• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

When we show up, we win.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

American History and Black History can not be separated.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Let’s finish the job.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

I was promised a recession.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Mobile Menu

  • Four Directions Montana
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2024 Elections
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War / So True It Hurts

So True It Hurts

by John Cole|  April 9, 20087:13 am| 10 Comments

This post is in: War

FacebookTweetEmail

Kevin Drum with a painful observation that made me laugh out loud:

Ambassador Crocker again refuses to engage in hypotheticals with Senator Biden. Unless we hypothetically talk about leaving Iraq, in which case he is absolutely sure that everything would fall apart and the world would end.

Le sigh.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Open Thread
Next Post: Kill Me Now »

Reader Interactions

10Comments

  1. 1.

    jake

    April 9, 2008 at 7:26 am

    I hope the next President leaves his ass there after the troops GtFo:

    He then points out that we still, after 8 hours of testimony, have no definition of success….Crocker’s weak response its “hard and complicated.”

    Shorter Crock: Waging unnecessary war is hard!

  2. 2.

    cleek

    April 9, 2008 at 8:17 am

    wait, the administration’s reasons for continuing the war are as hollow and self-serving as their reasons for starting the war ? that seems impossible.

  3. 3.

    Crusty Dem

    April 9, 2008 at 9:01 am

    cleek, I think you mean unpossible. What? It’s a perfectly cromulent word.

  4. 4.

    Redhand

    April 9, 2008 at 9:01 am

    Crocker’s weak response its “hard and complicated.”

    What a shill! Crock-of can do no better than his idiot C-in-C: “It’s hard work.”

  5. 5.

    TenguPhule

    April 9, 2008 at 11:48 am

    I hope the GI on the helicopter out remembers to kick Crocker off as they leave.

  6. 6.

    Delia

    April 9, 2008 at 2:15 pm

    Crocker’s weak response its “hard and complicated.”

    Yeah, it’s hard and complicated all right. The hard and complicated truth is that the Iraqis are perfectly capable of fighting bravely and intelligently. They just don’t want to do it for an American puppet regime. The recent battle in Basra illustrated that hard and complicated fact rather well. The hard and complicated fact is that this administration still wants to have things its own way in the Middle East no matter how much reality exists in getting in the way. None of them have apparently ever paid any attention to the noted social philosopher, Mick Jagger, who taught us all long ago that you can’t always get what you want.

  7. 7.

    Tax Analyst

    April 9, 2008 at 4:57 pm

    TenguPhule Says:

    I hope the GI on the helicopter out remembers to kick Crocker off as they leave.

    That creates a priceless picture image.

    would that it t’were.

  8. 8.

    Rick Taylor

    April 9, 2008 at 11:36 pm

    That sums it all up; you can skip the rest of the hearings. They gave no scenario for success, no description of what our long term goals were and how we were going to fulfill them, except to stay in Iraq until things get better, with the ever-present knowledge that leaving would be a disaster. It wasn’t actually Kevin’s observation, he was quoting Democracy Arsenal.

  9. 9.

    Rick Taylor

    April 9, 2008 at 11:38 pm

    The whole summary from day 1 is worth reading.

  10. 10.

    Rick Taylor

    April 9, 2008 at 11:47 pm

    Intel Dump is one of your links, so you’ve probably already this, but Philip has a good commentary on the hearings, and the whole thing is worth reading.

    “The reality is, it is hard in Iraq.”

    That statement by U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker pretty much sums up what he and Gen. David Petraeus presented to Congress yesterday. Iraq is hard, but we are making headway; victory is possible, if we only persevere.

    Except that in making this pitch, Petraeus and Crocker overplayed their hand. They overstated the threat posed by al-Qaeda in Iraq in an effort to justify the mission — a mindset that has generated a deeply flawed strategy. They also overplayed the surge’s success — downplaying or discounting factors that likely did more to create today’s improved security conditions. . . And, perhaps most tellingly, the two men made the case for perseverance without placing Iraq in the context of vital U.S. national interests, offering only apocalyptic predictions of what would happen if we don’t stay the course.

    . . . Our skewed visualization of Iraq — and overemphasis of the AQI threat — has pushed us to adopt an extremely risky strategy of standing up Iraqi security forces and local partisans that will, if we ever withdraw or downsize our forces, create the conditions for a massive civil war. . .

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

Recent Comments

  • Mousebumples on Henry Would Like His Lunch Right Now, Please (Open Thread) (Apr 15, 2024 @ 1:32pm)
  • H.E.Wolf on Henry Would Like His Lunch Right Now, Please (Open Thread) (Apr 15, 2024 @ 1:31pm)
  • Kathleen on Henry Would Like His Lunch Right Now, Please (Open Thread) (Apr 15, 2024 @ 1:30pm)
  • WaterGirl on Henry Would Like His Lunch Right Now, Please (Open Thread) (Apr 15, 2024 @ 1:29pm)
  • MisterForkbeard on Take the Fucking Win (Apr 15, 2024 @ 1:28pm)

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Balloon Juice Meetups!

All Meetups
Talk of Meetups – Meetup Planning
Proposed BJ meetups list from frosty

Fundraising 2023-24

Wis*Dems Supreme Court + SD-8
Virginia House Races
Four Directions – Montana
Worker Power AZ
Four Directions – Arizona
Four Directions – Nevada

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
Positive Climate News
War in Ukraine
Cole’s “Stories from the Road”
Classified Documents Primer

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)

Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Twitter / Spoutible

Balloon Juice (Spoutible)
WaterGirl (Spoutible)
TaMara (Spoutible)
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
ActualCitizensUnited

Political Action 2024

Postcard Writing Information

Balloon Juice for Four Directions AZ

Donate

Balloon Juice for Four Directions NV

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2024 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!