adrift in a barroom, acting like a jerk and a kid...,
2007-08-19 23:54:40
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a country that was supposed to be within days or weeks of building a nuclear weapon couldn't possibly have the technical prowess to add a copper plate to a homemade bomb...,
2007-08-20 14:07:53
my wingnut outreach program is only in its infancy:
"VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal." say seven infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division.
I get into arguments over this sort of thing with family on occasion, on account of their anecdotals regarding a cousin's husband who's serving there and complains, apparently, of the domestic media's inadequate coverage of all the good news from Iraq. As our conservative cousins across the great divide of American political discourse have complained since at least 1970: the media is losing the war at home, and so on, as confirmed furthermore by this or that authoritative anecdotal report from serving military.
While one could bring up:
- zogby's polls of the troops.
- The Pentagon's astroturfing campaign - widely published by said media - of form letters purportedly sent from US Soldiers serving in Iraq.
- The statistical inconsequence of re-building a school when the American involvement with the project will lead to the staff of the school being considered collaborators and run out of their country.
- Or the terrifying results of Army's Mental Health Advisory Team (MHAT) IV Final Report from November of last year, that, among other things, found 17% of soldiers serving in the war reporting that they agree with the statement "all non-combatants should be treated as insurgents" and another 39% who neither agreed nor disagreed with said statement (pp.35).
The conservative mind operates almost entirely on the basis of anecdotes drawn from what they've seen on the History Channel about WWII, so there's not much traction to be gained, I've found, shoveling such wood chips under the wheels.
Anyway, the reason our guys here in the 82nd find it surreal is not because of all the good news going unreported, but because they "are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day."
The only reasonable thing to conclude from such a statement is that these guys are opportunistic American haters with, as referenced above, deep psychological problems that have left them unhinged. Additionally, I would add, they probably don't even exist.
