Line up to die

Your three-year-old wearing roller skates gets a big, tall ice cream cone, and before they can lick it -- oops! -- the ice cream falls onto the ground.

They cry. You buy them another one. "Skate around while you lick it!" you encourage.

How likely is that? Not likely at all. If you have any brains, you ask the kid to sit on a bench and eat the ice cream. You do everything in your power to prevent them from getting on those skates with an ice cream cone and setting themselves up for another disaster. You cajole them. You forbid them to wear the skates.

Now consider a recent news item from Iraq:

"...a suicide car bomber attacked mostly Shiite police and National Guard recruits lined up for physical exams at a medical clinic Monday, killing 120..."

A web search I did using the criteria: recruits + 'lined up' + Iraq + killed yielded 88,400 hits. No, there haven't been 88,400 incidents like this, but it's happened, let's just say MORE THAN ONCE!

Do I sound angry? Good.

Five of the seven dead in the car bombing were recruits lined up outside the police academy, Iraqi police said.

I'm not sure when the first attack of this kind happened, but the first one I found was Feb 10, 2004:  In Iskandariyah, Iraq, a car bomb exploded at a police station south of Baghdad as dozens of would-be recruits lined up to apply for jobs, and a hospital official said at least 53 people were killed and 50 others wounded.

It keeps happening over and over. How do we expect the we'll-stand-down-when-they-stand-up thing to ever happen if they get mown down before they can even sign up?

A woman strapped with explosives and disguised as a man blew herself up outside an Iraqi army recruiting center in a northern town Wednesday, killing at least six people and wounding 30...

The slaughter of lined-up Iraqi recruits has been going on for close to two years now, and nobody in Washington has seemed to figure out that you have to prevent these guys from lining up!

There HAS to be another way of recruiting Iraqi police and military than having them line up like targets in a shooting gallery, at 7 AM on Tuesday, while Colonel Habibi carefully and slowly writes down the names of the applicants, dipping his pen in the blood of the ones killed in the process.

Anyone with a brain would have stayed out of Iraq. Anyone with half a brain would have anticipated an insurgency, and taken steps to prevent the use of this tactic. Anyone with just one brain cell would recognize the pattern and...

DO SOMETHING!

Also in the news:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. officials have been talking with local Iraqi insurgent leaders to exploit a rift between homegrown insurgents and radical groups such as Al Qaeda, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

Yeah, and Clinton was only giving career advice to Lewinsky.

What happened to not negotiating with terrorists? This is like a Boy Scout exploiting a rift between some candy and Michael Jackson. No matter what delusion the Bushies are under, these are surrender talks, plain and simple.