Ehren Watada refused to deploy to Iraq after he "gradually came to the conclusion that the Bush administration had lied about the basis for war and had betrayed the trust of the American people." Watada stipulated that he did not deploy with his unit as ordered. The judge at Watada's courts martial decided that Watada did not understand the legal significance of that stipulation and told the jury to disregard it. The prosecution had already rested its case. The judge granted the prosecution's request for a mistrial.

U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle ruled today that Watada cannot be tried on those charges again. The government rested without proving its case, and Watada did not request or provoke the mistrial. Under those circumstances, the protection against double jeopardy bars a second prosecution. [More...]

Iraq wants the US out:

The Iraqi parliament's biggest political bloc is calling for all American troops to leave this country by the end of 2011 as a condition for approving a new agreement extending the U.S. military presence in Iraq, a senior official said Sunday. . . . If the conditions are not met, "I cannot see that this agreement will see the light," said Sami al-Askeri, a Shiite parliamentarian and political adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

It was not immediately clear if the U.S. would accept the conditions, which would make significant changes to the draft agreement produced in recent days. The bilateral accord is aimed at replacing a United Nations mandate that provides the legal authority for U.S. troops to be in Iraq. It expires on Dec. 31.

(Emphasis supplied.) It seems the only people whgo want the US to keep spending 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq indefinitely are George Bush and John McCain. After all, as John McCain says:

John McCain: "This [surge] strategy has succeeded. And we are winning in Iraq."

Today in Iraq:

Iraqi police fatally shot a Kurdish politician in one of Iraq's most volatile provinces as he entered police headquarters Saturday to settle a dispute over the arrest of a colleague, officials said. ...

Tension has been rising between Kurds and Arabs in the north because of Kurdish demands for incorporating the northern oil city of Kirkuk and other areas into their self-ruled region of northern Iraq. Kurdish demands for greater control beyond their autonomous region have risen since the 2003 war, and has caused some Arabs in the region to flee their homes.

What's your definition of "winning," Senator McCain? What's your plan for bringing political stability to Iraq?

Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress today we are not winning in Afghanistan.

Mullen and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates appeared before the House Armed Services Committee a day after President Bush announced that the U.S. would increase its presence in Afghanistan by 1,500 troops. Gates, who focused on Iraq, told the committee he thought that the U.S. strategy in Iraq has "entered that end game."

Their testimony was a public airing of a discussion that's going on within the Pentagon about how quickly the military can shift its focus from Iraq to Afghanistan. While violence has dropped precipitously in Iraq, it's climbed in Afghanistan. U.S. troop deaths there are higher than Iraq now, despite a far smaller presence. In addition, insurgent groups increasingly are taking control of villages.

Mullen thinks we can win in Afghanistan with more troops and a different strategy. We are not going to save Afghanistan no matter how many troops we put there. [More...]

UPI editor Martin Sieff displays a surprising amount of journalistic honesty when he writes:

The cynical old adage about Vietnam is being played out in Iraq: Pull out the troops and call it victory.

That is certainly one way to look at President George W. Bush's decision, to be announced Tuesday, to pull 8,000 U.S. troops out of Iraq.

As Sieff points out, the current level of troop commitment would be unsustainable even if Iraq's nascent government hadn't insisted on a troop withdrawal. His verdict: [more ...]

The media headlines are all about Bush reducing troops in Iraq. Of course troop reduction in Iraq is a good thing.

But, he also announced that he's increasing troops to Afghanistan due to "renewed resistance from the Taliban."

....the president says that a Marine battalion will be on its way there in November -- instead of going to Iraq. And an Army combat brigade will follow in January.

....Bush's plan to instead shift forces to Afghanistan may give ammunition to the argument of his critics: that while focusing on Iraq, the president paid too little attention to the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.

Moving troops from one country to another is neither an end to war nor a success. Bringing all our troops home is what's needed.

There are many reasons why the presidential choice in November matters. Here's one:

As of Friday, Aug. 29, 2008, at least 4,151 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

It's good that someone is keeping track:

As of Friday, Aug. 22, 2008, at least 4,146 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. ... The AP count is two fewer than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Thursday at 10 a.m. EDT.

It's the economy (but not just the economy), stupid.

Author Ron Suskind has a new book out that's getting a lot of attention today. It's called “The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism.”

President Bush committed an impeachable offense by ordering the CIA to to manufacture a false pretense for the Iraq war in the form of a backdated, handwritten document linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, an explosive new book claims.

....Suskind says he spoke on the record with U.S. intelligence officials who stated that Bush was informed unequivocally in January 2003 that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. Nonetheless, his book relates, Bush decided to invade Iraq three months later — with the forged letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam bolstering the U.S. rationale to go into war.

As to the fake letter: [More...]

What's John McCain's answer to this? Surge II: The Sequel?

Female bombers struck Kurdish political protesters in Kirkuk and Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad on Monday morning, leaving at least 48 people dead and 249 wounded in one of the bloodiest sequences of attacks in Iraq this year.... In the attacks in Baghdad, three women used suicide vests and a bomb in a bag to make strikes just minutes apart, killing 24 people, all apparently Shiite pilgrims marching in a festival, according to an official at the Interior Ministry.

If things are going as swimmingly in Iraq as John McCain would like us to believe, why is the military so desperate to control the visual message?

The case of a freelance photographer in Iraq who was barred from covering the Marines after he posted photos on the Internet of several of them dead has underscored what some journalists say is a growing effort by the American military to control graphic images from the war. ...

[O]pponents of the war, civil liberties advocates and journalists argue that the public portrayal of the war is being sanitized and that Americans who choose to do so have the right to see — in whatever medium — the human cost of a war that polls consistently show is unpopular with Americans.

[more ...]

This editorial comments upon a hearing held Tuesday before a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee that examined the Army Medical Action Plan.

That’s the plan to prevent the kind of systematic neglect and mistreatment exposed by The Washington Post last year at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Despite promises of reform and statements of concern about wounded soldiers, this is what's happening: [more ...]