The Morning Paper’s Ink Stains My Fingers

What do you say to 4,000 of your finest countrymen and countrywomen dead from a criminal mistake ? The same thing you said when 3,000 died, and when 2,000 died, and when 1,000 died and when one died. Stop the war. Only you say it louder.

Brandon Friedman of VoteVets catches something tremendously significant. Not only have 4,000 Americans died in the last five years, an astonishing 25 of them have died in the last two weeks, the highest two-week death total in the entire war/occupation.

We are now entering a period of Iraqi restlessness in which Sunni Sahwa militias are growing restive, Muqtada al-Sadr’s ceasefire is on the verge of unraveling, and little political progress is being made.  In fact, I received an email today from a friend in the Green Zone who told me he slept in his body armor last night–something not typically done these days.  And it’s not a good sign.

Perhaps this will give John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman pause to stop patting themselves on the back for five minutes in order to realize that they are not vindicated, they are still wrong, and any sort of resolution in Iraq will require a serious change from the current short-sighted Bush administration strategy of “pay them off until I’m out of office.”

As I have said before, the violence in Iraq is cyclical and will remain so until we remove the bulk of our forces.  With 25 dead in two weeks, we are not headed in the right direction.