My car starts every day. God obviously thinks I’m the shit!

I eat ice cream nearly every day. No heart attack yet. Guess I’m on the right track!

There’s a name for people who believe they are being directed to do things through a *special* relationship with God – they’re called schizophrenics.

The trouble with these scare pieces about Bush’s belief in his own divine appointnment (see also: ‘Suskind, Ron’) is that they don’t take into account the fact that Bush is not in charge.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s fine if Bush thinks he pisses Holy water. He’s not really pulling the strings. What troubles me is the gods that Cheney and Rumsfeld worship- namely money and power.

Oh ye of little faith! Oh ye of myopic vision. The Israelites also complained as Moses led them out of the oppressive land of Egypt, through the wilderness, on the way to the promised land–the land flowing with milk and honey. They could not handle the wilderness. We cannot handle the wilderness through the Iraq war. So they forgot how far Moses had led them, and they forgot where he was taking them. Likewise, we, the American people, have forgotten how far Bush has taken us, and where we will ultimately end up—in the promised land of worldwide democracy, and in an ultimately more stable Middle East.

Dr. sliced pork belly sandwich,

Now that’s funny!

BLT, you’re clearly nutty in the head. Bush has insured that terrorism will remain to stay, now and in the far future. And please stop repeating the idiotic drivel that he is responsible for spreading world-wide democracy.

Too bad W hit his staff with that rock(yeah, I know) and got the big G all mad at him.

The Israelites also complained as Moses led them out of the oppressive land of Egypt, through the wilderness, on the way to the promised land–the land flowing with milk and honey.

Doc- in other words, the Iraq war won’t be over for another 38 years. Great.

opimus prime, perhaps my Moses metaphor was a bit of a stretch, but, nevertheless, I am an incurable optimist. Let’s say, as a worst case scenario, going into Iraq was an abysmal mistake. Certainly we can all agree that the shedding of innocent blood is never a cause for celebration. However, we must look on the bright side if we are to move forward. At least Saddam, a heartless man who had no qualms about wreaking havoc and brutally murdering and torturing his own people, and arguably the world’s biggest environmental criminal, is no longer in charge of the country. Would the world have been safe if we would have left him and his country alone? I can’t say for sure, but I do know that if I were his parents, I certainly wouldn’t give him a chemistry set for his birthday.

The Iraqi people are clearly enjoying more freedoms, the women are not as oppressed, and it looks like at least some elements within the insurgency may be ready to take the diplomatic road to change. I wouldn’t say “the future’s so bright I’ve got to wear shades,” but if you’re going to blame the bad stuff on Bush for getting us in the war, you also must give him at least some of the credit for the good stuff.

Oh, by the way, the story of Moses and the burning “bush” was not intended as a prophesy presaging Bush’s nemesis.

Moses spoke to the burning bush, ha! I wouldn’t have thought of that one. Time to trim the shrubbery at the white house. 2006 looking bedy, bedy, goot to me. Eeny meeny jelly beanies, gonna fill the house with democrat weenies.

Doc, you just made a very silly claim regarding Iraqi women. In actuality, their freedoms and opportunities have greatly diminished since the invasion; Saddam’s regime was brutal, but secular, and afforded women status equal to men’s under the law. Under current, religious-based laws, a woman is worth only half of what a man is in matters of inheritance or as far as court testimony goes. Not exactly “liberated” in my book, when a woman’s word is automatically worth less than that of a man who raped her, unless she can find two impartial male witnesses to back her up! But then you’d know these things if you regularly read Riverbend.

I like you Doc, but wow are you wrong.

“The Iraqi people are clearly enjoying more freedoms, the women are not as oppressed, and it looks like at least some elements within the insurgency may be ready to take the diplomatic road to change.”

If constant power brownouts, dangerous drinking water, 40% unemployment, random violent death and/or kidnapping, and tribal feuding is considered ‘enjoying freedom’, then I’ll take door number two, please. And women are more oppressed now, not less. Under Saddam, women were active in most professional fields and could walk in public without male family members. Now they are targets for kidnapping, rape, and religious reprisal.

