That woman needs a good mocking.

Laura, Laura...the last remotely respectable inhabitant of the White House...even you...say it isn't so?

She also flip flopped about the singing of the National Anthem in Spanish...in less than 30 seconds she went from saying it was OK to saying it wasn't.

They really shouldn't send her out to do W's bidding. I kinda feel sorry for her.

more observations here:

www.thoughttheater.com

It's nice to see her standing up for her man.

Now, would Karl Rove consider her 'fair game'?

Omission accomplished.

And when they predicted that the entire war would cost at most $60 billion, they meant that only the specific part of the war that cost $60 billion would cost $60 billion...and when Wolfowitz said that the Iraqis would greet us with flowers, he was correct because there were a few dozen Iraqis who meet us with flowers and he was referring very specifically to those Iraqis....

Whatever happened to plain speakin'?

Omission accomplished.

Hah!

What about Evasion Accomplished?

I can not think of a more fitting punishment for Laura Bushs willful deciet than to wake up next to the man whom she has made herself less so he could be more.
From that viewpoint, the comments to Mr. King make sense because either she admits that her husband is a complete and total failure as President, or lies to herself and forever refrain from entertaining the truth of her predicament.

It's telling that JR Hand had to rewrite Bush's speech, because it clearly was addressed to the crew. That's how they understood it.

The abject stupidity always on display here still fascinates me.

In the fullness of time, every denizen of the Bush WH will be drained of credibility.

The Bush WH will lay waste to every person who is pulled into its orbit, and even the Conservative movement itself.

It's become just a black hole in political space.

Let's see, so in addition to running a stop sign and killing the star football player in her high school, she is willing to lie in public to defend her husbands image. Well, once you have committed manslaughter, what's a little deception. This woman's soul had to be dead or damaged to marry this spoiled rich kid coke head alcoholic.

And in a few years, when the last helicopter has lifted off the roof of the besieged American embassy and the Abraham Lincoln has returned from its task of evacuating US forces, Bush can stand on its deck and give another speech with a giant "Extraction Accomplished" banner waving behind him....

Actually, what Laura is saying now is what the Bushies said after the all the complaints about this 3 years ago. It didn't make any sense then, it makes less sense now.

It all depends on what your definition of emission is.

Another "clarification" provided by Bush on the definition of welcomed:

"I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome."—Philadelphia, Dec. 12, 2005, on the reception of American forces in Iraq

You see, it depends on your defintion of the meaning of terms like "Welcomed" and "Mission Accomplished". The President means exactly what he wants to mean, no more no less, and if what he wants something mean changes it changes accordingly. He cant be wrong, anymore than he can be guilty of leaking classified information.

As I understand it, Bush was unaware that the proceedings would be televised. It was really an honest mixup.

The abject stupidity always on display here still fascinates me.

i agree. your comment was abjectly stupid.

And the fact that Bush said "My fellow Americans -- major combat operations in Iraq have ended" while standing in front of the "Mission Accomplished" banner was just a coincidence.

What do you expect from someone who years ago murdered her estranged boyfriend?

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3910b26e685a.htm

The abject dishonesty always on display here by Bush's defenders fascinates me.

And when Clinton said, 'I did not have sex with that woman', he was talking about Hillary Clinton, and referred to only the month before he made the statement.

That woman needs a good mocking.

Good one!

I don't get why people think Laura's some kind of patient sufferer who got a bad deal. She married the dude, presumably for his bucks and family connections (what else did he have to offer)? She'd known him and his family for ages. Unless she believed that George would suddenly bloom and her prospective mother-in-law would stop acting like a bitch in sheep's clothing, she had to know what she was getting into.

That she's spent her life mostly not working, obsessively shopping and staring at the wall in what appears to be a trank-induced haze is sad, but as Republicans who embrace personal accountability at all costs, we must conclude that she brought it on herself.

And that flight suit? Completely overblown. He was supposed to be wearing a regulat suit, but due to a series of wacky misunderstandings, it was still at the tailor's and Bush had no choice but to grab the first outfit he could find out of an Air Force locker.

...the White House is now modeling its stories on potential scripts from That's My Bush. Dear God.

It didn't make any sense then, it makes less sense now.

And didn't the Bush people say that the ship's print shop made the Mission Accomplished banner and they had no idea how it got there?

And wasn't that exposed as a lie in about, oh, an hour or so? When the guys in the print shop said they didn't and couldn't make a banner like that, and identical banners had been used in other Bush events?

