The Prissy Patriot: They Say the Devil Wears a Turban, but it is really a Brooks Brothers Suit...

Dearest Readers, Is anyone out there feeling a draft? It's coming soon. They have managed to put it off, but now Dubya has left the military high and dry. The National Guard has been left bare from Dubya's war. (see article below)

Prissy has heard through the military families grapevine there are reports of food and water shortages for soldiers in certain areas of Iraq. Prissy will keep you posted on this very serious situation.

UPDATE: Another source has confirmed this to be true -at least in the outlying areas of Iraq. It is often too dangerous to get them supplies. Why are there no air drops of food? Sometimes one hot meal per day is what these soldiers are getting. Rationing of water. Food from a snack sack the rest of the time. Unacceptable in a war of choice.Can you think of one reason military families should support Dubya?

No Commander-in-Chief in the history of the United States has ever abused the military to the point of denying the reality on the ground...where is the line in the sand? Prissy believes the families of the troops have just drawn it.

Prissy may get impatient with Patrick Fitzgerald's slow and deliberate investigation, but the lad is no fool-he is quite brilliant. Fitz is also the prosecutor in Former IL Gov. George Ryan's (R) corruption trial. Look how well he dot's his i's and crosses his t's. Even the judge has no concerns about a hung or deadlocked jury.

Hot Links

Reuters Iraqis in Tal Afar question Bush's optimism

Al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab insurgent violence has eased in Tal Afar since September's offensive but sectarian violence elsewhere in Iraq after the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra last month raised fears among many people of civil war.
"I say that Bush is 100 percent a liar because the city of Tal Afar has become a ghost town rather than the example Bush spoke about," said Ali Ibrahim, a Shi'ite Turkmen laborer.

Well, now that is something Americans and Iraqis can agree on. Now you go tell your government to get it together and we shall tell ours the same.

From Lew Rockwell An Open Letter To Rush Limbaugh by William R. Tonso, a retired sociology professor (University of Evansville) former Air Force Officer

One of my biggest gripes has to do with the way you dismiss those who question American involvement in Iraq as liberals who hate Bush and want the war to go badly so that Republicans are discredited and Democrats can regain the White House in 2008. I voted for Bush twice, or more accurately, I voted against Al Gore and John Kerry, and I think that the war is a huge, even criminal, blunder and that Bush and his merry band of neoconservatives are a total disaster. Of course, in your great wisdom, you surely think that I’m the print equivalent of one of those "seminar callers" you claim are always trying to smuggle their liberal views on your show under the guise of conservativism. Okay, let’s check out my credentials apart from the war

Yahoo Minister's Wife Confesses to Killing Him

SELMER, Tenn. - The wife a minister found shot to death in their church parsonage confessed to investigators and agreed to return to Tennessee to face first-degree murder charges, authorities said Friday.

Prissy thinks there could very well be a lot more to this story than meets the eye. The fact that there were no police reports of domestic violence doesn't mean much. Most middle class women will not call the police-they are too embarrassed. Society still blames them, especially within the fundamentalist "woman, know your place" cultures.

Perhaps this was not the case in this situation; but Prissy will tell you, as a professional in the field- it would raise many red flags. It has been Prissy's experience that people are often very surprised to find out what was going on behind closed doors of seemingly normal families. A tragedy, for sure.

Ill-equipped Guard units alarm states

"How in the world can we help ourselves or our fellow governors in a natural disaster when we have none of the equipment to do it?" Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire asked.

Gregoire is not alone in her concern. Along with every other U.S. governor, she recently signed a letter to President Bush expressing alarm at the way the National Guard is being funded.
"Attention must be paid to re-equipping National Guard units with the resources they need to carry out their homeland security and domestic disaster duties," the letter pointedly read.
$23 billion OKd to re-outfit
Overall, the Guard has only 34 percent of the equipment it is supposed to have, according to Guard officials and the GAO numbers. Congress has approved about $23 billion for the Guard over the next six years, most of which will go to replace equipment. But many of the governors, as well as Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard bureau, have said it will take at least double that amount to effectively re-outfit the badly cannibalized force.

