American soldiers really need to get the hell out of Iraq. Now.

American troops are preparing to bulldoze the center of the Iraqi town of Ramadi and turn it into a mini Green Zone. According to a recent report in The New York Times, here are some signs that marines put up on the walls of their quarters:

"Be polite, be professional and have a plan to kill everyone you meet."

"Kilo Company: Killed more people than cancer."

Ramadi. Fallujah. Abu Ghraib. Mahmoudiya.
Haditha. Countless nameless other massacres.

Support the troops? I support their right to refuse to participate in state-sponsored terrorism in Iraq. I feel compassion for the vets who can't find jobs or homes or get the medical and psychiatric care they need so desperately once back in the United States. I share the outrage of the guys who signed up for the National Guard so they could help out in American communities hit by natural disasters, and got sent to Iraq instead, where they make human disasters.

I do not support what they are doing in Iraq. Never have, never will. And I will never vote for any American politician who supported this war in any way, shape or form.

Ever.

In the meantime, work continues on fourteen permanent military bases in Iraq. This despite the intensive grassroots activism by American citizens which led the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a measure prohibiting the Pentagon from using funds towards building any permanent military bases in Iraq. A similar amendment was passed by the Senate, stating that no future funds could be used to “establish permanent United States military bases in Iraq, or to exercise United States control over the oil infrastructure or oil resources of Iraq.”

So what happened? Republican staffers removed the provisions from the bills. Just like that.

American democracy in action.

As Raed says, "The perception that the U.S. intends to occupy Iraq indefinitely is one of the major reasons behind the escalating violence there."

Perception? Makes it sound like those bases are just mirages in the desert instead of mini-Americas with Subways, Pizza Huts, football fields, Hertz rent-a-car offices, swimming pools, movie theaters, bus routes, and miniature golf courses. And tens of thousands of American soldiers.

America, get OUT of Iraq.