(In Case You Hadn't Noticed)
By Brad Friedman on 1/9/2005, 1:13am PT  

Too tired, too busy...too exhausted for proper analysis. So I point you to someone with a better brain than I for the moment.

From The Editors at The Poor Man...a few days ago...when there were a dozen or so more living U.S. Troops in Iraq.

The entire article seems particularly germaine given some of the appalling discussion I've seen from the wingnuts in BRAD BLOG comments of late...The insurgency continues to grow in Iraq...

Understand that the people killing us in Iraq aren't motivated by Gore Vidal or inspired by Susan Sontag or organized by Michael Moore or in cahoots in any way with any of the right's celebrity piñatas - not literally, not metaphorically, not if you look at it in a certain way, not to any infinitesimal degree, not in any sense, not in any way at all.
...
And if you really want to help the American war effort, you can join the fucking armed forces and go to Iraq like thousands of others have, and then you can do the best job you can to show them that Americans care about them and want, above all else, for all of our futures to be better and more peaceful than the past, and get paid shit. You will then be my personal hero, really, and I hope you don't get killed or maimed or see or do something that makes you hate everything for the rest of your life, which is a very real possibility.

In other related news that you probably haven't heard much about...

  • According to AP, "An Army platoon sergeant who ordered his soldiers to throw Iraqis into the Tigris River was sentenced Saturday to six months in military prison, but will not be discharged."
  • From Reuters, "The U.S. military said on Saturday a bomb dropped by one of its planes during a mission in northern Iraq hit the wrong target and it 'deeply regrets the loss of possibly innocent lives.'" (We're wondering what makes the 14 civilians killed when we bombed the wrong house --- many of whom were woman and children --- just "possibly" innocent).
  • And again from AP, "As of Saturday, Jan. 8, 2005, at least 1,351 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003."
  • Which brings us nicely back once again to the final graf from The Poor Man article...With apologies to anyone who may have been offended by the language around here of late, the final graf hits the nail on it's head...

    …And, before you ask: no, I have no clue about how we can improve things in Iraq. I don't have a single idea for how we can un-shit the bed, and I don't hold out much hope that this whole bed-shitting episode is ever going to be brought to a lemony-fresh conclusion. I do, however, know who shit the bed, and have some sense of how frequently he shits there. Let's stop shitting for a start.

    (Hat tip BRAD BLOG buddy Maz for the tip on The Poor Man piece!)

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