Archive for the ‘Iran’ Category

So, The Joint Chiefs chairman tells us today we’re fresh out of cannon fodder.

Admiral Mike Mullen admitted today that although additional US troops are needed in Afghanistan, we’re tapped. We have no more personnel.

The military said, nope.

In saying such a simple thing, Mr Mullen acknowledges what we’ve all known for some time. The back of our great American Army is broken. We are left without the ability to defend ourselves. Our men and women are bogged down and tied up in the stupidest and most disgustingly reasonless war America has ever engaged in.

Looking for something to be afraid of? There it is.

Did you know there’s a movement in San Francisco to rename a sewage treatment plant after Dumbya?

We are unable to prosecute, for all intents and purposes, what has always been the more important of the two fronts on “terror”.

Well, one didn’t matter at all and the other did kinda. It matters more now.

“There are force requirements there [in Afghanistan] that we can’t currently meet,” Adm. Mike Mullen said. “Having forces in Iraq at the level they’re at doesn’t allow us to fill the need that we have in Afghanistan.” -CNN

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Fire and death were lobbed into the Green Zone. Basra and Baghdad burn and die again. Turns out, we barely have the resources to take on al-Sadr’s Mahdi army. He was merely testing us.

We tell everyone it’s Iran’s fault

The future’s so bright, I gotta wear a welding helmet. And a hazmat suit.

This thing ain’t going nowhere but worse.

The economy. Duh.

We need a leader.

It’s amazing that our Little Bootlicker, McCain is a contender. I think he should have to reveal whether or not he’s in diapers well before the general in November. I wonder if he’s wearing a bag.

I don’t know what to make of this man. I used to like him. It’s been a while. He runs down the middle and literally alienates both sides while still polling well.

I guess the middle is big too. I’d hoped they weren’t that dumb.

With any luck we can collectively understand that old rich white men in charge is a bad idea, particularly if they have too much faith. Doubtfire doesn’t seemed to be consumed with Santa, but he’s wrong on all the issues.

I have but two questions, maybe three for Mrs. Doubtfire:

#1. How exactly are you going to win this war on a broken economy AND a broken military?

#2. What on earth made you run for President, what is your answer to number one?

#3. Are you serious about maintaining these tax cuts while staring at this black maw of an economic vortex?

#4. Do you understand these things at all?

He’s lucky to be getting a running start.

I know what it’s like when you’re trying to think but nothing happens.

He does too. Way better than me.

Look, the Republicans are used to various monkeys. Reagan was a bit of an orangutang. Bush Sr. was some skinny big eared sharp chinned simian. Dumbya is a retarded chimp. Doubtfire is a goddamn reptile. They confuse him while he confuses them.

James Dobson loathes The Bootlicker and that cracks me up. This guy reaches over two hundred million a day in a hundred and sixty countries by radio alone. Focus On The Family. Yes, that megalomaniacal douchebag. It’s these bastards that I really loathe. They highjack common sense with self righteous morality and an archaic set of standards that they barely pretend to live up to.

Before they’re done they take it upon themselves to press the flesh of their hypocrisy on as many as they can find and it means nothing to them that their beliefs have no place in politics, particularly if they are to remain sacred. Those beliefs aren’t sacred, they are for sale.

Anyway. Forgive me. It’s just that despite how much this matters, it’s still really stupid.

Try really hard not to be stupid.

Drinks for my friends.

Those of you that have been reading me for awhile, may recall that my take on the last State of The Union was titled “No babies in garbage disposals”. A not so subtle nod towards the populist pablum. Tonight was more of the same.

He still insisted on mispronouncing ‘nuclear’ six or seven times and stubbornly whipped the deceased equine carcass of social security, or “entitlements” in the euphemistic vernacular of the neocons. Fuck that. Social Security is not an entitlement. We pay in when we are young, it pays out when we are old.

More pointless and baseless saber rattling at Iran. Way Too many Democrats hauling asses out of seats for this particular round of applause. Sheezus.

I feel like an eight year old. I was bored and really, I just don’t give a mad fuck what Dumbya has to say anymore. He may still be dangerous, but his irrelavance metastasizes by the hour.

