Just another great ancillary benefit to having a rookie run the country.  Here is some really exciting news from Russia today about them developing a radical new missile delivery system for nuclear weapons. Thanks to GW taking the US out of the long-standing 1972 Ballistic Missle Treaty (in 2002) the Russians went ahead and developed a new nuclear missile.  Blah, blah, blah, Putin is talking about making Europe into a powder keg by looking to put a US missile defense system over there, but the fact remains, we are safer today than we were 7 years ago. Gosh I feel good.

tags: bush, missile defense, moron, nuclear missile, putin, russia, star wars

I am never really amazed at the things that go on each and every day. One of the things that has surprised me a bit however is how long this whole supporting our troops = stay in Iraq vs. not supporting our troops = leaving Iraq.  It really is past the point of being pure comedy as it is clear that repeating something enough times on television is enough to make something true.  People here don’t seem to want to say what they really think out loud anymore…and it is not okay to do so either. It is really a shame and I hope that this is something that will change dramatically very soon.

But, the real point of this post is to give a 2 second explanation why George W. Bush will never say we are leaving Iraq (while he is President).  It is simple really, he doesn’t have to.  No matter what Congress or the American public does to him and what is left of his honor, it will never get worse for him.  We have been told that we were going to Iraq for one reason, then another and that has turned into something different.  Martha Stewart, who I have no love for, went to jail for lying to federal prosecutors about a stock trade that netted her less than a month’s salary.  However, lying every day about why we sent 130,000 troops to Iraq (that has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars) is ok.  Strange.  George Bush will never pull our troops out of Iraq because he can only climb out of the hole he has dug himself into.  The vast majority of Americans want our troops out of Iraq.  However, Congress can really only do two things to stand in his way and my bet is, they don’t do either.  If they did, Bush and Co. would simply use their ace in the whole.  Should Congress do something drastic, they would get blamed for breaking their program and then they in turn would own the war in Iraq…not Bush (even though that would simply not be the case).
1) They cut off funding for the war in Iraq.  This can be spun any number of ways by George Bush and Co. and will pretty easily mobilize the people that wanted to elect this man to a second term as President to rally behind him. At the end of the day, Congress would cave and we would simply be further down the line (like we are today) wondering when we will get our boys and girls home with all of their appendages and minds intact.

2) They impeach the President. You can apparently get impeached for lying about getting a BJ from some wacked out intern in the White House, but not for why you sent 130,000 troops to invade another country.  While this makes a lot of sense (sarcasm for those of you too retarded to figure that out), it won’t happen because then Congress owns the war. Bush and Co. would simply be able to say we were starting to turn the tide over there and then Congress kicked us out. They broke it, they own it.

So, boys and girls. I am afraid that unless someone who has some sack stands up and gets in the face of the insanity that we have been living in, I am afraid that we will simply have more of the same for a long time.

tags: bush, iraq, never, war, withdrawl

When I watch the television and our elected officials these days, I often feel like I am in Alice in Wonderland. It is truly a surreal experience for me. All of the ideals that I was raised on and with seem to be so far from where we are as a country and a nation today.  I hear statistics that say 70+% of Americans are opposed to sending any more troops into Iraq, yet that is all our President and his team of repeaters can say.  The tactic of today’s politician is to repeat themselves so many times that they believe it as true and you get Jedi mindtricked into the same.

Well, I am sick of it. Here is the short and skinny. IF creating a democracy in Iraq (since that is what they have seemed to have settled on as the reason we went there) is something that is vital to OUR nation’s security (forget the nonsense about what the Iraqi people “want” supposedly), then let’s do what every general, the Baker-Hamilton commission, and sensible person thinks and let’s have a draft and get the other 250,000 troops we need to do that thing right into Iraq. Otherwise, congress needs to do one of the two things that they are able to do here. One, cut the funding allowing the President to use the power they gave him/give him to wage war.  Two, impeach him AND Cheney.  There is nothing else they have power to do. Clearly the President doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone else in this country thinks. I am not sure why that doesn’t incense people like it does me.

