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Steve Gilliard, 1964-2007
It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog, passed away June 2, 2007. He was 42.
To those who have come to trust The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects and interest categories where others feared to tread.
Please keep Steve's friends and family in your thoughts and prayers.
Steve meant so much to us.
We will miss him terribly.
Fantasy World
Labels: baghdad, Iraq, US Army, wingnuttery, wounded
Where is Brit Hume's?
I was watching 24 last night, and while it's been the anti-torture whipping boy, the underlying plot about rich american industrialists supplying five nuclear weapons to terrorists has been lost in the shuffle.
I don't know why ANY Republican would like this show with it's anti-capitalist undertones. But that's neither here nor there
I didn't post it up, but when I heard that the Sunnis launched an attack on a US outpost, surprised was not the word I would have used. Predictable. The Shia are holding their fire and watching.
The GOP refuses to deal with reality. They refuse to deal with the losing war, the fact that we treat veterans like shit, that Bush's plan is doomed. They think their cowardly words matter.
Well to the grunts fighting for their lives in the outpost De Lattre Petraeus sent them to die in, it sure as shit didn't. Watching a car bomb breech your wall is a mind focusing experience. Do the Republicans care? Fuck no. Their grip on Iraq is as sure as Britney Spears on her sanity. They have a fantasy world of brave Iraqis and happy US soldiers.
And when anyone intrudes on this cowardly, disgusting picture, you get the vile spectacle of Brit Hume, adulterer, lecturing Jack Murtha on service to this country. This is a man who's son blew his brains out to hide his homosexualty. No one tosses that in his face, or how his first marriage ended.
Yet, he dares to tell Jack Murtha that he doesn't know anything about the military. Who the fuck is he kidding? Anyone with a clue knows he's the Pentagon's go to guy. They are so wedded to their fantasies, that they lie to people. If Juan Williams was a man, he would have told Hume to just stop fucking lying
The debate in the house reached depths of shamelessness which should embarass a generation of Americans. Calling all and examples to call Democrats traitors for daring to suggest our colonial war was a grotesque failure. Talking about Hitler this and Lincoln that, without any clue that we are sending men to fight and die in a charnel house of our own making. They keep talking about victory, which is as likely as winning in Vietnam in 1954.
These cowards are hiding behind soldiers, ignoring their reality of payday loans, divorces, PTSD and shitty equipment. Brit Hume hasn't got a clue about any of this, Jack Murtha certainly does. Since he's the one spending his weekends at Walter Reed.
The Republicans, once again, refuse to serve this country. I'd like to take a smug, fat fuck like Adam Putnam, and send him on a ride through Baghdad with a patrol. All his bullshit would fall away like a leaf. After he finished shitting himself, that is. Part of the reason they back this surge bullshit is because it buys time with their contributors, even bigger cowards, who do even less than the clowns they send to Congress.
Stupid fucking veterans groups, still holding their grudge from Vietnam, the one where they shit on the vets, still refuse to call Congress out. The American Legion is useless, the VFW little better. Their leadership should be ashamed after reading the Washington Post. They do next to nothing but serve beer to fat old men, while future vets languish in a slum.
The media shows us so little of Iraq, not because a jackass like Malkin thinks the AP is in a grand anti-American conspiracy, but because they would wind up on an AQ death video if they tried to run around Iraq. Notice how the incompetent, like Malkin, always blame some secret cabal of anti-Americanism, otherwise known as the truth, for distorting their fantasy of Iraq. Malkin was there and couldn't tell when a mosque was blown to shit.
But for the real journalists, survivng Iraq is no small deal. It is so dangerous, they can't even explain it. They can't say they live in guarded compounds with armed guards, because they will be part of the story. But if they don't do that, they might as well commit suicide. I remember reading about one reporter who got sick of what she thought was bullshit, hopped in a cab and was never seen again.
And even with that stuff, we still get happy talk stories from military families about how proud they are their spouses are doing another tour. I saw one of these stories on ABC and I was amazed at how lazy and stupid the reporter was. Did she think these wives were going to tell the truth and ruin their husband's career? Of course not. Offer them anonymity off post and you'd get a much different story. Divorces, payday loans, affairs. But we don't want that story told.
Today, the Maliki government is denying a woman was raped by Shia militia security forces because they are still in the pocket of Sadr. And because he is an idiot. Of course, that's one of the little crimes we don't hear about.
The US press has not been eager to admit that the Army's criminal press gang program has led to all kinds of unhappy effects, like gang signs appearing on equipment, and of course, criminal activity like raping and killing Iraqis.
Another story we don't want to tell. It makes me want to vomit when I see the parents of these Einzatsgruppen in American uniforms beg for mercy for their spawn. Oh, he couldn't have done this. Bullshit. Your kid ain't on trial in the military for murder for NO reason. You know what you have to do to get charged with murder? Those Iraqis didn't wind up with bullets in the back of their heads for no reason or by accident.
The problem is that people refuse to realize that the American Army isn't invincible. Which is why all this bullshit about funding the troops and trying to discredit Murtha is going on. They want to pretend that the best Army in the world is in Iraq and they do nothing, not one fucking
thing, to support it. The GOP no more cares about soldiers than farms care about shit.