Rhinocrisy

Usually, I think I know how to speak and read English. Then I come across a couple paragraphs like these and I wonder whether I missed a day of vocabulary class.

Iraq observed “Freedom Day,” a holiday that commemorates U.S. Marines tearing down a statue of
Saddam Hussein as Iraqis cheered in Firdous Square on April 9, 2003, marking the collapse of Saddam’s regime.

Meanwhile, at least 15 people were killed Sunday, including eight suspected insurgents shot by American soldiers in a pre-dawn raid north of the capital.

Freedom (vree’-dome): (n) 1. The right to blow up one’s self and neighbors in an attempt to affect geopolitics. 2. The right to be blown up in one’s home by young men from a far-off country who for one reason or another consider one to be an insurgent. (See: misery)

Good news: Via Americablog, I learn:

Bush has caused a worrisome officer shortage in US Army:

The Army expects to be short 2,500 captains and majors this year, with the number rising to 3,300 in 2007. These officers are the Army’s seed corn, the people who 10 years from now should be leading battalions and brigades.

“We’re ruining an Army that took us 30 years to build,” Republican maverick Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., told a group of reporters at a recent conference….

The Army denies the shortage is a crisis, but its top civilian, Francis J. Harvey, acknowledged concerns, telling the Washington Post: “We are worried.”

Americablog, being a posse of Democratic Party partisans who find it more important to attack George W Bush than to think about what they consider good for the world, is predictably concerned. Oh no, they write. Now how will we invade Iran? For my part, I think the decline in military recruiting is great news.

Bad news: A country that lacks troops and officers but has thousands of nuclear missiles might not be such a good thing after all.