What About the Good News?

Here's an answer you might use in the future, at least in part. I must note, however, that there is much I disagree with in the full post from which that extract comes; in fact, I don't even agree with everything in the extract. Still, parts of it are useful. See many of my earlier essays for details on my disagreements with the largely mythological view of America from which remarks like these arise, beginning with the Dominion Over the World series (and Part II in particular, although all the installments speak to the general issues).

Now that I look at it again before posting this, I realize I don't like that response at all, even in the short version. Well, there you go. I don't even agree with posts at Antiwar.com all the time. I'm just ornery. I'll write my own response later today or tomorrow. I'll keep it short. (I can do that, you know.) Here's another post, from last summer, which indicates how profoundly different my perspective is: The Amnesty Question: We Are Not the Good Guys in Iraq.

In the meantime:

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Bombs have detonated across central Iraq, adding 40 more bloodied corpses to the grim toll of Iraqi dead as rebel groups mount a savage challenge to the latest US and Iraqi security plan.

The attacks will in the main be blamed on Sunni insurgents and appear to have been timed to embarrass US and Iraqi commanders as they deploy tens of thousands of troops to try to quell Baghdad's vicious sectarian war.

Two American soldiers were also killed and 17 wounded in what the US military dubbed a "coordinated attack on a coalition force combat outpost" in Tarmiyah, some 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the capital.

"Insurgents initiated the attack on the outpost with a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonation," a US statement said. "The attack site has been secured and wounded soldiers have been evacuated."

The deaths brought to 3,133 the number of US servicemen and women who have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, according to
Pentagon figures.

Get Out Now: Just Do It

The Missing Moral Center: Murdering the Innocent

A Genuine Mission Impossible

Give Up the Fatal Contradiction -- and Get Out Now