It's all too quiet on the Iraq front

[paineinthearse]

From THE COLUMBIAN (Clark County, Washington) - http://www.columbian.com/06032005/clark_co/283309.cfm

Opinion - It's all too quiet on the Iraq front

Friday, June 3, 2005
GREGG HERRINGTON Columbian staff writer

Maybe it's presumptuous to attempt to describe where America's collective head is on any given day, other than those awful 9/11-type moments of national coming together. But I'm going to try anyway:
* We're behaving the same way about Iraq that we act individually when faced with an unpleasant situation and ignore it in hopes it'll go away.
* We're like a nervous father who doesn't risk alienating a teenage son by confronting him about his poor choice of friends, late hours and slipping grades. We're the wife who doesn't confront her husband about his increased drinking.
* We want to be proud of what might ultimately be accomplished in Iraq and the region, just like the president says. But if we do think about it, we're mad that he got us into the war for unsubstantiated reasons and we're sad about casualties and worried about how deep we, our children and our grandchildren will have to dig to pay for it. So, we find something else to occupy our minds, like Social Security, Terri Schiavo, the pope, Michael Jackson, gasoline prices, summer vacation.

Anything but Iraq, where nearly 1,700 U.S. troops and 22,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, most of them since George W. Bush celebrated "Mission Accomplished" on an aircraft carrier. Nor does the president talk about the war not in a public and realistic way. Tuesday, at a news conference, he was asked if he thinks "the insurgency is gaining strength and becoming more lethal? And do you think that Iraq's government is up to the job of defeating the insurgents and guaranteeing security?"

Note the present tense. And Bush's response: "I think the Iraq government will be up to the task of defeating the insurgents." Note the future tense. He continued: "I think … the Iraqi people dealt the insurgents a serious blow when they when we had the elections." Note the past tense. The president's response about the insurgency today is a mishmash of past success and wishful thinking about the future.

A few weeks ago, when the "Downing Street Memo" surfaced in Britain and jeopardized the re-election of Tony Blair, it created barely a ripple on this side of the pond. It resulted from a visit to Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2002 by the head of British intelligence. It said, "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the Intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." It shows that several months before Congress even voted on giving Bush the authority to go to war in the event diplomacy failed, our troops were already as good as deployed.

more.......

[AndyTiedye]

1. A Couple More Things About this "Relationship"

* We're behaving the same way about Iraq that we act individually when faced with an unpleasant situation and ignore it in hopes it'll go away.
* We're like a nervous father who doesn't risk alienating a teenage son by confronting him about his poor choice of friends, late hours and slipping grades. We're the wife who doesn't confront her husband about his increased drinking.

*Said "husband" gets abusive when called on any of this.

*His nephew is the chief of police, so no good calling 911.

*His cousins are the judges at the divorce court, so there will be
no divorce, ever.

[Syncronaut Seven]

2. Pretty bleak picture

Is this where we start killing our famlies to escape, or in revenge, you know, like in Texas.

Edit:Sp

[paineinthearse]

3. Interesting analogy

Dysfunctional family coupled with a corrupt government infrastructure.