Xmas in Fallujah

I was already pissed off at Rumsfeld for taking a victory lap around Fallujah, the town he had reduced to rubble and ruin, and that was before I read the transcript of his little “town hall meeting” performance there:

The Fallujah of not that long ago was a symbol of rejection of the new democratic Iraq. Difficult days lie ahead to be sure, but the Fallujah today has some of the highest voter registration and turnout rates in the country, has increasingly capable and competent Iraq security forces in the streets helping to maintain order and hunting down terrorists. Fallujah is a place where the old adage about the U.S. Marines certainly fits -- no better friend, no worse enemy.

Wow! Security forces in the streets hunting down terrorists, it sounds like very heaven!

Mostly, though, he seemed to forget where he was, occupying a bubble in the rubble, as it were (sounds like the Bush administration as described by Dr. Suess). He talked about how the US military is helping out in the aftermath of the Pakistani earthquake, where there were houses with roofs blown off and many homeless – hello! that's just what the US military did in Fallujah!

And in a city that has a curfew, entry controls with biometric identity cards, constant searches and raids, and I think the locals still aren’t allowed to drive cars, not to mention white phosphorus, he talked about the American/COW military keeping its “footprint” “not... so large and so intrusive as to antagonize a proud and patriotic people”. Talk to Fallujans about the size of the footprint on their necks.