The Lady Speaks

There’s an old saying that, “Coincidences are miracles in which the gods remain anonymous.”

What else could this be? On the same day word spread that the lefty blogosphere had lost it’s beloved Yankee-hater, it was announced that:

Roger Clemens is out for a week with a “fatigued right groin.”

The gods certainly have a fine sense of humor… and timing.

The number of US service personnel killed in Iraq will, most likely, reach 3500 tomorrow. Tonight, actually, as we here in America sleep safely in our beds.

I felt sick at heart earlier when I checked www.icasualties.org and saw the death toll had risen by 14 since the last update of Counting the Cost.

3500.

Tony Snow will spin it, like he does every other fact, but I’m sure he won’t make the mistake of saying - as he did just a little less than a year ago - it’s “just a number.”

3500.

Husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, aunts, uncles, cousins, best friends, future spouses, class clowns - all lost in a war of pre-emption turned to religious civil warfare that they did not start and cannot stop.

3500.

The neo-cons and their hardcore base of cheerleaders will tell you things are getting better, really. It’s just the media that’s making things look bad. They’re ignorant of history and oblivious to facts, and yes, they really do prefer to “make their own reality.” (Of course, we drug schizophrenics and paranoiacs who live in their own reality…. just sayin’.)

Things are going fine … last throes … turning the corner … etc, etc, etc. Ad nauseum.

3500.

El Pollo Loco has promised a “long bloody summer.” I wonder how long…and how much more bloody?

It took nearly a year, 295 days¹ or roughly 1.67 Friedman Units, for the death toll to reach 500 combat deaths.

It took slightly less to reach 1000 combat deaths - 242 days¹ or 1.34 Friedmans.

Reaching 1500 combat deaths took 177 days¹ - just under .5 FUs.

2000 combat deaths? Roughly, 266 days.²

2500? Roughly 231 days.²

3000? New Year’s Eve, 2006. Just 200 days.²

When - when, not if - we reach 3500 tonight, it will have been only 154 days² since the last milestone.

3500.

How many more deaths are we willing to take? How many more deaths before the American people stand up, more or less united, and say, “No more?”

Sure we’re telling pollsters that 70% of us want this nightmare to end. 70% of us think our country is on the wrong track. 70% of us don’t believe the President when he tells us we’re winning, that our troops are making a difference, that Al-Qaeda and Iran (and not civil war) are to blame for the fact that Iraq is going to hell in a handbasket.

Too many of us are standing by, allowing the President to continue his “surge” to help “win the war” - all of which should be properly termed “an escalation to continue the occupation.”

But when are we going to stand and fight? When are we going to see mass protests? When are we going to see action in the House and Senate that represent the views of the majority of Americans?

George Bush and Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and Orrin Hatch and all the other Republican tools and fools can continue spewing lies, but it’s time for the 70% to do more.

It’s time to force our CongressCritters to follow the will of the people. No more wavering, no more cowering. No more useless bills that continue the blank check war. No more useless bills and toothless hearings that fail to hold the administration accountable for its myriad failures.

- - -

¹ - Based on info from Where Are The Weapons?

² - Rough estimates based on counting the number of whole weeks between dates and multiplying by 7. Yes, they may not be entirely accurate, but you try it while screaming children raid your workspace, wreck the house in a frenzy of hyper-activity, and eat all the pineapple upside-down cake.