The Bush people will say any goddamned thing. They lie, and lie, and lie.

It's telling that JR Hand had to rewrite Bush's speech, because it clearly was addressed to the crew.

And they televised it nationally for the benefit of any crew member who didn't happen to be aboard at the time.

I don't blame the First Lady too much for this. The "Mission Accomplished" banner was a move of such horrible cockiness and stupidity, that anything she says to try and explain it away is going to sound dumb.

Laura should have waxed enthusiastic, in the words of G. Gordon Liddy, about how the flight suit enhanced GW's "manly characteristic." Might have been just the thing for GW's sickly approval ratings; the Bush team has tried everything else (well except honesty, but we know they won't resort to that).

You see, it depends on your defintion of the meaning of terms like "Welcomed" and "Mission Accomplished". The President means exactly what he wants to mean, no more no less, and if what he wants something mean changes it changes accordingly. He cant be wrong, anymore than he can be guilty of leaking classified information.

This reminds me of something, but of what, of what....aha!

Humpty Dumpty took the book, and looked at it carefully...."And only ONE for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!"

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'"

"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."

And when Clinton said, 'I did not have sex with that woman', he was talking about Hillary Clinton, and referred to only the month before he made the statement.

He was talking about Marlo Thomas.

In the fullness of time, every denizen of the Bush WH will be drained of credibility.

And of their vital bodily fluids.

All these talking head shmucks got it wrong too!

http://mediamatters.org/items/200604270005

he only meant that the mission of that particular aircraft carrier had been accomplished

My eyes just rolled to the back of my head. Jeez.

...about how the flight suit enhanced GW's "manly characteristic.

Yes, the sock had nothing to do with it.

Three years to come with a story and that's it? "Wit of the staircase" I've heard of, but what's this, wit of the Mars Rover?

He meant to say 'Missionary Position Accomplished' but the small area of the banner forced them to delete some letters.

The abject stupidity always on display here still fascinates me.

Curious thing is, Paddywhack, that you have to post a comment yourself in order to see it in its full glory.

But after a round of finger-pointing between the military and the WH it was finally revealed that those words on that strategically-placed banner did indeed come from the White House.
Maybe Laura will also tell us why the ship circled for hours before bush was passengeed onto it.

Now... who will do damage-control for Pickles? Jenna? ("My mom is like the most super-awesome person...")

Where does the Pickles nick come from?

The whole speech is here, in case anyone wants to decide it for themselves.

We going to be recycling the National Guard stuff again, too?

"It's telling that JR Hand had to rewrite Bush's speech, because it clearly was addressed to the crew. That's how they understood it."

Wow. What an utterly thankless job it must be defending Bush 24/7. Though I will award an "A" for effort here. This kind of self-delusion takes a lot of drive and determination, I imagine.

We going to be recycling the National Guard stuff again, too?

If that's what it takes for the other 32% to see daylight, then yes.

Where's Al? Where's yesterday's fool, Crumb? Where are any of them?

If that's what it takes for the other 32% to see daylight, then yes.

What do I care about the "backwash"?

Ace Franze on May 4, 2006 at 2:38 PM:

Where's Al? Where's yesterday's fool, Crumb? Where are any of them?

Careful what you wish for, Ace...

This is a re-run. Bush (Fleischer? McClellan?) tried to use the "it was the ship's mission that the sign meant" excused 2 or 3 years ago. It didn't fly then; I hope it won't fly this time.

Tbrosz, do you like wearing brown lipstick all the time? It really isn't your color, dear.

It's tacky to criticise Laura on a personal level (god knows, most marriages won't stand up to a too-close scrutiny), however

when she makes political statements those statements (and her posture and role in the political game) are fair targets.

She's not just "defending her husband" she's using an outright lie to defend the administration and the Iraq disaster. And she knows it.

The Dems are now reduced to attacking Laura Bush?

Heh.

the way the landing on the aircraft carrier was
staged a lot of people thought when bush climbed out of the cockpit all alone that he had actually landed the plane---------all he did was
sit in the copilot's seat in a flight suit------
the actual pilot was killed in combat in iraq 3 weeks later

for more on this, type into google:
bush "did not land" "aircraft carrier"
you get over 180,000 hits

The Republicans are now reduced to hiding behind Laura Bush?

Heh.

We going to be recycling the National Guard stuff again, too?

