Those of us who opposed the war knew from the beginning that the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq was an unnecessary and illegal war of choice, not a regrettable conflict born of unavoidable necessity, as the Administration and its backers in the media insisted. But in a new Slate piece by Christopher Hitchens on the death of Israeli historian Amos Elon, we learn again just how unnecessary the death and destruction that accompanied the invasion truly was:

One day in Washington several years ago, as it became obvious that things in Baghdad were becoming hellish for the American-led coalition in the Iraq war, he told me the following story. In the run-up to the intervention in Iraq, the United States had approached the Israelis and asked how many citizens they had who spoke “Iraqi Arabic”—i.e., who had lived in Iraq before they had left or been expelled and who understood the local idioms and vernacular. The answer was that there were still quite a few. A group of these was put aboard an AWACS plane that flew high over Iraqi airspace and asked to listen in to radio traffic between Iraqi officers as the date of the Bush ultimatum to Saddam drew nearer.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhijqQVjlFI

Words in segment: 574

Words condemning murderer: 49

Words condemning victim: 133

Words condemning critics: 327

Words apologizing for previous words: 0

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyrm4iQehu0

JNOV again pokes fun at her favorite target:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXLgE-ndg1c

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Of course he had nothing to do with it!

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From time to time, a member of my flock will approach me with a seeming conundrum.  “Pastor Divad,” he’ll say, “why is it that the Lord doesn’t work miracles any more?”

When that happens, I act quickly to nip those sorts of doubts in the bud. After all, that’s the sort of unadvisable question that often lead the doubter to much greater sin. If a pastor can’t quickly put doubts like that to rest, next thing you know your lost little lamb will start asking why God made stars that appear to be millions of years distant, even though the whole Universe is only 6,000 years old.

Because let me reassure you, brothers and sisters, miracles do still occur. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to the words of one who has personally witnessed one: Baltimore councilwoman Helen L. Holton, who recently e-mailed the following testimony out to her supporters:

“God that can do anything but fail has found favor with this child of his … HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH!”

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We weren’t aware that Politico was in the business of contriving wingnut memes, but they took a Chrysler-worthy stab at the market last week with their report that the White House flack has a disturbingly healthy sense of humor.

Politico’s unassailable methodology: Count the number of times “[Laughter.]” appears in briefing transcripts. More than 600, apparently, dwarfing also-ran Tony Snow’s 217 larfs during his first four months.

We’ll grant that this approach has a glorious tradition behind it, from tallying Nixon’s expletives deleted on an abacus, to harnessing the latest supercomputer for a statistical analysis of Blago’s fuckfests. We’ll even allow a passing amusement in calculating Robert Gibbs’ Word/Chortle Ratio.

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