I think it’s great to have an optimistic outlook on life, but not at the price of being ignorant or flat-out wrong. Which in this case, you are both.

To be such a crappy President and still get reelected does seem to indicate some higher (or Satanic) power at work.

Or, perhaps, Diebold.

I like you too, yagi, but I have to do a double take in this case. Are you actually saying you would like Saddam back in power in Iraq?

Observe the bush baby in its’ native habitat. A nocturnal, deficit loving creature. It has big eyes to watch out for bad ole libruls and terrorists. It has big ears and tail. It can be heard at night to scream patriotism! patriotism. While its’ children go to prep school.

Having Saddam in power in Iraq was America’s foreign policy for a couple decades.

Bush the Elder understood the world enough to know that keeping Iran in check with a local, secular opponent was the best antidote to the mullahs.

How could one Bush be so wrong, and another Bush be so right?

It’s a burning question.

Doc,

Please don’t fall into the either-or trap.

The statement “By law, women had more freedom under Saddam’s regime than under the new constitution” does not equal “I wish Saddam were back in power.”

In fact, saying “We have really mucked up the lives of many ordinary Iraqi citizens” does not equal “I wish Saddam were back in power.”

I taught Iraqi refugees English composition back in the 90s. I got to read all sorts of essays about the horrible things that happened. I watched Kurdish ex-patriats celebrating in a local park when the statue of Saddam came down. No, I do not wish Saddam were back in power.

Do I think invading was good idea? No, but it wasn’t my call, was it? I can tell you that the reasons given to us were obviously BS to any Composition 101 teacher–C- work at best. I can also tell you that the lack of post-invasion planning was painfully obvious. (Candy and flowers? “No Iraqi sectarian factions”? Please.)

Whether the invasion was a good idea or not is completely irrelevant to the two statements:
1) Iraqi women now have less freedom than before.
2) We have mucked up the lives of many ordinary Iraqi citizens.
Those are facts, not judgements or oinions. They are politicially and ideologically neutral. If your particular ideology can’t survive those facts, perhaps its time for a review.

A whole lot of blood flowed under the bridge between that magical moment when Saddam was taken out of power and now. And, unfortunately, the majority of it is on our collective hands. Yes, some of that blood is on the hands of our enemies–those nebulous, ill-defined “insurgents” or “terrorists”, whoever they may be–that is another fact. Unfortunately, it is also a fact that the “insurgents” or “terrorists” have not killed, maimed, or brutalized anywhere near the number of Iraqis that we have.

You are certainly free to hold the opinion that our motives were just and our decision to invade was made with the best intentions and the good of the Iraqi people at heart. However, sooner or later, you are going to have to face the fact that our execution of the occupation following the invasion has been at best flawed. Depending on the metric you select, it ranges from “significant room for improvement” to “corrupt mismangement” to “god-forsaken clusterfuck.”

For the sake of our loyal soldiers, the Iraqi people, and the integrity of our own body politic, I certainly hope the people in charge pull their enormous egos out of their obsessivly-clenched asses really, really soon.

“you also must give him at least some of the credit for the good stuff.”

Yeah, OK. Name some good stuff. Because for the life of me, I can’t see any. Life for ordinary Iraqis is much more dangerous, much worse than before. As someone else said, read Riverbend.

But someone painted a school. And only charged us a hundred thousand dollars.

“I’m an incurable optimist”

PB&J is half-right, which is the first time he has ever got close to not being incredibly, stupidly wrong. Unfortunately he can’t maintain that level of lucidity for long, as next we get this brainiac statement…
“The Iraqi people are clearly enjoying more freedoms, the women are not as oppressed, and it looks like at least some elements within the insurgency may be ready to”

Clearly, Doc? Clear from what, you arrogant fool? Clear from your personal investigation of Fox news coverage? WTF do you think you know that we don’t? Newsmax is giving you the scoop? So lucky you are to have the right to have so many opinions without bothering to do any actual work.

