But Jimmy Kimmel actually made me laugh out loud. During the Comedy Central Roast of Flavor Flav, he noted that this was Comedy Central’s first carbon-neutral roast. He then added, and I’m paraphrasing here, “if Comedy Central is so concerned about polluting the air, they should cancel Mind of Mencia.”
Bwah!
Widely seen, but worth linking: Dick Cheney on why occupying Iraq was an obviously bad idea.
[I]f we’d gone to Baghdad [in the first Gulf War] we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.
Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.
It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.
The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families — it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?
Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.
Total US fatalities during Cheney’s second war in Iraq, to date: 3,689
Ratio with fatalities in first Gulf War: 12.6 : 1
US combat fatalities: 3,270
Ratio with first Gulf War: 22.6 : 1
“Coalition” fatalities: 297
Ratio with first Gulf War: 4.6 : 1
Other US casualties: 27,186
Ratio with first Gulf War: 183.7 : 1
US suicides: 118
Ratio with first Gulf War: unk.
Minimum reported Iraqi security force casualties: >7,350
Ratio with first Gulf War: N/A
(all sources as above)
Minimum reported Iraqi civilian fatalities beginning 2005: 65,000 - 76,000
Ratio with first Gulf War: approx. 20 : 1
You’re doing a heck of a job!
Hat Tip: Editor and Publisher
Rove is running away at the end of August. The question is why? Did major GOP players look at the disaster that was 2006 and the albatross that Rove has made of Bush and decided that they couldn’t afford any more of his genius? Or have one of the many, many scandals he had his finger in finally started to catch up to him? Remember, one of his closest aides is deeply involved in the Abramoff scandal and he has been implicated in the US Attorney scandals and his office was giving apparently illegal political briefing to civil servants.
Ans now that Rove is gone, does this mean that Cheney has even more influence on Bush?
Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again.
It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: "Kings. What a good idea." Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.
-- Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
