time for a new ticker?

fool me once for thinking that my first ticker would be enough.

meet mariner energy inc.:

new orleans, LA. — a mile-long oil sheen spread thursday from an offshore petroleum platform burning in the gulf of mexico off lousiana, west of the site of BP's massive spill. coast guard petty officer bill coklough said the sheen, about 100 feet wide, was spotted near the platform owned by houston-based mariner energy inc. ... the coast guard says no one was killed in the explosion and fire, which was reported by a commercial helicopter flying over the site around 9 a.m. CDT. ... the platform is in about 340 feet of water and about 100 miles south of vermilion bay on the central louisiana coast. it's location is considered shallow water, much less than the approximately 5,000 feet where BP's well spewed oil and gas for three months after an april rig explosion. ... the platform is about 200 miles west of BP's blown-out well. on friday, BP was expected to begin the process of removing the cap and failed blowout preventer, another step toward completion of a relief well that would put a finals eal [sic] on the well. the BP-leased rig deepwater horizon exploded april 20, killing 11 people and setting off a three-month leak that totaled 206 million gallons of oil.

this ap writer seems to think that bp's well was shut down back on july 16, as noted on my ticker. while we wait for bp to finish installing that "final seal", i'll keep my ticker running, thank you ...

thanks, bp: oils well that ends well ... ?

until the stoppage has been independently confirmed, i'll keep my revised meter running.

BP says it has temporarily stopped oil flowing into the gulf of mexico from its leaking well. it is the first time the flow has stopped since an explosion on the deepwater horizon rig on 20 april. the well has been sealed with a cap as part of a test of its integrity that could last up to 48 hours. US president barack obama said the development was a "positive sign" but noted that BP was still in the testing phase. BP executive kent wells said the oil had been stopped at 1425 local time (1925 GMT) and he was "excited" by the progress.

bp 2050

the ongoing wake-up call ringing itself off the hook in the mexican gulf brings to mind 1980's "solar plexus", a cautionary bit of science fantasy by rick veitch, which originally appeared in the fourth issue of marvel comics' first color magazine epic illustrated:

(story and art by rick veitch)

---

hate to nitpick, but veitch does make some stereotypical comic book science blunders and his most glaring one is off by an order of magnitude: the sun's radius is almost 700,000km, so a mere 50,000km tap would hardly come close to "penetrating deep into the sun's meaty guts ..." as veitch describes.

but editor archie goodwin committed a far more serious error: he ran veitch's story with pages 6 and 7 out of order — an unpardonable sin about which i'm sure goodwin thinks he's already heard enough.

thanks, bp

readers may have noticed the new bp oil spill meter perched in the right column of this blog. it will remain a fixture here until such time that the leak has been independently confirmed as sealed.

my home-made widget isn't as snazzy as pbs', but it can be resized. the spill rate is based on pbs' worst case scenario of 4,200,000 gallons per day (which amounts to 48.61 gallons per second ¹), which daily comes closer to reality as we peel away layer after layer of bp's lies and lowballing.

my widget also takes account of local time zones. according to wikipedia, the well exploded on april 20 at 9:45pm central daylight time. so anyone in chicago watching the meter will see the "day" counter advance nightly at 9:45pm. anyone watching in los angeles will see their counter advance at 7:45pm, while counters in new york will advance at 10:45pm, and so forth around the globe.

copy the code below and paste it into your own web pages to get a meter for your blog. to resize it, simply substitute your own numbers at each instance of the parameters for "height" and "width":

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" width="220" height="156" id="bpLeakCounter01" align="middle"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /><param name="movie" value="http://www.aarrgghh.com/gladYouAsked/bpLeak/bpLeakCounter01.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /><embed src="http://www.aarrgghh.com/gladYouAsked/bpLeak/bpLeakCounter01.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#000000" width="220" height="156" name="bpLeakCounter01" align="middle" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" /></embed></object>

