Friday, December 09, 2005

Thundersnow

Thought I was going crazy, but it is actually thundering as it is snowing right now in Boston. Having lived my entire life in the north (ok, except for the 10 months in Florida, but we don’t speak about that), I have never experienced this phenomenon before. Pretty cool!

No comment

Face the Nation (CBS News) - Sunday, December 4, 2005

Sen. JOHN KERRY: ...And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the--of--the historical customs, religious customs. Whether you like it or not...

Host BOB SCHIEFFER: Yeah.

Sen. KERRY: ...Iraqis should be doing that. And after all of these two and a half years, with all of the talk of 210,000 people trained, there just is no excuse for not transferring more of that authority.

SCHIEFFER: Well, you're not saying we should stop fighting these insurgents?

Sen. KERRY: Absolutely not.... But we do not need 160,000 troops running around the country as a whole, exposing themselves as they are, feeding the notion of occupation.

Barney's Best Friend, Joe

So, as usual, I'm a bit behind on things. That's why I was only today reading the Tuesday, November 29 op-ed by Joe Lieberman in the Wall Street Journal, Our Troops Must Stay: America can't abandon 27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists.

Lieberman's words - lies? delusions? desperate panderings to the Republicans? - have left me sputtering and speechless.

Nevertheless I will attempt to comment.

"Progress is visible and practical, " writes Lieberman. How exactly does he measure this? "There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. "

I wonder, did he count the cell phones? Is that how he got his scientific figure "millions"? No matter, let's move on.

"In my meeting with the thoughtful prime minister of Iraq, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, he declared with justifiable pride that his country now has the most open, democratic political system in the Arab world. He is right. "

Hmmm, how exactly does one maintain a democracy while being under foreign occupation? Just wondering.

"The administration's recent use of the banner 'clear, hold and build' accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week."

Again, I'm woefully behind on the administration's Orwellian catchphrases and questionable campaign names. (My recent favorite: Operation Steel Curtain. Are the propaganda folks really that desperate that they have to bring out the Curtain again?) When I first read that, I thought Joe was talking about clear-cutting forests or something.

"If all goes well, I believe we can have a much smaller American military presence there by the end of 2006 or in 2007, but it is also likely that our presence will need to be significant in Iraq or nearby for years to come. "

Finally, some honesty. Though if The Subliminal Man from SNL were reporting here, he would add "for the oil."

"After a Thanksgiving meal with a great group of Marines at Camp Fallujah in western Iraq, I asked their commander whether the morale of his troops had been hurt by the growing public dissent in America over the war in Iraq. "

I just don't have anything witty to say to that. Just blatant administration cocksucking.

Lieberman ends his piece with the Marines' motto Semper Fi. Nice words from a man who did not serve in the military; he received an educational deferment while in school, then a family deferment (as a father) upon his law school graduation in 1967.

The only way to end this piece is with a photo from Joe’s own website. A picture is worth a thousand words.



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