You do realize these are real people’s lives you are amusing yourself with? So glad you think that women are not so oppressed, I am sure if they knew your opinion it would make them happier than ever!!! No, as we learned from your messages during Katrina, you don’t understand that these are real people with real lives that in many cases are being ruined, and seemingly you never will.

F*cking arrogant p*ece of sh*t.

Dorothy, I have to give you props. You and my mom have more in common than the first name you share, even though she is a devoted right-winger, and are obviously driving in the left lane. You are both extremely bright individuals. I don’t agree with everything you’ve said, but I do find you to be very intelligent and decidedly more balanced in your perspective than many who blog on to this site. I willl carefully consider the points you’ve made.

g, all I can say is that you’ve obviously been cherry-picking what you’ve been reading. Consider reading articles representing a broad range of perspectives. I read things I can’t stand because of the blatant bias, but I don’t want to become a one-sided reader. There is plenty of good and plenty of bad things to have come out of the war in Iraq. We can’t take back the innocent blood that was shed, or take back some of the admittedly poor planning that led to needless suffering. But I am hopeful that as history unfolds, the good will overtake the bad.

I’m sorry, Dorothy, “…and are obviously driving in the left lane…” should read “and you are obviously driving in the left lane.”

Dr. sliced pork belly sandwich,
Good things have come out of the war in Iraq? For whom? Do you think they or we have somehow benefited from them and our soldiers being maimed and killed? Maybe you own stock in an oil company or arms manufacturer, but most of the rest of us don’t. Get out from under your bridge and take a look around doc.

It’s not hard to see why the subtlety of the unkosher one’s argument is escaping all you godless liberals.

You see, we all are united in our extreme dislike of the current president. Therefore, it is a source of constant misery to us that the Earth has not been invaded by ruthless bloodsucking aliens from Pluto who would enslave us all and force us to work endless hours in their Plutonian mines under the force of their mind control rays.

Because we don’t like Bush, anything – absolutely anything at all – would be better than having him as President. Heck, even if the Plutonians piped Celine Dion into the mines constantly, it would still be better than the current state of affairs.

“g, all I can say is that you’ve obviously been cherry-picking what you’ve been reading.”

No, Good Doctor, I’ve been weighing what I read in the balance.

There’s some good stuff out their. Only the fact is, it’s trivial shit. We painted the schools we blew up in the invasion. Painted schools, good. The fact that people can’t send their kids to the painted schools for fear of being kidnapped? Bad.

People can vote. Voting, good. Voting for corrupt people, bad. Voting as your clerics mandate — you tell me. Or voting for good people who get assassinated — Bad.

What else is fucking good over there? Is there a functioning electrical grid? Running water? Sewer system? How are gas prices and availability? How’s unemployment? How easy is it to buy food?

Oh, and what’s life like under a curfew, and how much fun is it to think that you just may get your shit blown up by someone at a checkpoint who’s nervous.

But the school got painted.

I have no problem with being optimistic, Doc, but there is a fine line between optimism and denial. Optimism is when things might not look so great now, but you have good reason to believe that good things will happen in the future.

Denial is when things look like absolute shite, it’s glaringly obvious that well-intentioned (at best) efforts have magnificently screwed up (or ended) the lives of thousands of people, and no one in any position of authority has the slightest intention of changing course to one that might not result in death and destruction – and all you can do is blindly hope that something not-as-bad will happen in the future, because anything else would mean accepting the fact that major, major mistakes have been made.

