e dares to even hint at this and Bush will end his career on the instant.

Someone here gave me a file on Hilary Clinton that is highly inflammatory. I made a few calls to newspaper friends, one in San Francisco, and pretty much verified a good part of it. This covers certain incidents concerning the Black Panthers (This is old news, and has been circulating on the Internet for at least 10 years that I am personally aware of) that is sure to make the Obama people happy. Probably publish this next week after I have more details. Going away for the holidays and a Happy Christmas to one and all and George, leave the cat alone. "It doesn’t like it when you do that."

The Green Zone Follies: The Coming Revolt!

Baghdad, December 17th 2006: “It starts out with latrine rumor, highly negative stories, bitter griping and verbal trashing of superior officers. Then it proceeds to groups of men getting together, informally at first, and giving vent to their growing anger and frustration.

A loose-knit organization is formed and eventually, gets connected with other unhappy grunts. And then there are acts of sabotage, small and often prankish, to start with but later escalating into serious damage of radio systems, vehicles (by putting molasses or sugar into the oil system or gas tanks, slashed tires, cut wires and so on.)

This progresses to more violence to include fragging of hated officers and NCOs, slow-downs in executing orders and then, finally, direct disobedience of specific orders. If we follow this insurgency to its logical conclusion, unchecked it will inevitably lead to rioting, murders of officers, the hated contractors and all kinds of government and diplomatic officials here inside the false protection of the Green Zone.

I know the CID has a list of fragged officers and I am trying to get my hands on it for all of you. Be patient and thank God for small favors!

We have been watching this problem grow here, slowly at first, and disconnected, but now it is starting to emerge in very ugly forms. The basic thesis is that the resistance is becoming well-armed with rockets with which they can blow up entire vehicles, killing everyone inside and that Washington is using the men in a futile effort to save their collapsing careers.

Bush is hated here by practically everyone to a degree that is beyond belief and we here are all really astonished that when Cheney paid his last visit here, he wasn’t blown away.

One of the recurring , and newer, themes here among increasingly furious grunts is that in the mid terms, the American people repudiated Bush and his sick war but Bush is deaf. Plans, well-reported here, that a huge. Residentially-ordered “push” is coming and that tens of thousands of fresh fools are going to be poured into Baghdad for a “final, triumphant victory” drive are met with fury (because it only prolongs the agony of the men now engaged here) and pity for the under-equipped and badly trained men who will most certainly be slaughtered by an increasingly competent and dangerous enemy.

The frantic hope of our brass here is that the dream-world “final push” might, very, very possibly, have some small success (and this will of course be greatly magnified by our captive domestic press) and that the whole murderous business here will come to an end. But most of us who have read the real intelligence and situation reports and been here for more than a year, know far better.

When the first wave of convenience store managers and other weekend warriors is cut to pieces, why it will only provoke the Pentagon (ordered by Bush) to pour in more troops. A senior officer, decent fellow, was in ‘Nam and he said yesterday that the situation here is just exactly what it was there towards the end. Tet showed the world that while the Cong could not win a decisive military victory over us, neither could we win one over them.

No one in Washington wants to bell this nasty and huge cat, so the politicians will dance around making soothing noises while the death and injury tolls soar and Bush rubs his hands together in anticipation of his huge Final Victory Parade down Pennsylvania Avenue., waving joyfully to worshipful crowds on the streets.

This is not working, folks, and nothing will make it work, believe me. There are a hundred thousand exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned men here fighting twenty five million intensely angry, motivated and very well-armed locals.

There is no question that pressures have grown to the point where there will be a serious explosion…this time not from roadside bombs or shaped-charge rockets pumped into weakly armored vehicles, but from the very volatile and outraged military itself.

Even many of the officers are becoming totally disillusioned and many are devastated by the high and continuing death tolls and, even worse, the terrible injuries and mutilations they can see among their own young soldiers. But a far-distant and totally disoriented Bush smiles and closes his eyes and ears while attending state functions and waving at increasingly empty streets. God save us all!”

Note: Here is another view on this subject, received from: http://www.lewrockwell.com/reed/reed110.html

When, one wonders, will mutiny begin among the troops in Iraq?

Recently I talked by email about the war with Jim Coyne, an airborne-infantry friend who served two tours as a gunship door-gunner in Viet Nam and then made a career in journalism. I asked, “Do they I meant the officer corps, the official military actually believe the optimistic twaddle this time around? Do they really not know what is happening?”

Jim’s response: “In my opinion, they really don't know; they may not even want to know on some level. You know as well as I, these are mission-oriented folks; can do folks; failure and its introspective handmaidens are not options to them. And in a tactical mission-oriented world our military doesn't really fail very often; in a strategic military/political world such as the Mideast and Iraq, however, we simply cannot win.

