Friday, November 27, 2009

The US military announces another death

Today the US military announced: "BAGHDAD – A Multi-National Division–Baghdad Soldier died, Nov. 27, of non-combat related injuries. The name of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next of kin and release by the Department of Defense. The names of service members are announced through the U.S. Department of Defense official website at http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/. The announcements are made on the Web site no earlier than 24 hours after notification of the service member’s primary next of kin. The incident is under investigation." The announcement brings the total number of US service members killed in the Iraq since the start of the illegal war to 4366.

That's ten announced deaths for the month thus far. Will the press trumpet an increase the way they've Happy Talked their way through alleged decreases in recent months? It's an increase of two over last month. Actually, an increase of one but the press outlets ran with 8 as the death toll for October when it turned out it was 9. So already the death toll for November is 2 more than what they reported it was for October.

It's interesting, too, the way the bulk of the western outlets aren't overly concerned with reporting on the roadside bomb attacks on US forces. Those are increasing. Those are noticeably increasing. But if we all look the other way, we can pretend Bambi ended the Iraq War. Click your heels three times and say "There's no place like home" or clap you hands and insist you believe in fairies.

If you're running
From your secrets
I will make you
Take them with you
-- "Until Morning," written by Chris Carrabba from Dashboard Confessional's Alter The Ending.


And make you choke on them if your name is John Hughes. Little Fat Ass Hughes is back to soil the Christian Science Monitor one more time:

Does it ever seem to you that the news from the Middle East is always bleak?
Well, take heart. From Iraq, where the United States sought to plant seeds of democracy, there is evidence of some budding.
[. . .]
But even more significant news – a major step for women – went largely unnoticed outside Iraq. Fifty women graduated alongside male classmates as senior officers in the national police force. In next year's class there will be 100 of them. The jobs are among the highest-paying in Iraq. The majority of the women in this year's class finished law school. There have been some women in lower police ranks, but they have not until now been eligible for the elite officers' corps.

Hey, Fat Ass Hughes, we're not as dumb as you are. We're not all that stupid. A) If you're going to claim female police are a sign of progress, you might want to get honest about the fact that female police officers were much more abundant in Iraq before the US invaded.

Yeah, dumb f**king ass, Iraqi women have been police officers for years. They only lost that after the invasion.

B) If you're going to write about these women, you mgiht try writing reality. Not only have they lost their rights, but they're a joke to their male peers. They're having to start over at square one. And if Dumb Ass actually read -- in his long career, there have been few indications that he even knew how to read -- he'd be damn well aware of that fact. What a moron. It wasn't two months ago that Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) was quoting Iraqi women in the forces on how they were treated and seen by their male peers.

What moron. Truly, some people need to have an enforced retirement.

There's more reality in a letter writer to Steve and Mia for their latest advice column (Philadelphia Daily News):

Q: I hope you don't think this is silly, but does the three-date rule before you have sex apply to a soldier shipping off to Iraq? Is it my patriotic duty to bend the rules?

Steve: It's been a few years, but my experience is that the three-date rule is not widely enforced. Or perhaps the rules varied, from the one-date rule to the "only in your dreams, buster," a rule that women applied only when going out with me.
Whatever your rules, I would not make an exception for a man or woman in uniform. There are plenty of better ways to honor their service. Otherwise, you could end up in bed with a marching band.

Mia: I always tell folks to get to know someone before getting intimate. You say three dates, I say you should wait at least three months. So pass on doing the horizontal boogie with soldier boy until you know him better.

Here's reality from someone not desperate to prevent the act of sex: If you want to do it, do it. And as someone who lived through a previous war, I can tell you that if you don't, you'll always wonder what-if (especially should he or she not return from the battlefield) and you won't have to wonder if you do. Steve and Mia, no doubt, make reactionaries hearts warm. But in the real world, try telling a woman what she may or may not feel ten or twenty years on down the line and table the preaching for a church. If she wanted a sermon, she would have sought out advice from clergy.

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