The Legend of Pandora's Box

Gen. John Abizaid, together with Ambassador David Satterfield, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State and Coordinator for Iraq appeared before the Senate today and warned the Democratic Senators today not to hamper the military. Imagine what level of brass ball cockiness is being shown here when this comes directly on the heels of Rumsfield's firing last week.

Their mission clearly was to turn the heads of the dem 'defeatists turncoats' around to the old guard Republicans way of thinking. Although they agreed with Senator Clinton that "hope is not a strategy", Gen. Abizaid suggested that "despair wasn't a strategy either."

Great. So while the Iraqi people continue to get mugged, murdered, slaughtered, blown up, and most recently, kidnapped, a 'intervention' more commonly known as the Iraq War has come down to a tit for tat tea party. People are dying, children are being used as target practice, families are being destroyed and literally threatened to the point they have to abandon their homes, and our administration sends in the clowns to say to a newly energized, confident Congress, now just hold on a minute here, there's no need to go crazy and bail out while we're just getting started there. Simmer down you all. If you just approve sending more money and more troops I know we can lick them. You can see we have them on the run now, just be patient, they'll come around to our way of thinking, I'm absolutely sure of it.

It was positively scary listening to the two of them address Senator Clinton's questions that way. And poor Hillary, purposely hiding her disdain from the camera's eye by keeping one hand over her cheek, had no option except to make nice and listen to their stale and utterly shameful manifesto to stay the course. How could they show up at congress with nothing better than let's just keep on keeping on. It's preposterous in light of the botched job we've spectacularly accomplished over there.


Our defense department has no idea how to end the savagery that is occurring in Iraq. Our government had no right to go in in the first place and never had an exit plan ever, our congress had no backbone when they should have to stop what was going down from every happening, and now four years later not one person in our government or military has a clue as to what to do. And the country tunes into the news everyday with the intent that somebody somewhere has to have the answer and yet....nothing.

At the very same time the congressional hearing was going on, Al Franken at Air America was talking with Michael O'Hanion, who is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution where he heads up the Iraq Index Project. He was suggesting along the same lines of Senator Joe Biden's proposed planforIraq in which Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds can decentralize to pursue their own interests, which goes against everything Abizaid and Satterfield were pushing down the throats of congress today.

For a whole lot of historical sociopolitical reasons there may not be a workable plan to end the inhumanity that exists in that region right now. When Bush's shock and awe bombing first went down that awful night back on March 21, 2003 he violently ripped opened Pandora's Box. From the minute our boots touched down on Iraqi soil we have done nothing but cause immeasurable suffering and atrocities to both our troops and the Iraqi people.

Taken from The Legend of Prometheus and Pandora's Box -
No sooner had the gods spoken, than the elements obeyed: the winds blew; the rain fell in torrents; lakes, seas, rivers, and oceans broke their bonds; and terrified mortals, forgetting their petty quarrels in a common impulse to flee from the death which threatened them, climbed the highest mountains, clung to uprooted trees, and even took refuge in the light skiffs they had constructed in happier days.

Their efforts were all in vain, however; for the waters rose higher and higher, overtook them one after another in their ineffectual efforts to escape, closed over the homes where they might have been so happy, and drowned their last despairing cries in their seething depths.