The Coffeespy

Coffeespy HQ actually has no pictures that can possibly do this story justice.  From the BBC:

British forces have denied rumours that they released a plague of ferocious badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra.

As much as I love a good militant gorilla, a warbadger might give them a run for their money.

Another rumor circulating amongst the cultured Iraqis we're attempting to help is the ability of the Americans to see through burkas.  Sometimes I wonder how they keep from falling to their knees and worshipping the rising sun some days.  From CNN:

As an American soldier peered out of a passing tank, a young engineering student and a retired accountant contemplated one of the more common questions on the streets of Baghdad: Did the soldier's wraparound sunglasses give him X-ray vision?

"With those glasses, he can definitely see through women's clothes," said the engineering student, Samer Hamid. "It makes me angry. We are afraid to take our families out on the street."

For once, I'm left speechless.

IraqSlogger works some magic with its headline:

Well, that's interesting.  I suppose you could chalk it up to a bad source and pretend that fact checking is a mythical standard, but when you actually read the story at IraqSlogger you find no mention of failures on all benchmarks.  What you'll read is how they haven't been met, but as "Project Management for Dummies" will tell you, benchmarks are marks of progress, not pass/fail barriers.

I declare this a Joker level boner.  And the Jooker doesn't like it when others horn in on his boner territory…

I'm sure IraqSlogger is already looking into outdoing it's own boner.  I can't wait to see their "new adventure in crime!"

Update: LA Times calls measuring performance a "costly blunder."  The unspoken suggestion is to follow the Democratic congress' policy of not measuring anything and simply speaking out of one's ass on any given subject.  Don't worry, if we just leave Iraq and forget about this whole terrorism thing, it'll go away.  Lord knows we shouldn't be checking our work.

Stan "the Man" Lee responds to the LA Times:

Thank you, Stan, for that sparkling commentary.

When you’ve thought and thought and still can’t come up with a solution, what do you do?  Well, if you’re a commander in Iraq, you do the unthinkable!

In Iraq, where stalwart American warriors battle daily with the demonic Nazi… er, wait, wrong speech… terrorist hordes, strategies come and go.  Indeed, the original “shock and awe” campaign gave way to a ”shockingly awful” occupation.

From the ashes of Abizaid’s spectacular failure in Iraq arose the sensational surge, sure pull Iraq back from the brink!

What’s the plan now?  From the BBC:

It is the latest move in what is clearly becoming one of the main thrusts of the US exit strategy here - to empower and arm Sunni Arab tribes and factions, provided they pledge to resist outside militants like al-Qaeda.

The Marvel Universe’s Illuminati was recently dispatched to Baghdad to speak to the US commanders:

Giving weapons to people who were shooting at us a few months ago is our new strategy.  I must be downwind, because I smell victory!

As my compadres at Common Sense Political Thought have pointed out:

Did you hear Cindy Sheehan left the Democratic Party?  Neither did I!

They’re commenting on the NewsBusters article citing an apparent lack of interest by the mainstream media concerning Sheehan’s actions when those actions oppose the Democrat(ic)s rather than bash the President.  From NewsBusters:

It’s been a full 48 hours since antiwar icon Cindy Sheehan publicly announced that she was leaving the Democrat Party due to Thursday’s bipartisan agreement on an Iraq war funding bill.

Yet, Google News and LexisNexis searches have identified that not one major media outlet has covered her announcement.

Not one.

Well that’s weird.  If I remember correctly, the media really liked to report on Sheehan’s doings.  NewsBusters reports that since August 2005, there have been 2,272 articles on Sheehan and her cause.  If we are allowed to play meaningless staticstics for one moment, since August 1, 2005 to today we have a grand total of 665 days.  That’s an average of 3.4 articles on Cindy Sheehan per day.  Not a single one of those has appeared in the past two, though, since her announcement on the Daily Kos.

And what of her announcement on the DK?  Sheehan writes:

As for myself, I am leaving the Democratic Party. You have completely failed those who put you in power to change the direction our country is heading. We did not elect you to help sink our ship of state but to guide it to safe harbor.

Spider-Man responds from New York with what most Republicans have been saying since the Sheehan circus began:

If Sheehan would just talk to John Edwards, she’d see she’s just being silly.  After all, there is no War on Terror.

UPDATE

• Ding
• Ding
• Ding

Sheehan’s own words:

When she had first taken on Bush, Sheehan was a darling of the liberal left. “However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the ‘left’ started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used,” she wrote.

