Finding God in a Dog

The bad news around the Twitterverse right now is that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has captured a former Iraqi chemical weapons site (Edit: Iraq has confirmed this), possibly loaded with useless artillery shells that used to contain mustard gas.

Of course, we know Iraq once had WMDs, and that the Hussein regime used them during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and on the Kurdish population. We also know that the UN inspectors determined that those weapons were useless in 2003 before the US invaded. Today's reports are consistent with these data -- apparently this is more like a toxic waste dump than an arsenal. The real question is whether anything on that site can be turned into a practical weapon.

Stay tuned, kids.

Why look! It's the 10th anniversary of Mission Accomplished!

Aren't you glad that war ended so quickly, and that the subsequent occupation was so painless? That the Iraq we left behind is now a stable democracy free from violence and corruption? That the total effort won't cost anywhere near the one trilion dollars that naysayers like me thought it would?

(And aren't you glad that we aren't thinking about a similar venture in, say, Iran or Syria?)

Sen. Lindsey Graham wants boots on the ground in Syria.

You know, because the good guys in the Syrian Civil War are so easy to spot.

And because invading a Middle Eastern nation has gone so well for us recently.

In fact, this idea is so stupid that it makes me think that it makes a perfect example of Dunning-Kruger-Madoff effect, where the incompetent are so incompetent that they don't realize how incompetent they are, and so are able to exude enough confidence to be taken seriously. It would certainly explain a lot that's happened since the 21st Century began.

Dear Republican Party,

Do you really want to run on the President engaging in "excessive celebration" of Obama bin Laden's death?

Seriously. Think about it. Remember this?



And that was for a war we didn't need to fight in the first place and that we wouldn't complete in any meaningful sense for nearly another decade.

You basically handed President Obama this media cycle. Far be it from me to discourage you from doing that, but sometimes, you just want to see the other team even try.

Love,
max