Billy Bob's Bulletins -- June 3, 2006

Ditto yesterday.

Iraq news is dominated by the firestorm over Haditha and some other investigations of potentially similar incidents that the press has uncovered in the feeding frenzy Haditha engendered. The Iraqis themselves have jumped all over the issue. Your upcoming "ethics training" will no doubt provide you with more of that than you or anyone can stand on that subject., so I won't go into it any further except to say this:

So far at least, the press and the public have not generalized from these events to soldiers in general. So far, both are accepting the "bad apples" defense and/or placing the ultimate blame on the Bush administration. Maureen Dowd is not atypical in this:

American troops are under spectacular emotional pressure. They go out every day, not knowing Arabic, not understanding the culture, not knowing who the insurgents are, not knowing when they can go home or which of their buddies will be blown up before their eyes by an unseen enemy.

The troops were not trained for a counterinsurgency, because Bush hawks ignored the intelligence reports that predicted an insurgency and civil war. These kids were turned into sitting ducks because the neocon con to sell the war needed a gauzy prediction of Iraqi gratitude and a quick exit.

However simplistic these sentiments may be, I can only hope the consensus holds.

The news on the other "big" issue in that part of the world -- Iranian nukes -- is not much better. There has been a lot of hoopla about the change in the US position on direct talks with Iran and about how that has "force[d the] mullahs into [a] corner." But I'm not so sure. There was a condition on the US willingness to talk -- that the Iranians stop their uranium enrichment first -- and the Iranians (initially at least) categorically rejected that condition. Later, though, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told Kofi Annin that a Nuclear Breakthrough Is Possible if the six powers were willing to talk without preconditions. Whether the US will talk without preconditions and whether the Iranians are serious about a "breakthrough" if they do both remain to be seen. But there is, I guess, hope, however slim.

The domestic news is not much better. The following Houston Chroicle headline says it all: "Gays, flag-burning and indecency! Did that get your attention?" Besieged on every front, the Bush administration is "going to the mattresses" by appealing to the very worst in the American electorate in an effort to stave off a political defeat in November. But I will go no further into that either lest it serve to further exacerbate your querulousness as to what exactly it is you're fighting for.

The one piece of good news I have found in the (now 2-day) news cycle is this: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police appear to have foiled a terrorist plot: 17 Held in Plot to Bomb Sites in Ontario. Good for the Mounties.

I hope all is well with you. Write when you can. And, if you have any, send me some good news from Iraq. I hope I am the one who needs cheering up.