‘Just a Comma’ on National Punctuation Day

According to the Carpetbagger Report, which can be accessed on the Think Progress website, this afternoon on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, George W. Bush practically said that all the sectarian violence in Iraq is irrelevant. When history views what is going on in Iraq now, Bush claims it will be seen as “just a comma.”

Is it just me, or does anyone else think he needs to go back to primary school and learn punctuation?

This is what was said:

BLITZER: Let’s move on and talk a little bit about Iraq. Because this is a huge, huge issue, as you know, for the American public, a lot of concern that perhaps they are on the verge of a civil war, if not already a civil war…. We see these horrible bodies showing up, tortured, mutilation. The Shia and the Sunni, the Iranians apparently having a negative role. Of course, al Qaeda in Iraq is still operating.

BUSH: Yes, you see — you see it on TV, and that’s the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there’s also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people…. Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there’s a strong will for democracy.

Presumably, our Ivy League-educated Miscommunicator in Chief meant that all the mutilations, the suicide bombs, the beheadings, as well as all the senseless murder of civilian men, women, and children in the marketplaces and at mosques, will be only a footnote in Iraqi history. That would make more sense, anyway.

I find it extremely hard to believe that what is happening in Iraq right now will be reduced to some kind of punctuation mark – a squiggle that doesn’t even mention it. Heck, I’ll go out on a limb and admit that I believe that it will even merit considerably more than a footnote! The Boston Tea Party merits more than a footnote, after all, and it had all the hallmarks of a fraternity prank, the likes of which I’m sure our esteemed chief executive was familiar with at Yale. If dumping a cargo of tea into Boston Harbor is part of the legend of American democracy, surely the mutilations and murders of thousands of people over a period of a few months will be part of the legend of Iraqi democracy.

How could we have re-elected this idiot? How could this fool ever have been elected president in the first place? Oh, yeah. I forgot. He wasn’t.

Perhaps Bush decided to make this comment because today is National Punctuation Day. No kidding. It really is.

Government Report: Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq

In a nutshell, even though “Mission Accomplished” happened years ago, the violence is much worse.  Aren’t we proud of what we did for that country? The people are so much better off! You only stop the killing by having a stable government in place.  And didn’t we do a good job of making sure their government was stable?

I’ll be the first to agree that Saddam Hussein was and probably still is evil incarnate on a par with Stalin and Hitler and Vlad the Impaler.  Obviously something or someone needed to stop him and his heinous offspring from their reign of terror.  But that is what revolutions are for.  Now we and our allies are mired in a situation that is repidly deteriorating into a much larger mess with as many people being murdered daily as Saddam himself managed.  Are we really improving things?

I admit to selfish motivation.  There is someone in Iraq right now who I very desperately want to come home as soon as possible in one piece.

Here’s a link to the report, dated August 29:

Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq

Will the Killing Ever End?

When will it end? What is the point of Iraqi bombers targeting a market where men, women, children, and elderly people are going about the business of daily living? To protest grocery shopping? To shout against the unfairness of pomegranate prices? To frighten people away from the places they need to go as a matter of survival? Iraqi terrorist bombers are targeting their own wives, sisters and mothers. They kill their own tiny sons and daughters and their motives are unfathomable. They murder their grandmothers. They slaughter their fathers and grandfathers and cousins.

Why do the Iraqi and American governments claim no civil war is going on there? How can such a claim possibly be justified? Identifiable segments of society in Iraq have not only declared American soldiers as targets, but Iraqi citizens as well. Government buildings house the regulations and operations of complex institutions. They are the repositories of the records. Owning property, probating a will, and obtaining a guardianship are a few of the ways people interact with their governments. When these records are destroyed, lives are disrupted.

I just don’t get it.