Letters to the Editor
-
@DanielGree, or Irony
"I recognize that we live in an era that allows people to effective deny the existence of facts but it does not help in creating reality."
"This was never going to be a short effort if the goal was a stable Iraq."
Mere sentences apart in the same post. I love it.
-
Douglas Moran. (I've just checked in from a neighbor) then, baa. bye. rest.
'Um are bull dinky. 'Um watch too much of 'My Little Mermaid' or Walt Disney's 'Goofy"...
Updates: The Mother who wrote of her son in the war was wonderful. I Thank her for her expression.
Glenn calls Kagan's "happy talk"...
Here, we hace a few crappy hens.
Hens hop outta a cardboard box,
and do poop on the kitchen floor.
Hens go back to nest with peeps.
`
(and a h/t to macgupta) I agree.
Watch My Little Mermaid? Plant!
Keep sowing these "good seeds."
Plant some annual buckwheat?
It's a good Spring soil improver.
-
Adjectives
I prefer pithy, with or without the lithp.
-
From pow wow's post
As in Vietnam, the United States is backing an unpopular and decidedly undemocratic government in Iraq, and that simple fact explains much of the violent resistance that's going on in Iraq today.
Vietnam had far fewer religious, sectarian and tribal rifts than Iraq does. Vietnam wasn't an artificial nation created in the last century. At least we didn't set the fuse to the "civil war" or "revolution" there. We just got in the middle of it.
-
The Surge is working!
Okay so the civil war is over, but the war on the US continues. Must be "Baathist party remnants" or something.
This just in today.
US diplomats instructed to take cover in Baghdad after attacks
Associated Press
The State Department has instructed all personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad not to leave reinforced structures due to incoming insurgent rocket fire that has killed two American government workers this week.
In a memo sent Thursday to embassy staff and obtained by The Associated Press, the department says employees are required to wear helmets, body armor and other protective gear if they must venture outside and strongly advises them to sleep in blast-resistant locations instead of the less secure trailers that most occupy.
"Due to the continuing threat of indirect fire in the International Zone, all personnel are advised to remain under hard cover at all times," it says. "Personnel should only move outside of hard cover for essential reasons."
"Essential outdoor movements should be sharply limited in duration," the memo says, adding that personal protective equipment "is mandatory for all outside movements."
"We strongly recommend personnel do not sleep in their trailers," it goes on to say, offering space inside the Saddam Hussein-era palace that is the embassy's temporary home as well as room at an as-yet uncompleted new embassy compound and a limited supply of cots.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/27/america/Iraq-Embassy.php
-
Oh, I think the cynicism was as great; and one could argue greater.
If you insist. I guess I never got the feeling during Vietnam that there was a huge ulterior motive that made the war almost casual violence. A million rice farmers died (actually much more)? More than half a million Iraqis have died, some estimates are 3/4 or 1 million already. We don't even know because the Geneva Conventions have been abandoned. Bush is better than half way to Pol Pot's numbers and he isn't even serious about the whole thing. By the time that many Vietnamese had died, Johnson was no longer able to sleep, and dumped his bid for a second term.
That's what I meant by cynicism. I agree lots of lies and horror occurred in Vietnam. No argument. But my original point was that the reason everybody mentions these guys' lack of military service is because of their apparent inability to act with any where near the appropriate gravity, or even, it seems at times, sobriety. A lot of the lies during Vietnam were told by desperate believers who were hammering harder and harder, convinced that victory was just around the corner (or the light was at the end of the tunnel). We knew it was because of the Cold War even if we thought the dominos were kooky. Here they haven't even defined victory, and they don't care if the thing goes on for a hundred years. And nobody can come up with a coherent explanation for why, other than the ones the neocons originally gave: a reluctant, power-shy America had to be forced abandon its belief in a nation of laws, not men, and assume it's destiny as an Empire. Maybe you heard that back then, but I didn't.
[That was quite the post, pow-wow -- again. Thank you.]
-
@Shooter, Proxy, Dan'l et al
Dudes, you so totally have to follow this link and read about these guys, real cheeto-eaters like you and me! They totally put one over on the ragheads, and got boo-coo bucks from the Defense Department in the bargain! Plus, dude, they learned how to use their war-on-terror credentials to get out of a domestic-violence jam!
Fuckin heroes, both of em! Read about it at:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/todays_must_read_304.php
or click my name. Don't worry, you won't get a shock.
-
@all
Here is the original story at the NYTs:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/world/asia/27ammo.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
It's a couple grades higher in reading comprehension and attention span required than the condensed article linked above. No point troubling them with it. It starts:
As the war in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.
With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.
Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.
Or click my name.