As reported in the San Francisco Gate: In the House of Representatives, Democrats were protesting the illegal ending of a discussion over a pension bill in the Ways and Means Committee, and while they tried to plot strategy on how to work on the bill, Republicans called the police to intimidate them into leaving the committee’s anteroom.
Basically, Tony Blair’s office wanted to claim that Iraq had WMD that they could deploy in 45 minutes against the United States. British Intelligence knew that claim was untrue. Blair claimed it anyway. The BBC caught on that the claim (and many others including the one that showed up in Bush’s State of the Union) was false. David Kelley was one of several British scientists that revealed to the BBC that the claim was false and that the report had been “sexed up” to make the Iraq threat seem greater than it was. Kelley apparently committed suicide, possibly because he feared that he would be revealed as one of the BBC sources of information.
Several of the soldiers who spoke out will lose their careers for airing their feelings in public.
You can imagine how the soldiers in Ward 57 of the Walter Reed hospital might feel about that, since many of them have no legs.
Also, we’re about to send more troops to Iraq, including 1st Cav, 25th Infantry Division. Why is that significant? Because they’re the Division that has trained to fight in Korea since the end of the Vietnam War. redeploying them to Iraq leaves us vulnerable in Korea, which is a hot spot right now, in case you haven’t been paying attention. Which means that we must be seriously over-committed.
Apparently the White House was so angered by the ABC News report I mentioned below, the one in which soldiers ask Rumsfeld to resign, that they leaked some news about the reporter who presented the story: He’s Canadian. And also he’s gay. Shocking!! Apparently gay canadians are not allowed to report the news here in America. Only those good patriotic, American Hets are allowed to run news stories. Like the folks at Faux News.
I so just want to go home and go to bed. Last night I went home, fell asleep on the couch without actually watching The Amazing Race (dvr’ed it) and then went to bed at nine. Have I mentioned that I love my DVR?
I’m a little worried about Kathy. She’s having a bad week. I hope we can figure some stuff out for her.
From CNN — “We have actually, since this deployment began, we have decided that we will no longer be in the army.”
HEMMER: Oh, he’s getting out after this tour of duty in Iraq? How do feel about that?
HAMILTON: Yes, yes. He can’t stand for it.
HEMMER: Why is that?
HAMILTON: I support him 100 percent.
HEMMER: Why do you say he can’t stand it?
HAMILTON: It’s hard on the families, it’s hard on the soldiers, and it’s especially hard to know that you put your faith and trust into a president, and they continue to lie to you, they break promises, and it’s hard to fight for somebody like that.
From ABC News — If Donald Rumsfeld were sitting here in front of us, what would you say to him?” I asked a group of soldiers who gathered around a table, eager to talk to a visiting reporter.
“If he was here,” said Pfc. Jason Punyahotra, “I would ask him why we’re still here, why we’ve been told so many times and it’s changed.”
In the back of the group, Spc. Clinton Deitz put up his hand. “If Donald Rumsfeld was here,” he said, “I’d ask him for his resignation.”
Or, “Things That You Overlook When You’re Appendix is Exploding”
Well, I Never Read the Appendixes Anyway
I’m back to work today and doing a lot better. I’m still not 100% and I’m pretty tired, but I’ll be fine if I can just get home and crash tonight. This past week and a half has been hell. I’m like a human pin cushion. I was in the hospital from Wednesday through Monday morning hooked up to an IV, and they had to move that around a bunch as well as take blood once a day to test my white-blood cell count, so my arms are bruised and full of holes and I look like a junkie. I hate the hospital with a passion and if I could figure out how to get out of going back there, I would. But there’s no way I can avoid it.
But I will need to go back in and have my appendix removed in the very near future.
The whole thing started back on Wednesday, July 2nd, when I had an upset stomach and couldn’t eat anything. But I felt better on Thursday, and the July 4th weekend was great. Then Sunday I had an upset stomach again and couldn’t keep anything down — I threw-up long after I had anything left in my system. But I still thought it was just the stomach flu at that point. By Monday the 7th, though, I knew something was seriously wrong and I went to the emergency room because I couldn’t get ahold of my doctor. I was completely doubled over and the pain in my lower right side was the worst thing I’ve ever felt in my life.
They decided right away that I had gall stones, even though I wanted them to rule out appendicitis and I kept telling them the pain was lower than where they were scanning with the ultrasound. They said the tests to rule out appendicitis were too expensive, and that with women over 30 who are overweight, the problem is always gallstones. But they decided they couldn’t see anything on the ultrasound because they weren’t radiologists, and wanted a real radiologist to give me one. They filled me up with pain medication and anti-nausea medication (but no antibiotics!!!!) and sent me home to wait for an appointment at Methodist East Medical plaza, which is way over on east Washington Street. The appointment was Wednesday morning, and Kathy drove me over there. By this point my appendix had already burst. It probably happened sometime late Monday in the hospital or on Tuesday while I was at home waiting to get an appointment.
To her credit, the radiologist at Methodist East realized what was really going on pretty quickly when I told her she wasn’t scanning where the pain was actually occurring. When she started to scan where the pain was, she said, “well that’s where the appendix is,” and then stopped to look at me, and left the room. I know she went to call and arrange an emergency CT scan at the Methodist South facility because she knew my appendix had already burst and I was probably in trouble at that point. So Kathy raced me to the south side, where they hustled me into the big donut tube and confirmed that I did have ruptured appendix. And they sent Kathy and I immediately back to the Methodist emergency room downtown with the x-rays of my oozing insides.
The first thing they said when we walked into the emergency room was “why didn’t you come in here on Monday when the pain started?” You should have seen the looks on their faces when I told them I had, and they sent me home.