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(Photo credit for this heartbreaking shot to Damir Sagolij/Reuters.)
I am shaking with rage at the moment. American soliders do not abandon their own. Unless, of course, someone orders them to do so. Which is exactly what happened when the Bush Administration -- via it's envoy Zalmay Khalilzad -- agreed to lift the eight day long blockade and search and rescue mission for the captured American soldier...on the demand and order of the Iraqi government.
You read me correctly, the US envoy in Iraq has decided that our US military personnel should take orders from the Iraqi government and abandon one of our soldiers to the Mahdi Army. That this decision occurred abruptly after Stephen Hadley's visit to Baghdad yesterday raises a whole host of questions in my mind -- and the press had better damn well be asking for some answers from the Bush Administration today.
The move lifted a near siege that had stood at least since last Wednesday. U.S. military police imposed the blockade after the kidnapping of an American soldier of Iraqi descent. The soldier's Iraqi in-laws said they believed he had been abducted by the Mahdi Army as he visited his wife at her home in the Karrada area of Baghdad, where U.S. military checkpoints were also removed as a result of Maliki's action.The crackdown on Sadr City had a second motive, U.S. officers said: the search for Abu Deraa, a man considered one of the most notorious death squad leaders. The soldier and Abu Deraa both were believed by the U.S. military to be in Sadr City.
The Bush Administration has been encouraging Iraqi-Americans to become more involved in the "liberation" of Iraq. The American military needs more soldiers with regional language fluency, and Iraqi Americans have an understandable interest and personal stake -- with many relatives still living in the war torn nation -- in working to make things better. The American soldier who was captured is of Iraqi-American descent, he was wearing the uniform of the United States...and we have abandoned him to Moqtada Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and Sadr City's rage as of yesterday.
We do not abandon our own.
Unless, of course, you are the Bush Administration -- which, apparently, has decided to let the Iraqi government start calling the shots for the US military. I hear George Bush will be on Limbaugh's show -- wonder if he'll be asked about his decision to abandon a US soldier to Al-Sadr's militia, with their penchant for torture, on the orders of the Iraqi head of state?
The corporate media had better start asking questions about this, because the American military taking orders to abandon one of their own from a foreign government is something that every single person with friends and family in Iraq right now will want to know about...immediately. How many American soldiers are we now willing to leave to the mercies of Al-Sadr's Army and other torture-wielding militants with no love for the American military presence in the name of propping up Maliki's government? George Bush does not get a pass on this one. Period. The time for accountability is now.
(H/T to Andrew Sullivan on this story. Appalling does not begin to describe this. The NYTimes has more.)
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Woo!
GOTV! and Fitz!
They were a lot more persistent in the search for those WMD’s.
And Kerry shold apologize according to the abandoner-in-chief?
Now that I’ve read this post, I’m dumbfounded.
What the fuck is going on? We invade a sovereign nation that didn’t attack us, stand by as it spirals into civil war, and essentially cede control of our own armed forces to a foreign government.
It’s suicide. My God, these people have to be made to stop.
So…… when al-Maliki stands up, Bush stands down?
Excellent choice of topics, and a very good post, Christy. This abandonment of one of our troops needs to be pounded until the MSM picks up on it. Not only for the effect on turnout but also because being accused of caving in to Maliki will really piss off the Bastard in Chief.
Oh, Christy, what are you going on about? Don’t you know we aren’t supposed to notice what President Baby is doing to our troops? It’s John Kerry who hates the troops!
“..and the press had better damn well be asking for some answers from the Bush Administration today..”
No No Christy, the press is too busy w/ Kerry’s verbal blunder today (and probably the immediate future), to pay attention to this. They are lazy little lapdogs who rather recite J.K’s miscue ad nauseum than ask hard questions about a missing soldier.
This is the story of the last week. We are abandoning an American soldier because an Iraqi President, who is only in his position due to the sacrifice of American soldiers, told us to.
Hammer this now and for the rest of the week!
But we all forget…this particular soldier was of Iraqi decent; married an Iraqi student (winning the hearts and minds, quite literally); thereby disobeying his superiors orders; and therefore is just one of those pieces of collateral damage.
tommy yum @ 5
Thanks for this, Christy.
tommy yum, this should provoke screaming from both sides, most especially the military.
