Phew.
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, testifying on Capitol Hill for a second day on the situation in Iraq, today dismissed the idea of calling for another buildup of U.S. forces in the country if violence escalates, saying he would rely instead on American and Iraqi forces already there.
It’s a tough call, considering that “calling” for another troop buildup is like me calling for a Megatherium pizza.
Zifnab
If there’s one thing that would really turn this war around, it’s General Petraeus ass babies.
Tim (the Other One)
What, no Surge 2.0 ? Not even a service pack ?
tballou
So why in the hell was the first surge necessary? If one surge is good, why not two? What’s that? Something about good money after bad?
Jen
I found this inexplicably amusing. Interesting how Democrats are on this list.
David Harmon
The other day, I saw a big fancy car with a RED ribbon reading “We Shall Prevail”. Appropriately, this was affixed to… the gas cap.
cleek
no, i don’t mind tooting my own horn: STFU DFH.
Keith
If anyone could crank out one of ’em and have it delivered in 30 minutes, it’d be Saint Petraeus.
The Other Steve
I got an email from the Politburo over at redstate.com.
Apparently the United States has been occupying the Confederacy for the past 150 years!
Says Erick Erickson
Man, I love these guys!
gypsy howell
They really really can’t accept that they lost the fucking war, can they?
Zifnab
Iraq or Civil?
4tehlulz
Google’s fast. I googled “Megatherium pizza” and this post was at the top of the list.
Also, the number of casualties in Japan, Germany, and the Confederacy of American Traitors has been a bit lower in the past few years than in Iraq. Just saying.
Jen
We are totally going to rise again, next year, maybe.
binzinerator
It also means since they believe they aren’t citizens of the United States of America, we can do whatever the fuck we want with them.
Why not treat them like we treat citizens of that other occupied country we’re still at war with, Iraq?
The redneck combination of self-inflicted stupidity and boundless embrace of victimhood never ceases to amaze me. Just like so much of Bushism. Which, no surprise, is often made up of the same kind of people.
Ninerdave
ToS, was just going to post that.
I firmly believe that the people who write RedState have trouble remembering to breathe.
binzinerator
Sorry forgot to do a blockquote of what I was talking about. My previous comment is in ref to
Rick Taylor
Lugar, a thoughtful Republican (nearly an extinct species) questioned Petraeus about how we’d respond if we needed more troops.
binzinerator
They have trouble even admitting those wars are in fact civil wars.
The war in Iraq isn’t really a civil war, see. It’s merely an insurgency.
And they don’t even call the (American) Civil War, the Civil War. They prefer to call it ‘The War Between the States’ or ‘The War of Northern Aggression’.
I am not shitting you.
Cris
That’s beautiful. Next time I hear a Southerner talking about supporting the troops, I’ll accuse them of collaborating with an occupying power.
4tehlulz
>>I am not shitting you.
Oh I know the drill. In that vein, I propose that we start referring to the Civil War as The War of Southern Betrayal.
Dennis - SGMM
Of course nothing will go wrong to the extent that American forces were required anywhere else in the world while our military is hunkered down in Iraq for an indefinite number of Friedmans.
Petraeus may be smart, he may even be a good general, but he’s too much the politician. His testimony before Congress would have been an opportune time to suggest that training and equipping more troops would be a wise idea. Cynic that I am, I suspect that someone is already warming up the “Petraeus in ’12” campaign.
joe
If I were soldier, and I was ordered to take a hill, and I’d lost a couple of my friends in the mission, I imagine that I’d believe that hill was the most important god damn topographical feature on the entire planet. I would believe that the future of all that is good and decent revolves around that hill.
I imagine I’d have to, or go utterly and irredeemable insane.
DragonScholar
Megatherium pizza is so my new band name.
Jen
FWIW, I’ve lived in the South my entire life and I’ve never actually heard anyone un-ironically refer to it that way. Granted, I don’t live in the Deep South and I don’t come from redneck stock, but I know people who are Civil War buffs.
Rick Taylor
Democracy Arsenal was live blogging the hearings with Petraues; it makes interesting reading.
gypsy howell
I wonder if the CSA is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions? I’ll bet not.
Let the torture begin!
It’s only fair after they’ve tortured us with all that shitty country music all these years.
Buck
I was born and raised in Georgia. I have always referred to it as the lost cause.
143 year ago today Lee surrendered to Grant.
What ya’ll doin’ to celebrate?
The Other Steve
I just want to point out how much I love Redstate. Especially that Erick Erickson guy.
Tim (the Other One)
“I firmly believe that the people who write RedState have trouble remembering to breathe.”
You really don’t have to remember if your mouth’s open all the time.
gypsy howell
Occupyin’ their sorry asses.
gypsy howell
Occupyin’ their sorry asses.