The thing I don’t get about the starry-eyed Murkin Patriots is the whole idea that if we (as a country) admit that our invasion of Iraq was based on lousy intel and misleading claims by the Administration; that the cakewalk Messrs. Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney predicted was in fact a huge clusterfuck; that our occupation of Iraq has been the best recruiting tool bin Laden and Zarqawi could have asked for; and that we desperately need the post-war planning and exit strategy that our Fearless Leaders neglected to provide for up front… admitting any or all of that somehow means the 2000+ dead Americans will have “sacrificed their lives in vain” or some such hogswallop. I don’t get it. To protect the “meaning” or “value” of someone’s death, we have to ignore the facts and condemn more to die?

To the insane, God’s will is obvious…to the rest of us, well chaos is a bitch.

Sorry, should be:

“to the rest of us, well…chaos is a bitch.”

preview then post – repeat

Hello, my friends. It’s a pleasure to once again engage in dialogue with all of you left-wingers. Please refrain from making RightWingRoadKill out of me. Remember, right-wingers have feelings too.

Mr. X. What have you been reading? Try something other than extremist left-wing propaganda. As for your comment about me having stock in the big oil companies, that’s simply hillarious! If you only knew the real Dr. BLT. I’m too busy paying off my student loans, to scatter-brained to handle financial records of any kind, and too ambivalent about the acquisition of wealth and material possessions to invest in the stock market.
As for the troll comment, I’ve stepped out from under the bridge and I still maintain that the glass if half full.

g: If you’re calling the right to participate in free elections, and the right to free speech, trivial, then we must come from different planets.

Dan, there were plenty of other good reasons for invading Iraq. I maintain that it was a mistake to invade Iraq in the name of “weapons of mass destruction.” Before the Republican convention, where folks turned the phrase into a cliche, I said in a song, “Saddam is a Weapon of Mass Destruction.” Like I said before, if Saddam were my son, and it were his birthday, the last thing I would get him would be a chemistry set.

Jillian: I’ve grown accustomed to your Bush-bashing, but please leave my fellow Canadian, Celine Dion alone. If your daughter had a voice like that you’d be constantly bragging about her. Besides, while you’re busy mocking her, she’s got the last laugh, and she’s laughing all the way to the bank.

Please excuse all the typos. I know you’re sick of hearing about it, but I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Hey, Jillian, easy, I own stock in those Plutonian mines.

BLT – Can’t you just for once admit you’re wrong? How long is it going to take for history to reveal this was a bad idea?
I’m looking at it right now, and it sucks.
How would you like it if you had to eye each car parked on the side of the road, wondering if it will explode just as you pass by? Or navigate deadly sniper alleys and checkpoints manned by machinegun toting soldiers every day? All that in a country that had never had a car bomb prior to the invasion.
Ever read a blog written by an Iraqi citizen? Everyone thinks Saddam is an asshole, but at least they didn’t have to fear for their lives every single day.

Dan, there were plenty of other good reasons for invading Iraq.

Maybe, but not a single one of them was legal under international law, including the U.N. Charter to which the United States is a signatory.

Well, it sounds like you guys are unwilling to put Saddam back in power. So we have no choice but to make the best of the situation and move forward. So far, I haven’t heard any constructive ideas on how to put the pieces back together, only complaints about how messy things are.

At least we recognize that things are messy, rather than blindly cheering the fact that Iraqi women now have the freedom to wear their burqas again. A wise doctor once said that you can’t change what you don’t acknowledge, and nothing is going to get any better until conservatives, particularly those in charge of our government, acknowledge that things seriously need to get better. Mistakes have been made, courses need to change, and Dick Cheney is still sitting in Washington waiting for his FTD Thanks For Being My Liberator Bouquet.

Here’s a suggestion for improvement, get the fuck out of Iraq. Done.

Timmah, your plan is a good one, only if it is executed in a gradual, incremental, (rather than an abrupt, ill-conceived) fashion. That’s where conservatives come in. If you pull out in an abrupt fashion, executing an ill-conceived plan, you will be left with nothing but further chaos and instability in the region.

I totally agree with Dr. BLT. I mean, look what happened when we went in in an abrupt fashion, executing an ill-conceived plan.

Touche’!

American occupiers are the ones causing most of the death and chaos.

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