“Again, as in Viet Nam, the career officer corps salutes and marches toward the sound of battle. Eventually however (and it won't be long now) it's the grunts who will begin to revolt, first in small ways (as in the 101st in late 1968, 'No sir. We are not going up that hill again.') and then, quickly thereafter (As in 1973, "F___ you, asshole.") By that time the media may get wind of things and spin it exponentially out of control. That’s what I think.”

So do I.

We have two sharply differing versions of Iraq. One comes from the professional officers. It holds that the military is making progress and the insurgents losing ground. The Iraqi people love us and want the benefits that we will bring them. The increasing attacks by insurgents are signs of desperation. Things seem bad only because the media emphasize the negative. The officers see light at the end of the tunnel. The body counts are great; the bad guys can’t much longer take the pounding we are giving them. Onward and upward.

The other view comes from enlisted men (and from a lot of reporters before being edited to say whatever the publisher believes). These assert that the Iraqis hate us and we, them; that the insurgency is growing in strength, that we are not making progress but going backward, that our tactics don’t work and we can’t win.

The pattern is so common in recent wars as to be routine. The enlisted men know that the US is losing. The officers do not know it, or refuse to know it. This will eventually have consequences.

When men die pointlessly in a war they know cannot be won and that means nothing to them, when they realize that they are dying for the egos of draft-dodging politicians safe in Washington—they will revolt. It happened before. It will happen again. But when? Next year, I'd guess.

It is important to understand that officers and enlisted men are very different animals. For example, enlisted men do things (drive the tank, repair the helicopter) whereas officers are chiefly administrators. But the important difference is psychological. Enlisted men are blue-collar guys or technicians. They carry little ideological overburden. They want to fix the tank or finish the field exercise and then go drink beer and get laid.

Above all, they are realists. If the new radio doesn’t work, or Baghdad turns out to be a tactically irresolvable nightmare, the enlisted guys feel very little urge to pretend otherwise. This is why officers do not like reporters to be alone with the troops. And they seriously don’t.

The standard response of the officer corps is that the troops cannot see the Big Picture. (Unless of course the enlisteds say what the officers want to hear, in which case their experience on the ground lends irresistible authority). But the Big Picture rests on the Little Picture. If a soldier sees slow disaster where he is, and hears the same thing from guys he meets from everywhere else in the country, his conclusions will not be without weight. Sooner or later, on his third tour with a pregnant wife at home and seven friends killed by bombs, he will say, in the crude but expressive language of soldiers, “f___ this shit.”

By contrast, officers can’t conclude anything but the positive. There are several reasons. Career officers, first, are politicians. You don’t get promoted by saying that the higher-ups are otherworldly incompetents. An officer’s loyalty is to his career, and to the officer corps, not to the country or to his troops. If this sounds harsh, note how seldom an active-duty officer will criticize policy, yet when he retires he may suddenly discover that said policy resulted in unnecessary deaths among the troops. Oh? Then why didn’t he say so when it would have saved lives?

There is a curious moral cowardice among officers. They will fly dangerous missions over Baghdad, but they won’t say that things aren’t going well. They don’t go against their herd.

Further, and I want to say this carefully, officers often are not quite adults. They can be (and usually are) smart, competent, dedicated, and physically brave, and some are exceedingly hard men. But there is a simple-mindedness about them, an aversion to the handmaidens of introspection, a certain boyishness as in kids playing soldier. A lot of make-believe goes into an officer’s world. Enlisted men, grown up, see things as they are. Officers are issued a world by the command and then live in it.

Note the heavy emphasis of the military, meaning the officer corps, on ritual and pageantry. It is adult kid-stuff. Three thousand men building a skyscraper just show up, do their jobs, and go home. The military wants its men standing in squares, precisely at attention, thumbs along the seams, with brass perfectly polished. It wants stirring music, snappy salutes, and the haunting tones of taps, “Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full, sir.” This is justified as necessary for discipline. It isn’t. A gunny sergeant has no difficulty maintaining his authority without the hoop-la

Officers remind me of armed Moonies. There is the same earnestness, the same deliberate optimism-by-policy. Things are going well because doctrine says they are. An officer is as ideologically upbeat as Reader’s Digest, and as unreflective. This is the why they don’t learn, why the US is again flailing about, trying to fight hornets with elephant guns. “Yessir, can do, sir.” Well, sometimes, and sometimes not. It is not arrogance, more like a belief in gravitation.

And so we hear phrases that embody the eternal precedence of oo-rah! over realism: “There is no substitute for victory,” or “The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer,” or “Defeat is not an option.” But sometimes it is an inevitability.

I think Jim is right. Sooner or later, a unit won’t go up the hill again. Then it will be over.