Once in Baghdad you have to decide where to live. Baghdad now is essentially divided into two broad zones: the Green Zone and everything else. It’s not clear when everyone started calling the Green Zone that, anymore than it’s clear when everyone started calling Iraq Rummy World, though it predated Doonesbury. The Green Zone is also widely called The Bubble, but that’s considered derogatory. Perhaps it got that name because the zone does include some of the only green space in Baghdad, including most of the Zawra Park and Zoo, the Festival and Parade Ground, the vast grounds of the New Unknown Soldier monument, the Convention Center, the al Rashid hotel, the Republican Guard presidential palace, the National Assembly complex, the Hands of Victory monument, the 14th of July Monument and all or parts of five city neighborhoods.
Around the four-mile square Green Zone, a triple perimeter has been erected, consisting of an outer blast wall of concrete barriers 15-feet high, inside of which are coils of barbed wire, a space, and another row of barriers and concertina wire. The eastern side also fronts the Tigris River. The entire area now has one main entry point, next to the al Jumhariya Bridge, where 1st Armored Division soldiers, backed up by British rapid reaction commando teams, are on duty. Tanks are located at key points, with machine gun nests on buildings and teams of snipers on rooftops.
This is a "team" blog. We are a bunch of
Americans, whose rising distress
in our leader's decisions brought us together to make this site.
As Bush said, he's a "uniter." Many of us have never even met.
That's the internet for you.
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the
president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is
not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American people."
- Teddy Roosevelt
"Government has a final responsibility for the well-being of
its citizenship. If private cooperative endeavor fails to provide work
for willing hands and relief for the unfortunate, those suffering
hardship from no fault of their own have a right to call upon the
Government for aid; and a government worthy of its name must make
fitting response."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions, but laws must and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
- Thomas Jefferson
"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain
degree."
- James Madison
"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves." - John F. Kennedy
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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"There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America." - Bill Clinton.
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