Day: August 13, 2005

Vince is Going Back

Trish
But we do contemplate it, all of it. Somewhere deep inside we know it’s happening RIGHT NOW, and we think about it. It’s a weight around our hearts, pulling us down, and hurting, hurting, hurting. Cindy Sheehan reminds us of this hurt. President Bush ignores it, goes on about his dude ranch holiday, puts one foot in front of the other, head down. But we know. We know.

We have a problem. We have a black cloud over our head, a shadow over our conscience, and a question mark over our future. Iraq is sucking the joy, the spirit, the courage out of us.

I bet you’re like me. When you get pissed off about the traffic and your idiot fellow drivers and long check-out lines and people who seem to be taking out a mortgage instead of twenty bucks at the ATM, a little voice in your head says, “Yeah, but at least I have electricity. At least I can buy stuff. At least I can drive down the road without bombs going off.” And like me, you feel more guilt than gratitude.

I work part-time at UPS. One of the drivers and I have a thing, a fun thing, where we pretend to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Vince is black and at least 10 years younger than my 40-something white self. If I look nice one day, instead of just saying, “You look nice today,” Vince says, “Baby! Did you wear that for me?” and I assure him I did. When I rag him about an irate customer and her petulant demands, he cuts me off and asks, “I’ll see you at the house later, right Shorty?” and I assure him he will.

We kicked off our friendship when I was unknowingly the third person to message him about the same annoying thing on a bad day and he called me from the road to tell me exactly how much I pissed him off. After he hung up on me, I found out he was right to be indignant and messaged him my regret. In the meantime, he thought about it too and reached the same conclusion, but in reverse, so when he came in that night he apologized to me for, “getting all Army on your ass.” I asked him what that meant.

Vince has already been to Iraq once, at the start of this mess. That should have been enough, but he spent three weeks in Georgia in July training for redeployment. He knows this is the deal he made. Vince has two years to go before he has his 20 years in. His little girl just turned 4, and from the pictures he’s so proud to show, is the spitting image of her dad, only prettier. His partner doesn’t want him to go back but knows she can no more end his service than his annual Kentucky Derby bets.

I don’t want Vince to go back. I don’t want anyone to go. I don’t want one more single, solitary person to go. It hurts to even think about it.

I want Iraq to just stop. I flinch when a 38-year-old guy in the reserves, like Vince, is killed because I know he’s got a family, a community, a good life in progress. The picture on the news of the just-killed 19-year-old hayseed with a grim expression posed in front of the flag makes me imagine the parents somewhere who never saw this coming, never thought he’d die after all the hard work of raising him was just easing off. The dead female soldiers – who smile radiantly in their pictures no matter what their age, young mothers or not – are especially hard. And it’s just too painful to think about the vast Iraqi death toll.

But we do contemplate it, all of it. Somewhere deep inside we know it’s happening RIGHT NOW, and we think about it. It’s a weight around our hearts, pulling us down, and hurting, hurting, hurting. Cindy Sheehan reminds us of this hurt. President Bush ignores it, goes on about his dude ranch holiday, puts one foot in front of the other, head down. But we know. We know.

Schroeder to Bush: Take Military Option Against Iran Off the Table

Jon Ponder
President Bush’s poll numbers are low because he is an abysmally poor president – especially in the arena of foreign affairs.

President Bush’s poll numbers are so low that he is now the most unpopular president since Nixon during Watergate. And of course, nothing boost poll numbers like the rally ’round the effect of going to war. Still, it’s shocking to hear sable-rattling statements, first from President Bush yesterday, and recently from his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, indicating that war planning against Iran may be well underway.

Late yesterday, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder spoke out, warning Mr. Bush that Europe is dead set against the United States going to war with Iran:

Mr. Schroeder directly challenged Mr Bush’s comment that “all options are on the table” over the Iran crisis.

“Let’s take the military option off the table. We have seen it doesn’t work,” Mr Schroeder told Social Democrats at the rally in Hanover, to rapturous applause from the crowd.

Mr. Schroeder said it remained important that Iran did not gain atomic weapons, and a strong negotiating position was important.

President Bush’s poll numbers are low because he is an abysmally poor president – especially in the arena of foreign affairs. He had better find a way to deal with Iran diplomatically because he will lose support completely in this country if her pursues the military option.

Fix Is in on Abramoff, His Offer to Flip Top GOP Pols Was Rebuffed – By Top GOP Pols

Jon Ponder

Now that Republican uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff has been indicted, it would be standard operating procedure for prosecutors to offer him leniency in return for his ratting out his betters. It would be SOP if our government were not controlled by the corrupt conservatives who were once Abramoff’s playmates. Here’s Josh Marshall:

I hear Abramoff has already tried to [flip], and [has] been rebuffed. And this gets us into questions I think we’ll be talking about a lot.

Why would he be rebuffed?

Decisions like that go right to the top. And since Abramoff’s shenanigans are closely tied — to be generous — not just to members of Congress (DeLay, Ney, Burns, et al.) but to key GOP power players (Norquist, Reed, et al.) and quite probably Karl Rove himself, you can see why he (i.e., Abramoff) might have a harder time than your usual perp cutting a deal to implicate those above him.

Must-Read: 21 Officials Involved in the Bush CIA Leak Scandal

Jon Ponder

If you’re among those who are having trouble getting your arms around the Bush CIA Scandal, a very good place to start is the break-out of major players from Think Progress. Here’s the opener for the section on President Bush:

WAS BUSH INVOLVED IN THE LEAK? In July 2005, the New York Times raised the possibility that Bush could be involved in the leak. “It is still not clear what the investigation into the leak of a C.I.A. operative’s identity will mean for President Bush. So far the disclosures about the involvement of Karl Rove, among others, have not exacted any substantial political price from the administration. And nobody has suggested that the investigation directly implicates the president. Yet Mr. Bush has yet to address some uncomfortable questions that he may not be able to evade indefinitely There is the broader issue of whether Mr. Bush was aware of any effort by his aides to use the C.I.A. officer’s identity to undermine the standing of her husband, a former diplomat who had publicly accused the administration of twisting its prewar intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program.” [NYT, 7/24/05]

We have added the document into our Bush CIA Leak News Watch under the link, “The Players.”

BLUE ALERT: Freepi Declare War on Cindy Sheehan, Will Descend on Camp Casey at Noon Today

Jon Ponder
“I therefore challenge anyone who seeks to criticize Cindy Sheehan to offer-up their son or daughter, their husband or wife or indeed, themselves, in sacrifice for the lie that is Iraq. Until you have, you have nothing to say and you just don’t get it.”
— Jennifer Monroe

The “Heart of Texas” chapter of the anti-democracy Internet group Free Republic has issued a call to its members to gather near Crawford, Texas, for a counter-demonstration today, Saturday, August 13, at noon, at the encampment of “Peace Mom” Cindy Sheehan near President Bush’s second home in Texas.

Sheehan’s ad hoc settlement is called “Camp Casey,” named after Sheehan’s son who was killed while serving in Iraq in 2004.

According to reports on C-SPAN and the Web, Freepers are in a state of high agitation that anyone would question their Dear Leader and label his misleading statements about the war in Iraq as “lies.” Late this week, they moved beyond posting personal smears against Sheehan to announcing an assault on Camp Casey.

Reporter Jennifer Monroe, who has visited the Free Republic website wrote:

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