Why, tbrosz? Do you have new, undiscovered evidence* that Bush showed up for duty in Massachusets, as he agreed to do? Whether we discuss it here or not, the public record indicates Bush shirked his duty, and the comments record indicates that you give him a free pass while condoning the attacks on Kerry. Shame on you.

*A cookie to anyone -- except tbrosz -- who knows what movie that's from.

Kentucky Fried Movie.

Close, Stefan -- you're on the right track.

The George Bush Limbo is now reduced to 32%?
Heh, backwash.

I thought Georgie did a fine job of landing on that carrier

somebody look into this. was the aircraft carrier's mission really accomplished? is it still out in the gulf?

Steve Bell on the Great Man's achievement,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,,1765701,00.html

The Dems are now reduced to attacking Laura Bush?

This is despicable, especially in light of the deep regard and undying love the Repubs had for the First Lady Hillary Clinton.

Shame on Dems. Shame! Shame! Shame!

Paul Rieckhoff gave an interesting interview today on NPR today for his new book, Chasing Ghosts , which is about his tour of duty in Iraq. He talked about how the "Mission Accomplished" speech infuriated him, because while Bush was telling everyone that major combat operations were over in Iraq his platoon came under fire every day on patrol in Baghdad.

He characterized that speech and others as trying to "will something into existence" that just wasn't the case.

He also gave some riveting accounts of what a heroic job the military did despite the lack of leadership, insufficient combat troops, and terrible supply shortages . There was no plan for occupation -- none -- and every day they just improvised the best they could, trying to figure out what to do and coping with unexpected exigencies like no police force and thousands of angry, unemployed men on the street. From having their families send them body armor to buying water from the locals when they ran out to buying pencils and notebooks for local school kids, imagination and ingenuity were vital to survival.

As an aside, Rieckhoff stays in regular email contact with the interpreter he used to while he was stationed there. According to the interpreter, in terms of bombing and violence things are much, much worse now than they have ever been.

tbrosz is trying to pretend that Americans remember the substance of Bush's speech, rather than the aircraft carrier, the "Mission Accomplished" banner, and the flightsuit.

Nice try, but no cigar. If the words were so damned important, than why didn't he just deliver a televised speech, instead of wasting several hundred thousand dollars on such a gradiose photo op?

The depth of the f-up can be measured directly by how visibly Laura Bush is placed by the WH to control the spin. I used to feel sorry for her, until she visited the Gulf Coast after Katrina and said on live national tv that the media was overreacting because things weren't really as bad as all that. Then again, maybe she meant that they weren't really all that bad for her, because, you know, she was going to be whisked by helicopter to a safe and luxurious hiding place before the end of the day. I just don't understand why they don't release the secret decoding device that's required to make them sound non-stupid.

I can't forget how disgusted my father (career military officer - 40 years) was over the Desert Storm victory parades. He knew those parades were for Bush 41 and not for the soldiers.

My poor dad must be rolling over in his grave now.

barb..

remember

laura bush called the worst hurricane to ever hit america in more than 100-years....

corrina....

hey she was close....

can you just imagine if hillary had done that...

Baghdad morgue receives 35-50 bodies daily

BAGHDAD, May 4 (Reuters) - An average of 35 to 50 bodies, most of them with gunshot wounds, are brought to Baghdad's main morgue every day, likely victims of sectarian killings, its deputy director said on Thursday.

Sectarian violence has exploded in Iraq since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shi'ite shrine which unleashed a wave of reprisal killings that pushed Iraq close to civil war.

The dumping of bodies, many of them bound and showing signs of torture, has long been a feature of Iraq's violence.

The morgue received 1,068 bodies in January, 1,110 in February, 1,294 in March and 1,115 in April, Doctor Qaiss Hassan said, adding 90 percent of them were shot dead.

Before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, Hassan said the morgue received an average of seven to 10 bodies a day.

Mission Accomplished indeed.

"The Dems are now reduced to attacking Laura Bush?"

Actually, PW, it's worst than that.
The Republicans and the WH are "reduced" to using Laura to "spin" for her husband.
Now that's sad.

It's the Xanax, folks. The woman is goggle-eyed, ripped out of her gourd most of the time. Count on it. How else could she stand being around you-know-who all the time?

"Misinformation Accomplished"

...again.

That's what I'm saying, Fred! mr. shortstop refers to her as "the lady with the vacant, Valiumed smile."

