Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Don't bother

to read this report about our new plan to "win" in Iraq. It's a tediously written piece of propaganda, recycled concepts, mushy language, that leads to the same result: nothing but the same old, same old. The report, as well as the plan itself, has one admirable feature: a breathlessness, a childlike whizziness of exposition that makes everything seem new and fresh, when indeed it's old and failed.

And--to add fuel to my fire--nowhere in the piece do the reporters point out how old, how re-hashed, how failed, these suppposedly "new" approaches are. So once again and still, the MSM reports as news that which isn't, and spouts as doctrine that which is but cover.

(A personal aside: Back in the Watergate days, I, along with a huge segment of US youth, aspired to be journalists. Now, I sure don't value that profession much, and neither do many Americans. I wonder why?)

Whither Erik, whither Iraq?

I'm off for about a week, visiting with Stanford alums in the Lake Tahoe area. Meanwhile, check out this lengthy AP article about al Sadr's plans and prospects in Iraq. The result of our costly efforts in that country could well turn out to be the replacement of a secular dictator with a religious fanatic.

Wonderful.

I hate to say I told you so

...but...

Monday, May 21, 2007

Got a minute?

Or maybe an hour? Check out this pdf. item from the Government Accountability Office, a report to Congress about progress in Iraq. (To save you some minutes, I suggest you click to page 39, a chart showing the number of attacks on US troops, Iraqi troops and Iraqi civilians. The "surge" has reduced the number of attacks down to the level they were in the hellish days of last summer.) Good for you, W. You're a real winner.

A date that will live in irony

Congress is presently considering, and may soon pass, a bill to try to stem the tide of illegal aliens coming into our country, after decades of being unable to control our borders. Does anyone see the irony in our repeated demands that Iran and Syria "control their borders," much of which, like our southern border, consists of miles of open desert?