---

1. oddly, the math programmers at pbs seem to think 4.2m gal/day amounts to just 37 gal/sec. update: d'oh! my bad — pbs' counter is also attempting to account for the "recaptured" oil, a number even harder to substantiate than the spillage. update 2: now revised to include bp's reported stoppage.

surfin' mobile bay

fun, fun, fun off the coast of alabama:

(hat tip to pharyngula)

the art of the backdown

oil producer british petroleum (BP) ceo tony hayward, forecasting the damage, or lack thereof, to the gulf of mexico from the ongoing and as-yet-uncontrolled flood of crude oil from the well damaged by the destruction of his deepsea drilling rig deepwater horizon:

i think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest. it is impossible to say — we will mount, as part of the aftermath, a very detailed environmental assessment as we go forward. we're going to do that with some of the science institutions in the u.s., but everything we can see, at the moment, suggests that the overall environmental impact of this will be very, very modest. (may 18)

ten days later ...

it is clear that we're dealing with a very significant environmental crisis and catastrophe. ... a cup of oil on the shore is failure. ... in that regard, we have failed to defend the shoreline to the degree and extent that we believed we could. (may 28)

(tip of the hat to think progress.)

---

update: too true, john cole. too true ...

when the oil company that caused the mess is using this terminology, you have to wonder how horrible it is ...

and the winner is ...

it's only wednesday but i feel pretty safe in bestowing this week's "look who's oozed out from under its rock" award and "feces flinger of the week" trophy to disgraced former FEMA head michael "heckuvajob" brown for his transparently self-serving efforts to wipe the stink of katrina onto obama:

brown:	and i think the delay was this: it's pure politics. this president has never supported big oil. he's never supported offshore drilling. and now he has an excuse to shut it back down. you've already heard bill nelson, senator from florida, saying offshore drilling is DOA. they played politics with this crisis and left the coast guard out there doing what they're supposed to do.
cavuto:	so michael, you don't take him at face value when he says a temporary halt in offshore drilling is just that — a temporary halt.
brown:	no, no. look bill nelson — and you know, they don't say these things without it being coordinated — and so now you're looking at this oil slick approaching the louisiana shore, according to certain NOAA and other places, if the winds are right it'll go up the east coast. this is exactly what they want. because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, 'i'm going to shut it down because it's too dangerous.' while mexico and china and everybody else drills in the gulf, we're going to get shut down.

brown:	hey, hey, chris, i think there's two things. i think, one, we're seeing the rahm emanuel rule number one, ah, taking effect. and that is, "let no crisis go unused". so, this is an opportunity for a president who wants to bankrupt the coal industry and basically get rid of the oil and gas industry to shut down offshore drilling in the gulf of mexico.
	[snip]
matthews:	why would somebody sabotage something that would cause this kind of damage to our planet, really?
brown:	oh well, because i think there are terrorists in the world who would like to do that sort of thing. terrorists don't give a rat's butt about the ecology or anything else. all they care about is hurting america.
	[snip]
matthews:	... but he just came out for offshore oil drilling.
brown:	oh, chris, ah, i'm glad you asked that. he came out and said, look, i'm going to approve oil and gas drilling. and all you guys went, look what a great guy he is, trying to reach out to everybody else. chris, all he did was he approved two existing leases on the northeast coast, and shut down all the other proposed leases on the west coast and the southeast coast. there was nothing new in what he did.
matthews:	but don't you know what you're saying to a third party, not somebody like myself or somebody like yourself, listening to you, thinks that you're sounding insane. you're saying that the president of the united states went into slow-mo here, somehow — or for somehow seemed to be working faster than he really was, but was really quite slow to get there, because he saw an opportunity to exploit a disaster so that he could reap discredit on to the coal industry. and by the way, a couple of weeks ago —
brown:	no, no, no, not just the coal ...
matthews:	— he came down for offshore drilling so that he could discredit it when this thing occurred. are you suggesting he somehow knew this would happen and that's why he came out for offshore drilling?
brown:	no, no ...
matthews:	it sounds like that's what you're saying —
brown:	no, no, chris, hang on ...
matthews:	— and it sounds crazy. crazy!
brown:	well, and the way you just put it, chris, the way you just put it, it sounds crazy to me, too.

