A Few Observations

After reading the tanscript of Judy Bachrach's statements on Faux News yesterday, I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I say that there probably won't be an encore.

Needlenose posted the link above, and cite a commenter at DailyKos as the source. Good for Bachrach--her observations are like a right cross to Barbara Boxer's left hook during the Rice hearings.

This morning I've been reading the ususal websites, trying to get a feel for the talking Chimp's inaugural address. Juan Cole links to a transcript (no, I haven't read it yet), followed by a pictoral commentary, then this conclusion:

Republicans who care about the Constitution should join Democrats who care about the Constitution in putting a stake through the heart of this abomination. A noble 200-year-old experiment in civil liberties and democracy, for which US troops are giving their lives, must not be ended by a single act of terrorism and a clique of authoritarians in Washington.

Bush's speech was about bringing liberty to the rest of the world. Let's see if he can first do something to restore to the American public the liberties we enjoyed, as free men and women, until 2001. Let's see if he can bring US government policies back into alignment with the Geneva Conventions and other international law on human rights, to which the US is signatory. Only then would he have earned the right to even think about trying to extend liberty to others.

On the other end of the spectrum, Nightline managed to come across last night as equally smug and banal. Barbara Walters (and her boots) traded gossip with Ted Koppel (ABC must have been taping the show in an airplane hanger--how else could those two egos fit in the same room?). I was able to stand about five minutes before shutting off the television and reading something a little more informative (Link provided by the newly reopened Whiskey Bar).

Anyway, the parties have mercifully ended, the hangovers are being nursed in the nation's capital (drinking expensive champagne...is hard work), and reality has a way of rearing its ugly head just when you wish it'd go away: like this story in today's New York Times, noting yet another bomb explosion in liberated Baghdad. Jeez, "bomb of the month club" would be an understatement. I also noted the following--it was the second paragraph in the story:

Earlier, a First Infantry Division soldier was killed and another wounded in an operation north of Baghdad to kill or capture known insurgents, a statement from the division said.

Well, at least it made the second paragraph. Another Times article--about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi thumbing his nose at us--added the deaths as a parenthetical:

[An American soldier was killed by guerrillas during raids on suspected insurgent hideouts in central Iraq on Friday, the military said, according to Reuters. Another soldier was wounded in the raids near Duluiya, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.]

So much for "supporting the troops." I wonder how many deaths it will take before they don't even bother to report them...