OT– Mrs. Dick deriding Kerry and the dems with Mrs. Greenspan…
I’ve spotlighted this post.
I first heard about this on Countdown last night. KO, as usual, on top of the important stuff. He showed a clip of Rumsfeld being asked about the checkpoints being abandoned. Rumsfeld looked confused and rambled on for a few minutes about wanting to “verify” information before commenting. He either is so above the fray that he doesn’t bother getting briefings about actual war developments anymore, or he was acting and knew all about it and also knew what a ****storm this will be and doesn’t want to get near the story with a six foot pole. Either way shows the lack of any kind of leadership, moral decency, (fill in your own noun) the man has.
Tommy, I’ve hit the first 10 in the GA - regional print and TV categories.
Going back for more, now.
CNN is getting peppered with this one. Daryn Kagan included.
Angie @ 12
Actually, Angie, this is quite on topic. If we had to pick one reason why we’re in the quagmire today, I’d say it’s because the MSM treats conversations like the one between Mrs. Dick and Mrs. Greenspan as if they were worth paying attention to.
The nation has lost its collective mind, and people are dying. I think John Kerry should apologize for that.
George Bush is a liar, a bully, a cheat and a thief. But most of all Mr. President, you are a coward. All of your miserable life you have weaseled yourself out of your mistakes. No more. Day of reckoning commences Nov. 7, 2006. And will continue for the rest of your life.
Our President abandoned American soldiers and their loved ones a long, long time ago. This abhorrent and cowardly behavior began when Bush used his family connections to avoid combat service in the Vietnam war.
Lynne Cheney on MSNBC about the RNC Tennessee ad that was pulled.
“I haven’t seen the ad”
Right. You’ve picked up every single detail about the midterms but you haven’t seen the ad. What a lying sack of…
off topic, but this needs looking into FAST
raw story claims in this article http://abcnews.go.com/Politics.....?id=156238
the house is refusing exit polls!
I don’t have time to read the article, the exit poll thing is not on the first page
BUT IF THERE ARE NO EXIT POLLS WE WILL LOOSE
THAT is a fact
Just got EPUed, but the comment is largely pertinent to this thread as well.
In the Ominous Department, William Lind had a post yesterday on Defense in the National Interest, among other places in which he lays out the calamitous down-side risks of taking on Iran.
http://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_10_31_06. htm
I connected both Odom’s and Lind’s pieces of yesterday on my blog, quoting the following from Lind:
An attack on Iran will not be an invasion with ground troops. We don’t have enough of those left to invade Ruritania. It will be a “package” of air and missile strikes, by U.S. forces or Israel. If Israel does it, there is a possibility of nuclear weapons being employed. But Israel would prefer the U.S. to do the dirty work, and what Israel wants, Israel usually gets, at least in Washington.
. . .
Many of the consequences of a war with Iran are easy to imagine. Oil would soar to at least $200 per barrel if we could get it. Gas shortages would bring back the gas lines of 1973 and 1979. Our European alliances would be stretched to the breaking point if not beyond it. Most people outside the Bushbubble can see all this coming.
What I fear no one forsees is a substantial danger that we could lose the army now deployed in Iraq.
. . .
The danger arises because almost all of the vast quantities of supplies American armies need come into Iraq from one direction, up from Kuwait and other Gulf ports in the south. If that supply line is cut, our forces may not have enough stuff, especially fuel, to get out of Iraq. American armies are incredibly fuel-thirsty, and though Iraq has vast oil reserves, it is short of refined oil products. Unlike Guderian’s Panzer army on its way to the Channel coast in 1940, we could not just fuel up at local gas stations.
There are two ways our supply lines from the south could be cut if we attack Iran. The first is by Shiite militias including the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades, possibly supported by a general Shiite uprising and, of course, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (the same guys who trained Hezbollah so well).
The second danger is that regular Iranian Army divisions will roll into Iraq, cut our supply lines and attempt to pocket us in and around Baghdad. Washington relies on American air power to prevent this, but bad weather can shut most of that air power down.
Unfortunately, no one in Washington and few people in the U.S. military will even consider this possibility. Why? Because we have fallen victim to our own propaganda. Over and over the U.S. military tells itself, “We’re the greatest! We’re number one! No one can defeat us. No one can even fight us. We’re the greatest military in all of history!”
