@ pdooley:

It seems I must again remind readers like yourself that it was the-always-optimistic "supporter of our troops" - yep, Harry Reid himself - who scheduled General Petraeus' address to Congress.

So, at last, there really is a connection between Iraq & "9/11"!

We've been engaged in some version of nation building (it used to be covert operations) for decades. Now we just have an administration willing to gut the entire Constitution to act out its particular Neo Con fantasy without review, accountability and obvious legal consequence.

I previously wrote either in this blogspot or the Post (a fairly effective arena for thought considering THEY don't have Glenn Greenwald) about a particular Archie Bunker episode. In it, the voice of Norman Lear cut through the political crap, as we seem unable or unwilling to do today.

In the episode, Archie was addressed by a reporter in one of those (harbingers of the blog) "man on the street interviews" during which he was asked what he would do the put a stop to the "skyjacking" problem plaguing that era. Almost without hesitation, he stated ARM ALL THE PASSENGERS! So while Joan’s thought still has a ring, it’s far from original.

Now we have a Democratic Congress which, when scrutinized from any angle, is an abject failure at the ONE THING it was tasked to do in the last election. Our elected officials have habituated their “peace-at-any-cost”, co-dependant, do anything/nothing, risk-free behavior to get RE-ELECTED for so long, that now the moment is here, they are paralyzed. It’s not lonely at the TOP, but it is lonely OUT FRONT!

It seems my Democrat brethren have grown accustomed to the seductive ease and comfort of being the underdog. "Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage"? FOR SHAME! Has the moral muscle and political passion so atrophied in the Democratic Party, that in this moment they DARE NOT ACT?

CONTEMPT - both from and for this President and presidency - is the most likely term that History will apply to the legacy of the Boy King. The ONLY thing that could prevent that is if this Congress cannot break the chains of self-interest in order to enact the will of the people. This would place our elected officials BEYOND CONTEMPT, and so by comparison, this dismal excuse for a chief executive would appear tolerable. Maybe the polls ARE right on this one.

@ Hadashito:

Wow, Hadashito, you must have connections that the rest of us mere mortals will never have. You know the "real" plan.

Arm everybody in Iraq ? An exercise in redundancy; a meaningless assertion.

Anybody in Iraq who wants guns, granade launchers, assault weapons, mortars, ammunition, you name it, already has them. According to news reports, Iraq is saturated with weapons of nearly every description - - including a goodly percentage of the weapons which we had intended to supply "our troops " that have gone missing.

Actually, what our clever administration is intent on doing is to incite the warring factions to use them more viciously against each other than ever. That's the real goal; "victory" by way of the Iago ploy. Convince them to kill each other, out of hatred, and at such an intolerable rate that the Bush administration may then preach to the American people that the whole thing has gotten so bloody and out of hand that the time has come to withdraw - preferably just in time to allow the next president the US to deal with the consequences. Sound a far fetched ? Not with this adminisrtration. Remember, DIck Cheney is in charge of foreign affairs. The moron who occasionally occupies the oval office (when he is not on vacation) hasn't got a clue.

Actually, the theory that we should "arm everybody" was promoted by the NRA and some other gun crazy whackos in the Congress in relation to the Virginia Tech. massacre. Don't you remember ? The idea was that the students and faculty who were ambushed and gunned down could have defended themselves if only they had had their own guns. A good the premise for a demeaning lawyer joke.

British troops have pulled out of the southern regions of Iraq and are holding up in a fortress near an airfield for quick evacuation. The President holds his strategic conference in an isolated airfield in a region far from Baghdad secured by tribal alliances formerly of the opposition. It would appear that this war has developed trajectories that we are not watching. Our debate may be a distraction while we are losing control of the initiative which seems to have shifted to the Iranian allies.

Its a common tactic of this administration to paint those who see parts of their plans as so far beyond reason that they needn't seriously be considered. This allows them to take the topics out of debate without reinforcing the framing by repeating them. Is that what you are doing virtue001?

On the other hand, some people who believe the government is up to no good, engaging in nefarious plots, and never telling the truth are in fact beyond reason and not worth considering. Is that you Citizen X?

Of course, sometimes the government really is lying to us, and we only find out in hindsight, like with the Iran/Contra scandal. Before it became established fact, who would have believed we were selling arms to Islamic fundamentalists who had only recently held Americans hostage? Certainly not virtue001.

This recent blaming of Iran is only one of many times the administration has asked us to believe baseless allegations. It is also possibly true, and if it is, this would be a sad case of the administration who cried wolf. After squandering all their credibility with prior lies, they would now be unable to lead the country effectively because nobody believed them.

For the time being, I suggest we watch this play out. Sensible people, many of them the same ones who predicted our current clusterfuck in Iraq, are now saying the administration plans to attack Iran. Some even think it will be soon, such as within the next few months, but even if not we only need wait a year or so. So watch what they say, and what happens, and for petes sake lets try to learn something from this so we don't get pulled into a war with China in 15 years!