The depth of the f-up can be measured directly by how visibly Laura Bush is placed by the WH to control the spin.

When they dump that poor woman in the Green Zone we'll know it's bad....

"the lady with the vacant, Valiumed smile."

That's why she's perfect for me!

What's Up?

Hypnotic map gimmick for news junkies,

http://www.jeroenwijering.com/whatsup/

The Dems are now reduced to attacking Laura Bush?

No, just what she says. More evidence that conservatives can't tell the difference.

Soon we'll see Laura Bush landing on a carrier sporting a flight suit, and giving a rousing speach to a grumbling crowd under a banner reading, "Wait, this is what he meant!"
And of course, the faithful will spoon up the spittle and swallow it like good little drones.

Spoon up the spittle...they'll have a barrel of fun!

Polka jokes prolly don't go over that well outside of Chicago and Warsaw.

I do like the recurring motifs of backwash and spit referring to the last holdouts in Fort Bush.

Why do liberals hate abysmal leadership?

Well. We think the Bush team is doing pretty well.

All things considered.

LB:(satire) You know my husband does tend to mangle the english language from time to time. But you should see him ride his mountain bike! Oh, the sweat that pours off of him just makes him look...so..so male.

He's also really good with a chainsaw. In fact he likes nothing better than thinning out his cedar grove on our ranch.

He's my man. Yea I know he grabbed a plastic turkey platter in Iraq and thought it was real food. He even looked for Saddam's WMD under his oval office desk.

But you've gotta realize, he really is a good person.

He chose a shoot-from-the-hip guy for VP to help manage the hard job of being president.

Yup, I love him.

That is the stupidest thing I've ever read.

In other words, she's admitting that Iraq is a strategic quagmire that we should have never gotten into.

I suppose the same could be said about her relationship with the Bush family, and the President in particular.

But that was a long time ago.

You know I am starting to feel sorry for these poor dumb Republican'ts.

Windhorse:

Before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, Hassan said the morgue received an average of seven to 10 bodies a day.

Mission Accomplished indeed.

As a number of people have pointed out, before the invasion, the bodies never got to the morgue. Go out in the country and start digging.

As a number of people have pointed out, before the invasion, the bodies never got to the morgue. Go out in the country and start digging.

I guess things must really be improving in Iraq now that people actually feel like taking the dead bodies to the morgue rather than just burying them somewhere, but what makes you think that now all of the bodies are going to the morgue?

As a number of people have pointed out, before the invasion, the bodies never got to the morgue. Go out in the country and start digging.

If this were true, how would it address or acknowledge the horror that is happening right now that is a direct result of our invasion?

Oh that's right, it doesn't.

It's just you skirting the issue.

Truth be told, it's nothing but a passive aggressive rejoinder you through out there every time someone points to the fact that you supported an unjust war that is tearing apart families in Iraq. It's clear from your record here you couldn't fake genuine compassion for the Iraqis if you had to.

Was Saddam killing 50 people a day? Of course not. Did he authorized the killing of large sums of people to put down some very specific political uprisings? Yes. Were those in the recent past? Not even remotely. And prior to the invasio, has Baghdad ever been a war zone of bombings and sniper fire and sectarian killings and kidnappings.

No, not even close.

You may as well retire your weak attempts to shift blame elsewhere on this matter, they just don't stand up anymore and besides, it's pretty clear who's to blame. If anything, they just highlight your unflattering glibness on a matter of tremendous human suffering and your unwillingness to accept responsibility for your actions.

Not sure anybody made this comment yet but if what Laura Bush said is true then it would probably piss off the Army and Marines.

It's telling that JR Hand had to rewrite Bush's speech, because it clearly was addressed to the crew. That's how they understood it.

That was how I understood it at the time.

Soon we'll see Laura Bush landing on a carrier sporting a flight suit

But will she display an enhanced manly characteristic? If so, how will the base respond? If not, what's the point?

Interesting how "Mission Accomplished" has devolved. The next talking point will be that the entire major-motion-picture production was staged to honor the cooks of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln for accomplishing their self-assigned mission to serve up historic quantities of SOS.

Slightly OT: Don't know about other long-time commenters/lurkers, but I'm truly saddened by the decline of tbrosz. He's always been a smug, self-satisfied little twunt with a delusional notion of how he'd fare in a truly libertarian society. Yet he's got a fair number of working synapses and at one point, he engaged in extended discussion, providing coherent arguments. Now he's just another driveby nutbot. *sigh* Well, you know what they say -- What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is.