I found more intrinsic entertainment in the shifts of smirk Cheney wore behind Dumbya’s right shoulder. I was amused by the Republican lockstep of standing ovations.

C’mon you pinheads, you’ve got be fucking kidding me.

Perhaps it’s irresponsible and lazy, but to counter the address point by point would be futile and didactic. If you don’t realize how full of shit he is by now, you never will. Like I said, I just don’t care.

On a far more interesting note, Obama collected the endorsement of Senator Ted Kennedy as well as a glowing op-ed in the New York Times yesterday titled “A President Like My Father” written by Caroline Kennedy, daughter of JFK, in case you didn’t know. Now this, is heavy.

The momentum that Obama is gathering is formidable. Although still very early, it is of a brand that could thwart the Clinton Machine. Wow. A certain degree of credit goes to Barack himself. He’s demonstrated a not so simple grace in allowing the Clintons to make themselves look bad. Zen judo. Awesome.

Time to take a walk John. Don’t go too far.

Goddamn Super Tuesday will roar at us I hope.

Drinks for my friends.

I found this guy who seems to be a pretty swell guy in the News & Politics top ten and I just couldn’t help it. I hope you all understand. I’m not picking on him but rather taking exception to an underinformed mindset. That and, I just couldn’t help it. My response to him on his blog follows.

You seem nice enough, a reasonably intelligent and well adjusted guy. But I have to take some exceptions here. I hope you understand. Also, if I’m blunt, understand it’s in the interest of brevity.

Here we go, you say:

“Iran, just as Iraq was, is engaged in supporting and training terrorists that seek our destruction.”

*Bullshit. At the very least, Iraq was a secular country and terrorists are anything but secular. Saddam was an evil bastard but he shunned religion in his politics and for good reason. As for Iran: If this chaos was taking place in Canada or Mexico, you can bet your ass we’d be in that fight for the sole reason of influencing it’s outcome in our favor. It’s intellectually dishonest to pretend Iran has no dog and therefore no interest in this fight.*

“Iran, just as Iraq was, is engaged in the production and procurement of WMDs. While Iraq was likely seeking nuclear weapons, it is most likely that Iran already has them (or is within days from having them), along with the ballistic missile capabilities required to deliver them to a very broad theatre.”

*Bullshit! What are you smoking? If the IAEA says Iran is compliant, just how the hell do you figure Iran either has nukes or is “within days”? Come on! That is conjecture overdrive.

And seriously, we didn’t find a damn thing in Iraq. Nothing. No shred. No indications. Nothing. We walked through that country like it was a grassy field. They had NOTHING!*

“Iran, just as Iraq had, has violated numerous U.N. demands for weapons inspections.”

*I can’t comment on the latter because I don’t feel like looking it up. But you’re first point can be proven to be bullshit by anecdote. Hans Blix, formerly of the UN inspection team and the IAEA said in an interview on BBC TV on 8 February 2004, Dr. Blix accused the U.S. and British governments of dramatising the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, in order to strengthen the case for the 2003 war against the regime of Saddam Hussein. Also, for what it’s worth, Saddam never expelled inspectors, they were pulled out.*

“Iran, just as Iraq had, poses a direct threat to the United State’s security interests.”

*You just can’t make a statement like that without supporting somehow. How? Why? You’re stupid because I say so. C’mon!*

“Iran, just as Iraq was, is governed by leaders that seek the destruction of Israel and her allies.”

*Yer killing me here man. SEE ABOVE! News flash: Ahmadinejad’s alleged call for Israel’s destruction is subject to interpretation via translation and he said the opposite on American Network Television. 60 Minutes? CBS?

And when exactly was Iraq ever a threat to us? Throw out all Kool-Aid in the house!*

“In short, we are justified in engaging in military actions against Iran. If they do not have fully operational nuclear weapons now, they will very shortly. It is my belief that we need to engage them now, rather than later. I honestly don’t believe that we can afford to wait any longer.”

*No. We are not. Bullshit. The only thing they have done that is remotely provocative is have weapons made in their country show up next door. Our weapons are in virtually every fucking country on earth and we’ve never had this kind of chaos on either of our borders. Just what is your point? Like I said, they have a dog in this fight and we didn’t.*

Then you go on to endorse the merits of surgical strikes as opposed to invasion. You rightly point out that we lack the capacity and resources for an invasion and that it could very well devolve into a third world war. Good job. I agree.

