Saintless

I just took The Bush-McCain Challenge - an online quiz to see if you can tell the difference between George W. Bush and John McCain. Check it out, and see if you can do any better than I did!

Don’t forget to check out the bonus carrot round!

Here’s the email I just got from Congressman Matheson:

Dear Misty,

The lack of independent, accurate assessments about our progress in Iraq has stymied our efforts to secure the country and assist in its reconstruction. We have the world’s most powerful military. If military might alone could succeed in Iraq, our mission would be complete by now.

We need more than a military strategy for Iraq–we need a plan for political, diplomatic and economic success. The President received such a strategy a year ago in the form of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) report. Unfortunately, he did not adopt it.

Going forward, in trying to establish a new Iraq strategy, I am guided by a set of principles that 14 Democrats and 14 Republicans support, including:

* We need a clearly defined and measurable mission for military involvement
* The government of Iraq must now be responsible for Iraq’s future and must make progress on political, security and economic benchmarks
* Our soldiers, including Guard and Reserves, must have adequate rest and recuperation time between deployments
* A safe and responsible redeployment of our Armed Forces is necessary to transfer the combat mission to the Iraqi forces
* Any ongoing mission must involve counterterrorism operations, force protection, equipping Iraqis, helping refugees and preventing genocide

It is immoral to play politics with the needs of the men and women who protect the ideals we hold so dear. Our troops have performed heroically. We owe them a new approach and a thoughtful approach to the situation in Iraq. We owe them a comprehensive strategy for success.

Our intelligence community tells us Al Qaeda–the number one threat to Americans–is strengthening. We must not weaken our capability to combat that threat. I will continue to look for responsible ways to change course in Iraq without engaging in political games that would compromise the safety of our soldiers.

Sincerely,

U.S. Representative
2nd District of Utah

It’s sad that Matheson is so far behind the Democratic platform when it comes to so many important issues.

Seriously, he’s “pushing for” this “principle” to guide us?

We need a clearly defined and measurable mission for military involvement

We needed this years ago, and now we just need out.

Oh, and is Matheson still part of the group who thinks al Qaeda is a threat to us in Iraq? They’re kicking our asses over in Afghanistan, but there’s not enough oil there for us to really care.

Get with it, Matheson!

Tags: Representative Jim Matheson

I found a blog called Army of Dude through the Weblog Awards. It looked interesting, so I added it to my RSS feed. This post was probably the first blog that has ever made me cry.

I’m not entirely sure why it made me so sad (as opposed to any of the other stuff I read about the war), or why I feel compelled to share it. But, I do.

The war is real, it’s not a made up story in a movie on our t.v., it’s real people dying and real people killing and real people living. It’s real, people.

Tags: Army of Dude

From the one and only Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, comes “Why It Was a Good Idea to Attack Iraq”. He begins:

Sometimes, just to test my point of view, I like to take the opposite side and defend it. For example, I think attacking Iraq was a huge mistake. So today I will make my best argument for the other side.

I must admit that I think he took most of this from Hillary. But, we’ll let him have her argument, just this once.

First, you have to separate the outcome, which is unknown, from the original decision to attack. Hypothetically, it could be a good decision to attack, based on what you knew at the time, but things could go wrong for unforeseen reasons. Likewise, it could have been a bad decision to attack, based on the evidence at the time, and somehow by luck, things might turn out well. So you have to look at the decision and the outcome separately.

He seriously goes on to defend Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

The cost of the war in Iraq is immense. But it has several potential benefits:

1. Al-Qaida showed itself to be everyone’s enemy.
2. Iraq has potential to be a U.S. ally, even if true democracy doesn’t take hold.
3. The U.S. sharpened its war-making tools and showed it is willing to use them.
4. Iraqi oil production will eventually increase, even if it takes 20 years.
5. The U.S. has a permanent military base in the Middle East.

He even says:

All things considered, the DECISION to attack Iraq was correct, given the perceived risk of Saddam developing WMD.

Oh, and here’s the Republican argument:

When a venture capitalist invests in a particular company, and it goes out of business, he doesn’t conclude that he made a bad decision to invest. He concludes that his strategy is good because he only needs one in ten companies to succeed.

And to finish:

In fact, if we attacked three or four countries looking for WMD, and found none, it still doesn’t invalidate the strategy. You only need to find one country that actually has them, and might use them, to make the entire strategy sensible. At the very least, all that attacking gives some teeth to the U.N. inspectors.

That’s my best argument for why attacking Iraq was both sensible at the time and might work out well in the long run.

I just wish I believed it.