Indeed, vetiver, it is sad. The cognitive dissonance must have gotten tbrosz at last. Was bound to happen.

That was how I understood it at the time.

Really? I had no idea you were a sailor who'd been on the deck of the carrier! Otherwise, if it was specifically addressed to the crew, there'd have been no way for you to have heard it if you weren't on board....oh, wait. They put it on television, didn't they, and forced the carrier to circle aimlessly just off the coast of San Diego for several hours so the backdrop to his speech would be open water and not Coronado Island. If it was specifically addressed to the crew then why was Bush costumed and made-up like a little toy soldier and why was it stage-managed and broadcast and beamed to anyone with a television?

As a number of people have pointed out, before the invasion, the bodies never got to the morgue. Go out in the country and start digging.

And as I've pointed out numerous, numerous times, those people are wrong. In Saddam's day most of the bodies got to the morgue...indeed, it was a particularly vile and sadistic innovation of his regime to make family members go down to the morgue to claim the bodies of their loved ones, and then not release the body until the family had paid the bill for the cost of the execution, including the cost of the bullet.

Yeah, Stefan. They went to the morgue, got their toes tagged, and then got shuffled off to mass graves later on.

Windhorse:

Was Saddam killing 50 people a day? Of course not. Did he authorized the killing of large sums of people to put down some very specific political uprisings? Yes. Were those in the recent past? Not even remotely. And prior to the invasion, has Baghdad ever been a war zone of bombings and sniper fire and sectarian killings and kidnappings.

Making excuses for Saddam is just one of the things that covers the anti-war movement with glory. I'm starting to see the same pattern with Iran, too.

Between the wars Saddam started and the massacres, you tell me what he averaged out to per day of his regime.

And to come up with what amounts to "well, he hasn't massacred anyone lately" shows how low the left, supposed champions of human rights and liberties, has sunk. By that odd reasoning, if people aren't being killed at this rate ten years from now in Baghdad, the current toll won't count, right?

Sure, Baghdad wasn't a "war zone" under Saddam. Hitler wasn't gassing Jews in Berlin, either, and the Gulags weren't in the suburbs of Moscow. Ask the Kurds, Shiites, Marsh Arabs, and others where the "war zones" were.

vetiver:

If I stopped bothering to comment here, you could all go back to writing feeble fake posts supposedly by people who disagree with you and then strutting around about how you "gave them what for."

Incidentally, congratulations on the brilliant and insightful point you made prior to the crack at me.

On the one hand we've got a president with delusions of grandeur. On the other hand everything he has touched has turned to ashes.

The crucible of his mind must be an increasingly unstable place.

The bright, shiny Tom Brosz: Making excuses for Saddam is just one of the things that covers the anti-war movement with glory.

Windhorse's statement was pure recitation of facts, correcting your own errors without in any way making a judgment on the morality of Saddam Hussein. Your sentence above is pure hysterical melodrama with no basis in fact. Which one of you do you think comes off more credibly?

If I stopped bothering to comment here, you could all go back to writing feeble fake posts supposedly by people who disagree with you and then strutting around about how you "gave them what for."

I notice that just about every time you wail that you're the only serious conservative who comes around here and what would we do without your tempering influence, boo hoo, we give you a list of the intellectually honest and emotionally stable conservative posters who actually earn our respect. You ignore it every time, choosing to believe that you're the one true savior and it's just that we're not ready to hear your special message.

A religion of one. That sort of thing never ends well, does it?

Making excuses for Saddam is just one of the things that covers the anti-war movement with glory

No one is making excuses for Saddam. But this wasn't a war of liberation and you know it. Trying to justify an invasion based on false premises by pointing to atrocities that prior to 2003 you didn't even give a shit about is just you making excuses. It's an absurd debate tactic that ignores the reality of human suffering in Iraq merely to defend your your political position.

How callous and disturbed would someone have to be to keep hiding behind that kind of petulant denial? Pretty fucking disturbed, I would think. It has been nothing short of tragicomic to watch the rabid war supporters who were gonna punish Saddam for threatening us with WMD's all doing flips in the air to both pretend this was really all about liberation and that Iraq now is fantastic compared to before.

What a brutal insult to the people living in that war zone every day.

