Marshmallows, anyone?

We'll show them Muslims they can't hate our freedom!

Once again, the anniversary of 9/11 is upon us and once again, it’s time for good old-fashioned idiocy to commemorate it. Leaving aside the fact that we have fought two wars against two countries that had nothing to do with it, the American thing to do is to blame an entire religion for the acts of 19 lunatics. After all, Islam isn’t a real religion, it’s just some whacko death cult, isn’t it?

So some asshole preacher, Terry Jones, has decided that the best way to honor the lives of the unwitting martyrs of 9/11 who died because all Moslems hate our freedoms is to use that freedom to hold a good old-fashioned book-burning of the Moslem holy book. Yessireebob, we’re gonna practice our freedom of speech by kicking freedom of religion down the crapper. After all, freedom of religion means you have the right to worship Jesus in any way you want–even Catholics! Joseph Goebbels would have approved!

On the other hand, it’s the first time both the Tea Partiers and Afghans have united in calling for President Obama’s demise. Now that is truly a hands-across-the-aisle moment!

Well, it seems that General Petraeus thinks that holding this wiener roast MAY actually hurt our chances of success in those wars which we won BUT ARE STILL GOING ON. How DARE he disrespect our troops in this way! Let’s all show our troops respect by showing our contempt not just for our enemies, but for any friends we might have had in the Middle East. Because we’re fighting a mighty Crusade to rid the world of Mohammedans and rebuild the Temple so the world can end in a fiery blaze of Glory. HALLELUJAH!

Or something like that.

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How Dare They Publish These Documents Without Clearing It With HQ?

The little American general tries to plug the leak in the dyke.

Sticking his finger in the dyke...

Well, Wikileaks has done it again. Not being content with having shown video of a turkey shooting in Baghdad–oh, wait a moment–those weren’t turkeys, those were REUTERS NEWS MEN!–they now have had the effrontery to publish 92,000 documents concerning our wartime activities in Afghanistan. 92,000! This makes the 4100 pages of the Pentagon Papers look like small potatoes. You couldn’t do this before the Interwebs! Let’s hear it for technology!

As for what’s in those documents, God only knows. WhoTF has even read them yet? I mean, this makes the last couple of Harry Potter books look like Victoria’s Secret flyers! Wikileaks founder Julian Assange tells us that there is evidence of war crimes there. The Guardian–the British newspaper given advance looks at the stuff–says there no such thing. But one thing, they and the NYTimes and Der Spiegel agree on–it’s worse than we were told.

The White House is making sure that everyone knows that the bulk of these documents deal with things that happened B.O.–Before Obama! But if this was the situation B.O., WTF are we still doing there now? The Pentagon, sharp as ever, wants to remind everyone that no one vetted these documents. Hell, back in the good ol’ days when Stan McChrystal was in charge, the Army vetted all leaks!

As for the reaction of the American public, who knows? The loudest shouters are so far, and have always been, the people who think we’re at war in Afghanistan because THEY ATTACKED US! Wait a minute, that war was over seven years ago–and WE WON! But perhaps these documents may convince more people that the reason for being in Afghanistan vanished a long time ago and–like the guy at last call who hasn’t left yet–the reason we’re still there is because we’re too drunk to see where the door is.

But I doubt it–the size of the leak is too vast for anyone to get a handle on it and its sheer weight will dull its own impact. As for war crimes–hey, there’s only a couple of them in there and they’re just little ones anyway! Besides, it’s war! You can’t make an omelet without breaking a couple of eggs!

I’m afraid we’ll be eating that Afghan Omelet for some time. And it will be about as appetizing as eating my Aunt Margie’s Afghan.

No cartoon next week–I’m taking time off and going to Otakon! Have fun y’all and try to stay out of the heat!

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Just Stand At Attention and Yell Semper Fi

SecDef Robert Gates defends the record of Marine General James Mattis who now only thinks it's a heck of a lot of fun to shoot people.

Gimme an OO-RAH!

It’s been a good week for hoof-in-mouth disease! First we have Lindsay Lohan, who was photographed at her probation hearing with her fingers on her lips and the words F*U*C*K*Y*O*U scrolled neatly on her fingernails. What she was doing with her fingers on her bottom lip is beyond me, probably playing BLERM with her lip, thinking the judge might think it was funny!

Well, I got news for you, Lindsay. The judge wasn’t all that thrilled. Would somebody PLEEZE tell that girl that this ISN’T A MOVIE! We’re not in Disney World anymore–the laws hold–especially the ones about cause and effect! Actions do have consequences. Oh well, maybe some time in the slammer (maybe 9 out of 90 days?) will have some effect. It seemed to work on Paris Hilton. On the other hands, if her friends are right, LL might spend the entire time in withdrawal from nicotine.

