The Blog of toussaint

i said that i was not going to write about the Petraeus report because it is a sham and everyone on earth knew what he was going to say before he said it.  In fact, i wrote on June 19th about this magical time and the conclusions that would come from it: "We must stay the course."  But i must say i thought more of the general because i knew he would say we are making marginal progress in Iraq but i never thought he would try to sell me this used car of a war and try to dress it up as some big success.  i was very disappointed to hear his testimony sound like that of a politician. i thought he would leave that to Amb. Croker, but it was like listening to Georgie himself.  Bush has dragged so many good generals down in this mess (Powell, Shinsecy, Pace etc.),  and i had hoped that Peterus would just " stick to the facts ma'am.  But, he used misleading charts that did not include all the data so that you would think that the surge was going better than expected.  He followed the Bush line about An Barr province so that you would forget that we did this surge to stop the violence in Baghdad, so that were the parliament meets would be free enough to do the business of trying to bring the country together without the threat of dying in the process.  But i guess i expected too much from a Bush appointee.  The only one not shoveling this shit is the Sec. of Defense. Have you noticed that he has not publicly commented on this report? 

In the real world, your boss does your performance review, not yourself.  How would you like to work for a company who tells you to do your own evaluation of your job performance?  We would all be getting raises this year.  In my industry we have "secret shoppers" that do not work for our company that do our reviews so that no one can say they have a dog in this hunt and they can give an honest assessment of my and my staff's performance.  The "secret shopper" of the U.S. gov. used to be the GAO.  But no one pays any attention to them when they say that, while security is a little better, the original goal of the surge (to provide political reconciliation) is not being met.

There is something rotten in D.C.  The pres. is trying to grab all the power he can and do whatever he wants, no matter what the voters think.  The Congress refuses to stop him because it is more politically advantageous to let the war go on so they can win the next election.  And the Courts. . . please! They are too worried about the issues of 20 years ago (i.e., abortion and affirmative action) to do anything to stop this mess.  i am afraid it is up to you and me to fix this jalopy but i am not sure we want to do the hard work of getting under the hood of this used car.  It is hot messy work and we might get our fingers dirty. 

P.S.  God rest the souls of all those who lost thier lives 6 years ago just trying to go to work or visit grandma.