But what makes you so sure that an Iranian nationalistic tsunami wouldn’t be the obvious reaction to our bombing the shit out of them? And if we use even tactical nukes? It’s all over but the shouting. It WILL be WWIII and those won’t end up being the last nukes used by about five different countries.

Your Entire platform is made of straw. Your points are straw and so are your arguments. I respect you for thinking this hard about it but you’ve just thrown an airball here. You got nuthin. You’re a good guy, so stop watching TV and read something.

We’re in big trouble here and we need those with functioning hearts and minds like you, to pay attention.

Thanks for indulging me.

Drinks for my friends.

Allow me to come at you correct, Ahmadinejad is not the most savory character on the world stage these days. He is in fact, a punk ass bitch. He’s a micro-penis in the power structure of his own country. He holds no currency. And, he’s a dipshit. He says they don’t have gays in his country, despite the fact than one can be executed for it.

Oh, and he questions the Holocaust.

However, he’s on the world stage and he regularly commands a spotlight. His influence over Sunnis in the Arab world is powerful, yet callow. He is extraordinarily well educated, accomplished and probably very smart.

He knows what he’s doing.

The stupid among you will be smug in your estimation that a savage dared to visit our shores and summarily had his ass handed to him.

He already knows what you think and you just spent three days with his hand up your ass. That, is why he came.

By the way, you guys did great. Your jingoistic outraged hubris was spot on. When the president of Columbia university lacks the basic courage to respond to Ahmadinejad’s remarks after the fact, as opposed to engaging in sophomoric rhetoric and insults before he utters a single word, it’s obvious there’s still a majority in this country that can’t get enough Kool Aid.

While America stands with hands on hips and thinks that we showed that bastard, and who the fuck did he think he was anyway, the rest of the world bowed it’s head and shook it.

More than a few covered their eyes.

“A man walks down the street
He says why am I short of attention
Got a short little span of attention
And woe my nights are so long
Where’s my wife and family
What if I die here
Who’ll be my role model
Now that my role model is
Gone gone
He ducked back down the alley
With some roly-poly little bat-faced girl
All along along
There were incidents and accidents
There were hints and allegations” – Paul Simon

Soon we will have been in Iraq for FIVE YEARS. Already longer than the big one.

Every aspect of this clusterfuck has played underneath and just behind the proscenium of a short attention span theater. Dumbsfeld said weeks, maybe months. All these years and it’s still unmitigated chaos. And it’s costing in excess of 700 million dollars a day.

A brief caveat: Today Dumbya vowed to veto a bill that would increase health care for uninsured children.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

Now, imagine if you will, that this same scenario was taking place in Canada. Would we be selling them arms? No. We would be giving them away. Or maybe selling them to both sides because we’re dirty, filthy, greedy pigs.

You can bet your ass we’d be involved. Neck deep. So Ahmadinejad gets torn apart for wading into the power vacuum that we left behind out of myopic stupidity right next door to his house.

Is our attention span so short that we’ve forgotten that we made this goddamn mess? We made this mess with a country that didn’t have dick to do with the original mess. Mess O’ Patamia.

The only hope of stabilizing the region at all is to initiate a dialog with Ahmadinejad’s bosses. Quit kicking the little bastard and take his country seriously.

I was really looking forward to the interview with Christiane Amanpour on CNN. After 60 Minutes and the debacle at Columbia I was anticipating a more level, if still American, stage.

It didn’t happen. Ahmadinejad had already accomplished what he came here to do. In spades. He didn’t come here to talk to us. He came here to talk to the rest of the world in front of us and despite us.

Predictably and infuriatingly, we played the straight man. Well done, assholes. I predict you’ll be sorry.

Drinks for my friends.

FURTHER READING:

I need to point some shit out.

Tempted by the fruit of another

So, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran took the podium at Columbia University today.

Before he takes the mic, he’s pretty much savaged by the dickhead in charge. Didn’t they invite him? He’d already had his ass handed to him by 60 Minutes.