In a step seemingly calculated to distance himself from Ahmadinejad and David Duke’s Holocaust Denial Conference of 2006, John Edwards has gone the other way with this one and decided to deny the Global War on Terror as a myth (you know, like unicorns and stuff).  From the AP story:

Democrat John Edwards Wednesday repudiated the notion that there is a “global war on terror,” calling it an ideological doctrine advanced by the Bush administration that has strained American military resources and emboldened terrorists.

Nevermind that Edwards voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq, he was fooled by the diabolically clever Bush administration.  How was he fooled?  Something about a bumper sticker…

Anyway, Nick Fury, the former leader of S.H.I.E.L.D. was reached for comment:

Colonel Fury looks a little busy so we’ll leave him to it.

I’m starting to see that all the wisdom of the world is inside our very own comic books.  Take Obama and Clinton bending to the cut and run crowd, for example.  You have two people who are hoping to lead the nation bowing to threats from far left groups.  From Reuters:

Obama and Clinton had refused to say how they would vote, but ultimately sided with opponents of the increasingly unpopular war. Liberal advocacy groups like MoveOn.org had warned Democrats who backed the measure of possible political consequences.

If there’s even a tiny bit of speculation that Clinton and Obama were voting with bipartisan support, it should be noted that the bill passed 280-142 in the House and 80-14 in the Senate.

Iraq’s a big, burly monster, it’s true.  But running isn’t going to make it go away.  What would Frank Castle do?  I give you an exerpt from issue 7 of the Punisher War Journal where he’s fenced in with a Nazi bull (that’s right, a Nazi bull):

Per the Houston Chronicle:

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius says the war in Iraq has exposed holes in domestic disaster response like the one currently under way in tornado-ravaged Kansas.

…

“He (Bush) assured me that he had additional equipment in his budget a year ago. What the Defense Department said then and continues to say is that states will get about 90 percent of what they had,” Sebelius said. “Meanwhile, it doesn’t get any better. I’m at a loss.”

According to FEMA:

FEMA has moved critical supplies into the affected area including 15,000 gallons of water for approximately 5,000 people and 21,000 Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) to feed 10,000 people. Staging areas for additional supplies and resources are being identified with the assistance of the state.

Also, within 24 hours the President had already signed a federal disaster declaration.  What does this do?  Let’s check FindLaw:

A Presidential Major Disaster Declaration puts into motion long-term federal recovery programs, some of which are matched by state programs, and designed to help disaster victims, businesses and public entities.

There are two major categories of disaster aid:

1. Individual Assistance - for damage to residences and businesses or personal property losses, and
2. Public Assistance - for repair of infrastructure, public facilities and debris removal.

Uh oh… looks like the governor is getting funds for debris removal but complaining about her National Guard not being there to do it.  This reminds me of a coin trick where you get the patsy to look at one hand while you hide the coin in the other.

If the governor wants to complain that her state’s Humvee’s aren’t at 90%, that’s fine.  But I also hope she’s going to take responsibility for every state vehicle not in working condition, every bus that was on a field trip, and every state disaster consultant that happened to be on vacation, honeymoon, or sabbatical.

The straw man argument here is that the National Guard has no business being in Iraq.  This confuses me since we train our soldiers to fight.  Otherwise, the National Guard shouldn’t bother with Basic Combat Training, weapons qualifications, or even Humvees.  They should simply be issued shovels, trained to stack sand bags for floods, and get some spiffy pick-up trucks to tool around in.

Nice job, Madame Governor…

The executive and the military tell the Democrat(ic)s to quit sending timetables along with bills.

The executive, via the Washington Post:

“I will strongly reject an artificial timetable (for) withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job,” Bush told reporters in the Oval Office as he met with Petraeus on Monday.

The military:

Gen. David Petraeus, the new Iraq commander, will try to persuade lawmakers in a private briefing this week to pursue a difference course.

What’s the response from Democrat(ic) poster child, Harry Reid?  Well, blame America, of course:

“Here is the bottom line,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in a speech in which he quoted a retired Army general who opposes Bush’s policy. “Americans must come to grips with the fact that our military alone cannot establish a democracy.”

General Petraeus has it right.  From National Journal writers on GovExec.com:

In the meantime, U.S. military leaders have one eye trained on a determined enemy in Iraq and the other on faltering political support back home, even as the war dangerously saps their forces’ strength. Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, talks about a conflict waged almost in parallel dimensions, one that runs on Washington time and the other dictated by events in Baghdad.