It comes down to the fact that it simply isn't your prerogative to choose death and suffering for Iraqis, yet you pretend that somehow it is. And your remarks show that you are clearly oblivious to the reality of daily life in Iraq prior to the invasion and apparently just as oblivious about Iran. Your witless calculus that attempts to equate numbers of dead from very specific military operations against insurgent groups in decades past with the chaos and carnage inflicted on the entire country today is heinous.

There is only one punishment fitting such a crime; you should simply have to go live there and live like an ordinary Iraqi. I'm guessing they don't have the brand of almond crunch cereal that you love, but if they do -- the trip to the store to get it just might be your last.

For all of Saddam's atrocities, Iraq was safe and relatively crime free during his reign. I know, because in the '90's my Iraqi friends and their families traveled back and forth all the time between our two countries to visit.

Funny how their impression of Iraq during that time as natives is so different from yours, gleaned as it is from the comfort of your garage.

For all of Saddam's atrocities, Iraq was safe and relatively crime free during his reign. I know, because in the '90's my Iraqi friends and their families traveled back and forth all the time between our two countries to visit.

Whoa, I guess that proves life was just swell back then! I can imagine what kind of Iraqis were able to fly freely back and forth all the time during the 90s while other Iraqis were suffering under sanctions.

I'll bet a lot of white people in South Africa thought life was pretty good about twenty years back, too.

For all of Saddam's atrocities, Iraq was safe and relatively crime free during his reign.

That you can even write a sentence like that without your head exploding says a lot. A lot of tyrannies are largely free of normal street crime. Try to remember why.

I'd stop digging if I were you. Next you'll tell me the trains all ran on time, too.

So whatever happened to those weapons of mass destruction?

I can imagine what kind of Iraqis were able to fly freely back and forth all the time during the 90s while other Iraqis were suffering under sanctions.

The fact that you'd try to paint these people as collaborators or in some way nefarious just because they were able to travel is another example of your ridiculously poor understanding of Iraqi society.

If you want to know the truth, they were actually one of the oppressed minorities. They came here, took jobs nobody wanted in the inner city, and became fairly well off, which allowed them the money to travel and to bring family members back.

Iraq was safe because it had a functioning government, a police force, good social services, and a respectable level of social harmony. With the notable exception of the Kurds, Iraqis thought of themselves as Iraqi first and Sunni or Shia second. A premium was placed on getting a good education, women enjoyed more rights than almost anywhere in the Middle East, and cultural refinement was valued.

I know these are basic, textbook facts for most people, yet your remarks suggest you aren't in possession of them. Tortuous logic, emotional appeals to tragedies you've been indifferent to all along, and a terrible understanding of Iraqi history and culture undercut your arguments without any outside assistance.

The reason is that it's simply impossible to google the situation and have any better understanding or more accurate view of it than the people who've spent their lives there.

tbrosz may know fuck-all about Iraq, but he sure knows a lot about what he wants to believe.

A lot of tyrannies are largely free of normal street crime. Try to remember why.

Because tyrannies are by definition closely, even brutally, controlled. The lack of unauthorized street crime is incidental. *duh*

tbrosz, now you try to imagine why living in a dictatorship might be preferable, day-to-day, to living in anarchy. (Or should we call it a libertarian proving ground?)

Saddam was an evil fucking bastard. Since we took him out, the country is worse off in terms of available electricity, potable water, waste disposal, oil production, any measure of development. No functioning government (but they did have elections! with purple fingers!) and the Iraqi army and police are infiltrated by the insurgency.

You happy with that? Run me an ROI here.

Between the wars Saddam started and the massacres, you tell me what he averaged out to per day of his regime.

If we're going to count the battlefield casualties of Saddam's wars in his body count of victims, do we also get to count the people who died in the war Bush started to figure out what victims Bush averages out to per day of his regime?

And for bonus points, tbrosz, how about reviewing the role of Ronald Reagan & GHWB in backing and strengthening Saddam and his regime.

Show us you know something about something.

Pickles?

It was the nickname of Morey Amsterdam's blond, dumb wife on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Congratulations to tbrosz on setting a new record in disgusting, cognitive-dissonance-propelled, self-righteous mendacity. I especially love the way the serially dishonest tbrosz pretends he's the lone voice of honesty and reason on this thread, as if he weren't haunted by the ghosts of a million straw men. Shame on you, tbrosz.

And congratulations to Windhorse, shortstop, obscure, Stefan et al for a righteous smackdown.

Was that et al or et Al?

Sorry couldn't pass that up.