And then well, he stood up and said some really ridiculous shit and they laughed at him. He has some serious sack, this pious fuck, but he’s still a bit of a douchebag.

This pissing match between him and Dumbya is a little like a bare knuckle fist fight between a pair of geriatric invalids. It’s kinda funny. I picture them naked except for huge saggy diapers.

Yep, silly, pointless and a little tragic. Neither one holds all the cards, and neither one wields the power of their respective regimes. Punch and Judy.

People in either country think they’re both assholes.

Lest we forget, Ahmadinejad is next door to the worlds biggest conflagration/power vacuum. He may be stupid but he plays because he’s living on the slope of an active, lava filled, geopolitical zit.

Don’t blame him for attempting to influence the flow of puss from the boil America picked at.

He’s here, but so far he’s talking to and playing for, his own people. Meanwhile, we don’t talk to very many besides our own either. We sure as hell don’t talk to Iran.

What if we did?

What if we tried being friends instead of arrogant red neck war mongering ignorant pricks? See, right or wrong that’s the path that they have been led down. That is what they think.

Bear in mind that Iran is fairly progressive society in the context of that region. And although it’s people regard some of our policies as idiotic, let’s face it some are, they don’t hate Americans.

Not yet anyway. Dick-in-Bush are doing their damndest to squander that goodwill.

“Comb your hair and paint and powder you act proud and I’ll act prouder
You sing loud and I’ll sing louder tonight we’re settin’ the woods on fire
You’re my gal and I’m your feller dress up in my frock and yeller
I’ll look swell but you’ll look sweller settin’ the woods on fire………..”
-Hank Williams

It’s absurd. Still, I’m a little giddy over the anticipated catfight tomorrow at the UN. Perhaps Douchebag and Dumbya will compare dicks and we can all move on.

I don’t intend to paint this embroglio as anything but really goddamn serious, because if we initiate hostilities with Iran we really are ‘arrogant red neck war mongering ignorant pricks’.

Allow me to be clear:

Attacking Iran, while we’re losing two other wars in the region, at the same time Iran exerts far more influence in the way bigger of the two conflicts than we do, is an unbelievably stupid idea.

See, despite the fact that our ground forces are a blister about to burst, there is an assload of 21st century firepower parked in the gulf right at the end of Iran’s front sidewalk.

The Navy is all fresh and ready to fuck something up. And they will. The first part will be over in a few weeks, just like both forays into Iraq.

And then, best case scenario is an even more pissed off and far larger nest of wasps who can’t wait to kill Americans any way they can.

Worst case scenario is complete chaos. Lotsa nukes over there kids.

That’s ok with Dumbya and Douchebag. They both get a little moisture over the apocolypse.

It’s gonna be great. The nighttime footage will be spectacular.

Drinks for my friends.

And now, as we stand swaying, drunk with hubris, ignorance and power that we longer possess, swaying on the precipice of world war three, a complete disaster and perhaps what these necons seem so anxious for, the apocolypse, we learn that Condi Rice may have forgotten to tell us about something that would make the whole catastrophe moot.

My apologies for the length of that sentence. Try to stay with me.

details here and here

Apparently, there was a serious overture on the part of both the religious and political leadership at the time (2003) in Iran to not only support America’s military efforts in the region, but to also recognize Israel as a legitimate state and to engage in cogent efforts to extinguish terrorism including relinquishing ties to Hezbollah and Hamas.

We haven’t had diplomatic relations with this country since 1979 and Dr. Condoleezza Rice doesn’t remember anything about such a magnanimous and historically significant proposal. Despite the fact that Colin Powell told the the aide to Rice (Flynt Leverett) that there would be no sale at the White House.

She doesn’t remember. What’s new? Libby can’t remember shit and Dick-in-Bush act like they’re in that Ground Hog Day movie with Bill Murray.

Forgive me. Are you fucking kidding me? We walked away from that?

Dick-in-Bush and Condi too, kicked this golden goose to death and then pretended like it had never arrived on a Pennsylvania Avenue doorstep in a pretty gift wrapped basket.

Hey America! This is your foreign policy at work. Stare down the throat of the gift horse and then beat it over the head with a sledge until it draws it’s last breath in pain and confusion.

