(no subject)

This is it until next Monday, when I hope to have some exciting tales of daring-do to share with everyone. More likely, though, it'll be gripes about Creation and how they can roll up their future conventions and shove them right up their ass. Hey I used to run security at these things, I know just how bad they can be.

Class went really well last night, I'm thinking I was bubbling over with energy due to the solstice. I made it through Raqs Suhaila a bunch of times and then had enough dance left in me to run the original version of Tammerhenna. And then I all but bounced out of class, which is just downright weird after she's worked us that hard.

Left my sword with Alyne so all the ditherers can get a look and make up their minds. For $25 I can't see there's much of a risk involved in getting one, but whatever. We picked out the music we liked best from M-'s sword balancing collection. It sounds very Amazon-y, which is the direction I can see this performance going in, myself. This pleases me.

A few errands left for tonight, then some tidying up and getting all the cats' stuff taken care of so my neighbor has little to do but put food out for them and pet them. I like keeping things simple. And tomorrow I get to sleep in, yay!

Golden oldie

Hey, anybody remember this exchange on Meet the Press?

Host Tim Russert asked whether "we would have to have several hundred thousand troops there" in Iraq "for several years in order to maintain stability." Cheney replied: "I disagree." He wouldn't say how many troops were needed, but he added that "to suggest that we need several hundred thousand troops there after military operations cease, after the conflict ends, I don't think is accurate. I think that's an overstatement."

Russert asked: "If your analysis is not correct, and we're not treated as liberators but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?"

Cheney would have none of it. "Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I've talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. . . . The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want [is to] get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that."

Russert: "And you are convinced the Kurds, the Sunnis, the Shiites will come together in a democracy?"

Cheney: "They have so far." And the vice president concluded: "I think the prospects of being able to achieve this kind of success, if you will, from a political standpoint, are probably better than they would be for virtually any other country and under similar circumstances in that part of the world."


It's the Tinkerbell theory of foreign policy, just keep clapping harder, and if you believe, really believe, everything will be just fine.

Attaturk responds:

There is absolutely no reason, given the Downing Street documents, that Bush did exactly the same thing before the war -- no doubt assisted by having "Cheney Wormtongue" whispering in the weak-minded Dear Leader's ear.

And, now, as posted below, we are in far worse shape for the future than we were on September 10, 2001.

Nice job.

And the hits just keep on coming...

A new classified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in Al Qaeda's early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat.
[...]
Congressional and intelligence officials who described the assessment called it a thorough examination that included extensive discussion of the areas that might be particularly prone to infiltration by combatants from Iraq, either Iraqis or foreigners.

They said the assessment had argued that Iraq, since the American invasion of 2003, had in many ways assumed the role played by Afghanistan during the rise of Al Qaeda during the 1980's and 1990's, as a magnet and a proving ground for Islamic extremists from Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries.

The officials said the report spelled out how the urban nature of the war in Iraq was helping combatants learn how to carry out assassinations, kidnappings, car bombings and other kinds of attacks that were never a staple of the fighting in Afghanistan during the anti-Soviet campaigns of the 1980's. It was during that conflict, primarily rural and conventional, that the United States provided arms to Osama bin Laden and other militants, who later formed Al Qaeda.


So we've basically made a better, stronger, faster, and smarter variety of terrorist...go us!

Again, Attaturk sums it up beautifully:

Front End: Bush always wanted this war.
Back End: And it is a complete and unmitigated disaster.

(no subject)

You know I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago and it totally slipped my mind, but particularly for tersa and aelfsciene:

Harry and the Potters

July 29th, Friday
Pleasanton, CA
Pleasanton Public Library
8:00pm, free!
400 Old Bernal Avenue , Pleasanton, CA
After-hours library show and everyone's invited!

or

July 31st, Sunday
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco Public Library
2:00pm, free!
100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, CA
Our triumphant return to the San Francisco Public Library! This will be sick! The show is in the Latino-Hispanic Community Meeting Room. Be there or be stupid.


Their music is available for your listening pleasure here, and any group with an album titled "Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock!" is one that cannot be missed. :)