deepwater hindenburg

(photos from the department of energy. see the rest at talking points memo.)

you're no fun

the little prince isn't happy:

bush is so done out with al-maliki's obstreperous stance on restrictions on us troops and his demand for a withdrawal timetable that he sharply warned al-maliki that without a [status of forces agreement] he would have to pull out us troops by jan. 1, 2009. (us troops operating in iraq with no agreed legal framework would be constantly open to murder and other serious legal charges).

well, well, well ... so much for "staying the course", that whole "stand-up-stand-down" thing and "conditions on the ground".

y'see, the whole point of the game was to take home two prizes: exclusive western oil contracts and permanent military bases to guarantee them. and it was clear that the prince was simply going to keep playing, and keep changing the rules, as long as the prizes were in front of him.

so, as playtime winds down, inexorably, with no prizes actually in hand, does the prince really think that taking his toys home in a huff is going to impress the other kids, who've already told him they don't want to play anymore and who've already heard his mamma calling?

update:

the oil majors are largely giving up on negotiating short-term contracts with the iraqi oil ministry. the contracts aren't that lucrative, and were just seen as ways of establishing a relationship, but the oil ministry played hard ball and so they could not come to terms.

come january, dubya's not gonna have much to show for his tenure in the oval office but for a tragicomedy entitled "how i ginned up an unjust war, alienated the world, castrated the constitution and only got this lousy t-shirt."

update ii:

looks like the iraqis are seriously feeling their oats these days, and aren't giving anyone any candies or flowers:

iraq will sign a $1.2 bn. service contract with china, for work on a small field that produces 90,000 barrels a day (iraq produces on the order of 2.4 million barrels a day). the deal declines to offer china a share in profits, confining it to fees paid for work done. that the iraqi oil ministry is playing this kind of hard ball has caused several western oil majors to pull out of talks on such short term contracts, which are not very profitable and are mainly undertaking to make good relations with the host country.

one year later

almost one year ago, clinton administration jetsam dick morris washed up on fox news and made this bold prediction about hurricane katrina's impact on bush's popularity:

y'know, george bush basically believes the federal government should do two things: fight wars and help people recover from disasters and now he's got both on his plate. i think that his ratings are gonna soar! not necessarily in the next three days, but over the next year he's gonna look so good doing all this stuff.

morris' hosts — even bush apologist-in-chief sean hannity — were understandably skeptical:

morris: ... the people who said this storm is gonna hurt bush's presidency are just wrong. he can get all the money he wants out of congress 'cause of this disaster, the people will be solidly behind him, the media will cover it like crazy, and he's gonna look like santa claus. colmes: so if you're advising democrats now, how would you advise them to react? morris: to shut up and stop harping — colmes: ha! "shut up" ... ! morris: — and screaming and hollering and pointing fingers, and start amassing national credits by showing the same liberal democratic compassion bush did. colmes: so they should just agree with him and say he's doing a great job. morris: yeah, they — just like right after 9/11, they hurt themselves by any kind of carping. ah, bush — this speech was fantastic! [ snip ] morris: ... you have a president that doesn't think government should do a lot. but he believes they should fight wars and that was the first term, and they believe they should recover from disasters and that's the second term. man, is this guy fortunate! hannity: [chuckling] fortunate to have a disaster? morris: fortunate to be able to be president at a time when he can respond without violating his principles.

