Milestones, Milestones, Milestones...Everywhere We Look, Another Milestone (and none of them good)

Oy. Where to start? Today we reached 2000 American dead. Women my age are not supposed to be burying their sons, they are supposed to be welcoming their grandchildren. I cry for the aching empty arms of so many of my sisters. I have a grandchild, and she is the light of my life. I never knew I could love another child as much as I love the ones I gave birth too, but I do. It is amazing, it is awe-inspiring, it is the greatest joy in my life. I ache for the grandchildren that will never be born and for the grandmothers who will never know the joy I feel every time that precious little girl looks at me and says "Nanna!" The serenity and peace I feel every time she falls asleep on my shoulder, the all consuming love I feel for her.

And as we reach this milestone of senseless death and lost opportunity and squandered youth, this milestone of spilled blood, lost lives, broken promises, and lies, our clueless leader rattles his sabre at Syria and Iran. Speaking of Iran, they waged a seven year war with Iraq in the 80's to achieve the ends the United States handed them on a silver platter with the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of the Hussein regime. Yeah, Saddam was a murderous thug, but his borders were controlled and the threat he posed was internal, no threat to us. Iraq had no connection to Al Qaeda before the invasion of a sovereign nation. Now it is their number one recruiting station.

If you think this is worth it, riddle me this...How many more need to die? How many more soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines need to die, need to spill their blood on foreign sand for a lie, before those who support this fools errand say "enough" and join the other 65% of us? How many more lives are you willing to snuff out? I want a firm number. Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? Fifty-eight thousand? A hundred thousand? How many? Are you willing to send your sons to die in this war?

I am not. I am so grateful that my husband talked our son out of joining the Marines in the spring of 2001. Just this afternoon when I woke up to the news that 2000 were now dead in the Iraq conflict, I started to cry, and thanked him again for talking Tyler into breaking tradition. (On my husbands side of the family, military service goes all the way back to the Revolution, without a single generation skipped...Until now. And he has a nephew in Strata Blue right now, so technically the streak still holds. But my son, the son of a retired Major, the grandson of a retired Chief Petty Officer and a Marine Captain, will serve you dinner, but he will not serve in uniform. Not for this Commander in Chief who couldn't even finish his own puss-duty after his daddy got him into TANG and sent someone less connected to die in his place. If only...)

From the Washington Monthly Blog: IRAQ WAR MILESTONE....The
Wall Street Journal reports that we've passed the halfway point: more than half
of all Americans now think that invading Iraq was the wrong thing to do. The raw
data is here. I've interpolated missing data on the chart to show a continuous trend. In other news, 66% of U.S. adults now say President Bush is doing a "poor" or "only
fair" job of handling Iraq; 61% say they aren't confident U.S. policies in Iraq
will be successful; and 44% believe the situation for U.S. troops in Iraq is
getting worse (compared to only 19% who think it's improving). I have a feeling
that yet another series of "same 'ol, same 'ol" speeches from the president
aren't going to turn this around.—Kevin Drum

That Canadian official was right. Bush is a moron. (Appologies to morons everywhere.)