After a conversation with my friend Jon Soltz this afternoon, I’ve made a decision that’s been a long time coming.  It has not been an easy decision, but I know it’s the right one.

       This is the last diary I will write as The Angry Rakkasan.

[Promoted from the Diaries by Meteor Blades.]

     Mark it down.  August 29, 2007.  That’s the day the Pentagon announced it was done being responsible for Mr. Bush’s waste of lives, time, and money in Iraq.  Tonight, the Defense Department has essentially told the President, "Thanks for the war, George, but it’s all you from here on out, buddy."  

       Via ThinkProgress this afternoon:

Despite Announcing His ‘Retirement,’ General Who Oversaw Walter Reed Scandal Still Serving In Army

On March 12, the Pentagon announced that Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, who oversaw neglect at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, was resigning, effective immediately. NBC News Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski reported that it was "very likely" Kiley "would be reduced in retirement, at least one rank" and "be forced to retire at that two-star level."

In order to retire as a three-star general, Kiley would have had to do at least three years of active-duty service in that grade. The higher the grade, the greater the retirement pay and benefits a general receives.

Kiley was appointed Army Surgeon General on Sept. 30, 2004. Therefore, as Miklaszewski noted, he retired before serving out his three-year term at the three-star level.

But ThinkProgress has learned that Kiley is still serving at the Pentagon, despite announcing his "retirement" in March.

       I wouldn’t think a fine upstanding public servant like Ari Fleischer would be capable of lying to the American people, so I guess he must just be confused.        

       Via ThinkProgress:

Beginning today, Freedom’s Watch, a new right-wing front group for the White House, "will unveil a month-long, $15 million television, radio and grass-roots campaign" to pressure Congress to continue supporting President Bush’s disastrous Iraq strategy. The group, which is "funded by high-profile Republicans who were aides and supporters of President Bush," is headed by a familiar face from the Bush war effort: former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.

       This is a big deal—whether you think this shows renewed signs of life on the part of the Republican Party, or whether you view it as a sign of desperation.  Either way, this is a huge ad buy—and this is going to be all over the media in the coming days.  

       Some time ago, I wrote an article called "The Young Chickenhawks."  In it, I profiled a number of loud-mouthed, well known warmongers—all of whom were still young enough to enlist, but still too afraid to go fight.  Today, we’re going to take a look at some other prominent Iraq War-supporters—but this time we’re going to focus on the under-30 crowd.  For me, this is the most entertaining type of chickenhawk—because the younger the chickenhawk is, the more hilarious the excuses for not serving become.
       You may be familiar with a couple of them, and two of them you may not know.  But either way, you should find this fascinating—and you should continue finding ways to heap scorn on these cowards.

       Today 175 Iraqi civilians were killed and 200 more were wounded when suicide bombers struck in Qahataniya, a town in extreme northwestern Iraq.  It was the third deadliest coordinated attack on Iraqi civilians since the war in Iraq began.
       On MSNBC’s Hardball, Jim Miklaszewski had this to say in response to the attack:  

These bombings occurred in an area we hadn’t really heard much about until today.

       
       Really?  No shit.

(Promoted from the Diaries by Meteor Blades)

Author’s note: Both Michelle Malkin and Matt Drudge are still young enough to enlist in the military.  As such strident war supporters, it’s anyone’s guess as to why neither of them has yet felt the need to pick up a gun and help out, while other troops—some under the age of 25—are beginning their fifth and sixth deployments.  With morale plummeting over the war, the military is in desperate need of the type of motivated troopers I’m sure both Malkin and Drudge would make.

On Friday morning Jon Soltz of VoteVets.org moderated a YearlyKos panel called The Military and Progressives: Are They That Different?  I was on the panel with Jon, along with General Wesley Clark, Iraq veterans Jonathan Powers and Josh Lansdale, and author Ilona Meagher.  The panel went fine.  However, at the end, there was some drama.  Tempers flared between Soltz and a questioner in a military uniform, and the right-wing Pajamas Media reporter in the room began falling all over himself to film it—thinking that he had just scored a "macaca" moment for the Right.

       This is how it happens: A desperate Republican goes to Iraq looking for something—anything—to justify the continuing presence of American troops there.  The Republican stays for a week (give or take), and then returns home as if he or she were Moses coming back from Mount Sinai, carrying to the American people stone tablets engraved with The Ultimate Truth About Iraq.
       And of course, this Ultimate Truth About Iraq is learned by the Republican in the chow hall, on the secure base, with the hand-picked soldiers sitting at the table.
       This is what Senator Jim Webb rightly called the "dog and pony show."  For those who don’t know, that’s an old military expression used to describe how troops are often forced to put on a "show" for visiting politicians or VIPs to convey just how swell everything is going on the front lines.
       Politicians or VIPs who’ve served in a combat zone know this.  Sadly, the rest visit the troops in a state of blissful ignorance.