It’s bull. The U.S. armed forces are technically well-trained, lavishly resourced Second Generation militaries. They are being fought and defeated by Fourth Generation opponents in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They can also be defeated by Third Generation enemies who can observe, orient, decide and act more quickly than can America’s vast, process-ridden, Powerpoint-enslaved military headquarters. They can be defeated by strategy, by stratagem, by surprise and by preemption. Unbeatable militaries are like unsinkable ships. They are unsinkable until someone or something sinks them.
What is truly terrifying is that I don’t think we can rule out the possibility that Bush-Cheney are planning to Intentionally use the 150K military people in Iraq as bait to suck Iran into a conflict that they can then claim justifies the use of nuclear weapons. First they attack known nuke installations in Iran with conventional ordnance. The mullahs have to respond in order to demonstrate their patriotism, and do so along the lines predicted by Lind. Bush-Cheney then come back with Round 2 which includes nukes.
Sure, this might set back Iran’s nuclear dreams by a few years or even decades. Then again it may not, if you take into consideration that our knowledge of Iran’s nuclear operations might be just as reliable as our comparable knowledge of Iraq’s was in 2003. (/snark) But one thing we can all agree on is that the identification and evaluation of down-side risks has not been a Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld strong point these past six years.
It remains difficult for me to think Maliki doesn’t serve at Bush’s pleasure.
GAAAAAH! Is it the fucking Lynn Cheney hour on MSNBC this morning? She of the “I’m not here to talk about politics, just to push my children’s book” whining on CNN is now on MSNBC talking about politics?
essentially cede control of our own armed forces to a foreign government
Isn’t this pretty close to the argument they were using for not joining the ICC agreement? That it would put our military under foreign command? And also (unstated) that it would prevent war crime charges against our government
idiotsleaders?Geroge, Dick and Donny are earning those trials from this incident alone.
Where does Maliki maintain his office? The Green Zone?
christy -
part of me hates to even bring these two issues up… but in a commitment to a search for truth, i have to ask… is there independent confirmation that there actually is a captured usa soldier in sadr city? some iraqis are claiming that it was propaganda to justify the siege. i trust these sources as much as i do pentagon sources - which is not at all.
so i am left unsure of what is really happening here…
in case there is any doubt, of course i don’t think that a soldier should be abandoned. that is wrong, wrong, wrong. but, maybe so is a siege which interferes with the lives of 3 million people - including their ability to get to the hospital. i think there are many other ways to attempt to rescue which is more respectful of the lifes of 3 million iraqis and doesn’t depend on collective punishment.
Christy Hardin Smith @ 22
you make me glad i don’t have cable. and i mourn for those who do.
Christy Hardin Smith @ 22
Her faux book tour doesn’t pass the smell test.
click.
Over and out, to CNN ; )
Kerry did apologize, sorta.
Kerry sorta apologizes
In the real news:
Christy’s allowing Andrew Sullivan to spin this as Bush Abandon’s our own troops. That’s fine with me. The NYT story that Christy links to (and the prior post with Juan Cole link) show that the Bush Administration did not “agree” with the al-Maliki government to lift the checkpoints in Sadr City. Instead, they were forced to acquisce after al-Malike forced their hand.
It appears that Sadr’s forces threatened a general strike and that al-Maliki announced the Americans would withdraw and then told the Americans to withdraw after the fact. The Bush folks are trying to spin this as an agreement, and Hadley was probably dispatched to save whatever is left of the illusion of US influence over the Iraq government. Funny thing about telling someone they have “sovereignty.” They start to believe it.
In the meantime, Senator “it’s about me” managed to push an important NYT article out of the way yesterday. That article yesterday quoted several folks trying to get their views into the Bush bubble that its time to start thinking about radical alternatives. From withdrawal to redeployment, but no more illusions. However, there are even calls for a US led military coup, (how many did we sponsor in VietNam? Remember General Diem?)
What I find interesting is that John Murtha’s plan for redeployment is already happening. In other words, al-Maliki essentially ordered US troops to “redeploy” away from Sadr City during day-light hours, because their presence was making things worse and pushing the country towards open civil war and collapse of the government. The logic applies more broadly, and now that al-Maliki realizes he can strenghten himself by pushing Bush around, he may just find other places where “redeployment” of US troops would be in his/Iraqi interests.
