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SO SORRY NOT TO HAVE MISSED IT. Gee, thanks, Brother Sam, for not letting that essay by the junior senator from Connecticut slip by me. I was really trying hard not to see it; I saw the headline and said, ugh, him again. Then I turned the page -- only to have it turned back at me. (I do not like that Kosher ham; I do not like him, Sam-I-am!)I suppose I should be grateful that Joe Lieberman decided not to throw control of the Senate to Vice President Richard Vader Cheney, but this bit of drivel, as Sam pointed out, is hard to take. My favorite bit: Because of the bravery of many Iraqi and coalition military personnel and the recent coming together of moderate political forces in Baghdad, the war is winnable. We and our Iraqi allies must do what is necessary to win it. Pair that with this headline, in today's Washington Post, from an actual news story by staff writer Nancy Trejos: "December's Number Steadily Edging Toward Highest Monthly Tally of '06."If that doesn't break your heart, there's a beautifully rendered piece in today's Miami Herald by Hannah Allam of the McClatchy News Service that really says it all:
[B]efore I left Iraq in 2005... rings from Kadhemiya were simply sentimental reminders of a two-year assignment here. ..[Today] [s]lipping on a turquoise ring is no longer an afterthought, but a carefully deliberated security precaution.A certain color of stone worn a certain way is just one of the dozens of superficial clues -- like dialect, style of beard, how you pin a veil -- that indicate whether you're Sunni or Shiite. These little signs increasingly mean the difference between life and death at the terrifying illegal checkpoints that surround the districts of Baghdad...Now, there are few true neighborhoods left. They're mostly just cordoned-off enclaves in various stages of deadly sectarian cleansing. Moving trucks piled high with furniture weave through traffic, evidence of an unfolding humanitarian crisis involving hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced Iraqis.Winnable -- yeah, right.
--Adele M. Stan