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… and the Iraqui people are safer.

Yeah. Of course they are. Pulling Back the Curtain: What a Top Reporter in Baghdad Really Thinks About the War

… and thanks for all the fish.

No, I’m not leaving for good or anything of the sort. But as you might have noticed by the recent lack of postings, I’m currently pretty much Net-less, thanks to the big move to Dorado. My DSL line at the old apartment’s been gone since last week, and the computers have allready been moved to the new house in Dorado, but I don’t have a phone line there yet. I’m going to be getting Cable Modem service, which I hope to get the paperwork in for this week, but who knows how long that’ll take. In the meantime, my only Net access is here from work, and that doesn’t leave me much time to blog, play, mu*, or really anything online other than occasionally answering my email. Don’t worry, as soon as I get my Net access back, there will be a veritable rash of new postings.

I just got this email in from MoveOn.org, and while I don’t normally bother sharing most of them, this is one of those that I need to show here, in full.

To hear President Bush tell it, Iraq is a bed of roses: “Our strategy is succeeding,” he said last week. Yesterday at the U.N., he said Iraq is “on the path to democracy and freedom.”

Yet the CIA told Bush recently that the scenarios we’re really facing there range from a quagmire to a bloodbath. The CIA’s July report outlines three possibilities for Iraq, ranging from “an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous” to “civil war,” according to the New York Times. [1]

Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) is calling on Bush to level with us, by releasing the report, formally called a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), to the public. Graham, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has read the NIE, and he thinks we all should see it too.

Join Senator Graham in demanding that President Bush to face the facts and tell us the truth about Iraq, by releasing the NIE, at:

http://www.moveon.org/tellthetruth/

It’s not just Democrats who are questioning the President’s grip on reality.

Senator Chuck Hagel (NE), a Republican, says: “The worst thing we can do is hold ourselves hostage to some grand illusion that we’re winning. Right now, we are not winning. Things are getting worse.” [2] “The fact is, we’re in trouble. We’re in deep trouble in Iraq.” [3]

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) also supports releasing the NIE [4] and says: “We made serious mistakes right after the initial successes by not having enough troops there on the ground, by allowing the looting, by not securing the borders.” [3]

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), says “he believes the situation in Iraq is going to get worse before it gets better, adding that he believes the administration has done a ‘poor job of implementing and adjusting at times.’” and says “We do not need to paint a rosy scenario for the American people….” [3]

Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) says it’s “exasperating for anybody look at this from any vantage point.” [1]

Those are Republicans talking. Here’s what the generals and national security experts are saying, in a terrific recent piece in the UK’s Guardian newspaper:

Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, said: “Bush hasn’t found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it’s worse, he’s lost on that front. That he’s going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It’s lost.” He adds: “Right now, the course we’re on, we’re achieving Bin Laden’s ends.”

Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, [said]: “The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options…. The priorities are just all wrong.”

Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: “I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true…”

W. Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College’s strategic studies institute — and the top expert on Iraq there — said: “I don’t think that you can kill the insurgency”… “The idea there are x number of insurgents, and that when they’re all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed”… “Most Iraqis consider us occupiers, not liberators.”

General Odom [also] said: “This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn’t as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we’re in a region far more volatile, and we’re in much worse shape with our allies.”… “I’ve never seen [tensions] so bad between the office of the secretary of defence and the military. There’s a significant majority believing this is a disaster.” [5]

Just as important are the opinions of those whose loved ones are serving in Iraq, like Martha Jo McCarthy, whose husband is on National Guard duty there. She says:

“Everyone supports the troops, and I know they’re doing a phenomenal job over there, not only fighting but building schools and digging wells. But supporting the troops has to mean something more than putting yellow-ribbon magnets on your car and praying they come home safely.”

“I read the casualty Web site every day and ask myself, ‘Do I feel safer here?’ No. I don’t think we can win this war through arrogance. Arrogance is different from strength. Strength requires wisdom, and I think we need to change from arrogance to solid strength.” [6]

Join Senator Graham now in calling on President Bush to face the facts and level with us, by releasing the CIA’s report, at:

http://www.moveon.org/tellthetruth/

President Bush has got to tell us the truth about Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction. No Saddam-al Qaeda connection. The mission is not accomplished. The transition has not been peaceful and stable. Attacks on our troops are increasing, not decreasing. These failures lie solely with the president, and he owes us an honest explanation.

