Renowned, multi-awarded NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman now says Iraq’s puppet Legislature shouldn’t take an August break from the summer heat:
I’ve been in Baghdad in the summer and it is really hot. But you know what? It is a lot hotter when you’re in a U.S. military uniform, carrying a rifle and a backpack, sweltering under a steel helmet and worrying that a bomb can be thrown at you from any direction. One soldier told me he lost six pounds in one day. I’m sure the Iraqi Parliament is air-conditioned.
“So let’s get this straight: Iraqi parliamentarians, at least those not already boycotting the Parliament, will be on vacation in August so they can be cool, while young American men and women, and Iraqi Army soldiers, will be fighting in the heat in order to create a proper security environment in which Iraqi politicians can come back in September and continue squabbling while their country burns.
But he doesn’t endorse what’s really needed — giving American troops a vacation from Iraq by sending them all home! Instead, he supports the deadly Bush “surge,” which means our troops had their deployments to the Iraqi inferno extended from 12 months to 15 months.
Friedman, by the way, may be the ultimate chickenhawk warmonger. According to Wikipedia he never served the military. His wife’s family is worth $4.1 billion. And “The July 2006 issue of Washingtonian magazine reported that they own “a palatial 11,400-square-foot house, now valued at $9.3 million, on a 7½-acre parcel just blocks from I-495 and Bethesda Country Club.”
So, here’s how it goes. You or your young family members go to bleed into the sands of Iraq, while Friedman lives like a pasha.
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