Letters to the Editor
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How much "good" news is really neded?
If you vote republican in 2008, you can do it without voting for Bush 43. That alone is worth several percentage points. A bit of good news from the war is worth some more. Smearing the dem is always a strong plus. Pretty soon it is a close elction again. Memories are short; repubs are oragnized, dems are not.
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"It's the economy, stupid."
all over again might be the factor that kills the repubs. But the election is a long way off.
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Troubling
It's basically akin to someone sitting on their couch and chewing up food and spitting it all over the floor and the walls and the furniture month after month until it piles up and congeals and grows into mold, turning the room into a repulsive, health-threatening mess. Guests by come and run away in horror at how repugnant it all is.
GG, after scraping the dried eggs off my monitor and reading today's post, I became deeply troubled. How did you get this very personal information about my home?
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But other than that....
how did you enjoy the play Mrs. Lincoln?
To me, the issue is this: We keep talking about whether the glass if half full or half empty. But since the liquid in the glass is gasoline, the real question is, who's holding the match?
http://www.americablog.com/2007/11/turning-point-for-iraq.html
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casuel_observer.
Onion pumpkin soup on my black keyboard.
Michael Crow Crawley. Howard Cootie Kurtz.
Yuck cleavage and chop suet. Statues poo hey-goo.
The fox liar's are repulsive and stink to heave heaven?
'Um embrace wreathed wretched souls and are inwardly dead as coffin toenails.
O, wait until casket day? Black maggots reject Broder's, Betrayer's etc., and backlash spew at the crappers? I'm not sure.
'Um maketh maggots heave bile? Hay! Glenn saith huh today? He doth cause 'usa' to be gagged. GOP are rt-wig wing-nuts and cootie-crows? 'um show cleavage. embrace war. same-same death bed some day? Yes!
O, yuck. crawling worms.
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That's politics.
GG:
If Iraq is stabilized, either in fact or in appearance, do you honestly believe that any American ant-war politician can defend his position by arguing that it wasn't worth the cost? Any who try will be swamped by the MSM newspapers, by the cable news channels, and by republicans eager to paint their political tormentors as "defeatocrats." It will be ugly.
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Johnson's Dog:
If Iraq is stabilized, either in fact or in appearance, do you honestly believe that any American ant-war politician can defend his position by arguing that it wasn't worth the cost?
Yes, I do honestly believe that. But I believe in the power of rationality and persuasion. The fact that Democrats have been so bad at those things for so long has trained people to accept defeatism as the inevitable state of affairs:
No matter what we do, the Republicans will always win. The pro-war message will always triumph. It's hopeless. There's nothing we can do.
I don't believe that.
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Soon the Dems will be the war party
And all the GOP need do is back away from the war.
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"Search and Avoid", a strategy that works.
I am always pleased when the number of American and Iraqi casualties goes down during any period of time. It is amazing how any down tick in violence brings out the proclamations that we are winning and we were right, accompanied by the slur that war protesters delight in US casualties and hate it when things start to go well. I read an article back in October that could suggest that our soldiers are taking matters into their own hands and responsibility for their own safety. This could be a big factor in the recent decline in casualties. The article is from the Asia Times and you can read it here.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IJ26Ak07.html
The article suggests that our soldiers are doing what many military experts suggested they should be doing all along. Redeploying to a safe distance and just moving in where there is trouble. It is impossible to say how prevalent these “Search and Avoid” missions are from this one article and I generally don’t support the idea of a soldier disobeying orders but given the incredible incompetence of our leadership in Iraq it is good to see our soldiers looking out for themselves. No one else seems to be.
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Mike Sultzer.
You got any Alika Seltzer?
Guest at my home say this:
The Place is cold, soup is cold,
O- and 'um run out with a shiver.
Got Chop sticks? Mike Sultzer?
They say they won't stay! Why?
Bemused, the woods not chopped.
A home smells like onion soup.
Dems in big, big trouble. me too.
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We've seen this one before...
Somewhere a grinning Joe Lieberman is pumping his little fists in the air, saying, “Yes! Yes! We’re winning.”
We’ve seen this movie before, too many times. And the pre-mature claims of “victory” and “winning” always collapse in a heap of false delusions and wishful thinking on part of the pro-war crowd that insists upon ignoring the most important fact of all: that the very purpose of the “surge” -- to give a chance for political reconciliation has been totally undermined – there has been no progress on that front at all.
Put your fists down Joe, and look at some of the reasons for the new statistics:
* A sharp increase in air strikes that have resulted in fewer U.S. casualties but more collateral Iraqi civilian casualties. In the first nine months of 2007, American planes hit targets more times than in the previous three years combined, and the ill will that the one-time liberators sew each time innocents are blown to smithereens by fire from helicopter gunships is not supposed a part of the counterinsurgency playbook.
* A sharp increase in curfews that limit civilian movement. Haven’t heard any bad stuff out of Falluja lately, have you? Could this be because the one-time hotspot is under virtual lockdown with a ban on private vehicles?
* A failure to train up the Iraqi army sufficiently and the continuing dismal state of national police forces means that they cannot be relied on to replace U.S. forces and not merely supplement them.
And let’s not forget the importance of the decision and role of the Mahdi Army discussed in the Kos Diary below, as well as the fact that our current troop levels are not sustainable.
http://themoderatevoice.com/war/iraq/15776/iraq-the-dirty-secret-of-the-surge/
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/11/5/22022/5007