"Garry Owen....I am still laughing over that line "Oral Roberts and his son Anal Roberts..." LOL LOL

BTW are you named after the song which was the theme of NY Regiment in WW I?

-- JoenBo"

Why, yes I am, as a matter of fact, JoenBo!

I am also a bona fide alumni of the U.S. Army 1st Cavalry Division (Air Mobile). Garryowen, the song, goes all the way back to the town of Limerick, Ireland and was first played in battle by the Irish mercenaries who fought against Napoleon at Waterloo.

And you can learn more about that by Wiki'ing the name Garryowen.

And I'm also a supporter of the Division 1, Garryowen rugby team of Limerick and you can find more info about them by Googling the words Garryowen and rugby.

Garryowen, and Suck It Up and Drive On!

Two days after his momentous (in his own mind) speech to a room full of carefully selected religious nutjobs, Willard Romney has actually FALLEN in the Iowa straw polls.

Apparently the Republican reactionaries in Iowa would rather not deal with a Mormon (me either), but would instead like their "old time religion" served up by the Right Reverend Huckster Huckabee.

Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition.

and it was like an old time revival with the handling of snakes and speaking in tongues, and fire walking and levitation and astral projection, and Benny Hinn whackin' people in the head to cure their polio, and Jimmy Swaggart, and Jimmy Baker, and Tammy Fae Baker and Jim Jones and the Jonestown Choir, and the Rev. Moon, and David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, and Father Coughlin, and Pat Robertson and the 700 Club and Jerry Falwell and Liberty University, and Oral Roberts and his son Anal Roberts, and any given night of the Glenn Beck Show all rolled up into one orgiastic ejaculation from Willard Romney's fecund loins onto the faces of his adoring followers.

Right now, there's very little oil coming out of Iraq in any direction. The infrastructure was destroyed twice, once in Gulf War I, and then again with Bush's invasion.

What little infrastructure manages to get built right now instantly becomes an insurgent target. There's only three ways for oil to get out of Iraq: In Kurdistan/Iraq north into Turkey. West into Syria (a very long pipeline) and out through Basra and into the Persian Gulf. Pick one and contemplate the logistics given that American forces are playing Whack-A-Mole in Baghdad, Tikrit, Balad, and Falujah. The Brits are pulling out down south and the pipeline is exposed. The Kurds and the Turks would rather kill each other over all the oil up there in the northern fields. And the skinny little pipe running west to Syria is a trickle when it's working at all.

In short, we haven't taken their oil yet because we really haven't even taken their country yet. We are barely treading water over there.

But Anony, my optimistic friend, when we leave, the warring factions in Iraq will come to a truce and put their oil infrastructure back together again. They will hire KBR, Bechtel and Halliburton to come back in and fix it. They will still hate each other and struggle for control, but at least it will be their oil and we will be forced to compete with China and India for it. That was the one thing the think-tank Neocons never wanted in the first place. But the oil will flow and we will not hesitate to buy it because it is vital. And once again, OPEC will have us by the balls, same way as they do now.

And so, the only thing different will be that that our cemeteries will have at least 4,000 more graves and we are right back where we started.

It was a gambit that failed. Call it Rumsfeld's fault for micromanaging an adventure he didn't fully think through. Call it Bush's fault for letting Cheney beguile him with visions of being a conquering War President.

And just one tiny favor if you would, please do not insult my intelligence equating post-war Japan with what we have done to Iraq. Surely you can't be serious.

Bubbye!