Random, occasionally rambling thoughts with links to interesting, scandalous, or partisan news of the day.

Fair and Balanced

Dead Heroes
• Thomas Paine
• Thomas Jefferson
• Benjamin Franklin
  

Living Heroes
We owe the liberty and freedom we take for granted to the enlisted men and women in the armed forces. They sacrifice family, ease, and even life laboring in service to all of us. The least we can do for them is honor their devotion with dignified pay scales, decent education for themselves and their children, and reasonable compensation for service away from their families and death on the battlefield. Flag waving politicians who praise the troops on one hand and cut their pay and benefits with the other should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

Blogs I Read Often
• Talking Points Memo
• Atrios
• FireDogLake
• Brad DeLong
• The Daily Howler
• Daily Kos
• Glenn Greenwald
• MyDD
• The News Blog
• Oliver Willis
• Political Wire
• The Volokh Conspiracy
  

The Best and the Brightest
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a Washington Post Staff Writer and author of "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" pours salt into the personnel policy wound that is the Bush administration's gift to America. Think of Bush as the "Herpes Fairy" with people like Michael Brown, John Bolten, and this new crop of characters from the CPA. Read the whole article.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

What emerges most clearly from this excerpt is the unwillingness of the Bush administration to act like grownups. They simply can't be trusted to do anyting right. What pisses me off the most about this is the lost opportunities, both in Iraq and Afghanistan. We're a nation of can-do butt busters, but instead of sending our bipartisan first string to get the job done, we sent rookies, ne'er do wells, and hapless political hacks. I've had enough.
posted by Dave on 2:46 PM | 0 comments link

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