Good News, Hopeful News, and Dumb News

First, the good news: John Edwards will be Kerry's Veep candidate. I don't see any downside to this. Sure, the Rethugs will try to smear him as a "trial lawyer," or perhaps as "inexperienced," but neither will cause any damage. The trial lawyer thing might play to his advantage--if he notes that as a trial lawyer, he opposed the kind of corporate greed exemplified in companies like Enron and Halliburton. As for inexperienced--um, there's a certain village idiot from Crawford, Texas for whom inexperience might as well be a middle name.

It's also nice to see The New York Post make an idiot of itself, as Atrios also noted.

The hopeful news: Wassef Ali-Hassoun, the Marine of Lebanese descent who had been captured and held as a hostage in Iraq, supposedly has been freed. Given that reports this weekend said he'd been killed, I'll believe this when he surfaces, but at the same time, one can hope. The hostage taking and executions have been so tragic--and so needless. All these thugs have proven is that US forces--who, lest we forget, are supposed to provide internal security as rules of occupation specify--are not even close to exerting control. That said, there's absolutely no need to kill civilians--which is something that US forces should also consider.

Then, of course, there's the dumb news: in this case, Tony Blair doggedly sticking to utterly discredited story of Iraq and WMD. I rhetorically asked in my last post a question as to what would consitute the "smoking gun" in Iraq. Blair is clinging to the notion that violation of UN resolutions constitutes a 'justification' for invasion. Tony--I'd like to quote Dick Cheney to you.

Iraq did not comply with UN resolutions only to the extent that they did not reveal what some folks like Scott Ritter surmised, based on logical inference: Iraq's WMD cache was either miniscule or nonexistent. Chemical weapons don't last forever, and the sanctions prevented Hussein from either acquiring more, or building manufacturing facilities. In other words, there was no threat. Besides, it doesn't take a genius--although apparently this baffled the US press--to realize that Iraq's "defiance" of the UN didn't exactly constitute the same threat as "Al Qaeda wants to use airplanes as weapons." As a result, we've willingly placed ourselves--and the entire Middle East--in an unbelievably dangerous and destabilizing situation. And, while we're busy with Operation Go Fuck Ourselves, the REAL problem is beyond our ability to respond. Check out, for instance, William Lind's latest. He points out that the problem is and never was in Iraq, but now is most certainly in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan. While our soldiers are dodging RPG's in Mesopotamia, destabilization in either of the big three mentioned would bring the house down, as it were.

Finally, to everyone--I'm still going to be a little slow in posting--thanks for your patience. Once again, it's a work thing, but there's also a health thing. I noticed yesterday that the swelling in my elbow has gone down a great deal. Whether this is coincidence or the result of rest, I'm not sure, but it can't hurt to continue to rest--and see. If the swelling goes down permanently, I'll be a hell of a lot happier.

Look for perhaps a short post or two this afternoon, but otherwise, thanks for being patient with the slowdown.