Then we have our new man at CentCom, General James Mattis. Since General Petraeus is taking over the post of hoof-in-mouth specialist General McChrystal, his old post at CentCom needs re-filling. Enter James Matiss of the US Marines! OO-RAH!! Another victim of hoof-in-mouth on the scope! UH-OH!

Looks like someone unearthed a video of him saying was fun it was to shoot people. He meant the enemy, of course. Even a Marine General isn’t crazy enough to mean it was fun to shoot at friends. Or random people, although that does seem to be the nature of targets in Iraq and Afghanistan. SecDef Robert Gates said we shouldn’t pay any attention to that video. It was five whole years ago and General Mattis has learned his lesson. He now knows it’s not fun to shoot civilians. At least to admit it. And if anyone asks him anything he hasn’t been given the answer for, he’ll just stand at attention and yell “Semper Fi.” Confuses everyone–works all the time.

Anyway, it’s been a good week for misstatements–looks like the only guy NOT getting into trouble has been Paul the Octopus. What’s that? Even the Germans want to turn him into sushi for not predicting them to win the World Cup? Hey football fans–he’s a psychic, not a witch doctor. Get it straight! Paul did. Besides, he’ll taste awful with wasabi!

But we all have to agree–Paul is one cephalopod who doesn’t just suck for a living!

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Who’d’a Thunk The Belgians Would Be So Creative?

Young Frankenstein homage, exhuming the Belgian archbishop with ties to the child abuse scandal..

The Belgians thought it would be better to hire local labor to exhume the Cardinal...

Well, it has been an eventful week. General MacArthur shot his mouth off again to the press and Harry Truman was forced to sack him. Oooops, I mean General McChrystal shot his mouth off to a reporter from Rolling Stone and Obama, after months of McChrystal’s badmouthing and leaking, was finally forced into firing him. McChrystal’s boss and predecessor, General Petraeus, will take over operations in Afghanistan that, suprise! surprise! we’ve been told will probably take even longer. After all, those 50 al-Qaeda in the mountains need to be kept from rejoining the rest of their crew … in PAKISTAN. Yeah, yeah, I know, we’re trying to keep out the Taliban too so we can keep our friend Karzai in power–who, it has been speculated, has already joined the Taliban. Round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows, but the United States will continue to waste money and troops there because we won’t accept defeat in a war that lost its meaning 5 years ago.

Anyway, on to the real story…no, not the one about Fox and Friends wondering what that BP robot was thinking when it accidentally knocked the cap off the Gulf gusher–Jon Stewart already handled that. Hey, guys, The Terminator was just a MOVIE. No, I’m talking about the latest development in the ongoing story of Churchly pederasty. Holy Hercule Poirot! The Belgian fuzz raided church offices to seize evidence about priestly child abuse and its coverup. You gotta hand it to those Belgians. They ain’t sitting on their hands with this one. But the icing on the cake was the opening of two Cardinal’s tombs–what, did they think they were going to catch them in a smoking erection? Evidently, somebody thought that evidence might have been buried with the prelates, instead of being burned like anyone with half a mind would have done. On the other hand, the Church is full of bureaucrats, better photocopy those papers before you burn them, just in case we need them again!

While giving the Belgian police high marks for energy, initiative and creativity, I have to ask what they were smoking. Did someone read/watch The Da Vinci Code one too many times? How about Young Frankenstein? In any case, Our Holy Father is in a state of Righteous Dudgeon–something he forgot about doing while HE was in charge of investigating priestly child abuse–How DARE they act like the Church was full of bankers? I mean, criminals! “Huff! Huff!” he huffed, “Thou Shalt Not Hear the end of this!” And the former Hitlerjugend member from Bavaria (in what was to become WEST Germany) called the Belgian cops worse than Communists!

The Belgian church is now thinking of suing the Belgian police if the Jesuits can torture out a legal basis for the suit.

Finally, as we heard this morning. Robert Byrd, longest serving Senator in US history, passed away last night. Byrd was a living example that you CAN teach an old dog new tricks, having turned from a member of the KKK to one of the most reliably liberal members of the Senate. He will be missed. Our condolences to his family, the Senate and the people of West Virginia.

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Afghanistan: As Obama will say, the Surge is Working … Hmmmmmmm

The last two al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Bilal and Yussuf, discuss Obama's Afghan strategy and how they'd be happy to leave for $10 billion dollars and we wouldn't even have to send in 30000 troops.

