Just wanted to point out that in the past week alone, over 200 250 people have died and "Bob" only knows how many have been maimed and injured. Close to that number injured and dead the previous week.
I certainly am not rooting for the bad guys here, but it's hard not to get the distinct impression that things are completely out of control in Iraq. I keep hearing that things are getting better and better and how the jihadists are desperate and on the run*. But I wonder what would be the effect of having 2,000-3,000 people die on a weekly basis here in the US (i.e. the number dying in Iraq scaled up as a percentage of population).
I really have to wonder what drugs y'all on the right are smoking (or injecting or swallowing or inserting as a suppository) these days (not that I haven't had such thoughts before), and ponder when everyone is finally going to wake up to your blatant happy face lies and white washing and finally kick your lilly livered butts like they deserve to be kicked.
Well, maybe you should look at how many people are killed in Africa everyday by fanatic muslims. Maybe that's where you should be looking for insight into this problem.
Well maybe if we didn't have 150K of our troops pinned down in a civil war that we'll never win we'd have been able to do something about it.
Bet you never thought of that.
From a historical perspective (something no-one is fond of, 'cause we all want to think that our age is special, our generation is special, and the post-modern cultural heritage makes us special), this Iraq mess is very much like the messes that (say) France was in some time back. I'm reading Montaigne (late 16th century), and Rochefoucauld (mid 17th century), and boy does it all sound familiar.
The liberal arts education (even a sketchy, patchy, and tenuous one - acquired part-time, under no supervision, and without writing papers - like mine) does give a long-term perspective....
BACK to the C++ mines, you lazy monkey, BACK!!!