Cindy Sheehan

I haven't opined much on the Cindy Sheehan, parked in front of a particular Crawford ranch, situation. I really wanted to absorb some of the details first.

What I knew was that she was critical of Bush, and I saw that the right wing freaks went after her with a gusto; shamelessly I might add.

There seems to be some reasonableness missing from the debate. The wingers want to suppress every dissenting voice, and they use really sick and mean-spirited attacks to do that. Some on the far left pull some unsubstantiated tin-foil-hat style conspiracy theories out of their ass.

The truth probably has more to do with Occam's Razor than massive "world domination" conspiracy theories. The neocons wanted to spread freeance and democracy in the middle east. They saw a threat from radical Islam and wanted to create a democratic and secular mecca in the heart of the middle east... They simply did whatever they had to do, and lied about whatever they had to lie about, to get it to happen.

They truly are the ultimate pragmatists.

Taking a country to war in that manner is probably not the best way to go about it. Consider the famous Rumsfeld quote:

"It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

Yes, it's pretty obvious they lied their way into the war. But lets put that aside for a second, and assume they weren't merely trying to get control of Iraqi oil.

Next, you have the prosecution of the war. It's been pretty well mishandled, and obviously not what they expected.

Donald Rumsfeld, 3/7/03:

"It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."

Vice President Dick Cheney, 3/16/03:

"I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months"

New York Times, 2/2/03:

"The administration’s top budget official [Mitch Daniels] estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion."

To date, the war has lasted 27 months at a cost of over 200 billion dollars.

So, we have lying us into the war, incompetent prosecution, and then we have the insurgency, which Cheney has been saying is in it's "last throes" for damn near a year now.

And that leaves us where? Cindy Sheehan says pull all the troops out. George Bush says we'll "stay the course", with rumors circulating that there will be at least a partial troop withdrawal this next spring, timed to coincide with the mid-term elections.

So, what has me so pissed off, and where do I think we go from here?

Incompetence and lying gets on my nerves. I also get pissed when people get away with being incompetent and lying. Bush has really had no adverse consequences to heading up this debacle.

Where do we go from here? I hate to say it, but we have to "stay the course", only I'd like to see a complete change in leadership as soon as possible. Our current leaders have proven incompetent and they are hurting our effort in Iraq.

I doubt the most positive outcome that could happen in Iraq will be worth the price that has been paid for it. That said, to abandon it now would be to invite disaster, and do a disservice to all of those that have sacrificed everything in giving their best efforts.

So - if I ruled the world, I'd jail Chimpy, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Rumsfeld. I'd bring in a new administration headed by President Clinton and Vice President McCain (ya, I know - not gonna happen but this is my fantasy). I'd have the tax cuts rolled back, scrap useless and expensive programs, like "star wars", beef up our military preparedness, fuck Halliburton in the ass, get a whole lot more troops, institute a "service" draft, where everyone has to pitch in, in some way at least, even if it's not the military, and rally the nation behind the effort.

As it is now, there is a defeatist attitude that is going to destroy the effort, and the incompetence at the highest levels is going to leave Iraq an Islamic theocracy. We can't have that.

Then again, I could be wrong, and regardless what our military does, it could all turn into a big pile of shit. If that's true, pulling out completely right now would be the right thing to do. I just don't have a crystal ball, and while I'm really pissed about the situation we find ourselves in, we better work hard to make it work. A whole heck of a lot is at stake.

In the meantime, it would be nice if those sick bastard wingers would just leave Cindy Sheehan alone and let her say whatever the hell she wants. It would be nice if the really cowardly ones would enlist in the infantry.