Invite your moderate friends and independent acquaintances to compare and contrast the candidates.

I'm sure someone can do a better job of diarying this article than I can.  Let me know when a better diary is up, and I'll delete this one.

We almost bombed Iran ... but sane forces inside the Pentagon used the unique counterargument of "We really should have a plan in case they fight back," and Vice President Cheney's office, which didn't have a plan and couldn't think of one, backed down.  With Fallon out of CentComm and Petraeus in, Cheney might get away with it this time.

Crossposted from the Wonk Room.

Email correspondence from the Pentagon document dump reveals Gen. David Petraeus was "happy to" participate in its "puppet" TV military analyst program in 2005. The "talented" military officer was promoted by President Bush to lieutenant general in 2004, with the public mission of training Iraqi military forces. At the behest of Larry Di Rita, Rumsfeld's "right-hand man" in the Pentagon, Petraeus took on another, secret mission that year, giving retired generals positive spin about Iraq.  Although in fact Petraeus failed to establish an independent Iraqi army, in 2007 Bush rewarded him with a promotion to four-star general overseeing the surge, adding another 20,000 American soldiers.

"There are more and more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbearable. Smoke is everywhere. It's hard to know how much people outside Fallujah are aware of what is going on here. There are dead women and children lying on the streets. People are getting weaker from hunger. Many are dying are from their injuries because there is no medical help left in the city whatsoever. Some families have started burying their dead in their gardens."

That was Fallujah in 2004.  Bush and Petraeus are about to do the same to the slum of 2.5 million in Baghdad known as Sadr City.  1,000 civilians have already been slaughtered.  Right now 75,000 children are trapped.  

Welcome to the buzzkill.  It's called Bush's War Crimes R Us, and it's the reason most of us have been so furious for all these years now.  

They're about to do to Sadr City what they did to Fallujah, and why?  Because they're still in power, because nobody has been able to stop them.  

Here are the top stories this week related to our soldiers here and abroad, taken from the Our Troops Newsladder.

When it comes to learning from lessons of history, the Bush administration isn't as inept as one may think -- when it comes to protecting their own interests. Taking a nod from the notion that the footage of bodybags and images of destruction in Vietnam led to the backlash of protest against the war four decades ago, the administration decided to preemptively nip that problem in the bud. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that since before the September 11th attacks, the Bush administration has been setting forth a plan to co-opt a team of so-called "military analysts" and groom them to appear on mainstream media networks as unbiased war commentators. This team consisted of retired military men, defense lobbyists and private contractor representatives, who were briefed on administration talking points to depict the war and then paid to deliver this manipulated testimony.

The American public cannot allow the Pentagon to strip us of our right to a free and open press.  The Bush administration justifies the war in Iraq by claiming to defend our security, but this breach does nothing but undermine the personal security of U.S. citizens by keeping us in the dark

Are we a rogue nation? Paul Craig Roberts seems to have that impression, and I tend to agree with him. He has written a good article about it that I found first on the Information Clearinghouse blog, link here,

http://www.informationclearing...

entitled, "American Hegemony is not Guaranteed." That is a deceptively innocent title for what follows. Mr. Roberts is concerned that General Petraeus began to make noises about Iranian influence in Iraq concerning "special groups" and Iranian supplied weapons being used to kill Americans in Iraq, which could be used as justification for an attack on Iran, and responds with an excellent slap-down of such theories.

Here are the top stories this week related to our soldiers here and abroad, taken from the Our Troops Newsladder.

Mike Turner, Virginia Congressional Candidate,  
Urges Frank Wolf to Curb President Bush’s War Powers

Purcellville, VA, April 14, 2008 -- Retired Air Force Colonel Mike Turner, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress in the 10th District, is calling on Congressman Frank Wolf to propose an emergency resolution within the next two weeks. This resolution would require President Bush to get Congressional approval before starting another misadventure in the Middle East. A former Middle East policy planner on the Joint Chief’s staff for  Retired General Wesley Clarke, Turner said, "The recent testimony of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker may have unwittingly provided ammunition for President Bush to order a reckless action against Iran that would have dire consequences for our country and for the world."

Please help to bring about the change we so desperately need and donate today.