Now if we can just keep my Junior Senator off the front page !!! maybe the voters will come to realize that the game is over, that Bush and his supporters got us into the worst strategic blunder, and now defeat, in half a century, and that every bozo that supported this misadventure should be turned out of office.
Trials should be held later.
Pat Lang on the significance of the US cave-in to Maliki:
It’s going to be very interesting to see how the military reacts to this, both active duty and retired. Especially the Marines.
i wonder how all those “commanders in the feild” that the boy king tells us he is always listening to feel about this. i’d like to see one of them bitch-slap georgie and send him running to cling to his momma’s skirts where he belongs.
Christy Hardin Smith @ 22
didja notice when Mrs. Greenspan asked her about her husband approving waterboarding, she said oh I thought you were gonna ask me about Charlie Rangel?
gaaahhhhh is right.
Oklahoma kiddo @ 24
Answer is obvious by asking this question: He’s still alive, isn’t he?
hmmm imagine that bush abandoning soldiers!! i’m not surprised just hope its a wake-up call for americans who’ve believed that bush has our real interest at heart. remember people we get a chance to begin to change the course on 11/7/06!! VOTE
I guess we now know what the Kerry smokescreen was intended to cover.
thanks for your thoughts selise @ 25 and scarecrow @ 28!
You both make excellent points.
We have lost much and so have millions of Iraqis.
beth meacham @ 34
Bingo.
scarecrow @ 28
excellent point…. and may apply to Muqtada al-Sadr also. if i real juan cole correctly, he seems to indicate that al-Maliki was forced to take this position (of demanding an end to the siege) by al-Sadr.
things look very fragile - like a house of cards on a windy day.
Oklahoma kiddo @ 21
Bush has become a prisoner of his rhetoric. If he doesn’t behave as if the Iraqi government is sovereign, it shows that the spreading of democracy is just another lie.
TeddySanFran @ 6
You got it. Bush can probably have al-Maliki removed, but only by giving up publically on the last figleaf about helping democracy. I don’t think the Bushies would risk a coup before the elections.
Teddy, do you remember the great SF Chronicle op-ed columnist during the VietNam era, who used to describe the latest puppet/general we installed to head the South Viet Nam goverment as “General Who Dat Don Dar”? What was his name? (He was the first blogger at heart) We may need him again, soon.
Bechtel cuts and runs.
me to me @ 19
From that article-
“But what next week’s election seems likely to illustrate is that the laws of thermodynamics — in particular, the one that states that for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction — have not been repealed”
Okay, this is why we need basic science education in America. This is very, very sad.
selise @ 25
selise, those are valid points. We don’t disagree that a lockdown is bad for the Iraqi people and probably not the most effective way of finding a kidnapped soldier. And, don’t think the following comments indicate that I’m not currently sympathetic and praying for the safe return of the kidnapped soldier.
However, this viewpoint kicks the administration in the nuts and attacks their wrongly perceived strengths.
1) Letting a foreign leader call the shot about our military deployment strategy is contrary to all bushco and its nationalistic supportors stand for.
2) Abandoning the kidnapped solder is abhorent and quickly understood and internalized by all Americans. Probably the only thing worse than #1.
“When the gales of November came slashing…”
————the wreck of the Edmund FitzGerald
I like it as an analogy of the storm coming November 7.
Make it a hurricane.
T- @ 42
completely agree… and the source of my hesitation….
tommy yum — yeah, Spotlight this post. I’ve been focusing these last few days on Cable network anchors and hosts, plus editorial boards and tv anchors in the 5-6 swing Senate states — CT, MO, VA, Tennessee, NJ — but even that’s a lot to cover. Can anyone else help there? What are others doing?
I put this up for Ed*ard Teller yesterday as a tribute to his great grand uncle Harry, who went down in Lake Erie.
If you like Gordon Lightfoot, check it out.
egregious @ 43
Bullshit! The Bush administration never abandons their own.
If this soldier wanted to be rescued from insurgents, then he should have gone to work for Haliburton, not joined the military. It is hardly the responsibility of the government to fix things when individuals make poor choices for themselves. That would be (gasp) socialism!
Now I demand that John Kerry apologize to this soldier for allowing him to be captured.
jeffreyw @ 40
hmm… are the opportunities for war profiteering starting to dry up?