with bush's approval at 41% (according to a fox news poll released on the day of the broadcast), dick probably thought his analysis was not completely ludicrous, since bush seemed to have nowhere to go but up:

today, 41 percent of voters approve and 51 percent disapprove of president bush’s performance, which is the lowest job rating he has received in a fox news poll. the president’s approval rating is down 4 percentage points from two weeks ago (45 percent, august 30-31), around the time the magnitude of katrina’s damage was becoming clear. before the hurricane, 47 percent approved and 44 percent disapproved (july 26-27).

well, after a year of bush's "liberal democratic compassion", dick may have been at least half-right — bush had nowhere to go. nowhere but down, that is, and he's dragging his republican-led congress down with him:

the new poll finds the [sic] 36 percent of americans approve of president bush’s job performance and 56 percent disapprove. these results are in line with the ratings the president has received for the last couple of months. moreover, for the past three surveys the gap between approval among republicans (76 percent) and democrats (10 percent) has been 66 percentage points. the assessment of the job congress is doing continues to be abysmal, as more than twice as many americans say they disapprove (58 percent) as approve (24 percent).

to be fair, dick's fawning pronouncements would not necessarily have been so pathetically absurd had he been prognosticating about any other president than the dismal one we are presently stuck with. to vindicate dick's wet dreams of republican munificence, all nero bush needed to do was to roll up his sleeves and simply deliver on dick's assurances of timely and tangible material support to katrina's victims.¹ compassion — if bush actually has any to give — without assistance is nothing more than contempt.

it was sickening enough that dick neglected to acknowledge the federal government's own culpability in the disaster that so fortuitously befell louisiana. but did dick truly believe that this potemkin administration ever intended to provide new orleans with more than a white wash and red tape? did he truly believe that the destruction of a major american city ever meant more to bush than just an opportunity for another series of woefully ineffectual photo-ops in bush's non-stop dog-and-pony tribute to himself?

---

¹ and of course, while he's at it, bush would also need to pacify iraq and lower oil prices and catch osama bin laden and jump-start the economy and ...

don't even think about it

tristero at hullabaloo offers some free advice — the most undervalued kind, as always — in an open letter to liberal hawks:

dear liberal hawks and other fence sitters from 2002/2003 (you know who you are), don't even think about a "thoughtful, measured response" to this bullshit: president bush proudly declared that american foreign policy no longer seeks to "manage calm," and derided policies that let anger and resentment lie "beneath the surface." bush said that the violence in the middle east was evidence of a more effective foreign policy that addresses "root causes." this is sheer, abject lunacy of the sort that imagined the invasion of iraq would lead to city squares in iraq named after george w. bush and the invasion would pay for itself out of oil revenues. the only appropriate reaction is to very loudly proclaim this is the reasoning of madmen. no rational human being thinks like this. your credibility has been ruined already by falling for the preposterous lies and rationalizations prior to the iraq invasion. if you take this seriously, your immortal soul is majorly on the line ...

sacrifice

for a country at war is there any more heart-rending ceremony than memorial day?

because as we pause to honor the fallen, as we acknowledge the sacrifices they've made on our behalf, we must also consider the sacrifices we have or haven't made for them.

sacrifice, or the paucity of it, is perhaps at the heart of the failure of the iraq adventure. it is a failed cakewalk, a failed war-on-the-cheap. it was supposed to have been not a war but a police action and it was supposed to have been finished in may 2003 — that’s all that had been planned for. it is an occupation attempted with the minimum resources, run by shirkers and dodgers, manned by backdoor conscripts and mercenaries. it is deficit-funded during a time of tax cuts, asking no real demand from the citizenry but their applause, and lacking that, their silence.

so the question we face is what are we willing to sacrifice in support of the occupation? what are we willing to sacrifice in opposition to it? personally, i have never supported the war, am not in the military, nor have family in the military, but i can’t think of anything that i’ve had to sacrifice in opposing the occupation except the time i’ve spent writing against it.