Persistence is Dick Cheney's hallmark.  He battered the CIA with demands to find an Iraq-Al Qaeada link in the run-up to war in 2002.  Given a setback on tax legislation or weakening of privacy rights, he's always back the next day to try again -- and he usually wins in the end.

Last year's National Intelligence Estimate on Iran seemed to put the nail in the coffin of the Neocon dreams of war with Iran, when it definitively stated that Iran was not close to possessing an atom bomb (though the report went on to stress deep concern about their nuclear development program).

But this is Dick Cheney we're talking about.  He's been travelling to the middle east -- and this is a man who had a potentially fatal blood clot the last time he went on a long trip.  He's on the move, and sources as diverse as the WaPo and Pat Buchanan are worried about where he's going, and where he's trying to take the rest of us.

When General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker testified before a Senate Committee this week, they pointed to "security improvements" and a "drop in violence" in Iraq over the last year, but there was one issue never mentioned: that's the issue of Iraqi refugees.

Vietnam was the historical reference point for Americans who never wanted this country to repeat that shameful and costly "mistake."  Those who really learned the lesson of Vietnam understood from the moment GWB uttered the words "axis of evil" in his ‘02 SOTU that he not only had failed that lesson plan but was determined to have his own splendid quagmire.  What shocked me then and continues to amaze me is how many Americans were as ignorant as GWB.  Even if he didn’t legitimately win either of his elections, GWB was and is an almost perfect microcosm of a majority of Americans.  That was what a founding father like John Adams feared about a full fledged democratic government.

Yesterday, General Petraeus wouldn't budge from his position, which was really quite simply stated:

We have no idea how long we'll be fighting in Iraq.
We have no idea how much it will cost.
We have no idea whether we'll win or lose.
We have no idea how many will die.
We have no idea how to define victory.

Oh, and our enemies keep changing.

First we give money and arms
to the Sunnis (supported by Al Qaeda)
against the Shia (supported by Iran).
And lo and behold, the Sunni become more powerful and dangerous!

Then we gave money and arms
to the Shia (supported by Iran)
against the Sunni (supported by Al Qaeda).
And lo and behold, the Shia are becoming more poweful and dangerous.

Maybe we should help the Sunni (Al Qaeda in Iraq) again?

Rinse and Repeat for 100 years.

And don't forget the intra-Sunni and intra-Shia battles too, upon which we have to take sides!

Rinse and repeat for 100 years.

(Tune in at 5 pm EST for live discussion of this at RadioInsideScoop.com)

The big news about General Petraeus’ testimony before Congress came not from the General himself (what should we expect from someone hand-picked by President Bush) but from the Senators who grilled him. Each of the three contenders for President -- Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain -- was critical of current policy. But they all also spoke out against removing all US troops from Iraq.

Tuesday Evening, Hi, this is my first diary, and I welcome all constructive critiques :)

The sorry state of our misadventure into Iraq promotes intense focus all ears bearing down on the Petraeus Crocker Senate Hearings as if we would hear new pronouncements from on high.  

No, not one - We must be in the Metaverse.

Rest easy we are getting into "post kinetic action".  WTF?  "Some Call It War, Others Call It ‘Kinetic Action’." See Daniel Larison at http://larison.org/... .  

"I have heard some ridiculous euphemisms in my day, but calling wartime violence "kinetic action" (which simply means ‘moving action’) is about as creepy a dilution of language as any I have encountered.  Perhaps we can call torture "kinetic pressure" and refer to the bombardment of civilians as "kinetic dropping."  

What will end up being the most famous quote of the Iraq war?   Remember, Bush did not actually say "Mission Accomplished." Perhaps Cheney's "final throes" will win the prize. .  But increasingly, as the significance of Gen. David Petraeus grows (seemingly by the minute), I have come to believe that it might up being his once-obscure 2003 remark: "Tell me how this ends."  It was cited again today by Andrew Bacevich in his New York Times op-ed contribution.

Petraeus said that when he was a Major General directing the 101st Airborne during the U.S. invasion but it's clear that today he has no more of a clue to the answer than he did five years ago. Maybe you'd like to supply an answer below. I will forward all replies to his press spokesman, who I have been in contact with.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas wants me to sign an online petition praising and supporting Gen. Petraeus.

He so wants my support, he is willing to lie to get it.
Click here to listen to this commentary