Remember the Trade Center

My favorite fruitcake editorialist, Robert Jamieson Jr., titled his piece in the Seattle PI "Endless Iraq war adds to sorrow of 9/11". Just so you know, it's not endless, it's been 6 years since we were ruthlessly attacked, and the war would be over already if we had responded to the World Trade Center attack with the same resolve and ruthlessness that we responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

If an enemy resolves to kill you, defend yourself. Protect the attacker's populace if you can, but if you must take them out to stop them, then you do that. What happened to the spirit of the old American West where they shot the bad guys and said "let that be a lesson to the rest of them"? It is well documented that our inability to respond to previous terrorist attacks is what inspired the 9/11/01 attack!

Further into the article, Jamieson plays games with numbers "...soldiers killed in Iraq now exceeds the toll of Sept. 11 - more than 3,700 soldiers...". Ok, lets see, 3,700 in six years compared to 2998 in 3 hours? How can one even make a comparison there? It's a tribute to the efficiency of the US military that we have lost only 3,700 soldiers!!! Ever read your history? This source tells us that the US lost over 500,000 lives in WWII! This was in response to an attack (Pearl Harbor) that cost 2896 lives. Military casualties, not civilian! During a WAR, not during a time of peace!

Why was December 7th "A day that will live in infamy", yet the 9/11 attack is a "convenient excuse" according to Jamieson?

Don't you think that we should be prepared to loose well over a million lives today in response to an attack on American soil on innocent US civilians? I do. I support our President, this war against terror, and our military. We need a new war cry along the lines of "Remember the Alamo!"... perhaps "Remember the Trade Center!"

Unusual Cartoons in the PI and Times

In a break from character, the PI had this cartoon by Lisa Benson on their opinion page. Of course, I couldn't find it on the PI web site, nor on the Washington Post site (who distributed it). The cartoon was the only reference in the paper that I saw about great job that General Petraeus did in his presentation. I was surprised that the opinion editor ran this, since the op-ed title was "Iraq War - Still a fiasco".

This Get Fuzzy cartoon from Sunday edition of The Seattle Times won a place of honor on the family refrigerator, and we are still quoting our favorite lines to each other three days later. Way to go Darby! My favorite is the "tax my tuna" line, the default political option here in the Seattle area.

Of course, I imagine that this will be the last time that we will get to see either cartoonist in these papers.