Carl Setzer

Pulling into work, my iPhone's AP app ( here's CNN's bit on this ) pinged me with the news that Syria had agreed to a four day truce starting Friday. Though magnanimous and all, my first thought was "why tomorrow?" I never understood why ceasefires aren't implemented immediately, regardless of whether we're talking about today's story in Syria or WWI's armistice. I understand that it takes time to communicate out to the lines. But why didn't the negotiators, or the government at a higher level, have a plan before they walked into the conference room. Perhaps its the finer details that need ironing out before communications can be launched. Perhaps the 1 day timeline is actually aggressive. However, it's hard to imagine anything more simple than a radio communication of "stop shooting". Mainly, I expect the Syrian forces are more organized and able to disseminate and act on this info quickly. The resistance, however, I expect to...

Bush's Iraq Speech - FactCheck.org As a response to Bush's speech, this sums things up nicely (as well as Durbin's response). Yesterday, though, I heard a little snippet of Bush's speech to a group of troops. There, he said that Americans had forgotten that we are in a critical battle (or something to that effect) and insinuated that Americans had forgotten 9/11. That is the main piece I feel a need to respond to. Particularly annoying to me was the allusion that our annoyance with Bush's performance in Iraq is the result of ignoring the threat of terrorism. This is such an amazing piece of rubbish that sinks Bush to a new low. He seems hell-bent on ensuring that he doesn't have a shred of credibility or respect left when he leaves office. Sorry about the digression... It's been clear for anyone who has any connection to reality that Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism; at least not initially. Even now, Al Queda and other terrorist organizations are rath...