Look over there, it's Julia Roberts' Babies!

Hezekiah and Ipicac or whatever the fuck they are.*

All created to take your mind off of things like how shitty things are over in Neocon Fantasyland, where it was a record month at the wooden-box office!

But I'm sure those 12,000 additional troops and soldiers who's tours have been held over ONCE AGAIN will take it up a notch and build an even more stately pleasuredome.

Why it's enough to make a 101st Keyboarder cream-in-their pants (they wear pants?).

But there are always those who manage to not appreciate the work of Dear Leader and the panacea he has created in Babylon:

You think getting into New York is a hassle? This is what it takes to get to Baghdad these days. First, there's the $630, 80-mile flight from Jordan. Dodging surface-to-air missiles, the pilot zigzags the plane into a heart-pounding landing. A convoy of armored vehicles awaits the traveler who has made prior arrangements. Thus begins the trip into town, a trip that James Hider of The Times of London describes as "the most expensive, dangerous taxi ride in the world.... Your driver is more likely to ask your blood type than if you had a pleasant landing."

The cars set off on the 15-mile ride from the airport, southwest of central Baghdad, to the coalition's Green Zone at 100 m.p.h. The highway, which used to be lined with palm trees, is now barren. The trees were cut down by U.S. forces to eliminate sniper posts. The wide-eyed passenger runs a gauntlet of roadside bombs, suicide car bombers, and charred Humvees and trucks, as well as hidden insurgents wielding rocket-propelled-grenade launchers. According to Hider, the 10-plus-minute ride will set the intrepid traveler back about $5,000.

The driver will likely avoid the Hamra district-where armed gangs prowl the streets looking for Westerners to kidnap, whom they then sell to one of the Islamist groups for some $250,000-and make a beeline for the Green Zone, the walled district of former palaces turned government buildings that is the coalition's redoubt in Baghdad. The area is a protected, isolated bubble within Iraq, but even here journalists and contractors arrange for a couple of cars and a handful of bodyguards, generally former soldiers from the U.S., Britain, or South Africa, who come armed with assault rifles and submachine guns. Two cars and four men can run upwards of $10,000 a day. It's getting so expensive to get people in and out of Iraq that it's estimated between 10 and 20 percent of the Iraq-reconstruction budget is going toward this sort of security.

I think about this every time I see a Baghdad dateline in the morning paper or a television correspondent broadcasting from there. Forget the rosy picture the Pentagon is painting for the public-the situation there is in meltdown right now. And it's only getting worse.

I think it is just shameful that people are so determined to try to shed such a poor light on the dreamland being built in Iraq by actually going there and checking it out for themselves.

For shame!

And then that same, unpatriotic publication, tells us that soldiers are returning from Iraq and immediately betraying their sacred duty to the "Seed of the Higher Father", by falsely claiming that things are not all going swimmingly and that they have not been made even more super-duper-patriotic by their so-called sacrifice in working and playing in such a wonderfully transformed beacon of hope in the middle-east. (Oh, and you who complain of long, tortured sentences? You're traitors!)

A 20-year veteran of the New York National Guard, Ramos had been mobilized for active duty in Iraq in the spring of 2003. His unit, the 442nd Military Police company, arrived there on Easter, 10 days before President Bush's mission accomplished appearance on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. A tall, soft-spoken 40-year-old with four children, the youngest still an infant, Ramos was proud of his physique. In civilian life, he was a New York City cop. "I worked on a street narcotics team. It was very busy, with lots of overtime-very demanding." Now, rising unsteadily from his armchair in his thickly carpeted living room in Queens, New York, Ramos grimaces. "The shape I came back in, I cannot perform at that level. I've lost 40 pounds. I'm frail."

At first, as his unit patrolled the cities of Najaf and al-Diwaniyya, Ramos stayed healthy. But in June 2003, as temperatures climbed above 110 degrees, his unit was moved to a makeshift base in an abandoned railroad depot in Samawah, where some fierce tank battles had taken place. "When we first got there, I was a heat casualty, feeling very weak," Ramos says. He expected to recover quickly. Instead, he went rapidly downhill.

By the middle of August, when the 442nd was transferred to Babylon, Ramos says, the right side of his face and both of his hands were numb, and he had lost most of the strength in his grip. His fatigue was worse and his headaches had become migraines, frequently so severe "that I just couldn't function." His urine often contained blood, and even when it didn't he would feel a painful burning sensation, which "wouldn't subside when I finished." His upper body was covered by a rash that would open and weep when he scratched it. As he tells me this, he lifts his shirt to reveal a mass of pale, circular scars. He was also having respiratory difficulties. Later, he would develop sleep apnea, a dangerous condition in which he would stop breathing during sleep.

Eventually, Ramos was medevaced to a military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. Doctors there were baffled and sent him on to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. There, Ramos says, one neurologist suggested that his condition could have been caused by some long-forgotten head injury or might just be "signs of aging." At the end of September 2003, the staff at Walter Reed ordered him to report to Fort Dix, New Jersey, where, he says, a captain went through his record and told him, "I was clear to go back to Iraq. I got the impression they thought I was faking it." He was ordered to participate in a long-distance run. Halfway through, he collapsed. Finally, on July 31, 2004, after months of further examinations, Ramos was discharged with a medical disability and sent home.

Apparently, this situation is likely caused by an innocent enough explanation. In addition to giving the Iraqi's the gift of "freedom" we are giving them the benefit of our advanced use of tactitical radioactivity via the wonder that is depleted uranium. It's a long-term gift to both our soldiers and those lucky third-worlders.

Enjoy the legacy Mr. and Ms. Iraqi, you and both your heads.


*Names may already be intellectional property of TBogg each Friday.