Isn't it time for an Iraq War forum?

[HamdenRice]

I was listening to the Today Show this morning. Katie Couric was interviewing some retired general about the shrub administration deciding to employ death squads. Couric seemed oblivious to the significance of this. She seemed to see it as a signal that the war wasn't going well rather than as a decision to employ yet more war crimes tactics against the Iraqis. My head was spinning, and it just seemed that the war is so huge and so unreal.

I know there is a foreign affairs forum here where the Iraq War is discussed among other things, including 9/11 conspiracy theories and Iraeli-Palestinian flame bait. I know that everytime this comes up, people also say the war discussion should be integrated with general discussion.

It just seems to me that this is the political/moral issue of our time -- like Vietnam or South African apartheid, yet even here we are not addressing it as such.

Where is the outrage? Where is the equivalent of 1980s CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) or of the anti-apartheid movement? Doesn't the naked aggression against a soverign country, the Halliburton vice presidential graft, the 100,000 civilian death toll, the slow destruction of our own armed forces by this reckless idiotic strategy, the spreading of instability and creation of a failed state and terrorist haven, the proposed death squads, the bankruptcy of the federal treasury, the making of American political refugees of our soldiers in Canada -- don't these deserve a separate discussion forum where perhaps we can figure out the way forward?

<edited for clarity>

[BlueEyedSon]

1. I'll second the motion. If there isn't one, there probably should be.

[meti57b]

2. YES, ... it's time.

(assuming it's a resource of material for use in debating against the dark side.)

[Marnieworld]

3. YES!

You are so right! We need a specific forum where we can organize info about all of the torture and war crimes. We need a pinned post that keeps a running total of KIA and injured soldiers as well as a daily total. We need to organize a list of all Iraqis killed because of their allegiance to the interim government and US. I believe a deputy police chief was just asassinated. The war is a crime. It is a mistake. It gets worse every day and the entire Bush administration should be in the Hague for it.

DU needs to focus on election reform.
DU needs to focus on the daily travesties of this administration.
DU needs to focus on maintaining a progressive sensibility in the democratic party and supporting candidates who share these principles.

DU also needs to focus on this horrible horrible war and bringing its illegality and the daily struggles of those there to light.

Build this forum and they will come.

[HamdenRice]

4. Thanks all for your support!! n/t

[naryaquid]

5. Me three....I've been wondering about this.....I was somewhat

active in CISPES back then, and when I read about the Death Squad "option"...I started feeling sick..Yes, the way it's being played in the news and what you say about the Couric interview...It seems like they don't even find it so atrocious anymore...Back in the eighties with El Salvador, they were busy denying it...horrible, if they/we are even losing shame about it.

[HamdenRice]

6. YES it's bizarre -- at least Raygun denied it ...

These criminals are not only not denying it, but openly, proudly proposing it as a perfectly acceptable tactic -- and the media plays along.

It makes me wonder: what if shrub proposed concentration camps? or ethnic cleansing of the Sunni triangle? or a final solution? Would the MSM simply ask what the political implications for shrub are? would they ask whether this might "turn the tide"?

[naryaquid]

7. This is what's getting scary about this country, It seems.."normal"

people are not ACTING normal...

[HamdenRice]

8. Anyone want to take a shot at a mission statement? nt

[HamdenRice]

9. Shameless kick -- I guess I'm going to have to haunt other threads ...

to drum up interest in this proposed forum.