Letters to the Editor
Terry A.
Published Letters: 181 Editor's Choice: 22
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Bet the pension.
[Read the article: The Sadr City question]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Let me see if I understand this: Sadr City is a comparatively quiet area of Baghdad with a peace maintained by a faction and militia that is an important part of the current Iraqi "government" with a great deal of support in the Iraqi Army we're asking to take over security in the country? And the last time we took this faction and militia on militarily all we did was incur casualties and increase their leader's popularity?
Bet the house, the college fund, the pension and that watch dad gave you for graduation. President Feeb will sent the Marines back into Sadr City.
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What a tool.
[Read the article: Quote of the day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Medved's blather brings to mind this dialogue from John Sayles' "Lone Star":
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Mickey: Think her family's gonna be okay that you're a white guy?
Cliff: They think any woman over 30 who isn't married is a lesbian. She figures, they'll be so relieved that I'm a man...
Mickey: Yeah, it's always heartwarming to see a prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice.
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Of course, these characters were talking of just two prejudices. The elements of Medved's bigotry stack like unspeakable pancakes.
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What a waste of bandwidth.
[Read the article: George? Jenna? Barbara?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If this story isn't a classic Buttafuoco, I don't know what is.
He's trained as a combat officer, his country has combat troops there, enough already. And what do his motives matter - he's not a policymaker, he's a freakin' tank commander.
Don't the United States forces in Iraq include any sons or daughters of wealthy or prominent parents? Do we care whether *they* went out of a sense of duty, or or noblesse oblige, or adventure or glory or revenge for 9/11? Do I **blame** them for "perpetuating" the freakin' war??
The saddest thing about the attention being given this guy's deployment is that, if he is hurt or killed, we will never hear the end of it. You can almost hear Elton John warming up in the wings.
t.
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Big whup
[Read the article: Ann Coulter on John Edwards: "Faggot"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Coulter's remark calls to mind Ellen DeGeneres' standard response to hecklers when she was starting out.
Some guy would yell out, "What are you, a dyke?"
Her response, "So what are *you*, the alternative?"
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Nothing new.
[Read the article: Slip sliding away, or Cheney on Afghanistan and Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Cheney's mendacity is trite. But then, that's what happens when someone maintains professional status as a liar for years and years.
On which subject - interesting factoid on the Wayne Madsen Report right now. WMR is best for its entertainment value (oh that Dubya really **were** in the closet, or really **were** having an affair with Condoleeza Rice!), but I've never heard of any hard fact or number he posted being wrong.
He's reporting today that percipient witnesses to the Mayaguez rescue in 1975 (specifically, Navy corpsmen) reported three times as many deaths (120) from the mission as the Ford Administration acknowledged officially (41).
Those responsible for suppressing the truth? Chief of Staff Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Same ol' same ol'.
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He did! He did!
[Read the article: The Sadr City question]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When this article was published, I wrote, "Bet the house, the college fund, the pension and that watch dad gave you for graduation. President Feeb will sent the Marines back into Sadr City."
Kinda wish I'd followed my own investment advice.
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Another LEETLE distinction
[Read the article: Slip sliding away, or Cheney on Afghanistan and Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Response, in part, to Joe.
Iraq is a mess because the relevant American "leadership," primarily notable liars Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, bungled our occupation. They sold the invasion based on lies about the state of Iraq's weapons programs, and lies about the cost to the United States in the lives and health of our servicepeople, as well as time and money. If these "leaders" had succeeded in pacifying the country, we probably would have forgiven their serial mendacity, but they didn't. From the beginning, and except for the formation of a nascent Kurdistan that NO ONE in the region will allow to exist, on every single objective except killing Sadaam Hussein, they have failed. They haven't even managed to make their confiscation of Iraqi oil reliable enough to "pay" for our occupation.
By contrast with President Feeb's Iraqi adventure, our decade in Viet Nam stands as a model of military, diplomatic and fiscal efficiency bordering on genius. **
Would the same people have bungled an occupation of Afghanistan if more troops had been sent? Maybe. They've certainly bungled it so far. There is only so much the commitment and heroism of our troops can do.
The difference, however, is that AFGHANISTAN ATTACKED US. Remember? The Taliban? Al Quaida? Seriously, it was in all the papers.
When a country ATTACKS you, you are entitled, both morally and by international law, to RESPOND.
No such justification exists for Iraq, which never attacked us.++ All Iraq did was to be offensive to the neocons. IRAQ had NO weapons of mass destruction, and we know now that it was a LIE that our "leadership" knew that they did.
In Iraq, we have spent the irretrievable lives, health and energy of some of our best and most courageous young citizens (and non-citizens)(not to mention hundreds of billions of dollars in materiel) and we have created a mountain of debt that our grandchildren will pay (or not).
And what have we achieved?
A civil war costing tens if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives;
The enfeeblement of our conventional military and our economy;
The destruction of our reputation in the world;
And the radicalization of an entire generation of Middle Eastern Muslims from which groups like al Quiada will be able to recruit for a long, long time.
Excusing our bungling of Iraq by asking whether we might have bungled Afghanistan anyway is like disputing the evil of torture-by-vivisection by saying a doctor might have bungled heart surgery.
I'm sure the irony was unintentional.
** Except for the cost in American lives, and (as I've said before) it's early.
++ No attack, that is, unless one bases the occupation of Iraq on the failed conspiracy to murder George the First. George the Second always denies this, for whatever his word is worth).