Major troop movements are no secret in Iraq. No one has to publish troop withdrawal dates because the insurgents have eyes and ears everywhere.

That has been obvious from the very beginning to everyone except Rumsfeld and Bush. Their intel was so bad that they believed the Iraqis would welcome us as saviors.

Our deal with Iraq is to withdraw as we are replaced with an effective Iraqi force. This is a well-planned, strategic withdrawal with the US not leaving until Iraqis are ready to move in and take over.

We are leaving an Iraq that is far different than it was under Saddam. The long-term consequences and the legacy of the Bush Administration's miserable performance include ongoing sporadic bombings and insurgent activity. The Iraqis chose to handle this without our help because they believe that a continuing American presence will always cause more problems than it will solve.

Thank you for helping the case for impeaching Bush, Cheney, and others who conspired to get the US into Iraq and who initiated illegal wiretapping, rendition, torture, etc.

and they outranked the kitchen help so when they gave orders they were ORDERS!

A TV show about feeding 400 very hungry troops would certainly offer opportunities to develop interesting characters and plot lines. Mess hall kitchens are (or were) huge factories populated with sullen troops conscripted to KP (aka kitchen patrol)under the supervision of career military chefs. This volatile mix of Regular Army rank and kitchen help wanting to be anywhere else often led to some interesting outcomes. Given the level of rage from the ranking chefs it amazes that body parts were not found in the soup de jour.

In the end, however, some pretty decent meals were prepared and SOS ("shit on a shingle") turned out to be one of the better breakfast offerings after all.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Perhaps the word "welfare" was a typo used in place of "warfare".

Possible.

I suppose one could argue that it is a good thing for the prosthetics industry, prosthetics being mostly made here.

We don't make TVs, stereos, decent automobiles, our stores are loaded with goods made anywhere but here so what shall we do?

Well. we make pretty good tanks, guns, fighter planes, armed drones, wide area explosive devices, nuclear arms and bombs so the logical thing is to create a market for this stuff.

Does that help to explain our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Anyone can get healthcare in the US. Illegal aliens, criminals, terrorists, your mother, wife, sister, her aunt. Everyone.

It is available in emergency rooms and free clinics in every city and town. Care is not means-tested. If you can pay, you will. Otherwise the good and generous taxpayers and doctors and others donating time will cover your costs.

The issue is quality health care and preventive health care with the revolutionary (to some) idea that an once of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Palin and Bush were probably cut from the same cloth. After 8 years of Bush I've concluded that the average Republican voter is in a steady state of mental decline and fully capable of running Palin again.

Stupidity = GOP.

From the UCLA Newsroom, 2009:

"While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly."

I listen to NPR daily and I agree with UCLA assessment, in opposition to yours. They have no axes to grind.

I selectively delete distasteful cable channels in the main channel menu.

Even brief exposure to Fox can upset my (somewhat) blissful existence.

The media attacked Bush because he deserved to be attacked for his many, many failures. Fox, on the other hand started attacking Obama from Day One, wanting him to fail.

Calling people names without a basis in fact is the tactic de jour of the right these days. Comes with not having any meaningful ideas of your own, I guess.

Cheney ought to spend more of his time apologizing for the thousands killed in Iraq.

Then he should sit in a bathtub and do the right thing.

Stick around and wait. We're in self-destruct mode and eventually you'll be able to buy, say, the entire State of California for around $500.

From the Taliban? No. From the American right wing.

And we can put some responsibility on the backs of the right wing hate machine - Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, Savage, Buchanan for feeding the ignorant dittoheads with enough fertilizer to drive the political discourse into the sewer.

What a day that will be! His epitath should read: "He Did So Much To Hurt So Many".

And, by the way, more Americans die from lack of health care than die in Afghanistan, a hell of a lot more.

Please get your priorities straight.

The surge in Iraq was not Bush's choice when Rumsfeld was in office. Rumsfeld opposed sending more troops and he opposed any change in war strategy.

Only after the Republicans lost both Houses did Bush renege on his promise that "Rumsfeld stays" and replaced him only because he could see the magnitutude of his errors and the subsequent losses in Congress.