  Well I went to see Carlin and damn was it good. I took the PDA but it just wasn't having anything close to recording all of the set.
I just want to say that is really was worth all the walking up and down steps that I had to do. He had great new material and starts the show out with a bang. I am pretty tired from it all and I am still processing much of it...but this tour has less political satire than I was expecting. Seeing that there is so much cannon fodder right now I would think that he would have a lot of political stuff going on.
This isn't the case but he does put Bush down twice and the second time it is "he lays his big fat empty head on his little pillow". There is a story behind it but it really is pretty funny. Just got this in...take it with a grain of salt as with everything on the interweb...but the AP picked up the story it seems. Rummy may have authorized the torture after all with the presidents knowledge. Well that hit me up pretty good.
It is sad when we as Americans think and act like we have the moral high ground yet we are the ones killing and torturing on a scale that far exceeds what the so called "animals" in Iraq are and have done to us. Falujah...I am sure we killed not only a few true targets that were shooting at our men, but we killed hundreds if not thousands of women and children. The argument that has been made is that they had the chance to turn in the insurgents or leave the city.
Well first many weren't allowed to go because their husbands couldn't leave...and last time I checked it is still a male dominated society over there so women can't really travel without men. Ok so back to the horror of it all. Second did many of our founding people turn in Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and others? Nope...why? Because they were revolutionaries. They were the insurgents of their day. No matter what we do or how we do it we will be kicked out of Iraq.
No nation or empire on the face of the planet has been able to hold the middle east. Every nation or empire that tried was driven out by the local peoples, including the local Jewish people. (A dirty little secret is that before Israel was a state the Jews and Arabs that inhabited Palestine lived in relative peace outside of the occasional squable over goats drinking from the wrong part of the stream or eating in the wrong field. Only after Israel became a state and started expelling the local Arabs or Palestinians is when all hell started to break loose.
The other Arab nations didn't help matters much because they propugated the myth that Jewish settlers would wholesale slaughter palestinians and that they should run or kill every jew they saw. Well that led to more violence. Also since the time of Muhammed the keys to the church or temple or mosque in Jerusilem, a religious site for all middle eastern religions including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the keys were entrusted to a Muslim family that there sole purpose was to make sure that the site remained open to all faiths and that the site was clean and protected. Muhammed foresight actually protected the site from the invading armies of Europe during the crusades because they were burning villages that wouldn't convert to catholisism.
So they burned jew and muslim alike. Both groups fought side by side albeit contentiously but fought the European crusaders. The family to my knowledge still has the keys and still is in charge...it may have changed after Israel took Gaza and the West Bank which includes Jerusilem. But it was the Muslims who protected and kept up the most sacred sights for Jews and Christians alike because Islam was and still has hope of being a religion of peace.
) Again we cannot win in Iraq. We have already lost. The thing that we must do now is find a way to retreat and let the most stable power come to power without looking like we placed him in power. Sistani may be the answer...let him "beat" the United States and feel his oats. That is fine. As long as he promises not to wholesale slaughter other factions and have some sort of representative government as part of our "surrender" or "cease fire" treaty. The only thing we can do is pull out strategically and hope that the region settles into some sort of stable peace.
So we must pull out...otherwise we risk the attitude that started breeding (and it is starting even earlier this time) like that of Vietnam were we supposedly can't loose or the region will fall apart and become this huge communist domino and more nations will fall after that. Well it fell yes...but not to many fell after it. Now the region is seeing modest but steady economic gains and the people aren't attempting to export anything but local goods. For the the communist system has helped move them out of tribal and clan like systems that even the French were unable to do. It may have been through ruthless re-education but that doesn't concern us and doesn't affect me at all.
So why should we have been concerned. Iraq is a strategic asset, but only if we can completely control it and we can't. If we continue and fight harder and harsher then it will galvenize the Arab nations against us. They hate us now, but soon they will despise us and when that happens you will see people from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Iran, and Iraq come together and fight us as they have always done with past invaders.
It won't be radicals that will be fighting us...as the powers that be will say. It will be average people who just want us out. It is already happening in Iraq and soon it will spread. That is what the politicos should be worried that the domino effect will be cause by our continued presence instead of our leaving the region both militarily but also economically. When we leave the region will have some upheaval as power bases shift but it will settle out quickly.
If we don't leave soon we will end up fighting every Arab nation and incurring tens of thousands of deaths on our side militarily and increase the risk for civilian deaths here at home in terrorism, not to mention the millions that we will kill in retribution. We can save a lot of money and a lot of blood if we admit failure and pull out now. Pulling out is a great American tradition, only this time it is sure to work because we will remove the substance that is giving the enemy all of its gas to fuel the fires of hatred.
Peace 
