by TChris

The Bush administration's Pentagon has taken to branding gravestones with one of the PR slogans developed to induce support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq: "Operation Enduring Freedom" or "Operation Iraqi Freedom." The Pentagon claims to give families of the fallen approval over the contents of the gravestones, but that hasn't always happened.

Nadia and Robert McCaffrey, whose son Patrick was killed in Iraq in June 2004, said "Operation Iraqi Freedom" ended up on his government-supplied headstone in Oceanside, Calif., without family approval.

"I was a little taken aback," Robert McCaffrey said, describing his reaction when he first saw the operation name on Patrick's tombstone. "They certainly didn't ask my wife; they didn't ask me." He said Patrick's widow told him she had not been asked either.

"In one way, I feel it's taking advantage to a small degree," McCaffrey said. "Patrick did not want to be there, that is a definite fact."

The owner of the company that manufactures gravestones for the cemetary at Arlington recognizes how offensive it is for the administration to turn grave markers into a PR ploy.

Received by e-mail from Progressive Democrats of America: Arizona Democrats have passed a resolution with a message to President Bush: Bring home the troops and fund benefits for vets:

Whereas the AZ Democratic Party is supportive of our Men and Women in military service and supportive of their families;

And whereas the AZ State Democratic Party opposes the reasons previously stipulated by the Bush Administration for war in Iraq, the method of prosecution of the war and its failure to have an adequate exit plan from Iraq;

Be it resolved that the AZ Democratic Party call upon the Bush Administration and the US Congress to support the families of our service people, and to fully fund veterans and military benefits for our service personnel, and to remove our troops from Iraq in as responsible and expeditious a fashion as possible."

Tom Hayden has new post outlining a petition making the rounds with the core principles of an exit strategy.

A three day extension of the deadline for the Iraq Constitution has been granted. Here's the text of the draft. A Bill of Rights, it's not, although it does promise freedom of religion, expression, association, and the press, and states there will be no torture or forced confessions. It also provides that 25% of the Council of Deputies seats will go to women.

In other places, it sounds like it is trying to be all things to all people. One example:

Update: Constitution delayed.

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Original Post:

ABC News in Australia is reporting the Kurds and Shiites have agreed on a draft of a Constitution and will present it regardless of whether the Sunnis agree.

"An agreement between the Shiites and the Kurds (the two main parliamentary blocs) have been reached... God willing, the draft will be presented in the Parliament today," Shiite negotiator Jawad al-Maliki said.

Although the agreement appears to have been thrashed out over the heads of the Sunnis, the Kurds and Shiites have enough seats in Parliament - 215 out of 275 - between them to have the constitution approved with a majority.

More from the Guardian here. Garance at Tapped writes:

The war that keeps on taking...

Four American soldiers were killed and three wounded when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle in southern Afghanistan. In a separate attack, two employees of the United States Embassy were injured when their convoy was hit by an explosion west of the capital, Kabul.

In southern Afghanistan, a religious cleric and another man were killed outside a district mosque in the latest in a series of attacks on pro-government clergy by suspected Taliban insurgents.

Today's attack brings to 65 the number of American soldiers who have died in Afghanistan this year, making 2005 the deadliest year for the United States military in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001. A total of 181 American soldiers have died in Operation Enduring Freedom in and around Afghanistan since military operations began in October 2001, more than 100 of them in hostile attacks.

What a victory for democracy (not.)

The U.S. has backed the Shi'ites in the Iraq Constitution fight - which would make Islamist law predominant. The Sunnis want the U.S. to withdraw their support for the draft document.

A retreat to Sharia law would be the antithesis of a democratic state. Didn't George Bush tell us we were going to war to bring a democracy to Iraq? What a total failure both Bush and his war are.

A letter written in jail by Saddam Hussein has been distributed by the Red Cross and published.

"I and my family offer ourselves as a sacrifice for this nation, including dear Palestine and our steadfast, beloved, and wretched Iraq," he writes."Life without faith, love and the inherited traditions of our nation is destruction.

"He who sacrifices his property and soul for his nation is but doing a little because this nation deserves much to be done." He ends the letter: "Long live Palestine. Love your nation."

by Last Night in Little Rock

My wife, from a long line of anti-war protestors, whose father fought in the Pacific in WWII and came home to protest the Vietnam War outside Nixon's San Clemente Western White House, just returned from two days protesting at President Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch.

She reported that the pro-Bush supporters were taunting Cindy Sheehan just before Sheehan departed "We don't care." I was appalled and couldn't believe it. No, she was dead serious. She was tearing up talking about it. It was, in fact, reported in the DailyKos here.

This is no surprise to those of us who have followed the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, but still, it's gratifying to hear one of the already sentenced guards, with nothing left to lose, say the abuse occurred at the orders of higher-ups:

Sergeant Javal Davis was sentenced to six months in jail after admitting to having deliberately stepped on the hands and feet of handcuffed prisoners. In an interview aired on Channel 7, Sgt Davis said he was instructed to make life as unpleasant as possible for those he was guarding.

"I was left with an open door to pretty much almost do whatever I want, you know like 'hey, make sure this guy has a bad night you know' or 'make sure this guy gets the treatment'," he said.

Sgt Davis says he found some of the things he was asked to do distressing. "For example, the nakedness, the hooding, the handcuffing of the detainees in compromising positions, like handcuffed behind their back in an uncomfortable way or handcuffed to the bar door door or something," he said.

He says he asked that orders he was given to abuse prisoners be put in writing.But despite repeated requests, his superiors never agreed to do so.

In other words, they covered their as*es.

Frank Rich has a scathing account in the Sunday New York Times about the current administration's mismanagement and deceit about the Iraq War.The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan is a must read.

But this time the Swift Boating failed, utterly, and that failure is yet another revealing historical marker in this summer's collapse of political support for the Iraq war.

....THIS summer in Crawford, the White House went to this playbook once too often. When Mr. Bush's motorcade left a grieving mother in the dust to speed on to a fund-raiser, that was one fat-cat party too far. The strategy of fighting a war without shared national sacrifice has at last backfired, just as the strategy of Swift Boating the war's critics has reached its Waterloo before Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury in Washington. The 24/7 cable and Web attack dogs can keep on sliming Cindy Sheehan. The president can keep trying to ration the photos of flag-draped caskets. But this White House no longer has any more control over the insurgency at home than it does over the one in Iraq.

George Hunsinger, professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, and coordinator of Church Folks for a Better America (and frequent reader and commenter at TalkLeft) has a letter to the editor in today's New York Times:

Bob Herbert is right ("No End in Sight in Iraq," column, Aug. 11). We need a serious national conversation about exiting from Iraq.

First, we need to face reality: no good options exist. The American-led occupation is the main cause of the insurgency, not the cure. Yet an abrupt pullout could lead to even more chaos. The last best hope lies in "internationalizing" the peacekeeping forces until Iraq can take over on its own.

Those who object to this path as unrealistic need to explain how we can better extricate ourselves from the biggest American policy disaster since Vietnam.

by TChris

Cindy Sheehan's protest is taking on its own life as her supporters held more than 1,500 candlelight vigils across the country last night.

Some 250 supporters gathered for a vigil in Somerville, Mass., north of Boston, while 150 people turned out in White Plains and 200 people assembled in a field next to the expressway west of downtown Chicago. In New York, people gathered at 106th Street and Broadway, and in Riverside Park.

Disgust with the president's war will continue to spread as soldiers continue to die. Four soldiers were killed today by a roadside bomb.