Jen
Planning the rising again, of course. That and cornbread.
gypsy howell
so good I had to say it twice. sigh.
Zifnab
Ditto. Not that I haven’t seen a few flatbed pickups with the Rebel Flag, but I’m never sure if they’re actual wanna-be insurgents or just Dukes of Hazard fans.
Punchy
Yes, but Iraq will be such a clusterfuck by then that this current love affair for General Petty will be so gone, evaporated, and a non-starter by then. He only thinks the whole country loves him; in reality, most of us see him as the political Svengali that he truly is.
The Other Steve
Drinking a bottle of Old Crow Bourbon, just like General Grant!
Jen
From Dan Froomkin:
Would it be an insane guess to say Yoo is going to raise some executive privilege BS and refuse to testify?
The Other Steve
Ahh, good one.
cleek
gonna git my gun and shoot me some food!
Punchy
How do they claim this if they no longer work for the government? Isnt the whole idea that the executive branch needs some “private time” away from the legislative, but if this guy is no longer employed, then WTF?
Otherwise, is the precedent that anyone who ever says “hi!” to Bush is immunized from testifying?
Ninerdave
Completely off topic, but if you’re not watching CNN and the San Francisco Olympic Torch cluster fuck, you are missing out. It’s hysterical
Dork
Ah…Iraqi soveignty (sp?) at its finest:
“You say he’s a free man….we say no he isn’t. Enjoy the independence we gave you!”
Zifnab
Dude. This is John Yoo. The man who insists a US Military Officer can walk into your house and rifle through your stuff because the 4th Amendment doesn’t apply to him.
I hope he gets arrested when all this is through. And I pray to high holy heaven that he’s dumb enough to represent himself.
jrg
Why? Are our armed forces policing Atlanta, Tokyo, and Düsseldorf, to protect the population from heavily armed sectarian factions? Were there wide-scale internecine conflicts after “mission accomplished” in WWII and the civil war? Where do North Korea and North Vietnam fit into this oh-so-simple paradigm?
Someone should also ask the Democrats why apples and bananas are both called “fruit”, yet taste and look completely different.
ZOMG, Teh stoopid – It burns…
Grumpy Code Monkey
Unfortunate gaffe about the South aside, I kind of see where RedState is coming from. If I’m correctly reading what he actually said, McThuselah wants to maintain a military presence in Iraq in much the same way that we maintain military presence in Japan, Germany, and Korea; not as an occupying force perpetually waging a counterinsurgency campaign, but as an ally leasing some real estate to maintain a forward presence against regional threats.
It’s an imperialistic, Cold War mentality that I don’t think works in this case. Even if we hadn’t already pissed away all of the goodwill from removing Saddam, it would have been a hard sell to any reasonably independent Iraqi government. Now, forget it.
Bubblegum Tate
When I was in NC to go to college, a friend of mine (native NorCarolinian) ironically threw out the War of Northern Aggression name. I laughed, and so did she, but then she said, “…but that’s seriously what they taught us to call it in high school.”
Yikes
jake
Nah, he’d just get his conviction overturned because he had inadequate counsel.
Caidence (fmr. Chris)
O/T, but Tapper puked out another post, and I need some quality mockery to wash it off.
The Other Steve
I actually feel bad about that. The guys running the torch don’t have anything to do with China. The Olympics is supposed to transcend politics. I think if we can go to Nazi Germany in 1936, we can go to China. Sheesh.
I understand that it’s a great opportunity to get this issue aired. But can’t we be kind to the athletes? They don’t deserve this shit. What happened in France was a fucking disgrace. It’s one thing to sit along the side chanting and waving signs, but trying to attack the torch runner is pathetic.
slippy hussein toad
So, this kind of begs the question. If we are fresh out of soldiery to sustain Another Teh Surge, what happens when we bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran, and then have no ground forces to contain their response? Will we sit here as much of the Arab World, now truly alarmed by our unhinged, batshit nutbar fuckwad insane leadership’s wild, loose-cannon-on-deck behavior, unleashes a resource war on us? I mean, let’s say they decide just to cut us the fuck off on the oil? They can sell that shit to China just as easily.
Pop quiz, hotshot: you’ve overextended your military resources in the Middle East and you run haring off and start another crazy-ass war, and nobody reports for the draft selection. What do you do?
What do you do?
This is madness.
Ninerdave
Totally agree. Having heads of state not attend is one thing, physically attacking a torch runner is another.
Really if we wanted to truly protest China, we’d remove Favored nation status and stop trading with them instead of harassing athletes and torch runners.
Having said that, whoever decided that it was a good idea to run the torch through San Francisco, one of the most liberal and activist cities in America is a moron.
Zifnab
Just read the comments. It’s a mad-house. :) God bless the internets.
