keeping baghdad safe, rummy better cancel those travel plans, and a short learning curve...

thank god things are going so well in Iraq...otherwise the American people may be right to worry that their leadership is incredibly inept at occupying a country and putting it back together after dismantling it and then sending all the folks that knew anything about running it home, without pay, with weapons and really, really pissed off (not that creating conditions tailer-made for an effective insurgency should be considered poor planning...I mean, nobody saw this coming, a people pissed off that a foreign power is occupying their nation, that never happens). I mean, just recently about 150 education ministry folks got a free, all-expenses paid trip to the local amusement parks which some troop-hating, anti-American, kook would probably call a "torture chamber." we are doing so well in protecting the major city in the country that boring civil employees have the freedom to take time off...hell, they are going so well that they are forced to take time off...by hooded men with really big guns...

unfortunately, the rash of kidnappings in baghdad (along with that pesky little civil war thing, which, turns out, saddam planned ahead of time when these fucks got back in office...not that they would bother to get intelligence before invading and occupying a country though) has caused Rumsfeld to cancel his vacation plans to Iraq to visit "his" troops (which he loves so much he sends to war undermanned with inadequate equipment, poor planning and absolutely no foresight). instead he planned to take a trip to germany to visit with some people he felt may understand the human propensity to commit grievous war crimes (or at least oversee their commission)...unfortunately, those plans are now on hold as well since the german people are suing to get their prosecutors to look into investigating him and a bunch of other faces you would likely recognize for war crimes. my how the tables have turned...I would say he could try brazil and hang out with other monsters, but now that the germans have turned against it, I wonder how much help he would have in hiding down there. better hope for that pardon and stay between canada and mexico asshole...

south africa...a nation that within my short lifetime was the subject of much worldwide disdain for apartheid and the brutal racist cracker regime that ruled it and their apparent disdain for anything remotely approaching civil rights for anyone who did not happen to be cracker enough...is now whipping past the united states in a crucial area of civil rights...homosexuality. by a margin of 230 to 41 the south african parliament gave the thumbs up to gay marriage (right-wing "christians" across the united states are praying for a smiting at this very moment, so stay tuned)...within a few decades this nation went from brutal discrimination to walking hand in hand with all of four other nations in approving gay marriage - assuming the actions of the parliament take hold...shamefully, the united states is not one of those four.

in supporting gay marriage, the african national congress caucus chairman, Vytjie Mentor, explained that members of his party must vote for the measure regardless of their views towards homosexuality...“how do you give someone permission to discriminate in the name of the anc? how do you allow for someone to vote against the constitution and the policies of the anc, which is antidiscrimination?” is it just me...or should the "a" in "anc" be replaced by an "r" and this message be sent to all republicans...or maybe just replace the whole of "anc" with "christian"...

it is a sad day when America has embraced the policies made famous by Nazi Germany (later famously decried by liberal democracies such as, oh, America, in criminal trials of Nazi leaders) and South Africa speeds by America on the freeway of civil rights recognition...what happened to the ideals that made this country great?

another century spent pointing guns at anything that moves...