Risk Takers


Last night on Countdown I literally couldn't believe my ears when Olbermann cited the following passage in Eric Edelman's dolchstoss letter to Senator Hillary Clinton:

...such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks in order to achieve compromises on national reconciliation, amending the Iraqi constitution, and other contentious issues.

Um, these risk takers are about to emulate our president--well, almost--and take a month of paid time off (if they REALLY wanted to do a Shrub, they'd go for a full six weeks).

Well, I suppose if your world view considers Scooter Libby an almost prisoner-of-war, as idiot Edelman presumably does, then it's possible a month-long vacation qualifies as "personal risk." After all, an individual lawmaker might well...run up an embarrassingly large tab at a hotel/restaurant in the south of...France. Ouch.

Of course, Edelman, like most others in this administration, can't be bothered with the dead and wounded. I mean, geez: it's as if they went out of their way to make such a splendid little war so goddamned messy. And now Team Bush is being asked to do some most unpleasant contingency planning...for the inevitable loss, a loss that continues to cost us dearly because, according to Chester Crocker (Ambassador to Iraq), we need to "buy time," which, in Iraq, is paid for in local currency: blood.

Oh, at times how I wish there was a hell...because an awful lot of people would one day be rotting in it...