Exactly what Al Qaeda wanted. Fresh supplies of Americans to slaughter and they don't even have to travel out of town to do it. Heckuva job Brownie.

...to tell the troops he had lunch with, that he and the democrats just gave Lil Georgie Dumbass another huge bag of borrowed money to help keep them stuck in Iraq until the end of time?

When the movie "Patton" with George C. Scott came out in 1970 I was still "in country" in Vietnam. I heard it was Nixon's favorite movie and that he had played it over and over in the White House movie room, sometimes just sitting by himself.

Eventually I saw it in re-runs at some third-rate movie house. One line from Scott's rendition of the famous Patton's Address to the 3rd Army, portrayed at the beginning of the movie stuck in my mind.

"Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You win it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

Fresh back from a war, I got the meaning of those words all wrong. I thought that when he said you win a war by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country, he was admitting the truth as I saw it: That in America, the people who start wars, the war merchants and their political puppets in Washington never won a war by dying for their country (America). They won wars by making the other poor dumb bastard (American G.I.s) die for THEIR country. It made perfect sense.

I have to admit I was a little embarrassed when many years later I heard someone interpret that line to mean that Patton was saying that American G.I.s needed to make the poor dumb German bastard die for Germany. I must have got it wrong.

But I like my interpretation better. The G.I.s are considered to be poor dumb bastards by the likes of Bush, by the likes of Lieberman who wouldn't put himself into a position to die for his country, but to make a whole bunch of people that he considers poor dumb bastards to go and die for him (and for Israel).

They've got Lieberman!

NEWSFLASH

Soldiers in the field, the people best qualified to assess the situation on the ground, are afraid of official retribution/punishment for expressing honest concerns based on factual experience on the ground.

"Accurate communication is possible only in a non-punishing situation!" I like to call it one of Celine's Laws, but the idea has been around longer than that.

Why Salon chose the more troops more targets quote as the headline is beyond me. This quote, on record from a named source cuts to the absolute heart of our problem in facing the realities of this war.

From an old Gary Larson, Far Side cartoon. It depicts an invading army attacking a fort wearing tunics with a target design on it.

Joey lemming and his pal Joey Biden need to meet and hold hands as they stroll down memory lane , hopefully in Faluja and w/o that pesky body armor and cumbersome helmet, and reminisce about the good ol' days when they both still had brains...

"It just seems like we drive around and wait to get shot at."

Uh, that's your job dude. After they shoot at you, you run them down and kill them. It's called War.

Why do the troops hate the troops so much?

Ah, yet more wordplay from the supporters of the war. If ol' Joe had said they weren't optimistic, that would sound bad. But make optimism sound childish and feminine, and of course those badass soldiers wouldn't be like that! Who wants to be "Pollyannaish"?