Tony Blair is cool.

"No one lied. No one made up the intelligence. No one inserted things into the dossier against the advice of the intelligence services. Everyone genuinely tried to do their best in good faith for the country in circumstances of acute difficulty. That issue of good faith should now be at an end ... But I have to accept, as the months have passed, it seems increasingly clear that at the time of invasion, Saddam did not have stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons ready to deploy ... I have searched my conscience, not in the spirit of obstinacy, but in genuine reconsideration in the light of what we now know, in answer to that question. And my answer would be that the evidence of Saddam's WMD was indeed less certain, less well-founded than was stated at the time. But I cannot go from there to the opposite extreme. On any basis he retained complete strategic intent on WMD and significant capability. The only reason he ever let the inspectors back into Iraq was that he had 180,000 US and British troops on his doorstep ... Had we backed down in respect of Saddam, we would never have taken the stand we needed to take on WMD, never have got progress on Libya ... and we would have left Saddam in charge of Iraq, with every malign intent and capability still in place and every dictator with the same intent everywhere immeasurably emboldened. For any mistakes made, as the report finds, in good faith, I of course take full responsibility. But I cannot honestly say I believe getting rid of Saddam was a mistake at all."

(via Andrew Sullivan)

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I've bragged before about how wonderful my students are; tonight one of them outdid anything I've seen yet. Right before I was leaving my house, my phone rang: it was a student, one of the two students I have who drive more than an hour each way to come to class. He had gotten all the way to post and realized he'd forgotten his wallet, so he couldn't get in. I gave him the phone number of another student so he could get signed in as a guest. When I got to class, he wasn't there, so I figured he didn't have any identification on him and they wouldn't let him on even as a guest. About fifteen minutes after class started, he came in through the door. He had driven all the way back home just to get his ID so he could attend class. He said he was speeding like a madman, but he wanted to make it back in time for our class.

Now that's dedication...

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True story: I was walking the dog this evening when an animal ran out of the hedges and down the sidewalk in front of us. It was in my sight for at least five seconds, running away from us, and I was staring at it trying to figure out what it was. After it dashed out of sight, I stood there, puzzled at what I had seen. I figured it must have been a baby deer, even though it looked more like it was hopping than running. If someone told me it was a kangaroo, no lie, I might've believed it. When the dog and I got to the end of the hedges and turned, there it was again, this time from a side view. As it ran off, startled, I realized that I had just seen my first hare. Lord, was it humungous. It was bigger than the dog, with powerful legs and stiff ears. I then also realized why the flowers in front of my house have not only been nibbled to death, they've been ripped from the earth, roots and all. An animal that big could pull a whole bush up. Man, this hare put Illinois' bunnies to shame; it was a beautiful sight.

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I hesitate to even say the p-word here on my blog again, in light of what happened last time, but Joshua Sharf has an interesting post about the new WaPo poll.

(By the way, if you're not reading Oh, That Liberal Media every day, you're missing out on some shocking stuff.)

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Surprise, surprise. Someone at the NYTimes is donating money to Kerry. Gasp.

(via Iraq Now)

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Tim found a good article by John Leo about the power of blogging.

Plus I read another Leo article and found this line, about googling Bush=Hitler, hysterical:

The odd thing is that I typed in the names of every Nazi I ever heard of, excluding only Hitler himself, and the group total was still less than George Bush gets alone. This might indicate that either that George Bush is by far the second most important Nazi of all time, or that the Democrats and the left now require some sedation.

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I read Robert Jensen's article Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore Misses About the Empire via Hud. I certainly don't agree with many things in this article, but at least Jenson and I can find some common ground:

And what of the analysis of Iraq? Moore is correct in pointing out that U.S. support for Iraq during the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein's war on Iran was looked upon favorably by U.S. policymakers, was a central part of Reagan and Bush I policy up to the Gulf War. And he's correct in pointing out that Bush II's invasion and occupation have caused great suffering in Iraq. What is missing is the intervening eight years in which the Clinton administration used the harshest economic embargo in modern history and regular bombing to further devastate an already devastated country. He fails to point out that Clinton killed more Iraqis through that policy than either of the Bush presidents. He fails to mention the 1998 Clinton cruise missile attack on Iraq, which was every bit as illegal as the 2003 invasion.

Jensen lost me when he spoke ill of the military, which is not surprising given my admitted knee-jerk love of all things camouflage, but at least I could read the article and try to see his point.

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Kerry vs The War

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A 12-yr-old girl wrote a letter to the editor urging Americans to stand behind the President. She said that she doesn't agree with everything he's done, but he's our elected leader and we should give him the respect he's due and try to put ourselves in his shoes.

Smart kid.

Someone today decided to respond to the girl's letter (scroll to the second entry), beating the dead horse of Not Elected once again. This letter concludes with an absolutely ludacrous paragraph:

For the soldiers who are being shot at in Iraq, for freedom-loving citizens who see our country being turned into a police state, and for the 99 percent of us who haven’t benefited from Bush’s “tax relief” for billionaires, the best remedy is to relieve him of that stress, and his duties, on Nov. 2.

