Iraq Has Been a Success!

Oil Profiteering is the great success story in Iraq. I think in fact, it's likely the only one. As Bush and cohorts have made it clear that Iraq has been a success story, we can look at Iraq's success to see what they are so happy about.

In 2000, the UN was discussing a strategy for ending sanctions against Iraq. At that time Saddam had been busy selling off development rights to Iraq's oil fields to German, French and Russian firms. He announced multiple times that Halliburton was going to be kicked out of Iraq. He cited Halliburton's involvement in the oil for food scandal as a principle reason to do so.

Then somehow Halliburton got really lucky and its CEO, that masterminded the oil for food scandal, retired from Halliburton to run for office as Vice President of the United States. Luckily, with lots of money, hard campaigning and friends that own the voting machines used to determine the popular vote, Halliburton’s candidate won by a 1% landslide!

Well, the next thing you know, Saddam’s ready to nuke the US with his arsenal of 20 nuclear tipped intercontinental ballistic weapons. Well, it turned out later he probably didn’t have them. But he wanted them. The thought police know these things.

How do we respond? Well, we invade and make Halliburton Iraq’s official oil company. Then luckily for Iraq, the Iraqi government never even bothers to ask for this cut. To this day, Halliburton doesn’t have to pay a dime in revenues or taxes for the privilege of selling Iraqi Oil.

Think maybe I’m making this up? Just try a little web searching and read Halliburton’s own press releases. They say so! They are up front about it. So no wrong doing there!

And now we’re at the present day. The US has a string of newly built permanent bases all along the Iraqi pipeline routes. Halliburton has been assured that it will be pumping oil in Iraq for years to come. And the US taxpayer covers all of the costs! The US taxpayer even pays Halliburton to produce the oil that it then sells. And Halliburton gets to keep all of the profits from the sales! What a lucky corporation!

And how will the US maintain and staff these bases? Well duh! That’s why we’re closing all of those stateside bases. In the new century, we don’t need our soldiers on US soil protecting US interests. They are now international mercenaries protecting Halliburton’s interests.

To borrow a line from ‘A Clockwork Orange’, “It’s the new way.”

Lip Service War Supporter

Chorus:
I'm a lip service war supporter.
And I want you to die for my beliefs.
Cause this goin off to fight in wars, is not for my kind.
You're better off if I'm partyin and drinking wine.

You saw me the other night at the waterin hole.
I was shootin off my mouth and feeling stoked
Then a recruiter said son, sign here and you'll get a gun.
Well I turned tail and found myself on the run.

Well I'm sittin home and watchin a little TV.
Some boys were gettin blowed up in a humvee.
Then rang the bell, it was a recruiter givin his speil.
I slammed the door and told him to go to hell.

I heard some people are getting a little upset.
At all the killin and maiming and wasted deaths.
Well I want you to know, you're dyin for a noble cause.
So don't let no questions ever give you pause.

Go down today and sign it all away.
You could be in Baghdad in a hundred days.
The day after that, you can come home in a body bag.
And we'll drape your coffin in an American Flag.

I'm hopin I can date Jenna Bush.
That way I'll be safe sittin on my tush.
Cause whoever Bush calls son, is sure to get deferment number one.
otherwise if the draft comes, I'll hafta be on the run.

Sometime now this song will have to end.
Cause the hunderd and first keyboarders hafta win.
So it's a few tequila shots, smoke some dope and then begin.
And give them liberal bloggers a little spin.

Appeasing Terrorists

WooHoo! It’s marketing time again in the White House! The recent attempt to rename the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan took an interesting turn. After learning that Rummy was referring to the conflict as the “Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism”, Bush has set the record straight. Claiming that he didn’t approve the name change, he reiterated that the official name of the conflict is “The War on Terror”.

And I don’t blame him. He’s made it clear that he’s a “War President” and that war will be the legacy he’ll leave us. He’s about bombing, killing and maiming, not about struggles. And had the name change gone through, he would’ve been known as the, “Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism President”. Or maybe the “Struggling President” for short.

I personally think the moniker, “War President” is very apt and descriptive. Getting people killed seems to be his forte. There’s not much else he’s accomplished except maybe to raise graft to all time record levels.

So if we’re going to be accurate in our monikers, I think the “Flypaper Strategy” should be reexamined. I don’t see how the strategy in Iraq resembles flypaper. When using flypaper, the flies land on it and die without causing anyone any additional harm. If Iraq were like this, then terrorists would go there and cleanly commit suicide with neat little confessions in their pockets. They wouldn’t cause any more harm than is necessary.

But the conflict in Iraq isn’t like that at all. I’d call it the “Sacrificial Maiden Strategy”. After all, we’re sending troops to Iraq to be killed, to appease the terrorists so they won’t come to the US and kill civilians. So it’s more like sacrificing maidens to the dragon, so he won’t destroy your farms and villages.

So really, it’s an appeasement strategy. It’s a diplomatic strategy, in which we trade the lives of soldiers for a temporary peace. The real goal isn’t to defeat the terrorists. It’s just to keep them appeased.

But this dragon is growing and getting hungrier. Over time we are finding that we have to sacrifice an increasing number of soldiers to the dragon. How long can afford to feed the dragon? And what happens when we quit feeding it? Will the dragon get hungry and lay waste to our farms and villages?

Perhaps this tale will have a story book ending? How would you end this tale of marketing and dragons?

Requiem for Nero

It's been a bit of time since my last entry, so much for my best intentions.

In the interim, my I picked and my wife canned, about 15lbs of figs and pears from our backyard. She's made up a batch of fig chutney and a lot of pear butter. I was pleasantly surprised by the Pear Butter. I didn’t know what to expect. Think apple butter, but with pears. Yum, yum.

My youngest chick has grown long in the leg and is dancing for the hens. We’d hoped it would be a hen, but alas, we lost the coin toss.

We can only have one rooster in my city, so his father, a beautiful red Auracana named Nero, became my first try at processing chickens at home. It was hard to do it, but once I got going, I didn’t think about anything but the job at hand. It was a bit easier than dissecting in college, I guess because I wasn’t drawing everything as I went.

He was a two year old and we weren’t certain how to prepare him. I started out trying to broil him, but after an hour, he failed the fork test. So the next step was to borrow the neighbor’s pressure cooker. That went well. I was surprised at how dark the dark meat was and gamey. It was the color of a dark liver. Once I cut into that, my pups came running. They had ignored me until then, then suddenly they were at my feet whining. They got a little and didn’t seem to need to chew.

This was my first attempt at making stew, and I’ll be eating it all week. My wife said she liked it, but refuses to eat any of the meat in it. So it’s all mine.

On other fronts, my fall garden has been weeded and planted. I put in mostly squashes and am trying to get parsley started in my herb garden. My next step is to get some fill dirt delivered to level out the garden area for my yard. Maybe I’ll do that next week? If I get that in then it’s going to be planted in brassicas, lettuce, cabbage, etc…

And finally, I got some practice in for Tuesday’s Acoustic session at MacHenry’s in Ft. Worth. A friend there suggested I practice more on rhythm, something I’m awful with. So I downloaded the HammerHead drum synthesizer and have been using it for a metronome.

Until next time..