on another blog (i can’t remember which), someone asked that if this war is so vitally important, why no draft, no full mobilization of our resources? perhaps the unspoken (and unspeakable) answer is now that this “slam-dunk” investment has become a money pit, the architects want to hold onto whatever diminishing profit remains — and i’m referring here more to those mega-bases than exxon and halliburton profits — at least until they can “ponzi” the war off onto the next administration.

the time is drawing near, if it is not in fact already upon us, when people are going to have to make a decision. some believe that the occupation is necessary, if only to responsibly fix what we broke. others like myself believe that withdrawal is necessary, to make way for those who actually can fix it. it's time for those supporting the occupation to make the sacrifices necessary to make it work or those opposing the occupation to make the sacrifices necessary to stop this war and remove the officials running it. but what those sacrifices may be i don't have an answer to yet.

impossible idiocy

physicist sean carroll of the blog cosmic variance reports the birth of a wrongness singularity in the blogiverse.

and just what is a wrongness singularity?

a statement is either wrong or it is not wrong ... by the conventional rules, n declarative statements can be wrong at most n times. by the pauli exclusion principle, you just can’t be more wrong than that!

to be wrong more than that should defy the laws of logic, but this is the right-wing blogiverse we're observing, so singularities are theoretically possible. carroll focuses his blogometer on reynolds' recent bloviations regarding u.s. energy policy in the middle east:

of course, if we seized the saudi and iranian oil fields and ran the pumps full speed, oil prices would plummet, dictators would be broke, and poor nations would benefit from cheap energy. but we’d be called imperialist oppressors, then.

four statements, four instances of preposterousness. (can we call these falsehoods prepostulates?):

prices would plummet — no, they wouldn’t. as it turns out, the saudi and iranian oil fields are running at very close to full capacity; any increase would be at most a perturbation. dictators would be broke — not sure which dictators we’re talking about here — the ones we just deposed? in fact, dictators have shown a remarkable ability to not be broke even in countries without vast stores of oil wealth. poor nations would benefit — because it’s really the poor countries that guzzle oil? this one baffles me. we’d be called imperialist oppressors — now, in a strict sense this is not wrong. we would be called that. because invading sovereign countries in order to take over their natural resources is more or less the definition of imperialist oppression. however, reynolds’ implication is clearly that we should not be called imperialist oppressors, that it would somehow be unfair. which is crazy. so can we count that as wrong? yes!

so far, a straightforward proof. now, onto the hidden fifth element:

as tim lambert points out, instapundit managed to be wrong yet another time, by begging a question and then getting the wrong answer! the subjunctive clause opening the first sentence cleverly slides from invading saudi arabia and iran to running pumps at full speed. actually not something that would happen in the reality-based world! as tim says, "yeah, because that’s pretty much the way it worked out in iraq." so in fact, reynolds has managed to fit five units of wrongness into only four declarative statements! this is the hackular equivalent of crossing the chandrasekhar limit, at which point your blog cannot help but collapse in on itself. it is unknown at this point whether the resulting end state will be an intermediate neutron-blog phase, or whether the collapse will proceed all the way to a singularity surrounded by a black hole event horizon. we may have to wait for the neutrino signal to be sure.

the right-wing blogiverse: an endlessly fascinating place to visit, but i can't see how intelligent life could exist there.

running on empty

looks like the party of stunts photo ops staged events cheap political manuevers ideas has just run out of them:

washington post: the response so far has been profiles in panic. some conservatives dropped their philosophical opposition to tax hikes and business regulations and began complaining loudly about oil companies and the auto industry. president bush last week announced that he wanted the authority to raise fuel economy standards on automobiles. one aide acknowledged the idea was devised on the fly, with almost no planning or discussion among relevant agencies. this became obvious within hours when white house officials cautioned that bush had no immediate plan to use the authority even if he had it. a few days earlier, bush backed diverting crude oil from the strategic petroleum reserve, an idea he dismissed less than two years earlier as a political stunt. republican lawmakers likewise have responded with a mishmash of solutions — some barely vetted, others with little chance of becoming law.

