Quotes of the Morning: It Will Be Just Like Nirvana

“I know that this gets redundant at times, but it looks like there was another bad day in Iraq today.”
-Skippy

“Baghdad shook with bombings and political upheaval Wednesday as the largest Sunni Arab bloc quit the government and a suicide attacker blew up his fuel tanker in one of several attacks that claimed 142 lives nationwide.
The Iraqi Accordance Front's withdrawal from the Cabinet leaves only two Sunnis in the 40-member body, undermining Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's efforts to pull together rival factions and pass reconciliation laws the U.S. considers benchmarks that could lead to sectarian reconciliation.
The U.S. military announced the deaths of four more American soldiers, including three killed in Baghdad on Tuesday by a powerful armor-piercing bomb. Washington says these types of bombs are sent from Iran. The fourth soldier was killed by small arms fire on the same day. A British soldier also was killed Tuesday in a roadside bombing.”
-Associated Press, August 2, 2007

“Still, one bad day. It isn’t like this is happening all the time. The media just isn’t looking at the positive side of Iraq.”
-Skippy

“The number of Iraqi civilians killed in the country's brutal civil conflict rose by more than a third in July despite a five-month-old surge in US troop levels, government figures showed Wednesday.
At least 1,652 civilians were killed in Iraq in July, 33 percent more than in the previous month, according to figures compiled by the Iraqi health, defence and interior ministries and made available to AFP.”
-AFP, August 1, 2007

“Silly media. The surge has only been in place for like a month, and we won’t have any idea how it is going until at least September. Really, are 2,750 or so dead civilians over a couple of months really all that important if we can still bring them American Freedom™? I mean, we deposed a dictator! Now we just need to root out the foreign al Qaida terrorists and Iraq will be like Nirvana (and no, I don’t mean that their leader will be killed with a shotgun blast to the head.. though that could happen). Iraq would be ideal if it weren’t for the foreign terrorists.”
-Skippy

“Despite President Bush's recent insistence that al Qaida in Iraq is the principal cause of this country's violence, senior American military officers here say Shiite Muslim militias are a bigger problem, and one that will persist even if al Qaida is defeated.
‘The longer-term threat to Iraq is potentially the Shiite militias,’ one senior military officer said, echoing concerns that other American officials raised in recent interviews with McClatchy Newspapers.
[…]
Combating the influence of Shiite militias had long been a cornerstone of American policy in Iraq. But that position changed last January, when President Bush, facing rising congressional and public opposition to the war in Iraq, pronounced al Qaida the No. 1 cause of violence there and said he was dispatching more than 20,000 additional troops to confront the problem.
In the months since, as congressional criticism grew, Bush has gone even further, calling al Qaida in Iraq ‘the same people’ responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, though al Qaida in Iraq didn't form until after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and has at best only hazy ties to the al Qaida of Osama bin Laden.”
-McClatchy Newspapers, July 31, 2007

“Ok, so there might be some small issues with hostile armed militias, but we will continue to support the Iraqi security forces, and with their help we will be able to calm things down.”
-Skippy

“The Pentagon cannot fully account for $19.2 billion worth of equipment provided to Iraqi security forces, government auditors said Tuesday.
The finding by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, comes a few days after the Pentagon acknowledged that the U.S. and its allies have delivered a little more than a third of the equipment in the pipeline for the Iraqi Army and less than half of what is destined for the Iraqi police.
Baghdad officials have long complained that the lack of equipment has made it difficult to train and equip Iraqi forces.
Since the program's beginning, the GAO found, consistent records confirming the date of issue, what type of equipment was received, and by what Iraqi unit were not kept. Before December 2005, no centralized records were kept.”
-Associated Press, July 31, 2007

“Wow.. That seems like a lot of money (and guns) to have lost. Never fear though, Fearless Leader has a plan to keep costs low so that we can continue to fund the bloodbath, um… I mean security situation… in Iraq.”
-Skippy

“President Bush should abandon his threats to veto legislation that would renew the popular State Children’s Health Insurance Program, New Jersey’s senators said today. Sens. Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg, both Democrats, urged Bush instead to endorse congressional efforts to cover more low-income children. Speaking on the Senate floor, they added that a country that spends billions each week in Iraq could certainly afford to spend more on its own vulnerable children. Congress is expected to approve SCHIP legislation this week.
The Senate measure calls for $35 billion more for the program over the next five years. The House proposes nearly $48 billion. Both would raise federal cigarette taxes and the House bill would cut Medicare Advantage, under which 9 million senior citizens receive coverage from private plans that receive Medicare money.
Bush, who has proposed $5 billion for SCHIP, wants states to stop enrolling parents in the future and favors scaling back income eligibility guidelines for future enrollees.”
-Gannett News Service, July 31, 2007

“Those poor American children probably didn’t need any kind of medical attention anyway.”
-Skippy