Murtha's Nosehorns
Is it just me, or does Murtha have nosehorns?
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Why?
Sally Quinn takes a step back and actually focuses on the American soldiers in today’s WaPo.
It’s nice that someone actually takes the time to think about these young men and women. As many times as the Right uses our troops to further their liberal bashing agenda (you know, the soldiers snub Kerry, lie) , they never seem to actually want what is good for the troops.We have three choices here. All three are immoral. We can keep the status quo and gradually pull out; we can surge; or we can pull out now. When I think about those young soldiers on that plane coming back from Japan years ago, I believe pulling out now is the least immoral choice.
This is one of the truest things I’ve seen written. No matter what some would have you believe, we will eventually pull our troops out. This surge is not going to solve the civil war in Iraq, and Bush seems to not have the ability to do the things that will actually calm the violence. So, what we are left with is a simple escalation plan that will kill and injure more of our men and women, before the inevitable withdrawal.
The question everyone needs to ask themselves is why.
Why are we going to send more of our people to die?
Why can’t we just skip the deadly step and get to the inevitable point of withdrawal?
Why are the people who use “support our troops” as a political platform the least likely to truly support our troops?
Why?
Technorati Tags: Soldiers•Surge•Iraq•Escalation
Monday, January 8, 2007
Morning Roundup
•From the WaPo -
Democratic leaders who had hoped to emphasize their domestic agenda in the opening weeks of Congress have concluded that Iraq will share top billing, and they plan on aggressively confronting administration officials this week in a series of hearings.
Pushed by House members who want a quick, tough response to the Iraq strategy President Bush is expected to announce this week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has backed off from her initial assertion that nothing should detract attention from the legislation she hopes to pass in the first 100 hours of House debate.
This is what happens when you have people representing you and actually listening to you.
Contrary to what the nutosphere claims, Americans are not opposed to troop withdrawal and the Democrats realize this. Without a hardnosed stance to Bush’s escalation policy, the Democrats are in danger of alienating voters. Their domestic plan is good, but that most important issue of our time is the Iraq war. Nothing good will come out of ignoring it, while leaving it in the hands of Bush, who’s already bungled it beyond belief.
•Deb Price, a columnist at the Detroit News, has posted a column explaining that the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy is no longer needed.
W hile serving in Iraq and South Korea during his five-year Army career, Specialist Patrick English came out to about 50 fellow soldiers.
The enlisted man never had a problem, even in group showers -- which are increasingly uncommon -- with heterosexual military men who knew he was gay.
I never understood why the army allowed this discrimination. Even if soldiers were fearful of gays (which is no longer the case), that doesn’t mean that we should discriminate against them. All discrimination stems from irrational fear, yet we don’t give any of that the time of day.
And, seriously, if members of our military are fearful of gays, do we really want them protecting us from enemies? All a terrorist would have to do is blow them a kiss, and they’d, like, fall down in a fit of fear. Obviously, nothing good can come of that.
•Just in case any of you wondered, Wesley Clark is still against escalation.
The odds are that this week President Bush will announce a "surge" of up to 20,000 additional U.S. troops into Iraq. Will this deliver a "win"? Probably not. But it will distract us from facing the deep-seated regional issues that must be resolved.
The administration views a troop surge of modest size as virtually the only remaining action in Iraq that would be a visible signal of determination. More economic assistance is likely to be touted, but absent a change in the pattern of violence, infrastructure enhancement simply isn't practical.
Clark’s entire OpEd paints a picture of an administration that still doesn’t seem to understand what is happening in Iraq and how to solve the problem.
Most telling is this statement -
Vicious ethnic cleansing is underway, as various factions fight for power and survival. In this environment, security is unlikely to come from smothering the struggle with a blanket of forces -- and increasing U.S. efforts is likely to generate additional resistance, especially from Iraq's neighbors. More effective action is needed to resolve the struggle at the political level. A new U.S. ambassador might help, but the administration needs to recognize that the neoconservative vision has failed.
Uhhh, ya think?
Nothing about the war should be left to this administration… an administration who still doesn’t understand that situation in Iraq and still doesn’t understand that a military solution is not real
Technorati Tags: Bush•Surge•Iraq•Escalation•Democrats•Congress•Don‘t Ask Don‘t Tell•Gay
Sunday, January 7, 2007
NYT: The Bush Escalation Plan
The Times has published more details about Bush’s new Iraq plan - WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — President Bush’s new Iraq policy will establish a series of goals that the Iraqi government will be expected to meet to try to ease sectarian tensions and stabilize the country politically and economically, senior administration officials said Sunday.