Come clean with us, Shrub. Your continued lying in the face of overwhelming facts is not just disrespectful to the american people, insulting to the soldiers who’ve placed their lives in your hands, and despicable coming from someone who claims to be on a mandate from God, but it’s also an act of outright evil if it’s being done on purpose.. and complete idiocy if its not.

… has me in a spell.

Just found this over on BoingBoing, and it totally made my day: fighting homophobic bible-thumpers on the NYC subways through the power of SHOWTUNES!

Me: “If you all don’t lower your voices and cease calling me Satan, I will have to sing show tunes.”

The other straphangers look at me with stony faces.
I begin to sing.
“Its very clear, our love is here to stay. Not for a year, but forever and a day…”

Preacher lady and the Jesus police start mumbling and beseeching G_d to strike me down and boil me in molten tar. (I look better in silver.)
The train reaches Wall Street. Confused subway riders check out the scene. I begin swaying and feeling the music.

The slamming Bible man looks like he is going to pop a blood vessel. “I cast ye out, Satan.”

I go into jazz dance crouch and then spring up to belt out, “THAAAAAAT OLD BLACK MAGIC, HAS ME IN A SPELL!”

Bible man has to get off the train as I wriggle and shimmy. “That same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine!”

Bible man exits. SHOW TUNES 1, FUNDAMENTALISTS 0.

See the full link.

… bites the dust.

Well, I survived the hurricane/tropical storm that hit us, although it took this long for the lights to come back on so I could get my Internet fix once more. Let me just say that I have never appreciated my GBA SP’s 10 hours of battery life, or the AC/DC converter I bought for my car, as much as I have the past few days when we had no electricity or water. Things are back to normal more or less now, though. I hope.

A quick update on the whole sitch with Natalie’s mom: She’s out of the hospital, finally, and doing a *lot* better.. thanks to everyone who’s been asking around after her.

And finally, I just wanna link to this rant by Jon Rosenberg, of Goats. Goats is the first web comic I read several years ago, and thanks to it, I discovered the wild and wolly world of webcomics. I now read like 30 or so webcomics regularly, and I add in a new one whenever one catches my fancy, and Goats has always been among my top picks. So he’s posted up a rant about how much those webscraping Visual Basic scumware programs that snag the webcomics from author’s pages suck, mentiuoning that anyone who can’t or doesn’t want to visit the webcomic’s page itself is welcome to use their RSS feed which they gladly provide, and encouraging other web comic artists to provide RSS feeds as well to take away the ‘reason’ the people who make these programs give for distributing them. It’s a pretty good rant, and I do agree with just about everything he says, so here’s the linkup.

Warehouse 23: Something Positive: Saving Throw T-Shirt - Large

… pound for pound it costs more than gold.

So, I figure my Mage players over on MedNights probably think I deserted them. Been away from the mux for a few days now, and didn’t really give a warning. Gotta spend some extra time with them this week to make up for it, since they are understandably leery about their wizzes dissapearing on them. Don’t know if they’ll understand that RL kept me away from the computer all these days. Heck, I wasn’t even able to show up here and make a quick blog entry. Ah well.. maybe I can hand out some GMail invites to them to make it up to them. I’ve got 6 of them to hand out, after all.

… and now I know I wanna kill you.

I really do want to blog more these days, but got so much on my mind I don’t even know when to begin. It’s odd, you’d think that when there’s plenty of stuff going on, I’d have lots of material for blog entries, but it turns out I get scared of the blog, because I’ve no idea where I could possibly start. So, I won’t blog about my life, I’ll just point y’all to things. Easier that way, and maybe I can deal with the rest on a piece by piece basis later.

Sekai o Yumemiru: This is the beggining of an ongiong storyline based on a dream a friend of mine had. It starts off a bit slow, but picks up as you go along. He seems to be having a fairly vivid series of sequential dreams. I’ve had a few of those in my life, and always found it fascinating when I did, usually eager to go to sleep each night so I could discover what happens next to the motley crew in my dreams. Sadly, pretty much all of my sequential dreams never quite wrapped up.. I just stopped dreaming them. I do hope this one doesn’t suffer the same fate.

BoingBoing’s RNC coverage: BoingBoing has a series of articles they’ve been running covering the Republican National Convention that’s currently taking place in NYC. It’ mostly from the point of view of the protesters, but still on the outside: showing you what the regular media’s ignoring, without getting too involved in the rethoric of the protesters themselves. Good stuff. Linkies here and here and here and here and here.

Kaiju Big Battel is now officially at the very top of my ‘coolest things in the world’ list.

And, finally, for your moment of Zen.