News From Around the "Blogosphere"

I hate the word "blog." Why couldn't it have been called "e-log" which makes much more sense.

Anyway, posts and reactions from bloggers 'round the globe:

One Pissed Off Veteran gives a rundown of some of the numbers:

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959

Total coalition forces dead: 247
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1928
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1379
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1328
Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347

Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 311
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 157.

It is still 782 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

I like that. Sadly, more days have passed. Someone should create a countdown (or count up) timer for each of those in HTML so we can all add them to our site. I did find this:



I'll probably post this somewhere on my site. It's available at www.backwardsbush.com. Also, you can buy an out of office calendar at Amazon.com.

Lean Left discusses the idea of multiple tours in Iraq, especially for people who don't believe they should be there:

Why should soldiers be forced to extend their tours or to serve more than one tour in a conflict they do not believe in? There have been a lot of stories lately about soldiers being sent back for two or three tours or being recalled after they had thought they had left the service. The stories are full of heart break, privation, anger, and frustration. Those kinds of stories should not happen in a democracy. Soldiers should have the right to refuse to participate in any conflict that they wish. These people are making the ultimate sacrifice: they are putting their lives on the line for the country. They should have the right to decide when an where that sacrifice is justified. Asking a man to be the last one to die for a mistake is bad enough; forcing that man t be the last one to die for a mistake is unconscionable.

Some will complain that such a rule would make military operations more difficult. Those people are correct: certain kinds of military operations would become more difficult. But I consider that a feature, not a bug. Presidents would have to convince soldiers that the action was justified and then continue to earn the soldiers trust throughout the operation. Military adventures like Iraq or Vietnam would become harder to start and harder to sustain, and that can only be to the good. And since I doubt that anyone would argue that the military would refuse to fight when the country was well and truly threatened, I fail to see the problem. If the 101st keyboarders want their Pax Americana through the barrel of the gun, they can either convince the military they are right or join up themselves. But they would no longer be able to use soldiers as if they were pieces in a game of Risk.

Death is a terrible thing. To steal a line, it takes away everything you ever had and everything you ever could have had. No one should be forced to risk that in a fight they don’t believe in.

Well said. I wonder if this will be exacerbated by the "larger army" Bush has planned.

2 Political Junkies has a list of Gerald Ford quotes about the Iraq war.

Those are some noteworth blog posts. More later.