TeddySanFran @ 6
This is what ALL the Dems should be saying…Great comment Teddy!!!
kristinejoy @ 41
This is the way a wise engineer once told me the way thermodynamics works.
1. You can’t win.
2. You can’t break even.
3. You can’t get out of the game.
Can someone explain Kerry’s smoke screen and what it is intended to cover? Type slowly, I’m really dumb today.
As for Kerry’s remark, it seems to me that we still have this First Amendment thingy. We’re still holding out for some acknowledgement of Bush’s blatantly deceitful remarks leading up to (and through) Iraq, so as far as I’m concerned, he and his holier-than-thou staff can fuck off.
I find it interesting that the Bush administration wants to focus on the words of a Senator on the campaign trail in California while virtually every intelligent observer believes that the “stay the course” effort in Iraq is putting our troops in harms way.
If the President is actually concerned for our troops, why doesn’t he admit his administration’s mistakes and focus his energy on crafting a new war strategy rather than a new political strategy…but that would require him to be less concerned with political power and more concerned with protecting our troops…troops he enjoys waving around like a cheap campaign sign when he thinks they will win votes…the same troops that died in near record numbers in October in a war the President declared we had won more than two years ago.
Read more here:
www.thoughttheater.com
I just got an e-mail from a reader accusing me of racism in this post. I know we have a lot of Islamic/Middle East scholars on the thread at the moment, and I’d like your take. Al-Sadr, to me, has always screamed ambitious political manipulator out for himself and consolidation of his power base. And torture, whether it comes from the American side or the Iraqi one, is flat out wrong. Can someone explain to me what in the hell the basis for some assertion of “racism” comes from with this? Because I am not seeing it, and I’d like a second opinion.
Or, as Paul Simon sang, “everything put together falls apart”
Bush doesn’t understand loyalty.
Bush thinks loyalty is what everyone owes him.
Loyalty is a two way street.
You can’t demand loyalty from people if you are ready to abandon them when the going gets tough.
Bush doesn’t understand what loyalty means.
Maybe if he had served in combat rather than in a Champagne unit, he would understand what loyalty means.
Loyalty is EARNED.
Loyalty is given out of respect for those who show grit and determination. Grit and determination are things shown in the real world. Grit and determination aren’t poses and words thrown around to look tough. Loyalty is given to those who have been loyal to others. Loyalty is not a perk of office, as Bush seems to think.
Bush doesn’t understand what loyalty is.
I knew I didn’t like Harold Ford. I want to, but every time I see him on teevee, when he starts talking I just think bleah. He did voice support for one Democratic principle, but I can’t remember what it was — maybe labor rights.
sofistic @ 51
Kerry isn’t doing the smokescreen; Bushco is publicizing its faux outrage over Kerry’s statement as a smokescreen for its own latest run of incompetence, fraud and deceit.
the laws of thermodynamics — in particular, the one that states that for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction
Oh geeze, Sir Isaac is rolling over again. Someone go relay the paving stones, please?
Helpless Dancer @ 50:
And, I’ve heard, the various political philosphies deny the three laws as follows:
(1) Capitalists believe you can win
(2) Socialists believe you can break even
(3) Mystics believe you can get out of the game
EvilDrPuma @ 57
Ah, clarity returns. Thanks, I thought I knew that.
kin @ 56
Exactly. Bush, clinically, makes us suffer from either a narcissistic or an antisocial personality disorder. It’s quite characteristic for an individual with either of those illnesses to see himself as specially entitled to privileges and rights above and beyond those of mortal humanity.
sofistic @ 54
The ultimate truth, entropy wins. Reinforced every morning I get up and look in the mirror.
sofistic @ 55
Or, or as Stephen Stills sang, “the more you lose even when you win.”
Mrs.(SKELETOR) Greenspan….was so gentle with Lynn(WICKED WITH) Cheney. It was such a joke.
sofistic @ 54
Yeah, but confusing Newton’s Third Law of Motion and the Laws of Thermodynamics …. priceless.
T- you still on? I see the AJC is endorsing Price over Sinton in GA-06 because, even though Sinton argues that
but that Price
AAARRRRRGGGHHHH!!!! The things that Sinton argues for are things that conservatives used to care about.
spotlighted to some of the editors and writers at the LA Times… would do more, but the children are arriving…
Redd - racism? err - where? I can’t see it either..