The last line is perfect. Read the whole thing, he says it better than I can copy/paste pieces of it. And if you’ve ever read Dilbert, you know how great Scott Adams is at trying to make sense of the nonsensical.

Tags: Dilbert

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Condoleeza Rice has blood on her hands, and it looks like she wants the blood of Desiree Farooz, as well. Now if we could only get this sort of photo with Cheney and Bush…

(h/t Crooks and Liars)

Tags: Condoleeza Rice, Desiree Farooz, Dick Cheney, George W Bush

Representative Pete Stark just said the following on the House floor, and it’s exactly what Republicans who want the war and are against SCHIP make me want to say to them (or, well…yell, really):

First of all, I’m just amazed they can’t figure out, the Republicans are worried we can’t pay for insuring an additional 10 million children. They sure don’t care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where ya gonna get that money? You going to tell us lies like you’re telling us today? Is that how you’re going to fund the war? You don’t have money to fund the war or children. But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President’s amusement. This bill would provide healthcare for 10 million children and unlike the President’s own kids, these children can’t see a doctor or receive necessary care. [...]

But President Bush’s statements about children’s health shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than his lies about the war in Iraq. The truth is that Bush just likes to blow things up. In Iraq, in the United States and in Congress.

(h/t BarbinMD)

Tags: funding, Representative Pete Stark, SCHIP

Watch the video, click the link and let your representatives know that you don’t want to be fooled again.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULyka2Bfp04]

Tell ‘em!

Tags: bring the troops home, George W Bush

Where did John McCain and the rest of the “important” government official stay while in Iraq? You know, the ones who came back and said with a straight face that the situation is improved in Iraq.

They stayed here:

I’m sitting on a gilded chair, writing on a gilded table. The floors beneath me are marble, and the chandeliers above are sparkly and crystal. The only reminder that I’m in a war zone is the pair of man-high concrete barriers I can see out my window. “It’s Sunday, man, you’re working too hard,” a national guardsmen just told me. Welcome to Baghdad.

You know, the place where:

Not all that far away, Marine grunts are going weeks without showers or toilets, chomping on rations – and generally maintaining a positive outlook on life. I got my laundry done by a Philippino maid. Yesterday, I listened to a salsa band play in the chow hall, while I supped on alu gobi and navratan vegetable curry.

As Noah Shachtman says in the article:

This isn’t a war. It’s a war convention. Too bad I didn’t bring my bathing suit; maybe I would have taken a dip in the big, outdoor pool a few hundred yards away.

Next time one of our officials visits, and wants to come back and tell us how nicely everything is going, I think he or she should try staying in the barracks with the guys who are there for the war, and not the war convention.

Tags: Hotel Baghdad, hypocrites, John McCain, Noah Shachtman, Wired Danger Room

Here’s an idea that just might work:

For three hours during a townhall meeting last night, Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) “was verbally flogged by hundreds of his constituents for no longer supporting the quick withdrawal of troops from Iraq.” “There is only one way to end an illegal and immoral war, and that’s to end it,” said Zamme Joi. “You have screwed up, my friend. You have screwed up and you have to change course,” another constituent said. “We don’t care what your convictions are,” said Jan Lustig of Vancouver, “you are here to represent us.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3bLqQ-nQIw]

So, how do we pin Matheson down, and let him know that Utah Democrats want out of Iraq, and a lot of the Republicans do, too. I’d love to participate in giving him a verbal tongue lashing for making the wrong decision on that, and other issues such as Habeas Corpus.

Tags: Representative Brian Baird, Representative Jim Matheson

We’re all probably aware that Bush rejected the comparison of Iraq to Vietnam, more than once.

We’re also probably aware that Bush recently compared Iraq to Vietnam.

“One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people,’ ‘reeducation camps’ and ‘killing fields,’ ” Bush told a receptive audience at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention.

Beyond pointing out that “I was against it before I was before it”, I was floored when I heard that statement. Just floored.

So, while Bush may no longer reject the comparison of Iraq and Vietnam, Vietnam definitely rejects it.

HANOI, Vietnam - President Bush touched a nerve among Vietnamese when he invoked the Vietnam War in a speech warning that death and chaos will envelop Iraq if U.S. troops leave too quickly.

People in Vietnam, where opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is strong, said Thursday that Bush drew the wrong conclusions from the long, bloody Southeast Asian conflict.

“Doesn’t he realize that if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam longer, they would have killed more people?” said Vu Huy Trieu of Hanoi, a veteran of the communist forces that fought American troops in Vietnam. “Nobody regrets that the Vietnam War wasn’t prolonged except Bush.”

’nuff said.

Tags: George W Bush, Vietnam War