the problem? it seems that the citizens of emerald city, even the once-fawning dittoheads, are now paying very close attention to the man behind the curtain ...

new york times: the senate republican plan to mail $100 checks to voters to ease the burden of high gasoline prices is eliciting more scorn than gratitude from the very people it was intended to help. aides for several republican senators reported a surge of calls and e-mail messages from constituents ridiculing the rebate as a paltry and transparent effort to pander to voters before the midterm elections in november. "the conservatives think it is socialist bunk, and the liberals think it is conservative trickery," said don stewart, a spokesman for senator john cornyn, republican of texas, pointing out that the criticism was coming from across the ideological spectrum. angry constituents have asked, "do you think we are prostitutes? do you think you can buy us?" said another republican senator's aide, who was granted anonymity to openly discuss the feedback because the senator had supported the plan. conservative talk radio hosts have been particularly vocal. "what kind of insult is this?" rush limbaugh asked on his radio program on friday. "instead of buying us off and treating us like we're a bunch of whores, just solve the problem." in commentary on fox news sunday, brit hume called the idea "silly."

the architects of human destiny

dreams die hard when you're a neocon. it's just that the rest of us do the suffering.

in francis fukuyama's recent eulogy to neoconservatism, the newly repentant and newly retired acolyte laments that "the idealistic effort to use american power to promote democracy and human rights abroad that may suffer the greatest setback." "The problem with neoconservatism's agenda," he has come to realize, "lies not in its ends, which are as american as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them."

it would be snide to suggest that fukuyama and his shadowy braintrust neither appreciated nor calculated, in their machiavellian way, the negative consequences of unleashing upon the planet yet another series of ideological wars, with their attendant destruction, mayhem, atrocities and moments of brazen television horror.

nonetheless we are forced to wonder if they also anticipated the renunciation of long-established international legal norms, the kidnappings, the secret gulags, the extra-legal detentions and last but never least the torture. did the constriction at home of civil freedoms that are "as american as apple pie" in order to expand them abroad enter into their cold calculus? how much of the neocons' original thought went into the actual implementation of american strategic policy, the so called "bush doctrine"?

while we may not know for decades the bush administration's real goal for intervention in the middle east, for the sake of this discussion let us temporarily put aside dark murmurs of oil and schemes of american hegemony. let us for the time being grant the administration its stated mission of furthering the development of freedom and democracy across the globe, even so far as to grant the terms "freedom" and "democracy" with the best possible meanings and all the visible blessings that go with them. are not these goals in themselves worth the price?

"imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death one tiny creature — that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance — and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?" — fyodor dostoevsky, the brothers karamazov, 1880

in the 2001 action film swordfish, john travolta's super-slick and super-glib super-spook starkly justifies himself by citing the classic theologic defense of god's apparent tolerance of evil, which defines evil as a necessary means towards a greater good. his character's name suggests, despite the hellish and high-casualty havok his plots unleash, that gabriel the spook, like his namesake the archangel, is in the service of a force for benevolence:

"[you're] not lookin' at the big picture, stan. here's a scenario: you have the power to cure all the world's diseases but the price for this is that you must kill a single innocent child. could you kill that child, stanley? no? you disappoint me. it's the greatest good."

neither dostoevsky nor poor stanley could take that step, but for others, like gabriel and the neocons, the question proves too compelling and the logic seems inescapable: indeed, how could one deny peace to the long-suffering billions of earth for the sake of only a single life, one child?

however, the logic is inescapable only if one presumes the power of a god: that one has perfect control over events and perfect knowledge that the intended outcome is absolutely guaranteed. since mere mortals, even neocons, are blessed with neither omnipotence or omniscience (much less omnibenevolence), that any human should answer such a question with not simply "yes, i would kill that child" but righteously "yes, i would kill untold thousands of children" demonstrates the epitome of arrogance and the source of the hubris only now admitted to by neocons like fukuyama:

