Dear Mr. Kerry

I thought you claimed to be a fighter.

I hoped so, too, in 2004. You claimed you had our backs, and then you gave up without a whimper, even before the voted were counted and the frauds were investigated.

Now you've let us down again. John, your joke was poorly executed, and sure, the thugs over in the White House jumped all over it. But you could as easily have turned things back to our side, by continuing to fight. You needed to stay out on the campaign trail, not shrivel like a raisin in the Sahara. Here's your script:

"I apologize to our troops in Iraq. I misspoke; you are in fact intelligent men and women.

"I apologize also for your having to be there as the result of incompetent and criminal choices by a C-minus student who evaded any serious military duty himself, and cannot possibly understand what you are experiencing there. I'm sorry you're dying as a result, and we are going to do our damndest to get you home, where you belong, as soon as possible."

I'm sorry, you've just lost all credibility as a fighter, and I'm glad to say, I can't see you coming close to the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008.

Get out of the spotlight, if you must; soldier, shut up and soldier.

No love,

Me.

Unpersons

1. At home

Bunnatine Greenhouse sits in a cubicle in a far corner of an office in the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) headquarters in downtown Washington, DC, where, she says, "I am treated like a non-person." Months crawl by yet her immediate supervisor just can't seem to find the time to meet with her to discuss a work assignment. The taxpayers of the United States pay her salary but, oddly, no demands are made of her.

That's a sad plight for a dynamic woman executive who is the cover girl of the July/August issue of Fraud Magazine. She's not written up for being on the wrong side of the law, only on the wrong side of the Bush White House, now a law unto itself. Fraud is published by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and Ms. Greenhouse is the recipient of the association's coveted 2006 Cliff Robertson Sentinel Award. She's been showered with honors and is the subject of laudatory press. In another America in another time, an administration might well have been proud of her.

What did she do to deserve this? Her job; she refused to sign off on billions of no-bid contracts awarded to a Halliburton subsidiary. She officially requested that the same company not be permitted to attend the segment of a meeting (at which they'd been the only permitted presenter) during which confidential data was discussed, providing them with what amounted to insider information.

In other words, she did her job and she did it well. And now she can't even get a job to do. Welcome to Soviet Amerika. Ms. Greenhouse. May your employers face war-crimes charges soon.

(via Echidne Of The Snakes)

2. In Iraq

This one's from the estimable Christy, over at Firedoglake:

[T]he Bush Administration — via it's envoy Zalmay Khalilzad — agreed to lift the eight day long blockade and search and rescue mission for the captured American soldier…on the demand and order of the Iraqi government.

...[T]he US envoy in Iraq has decided that our US military personnel should take orders from the Iraqi government and abandon one of our soldiers to the Mahdi Army.

...

The Bush Administration has been encouraging Iraqi-Americans to become more involved in the "liberation" of Iraq. The American military needs more soldiers with regional language fluency, and Iraqi Americans have an understandable interest and personal stake — with many relatives still living in the war torn nation — in working to make things better. The American soldier who was captured is of Iraqi-American descent, he was wearing the uniform of the United States…and we have abandoned him to Moqtada Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and Sadr City's rage as of yesterday.

I understand that there's a principle of "acceptable losses" (though I tend to agree with Hawkeye Pierce about how that smells), and I understand that sometimes the good of the many outweighs the good of the one. Nevertheless, there was a legitimate military objective in place, and it was abandoned for no good reason. I do know that if I were in the armed forces, I would be questioning why, right about now, even if I hadn't done so before. When the commander reneges on his commitment to his troops, how can expect them to remain loyal? I sure wouldn't.

Please, go vote this Tuesday. Vote to get the crooks out of office; vote for the truth; vote to restore the Constitution.