people who will at least consider implementing just such a "State of Emergency."

Will we have any warning signs--other than the launching of air strikes against Iran? Watch carefully what the Bush White House tries to do with the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. If the Bushies (as they call themselves) try to relax the prohibitions on the use of the military to maintain domestic order, it will be a strong sign that they wish to justify using the National Guard and U.S regular military forces stationed domestically to enforce such a "State of Emergency." Remember how the Administration slipped into the Patriot Act of 2006 a provision for side-stepping Congressional approval of U.S. Attorneys. Watch also for any enhancement of domestic roles for Blackwater Security and similar private, armed firms that could be used as the "Blackshirts" or "Brownshirts" of our day.

By now it should be clear to everyone except the Rovian Hard Core, the irreducible 30 percent "base," that these people in the Bush White House and Gonzales Department of Justice have their own personal survival and party interests, not the national interest, foremost in their minds and actions.

as possible tactics by the Bush administration is perfectly credible. I would like to think that Bush is so deep in the hole on the political capital he has squandered that he and Rove could no longer pull off any of this stuff.

  And I thank my lucky stars for people like Senator Jim Webb and other retired military officers who aren't bound by the political correctness that has hog tied some in our Congress who failed to speak out in 2002 and 2003 against Bush's "preventive" war.

I'm grateful to Wes Clark for speaking out now against a "preventive" attack on Iran.

stopiranwar.com

neighbor to go to his site and sign.  Broadcast the message and get people to log on and sign the petition.