Ooops..

... Well, I spoke too soon, Bush. We made the attempt to move in to our new house yesterday, but were frustrated on all fronts. First, a dreadful accident closed down the 5 freeway for almost the entire day, snaring our work force in traffic so bad they had to turn around and head back to the shop. None of the work we'd been promised to allow us to move in by noon was done. Then, the rain. An untypical October storm drenched the area, and also continued throughout the day. Still, we drove up through sheets of rain, thinking to improvise enough to be able at least to spend the night--only to discover that so little progress had been made at the end of last week that a move-in was out of the question. Piles of boxes and furniture in every room, covered only with loose plastic sheets. The bed was not even visible under the clutter. So we turned right around, locked up the house, and came back down to our Laguna retreat. We won't even try today. Perhaps tomorrow...

In the meantime, I did get time to watch the news last night. And was appalled by our new "precision-guided" bombing expedition in Iraq. The US military was quick to brag that they had killed 70 "insurgents" at the site of the previous day's car-bombing that had left American service people dead. On the ground reports--from doctors and hospitals, among others--claimed that the majority of those who died were civilians, including childred, attracted to the bombing site out of curiosity. At the time of the news reports, the US military was continuing to insist that it had "no information about civilian casulaties." No information, Bush! I find that hard to believe, when I myself had information, sitting there at a television set in California! Precision guidance from a speeding aircraft at God knows how many feet seems of questionable value when you haven't the first idea what's happening on the ground. You can hit the target, I guess. But you have no control over who happens to be there. You just make the assumption that it's "insurgents." And then you stick to your story, no matter what the peasants say.

I thought about it again this morning, Bush, with your Hughes sitting there on the Today show talking about the murderous insurgents who don't care who they kill. I thought how little it would take to view this from the other side--the side from which we look to be the murderers, not caring who we kill. Just a simple shift in your point of view. Not to excuse the brutality on the other side. Don't think that I'm speaking in their favor. Murder is vile, no matter who commits it. But nor does their brutality excuse our killing of civilians, as I see it, from speeding aircraft, at God knows how many feet.

Your Hughes was also doing some crowing about the numbers that showed up to vote in the referendum, Bush, even as those numbers were being questioned and the specter of election fraud evoked. Was there, as one experienced observer put it, "something fishy" about the numbers? Were the ballot boxes stuffed? From what I hear, it sounds like a plausible possibility. Which leads me to wonder whether how many Sunnis actually did show up to support the draft constitution. I think we need to verify that before we crow too loudly. Don't you?