You go, man! Tell that 12 year old!

My husband's best friend said the other day that he's pretty much given up even reading the Stars and Stripes because of all the negative letters to the editor. That's a real shame.

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Via DGCI, I found this transcript from Rush Limbaugh's show about the Kerry appearance on Larry King. Larry King and Linda Heinz-Kerry had the following exchange:

KING: What do you think, Teresa, would be the effect of another terror attack on the United States politically?

HEINZ-KERRY: I don't know. I think most Americans subconsciously believe something is going to happen. It's a matter of when. And it's a matter of how.

KING: Strange way to live, though.

HEINZ-KERRY: Yeah. But you know, Europeans have lived that way and other people around the world have lived that way. Americans have been very safe, at least as a nation.

Rush Limbaugh explained a serious difference in worldview between people on the Left and people on the Right:

America is exceptional. America is the shining light, city on the hill, beacon of freedom, all this, prosperous nation, superpower. The left doesn't like that. They don't believe in American exceptionalism. They think this is an accident. It's not fair we should be more prosperous. It's not fair we should be safer. We must learn to adapt as the Europeans have. And her husband didn't step in and disagree with any of this.

I encountered some of this in the class I took over the weekend. Our professor hails from Africa but has lived in Germany for thirty years. At times during the seminar, he seemed to be belittling the American response to 9/11. He too was operating under the viewpoint that these things have been going on in other parts of the world for much more than three years, and that al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism terrorism is nothing to get all worked up about. He kept pointing out how Americans think that terrorism started in September 2001 when in fact it's been going on in Europe for decades.

My question is, why does it seem that we're the only ones to try to do something about it?

Granted, 9/11 is much bigger than anything the Red Army Faction or other terrorist groups ever did, but why hasn't Europe been waging a War on Terror for the past few decades? It's funny that when France said "We're all Americans now," what they seemed to really mean is "We're all victims now." And Theresa Heinz-Kerry seems to agree. It sucks to live in fear, but hey, everyone else does it. That's not the type of mentality that I want running the country. I want "smoke 'em out"; I want "either you are with us or you are with the terrorists"; I want "bring 'em on." I don't want "I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations."

I don't want to cower like the rest of the world does. I want us to be exceptional.

(Thanks for RWN for the quotes.)

MORE TO GROK:

Annika is a lot more blunt than I am...

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Two Johns, Two Positions

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Oh, and what's the deal with the weather? Last summer we had a heat wave that killed thousands of French grannies; this year it's the Ice Age. It's currently 54º in my neck of the woods. I am still wearing sweaters and knee socks. In July.

I told my husband today that it's a shame we can't average his temperature (currently 93º at midnight) with my 54º and have a nice happy medium.

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Hey, look! I'm in CPT Patti's window!
(right side, bottom left corner)

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I've never been good at stairs. I never take my time, and I fall often. Going up, I usually don't lift my foot high enough and catch my toe on the edge. Going down, I usually put my heel too close to the edge and slip. One time when I was away at college, I came home for a weekend. I ran into the house and down to my dad in the family room, at which point I fell and came crashing down the flight of stairs. My dad just chuckled and said, "Sarah's home."

So tonight as I was walking up the stairs to class with my purse over one arm, my bag of class materials on the other, and a Taco Bell cup in one hand, it's no big shocker that I caught my toe on the step and crashed onto the landing. Since my hands were full, I didn't have any way to brace myself as I fell. The three Soldiers I was walking with were a pleasant change from my classmates in high school: rather than laughing and pointing, they immediately helped me up and made sure I was OK. Nonetheless, it was extremely embarrassing, and now the entire left side of my body hurts. I even have a nice big purple lump on the palm of my hand.

Only I could find a way to bruise my palm.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:53 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Snicker. Muckadoos.

Thanks, OkieMinnie.

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I got an email spam today whose subject line still has me reeling: "fire hydrant gonads".
What on earth is that supposed to mean?

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A good NY Post article, via DGCI:

The report condemns the CIA for overstating the intelligence it did have on Iraq's weaponry. But it doesn't claim that the CIA actively discarded or disregarded contravening evidence. There was almost no evidence that Saddam did not possess weapons of mass destruction until after the war was won and we began looking for them.

I know I've become a linker lately; the truth is that I don't have time for anything else. In fact, I should be grading papers right now instead of reading the NY Post. (I also don't have anything new to say that hasn't already been said elsewhere, but that's a different issue altogether.) My friend here, known for throwing hilarious fake tantrums, grumbled at me yesterday because I never come knit or sew with her anymore; I have a half-made quilt that's been sitting there for over six weeks. She's right; I don't do much of anything anymore except work, teach, grade, and try to get some sleep while other people's dogs are keeping me up all night. Only two and a half more weeks of this school term though, and then I get a break until October.

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Oh my goodness. I watched This Land! (at LGF's urging) and laughed my fool head off the whole time. You must go see it too.

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Go and share the joy with Tim and Patti!

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GIs and Germany: A long love affair may soon be over was in the Stars and Stripes yesterday.

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