Mark Bossingham

Aloha!

WE ARE off to Hawaii tomorrow. Not a huge surprise; we’ve visited there once or twice a year for over a decade. But this trip will be a little different. Will be sailing aboard the Pride of America around the islands for a week before pulling back into Honolulu for four days at the Hilton Something Or Other. Like all cruise ships, this one has received mixed reviews. Certainly not luxurious; I am thinking of it as a floating all you can eat restaurant. My expectations are low, but I think if will be fun. I’ve spent literally years at sea but this will be the first time I haven’t had to work.

Smells like victory

TWELVE THOUSAND killed or captured in 2007.

Vocabulary quiz

GEORGE BUSH gave Americans a vocabulary quiz today the liberals would rather forget.

“Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. There's no debate in my mind that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the United States of America. (Applause.) Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like "boat people," "re-education camps," and "killing fields."

Bloody hands

THE HANDS of Democrats are covered with the blood of U.S. troops. Eventually, they will pay the price. In the meantime, at least on liberal Democrat understands this, Rep. Brian Baird, WA.

“I think we're making progress.  When I spoke with the generals and the troops on the ground and Ambassador Crocker, there's still a lot of challenges, but noticeable and important progress, and I think we need to try to work together to make this thing a success.  I really believe what we need to do now is stop looking at backwards and look at where we are today.  We have a strategic interest in seeing that this mission succeeds.  We have a moral responsibility to the Iraqi people and the region, and I think we're seeing signs of progress, and it is worth letting Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus have the time and breathing room.”

Once upon a time

U.S. soldiers dying for this?

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accepted an invitation to visit neighboring Iraq, Iran's foreign minister said on Sunday, a move that would be unlikely to be welcomed by the United States. Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki said Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had invited Ahmadinejad after Maliki visited Tehran on August 8-9, but added a final decision had yet to be taken.

Those funny appeasers

EVERY TIME I think nothing further could surprise me, some fool opens his mouth. Here’s a head-shaker from a Dutch Rodney-King bishop. At least Welmoet has a sense of humor.

AMSTERDAM - A Roman Catholic Bishop in the Netherlands has proposed people of all faiths refer to God as Allah to foster understanding, stoking an already heated debate on religious tolerance in a country with one million Muslims.
Bishop Tiny Muskens, from the southern diocese of Breda, told Dutch television on Monday that God did not mind what he was named and that in Indonesia, where Muskens spent eight years, priests used the word "Allah" while celebrating Mass.
A survey in the Netherlands' biggest-selling newspaper De Telegraaf on Wednesday found 92 percent of the more than 4,000 people polled disagreed with the bishop's view, which also drew ridicule.
"Sure. Lets call God Allah. Lets then call a church a mosque and pray five times a day. Ramadan sounds like fun," Welmoet Koppenhol wrote in a letter to the newspaper.

Transformers

JUST GOT back from watching Transformers. I am not a tough audience by any means but this flick left a bit to be desired. I guess I shouldn't be surprised--it was made by Dream Works and Hasbro, the toy company. Very much like watching Saturday morning cartoons when I was 6. I suspect it was shot with the cooperation of the military--much of that stuff was realistic. It isn’t so much that you can tell when they have military cooperation as when they don’t. Often end up with baby blue Navy helos and other such oddities. Give it a 5 out of 10.

Weather update

CRINGING IN my cool bedroom, air conditioner humming, I feared getting out of bed this morning. First a toe, then a nose, I stuck out the door. Felt safe, so I leaped into the hall. Not hot. Coolish. Not 36 or even 32. I glided down the hall through air heated to a balmy 27 degrees. OK, OK, nothing is perfect. Humidity 75 %. Going to see Transformers at the local cineplex after the first few innings of the Mariner/ChiSox game today. Yes, I expect it to be stupid, but I am hoping for a cool-stupid. The picture is aoothing. Click on it to cool off.

The Wolf

I’M NOT all that slick with metaphors, maybe that’s why I appreciate good ones. Gen. David Patraeus used a great one in an interview yesterday:

He described al Qaeda in Iraq as the “wolf closest to the sled,” because they carry out the most horrific attacks, causing the biggest loss of life. The group tries constantly to return Iraq to levels of sectarian violence that were so destructive this past winter, he said.

The whole interview is worth a look. Neither a glass-half-full, nor half-empty assessment, he does make it pretty clear that while the war is finally being won on the battlefield, the final outcome of the conflict will be determined by the Iraqis themselves.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17, 2007 – The clock is ticking for American troop presence in Iraq, and if more time is needed, it will require more progress in the region, the commander of coalition troops there said today.
"If the Iraqi security forces, the Iraqi people, the Iraqi political leaders can demonstrate that there should be hope for them making the most of the opportunity, that our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are fighting to provide them, indeed there could be time put on the clock, kept on the clock to enable this endeavor to go forward,” Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of Multinational Force Iraq, said in an interview today with Soldiers Radio and Television’s Gail McCabe. 

Results of the emergency political summit going on in Baghdad will be critical, he said. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called on Iraq’s top Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders to meet this week in an effort to stabilize what Petraeus referred to as “political crisis.”