Friday, February 27, 2009

At Least The Guard Wasn't In NOLA As Long As They've Been In Iraq

Oh, crap, why even fucking bother? We get all het up over a headline, but the facts are usually (inevitably, really) a disappointment.
The National Guardsmen were welcomed as liberators when they arrived in force in a big convoy more than four days after Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005 and plunged the city into anarchy. The force was eventually 15,000 strong. Their numbers dwindled as civil authority returned in the months after the storm. But then, after a surge of bloodshed, 360 troops were dispatched in June 2006 to help the depleted police department patrol the streets. In recent months, only a few dozen troops were still patrolling.
So it's all over but the shouting (which has become a death-whimper "in recent months") & has been for a while. Nonetheless, the AP was able to find a few who didn't want the NG to leave NO. This all by contrast to the announcement of a final, definitive, schedule/timetable thingy whatever for w/drawl of Yankee pig-dog troops from Iraq. Well, as many as are going to be pulled out. Last corner o' the ear we heard was at least 35,000 trainers & advisors. So let's read this & see what the story is now. 
[Der Prez] and others — from his defense chief to powerful lawmakers — danced around some of the specifics about dates and troop numbers.
Gawd-uh-mighty day-um, no! They didn't. "Danced around," did they? Where else might one find information about all this? Perhaps, also, the AP. Entirely different from "msnbc.com news services." Isn't it?
Gerald Herbert/AP
South Lawn, White House, Washington, D. C., Friday, 27 February 2009 1640 ET
There need be no more question as to President Obama's presidency, or that LeaderOfTheFreeWorld thing. Above, the first mainstream media representation that we've seen (otherwise, of course, they don't exist) of Barack Obama as the The Loneliest (& Most Powerful) Man in the World, headed for the Oval Office, a solitary figure limned against the White House blahblah etc., & also perhaps anyway ...

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