This is courtesy of Crooks & Liars.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/10/05/michael-ware-she-condi-is-so-far-from-reality/

Wolf Blitzer: At this point, she comes in for a few hours, a day or whatever. Into Iraq, she immediately goes to the very secure green zone. Does she really see what's happening inside Iraq? Does she leave there with a better appreciation of either the sectarian violence or the insurgency?

Michael Ware: Of course not, Wolf. I mean you could just imagine the umbrella of security that encases someone like the security of state. But i mean going to from the airport which is its own self-contained little bubble. To the green zone which is the ultimate bubble here in Iraq, i mean, U.S. Officials and contractors and all manner of people will come into six to 12 months in Iraq. But never leave the green zone. They don't know even what it's like to walk an Iraqi street. Certainly not without the shroud of heavily-armed American soldiers about them. They don't know what it's like to go to someone's home and sit and talk with them. To shop in the markets. To have blackouts. To not have water. To have the cure for benzene. Secretary rice is so far from that reality that she couldn't possibly hope to understand it. Certainly not from fleeting visits to an artificial bubble like the green zone, Wolf?

Ricearoni dips her pampered toe into the hell she's helped create. Big deal. Did she resurrect any dead soldiers?

won't even dare to use this as a valid talking point. No plans for how to make it better and give the American people some reason to look at them as leaders.

They'll stay to the side and hope that Foleygate has enough steam to just barely push them into control.

How sad.

is a neo-con. Reality is of no consequence. She carries a solid gold statuette of the see-no, hear-no, speak-no evil monkeys in her flak jacket matched purse. I'd bet $50 her shoes were haute-camouflaged heals purchased in a mall in what is left of Lebanon, along with a smart, contrasting colored helmet, red lipstick and a smile hiding the huge pee ring in her smart pants brought-on by the fear of visiting the safest place in her Boss's pipe dream.

For the first time, I can say I agree with you. Though your replies to the last message I wrote you were pretty funny.

(http://letters.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/09/11/flag/view/index2.html)

Here's a plan: move a division to Turkey, and send the rest home. Or do more dead soldiers make you feel more manly, like Cundi? You should feel great ths week: 27 more dead. 6000 Iraqui innocents killed last month. Mission accomplished.

Let's see...manly enough to comment on dead soldiers but not teenagers being hunted by and covered-up by the "great idea makers" of your ilk? If one prefers dead soldiers to "fair-game" teens then I guess your party's ideas are better than ours. Indeed, no ideas are better than the ones being cultivated by your fearless neo-cons. Besides, Kerry had some very different ideas that fell onto deaf ears, yours included.

Plenty of Democrats have said plenty of things about the mismanagment of the Iraq War, and the lies that got us into it in the first place. I'm on a couple dozen mailing lists and I get such statements multiple times in a day. But without the Presidential soapbox and a captive media outlet (Fox News), most of these criticisms don't get heard by a mass audience.

But it's clear that a majority of Americans have turned against the war and a majority of Americans disapprove of Bush's running of it. I believe a majority of Americans have great unease about other aspects of Bush's presidency and policies as well. But for people who don't pay a lot of attention to the news and don't delve into issues much past TV coverage, they may not have concrete reasons to articulate their unease. They just have the sense that something has gone very wrong. I think a lot of these people still trusted Bush on the "terror" issue and that he was "keeping America safe" - mainly because he and his propaganda machine kept telling us he was doing so.

Something like Foley serves as a crystallization of that unease. It exposes the fiction that the Republican leadership is either competent or cares about the welfare of most Americans. They are willing to sacrifice our soldiers; they are even willing to sacrifice young Republicans - whatever it takes to maintain their stranglehold on power.

It's never about what it's about, and Foleygate is about far more than the misdeeds of one Republican Congressman.

courtesy of House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061006/ap_on_el_ge/pelosi_time_1

I will agree with joe that the dems are a sad bunch. Not as sorry as that group running the war that you love so much, but a sad bunch indeed. We need to get out troops out of that hellhole as soon as possible. If the Dems can divert the gravy train for a bit, maybe they can at least set some kind of time table.

She arrived in a high security plane with anti missle gear. Our poor soldiers who actually put their lives on the line have to scramble and find metal plates to enforce their unarmoured vehicles. Convoys are sent out daily without military escort while the Friends of the Regime keep depositing checks for the military might they are supposed to be providing.

As with any good lady for hire, they should have just put her in a taxi with $ in her pocket and let her make her way back to the airport on her own.

I would have at least expected a piano recital or figure skating exhibition.

the highway from the airport is still too dangerous for travel.

So, after nearly 3,000 of our soldiers are dead, countless others are wounded and maimed for life, thousands of Iraqs are in similarly sad conditions, and we're mired in this mess for the long haul, Ms. Prada can't travel the main road to Baghdad because of safety reasons...but there's no civil war and Rummy's still doin' a "Brownie" of a job?

Can we drop-kick her and the whole lying bunch of crooks into the unsafe zone and let them play in traffic for a while? Pretty please?!