Reality slap upside the head from the NYTimes today

[TayTay]

This is devastating. The NYtimes has published a chart that it got from someone in Central Command. It shows the US military assessment that Iraq is sliding into chaos and that this slide has been accelerating since the Grand Mosque blew up in Samarra in Feb of this year.

Chart:



Story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/world/middleeast/01military.html?hp&ex=1162443600&en=ae294d1d13aed188&ei=5094&partner=homepage

No wonder these folks want to talk about a botched joke and pretend it means something. OMG, the truth is just incredibly horrible. This is what our $500 billion has bought us in Iraq.

Then I wrote this:

Then it becomes not about the Democrats or the Republicans, about a particular pol I like or one I don't. It's about those kids I saw at my son's graduation last June, those three kids who stepped forward to received their acknowledgement from the US Marines that they were accepted and were going to boot camp in the summer. Everyone in that high school graduation crowd understood, these 18 and 19 year olds were going to be in Iraq before the end of the year.

Sometimes, just sometimes, Iraq makes me cry. I think of one of those young inductees and how their enlistment was cancelled because their older brother was killed in Anbar Province in Iraq in May and the mother didn't want her only surviving son to also possibly die in Iraq. I think of the young girl who was smiling as she took her Marine letter and her brother who lost a leg in Fallujah.

George Bush and the Republican Party in Congress do not deserve the service of our young. They do not deserve the trust of parents who let their kids join the military. They do not deserve the support of the American people.

$500 Billion dollars, 104 Amrican soldiers dead in October alone, thousands and thousands of wounded and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, and the GOP wants to focus on a botched joke. Pardon me for a second as I cry. This is not from defeat, not from sorrow for any one Dem pol, it's sorrow for those two kids I saw graduate this summer and the lack of support and the lack of plan to back up what they are doing in Iraq. I cry for their families. I cry because George Bush doesn't deserve this. He is an utter failure and he doesn't care about these people.

Every so often, Iraq hurts more than I can bear. Then I remember those kids and I remember I have to bear it, because those kids need someone to speak for them. So you dry the tears and you fight again.

Dear Lord in heaven! No wonder the morally bankrupt Right Wing wants to talk about gaffes and fake outrage about who supports or doesn't support the troops.

Guys, just a hug today. Reality slaps hurt. They make me cry.

[whometense]

1. A virtual

:grouphug:

As outraged as I am on behalf of Kerry, he is, as he says, a big boy and can handle it.

What kills me is the moral bankruptcy of the Bush administration criminals, their complete abdication of any kind of responsibility for anything they've done. And their slimy, braindead minions, who swallow everything they're fed, no questions asked. That's the 37%. How is it possible there are still that many of them? How is it poossible they can say with a straight face that they "support the troops"? They have decimated the troops. It's so tragic it's hard to comprehend the horror that is the new, Bush-made Iraq.

Stephanie Miller is going to town on this right now, and playing "Let's Hear it for the Boy" for Kerry. Randi Rhodes has a podcast up of yesterday's show that is a thing of beauty. Ed Schultz was wonderful. So was, amazingly, Chris Matthews. And of course, Olbermann.

One misspoken line vs. moral banruptcy. Yeah, let's pile on Kerry. How dare he misspeak? And f*** any democrat who uses this as an opportunity to trash Kerry. I'm taking names.

[beachmom]

2. You're absolutely right.

And let's also face the reality that this is the silly season. It's silly because reality is just too damned hard to take. George Bush is the one who will be judged harshly by history; nobody is going to remember what happened this silly season.

[whometense]

3. I wanted to mention the excellent series the Boston Globe

has been doing this week about PTSD. http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2006/10/29/the_war_after_the_war/

Definitely not easy reading, but important.

[_dynamicdems]

4. You really should post that in GDP.

This is horrible and we have to do something about it.

We have to fight them. Kerry gave us an opportunity to get Iraq in the spotlight again. He's already taking advantage of that. Yesterday he defended himself. Look for him to be in full attack mode today. He's on Blitzer later and who knows what other appearances he might do. Maybe even Olbermann.

We need to start writing our little fingers off to news stations, pundits, reporters and ALL DEMOCRATS.

IRAQ, IRAQ, IRAQ...keep pounding them and don't let them up for air.

[TayTay]

5. I did post it.

It's on the Gretest Page.

[sandnsea]

6. $7.50 An Hour To Die In Iraq

That's why I wrote that. You want to talk about outrage over the troops, that's what we should be outraged about. They're paying minimum wage to our troops in Iraq and dare to say Senator Kerry disparages the troops. Bush hasn't done a thing about our troops losing their lives, he only cares about losing in the polls. This country is sick in the head for getting in a turmoil over a comment and ignoring the death and mayhem that caused the comment.