Who's on first?

FIRST: VOTE LARRY GRANT FOR CONGRESS!

Larry Grant was here this evening, I believe his sixth time for visiting us here in the remote regions of North Idaho. It is always most refreshing to listen to someone who doesn’t just spout total nonsense like most of our contemporary politicians. I still maintain that he is an absolutely outstanding candidate for Congress and is fully deserving of our support. His grass roots campaign for the past three years has concentrated on building an organization through the counties that will last even if he should not be elected. This is like the 50 state strategy of Howard Dean and the DNC and eschews big money in favor of more individual support and grass roots volunteers. He has been criticized for not reaching out for the big bucks. These critics are wrong. Money can’t buy you love.

Anyway, let me see if I have this straight. Moqtada al-Sadr, a religious leader in the southern part of Iraq, has a very large militia that is loyal to him. He is an Iraqi nationalist and would like the U.S. out of his country. For the past few months he has observed a truce and restrained his militia. Now, weary of having his people attacked, he has called off the truce and violence has broken out once again, not only in the south, but also in parts of Bagdad. As a nationalist, and even though he is Shia, he does not answer to Iran which is also Shia. Nouri al-Maliki, our handpicked leader of Iraq, and the one we are supporting, has called for the destruction of al-Sadr’s forces, saying only the central government has legitimate power. He and his followers are also Shia, but the Shia that are all cozy with Iran. The U.S. is constantly trying to start a war with Iran and wants to prevent the Iranian from getting too influential in Iraq. So…who are we supporting in this civil war. If you answered al-Maliki you are right and you win a pink kewpie doll. But wait, there is more. There are also the Sunni who used to be in control of Iraq under the notorious leadership of Saddam Husein. We have been bribing them with arms and money to not attack us as they were wont to do previously. They do not want the Shias in power and now well armed by us, could turn on us once again, and can also fight against the Shia. But wait, there is more. There are the Kurds in the north who have traditionally been our allies. But they want independence from Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. Those countries do not want them to be independent. Turkey has therefore been attacking certain Kurdish elements who commits various acts of aggression against Turkey. We have sided with Turkey in this and sanctioned their right to invade Iraqi territory to punish Kurds. The Kurds are well organized and have their own army. They want control of Kirkuk, where most of the northern oil is. The Iraqis don’t want them to have it, but it is not very clear what they can do about it. Israel has been supportive of the Kurds because they don’t like the Iranians. Then, of course, there is Syria and Lebanon which don’t cotton to Israel, especially the Hezbollah part of Lebanon which is supposedly backed by Iran. Iran also supposedly is backing al-Maliki and his Shia followers even though al-Maliki is backed by the U.S. and doesn’t want the Iranians to ally with Iraq (or anyone else for that matter). I hope that by reading this you have a clear understanding of just who is on first. To try to put part of it more succinctly: we are now actively engaged in a civil war in Iraq on the side of al-Maliki who is allied with Iran even though we may be about to attack Iran because they someday may have the know-how to build a nuclear bomb which, stupid savages that they are, will immediately drop on Israel while reciting some of the 3000 year old poems they composed while our ancestors were still dressing in the skins of animals. All this, if you haven’t figured it out, is called American Foreign Policy. American Foreign Policy is determined by 100,000 chimpanzees playing with 100,000 computers while eating bananas.

LKBIQ:
“We’ll be a great country where the fabrics are made up of groups and loving centers.”
George W. Bush