Bush* and the Bike and Training Wheels...

Just too easy.

Remember the Reuters Reporter??

The one that got killed last August 17, while filming outside Abu Ghraib prison??

Just wondered...

Folks Are So Sensitive

Steve McLinden, the Ft. Worth Star Telegram reporter who sent an e-mail to the Young Conservatives of Texas calling them “heartless, greedy, anti-intellectual little fascists” is no longer working for the newspaper.

Some people just don't like being called little...

Probably Clinton's Fault

How were the Chickenhawks supposed to know this guy was untrustworthy??

Hell, he only had ONE conviction for bank fraud. Compared to most of the people they know...

If True...

This will be a bigger political scandal than Watergate...

A bigger intelligence failure than 9/11...

A bigger stain on the Presidency than the entire blue dress.

Curiouser and Curiouser

"The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources."

An Iranian Intelligence operation given access and influence at the highest possible levels in our government, sponsored by people at and just below Cabinet level, and WE PAID FOR IT??

Probably the work of a few Enlisted Reservists...

Chalabi: Biggest Con Man in History??

Has that neo-con darling Chalabi taken the entire civilized world for a ride??

The bulk of the "evidence" of Iraqi WOMD came, directly or indirectly from Chalabi and his INC. We know his stuff got traction in the U.S. primarily because he was saying (and inventing) exactly what Perle and Wolfowitz and Cheney wanted to hear.

How many other Western intelligence agencies relied primarily on what Chalabi fed them??

What was the original source of the various crude forgeries fingering Iraq??

Should the anthrax attacks be re-examined for a Chalabi angle??

Trusting this guy may end up being the most incompetent thing this Administration has done to date, which is saying a mouthful.

Rank-heavy casualties

The list of dead from Iraq is far too large to look at in it's entirety, it's easier to see when it's broken down into digestible pieces. While perusing a State-by-State list:

War Casualties
I noticed an amazing thing. The casualty list from any State not home to multiple Major Army Commands is VERY rank-heavy. Tennessee has lost 18 killed, 3 of whom were not NCOs, Warrant Officers or Commissioned Officers.

An impossible number. So I checked Arkansas, to my West.

11 dead, 4 lower Enlisted.

Mississippi, to the South??

13 dead, 6 lower Enlisted.

East of me North Carolina, home to Fort Bragg, the guys most often at the shitty end of the stick:

19 dead, 6 below NCO.

To the North, Kentucky, home to Forts Campbell and Knox, Air Assault and Armor Centers.

10 dead, 1 below NCO.

How can this be, and how can it be sustained?? I assume it at least partially reflects the heavy use of National Guard and Reserve troops, but Christ on a Cracker!!

How long can the Army trade E-7s with 20 years for newly-minted E-5s with 3?? Having quit as a Staff Sergeant the mortality rate there just leapt out at me...

There once was a man from Nantuckett

May have happened as many as three times, but that's unsubstantiated rumor.