OldCoastie
i don’t see how criticizing Al-Sadr is racist. sorry, does not compute.
OldSchool @ 66
I didn’t see that either. Your characterization of him as an opportunist seems spot on.
When I heard about the latest Kerry faux pas, I got both depressed and angry. If you’re gonna try to make a snide — if accurate — point about the incompetent Gaffer-in-Chief, somebody, SOMEBODY had better make sure there will be no lexical fuckup like this one was. The Bush Whisperer (Rove) was given a huge gift with this. The timing is really bad.
_
MSNBC has an article up explaining how Lieberman may help GOP House candidates win.
Lieberman could help CT GOP candidates
The ads about Iraq that Rahm/DCCC plans to run in CT better be clear enough to implicate Lieberman. Hello, Hillary Clinton?
Mrs.(SKELETOR) Greenspan….was so gentle with Lynn(WICKED WITH) Cheney. It was such a joke.
She knew from Wolf Blitzer’s experience what would happen if she asked Lynn about “Sisters” and she didn’t want her patriotism questioned.
Or she’s a tool.
Take your pick.
OldSchool @ 68
If describing torture-wielding militants as torture-wielding militants is racist, then yes, I suppose Christy was being racist. But does that mean that it’s racist to describe Bush’s GOP as torture-wielding militants? ‘Cause I’d sure as hell say they are.
Christy Hardin Smith @ 54
Am not a Middle East scholar, but I went thru the post carefully and cannot imagine what the complaint was about. I think it is an attempt to distract and dismay you: ignore it.
Ne illegitimis non carborundum.
P J Evans @ 58
That’s a new one on me, but it make a lot of sense. Capitalists believe nothing is finite, Socialists believe in a zero sum game, and Mystics? Good only for screenplays.
Christy Hardin Smith @ 54
I’m not seeing it.
What I see is an Iraqi leader who has realized that whether Bush wants to admit it or not, this IS a civil war going on, and he’s got to pick sides. Hadley’s visit was likely a last ditch attempt to talk him out of asking US forces to back off, and it failed.
To go back to an earlier thread’s metaphor, I’m guessing that Maliki called Bush’s bluff. Speculating here, but the message might have sounded like this: “Either you back off, or I’m calling the media to tell them I asked you to do this and you refused. Either I’m a sovereign leader or I’m not: you decide. And if you decide I’m not, then I’m going home. Good luck with that.”
Bush painted the US - and the US military in particular - into a corner long ago, and now he’s finding out that those walls are closing in on him. All politics are local, and Maliki just proved to Bush it in Iraq.
And the cost continues to rise. . .
Christy Hardin Smith @ 53
i’m no ME scholar, but i agree with this description of al-sadr. course, i would also agree to characterizing many of our own politicians with this description.
kerry says sorry for botched joke:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/200.....s_kerry_dc
I guess it’s better not to have the focus on Kerry for the last 6 days, but it sucks to have to knuckle under the Rove slime machine.
OT
Link in my yahoo local news:
Hunter making ‘preparations’ to run for president Tue Oct 31, 10:47 PM ET
Unfortunately, when you click it, it says “file not found”.
Sigh, I was so looking forward to reading it.
al- Sadr is a very powerful figure among the Shia. The USA today article does say that they are not sure if the “torture chamber” is linked to al- Sadr himself. al- Sadr’s organization is part of the Iraqi government now… the “sovereign government of Iraq.”
I do not see your post as racist, though.
(Snowballs on cspan now.)
Nice post from Glenn
Watching this presser with Tony Snow, why doesn’t someone ask: Will you apologize for putting words in Senator Kerry’s mouth?
JF @ 65
Hadn’t seen it, dammit. Will go look now.
I’ll be holding a sign on the corner of Abernathy and Roswell Rd. this afternoon at rush hour.
localized cut and run.
This is a real eye-opener. What our military should do is arrest Makaki, send all our troops after al Sadr and arrest him, then hold both until the kidnapped soldier is returned.
Then the U.S. military should load everything onto its trucks and pull out, with the Corps of Engineers blowing up everything we leave behind including Baghdad Airport.
