Today’s reading, from the London Review of Books: What I Heard About Iraq by Eliot Weinberger.

Over the past few years, I’ve become desensitized to all the misinformation that Our Beloved Administration! has been feeding the American people. Each soundbite, each “made for TV” lie that comes out of this White House outrages me just a little bit. Time after time, I’ve learned to internalize the anger and disappointment each day of news brings as if all of this were just “politics as usual”.

Then, you go and read a distilled set of rememberances like the one above, and all the anger comes flooding back, in concentrated form.

It’s true that the people of Iraq want to be free. Before our liberation, many wanted Saddam removed from power. But the way it was done — forcibly, with bombs, tanks and troops — gave them a new situation: a urban guerrilla warfare between insurgents and mostly American forces. Kind of like trading a sack of manure for a bag of crap, which, after all is still a pile of shit.

Now, they want to be free from what is seen as American occupation, regardless of how many countries are involved. And, most of all, they would like to have reliable security, electricity that comes on for longer than two hours a day, and reliable running water. Meanwhile, underneath the plans to slice ‘n’ dice Social Security, I am hearing that we are already looking to “do something about Iran”, which, arguably, was a bigger problem than Iraq ever was.

Let me add my own things I’ve heard about Iraq to the list, most of which I’ve heard around the water cooler:

• I’ve heard that, while this war may have been a mistake, “it’s better now that Saddam is out of power.”

• I’ve heard that the problem with America is that we’re pussies, and that we should fight this insurgency to win it, even if that means destroying mosques and killing orphans.

In the meantime, Our Beloved Administration! continues to plug on, like Sherman marching to the sea, burning everything in his path that gets in his way.