In a speech to the nation last night, President Bush cited success in Iraq as a reason he may be ready to withdraw surge-level troops by July (although he never used the word “withdraw”). He also had some news for presidential hopefuls: he fully expects our forces to remain in Iraq “beyond [his] presidency.”
Bush cited current success of the surge strategy as the reason troop withdrawals may be in the future, but his vague outline of future plans for troops wasn’t enough for Democrats like Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, who said that Bush was once again speaking of an “endless and unlimited military presence in Iraq.” He went on to say that Congress would not allow such a thing to occur.
How noble, Mr. Reed, of a man involved in an organization that has yet to present the president with a bill outlining a plan for eventual withdrawal that he will commit to and sign. Folks, it’s time for our legislators to start being honest with us, and the honest truth is, there’s very little to nothing they can do about this war because our president will veto anything that doesn’t fit in with his line of sight. Hopefully the next president will be more receptive to the suggestions made by the members of the legislative branch, who speak on our behalf. [NY Times]
You’ll pry these Ding Dongs from my cold, dead hands
There are reasons why you don’t trade snacks in grade school. Number one, your mother would be mad. Number two, you might get shot.
A nine-year-old in Orange County, Florida, was threatened after trading her “zebra cakes” for a bag of chips. But the girl she traded them to insisted on taking both (that would be “all that and the bag of chips”). Instead of going about things the civil, childlike way of pulling hair and pinching, the chip-less girl wrote a note to the other, explaining, “I have a gun and first I'm going to shoot you in the shoulder.” According to the mother of the letter recipient, the letter went on to describe how the firefight would ensue: a bazooka was one of the weapons.
This happened in an after-school program at a YMCA, and the letter writer has been suspended. But the mother of the recipient isn’t satisfied, and wants to know whether the schools will step in and suspend the writer. She may even pull her daughter out of school.
Even the mother involved admits she’s being overprotective, saying that her daughter is irreplaceable. When I grew up, threatening your classmates with bazookas, machine guns, and even air strikes was the talk of playground legends. I guess we live in a different time these days. [WFTV] Compiled by Branden Hart, TheSequitur.com Senior Editor.
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