Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Rant-y Day

I guess today is a good day to rant. Both Sweaterman and Ghandisxmas have posted great rants, and I recommend both.
Now I've got one more:
The rethuglicans in the senate have decided to filibuster Webb's amendment, and have basically said that they will filibuster ANY bill calling for any change of course in Iraq. They've used the filibuster to stop almost every bill the house has passed. Can we call them obstructionist? You bet. But will anyone listen?
This is what the rethugs support in Iraq:
On Tuesday, guerrillas launched some 20 katyusha rockets and mortar shells into the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad, killing 3 persons, including a US soldier, and wounding 25 persons.
The Green Zone was originally supposed to be the safe place in Iraq, with the area
outside it (everything else) called the "Red Zone." The US Embassy in Baghdad appears to have forgotten what the phrase "Green Zone" means, since a spokesman
there told the LAT, "There's fire into the Green Zone virtually every day, so I can't draw any conclusions about the security situation based on that . . ."
Let me draw the conclusion. If you've got fire into the friggin' Green Zone every day, then we can draw the conclusion that the security situation in Baghdad sucks big time. When you've got people killed and a large number of people wounded in the one place in Iraq that was supposed to have a "permissive" security environment, then security in general is the pits.
Now you might say that we can't draw many conclusions from the events of a single day. And, being able to lob mortar shells over a wall doesn't speak to that much organization. But then what about these two nuggets in the LAT story?
1) "There were about 39 attacks [on the Green Zone] in May, compared with 17 in March, according to a U.N. report."
2) "Tuesday's attack came the same day gunmen kidnapped Iraqi Police Col. Mahmoud Muhyi Hussein, who directs security inside the Green Zone . . .
In other words, the security situation in the Green Zone is spiralling down at an
alarming pace, and the guerrillas have such good inside knowledge that they can
kidnap the very person responsible for security in it, as he drives in Jadiriya. That, my friends, is an inside job. And such an inside job doesn't bode well for future security in the Green Zone. For one thing, presumably they are "debriefing" Col. Hussein as we speak, looking for weak points.http://www.juancole.com/

They OWN it. For every soldier killed or wounded in Iraq, we need to shout "this soldier died because of republican obstructionism!". It may not get the media's attention, but it could get our neighbors attention.
OK, enough ranting by me for now. I'm gonna need a beer after all this crap. Hey, Sweaterman and Ghandisxmas, I'll buy the first round. And if any of you readers come by, I'll buy you one too.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The fall of Saigon was before my time....

Justin said...

thanks for the beer and yes, the attacks on the green zone are getting very little airtime in the corporate media that sold us this fake war.