Afghanistan-Pakistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan--it's getting so they're not even unpacking anymore

Well, the root canal is still a bit sore but the stomach virus has, shall we say, eliminated itself, so we are back here a day late. Obama’s speech to West Point–which Mr. Matthews stupidly characterized as “the enemy”–has already passed out of the news to give way to more important rumors about Tiger Woods and his many woods…which appear to be quite a few more than he carries in his sack. President Obama has, as was expected, elected to escalate whatever it is we’re doing in Afghanistan. I mean, what ARE we doing there? Is it a war? I thought that was over eight years ago. Is it a mission? If it is, I’d like to know what the mission is. Or was.Or will be. Because the only way you can end a mission is by accomplishing something and after 8 years of being in charge, we haven’t seemed to have accomplished much. Was it to catch Osama bin Laden? That’s what the advertising was back after 9/11. Well, hell, we let him escape to Pakistan. That’s one mission UNaccomplished. Was it to eliminate the drug trade? Hell, there are only two industries IN Afghanistan, rugmaking and opium poppies, and opium poppies is the one that brings the most cash into the country. Besides, if that was our goal, we should have just left the Taliban in charge–they’d brought opium production down to a minute fraction of what it had been. What’s 18 months gonna do that the last 8 years hasn’t?
To be fair, back during the election, Obama kept saying that Afghanistan was the GOOD war and Iraq was the BAD one and he was going to do something about it. But lots of us must have figured that was just to impress Fox News. And as it turns out, this is one of the few things he wasn’t blowing smoke about. Gays? Wait around. Patriot Act? You know, there are some awfully good things in there. Secrecy in government? Shhhhhhhh, let’s not talk too much about that one. Single Payer? Why, that would destroy our health insurance industry! So I can’t blame progressives for being surprised that he IS keeping his promise about this one. But, if we haven’t accomplished our mission yet, just WTF is it?
FOX NEWS knows what our mission is–since they seem to have become the fourth branch of government since Dick Cheney abdicated–it’s to “WIN”. That’s one word we didn’t hear in Obama’s speech, Fox newsies said with stuck record regularity, WIN! Well, Fox–and its subsidiary, the Republican Party–has always had a football game mentality to both war and politics, which I suspect are the same thing to them. No such thing as a draw, only winners and losers in their books, so if you didn’t win, you’re a loser. But — we won. We did that eight years ago. What we’ve been trying to do for the last eight years is figure out what the hell it was we DID win. True, we got rid of the oppressive Taliban government, but what did the Afghani get in return? Karzai–and his brother, Mr. Opium King? Who managed to hold an election in which hundreds of thousands of votes were cast in non-existent polling stations? I’m no fan of the Taliban but Cheeses and Crackers, couldn’t we have done a little better than Hamid Soprano?
Winning, as far as I can see, consists simply of keeping al-Qaeda and the Taliban out. Well, the Taliban, there’s only about 100 al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan at the most generous estimate, see Bilal and Yussuf in the illustration, but we always have to say “al-Qaeda and the Taliban” so that our “mission” looks like it still has something to do with 9/11. Where did al-Qaeda go? To the hills of our “ally” Pakistan. So why are we in Afghanistan? To keep them from coming back in. WTF would they go back to Afghanistan when they have a safe haven in Pakistan? I mean, it’s not like it’s their ancestral homeland. They have just as miserable conditions in Pakistan as they had in Afghanistan. Well, we have to stay to keep the Taliban out. What for? To keep up the opium trade? To prop up a government that is so corrupt it even makes the Bush administration look beige? We’ve had eight years to Kabul together a government in our own image and likeness and all we did was screw around. We ain’t gonna do it by getting serious for another 18 months.
But I think Fox News has a point, one that they don’t even understand–which isn’t saying a lot, since understanding things is less important to them than having an opinion. We have to have a surge to make it look like we’re taking some kind of action. Then we’ve got 18 months to figure out what we can say we accomplished so we can declare our mission “WON”. Then we can “draw down” before the ‘012 election. Mostly. Like Iraq, we’ll be keeping a significant garrison in place because the only way to keep the Taliban out is to stay fighting them. And, like Iraq, where we still have 50,000 troops, we’ll be there for some time to come. At a million dollars a year per man because that’s what it costs to keep troops occupying another country. Just think what we could do HERE with a million bucks! Never mind we, think of what I could do with a million bucks. Hey, doesn’t the USA qualify for “too big to fail?”
Which brings me to my final point. The Soviet Union was only in Afghanistan for 10 years and that little adventure is credited with its downfall. We’ll be hitting OUR tenth anniversary in 2011 and remember, the tenth anniversary is TIN!

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