Could it be that they welcome with glee the notion of these poor bastards emerging from their holes festooned with open sores and lesions from radiation poisoning as a result of either our or Israel’s nuclear tipped bunker busters? Not unlike the undead? Like fucking zombies who are well aware of their expiration date? There are a ton of them that think very little of walking into a crowded marketplace and detonating themselves and burning and exploding everyone around them.

Am I scaring you yet? It’s right around the goddamn corner.

I intend to stay on this subject for awhile. It is literally the most important subject in the world today.

Two carrier groups and a third on the way soon. We’re standing at the fence in the front yard. They really have no choice but to wait for us to come over the fence and start shooting. And then, they will. And then. We will.

This is all a really stupid game for a prize that is in everyone’s best interest to render obsolete.

Watch for the fireworks kids. Nightly over Teheran. Sometime this spring.

Drinks for my friends………..

Submitted for your approval, the drama unfolding on an ever bleaker world stage, on this day the thirteenth of February in the year of 2007.

As a second carrier group steams toward the gulf this week, Newsweek reports that a third is likely to follow soon. Do we have any idea the havoc that can be wrought by three aircraft carrier groups and nearly sixty warships total? How many nukes are on those ships and on the submarines that are surely lurking underneath?

From the Associated Press today and lifted directly from my friend Doug’s blog:

Pace contradicts claims by other U.S. military, administration officials
The Associated Press
Updated: 3:32 p.m. ET Feb 13, 2007
JAKARTA, Indonesia – A top U.S. general said Tuesday there was no evidence the Iranian government was supplying Iraqi insurgents with highly lethal roadside bombs, apparently contradicting claims by other U.S. military and administration officials.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces hunting down militant networks that produced roadside bombs had arrested Iranians and that some of the material used in the devices were made in Iran.

“That does not translate that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this,” Pace told reporters in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. “What it does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers.”

His remarks might raise questions on the credibility of the claims of high-level Iranian involvement, especially following the faulty U.S. intelligence that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Three senior military officials in Baghdad said Sunday that the highest levels of Iranian government were responsible for arming Shiite militants in Iraq with the bombs, blamed for the deaths of more than 170 U.S. troops

Asked Monday directly if the White House was confident that the weaponry is coming on the approval of the Iranian government, spokesman Tony Snow said, “Yes.”

Iran on Monday denied any involvement.

“Such accusations cannot be relied upon or be presented as evidence. The United States has a long history in fabricating evidence. Such charges are unacceptable,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters in Tehran.

Also, new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said on Friday that he’s “not frankly specifically certain myself of the details”.

And today our new commander in the region Admiral William J. Fallon said “I have no idea who may be with hands on, on this stuff”.

David Gergen on CNN, no friend of us peaceniks, just called the whole thing “wierd and botched”.

The emperor is buck naked, sporting gooseflesh and he appears to be jaundiced. Even though his eyes leak tears from the Washington winter cold, he stands before us completely unaware that our gaze is drawn to his shriveled purple phallus. He knows not of his own leaflessness.

But his his sack is huge and distended by the swollen fruit within.

There’s a fine line between clever and stupid. Rest assured that the balls of The Decider In Chief are massive by reason of stupidity. Also know that these are not those of brass the we’ve come to so admire on some leaders. The testes adorning this village idiot are no more durable than overripe grapes. He knows nothing of this either.

Snot leaks from nostrils and spittle flies from his mouth agape as his bird like head head pivots to catch sight of a horrified citizen pointing and gawking at his shrunken manhood and a grossly oversized pair of man produce.

Iran has a thriving modern infrastructure and it’s military is certainly no paper tiger like that of Iraq. It is a civilized country nearly three times the size of Iraq with a population of nearly seventy million that has grown and prospered unfettered by sanctions from the west.

Those who would charge that various weapons are sourced from Iran and that the highest levels of it’s government are complicit, have no evidence to support such claims and their names are being kept secret on their own insistence. That makes me all warm and fuzzy.

