It is time the leave/stay in Iraq question be put in context

[gristy]

of what the trade-offs are with other things that demand our country's attention.

Poverty, political instability, security vacuums, religious fundamentalism, civil war - all of these have the potential to breed terrorism, and there are plenty of those things in many countries in the world. Below is the latest list of travel warnings from the State Department. Most are on the list because of safety concerns for traveling Americans (Cuba is on the list only because of Katrina).

The simple point here is that the US forces that are fighting in Iraq and the dollars being spent to sustain those forces in combat are the same manpower and dollars that are unavailable for use elsewhere in the world. And I don't mean that we should be kicking the shit out of someone else instead of Iraq... I mean our entire foreign policy effort is just completely overwhelmed by Iraq. Bush of course would have us believe that Iraq is the first of a long chain of dominoes, and once tyranny is toppled and democracy is established there, all other tyrannical nations will fall and the sun will shine over the world.

Well, he's wrong about that, and our friends and neighbors and brothers and sisters and sons and daughters that make up our military are being ground up in Iraq, and the security of our country has been clearly weakened because of this war. Our focus is entirely on Iraq while the problems of the nations on the list below fester. It is approaching the point where the top priority can no longer be the punishment and removal of bush and his cabal; the absolute first priority must be for the proper re-alignment and re-prioritization of security concerns across the board (we started to see evidence of the House coming to this realization last Friday in their debate of the faux-Murtha resolution). If it is true that re-alignment and re-prioritization cannot happen without the cabal being brought to justice, then we have no choice. They MUST be brought to justice.

As he says himself, George Bush would have our military stay in Iraq "until the job is done". That is, he would be willing to have them stay forever if that is what it took. Well, I got news for you, GWB, they CAN'T stay forever. Wars aren't something that a country just does. They aren't just something that doesn't suck the life and resources out of a country. The war in Iraq has so far cost 2096 American lives, 15,568 Americans wounded, and 221,180,000,000 dollars.

Bush is mentally, emotionally, and politically incapable of making the tough choices that are needed for the good of our country. He's pushing our military through a meat grinder, and he's taking the rest of us for a long, long ride away from home and we are spending the means with which we might get back. I do believe he is perfectly capable of destroying our country in his efforts to "protect" it.

As for his puppet-master, the neo-con cabal, they remain an enigma to me. I don't understand them. Never have, never will.

Well, that's all for now....

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Almost all of these State Department travel alerts relate to security and terrorism. The date refers to the last issued travel warning.
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_1764.html

Indonesia 11/18/2005
Zimbabwe 11/14/2005
Lebanon 11/07/2005
Liberia 11/04/2005
Yemen 10/28/2005
Cuba 10/19/2005
Burundi 10/19/2005
Côte d'Ivoire 08/25/2005
Sudan 08/05/2005
Bosnia-Herzegovina 08/01/2005
Somalia 07/21/2005
Algeria 07/21/2005
Uzbekistan 07/01/2005
Kenya 07/01/2005
Iran 06/30/2005
Iraq 06/28/2005
Congo, Democratic Republic of the 06/24/2005
Nepal 06/24/2005
Israel, the West Bank and Gaza 06/20/2005
Afghanistan 06/09/2005
Haiti 05/26/2005
Nigeria 05/20/2005
Saudi Arabia 05/17/2005
Colombia 05/04/2005
Central African Republic 04/19/2005
Pakistan 03/25/2005
Philippines 03/23/2005