"... successful pre-emption depends on the ability to predict the future accurately and on good intelligence, which was not forthcoming, while america's perceived unilateralism has isolated it as never before. it is not surprising that in its second term, the administration has been distancing itself from these policies and is in the process of rewriting the national security strategy document."

so without any guarantee that our goal, the spread of freedom and democracy, is achievable, can we still justify these machiavellian visions, the failures of the bush administration nonwithstanding? after all, though repentant he may be, fukuyama still sees, as quoted above, the failure of the neocon dream as a failure only of implementation:

"the problem with neoconservatism's agenda lies not in its ends, which are as american as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them."

so long as men like fukuyama continue to believe that even though the execution be flawed, the neocon dream remains worthwhile, the rest of us shall remain the pawns of the would-be architects of human destiny.

to the architects then let us honestly restate dostoevsky's conundrum, and ask them to take into account the limits of human knowledge, power, competence and will:

if you believed that you might be able to make some men somewhat happier by torturing to death thousands of tiny creatures — those babies beating their breast with their fist, for instance — would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?

why are we still there?

(cross-posted at daily kos)

iraq: dateline, february 2006.

insurgents. jihadists. militias. suicide bombers. death squads.

at least 30,000 and up to 100,000 or even more dead; many tortured, executed. over 40,000 injured. perhaps 1,000 more each month.

in the midst of this abbatoir: a 20-something, over-extended guardsman from anytown u.s.a. who doesn't speak the language, doesn't look like the locals. her assigned task: "security". what can she secure? according to respected middle-east scholar juan cole, not much, not even her own safety:

"sunni arabs in iraq blamed us troops for not protecting sunni mosques and worshippers from violence. the us military ordered the us soldiers in baghdad to stay in their barracks and not to circulate if it could be helped. (later reports said some us patrols has been stepped up.) this situation underlines how useless the american ground forces are in iraq. they can't stop the guerrilla war and may be making it worst [sic]. last i knew, there were 10,000 us troops in anbar province with a population of 1.1 million. what could you do with that small force, when the vast majority of the people support the guerrillas? us troops would be useless if they hcad [sic] to fight in alleyways against sectarian rioters. if they tried to guard the sunni mosques, they'd have to shoot into shiite mobs, which would just raise the level of violence they face from shiites in the south."

it seems crystal clear that u.s. forces have been reduced to serving only one function in iraq: target practice. the majority of iraqis feel that attacks on u.s. troops are justified. with reconstruction effectively halted, and no further funds forthcoming, guess who bears the brunt of civilian frustration? as long as u.s. troops stay in iraq, they remain too convenient as scapegoats for everything there that continues to go wrong:

"on saturday, al-sadr's movement joined sunni clerics in agreeing to prohibit killing members of the two sects and banning attacks on each other's mosques. the clerics issued a statement blaming "the occupiers," meaning the americans and their coalition partners, for stirring up sectarian unrest." (AP)

having successfully alienated all the rival factions, the u.s. no longer can find any meaningful candidate to partner with. cooperation with the u.s. has become the literal kiss of death in iraq, delegitimizing and rendering impotent any iraqi that might still wish to help implement any american plan for recovery.

there have been many calls, out of feelings of both guilt and pride, to, in so many words, clean up the mess that iraq has become. such calls, even if somewhat narcissistic, might be lauded for their acceptance of our ultimate responsibility. others call for us not to allow iraq's oil infrastructure to become incapacitated or be altogether destroyed. such calls are compelling for their sobering practicality. still other calls demand that we keep the conflict from engulfing the entire region, for the sake of stability and security. but our guilt, pride, practicality, stability and security cannot be helped by staying in iraq if in fact our presence has no positive influence whatsoever.

withdrawal from iraq removes both a focus for much iraqi anger and an easy excuse for iraqi dysfunction. most importantly, withdrawal will save lives that can be saved. the time for withdrawal is long overdue.