We owe no loyalty to Makaki whatsoever. If he can’t get his troops to defend him, tough. If he orders the U.S. to abandon a soldier, and Steven Hadley goes along with it, then it is time to get the flock out of the country. It’s not worth the life of a single American soldier or marine.
OT, I’ve been pestering my Secretary of State and the Director of Elections here since last week, when I googled our state election systems and found that we have Diebold Optical Scanners. Luckily, we also passed a law a couple years ago requiring paper verification of electronically calculated votes. However many studies have shown that these Scanners are highly vulnerable to hacking and theft. The Brennan Center for Justice has issued a report on the problems with Optical Scanners and some of the measures that can be taken to safeguard such systems. In particular, this report stresses the need for Random Audits which are Randomly Selected and Transparent to the public.
The Secretary of State’s Office has been modifying their posture over recent months, and just in the last week. Originally the Director of Election said there was no need for audits here in Vermont. A spokesperson for the Sec of State recently said that was no plan for random audits. When I complained about this last week, I was told of course there would be random audits. I expressed that I wasglad I was to hear that, and mentioned that I assumed there would be a random selection which was open to the public.
Then they said that while there would be a random selection, there would be nothing to see, move right along, because the random selection would be computer generated.
So I explained that as any softward program is hackable, they ought to separate out the means of choosing random audit from the means of tabulating votes. I asked who wrote the random selection software? I asked why couldn’t they simply draw precincts from a hat in public view?
This morning I get emails from Sec of State and the Deputy of Elections to say they will be selecting random audits by pulling towns from a hat (!!) in public view, and I am invited to observe. YAY! (And I must say, the Sec of State and Director of Elections were very accessible here, KUDOS).
Moral? IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO AGITATE! Poll security is a local issue. Google the means of election in your state. Find out what’s going on and what you can do to help.
Christy — I don’t see any racism here. And it does appear that the militias have engaged in brutal and systematic torture — but which ones? Whom can we believe?
I don’t see al-Maliki as an enemy; in fact, I don’t even see Sadr as our enemy; he opposes Bush and occupying troops, as we would do in the shoe were on the other foot. He’s probably a thug, but he’s their thug. He seems to see himself as leading another movement like Hezbollah — which I view as a mixed bag of armed militias that are either (depending on your perspective) (1) a threat to national security or (2) the only way to keep your neighborhoods secure when there is no genunie national government (and hence no genuine national army or policy force). These are all figments of Bush’s delusional perspective. We’ve created a situation in which both (1) and (2) are correct, simultaneously. The neocons see only (1); the Iraqis see (2). The plight of the Americans, let alone a lone soldier, doesn’t register in this calculation. So our focus should be on Bush and the predicament he and his neocons - VP/Rummy/Rice — have put us and our soldiers in — exactly what you’ve said.
racism in Christy’s post? uh, no.
scarecrow @ 87
well said and thanks again scarecrow. you are eloquent and spot on, imo.
Christy Hardin Smith @ 22
I watched cable news all day yesterday for the first time in years.
This wasn’t a good idea. By the time Countdown aired, I had already eaten an entire chocolate Halva bar, dark chocolate covered toffee and chocolate pudding. Then my face broke out.
I can truly say that MSM is bad for my health. I will never do that again.
Christy, anyone who would suggest you made a racist comment can’t possibly be a regular reader of your work.
What Kerry should say:
I can take a joke. I just can’t tell one. Bush can tell a joke. He just can’t take one.
LindaR @
93
Bush can be a joke. In fact that’s all he can be.
LindaR @ 93
Not bad. Personally, I wish Kerry would take a pledge — to not run for President again unless/until he learns how to deliver a punch line.
Bush isn’t in charge of the Iraq war, neither is Rummy, the generals on the ground or Malarky Maliki. It’s Moqtada Al-Sadr. Great. Tony Snow is giving his morning press conference, proving why Shrub hired him. The most acceptable of the Fox spinmasters, and a cancer victim they don’t think people will attack. Now where have I heard that before? He has spent the whole time talking about Kerry’s faux pas instead of whose really winning the war.
OT
Christy, I’m having trouble reading you, to many ads/infos. on the peripheral, after all ads are intended to grab attention but I can’t ungrab them.
scarecrow @
72
It’s from Andrew Miga again. He’s a shill.
Bush IS a botched joke.
_