How Iraq Celebrates Ramadan, A New Tradition...

Paul Krugman
Elizabeth Rubin
Richard Parker

"Corporations are people. It's time to remake 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' where the daughter brings home an oil rig. You know Spencer Tracy won't want to see his daughter drilled." – Stephen Colbert, on Mitt Romney's declaration that "corporations are people"

"Congress is now appointing a debt committee to deal with the debt. I thought Congress was the debt committee. Aren't they the ones who put us in debt?" – Jay Leno

"President Obama said this week that the downgrading of our credit rating should give America 'a renewed sense of urgency.' A renewed sense of urgency? When was this not urgent? The only people that don't think it's urgent are the Congressmen that just went on a five-week vacation. Can we get their asses back here?" – Jay Leno

"President Obama says he inherited most of the problems with the economy. I think he's being modest. He deserves a little credit." – Jay Leno

“It is Ramadan this month and we should pray that we won’t kill each other."  - Saad Ahmed

To prove how crazy dangerous life has become in Iraq, some group, either al Qaeda or part of the police, set off one of the deadliest days, of multiple bomb and suicide bomber attacks all over the country that killed 86 people and wounded over 300. This ends up putting stress on the hospitals, that don't have enough doctors or medical supplies, despite the billions of dollars in aid sent to Iraq each year. I mentioned the police because one man in Kut, who was a vegetable seller in the bazaar, said that the car with the bomb had been parked where it was since Sunday night, and that it was behind barriers set up by the police, and the only way the car could have gotten there was by the police letting it past the barriers and letting it park overnight. It was the first of many conflicting stories...

Critics say that the bombings are a protest over the Iraqi government agreeing to sit down and hammer out an agreement with the US, to see how many troops we will leave in the country after the end of the year. The main group that would benefit from having all troops gone is Moqtada al Sadr's party, and they have the Iranian connections that would get them enough bombs and munitions to pull off such a caper... Then there are the sympathists to the old Baath Party, who may be saying screw everybody, let's cause some trouble... There is always the possibility that different factions in the existing government use the fear generated to jockey for position and more money for the police, know who your friends are... I'm sure that every neighborhood in every town has a different theory for why this happened.

Oh, yeah, it could be al Qaeda. It was pointed out by an Afghani warlord that groups like the Taliban and al Qaeda use suicide bombers because they don't have enough men to fight any kind of battle, so they turn to these pathetic, anti-Islamic tactics... Who knows just how crazy their members have become now that they have been deprived of their Pakistani pornography and their leadership gone. Just as living in the jungle and eating bugs turned Pol Pot and his Kmer Rouge into batshit killing machines, living in the desert when the heat is above 120 degrees must cook the brain cells until they are crispy fried... The local al Qaeda representative thinks that the citizens of Iraq enjoy being made the targets of so many bombings, and that they look forward to the next attacks. Certainly, al Qaeda worships death above all other religions: ”We have men who have divorced themselves from life and love death more than you love life, and killing is one of their wishes,” What a wonderful path towards liberation. Maybe it was Osama bin Laden who kept the mentally ill from taking over. And why is it that suicide bombers only seem to be in Baghdad, Kabul, Islamabad, and New York? OK, that last was a cheap shot, considering that the last ones caught in America came from Colorado, Salt Lake City, and Fort Hood, Texas...

Ironically, many Iraqis have fled to Syria to escape the violence. The current level of bombings and shooting by the Syrian government on its civilian population must feel like deja vu all over again... I wonder, if after the US actually does leave Iraq alone, how many Iraqis will then move to Iran? Will the borders become porous like the EU, or will they tighten up enough to build a fence? Maybe that could be our last gift to them, a lasting legacy that would affect their lives about as much as the Berlin Wall did... Of course, like along our own border, it would only get about 2/3 built before running out of funding... I'm beginning to think that the whole Middle East needs to get rid of their male leaders, and let the women run things for a good few hundred years, that is, if you guys can keep yourselves from assassinating them...