Dennis - SGMM
What’s pathetic is that the IOC accepted China’s bid in the first place. I guess Zimbabwe couldn’t finish its velodrome in time. The IOC had to know that China would be a very controversial choice, especially in view of its treatment of Tibet and of the Uigurs but they made it anyway. That, I don’t understand.
Rick Taylor
I really don’t think that’s going to happen. How long have we been hearing those predictions?
On the other hand, our troops are stretched thin, and it’s a legitimate question what we’ll do if the unexpected happens (as it usually does). What if Sadre decides to break the cease fire? What if the sons of Iraq decide they no longer want to work with us? It’s not like we have a lot of troops to spare in case of a flare up of violence. Lugar asked a question along those lines during the hearings.
Zifnab
That’s the nature of politics at the moment. If you wave signs, you get ignored or blotted out. If you write your Congressman, he doesn’t listen because trade with China is too “serious” an issue for stupid bleeding-heart plebes to affect. If you boycott their products… well, that’s damn near impossible given the nature of trade today.
But if you mug an Olympic Torch runner, you get on national TV. Then people sit up and take notice, China gets embarrassed, and – very, very occasionally – the sign wavers and the Congressmen writers and the boycotts gain the leverage to get something done.
It’s a stupid system, and its demeaning, and its rather pathetic given the rules of the Democracy we allegedly live under. But here we are.
slippy hussein toad
Bingo. We are one aggressive nutjob away from a serious problem. Thanks, George W. Bush, for demonstrating in textbook fashion the true dangers of abusing Presidential military authority. I can only hope our Congressional culture learns a little less quiet, dignified respect and a little more solid rock balls to stand up to this kind of ridiculous horseshit in the future.
Svensker
Where the hell does the U.S. get off protesting China? We, who attacked a country that did not threaten us, have occupied it violently for 6 years, and have killed hundreds of thousands, displaced millions. And we’re protesting because China is oppressing Tibet? Pot meet kettle. I think the pot should protest itself, before it gets all huffy about the kettle.
binzinerator
I lived in Georgia for a number of years, and I certainly have heard a few people refer to it that way, and not in an ironic way.
I’ve also been referred to as a ‘damn Yankee’ a couple of times, and also not in an ironic way. Not with vehemence, just matter-of-factly, just the way I’ve heard some Southerners say ‘nigger’. (Northeners really do say it differntly.) No heat, it’s just an adjective. (When most people say the n-word, it sounds like what it is — an epithet. But doing it casual-like gives it a certain kind of insidious power, I think.)
I also knew two people who had grown up in Georgia (different towns) who told me they both had school teachers who insisted on calling the Civil war ‘The War of Northern Aggression’. Considering the age of the two people in question, that would put those grade-school history lessons sometime in the mid-1970’s. By the way, those two do in fact ironically refer to the Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression”, and in all the time I knew them I never heard them use the n-word. The South, as I learned, is not a homogenous place.
You oughta visit Georgia sometime and see the South. ; )
binzinerator
Jeez, Svensker, they’re Commies and we’re not. We invade sovereign nations and oppress their people to bring them freedom. Can’t you see the difference? Why do you hate America so much?
Dennis - SGMM
Next you’ll be wanting them to vote the interests of the people.
Tim F.
Ha ha, sigh. The day we bomb Iran is the day we make a fighting withdrawal from Iraq, dynamiting whatever we can’t cram into humvees, or our hundred K troops become Iranian hostages.
GeoX
My grandmother, a liberal Democrat from Tennessee, nonetheless referred to it as the War of Northern Aggression to the end of her days.
Just another data point.
leinie
Grumpy Code Monkey, I am *so* stealing that.
Zuzu
If it applied at all, I would guess it would apply to actions, conversations, opining, etc. that took place while under the executive umbrella.
Bedlam
I googled:
so essentially a Megatherium pizza, is somewhat harder to get hold of than a sloth burger.
mmmm, sloth burger.
Cyrus
Well, if you put it like that, sure. If today’s Iraq were in the same position as South Korea has been in since the 1950s, I think we’d all support keeping troops there. Maybe someone should point out the differences to McCain, and why there’s almost no chance Iraq will become like South Korea, and he’d see reason.
Megatherium pizza with extra cheese for me, please.
As for more troops, though, it would definitely be possible. Increase salaries for soldiers or make the commitment less onerous and open-ended, and you’ll get more people enlisting. Free market FTW! But that means Republicans would have to admit that the economy sucks for working-class people, and increasing money for salaries means ridiculous-looking budget increases, unless you make cuts elsewhere, like corporate welfare — hah!
Buck
Well maybe up from the ground will come some bubblin’ crude.
Sounds like a damn good way to celebrate.
As for me I spent the evening listening to The Band and cryin’ in my grits.
OriGuy
You want us to cut up our Megatherium for one pizza?
At least order the cutlets with it.