How Do You Like That!

Remember the dozen pro-Bush guys from the 42nd Infantry Division in Tikrit who shilled for the Bush administration in the staged videoconference this past Thursday? Turns out, mouthy Master Sgt. Corine Lombardo who was so articulate about "working side-by-side, training and equipping 18 Iraqi army battalions", is a Bush ringer. Ward Harkavy, who writes “The Bush Beat” for The Village Voice. spotted Lombardo sitting in the front row of the staged photo from Tikrit. Master Sgt. Lombardo is a Public Affairs tool. She writes a regular column for “Operation Liberty Torch”--a pro-army rag--for the 42nd Infantry Division. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But during the fake “conversation” between GWB and the troops, Lombardo never owned up to the fact that her first and foremost job is to make the BushMen look good in Iraq. Boy, it must be like paying $1000 for really bad sex. All this money being spent on fake photo-ops, fake journalism, fake snow jobs, and the war in Iraq still looks like the pig’s ear that it is: a war of aggression instigated by arrogant third-rate politicians who had avoided being in the military, planned by over-the-hill Pentagon officials who decided to wage a war on the cheap, and carried out by an insufficient number of ill-equipped and inexperienced military personnel. Trying to cover up the Iraq stinkhole is bad enough. But WaPo reported a true story yesterday that shows the depths of incompetence to which our government has sunk. The US Army is sending bills to our wounded and maimed soldiers for everything from military housing to travel for follow-up hospital treatment to military gear found missing after their injuries. The military says these bills were mistakes and they are being rectified. Mistakes? Computer errors? Who cares? We’re talking about people who believed in their government enough to fight an unnecessary war. These people should be honored not billed. Mistakes? I rest my case. Could the Bush administration and the Pentagon fuck up any worse? Oh yes! I am sure they could and they will. Wait for it!