“The Washington clock is moving more rapidly than the Baghdad clock,” Petraeus said in a televised interview. “So we’re obviously trying to speed up the Baghdad clock a bit to produce some progress on the ground that can, perhaps … put a little more time on the Washington clock.”

The military is trying to win the war before Congress and the media can convince the public they’ve lost.  They’re fighting a war on two fronts: one front has warriors with guns and bombs while the other has opportunists with agendas and deadlines.  I’m forever grateful that our military has the tools to overcome both of these ravenous beasts: fortitude, integrity, and a sense of duty.

Ralph Peters published an op-ed in USA Today (also found on Yahoo!) that would have been better if it had started with the words “Once upon a time…”  In his fairyland retelling of Wilsonian statemanship, Peters naively states ”significant population groups” with a “unique identity” deserve their own state:

Dismissed as a naive dreamer by the Washington establishment, President Woodrow Wilson got it right nine decades ago: Significant population groups who possess (or assert) a unique identity must be given a chance at statehood.

So, what makes a group “unique?”  I don’t know.  And neither does Peters.  Also, what kind of numbers amount to “significant?”  Again, I don’t know.

After reading the article, I wonder if 12 million people displacing from south of the border and dispersing throughout the United States counts as a “significant population group” and I also wonder if Hispanic culture is a “unique” identifier.  If so, by Peters’ reasoning, don’t they deserve their own state here in the U.S.?

Peters fumbles on, blaming Europe for all the world’s woes, but never comes close to addressing the real problem around current borders: intolerance and breeding.  As some population groups grow (Albanians, for example) others will struggle to maintain their national boundaries (Serbs).  Muslim Albanians wouldn’t adjust to Orthodox Serb laws within Serb borders and the conflict took on a genocidal tenor.

Now we have new borders for Serbia… until the next time the Albanians decide to expand and immigrate.  This isn’t a pattern I’d like to establish globally, especially considering our own nation’s immigration problems.

Back to Peters:

We consistently choose the expedient option over the more difficult, but ultimately more promising, course in foreign policy. Without self-determination for major population groups that feel themselves wronged by history, we shall continue to fall short of our noblest goals

News flash: EVERY population group feels themselves wronged by history.

Let’s be blunt here, what Peters approach will foster is a thousand tiny fascist states.  Statehood is easy when everyone has the same thoughts, needs, and values.  Another thing that’s easier is war.  When everyone’s in agreement, who’s left to dissent?  Even more important, who’s brave enough to dissent?

Peters’ support of Wilsonian foreign policy ideas is half-witted.  Nations with an almost completely pure ethnic identity have proven to be some of the greatest global threats ever: Iran, North Korea, Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, and the grand-daddy of them all, Nazi Germany.  Unique cultural identities didn’t stop oppressive regimes from asserting their will over the people as Peters opines.  The entire idea Peters supports flies in the face of over 200 years of American history - where we’ve successfully struggled to maintain peaceful equilibrium in a changing landscape of diversity.

From an Early Birded story in the New York Daily News (bold text mine):

Democratic policymakers searching for a winning argument for why it’s time to get out of Iraq have ditched expert advisers - and appealed to the public for help.

Rank-and-file supporters have been asked to explain to the party why the troops should be brought home. And the best grass-roots tacticians could replace politicians as the public face of the Democrats.

“We want people like you to explain why it’s time to end the war and bring our people home, because most experts don’t see it our way,” party spokeswoman Karen Finney said in a circular sent to members.

“Rather than react to these out-of-touch Republican remarks with sound bites from Washington, D.C., consultants, who have the benefit of years of experience and training in this issue, we want our response to reflect the views of the people who matter most, those who will vote for us because they don’t have the aforementioned experience and training.”

The input of armchair politicians will be used in a campaign advertisement aimed at appealing more to voters than Washington experts would, Finney said.

“[Howard] Dean came to the [Democratic National Committee] with one goal, to put the Democratic Party in the hands of its grass-roots supporters White House by any means necessary,” she said.

“Instead of stating the case ourselves, because we have no rational basis, we want people like you to explain why it’s time to end the war so we can pander and exploit your ignorance for our own political purposes.”

Go Democrat(ic)s.  Next up - 5th graders to give DNC their views on global warming and the economy to forge new Dem platform.  “We’re doing it for the children,” commented Democrat #17.