Taking Stock

The Democrats have mercifully passed a bill that would begin the withdrawal of troops from Iraq in October 2007. Predictably, Republicans are acting like the hornet nest that got whacked with a nasty stick.

If one were to do a performance review of the last 4 to 5 years of Bushchenian Iraq policy, this is the conclusion - why were these two not impeached 3 to 4 years ago.

The philosophical theme at play here is this; how can something good come from something hideous. For example, how can a woman fall in love with the man who brutally rapes her, kills her family, and takes her wealth? If you're George Bush and you are reading this example, not only do you expect the woman to fall in love with the rapist, you are actually upset that she hasn't, and even more upset that somebody wants to get the rapist out of this woman's life.

Let's stop walking on eggshells here. Everybody knows this was a concerted and coordinated effort to deliberately sell America a bad bill of goods. People had the crap scared out of them with 9-11 and capitulated to a mega-list of media failures. Even the Republicans know it. The Republicans are loyalists to the core, no fact is going to budge that loyalty. That's fine and I appreciate that, but even old Uncle Ernie gets the boot after he wrecked the car for the tenth time.

The list of screw-ups, shortcomings, bad plans, generalized incompetence, bogus assertions, brutalizations, and glossed over tragedies is so vast that nobody can accurately keep track of it all. This stuff doesn't win hearts and minds.

Obama says the bill only needs one signature or sixteen signatures. Its not going to happen either way because the President has a plan, a surge.

Speaking of surge here are a few numbers to keep in mind:

-The peak number of American troops in Vietnam was 536,100 in the year 1968.

-Size of Iraq is 437,072 square kilometers

-Size of Vietnam is 325,360 square kilometers

Vietnam is 3/4 the size of Iraq and that's North and South Vietnam together, different terrain of course, different in many ways. No need to rehash the final results even with 536,100 troops there in 68.