Blogging My Life

The old comedian, W.C. Fields had a routine where he would be talking or trying to do something, and a young kid would be trying to get his attention and in frustration Fields would say, "Shut up kid, you're bothering me." This is basically the response given by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to an American soldier in the Middle East who asked why the soldiers deployed over there didn't have the equipment neccessary to fully armor their vehicles. Click on the link above to go to the New York Times op-ed piece. This link takes you to a Bloomberg article covering the same thing.

I have been giving a lot of thought to my friend who voted for Bush. I feel bad that I was so quick to insult my friend's intelligence. This person has been a real friend over the years. I guess I just thought that I knew him better, and that I was angry at myself for not having the power of persuasion necessary to bring him out of the darkness and in to the light.

Okay, so U.S. forces have cleared out Fallujah only to have the insurgents pop up in Mosul. So now we're gonna clear out Mosul. This could go on a long time. In fact, as Jerimiah has said, this could turn out to be a big version of "whack-a-mole." You know the game, you stand there with a mallet and wait for a "mole" to pop its head up and then you whack it. Unfortunately, one doesn't really "win" a game of whack-a-mole. Its a timed game. The moles will continue to pop up as long as you stand there and put quarters in the machine. The insurgency in Iraq is the same way. As long as we're there, the insurgency will pop up to fight us. I hope the American people get tired of this very soon and that they will tell Bush to get out of Iraq and focus on the war on terror, which is more important than the war in Iraq.