I saw a story diaried this week -- no cite handy, sorry -- about a report that the US military has taken over Iraqi security, in a tacit admission that training the Iraqis is no longer feasible as a central part of our Iraq "strategy." Amazingly, an Army official minimized this acceptance of what was an Iraqi responsibility key to our extrication as "another leg of our mission."
That got me wondering: How many legs does the Iraq mission have? A bipod is two legs. A tripod is three.
Keep in mind that these are approximations in order and description because it’s difficult to count the legs on a moving creature running in circles and digging an ever deeping hole, which are the distinctive characteristics of this creature. But my best guess is that Mission: Iraq is supported by at least 100 legs, though some appear to be trailing appendages that are at best, useless, and at most, harmful to the creature itself--proving the concept of "unintelligent design." Feel free to add your own observations, as I am submitting these findings for peer review.
- Project for a New American Century
- 9/11
- Dick Cheney
- Curveball
- Paul Wolfowitz
- Douglas Feith
- George W. Bush
- Axis of evil
- Tony Blair
- Threatened his neighbors
- Ahmad Chalabi
- Gassed his own people
- Condolezza Rice
- Met with Al Qaieda
- WMDs
- Smoking gun a mushroom cloud
- Downing Street Memo
- Colin Powell
- Violation of UN resolutions
- Mobile labs
- Aluminum tubes
- Yellow cake
- Liberators
- Flowers
- Sixteen words
- Forty eight hours to prove no WMDs
- Donald Rumsfeld
- Shock and awe
- UN recognition
- Coalition of the willing
- As democracy takes hold ...
- The statue
- Mission Accomplished
- Oil revenues will fund reconstruction
- Search for WMDs
- Coalition Provisional Authority
- Green Zone
- De-Baathification
- World’s largest US Embassy
- Paul Bremer
- Extraordinary rendition
- "The WMDs are hidden in Syria"
- Purple fingers
- Iraqi constitution
- Halliburton
- Transfer of sovereignty
- Search for WMDs in the Oval Office
- The first thousand’s sacrifice cannot be in vain
- Hurricane rescue equipment in the desert
- As Iraqis stand up we stand down
- Geneva Convention – how quaint
- Saddam’s sons
- Nouri Al Maliki’s coalition government
- Abu Ghraib
- Outraged at the outrage
- Al Qaieda’s Number Two in Iraq killed
- The Golden Mosque
- Fallujah
- White phosphorous
- Fighting them over there not over here
- The second thousand’s sacrifice cannot be in vain
- Al Qaeida’s Number Two in Iraq captured
- More purple fingers
- Waterboarding
- No WMDs
- Dead-enders
- Central front in war on terror
- Last throes
- Spider hole
- Not a civil war
- Contractor fraud
- Bases the size of Sacramento
- Al Qaieda’s Number Two in Iraq killed or captured
- "Nothing" to do with 9/11
- No timetables, no milestones
- Iranian interference
- Pentagon buys the news today o boy
- Muqtada al Sadr’s interference
- The trial
- Al Qaieda’s Number Two in Iraq suspected killed or captured
- Blackwater
- Preventing a civil war
- "Operation Together Forward"
- The Lancet’s 650,000
- Iranian IEDs
- Building walls
- Execution and taunts
- Iraq Study Group
- Keeping the civil war from getting worse
- Clean and hold
- The third thousand’s sacrifice cannot be in vain
- The surge
- Give the surge a chance
- The surge is not yet in place
- Walter Reed
- "Gated communities"
- Veto threat
- Parliament cafeteria bomb
- Strolling through the marketplace with 100 troops
- Training Iraqis no longer emphasized
Iraq is a centipod.