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Of Asses and Elephants by George Ziemann December 7, 2007 Casual observation -- Someone must be worried about Mike Huckabee gaining too much popularity. At least worried enough to go back ten years to find something he messed up on and has already admitted was a mistake. The "I wasn't paying attention to all the details" version of the story goes something like, Huckabee let a rapist out of jail after having served about 15 years. Unfortunately, the rapist had learned new skills in prison and proceeded to kill two people not too long after his release. Huckabee screwed up. He's a preacher. Gave the wrong person a second chance. Admitted that, in hindsight, this had not proven to be a wise decision. Someone believes that knowing this information should influence the way you may vote if Huckabee's name appears on the ballot. Considering that the current president was elected in spite of us knowing that he had mocked a convicted woman before he had her executed, I'm not sure if Huckabee's misplaced compassion is supposed to be a pro or a con. CIA Covers Up -- Despite the fact that the United States does not engage in torture, the CIA had some video tapes from 2002 of "its officers" torturing "terrorists," er, al-Qaeda members. In 2005, right about the time that America was coming out of a coma and realizing they had been lied to about, oh, everything to do with Iraq, the tapes were destroyed. Because the United States does not engage in torture. October 21, 2007 I plan on making this an ongoing project, much like everything else on this site. So I'll start with the big ticket items and go from there later. The 2008 Election With campaigning well into its second year, the foreign media is concentrating on the truly important issues, surmising that Hillary Clinton has already ruined her chance at victory because she gave away Socks the cat when they left the White House. Iraq My personal assessment of the Iraq situation goes like this -- Regardless of your opinion of whether we were justified to invade Iraq, no one can deny that our troops are still the greatest fighting force on the face of the planet. The "war" lasted about a week or two. We won. The military did its job. They kicked ass. We waltzed in and captured the flag, even as Baghdad Bob continued to spew out disinformation on a level that could only be described as comic genius. There was not even an organized "enemy force" to surrender. Our troops did exactly what they were ordered to do and carried out their missions swiftly and successfully. It's important to remember this when you hear someone mention that the war has lasted longer than World War II. In addition, there are things like the Washington Post's series on how IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) are the most effective weapon against us in Iraq that make me think we're lucky they don't have things like tanks, bombers, fighter planes, rockets and everything else that Germany threw at us in World War II. But the war is over. We won. "Mission Accomplished." As I see it, that's when the problems began, because that's where the real plan ended. The job of the troops went from a strategic offensive mission to being a permanent occupying force. This is a scenario that never ends well, especially when the people you are trying to control speak a different language. Add to this that the Iraqis are divided into three sects, so some are friendly, some are not, they're both in the same place and you can't tell the difference because they don't have uniforms. Since April of 2003, the job of the troops has been basically to try and figure out who the bad guys are before said bad guys blow them up during the daily patrol through town. Although this is not a comparison of the struggles, this seems to be very similar to the strategy the British used keep the colonists in line during the Revolutionary War. The Decider Why in the world has this man been allowed to run the country for so long? Am I the only person who heard him say over and over in his first campaign that "The purpose of the military is to fight and win wars," when there was no major war going on? Silly me, I thought the purpose of the Defense Dept. was to defend our country. Nixon got impeached for spying on the Democrats. Bush is spying on the entire country. This week, he asked for retroactive immunity for telephone companies that had participated in illegal activity at the request of the government. He's lied about much more important things than whether or not he had sex with a woman, which was enough to get Clinton booted out of office. The Democrats Since Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors are so obviously beyond anything Nixon or Clinton did, why haven't the Democrats done anything about it? There are a lot of potential answers to this question, from simply being ineffectual to being plain stupid, but the one possibility that I find scariest is that they're making a list of all the crap Bush has been allowed to get away with, like signing statements, outing CIA agents, spying on the public, torture, renditions, ignore major cities hit by disasters, as well as any parts of the Constitution which may be in the way. The Democrats' turn to be The Decider is next. They will inherit the new powers Dubya has granted himself, right up until the Republicans have them impeached for it.