A compilation of news you may or may not have seen or read regarding America's most disastrous war

Good news! George W. Bush has given himself the power to seize the assets of anyone undermining the (puppet) Iraqi government! Like, you know, famous war critic Sen. Hillary Clinton, who only two weeks ago was ripped by a Cheney protege at the Pentagon for giving the enemy succor by asking the Pentagon about contingencies for a drawdown of troops. (Cheney backed up his protege this week: "I thought it was a good letter.") Or, you know, you. For reading this.

Otherwise, while it hit 120 degrees in Baghdad again all this past week, and most of the city suffered from no drinking water due to the mere trickle of daily electricity available for running the pumps, back in Washington it wasn't the heat, it was the stupidity: Administration parrots, and much of the corporate US media (an overlapping set), lauded July's decreased US soldier death toll as evidence the (cough) escalation (cough) "surge" was "working." Problem is, things always slow down in 120 degree heat, war included, and not only have troop deaths declined in past Julys, but July 2007 was up nearly 50 percent over July 2006. And yes, some of those same pundits were snarking about the Iraqi parliament adjourning for the entire month, even as Congress and the President did exactly the same thing--and while they've destroyed lots of infrastructure in this country, too, they still have air conditioning.

Before everyone fled D.C., the House this week voted 224-194 to give GIs breaks between Iraq deployments. The margin was not enough to overcome Bush's veto. The House also passed 399-24 Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA)'s bill to ban both permanent military US bases and US control of Iraqi oil. Before you get too excited over the lopsided vote, however, remember that there is absolutely no downside to a "yes" vote for electorate-conscious Republicans trying to distance themselves from a war they've been rubber-stamping. Even if the Senate passes the exact same bill, there's no way in Baghdad that George W. Bush will ever sign it. How they vote to override the veto would be a lot more instructive, unless it's clear the less electorally vulnerable Senate will do the dirty work for them.

New British PM Gordon Brown, visiting the White House, announced that the UK will not delay its Iraq exit in consideration of America or Bush. The Congressional Budget Office weighed in with a real shocker--that the war is now expected to cost over $1 trillion over ten years. Given that it's cost over a half trillion in its first five, and that famed economist Joseph Stiglitz co-authored a study last year estimating a $1-2 trillion long-term cost then, well, you don't say?

Rep. Henry Waxman's ever-busy House Oversight Committee held hearings on waste and fraud in the construction of the (cough) Taj Mahal (cough) new US embassy in Baghdad. Most alarming in the litany of worker abuses and contractual extravagance was a former worker's testimony that at least 52 Filipino nationals had been kidnapped to work, essentially, as slave labor at the construction site. The office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction released results of an audit showing that, of 24 Bechtel projects in a $1.8 billion 2004 contract, 13 were never finished (and some never started); there was "limited" oversight by USAID, the granting agency; and only 59 percent of taxpayer money went to actual construction, with the rest going to "security and Bechtel fees." Oh, and a GAO report revealed that the Pentagon cannot account for 190,000 guns shipped to Iraq since the start of the war.

One last item before I join everyone else and leave Washington: Dick Cheney, in his media rounds this week, allowed as to how the September report due to Congress on the "surge" will show "significant progress." No surprise there: His office probably wrote it already.

Back in the real heat, the war didn't entirely take a break, the euphoria from the Iraqi national soccer team's unexpected Asian Cup win notwithstanding: 142 Iraqis were killed or found dead in the Baghdad area last Wednesday alone. All six ministers from the largest Sunni political party, the Iraqi Accordance Front, quit Prime Minister al-Maliki's Cabinet last week over Maliki's refusal to address their concerns over how the Shiite-dominated government is treating Sunnis. A report by US advisors to an Iraqi corruption agency echoed some of their concerns, saying that Iraqi government corruption is endemic and "remains untouchable," and singled out Maliki: "the PM's office has on a number of occasions intervened on cases involving political supporters." Sounds sort of like another chief executive we know. Meanwhile, most Iraqis aren't exactly sharing in the largesse of the American taxpayer. Oxfam and a number of other NGOs jointly announced that some eight million Iraqis (well over one-third of what's left of the country) now need urgent humanitarian aid.

Dahr Jamail, in an essay on the surreal disconnect between life in Iraq and life in America, cites some sobering recent statistics: A WHO report that 70 percent of Iraqis now have no access to clean water, 80 percent "lack effective sanitation," and 54 percent of Iraqis now live on less than $1 a day.

For a couple of months now, the US military in Baghdad has been buttressing White House spin by trying to blame everything bad that it can (to the extent that the liberal media just doesn't report all the good news coming from Iraq) on Iran. The idea is to promote the notion that Iran is an integral combatant in the (cough) illegal occupation of Iraq (cough) Global War On Terror, and so when President (cough) Cheney (cough) Bush decides to launch a military strike on Iran, he can do so without consulting Congress on the claim that it's all the same war and Congress has already authorized it. This week's sublime contribution to the genre: blaming the "improved aim" of insurgent mortar attacks on their "training in Iran." Note that this is fundamentalist Sunni mortar fire we're talking about here. Trained in fundamentalist Shiite Iran. Riiiiiggghhht.

For weeks, Turkey has been massing its troops on the northern (Kurdish) border of Iraq, lobbing shells across the border and threatening to invade in pursuit of Turkish Kurdish separatists using Iraqi Kurdish territory as a safe haven. It's a sticky situation for the US: A NATO ally, armed to the teeth with US weaponry, going after America's most loyal allies in Iraq. What to do? Well-connected conservative columnist Robert Novak (of Valerie Plame notoriety) claimed this week to have the answer: the US is working covertly with Turkey to suppress the Kurdish guerrillas so as to forestall Turkish invasion. If this is true, it raises an obvious and depressing question: How many times is the US going to sell out the Kurds, anyway?