trying to grok

Good articles, Sarah.

Now, knowing that I'll probably get a smart-ass comment from Will, I am hesitant to say this, but I've started feeling a shift in my attitude towards the war in Iraq. I'm not necessarily against it, but I feel like maybe we were too hasty in going in the first place. But maybe I feel like that because I'm constantly bombarded by anti-everything-hippies here in the great Northwest. I don't know. Maybe it's because I think we may have bitten off more than we can chew. Regardless, we're there now. I still stand by the fact that it would be an even bigger mistake to leave than it would be to finish what we started.

I'm just happy that people are coming around on the issue, even if it's in such a back-handed way. It's taken far too long. In 2003, something like 65% of Americans (probably most of them conservatives) thought Saddam perpetrated 9/11. Almost everyone thought he had WMDs. And a lot of people, at least all the neocons, actually thought that an occupying army led by George W. Bush would be perceived as a liberating force. Come ON PEOPLE! There's no way Bush can promote a "liberal society in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world" when he can't even promote a liberal society back home. (widespread civilian phone surveillance, patriot act, military tribunals, torture, rendition, using homophobia as a voting tactic, erasing the seperation of church and state, consolidating all power into the executive branch, etc, etc, etc, etc, I'm so sick of it all.)

Anyway, what we need to do now is get out of Iraq (not that we're going to be able to - Goldberg's "vote" idea is stupid beyond comprehension) and we need to get back into Afghanistan in a big way. The taliban is far from dead, and it's imperative that we make them dead, now. Too many troops, especially Canadian soldiers who are footing the bill right now, are dying in our justified and unfinished war against terrorists in Afghanistan. Rumsfield left the CIA (the ones calling in the airstrikes in Tora Bora) out to dry in the fall of 2001, because he only cared about occupying Iraq - we have to fire that son of a bitch first, and get the military back from the crazy PNACs.

Lastly, I just want to say that the Pacific Northwest is the greatest place in the world - it's like living on the moon of Endor, surrounded by left-leaning ewoks.

Do the smelly hippies get any credit for knowing three and a half years ago what the good and wise Republicans are finding out just now? Well, of course not. Bush wasn't a conservative anyway. He was an imposter,a liberal Manchurian canditate. Conservatisim can't fail, it can only be failed.
No matter what happens in November conservatives are preparing to throw Bush out of the life boat. They have to pretend they never knew him.

Let's say a president wants to go to war.When considering force requirements, he ignores the advise of the Secretary of the Army, the Chief of Staff of the Army, and the Secretary of State, who was a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Shouldn't this man be considered our Churchill? This generation's Truman?

Well, shouldn't he?