Among these “benchmarks” are steps that would draw more Sunnis into the political process, finalize a long-delayed measure on the distribution of oil revenue and ease the government’s policy toward former Baath Party members, the officials said.
The article goes into further detail (basically the entire plan).
This entire thing feels like window dressing, meaningless things that are simply put there to take some attention away from the escalation. Does Bush actually believe any of this stuff will have any impact in Iraq? Is there anything there that is even new?
This is the same exact thing we have now, simply with more troops involved. Like, seriously, Bush is simply saying, hey, we’ll work a little harder… while we send more troops in because, basically, we still don’t get it yet.
Gag.
If this is the entire plan, please, Democrats, don’t be little bitches.
Technorati Tags: Bush•Surge•Iraq•Escalation
Pelosi VS. Escalation
The biggest (only) thing to come out of the Sunday Talk Shows would have to be Pelosi clearly stating that there would be no funding for an escalation, if Bush cannot justify it. (h/t Think Progress).
Visit Taylor Marsh’s site to view the whole video.
If the Democrats hold to this, we may finally see the first bit of oversight Bush has ever really faced. If you think Bush is a lame ducky, now, just wait until he has to try and explain his insanity to people that ultimately control the funding of said insanity.
Is it too nerdy to admit that this is, like, totally freakin’ exciting?
Other Bloggers: Tennessee Guerilla Women•Progressive Movement
Technorati Tags: Pelosi•Face The Nation•Iraq•Escalation
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Bush - Finally Sucking Across Party Lines
Are we actually seeing the start of a Congress Vs. Bush steal cage match, with Democrats and Republicans banning together?
It kinda seems that way.
WASHINGTON - President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq is running into trouble on Capitol Hill, with Republicans joining Democrats in raising eyebrows before the president even has a chance to make his case.
Next week Bush will unveil a new Iraq strategy that entails political, military and economic steps to win the war. The military solution, which has attracted the most attention and skepticism from Congress, is expected to include an increase in U.S. troops, possibly 9,000 additional troops deployed to Baghdad alone.
Technorati Tags: Congress•Bush•Escalation•Democrats•Republicans•Iraq•Surge
Friday, January 5, 2007
BREAKING- Dems' Letter To Bush
The entire letter can be found over at HuffPo.
In a recent appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General John Abizaid, our top commander for Iraq and the region, said the following when asked about whether he thought more troops would contribute to our chances for success in Iraq:
"I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the Corps commander, General Dempsey. We all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is, because we want the Iraqis to do more. It's easy for the Iraqis to rely upon to us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future. "
Rather than deploy additional forces to Iraq, we believe the way forward is to begin t he phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror. A renewed diplomatic strategy, both within the region and beyond, is also required to help the Iraqis agree to a sustainable political settlement. In short, it is time to begin to move our forces out of Iraq and make the Iraqi political leadership aware that our commitment is not open ended, that we cannot resolve their sectarian problems, and that only they can find the political resolution required to stabilize Iraq.
Finally.
I was worried the Dems wouldn’t take such a hard line, but it seems they have listened to the American people, the Iraq forces, and, like sanity, and issued a strong statement.
Let the games begin.
Technorati Tags: Congress•Pelosi•Escalation•Democrats•Dean•Iraq•Surge
Welcome To Relevancy
(Updated Below...Updated Again)
When the Country spoke last November, there was a bit of trepidation in me, boiling beneath the surface. I felt that there was a chance that Democrats could easily drop the ball that they were given, and simply become another version of the Republican do-nothing Congress.
My trepidation has been eroded, somewhat, as it seems, to me at least, that the new Congress has gotten more done in its first 24ish hours, than the last Congress did, ever.
From today’s WaPo -Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was elected America's first female speaker of the House yesterday in a raucous, bipartisan celebration of a historic breakthrough, and hours later she presided over passage of the broadest ethics and lobbying revision since the Watergate era.