Dubya made us eat out own and left us open to attack for his imperialism. Nice going again, Chickenhawks...oh, but that was the plan.

Stuff.com New Zealand Iraq to be focus of Blair's Australia trip

CANBERRA: Iraq will be at centre stage in British Prime Minister Tony Blair's four-day visit to Australia, with the father of an Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee hoping to seek his help to free his son.
Blair will make the second of three key speeches on terrorism, Iraq and Afghanistan in an address to Australia's parliament on Monday, after attending the closing ceremony for the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne on Sunday.
Anti-Iraq war protesters and anti-war politicians are planning a rally outside parliament for Blair's visit.
And..."Given that Blair is reaching the end of his prime ministership, he has nothing to lose by speaking out quite firmly and trying to justify his place in history," he said.

The Jerusalem Post US objects to Israeli tech buyout

The Treasury Department, which oversees the committee, formally accepted Check Point's request to withdraw from the review process. This ensures the panel will not be required to submit recommendations to President George W. Bush whether to block the deal.
The committee has concluded only 25 full-blown investigations in more than 1,600 business transactions it has reviewed since 1988. In roughly half the investigations, companies pulled out of the deal rather than face imminent rejection.
Former president George H.W. Bush is the only president ever to block a deal, stopping the sale of a Seattle aircraft parts manufacturer to China in February 1990.
The objections by the FBI and Pentagon were partly over specialized intrusion detection software known as "Snort," which guards some classified US military and intelligence computers. Snort's author is a senior executive at Sourcefire, based in Columbia, Maryland.

This should not surprise anyone. Cheating is the only way these folks will ever win, they simply do not posses the ability to lead. Their prejudices and greed always get in the way...See why you can't always trust the Washington Post? From Salon A portrait of the blogger as a young plagiarist

As a college student Ben Domenech lifted arts criticism; as a GOP henchman, he was accused of fabricating a Tim Russert quote. What was the Washington Post thinking?
Does the Washington Post intend to maintain journalistic standards in the brave new blogosphere? Or are those standards incompatible with the Post company's ambitions for WashingtonPost.com?

CNN Cheney: Critics too eager to call Iraq war unwinnable And Prissy is too eager to see you get your come uppance, draft dodger...

SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Illinois (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney accused some Bush administration critics Tuesday of being too quick to argue that the Iraq war cannot be won and of underestimating a continuing threat of terrorist attacks.
Part of a broad effort to counter polls that show waning public support for the war and for President Bush personally, Cheney emphasized what the administration has said is underreported evidence of improvement in Iraq. He also took on those who have been questioning Bush's approach in the three-year-old war.
"A few seem almost eager to conclude that the whole struggle is already lost," Cheney told an enthusiastic military audience, from a stage bedecked with flags and camouflage netting. "But they're wrong.

Prissy will say Dick must be dumber and more evil than she thought, in his attempts to pull this one off. Throwing your lies right into the military's face, Dick. Of course, a Chickenhawk with five deferments can hardly have any shame.

US prepares for Iraq civil war

Mr Rumsfeld's admission that "the intelligence community are thinking about this and analysing it" comes despite the White House's insistence that Iraq is not slipping into civil war.
President George Bush and his officials have so far refused to discuss what has become known as the "plan B" scenario, declaring that the US military will stay in Iraq until a stable, democratic government is established.
It has also been revealed that an elite US Special Operations forces unit has converted one of Saddam's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention centre and used one of Saddam's torture chambers as its own interrogation cell, named the Black Room.

Once again, completely contradicting themselves.

From Reuters

Iraqi leaders were holding their first formal talks in several days on Friday as Washington kept up pressure on them to form a national unity government that can avert civil war.

Quotes of the Day

"I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them." -- Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

"Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too."-- Richard M. Nixon

For those who say Dubya's wiretapping is a OK with them...Let me not be understood as saying that there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.--Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population. --Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.--William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

(Click to enlarge photo)