Get the Hell Out

Ted Rall analyzes the current state of Iraq (snippett):

Our early emphasis on seizing oil fields, and schemes to funnel revenue from the U.N. oil-for-food program into lucrative contracts with Halliburton (which still pays Dick Cheney a huge salary) and MCI-WorldCom (a major Bush-Cheney campaign donor) belie our stated commitment to liberation and spreading democracy. We're more Genghis Khan than Dwight Eisenhower.

Bush, a former businessman, is treating "liberated" Iraq like the victim of a hostile leveraged buy-out. In an LBO, you borrow a target company's purchase price and saddle its balance sheet with the resulting debt, layoffs and possible bankruptcy. In Iraq Bush hopes to defray rising costs of occupation--$1 billion a week for the Pentagon, plus $30 billion to fix water, electricity and oil production facilities--by selling Iraq's oil.

But it's Iraq's oil, not ours.

Our soldiers disposed of Saddam's army, but they haven't been nearly as effective as good will ambassadors. Partly because they don't speak Arabic or understand Islamic culture, jumpy U.S. soldiers are killing so many Iraqi civilians that the Pentagon is deliberately not keeping a count of accidental casualties. Our troops are swaggering about the desert like Gestapo thugs, robbing locals of their cash, kicking down doors, roughing up women (a no-no under Islam) and brown-bagging innocent men's heads before dragging them off screaming into the night.

and comes to the conclusion supported (for a long time now) by Left is Right:

The real answer is to get the hell out before one more American or Iraqi gets killed in a lost cause. "Leaving now would place Iraqis under violent usurpers and set a precedent that could haunt the U.S. government for years," argues The New York Times' Christopher Marquis, but we've already blown our chance to make a good first impression. More money, more men, more international involvement--those were good ideas back in March. Now it's too late to avoid the ostracizing of the United States or the Afghanistanization of Iraq.

For God's sake, cut our losses--and Iraq's--and bring our troops home.

And on an unrelated note, Johnny Depp disses Bush.

Finally, check out MoveOn's latest ad to hit today's papers (PDF format).