Democrats took control of the House and Senate after 12 years of nearly unbroken Republican rule, with resolute calls for bipartisan comity and a pledge to move quickly on an agenda of health-care, homeland security, education and energy proposals. Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), the soft-spoken son of a hard-rock miner, took the helm of the Senate, after a closed-door session in the Capitol's stately Old Senate Chamber. But with the eyes of history riveted on her, it was Pelosi's day.
(snip)
In the House, Democrats did not skip a beat between formally taking control and getting to work on what they have called their hundred-hours agenda. Last night, the House nearly unanimously approved a broad package of internal rules changes designed to sever the cozy links that have developed between lawmakers and lobbyists.
The changes would prohibit House members or employees from knowingly accepting gifts or travel from a registered lobbyist, foreign agent or lobbyist's client. Lawmakers could no longer fly on corporate jets. In addition, congressional travel financed by outside groups would have to be approved in advance by the House ethics committee and immediately disclosed to the public.
The measures were approved 430 to 1, with only Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) voting against it. This was a remarkable change considering that House Republicans could barely pass a far weaker measure last May and ultimately did not enact any measure because they could not reach agreement with the Senate. But voters in November identified corruption as one of their primary concerns, and the House responded yesterday.
The House also saw action on some important Bush-slappin’ issues -To make it clear that such issues will have to be addressed, Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) reintroduced legislation on the new Congress's first day to mandate that NSA surveillance once again involve a warrant from a secret federal court.
"There's a long list where Congress has been abdicating their responsibility, and I suspect the leadership and the chairs will have to quickly get to work," Schiff said.
It may not be much, yet, but it’s still more than we ever saw from the Republicans.
I’m not even sure how to cover a relevant Congress that does its job.
UPDATE1: 11:25 AM
Look for a statement from Democrats on Bush’s horrible escalation plan.
UPDATE2: 12:54 PM
The letter has been sent. It’s breaking on MSNBC. Will have a link and more as it pops up online.
Technorati Tags: Congress•Pelosi•Escalation•Democrats
Thursday, January 4, 2007
In The Army Now!
(Updated below...Updated Again)
Watch out liberal newswires, here comes the Malkin, to, like, let truth prevail.
I spoke with Jordan by phone before Christmas to learn more details of his offer, which I'm not going to get into for privacy and security reasons. (He asked that his discussion be off the record.) I let him know that I had received invitations to embed with the military and planned to follow up on some of these offers concurrently with the investigation of the AP's reporting. Since our conversation, things have moved at a fast pace on the embed side. Over the holidays, my Hot Air colleague Bryan Preston and I received word that our embed applications had been approved. We have been busy preparing our families and ourselves for the journey. Our overarching goals are two-fold:
1) to report on how the troops perceive mainstream media coverage of the war (with a particular focus on the wire services relying on local stringers); and
2) to report on progress and interaction between U.S. troops and Iraqi Army trainees.
The "Jamil Hussein" story is one important item on our agenda, but not the only one. As Curt and other bloggers on this story have noted from the beginning, Jamilgate isn't just about "Jamil Hussein." Bryan and I plan to do as much on-the-ground reporting as we can to nail down unresolved questions--not only about Jamil Hussein and the Hurriya six burning Sunnis allegations, but also about the AP four burning mosque story discrepancies and the many other AP sources that our military has publicly challenged--including "Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq" and more than a dozen police officers listed by U.S. military spokesman Navy Lt. Michael Dean. There's also the issue of detained AP photographer Bilal Hussein. And we are looking forward to reporting first-hand on the security situation in Iraq outside the so-called "Green Zone" (International Zone) and talking to as many American and Iraqi Army troops with insights on these and other broader matters.
Please, Malkin, enlighten us with your fair and unbiased reporting.
UPDATE1: 12:11 PM
Jamil Hussein has won the first Battle of Fakraq as he stuns the Malkin Brigade by announcing his existence!
UPDATE2: 9:11 PM
Oooopsie, it looks like Jamil Hussein is really, really real.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The Interior Ministry acknowledged Thursday that an Iraqi police officer whose existence had been denied by the Iraqis and the U.S. military is in fact an active member of the force, and said he now faces arrest for speaking to the media.
Ministry spokesman Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, who had previously denied there was any such police employee as Capt. Jamil Hussein, said in an interview that Hussein is an officer assigned to the Khadra police station, as had been reported by The Associated Press.
