A Wisconsin conservative Christian writes about, well, whatever I feel like
I believe in all the second amendment rights and, of course, Iraq is not the US, but this just seems wrong.
Iraq announced Monday it will let doctors carry firearms, one of several measures aimed at trying to keep medical workers from leaving the war-torn country.
Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures.
Perhaps many will see it as “Same old, same old.” Most oppose the war and they’ve written him off as a lame duck and not too many approve of the job he’s doing. So most likely not much attention was paid to it, other than those looking for “Gotcha!” lines.
So here’s the text. I thought he did well in outlining where progress is being made. There should have been more. He admitted that. He should have done this more often in the last five years.
Where will we be five years from now? I wish I knew.
Let’s hope progress continues.
Keith Schmitz (the famous krshorewood) makes a good point here.
We beat Germany and Japan, two of the world’s greatest powers in three years and eight months.
We have been at it in Iraq for five years with no end in sight.
I would disagree that Bush (and Cheney) are dragging things out intentionally. I think they are genuinely clueless here.
Not that I’m much better. We Republicans talk about victory, but what will that look like?
No more casualties with a stable Iraq? What will be stable? And will we realistically get there?
UPDATE: Mike Nichols of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel basically reprints some of Maj. Olmsted’s post, whose parents apparently live in Cedarburg.
Michael Mathias of Pundit Nation points to this post, humorous, realistic, moving last word by a blogger killed in Iraq. No matter what your views of the war, it’s worth reading. If you get through it without tearing up, you’re a better man than I, even though I didn’t know, nor had ever read his posts.
Some excerpts to whet your appetite,
…while you’re free to think whatever you like about my life and death, if you think I wasted my life, I’ll tell you you’re wrong. We’re all going to die of something. I died doing a job I loved. When your time comes, I hope you are as fortunate as I was.
A lot of people will protest that argument by noting that the people we are fighting in Iraq are unlikely to threaten the rights of the average American. That’s certainly true; while our enemies would certainly like to wreak great levels of havoc on our society, the fact is they’re not likely to succeed. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a need for an army (setting aside debates regarding whether ours is the right size at the moment).
Regardless of the merits of this war, or of any war, I think that many of us in America have forgotten that war means death and suffering in wholesale lots. A decision that for most of us in America was academic, whether or not to go to war in Iraq, had very real consequences for hundreds of thousands of people. Yet I was as guilty as anyone of minimizing those very real consequences….
If everyone who feels this pain keeps that in mind the next time we have to decide whether or not war is a good idea, perhaps it will help us to make a more informed decision. Because it is pretty clear that the average American would not have supported the Iraq War had they known the costs going in.
There’s more, much more.
Rest in peace, Major Andrew Olmsted.
His last post at Obsidian Wings as G’kar. His blog at Rocky Mountain News.
An art show at Pasadena City College Art Gallery includes Marine tattoos.
IT’S a canvas of sorts, one threaded through with blue veins, nasty bruises, an explosion of hatch-marks that, upon closer inspection, turn out to be scars. It’s skin — but that’s just one layer of a story.
Read more at the link. Photos of some of the tattoos are here.
