Note: Original tile: "A fond farewell"--rejected for saccharin overload.

I made my New Year's resolution to myself to leave Daily Kos--not because I dislike the place (although like anyone who's been here a while, I do have my gripes) but because I waste way too much time here, and there are other, more important things I should be doing with my time. Since I have an addictive personality it's all or nothing for me. I've been getting over a flu for the past several days, and spending my fairly useless energies commenting here more than ever before in preparation for making my clean break.  I know that GBCW diaries aren't given much respect around here, but this is something I need to do for my own sense of closure and in order to maintain my resolve. I promise to try to uphold at least a one or two of the traditions of a classic GBCW diary.

This is according to the now indispensible Empire Notes, http://www.empirenotes.org/.

You may have already read about the hospital closing in Fallujah.  But it appears that they have also shut down the main hospital in Najaf.  Reports of coalition soldiers shooting at ambulances, not only in Fallujah, as also in Sadr City, have also been confirmed.

The Spanish garrison was charged with the task of closing down the hospital in Najaf. I just wonder if this in any way hastened Spain's decision to withdraw its troops from Iraq?

WTF can the Coalition commanders be thinking? Is this any way to stem a popular revolt?

Here's just a part of Rahul Mahajan's preliminary report on this situation:

But the main story goes well beyond this. It's a story about hospital closings. Again unreported in English-language media is what happened with the main hospital in Fallujah. Fallujah is almost entirely on the eastern bank of the Euphrates; the main hospital is on the western bank. From the beginning of the assault on Fallujah, the American forces closed down the bridge; sources we interviewed said that anything that tried to cross the bridge was destroyed. Nobody could make it to the hospital, so the hospital staff voluntarily left the hospital, taking whatever supplies they could, and started treating people at what had previously been a small three-room outpatient clinic across the river (on the same side as the town). For two weeks, doctors were doing surgery on the ground because there weren't enough beds, with only the supplies and equipment they could transport, and the main hospital stood closed. You can say the Americans didn't close it on purpose, but no doctor who believes in the Hippocratic oath is going to sit in a hospital that nobody can reach while across the river people die in droves. Call it another form of "collateral damage." I 'm told that yesterday the controls on the bridge were eased up (not eliminated) and perhaps the hospital can resume functioning shortly.

What's been done in Najaf is even worse. I have this at secondhand. Pratap Chatterjee, an award-winning journalist who works for CorpWatch and has done a lot of reporting on corporate crimes, interviewed a doctor who was posted to Najaf. The doctor was working at the al-Sadr Teaching Hospital in Najaf (formerly the Saddam Hussein Teaching Hospital). This is a major institution, with 200 doctors; often, doctors come from Baghdad for training. On April 5 or 6 soldiers from the Spanish-language garrison that was posted to Najaf came to the hospital and told doctors they were shutting it down. They gave doctors two hours to leave, allowing them only to take personal items, not medical equipment. The hospital is sort of between Najaf and Kufa, and near the military base where the garrison is posted; the reason given for the closing was "security." Imagine the havoc caused by closing the biggest hospital in a major city for a week. The death toll due to this will never be figured into the total equation of the "liberation."

According to the immensely readable Steve Perry, he did.  I don't how many here read the "Bush Wars" blog, but now that Steve is finally back from a long hiaitus on that blog, I recommend it highly.  His take on what went down in Iowa is by far the best I've read. Anyway, here's the relevant quote:

Clark elected to stay out of the Iowa race, but he was nonetheless an important player there. A disproportionate amount of the dirt dished in the caucus race originated with the Clark campaign's dirt-digger, the "opposition researcher" Chris Lehane. In particular, one New York Times profile of Lehane revealed that Dean's people hold him responsible for the single most damaging bit of anti-Dean agitprop, an old appearance on Canadian television in which Dean derided Iowa's caucus system.

Here's the rest of the article:

http://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/sperry/

Please check out the rest of the article.  It does a much better job than I ever could of articulating the discomfort that many of us feel with Clark. And it's also funny as hell.

Btw, I've been one of the very few Kerry defenders on this site, and so it's strange to admit this and I'm sure it points to a perverse streak in my own psyche, but I personally am much more favorably disposed to Dean now that he lost big in Iowa.  I actually found his Wrestlemania-esque non-concession speech to be rather charming.  But then again, I like several of the candidates (I even cried while watching Gephardt's tearful withdrawal from the race).  And that is, I am sure, what killed Dean's chances the most in Iowa, Clark's agitprop notwithstanding.  What Iowans (and I) couldn't stand was the aura of inevitibility that Dean's campaign, with all its money and endorsements, seemed to boast. What voters really can't stand is to feel that the jig is up before they have had a chance to cast their ballots. I'm just hoping for a tight race that excites and eventually unifies the Democrats around a solid candidate (and that the candidate isn't Clark or Lieberman).