But still, Malkin will be on the scene to convince us that Iraq is really a happy place with prancing bunnies and, like, sand creatures that frolic in the dunes. You know, nothing like the war zone that the liberal media would have us believe it is.
Other Bloggers: Firedog Lake
Technorati Tags: Michelle Malkin•Iraq•Jamil Hussein
Morning Roundup
Ahhh, the drunkenness of New Years is over, and it’s time to start full time blogging again.
The funniest news of the day - Judge Blahblahtano on Fox and Friends totally just said “Ghost Ride The Whip”. What a honkey.
In what has to be the most.disgusting.visual.image.ever, The Rude Pundit takes on Nutterdamus. A couple of nights ago, Robertson celebrated the new year by opening his sticky Bible to the less worn New Testament and yanking his meat to the Gospel of John, the crucifixion scene, his mind a miasma of images from the words of the ancients and the film of the Gibson, Christ's pain and screaming giving him something not unakin to a full erection, his cock like a spitting camel at the end. And God spoke to him, and God told him a horrible thing, but something that, to his mind, was just an inevitability, like the nailing of the Son of God.
Are we all puking are cuts out, yet?
• Yesterday, ABC reported on a report released by the Union of Concerned Scientists, which shows how ExxonMobil has attempted to confuse the American public on the issue of Global Warming, basically by funding Global Warming naysayer, making it appear to the public that there is some sort of scientific debate about Global Warming.
From ABC News - Jan. 3, 2007 — A new report details what it calls an "enormously successful" disinformation campaign by ExxonMobil that used tobacco-industry tactics to fund groups who cast doubts and deceive the public on the scientific consensus regarding global warming.
The report was released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a nonprofit environmental advocacy group based in Massachusetts.
Anybody with half a brain already knew this, and it’s not at all surprising, seeing as ExxonMobil’s livelihood is threatened by Global Warming, but the biggest question still remains, why are others on the Right embracing this idea that Global Warming isn’t real? The only thing I can think of is that they got scooped by the Left on this issue, and we all know that their Party loyalty will never allow them to admit that they were wrong and the other side was right.
I certainly hope that isn’t the reason, but it’s the only thing left that I can possibly think of.
Other Bloggers: Floating Ark•Blue Climate•Dude, Where‘s My Enlightenment?
• Living in Metro Detroit, it’s sometimes hard to realize that there are crazy gay haters everywhere, including my own state, who are so unbelievably insane, they think that simply supporting a high school gay/straight alliance club means you are from teh S@t@n.
From The Bay Area Report - One day a girl from the middle school came in, and Yale mentioned to her how she hadn't seen her or her friends in a while.
"She said, 'So and so's mom said she couldn't come in here again.' We assumed she was grounded," recalled Yale. But the girl's friend told Yale that "her mom said you guys have the gay store and she can't come in here."
Yale's sin, at least to her neighbors, was sponsoring the homecoming parade float built by the GSA. Her tacit acceptance had provoked a backlash. The community was reportedly shunning her business.
After the parade in late September, sales at her small store plummeted. Many of her shoppers' parents, upset at her decision to sponsor the GSA float, no longer allowed their children to come in to the shop, said Yale.
"All summer long we had so many kids in here it wasn't funny. We would have to kind of limit how many kids could come in at once," said Yale of the store she opened just before Christmas in 2005. "Now if we get 10 kids in a week we are doing good. We'll probably have to close."
There is still so much bigotry out there. Michigan is a funny state, with its liberal Detroit area and its whacky conservative “backwoods”, but still I’m shocked to see this going on in my own state. There’s an entire city that needs to take a step back and look at its own actions, and realize that they are part of the problem, not the solution.
Technorati Tags: Pat Robertson•Global Warming•Environmentalism•Homosexuality
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Virgil Goode: Racism and Republicans
From USATODAY -
A letter I sent in early December was written in response to hundreds of e-mails from constituents upset about Rep.-elect Keith Ellison's decision to use the Quran in connection with his congressional swearing-in. Their communications followed media reports that Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat, had said that he would swear on the Quran. He repeated that at a gathering of Muslims in Detroit on Dec. 26.
I wonder if more Republicans will now come out against Goode and his use of racism to gain support for an immigration plan.
Doubtful… I wonder why….
Technorati Tags: Virgil Goode•Racist Republicans
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Gitmo Again
What are we going to do about the innocent people held at Gitmo, while making sure we don’t release the dangerous ones?
