Backpedalling and backfilling

Officials Back Away from Early Estimates of Iraqi Voter Turnout

Looks like the leader in the Iraqi elections isn't the best possible option for the U.S.


Wow! Okay, Okay. I'll add some chum to the waters.

Here's something to think about: If the Iraqi people, of their own volition, elect into office the next Saddam Hussein, or worse, will it (still) have been worth going to war to accomplish?

Let's just for argument's sake say that the next leader of Iraq, after he/she takes office, says "That's it. That's the last vote we'll ever have. The people have spoken and said that they don't want democracy, because they elected me, and I have a MANDATE from the people!" Will the 1500 dead Americans, tens of thousands of injured Americans, hundreds of thousands of dead and injured Iraqis, have been worth it?

If you blindly say "Hell Yeah!" then good for you. Go back to chewing your cud.

This is a possibility that we certainly should have thought about when we began prosecuting this war in Iraq. There is something happening in Iraq that our policy makers here haven't begun to think about. There is a significant percentage of people who actually LIKED Saddam Hussein. There is an even greater percentage of the Iraqi population that are now institutionalized. They have a prisoners mentality. When let free, a certain percentage of paroled prisoners WANT to go back to prison, where 'things make sense'. There is NOTHING that the US can do about them from here. Not with what we have.

Let's face it, we exacted a war in Iraq without the resources necessary to complete the tasks we set out to do. What we have done over there is take a starving dog and give him 1500 lbs of prime rib wrapped in Saran Wrap. He is still hungry because he doesn't know what to do with what has been given to him. He can't unwrap it. He's still starving. The huge thing just scares the hell out of him. Worse, when he gets through the Saran Wrap, he'll eat enough to kill himself.

Okay, so I'm an open-source turncoat.

I've switched from Opera to FireFox. Sue me. Why would I change browsers now when I've been an Opera user for so long? No real reason except that Opera doesn't seem to be keeping up with the bugs. That and the fact that most of the plug-ins don't recognize Opera as an option. So I've installed FireFox and have been using it for a little while now. The extensions are useful. I have the weather extension, the Gmail extension, the Homeland Security extension (currently on "Scared") and I'm looking for others. That's not enough though. The fact that some plug-ins don't work with Opera is pretty maddening, if you like to build web pages and view pages heavily laden with rich media. Screw Active X! Who needs it?

How about a fountain of smart?

I saw a bumper sticker the other day which made me laugh and say "Right on!". It said "We have enough youth, how about a fountain of smart?"

There's this guy in Texas who just killed someone while driving drunk. Everyone is asking "What should we do about drunk drivers?" Why all the attention on this one death? The guy was convicted of drunk driving about 20 odd times in his life. I think the solution to this is easy. Make drunk driving a felony, that way if you get convicted, you have a felony on your record, making it harder to get/keep a job, and if you kill someone while driving drunk, it's murder. Simple. Kill someone while driving drunk, go to jail for life, or in Texas, get the needle. Really simple. No problem anymore.

Which brings me to another subject near and dear to my heart. The death penalty. Here is an area where my views are not typical of most Liberals. I'm completely in favor of the death penalty. There are a couple of problems with the system right now which need to be fixed;

Problem 1: The appeals process. The appears process needs to be a lot smoother and quicker. We should enpanel two juries at the same time. One for the first case, the second for the required appeal. When the first trial ends, the second one starts, if convicted. Okay, maybe a week in between. A month TOPS. After the end of the first trail, a judge rules on an appeal within the week. If granted, the trial starts IMMEDIATELY. If denied, the convited gets the needle THAT NIGHT. Better yet, he gets a bullet in the brain right there in the court room.

Problem 2: "Corrections" versus "Penal": The prisons are called a correctional institutions. This implies that someone sentenced to prison is expected to get better sometime in the future. When someone comes up for parole, particularly a murderer or rapist, there's a huge hue and cry about him getting out early. Every time.

Look, if he's not there for correction, then he's there for penalty. If that's the case, then he's in there for the ENTIRE sentence. No parole. No "furlough". Punishment. Period. If there's no expectation that he'll get better, than admit it and put a bullet though his brain. I'm not interested in paying for a serial rapist's Ph.D. I'm not even interested in paying for his MEALS for the next 6 decades. Kill him and roll his corpse into a shallow ditch. Done with it.

Problem 3: It's not used on enough crimes. Here's the list of crimes that I think you should be put to death over:

Murder
Negligent homocide
Rape
Child abuse
Child molestation
Maybe a couple of others, but of course, IANAL.

More later.