       Daily Kos is my online home, and I’ve made dozens of friends here over the last year.  You may not know it, but you guys have given me the ability to really get my psychological sea legs back under me after spending two years in combat and another two years writing about it.  You’ve taught me modern politics and re-ignited a fire I wasn’t sure I’d ever get back after my return from Iraq.  So I credit you all with giving me back my aggressiveness—and swagger—as I attempt weekly to go after the traitors who got us into this war in Iraq.  And for that, I thank you.
       Thus, it is with an anxious sense of anticipation that I present to you my now-available war memoir, The War I Always Wanted:

       George W. Bush spoke at Charleston Air Force Base this morning, where he laid out the clear link between al Qaeda and the War in Iraq.  For the first time in five years, I finally understand that link.  Here is some of what the President said:

       Max Blumenthal of The Nation is my new hero.  In fact, anyone who exposes College Republicans as smarmy warmongers who mysteriously can’t enlist because of "asthma" or "bad knees," is my hero.  But Blumenthal has taken it to a new level with a video he produced and released yesterday on Huffington Post.  
       The video depicts his covert infiltration of the recent College Republican convention in Arlington, Virginia.  In it, he goes around engaging College Republicans about the War on Terror.  He first has them explain why it’s so important to fight, before going on to ask them why they’re not serving overseas themselves.

       I've been on Capitol Hill with VoteVets since this afternoon.  I'm using a computer I borrowed from Faiz of Think Progress.  It's after 2:00 AM here on the east coast, and I'm smoked.  But we're still here, and I thought I'd take this time to pass on a few of the highlights from this long day.  
       So in no particular order, here they are:

       Senators like Lindsay Graham are clowns.  Jim Webb showed that on Sunday morning.  On Meet the Press, Graham was insistent that the military loves the war in Iraq, and that troops are re-enlisting in high numbers due to their patriotism and their desire to see the mission through.  Or something like that.  
       But now, the latest person to make Republican warmongers like Graham look like fools is Texas congressman Ron Paul.  Why?  Because apparently he’s sucking up what’s left of the Republican military vote based on his stridently anti-Iraq War message.

[From the diaries - BarbinMD]

Today.  10:06 AM Eastern time.  Your local radio station.  Commander Guy.  The Angry Rakkasan. Mano-a-mano.

I've been waiting for this moment since the day I returned from Iraq.  Tomorrow morning I’ll be delivering the Democrats’ response to the President’s weekly radio address.

I’m this guy.  And because of my work with VoteVets.org, I was selected to write and deliver the rebuttal to President Bush on behalf of the Democratic Party this week (though I think I’m speaking for a lot more Americans than just the Democratic Party when I slam The Decider).  I worked on it last night, recorded it this afternoon, and will listen to it air on Saturday morning.  
       
I’d love to give you all the text, but that would spoil the fun.  As you could probably guess though, it’ll be about Iraq.  I’d also like to tell you all which station it will be on, but there’s no standard station (or even time) across the country.  I found out why when I accessed the White House page regarding the President’s weekly radio address.  The site said that the address:

is made available to all radio stations at 10:06 AM Eastern Time each Saturday. However, not all stations that air the Radio Address do so at that specific Eastern Time. I would encourage you to contact your local all-news format stations' programming departments in your area to find out more.

       
So that’s that.  Please tune in if you can.  And remember that that’s a fellow Kossack working hard to further expose what an unmitigated disaster the President is.
I’d also like to thank all of you out there who have supported my writing here for the past ten months. Without your support and interest, I wouldn’t have had this opportunity to tell America how the military really feels about Mr. Bush's war.

UPDATE: You'll also be able to hear the address at a number of places online.  Please see some of the comments below for individual web sites.

       A couple of months ago, I sent an email to a close friend of mine who is currently deployed.  He’s a Special Ops guy, so I don’t know exactly where he is.  He’s also one of the many unlucky ones to get recalled—having been originally discharged from Active Duty in 2005.  In the email, I said to him that we were doing everything we could to end this Iraq debacle.  I also told him that, in my opinion, this thing was going to be over sooner, rather than later.  
       I just had a hunch.
       And whether I actually believed it at the time or not, it now looks like we’re on the cusp of turning the corner.  Things are cascading.  There is blood in the water.  And this morning, the New York Times is reporting that even the White House is now debating a pullback in Iraq.
       George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney—they’re all are done.  
       And they know it.

       Retired three-star Army General William Odom threw Commander Guy under the bus today.  And Odom is no ordinary three-star.  From 1985-1988 he served as chief of the NSA under Ronald Reagan.  
       So take a deep breath, Red America: It’s going to be hard to spin this one.

       Knowing full well that the Scooter Libby pardon commutation would hide his bloodthirsty remarks, Joe Lieberman issued a statement yesterday that represents a direct threat to an already beleaguered U.S. military in Iraq.  He said:

The United States government has a responsibility to use all instruments at its disposal to stop these terrorist attacks against our soldiers and allies in Iraq—including keeping open the possibility of using military force against the terrorist infrastructure inside Iran.

Although no one desires a conflict with Iran, the fact is that the Iranian government by its actions has declared war on us. And while I sincerely hope that diplomacy alone can convince the Iranian government to stop these attacks, our diplomatic efforts are only likely to succeed if backed by a credible threat of force.

       So the question is: Why does Joe want to kill more Americans than is absolutely necessary?"

       Back in March, Jon Soltz of VoteVets.org posted a diary about the work they were doing at the time with Wes Clark.  As a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, I jumped into the comment thread and asked Jon how I could help out.  I was a big fan of the commercials VoteVets had done, but didn’t know how to get in contact with them.
       That one comment I made here on Daily Kos opened the door to a lot of things for me.  Two weeks later I was in Washington on behalf of VoteVets, and since then, I’ve been working closely with VoteVets on a regular basis.
       The volunteering has all been fun, but now it’s getting serious.  I’ve been asked by VoteVets to help full-time with the launch of our new blog.  But I need your help.  We need to give it a good name.