This is a Republic…a representative form of government. It would be nice to see some goddamned representation already.

tags: bush, cheney, congress, impeach, iraq, policy, politics, powers, war

So, I try to read a few different online news outlets and Op-Ed pieces each day to hear what the “two sides” (since that is apparently all we are allowed to have here now) have to say and I soon realized that the Neo-Conservatives are truly crazy fanatics. Not that I did not think that they were before, but I really believe that many of them are really crazy. I was reading Frank Gaffney’s Op-Ed piece in the Washington Times just now and was pretty taken back. In his open letter to President Bush, Gaffney suggests that the President let the country and the world know that we are not engaged in a “War on Terror” against “terrorists” but, we are engaged in the “War for the Free World” against, at the moment, those adherent to “Islamofacism.”

What scares me most is that this is the group of people that are creating our policies these days and it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that they don’t want to listen to what anyone has to say. That is fine, just do it in your own little shack in the woods, ala Montana Ted, and have a day…just don’t do it when you supposedly represent the 290MM+ people in the US of A. Has anyone on this team of geinuses ever spoken to any of the people that we are supposedly helping in the muslim world? There was an interesting article about Pushtunwali in the Economist last week and I think it is something that everyone in this country should read. Basically, it talks about some of the predominant cultures in the Middle East and their heritage. Bottom line, I don’t think any of these people want to be “liberated” by the US or anyone else. They just want to live like they have been for thousands of years.

If we want to go to war to stake a claim to the world’s great oil reserves, ok. Let’s just call it what it is, I am down with that. We have the muscle and we want a piece. Just don’t make up 10 different names for something until one sticks. Bottom line, if there was no oil in Iraq, we would not be there. I am sure there are millions of other people in the world that need to be liberated as well, don’t see us running to save them.

Bush, Muslims, Neo Con, Neo Conservatives, Pushtunwali, State of the Union, USA

Well, I was a bit surprised to hear the news this morning right before President Bush spoke, that Donald Rumsfeld is stepping down.  Not that it came as a total shocker, but it was surprising that it came so soon.  What was funny about this morning, more than listening to our President have to field a bunch of questions that he fumbled with, was listening to a newscast on MSNBC while the news of the resignation came over the AP wire.  Nora O’Donnel was talking to another O’Donnel at the White House when the WH O’Donnel’s phone rang.  Distracted, she looked down at the phone and tried to figure out if she should answer. Nora O’Donnel in the studio reported that the AP was apparently reporting that D. Rumsfeld was stepping down as the Secretary of Defense.  During the conversation between the two one could hear protesters outside the White House, but you could not really make out what they were saying.  About 3 minutes after the news went mainstream about the resignation, you could start to make out what the protesters were saying…rather singing.  “Nah, nah, nah nah, nah, nah, nah, hey, hey, hey, good bye.”

Comedy.

tags: bush, comedy, rumsfeld,  politics

Iran is expected to give the U.N. its “formal answer” to the U.N. “demand” to halting their Uranium enrichment program today.  Sorry, I meant to say, “Iran says F U AGAIN to U.N.”

tags: iran, nukes, u.n., uranium

Ok, whatever you think about how WE, the people, have arrived at the current position we find ourselves in, I think we all have to think about what needs to be done from this point forward. There are two schools of thought. One, withdraw, re-deploy, rotate out, or whatever you want to label removing US troops, from Iraq. Two, is to leave Iraq in a stable environment and self-sufficient.  The latter is something that is incredibly difficult and something that is going to take at least a decade from this point forward and one that I am not completely opposed to. BUT, here is the thing.  In my opinion, it is very clear, that we are under staffed for the job at hand in Iraq.  Moving troops around in order to accomplish something in the short-term, like “securing” Baghdad, doesn’t seem to make much sense to me when we are looking to secure the whole country.  So, what do we do? If we, as a country, decide that we are going to “stay the course” in Iraq then I think it is time to do the job right.  I used to get scolded by my grandfather a lot as a child to be sure to do things the right way…and not half-assed. Translation = Draft.  President Bush and Team Bush were very adamant about the fact that the forces deployed worldwide are an “all volunteer” force. Well, in my view, if we are going to do the job then let’s do it right.
I have heard generals and the like talk about using “overwhelming force” to accomplish our goals in just about every successful military campaign the US has been involved in in the past 20 years. Electricity and running water are not a fact of life in the capital city of Baghdad so let’s forget about paying for the war with oil revenues like we were promised. Let’s just get in there and kick some ass so that we can get out of there with something better than what it started as.  Otherwise, we may witness the second coming of Persia in our lifetimes.

tags: baghdad, draft, iraq, middle east, politics, war