Good stuff, more after the jump...

In "The Hawks Loudly Express Their Second Thoughts" (Week in Review, May 16), you note that the shapers of thoughts and architects of the war now have troubling doubts about their enthusiastic support of the invasion of Iraq. How sad for them.

I am the mother of Sgt. Sherwood Baker of the Pennsylvania National Guard, soldier 720. That number is seared on my soul now, along with the screams and despair of my family and the wind carrying the sound of taps above the weeping crowd at the grave site of my son.

To me and mine, the consequences of the failed judgment and outright lies of the Bush administration and its apologists and spokesmen are not just becoming "depressed" or "angst-ridden." We have lost our brave and beloved son, who was ordered to the war these folks dreamed of and hoped for.

The explosion that killed my son in Baghdad will go on in our lives forever. Sherwood gave the full measure of his responsibility as an American citizen doing his duty for an administration that betrayed him.

CELESTE ZAPPALA
Philadelphia, May 17, 2004

link

"[Kerry] blamed 'grievous' errors by the Bush administration and lax oversight up and down the chain of command for the scandal.

With that, his most stinging assessment yet of the Republican administration, Kerry made clear he would not back down in the face of charges by President Bush's campaign that he was politicizing the war and prison abuses.

Wow!

I completely disagree with the argument that we want Rumsfeld to stay so the problem will linger.  First, forcing out the Secretary of Defense six months before an election, during a war, will a) bring home the point that this is a really huge problem and b) damage the Dear Leader politically, so that the press and Democrats will be more willing to attack (the blood in the water theory).  But those are political arguments.  In the real world, we have the overriding problem that Rumsfeld is completely incompetent.  At this point the guy is too blinded by ideology to run a McDonald's.  We desperately need him out of there.  I don't think he will be replaced by some miracle worker but there is a chance that, with enough pressure, an old-fashioned conservative not caught up in neoconthink would be really could help.  If not, at least we get the confirmation hearings.

Obviously, if you disagree with this argument, you don't want to bug anyone about this.  But if you do, here are my letters.  Notice: no rude quacking from this duck, only polite arguments.   If you want, plagiarize, but cover your tracks: form letters are a lot less effective.  So make some changes so it reads a little differently.  As I understand it, faxes are the best way to contact congress these days.  Make sure you put your home address on there!

I want to post some letters I faxed this morning to my congressman and one of my senators.  (If posting letters to congress here is a totally wankerish thing to do, somebody let me know.)

So to not run afoul of the diary police, and make it look nice, I want to use the "Extended Copy" box and then put each letter in its own blockquote text box.  But fooling around with things I find by viewing source code for 45 minutes has resulted in a cruddy-looking preview with errors that I don't think is close to working.  

Like I said, I am a moron.

So, how do I put in the "Extended Copy" box?  

Sorry if there is a page that explains how to do this...I can't find it but I'll read it if pointed to it...

I'm pretty addicted to NPR, with all its warts.  Lately I've noticed a trend I don't like at all.  Every newscast seems to have a body count in it - tonight the body count is 35 of Sadr's men in Baghdad.  Apparently every single one of them was an insurgent.  Good - I'm glad they can tell that for sure, especially since the insurgents were amongst the population in Sadr city.  I'm sure every one of them was a very bad person.  Since we've established that we never screw up and kill people by mistake...

(Due to javascript use, I can't make a link to the newscast.  You can go to their main page and click on the `hourly newscast' button on the left side, a bit down.  Right now the body count bit is a couple minutes in, but that changes.)

Anyways, this seems like a recent trend.  Anybody else noticing this?  Is it happening on other news channels?  Is it getting more common?

Two things about this...

-First, I'm going to send a letter to NPR about this -  complaining mainly about the unquestioning way they report these body counts, especially the `fact' that every fatality is A Bad Person.  Any suggestions for talking points?

-Moreover, though - what's going on here?  Here's my theory...the Pentagon is changing its emphasis in the news it is feeding to reporters.  We are back to Vietnam style body counts to show everybody we are winning the war!!!

We here know that this is not a zero-sum game...killing terrorists while you occupy a country, if you are not willing to adopt Stalinist/fascist tactics forever, doesn't help much.  You just create more terrorists.  

But if you ask Americans "How would you define winning the war in Iraq?" I wonder what you'd find.  How many Americans define winning in Iraq as "Killing Iraqis?"  Somehow I guess those folks belong to the Bush base.  

Now we've got the Pentagon - and the media? - telling everyone: "Look!  We're killing `em!  We are winning the war!"

Do I just have a dark outlook?  I'm especially interested in whether others have noticed the body count reports.  And what do those of you who know more about Vietnam than me think?

Look, I hope and pray that we only have eight more months of the Dear Leader and his pack of idiot ideologues.  But we do not have that much time.  Iraq is an absolute disaster, for our country and the whole world, of great historical import.

If Kerry became president right now, I would be very torn about how quickly we should pull out.  If we don't get something set up by the UN / arab league / somebody it will be way worse than afghanistan there.  But that is a long time from now!  What can we do in the mean time?

Well, we can dream about impeaching the Dear Leader, but that is not going to happen and its hard to see how that improves anything.  I'm writing this diary to encourage thought about what the lefty blogosphere can do to improve the situation.  

We need to get rid of the morons who are achieving nothing but death and despair in Iraq.  I propose we start with Rumsfeld.  He is an absolute failure - from any political perspective.  The blogosphere had something to do with dethroning Lott, we need to turn our sights on Rumsfeld.  If we can get something going, maybe MoveOn will pick it up and run some ads.  Liberal members of congress will start call for his head.  Press coverage of his many, many blunders would follow.  Eventually, Rove will cut his losses.  

I don't have a blog, or even a website, and I'm writing my #$%! dissertation so I cannot contribute much.  But lets get a rumsfeldmustgo website up, lets get as many websites as we can making noise about this, lets start making phone calls and writing letters to the editor.  

Thoughts?  Ideas?  Let's get going.  Our country needs us.

Here's a tidbit about Hughes I noticed today in the local paper:

They already see [Hughes'] fingerprints on the decision to portray presumed Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry as a waffler and to hit hard at Richard Clarke, a former anti-terrorism official who said the Bush administration failed to heed signs that al-Qaida was planning the 9/11 attacks. Hughes is not officially on the payroll until August but says she is speaking to the White House and the campaign staff daily and dining regularly with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

The National Security Advisor is obviously prioritizing the safety of the country, by keeping open the lines of communication with important sources...

Amazin...