The Common Ills: Iraq and the ignorance of the Cult of St. Barack

In yesterday's snapshot, we went over the latest US and Iraq agreement -- the Memorandum of Understanding For Defense Cooperation Between the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Iraq and the Department of Defense of the United States of America.

I've read over 50 e-mails from visitors e-mailing the public account to explain to me how wrong I am. As I noted yesterday, I can be wrong and I often am. With regards to the Memo, my mistake was thinking anyone reading would be a functioning adult.

I didn't realize I needed to draw up flash cards and a vocabulary list before we could address the memo.

Section two of the contract, clause "L" covers "joint exercises." We went over that yesterday.

My mistake was to assume that everyone was mature enough to grasp it. In fairness, most were. Certainly community members long ago rejected the Cult of St. Barack and have no reason to self-deceive.

But for those idiots who can't quite grasp reality, my question would be where, if not in Iraq, would you expect these joint-exercises to take place?

Paris?

Are joint teams of US and Iraqi service members going to patrol the Champs Elysees?

I guess it was also too difficult for some who just knew I was wrong to actually read the Memorandum -- or even Section Two which we quoted in full in the snapshot. We'll go back over the Memo in today's snapshot.

I really did think -- and there I was hugely wrong -- that as a country we were at least mature enough to grasp that the current White House attempted to extend the SOFA as last year was winding down. But that was clearly 'breaking news' to many of the visitors e-mailing to dispute my interpretation of the memo.

The ignorance of the Cult of St. Barack -- the continued ignorance of the Cult of St. Barack -- is staggering.

Best e-mail from the Cult had to be one from a David who wanted to insist not that I was wrong in the interpretation but that I was lying about the memo itself. David explains to me at great length that no such memo exists (we noted it on Thursday and included the Pentagon's press release in that day's snapshot but facts never bother David). As he concludes his long list of why the memo doesn't exist and how I am lying, he offers his "absolute proof that convicts you as a liar. If the memo existed, MSNBC would have talked about nothing else for the last days. You can keep lying but a lot of us watch MSNBC and we know what's going on."

That is just so precious. You sort of picture David dashing off a letter to Santa right after he finished e-mailing me.

The following community sites -- plus Ms. magazine blog, The Diane Rehm Show, Antiwar.com, Chocolate City, Cindy Sheehan, the Guardian, PRI, Jane Fonda and World Can't Wait -- updated last night and this morning: