All we're seeing now is face-saving. Everyone in D.C. is trying desperately to get on the "right" side of the issue, wherever that's perceived to be at any given moment.

What we see in D.C. now is as abject an example of the utter whorishness of our politicians as there has been since the salad days of the HUAC and that gnome MacCarthy.

It is beyond tragic that all this posturing is costing lives every day. But, remember, these are *politicians* and their power and position are at stake.

As I have said before, and has been proven again and again, politicians will sell their children into slavery and their mothers for hamburger rather than cede an ounce of power and status. Iraq is a giant sinkhole, into which will fall the lives and reputations of any politician who gets too close to it without a lot of caution...and even more mendacity.

Over the past four months, from mid-August to mid-November, the number of attacks in Iraq has grown, so that the weekly average is at its highest point in more than two years.

Wasn't it supposed to be that the insurgents/terrorists were just concentrating their attacks for a short time, for the goal of influencing our November elections?

So that means the report we'll see for the period after mid-November will show a sharp falloff in the violence levels... right?

...if it ever was.

I am glad I am not George W. Bush this Christmas. That guy has to try to pretend he still belives he always was right.

He has to look his kids straight in their pretty eyes, and pretend that he is an honorable man. He has to work on his laugh, to make sure it sounds natural.

Poster Chas and I can just stop posting for a couple days, and pay attention to our hilarious nieces and nephews. Bush has to rachet up his fake, and put on his greatest performance, with his toughest audience, his own family.

Merry Christmas, my friends! Bush will pass. But the holidays go by too soon, and our kids grow up much too fast. Go home and cook something great. Bless you all, honorable people!

try to keep in mind that your clear thinking has delineated the difference between morally bankrupt leaders and a population trying to do the right thing by holding them accountable. Short of insurection, our words are our guns and our ideas our banners. Much too old to fight but much too young to capitulate. I too am glad I am not Mr. Bush, or one of his Joey-like ilk. Quail hunting anyone?

Those people who were right before the invasion and warned that Iraq would descend into barbaric chaos are still being ignored by both the media and the politicians.

I wonder how many more Friedman Units it will be before the Cassandras will have a chance to be heard?

From wikipedia:

"Cassandra was a daughter of Priam, the King of Troy. She was taken under tutelage by Apollo who gave instruction on foretelling the future. Initially this was bestowed as a gift. When Cassandra refused Apollo's romantic advances, her instruction stops and the gift becomes a curse. Cassandra was left with the capacity for foreknowledge of future events, but could not alter these events. She could predict the future, but no one would ever believe her. Cassandra predicts that Paris's journey to kidnap Helen would end in doom for Troy. In Vergil's Aeneid, Cassandra warns specifically that the Greek gift of a giant wooden horse was soon to carry tragedy within the walls of Troy, a prophesy in which "All heard, and none believed"."

"The figure of Cassandra, has also been used as an iconic image of those who are in the role of an antagonist of widespread ignorance or arrogance, particularly at the governmental level, to the consequences of the pursuit of a policy against one's own interests (Barbara Tuchman: March of Folly; From Troy to Vietnam)."

If the Pentagon has been reporting several hundred fewer attacks than the Iraq Study Group during the period August through November, then the Pentagon's figures for the period May - August (when there was no ISG) are in doubt. Since the establishment of the ISG, the reported attacks have increased. Even adding a few "grains of salt" can we now rely on the current administration to provide us with a reliable version of what is actually happening in Iraq. After the disbandment of the ISG, will the facts show a decrease in the number of attacks? If so, can we believe that is the case? Doubt in the truth of that old oxymoran "government intelligence" was a factor in our withdrawal from Viet Nam. Will the current administration remember what happens when the people no longer believe what their government tells them?