President George W. Bush on Wednesday warned that a hasty withdrawal from Iraq would trigger a bloodbath like the one in Southeast Asia after the US defeat and retreat from Vietnam.
“Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left,” Bush said in an effort to turn on its head the analogy by critics who liken the Iraq war to the Vietnam quagmire.
The Pentagon expects to deliver only 1,500 mine-proof armored vehicles to Iraq by the end of the year, less than half the number promised a month ago, a spokesman said Wednesday.
Press secretary Geoff Morrell said the Pentagon will not be able to meet its goal of delivering 3,500 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles by the end of the year.
“If we could get 1,500 to theater by the end of this year that would be a positive development,” he said.
The White House is so worried that the increasing number of protestors who show up at Presidential events might intrude on the delusional world of George W. Bush that they have a manual that details how to keep dissent away from the President.
It even details how to throw dissenters out of Presidential rallies.
Two years ago, the CIA sent to Congress a report of several hundred pages done by its inspector general detailing the agency’s errors and missteps leading up to 9/11. The CIA fought strenuously against its release. Based on a heavily edited 19-page summary, it’s easy to see why.
Much of the summary spells out what was previously known or guessed at, and it did find that there was no “single point of failure” that allowed 9/11 to happen or “silver bullet” that would have prevented it.
The guy has been a friend of John Powers since their middle-school days in Cumberland, R.I. When Powers headed for the University of Rhode Island, his friend headed for the Marine Corps.
His friend came back from Afghanistan in 2005.
“I saw his life fall off the face of the earth,” says Powers. “He couldn’t get a job.”
It has been two years, and still Powers worries. His friend will be OK for a couple of months, then get caught in that dark, frightening confusion that the Marines never prepared him for. He’ll stop calling.
In Sunday’s Democratic presidential candidate debate on ABC, the most interesting yet least-publicized exchange came in the form of the candidates’ responses to a question on religion.
As wildly unpopular as President Bush now is, with approval ratings dipping into the high 20s, it should be obvious his most disastrous policy decisions were driven either by his zeal to appeal to the religious right or by his innate belief (and those of some of his advisers) that his policies were sanctioned by God.
The first concept to grasp is that the global conflict now under way involves both a clash of arms and a clash of ideas. To succeed in this war will require effective combat on both fronts.
The second concept is this: The clash of arms and the clash of ideas influence one another, often in peculiar and even counterintuitive ways.
One example: Al Qaeda in Iraq could not challenge American troops directly. Their solution has been to target innocent Iraqis instead, to slaughter innocent Muslim men, women and children by the hundreds.
Erin Brockovich is moving forward with a possible sequel to the investigation she led in California, this time in Australia.
Brockovich and the Westlake Village, Calif., law firm Masry & Vititoe earned acclaim for her sleuthing in Hinkley, which found that a California power company had polluted the water supply.
The investigation was turned into a 2000 movie that earned Julia Roberts a Best Actress Academy Award.
It is my opinion that Americans complain too much and do too little about their own life in general and about politics specifically. It is understandable why we complain so much, less clear why we do so little. As a nation, we hardly even get out fat butts out of the chair one day every other year to vote. Yet we expect that by some miracle they do something right for a change and solve our problems. Insanity is too kind a word for our syndrome.