STICKS AND STONES

I was about to post on my outrage at the media hullaballoo over John Kerry's botched joke while virtually ignoring the fact that our vaunted Commander-in-Chief yesterday pulled our soldiers off their checkpoints in Sadr City at the behest of Iraq's Maliki (who was just taking orders from Moqtada al-Sadr). Yes, folks, Bush ABANDONED A KIDNAPPED U.S. SOLDIER to the bloody Mahdi Army.

But then I ran across Sully's post of the day, and he says it well so I don't have to:

The U.S. military does not have a tradition of abandoning its own soldiers to foreign militias, or of taking orders from foreign governments. No commander-in-chief who actually walks the walk, rather than swaggering the swagger, would acquiesce to such a thing. The soldier appears to be of Iraqi descent who is married to an Iraqi woman. Who authorized abandoning him to the enemy? Who is really giving the orders to the U.S. military in Iraq? These are real questions about honor and sacrifice and a war that is now careening out of any control. They are not phony questions drummed up by a partisan media machine to appeal to emotions to maintain power.

And where, by the way, is McCain on this? Silent on Cheney's "no-brainer" on waterboarding. Silent recently on Iraq. But vocal - oh, how vocal - on Kerry. It tells you something about what has happened to him. And to America.

Yep, it says something, all right. George Bush can lead 3,000 American soldiers to their deaths, but heaven help John Kerry for saying anything that could be construed, rightly or wrongly, as dissing them.

Tags: John Kerry, Maliki, Iraq, Moqtada al-Sadr, Bush