Iraq is a miasma of dominoes that we continue to kick over with no idea of when or where they will stop tipping into others. Iran is a massive forest of the metaphorical slabs that our arsonists laureate, Dick-in-Bush, are gearing up to topple en masse in all directions. Once they get started, I won’t be suprised to see the Iranian army spilling across the the Iraqi border.

Wthout question, chaos will then have siezed the reigns in the Middle East and there’s no predicting where it will end. I can virtually guaruntee that the 3,100 plus dead Americans and some where around three quarters of a million dead Iraqis will suddenly become Sesame Street numbers in the scheme of things. The violence, carnage, destruction and horror we’ve witnessed so far will rapidly become Fisher Price.

Already we use ammunition containing lethal amounts of depleted uranium in Iraq without any regard. Finally, mainstream media has begun to notice. White phosphorus, torture, kidnapping and rendering, war profiteering…………I mean pallets of cash. Pallets of four hundred thousand dollar bricks or “footballs”. Of fucking cash!

And they continue to hammer away with a heavy sledge, at our liberties, our rights.

And now they want another war.

Think about that.

On top of one that will surely bankrupt us.

On top of the one with no end in sight.

On top of the one that has left us completely bereft of credibility in the world.

Our arsonists laureate, Dick-in-Bush. seek to gash open another wound, with the old one still bleeding profusely, not knowing or caring if it causes all of us to bleed out.

My hero, Hunter S. Thompson once said that when the going gets wierd, the wierd turn pro. I’m starting to wonder if he meant that we will not have a choice.

Take a look at who our arsonists laureate want to burn next

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!’
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought–
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
‘And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Drinks for my friends.

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”

I just can’t stand it.

Here we go again.

I’m gonna ramble a little. Pontificate if you will. Well, rant.

The Bush doctrine of preemptive war has reared it’s ugly head again.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has never threatened another country with nuclear weapons. He has in fact, never so much as expressed a desire for them. His simply stated goal has been to develop nuclear energy for his people.

If you wonder why an oil rich state in an oil rich region would want to develop alternative energy sources, it is because they are not stupid. The less oil they use, the more they can sell.

By the way, he never said that Israel should be wiped off the the face of the earth. Watch this. Then read this.

Our own CIA says that IF Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program, they have no evidence, that they are least five, if not ten years away from producing a single nuclear device. Of course, they could be wrong, as a key figure for determining proliferation of this kind in the region, one Vallery Plame, was exposed in a meretricious smear perpetrated by the very administration seeking aggression of this preemptive brand against said country.

I stand slack jawed. Agape and unconsciously leaking copious amounts of drool on my frilly liberal blouse at their audacity, their ostentatious vigor in pursuit of the most astounding duplicity ever witnessed by a civilized people.

As a platform, Dumbya used the state of the union address, to advance his diabolical agenda. And now that disingenuous, corporatist bitch Hillary Clinton, is standing along side rattling sabers and gnashing teeth with the usual asshats McCain and Lieberman.

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me” – chief engineer Scott from The Starship Enterprise. Wake the fuck up people. Iran represents no more of a threat to you or me or anyone else in the world than Iraq did. And look where that got us.

And now our arsonists laureate, Dick-in-Bush, seek with marvelous composure, to send more child warriors. To throw good money after bad. They endeavor to convince us that grinding salt and ground glass into this gaping wound we have opened will make a difference. Indeed, they endorse escalating the scale of death and destruction. More American kids will die and many more innocent Iraqis will die in a shitstorm of our ruler’s own device.

As I write this, a second aircraft carrier task force speeds towards the gulf. Our military has begun to train sailors to fight on the ground. The army is advertising $40,000 signing bonuses. We are preparing to bomb the shit out of more brown people.

And they tell us twenty thousand, when what they are clearly saying is as many as forty eight thousand. Combat troops require support troops. And those support troops are just as likely to die, lose a limb or come home brain damaged as those doing the fighting.

Against all advice. Against the will of the people. Against all good and common sense.

And in the news today, our legislative branch has taken it upon iteslf to smite any debate over the language for a non binding resolution to express polite dissatisfaction for all of this.

I can’t stand it.

“Woe to you, Oh Earth and Sea,
for the Devil sends the beast with wrath,
because he knows the time is short…

Drinks for my friends.