News Where We’re Not Wanted
posted by on July 15 at 16:09 PM
Iraq, apparently.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki shrugged off U.S. doubts about his government’s military and political progress yesterday, saying his forces are capable and American troops can leave “any time they want.”
According to this morning’s front-page NYT story, American troops would like to leave Iraq now.
Cpl. April Ponce De Leon describes herself and her husband as “gung-ho marines,” and in two weeks she deploys to Iraq, where her husband has been fighting since March. But she says she stopped believing in the war last month after a telephone conversation with him.“He started telling me that he doesn’t want me to go and do the things he has been doing,” said Corporal Ponce De Leon, 22, speaking by telephone as she boxed up her belongings in their apartment near Camp Lejeune, N.C.
“He said that ‘we have all decided that it’s time for us to go home.’ I said, ‘You mean go home and rest?’ And he said, ‘I mean go home and not go back.’
Even though this is great news here domestically, you'd think he'd know better than to say something like that. Our puppets tend to have rather short life spans as soon as they're no longer under our constant protection.
You're talking about Prime Minister al-Maliki, right?
@ Gitai, well he was never the smartest puppet we put into power.
"Corporal Ponce de Leon"
Thats gotta be the quintessential Puertorican last name.
Compared to some of the puppets we put in power in Vietnam, he's a fucking genius. One puppet who ruled South Vietnam briefly dressed like Elvis, carried bejeweled six shooters, and when asked about a leader he admired, he said Hitler, because he really got things done. Then there's Shah Reza Pahlavi, who lived a lifestyle so decadent that Diddy looks like a Trappist monk in comparison, all while his people suffered extreme poverty. No surprises he was deposed. Oh, and Baby Doc. We had some smart ones though. Mobutu managed to last a very, very long time.
So dan, after all that has happened in Iraq, are you or have you and The Stranger already issued any kind of official mea culpa (if you already did, disregard)? I read some of the stuff you wrote back before the war and its still as dumb and infuriating as it was back then. I love your stuff usually, but you really stepped in it with the Iraq issue. Perhaps you should have a little less of "Bareback Andy" Sullivan whispering in your ear.
Oh, normally I wouldn't do this considering not many people could tell the Bush administration was lying through its teeth about just about everything, but this is 3500 soldiers and countless Iraqis all dead, so: WE FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!
Good point, @7.
A full five hours and four comments before Dan got blamed for the Iraq War again? You disappoint me, Antiwar Guy With a Hardon For Savage.
How does "Quoting somebody's published words" equate with "blame"?
Did Mr. Savage not write the above article? If not, then clearly it's a bogus assertion. If he DID, Mr. Savage is certainly responsible for what he wrote, and should indeed be accountable for it.
What does "accountable" mean? Well, I really have no idea. There's not a good mechanism in journalism for determining whether or not somebody's full of shit.
Maybe Dan should set up a mea culpa bot to trigger whenever a certain monomaniac posts that pro war thing. It'd save time and energy.
@10: Oh, if it makes my brain hurt just a few lines in, and the headache just gets worse the farther I go, is usually my indicator of it being full of shit. But if I shunned every mental lightweight that fluttered over to the war side in terror and rage after 9/11, I wouldn't have much company.
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