Hey, the American court system seems to be the best at doing this in the world. But fuck that, these people are Muslims!
Technorati Tags: War On Terror•Guantanamo•Gitmo
Morning Roundup
There’s nothing more annoying than blogging during a slow news week. Here we go -
CNN has a poll up where you can vote for the top news stories of 2006. My first would have to be the shifting of attitudes towards the Iraq war, which single handedly lead us into my pick for number 2, the resounding defeat of Republicans in the midterm elections.
Gordon Adams and John Diamond have an Opinion piece on escalation, in today’s WaPo. It makes several good points on why escalation would be bad policy.Army Chief of Staff Gen. Pete Schoomaker, The Post, the New York Times, and many Democrats and Republicans have converged over the past month in support of a serious expansion of the U.S. Army -- a permanent addition of 40,000 to 90,000 over the current ceiling of 507,000 troops.
This proposal is a bad idea. It is irrelevant to the stresses the Army is experiencing in Iraq. It would build enormous long-term costs into the defense budget, and it presumes a role in the world for the U.S. military that the voters emphatically opposed in November.
AlterNet has a post up detailing the nuttiest nutter moments of 2006. How extreme were conservative commentators in their remarks this year? How about calls to nuke the Middle East and an allegation that a "gay … mafia" used the congressional page program as its own "personal preserve." Right-wing rhetoric documented by Media Matters for America included the nonsensical (including Rush Limbaugh's claim that America's "obesity crisis" is caused by, among other things, our failure to "teach [the poor] how to butcher a -- slaughter a cow to get the butter, we gave them the butter"), the offensive (such as right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel's question about "Barack Hussein Obama": Is he "a man we want as president when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?"), and the simply bizarre (such as William A. Donohue's claim that some Hollywood stars would "sodomize their own mother in a movie"). Since there were so many outrageous statements, we included a list of honorable mentions along with the top 11, which, if not for Ann Coulter, we might have limited to 10.
Read it. It’s some good ish.
Technorati Tags: Iraq•Troop Escalation•Nutters
It's Latenight, yo
Because I’m hopped up on Rockstar - and freakin’ bored - I present to you the dorkycool news of the week.
Technorati Tags: archaeology
Friday, December 29, 2006
The Death Of Saddam and The Creepy Right
(Updated Below)
Let me start off this post with the obligatory “Saddam was an evil, evil man who did evil, evil things”, so the nutters don’t accuse me of an evil lovefest, or whatever other strange ad hom attacks they can think of to label the left, instead of actually debating their ideas. With that said, it seems quite set in stone that Saddam will be hung by tomorrow, giving the Bush administration what could, perhaps, be their final shining moment in regards to the Iraq war.
Watching Fox news (hey, I take that bullet so you don’t have too) and the Conservative blogosphere (that one too) cover this with such glee is quite creepy. There is no doubt in my mind that there will be Champaign (and pill) popping in many Conservative camps, once this execution has taken place. The fact that a group of people are so happy, so incredibly giddy, about the death of another human being, cannot be described as anything but a sign of insanity. To get a hardon over the destruction of another human life is intrinsically evil.
UPDATE1 1:16 AM
And it's done.
With all the effort, all the lives lost, all the money spent in the fight to get to this exact moment (well this exact moment a few hours ago… yeah, yeah, I’m behind), shouldn’t I feel more… something? I can honestly say it wasn’t worth all the pain and suffering of our soldiers, all the deaths, all the past and future destruction as this war drags on until Bush is no longer president.
Technorati Tags: Iraq•Saddam•Nutters
Ice Shelf Breaks - Nothing To See Here
Those evil liberals must have hiked up to the frigid North (God knows they didn’t take a car… I mean, they are just that radical) and cut away at a giant ice shelf, making it seem as though their excuse for “normal” weather patterns - Global Warming - is causing huge climate changes. All so that they can stick it to their evil nemesis, big business, by making them adhere to regulations.TORONTO, Ontario (AP) -- A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada's Arctic, scientists said.
The mass of ice broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 800 kilometers (497 miles) south of the North Pole, but no one was present to see it in Canada's remote north.
Contrary to the flat out lies by the right, Global Warming is real, and there is a scientific consensus that agrees. As GW spurred environmental changes occur at incredibly fast rates around us, they will eventually come to terms with this fact. My only fear is that it will be entirely too late. Prevention is the key here, yet I don’t think enough people are ready for that step. I hope that, by the time they are, our world isn’t completely destroyed. Maybe with the new Congress something will get done, but I highly doubt it.
Technorati Tags: Global Warming•Climate Change•Ice Shelf•Environment
LIEberman and Reality: No Longer BFF
Ripped From MuseworldIn case anyone was wondering, Joe LIEberman is still at odds with reality.
I've just spent 10 days traveling in the Middle East and speaking to leaders there, all of which has made one thing clearer to me than ever: While we are naturally focused on Iraq, a larger war is emerging. On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States. Iraq is the most deadly battlefield on which that conflict is being fought. How we end the struggle there will affect not only the region but the worldwide war against the extremists who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001.
Because of the bravery of many Iraqi and coalition military personnel and the recent coming together of moderate political forces in Baghdad, the war is winnable. We and our Iraqi allies must do what is necessary to win it.
This entire Lieberman OpEd, which is basically LIEberman giving a BJ to the troop escalation camp (is there any doubt now that Bush is going to call for escalation), stinks of some real reality dodging- we even get a 9/11 comparison. Simply, LIEberman sounds like unhinged Bush (circa 2005).
The interesting angle of this is how the American public will receive this OpEd and if they will believe that we are, once again, fighting al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups in Iraq, instead of being completely stuck in the middle of warring Iraqi groups fighting for power. My guess is that there will be a resounding rejection of this escalation plan, and when this happens, I hope they realize that LIEberman is not a Democrat and that he should not reflect on the party.
Technorati Tags: Iraq•Bush•Troop Escalation•Lieberman•Troop Surge
Other Bloggers: ConnecticutBLOG•Brillian At Breakfast
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Tweaking The Site
I've been playing with this blogger beta all day, adding fun things and tweaking the site.
There's a chance that I messed something up, badly, so if anyone notices anything wrong, please let me know. I'm only running IE, Netscape, and Firefox so it may all look horrible on other browsers. It sure wouldn't be the first time.
Strange Waiting Game
(UPDATED BELOW)
I feel like all this behind-closed-doors “Iraq policy crafting“ is nothing more than political games.
CRAWFORD, Texas - Already weeks in the making, President Bush's new war plan is being burnished with the assistance of top military and diplomatic advisers as critics of the war urge the Democratic Congress to resist any call for a large military buildup in Iraq.
It's unclear whether Bush will signal his desires or just seek further consultation when he meets at his Texas ranch on Thursday with Vice President Dick Cheney and other members of the National Security Council.
Downplaying expectations, the White House says it's a "non-decisional" gathering. Yet advisers have set the stage for a presidential speech after the first of the year in which Bush will lay out a new U.S. strategy in Iraq where violence could be sparked by the execution of Saddam Hussein.
We all know that Bush is going to call for more troops, so why all these weird consultations and talks? Bush fully thinks that there is an enemy in Iraq that has to be defeated for the country to become stable. Because of this flawed thinking, he believes that sending more troops will solve the problem by quickly defeating the enemy and bringing peace to the country.
How fucking weird is that?
I think this quote from the article hits it dead on -
Sending more troops only increases the Iraqis' dependence on U.S. forces and allows them to delay making the painful political compromises needed to end the violence, said Larry Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense. He said part of Gates' mission in Iraq was to get military leaders to support an increase in troops.
"You can put a Marine or soldier on every street corner in Baghdad, but unless the reconciliation process begins, it's not going to make any difference," Korb said.
UPDATE1 11:35 AM
The Raw Story has a post up linking McCain’s sagging poll numbers to his support for the “troop surge” idea. It’s an interesting read, but in the end it all works out like this:
If this troop surge idea happens (it will) and if it actually works (it won’t), then Republicans will be hailed as some sort of heroes, which leads to a problem for the Republicans. This idea is completely unpopular, causing very few Republicans to support this troop surge policy, out of fear that it could be political suicide.
All this leads me to believe that we are about to face some interesting political times.
Grab a beer and watch the games begin.
Technorati Tags: Iraq•Bush•Strange Republican Insanity•McCain•Troop Surge
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Hillarious
Hahaha, if anti-drug commercials really were like this, my life would be so much more interesting.
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