My Kingdom for a Chocolate-Covered Pretzel...

It seems ironic that on the blog Journey to Enlightenment, I had just told Darkmind how he wasn't the kind of evil that hurts people, but the kind of evil that would deny the world chocolate-covered pretzels just because, and lo and behold, when I get to work on Monday, for once in the mood for some of these delicious pretzels that transport me to a heavenly plane...

There are none in the vending machine.

Granted, I can't eat a whole hell of a lot of chocolate. One of the blessings I inherited from my mother was an allergic reaction in the form of a rash that covers the arms and chest when the body feels too much chocolate has been consumed. Not deadly, no, but irritating nonetheless. And on those rare occasions when I feel that the rash is worth it, it just happens to be that Mr. Vending Machine has decided not to restock them at A-6...

Sure, I could get the peanut M&Ms, which are also known to satiate the chocolate beast within, but there's just something about the crunch f the salty pretzel surrounded by all that milk chocolate that just waters the mouth, delights the taste buds, and settles the monsters that wish to rip out the throats of coworkers on a given Monday, know what I mean?

Something tells me I'll be stopping at a gas station on the way home, but not for the car...

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Only nine days until my Voting Party, in which I will gladly watch the Democrats win back the House (and hopefully the Senate). October has become the 4th deadliest month for our soldiers over in that hellhole known as Iraq, and Bush has decided that "stay the course" is a silly slogan, and on the search for a new one: David Letterman, I believe on Friday night, offered "Find Osama," but when has that ever been one of Bush's priorities? (Hint: Never.) For a while there, it was "Mission: Accomplished" which, had the Bush administration been paying attention, whenever you start with the words "Mission:" the word "Impossible" is kind of a forgone conclusion, wouldn't you think? And usually when something is only one degree away from crazy Tom Cruise, that's enough to make me want to second guess anything even remotely positive sounding. Then we heard about how wonderful it was that, even though no WMD were to be found anywhere, and Rice's brilliant use of "mushroom cloud" propaganda was a silly, even remote possibility at best, at least that ruthless dictator was now out of power, and winning in Iraq became letting the people rule through democracy. But, as always, one who tries to enforce individual law onto a tribal society based on "good-of-the-tribe" mentality, the people decided to run things as if Saddam had never left, and they're killing each other, and our soldiers, right and left (not to mention up and down). So winning was now no longer about WMD or rebuilding the country, but keeping the country from falling apart due to "insurgents" and "sectarian violence."

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You remember Vietnam, right? Well, apparently, the same arguments were made back in the day if we withdrew from Vietnam. "They'll fight us here instead of there," "The region will fall into chaos," "We'll lose face with the global society," yadda yadda...

We withdrew anyway. We Americans are smart enough to know when we're engaged in something pointless. But Bush, lacking the fortitude to admit he may have been wrong (or better yet, that he knew he was wrong but did it anyway), will continue to have our brothers and sisters in freedom killed for no other reason than Bush not wanting to lose face. They say that pride goes before a fall... I only hope Cheney ordered some mattresses for them to land on, because when the investigations start in on this mess, heads are going to roll. And you hard-core right-wingers will scream about patriotism and all sorts of other negligible matters, but the fact of the matter will remain: We didn't invade Iraq to protect our interests. And even if, through some twisted logic, you can claim that the data wasn't hand-picked and lied about, and that we truly did believe that WMDs were there, we should have left when we found out the truth. Bush Sr and Clinton knew the quagmire that Iraq would draw America into--and that's giving Bush Sr a lot more credit than I normally do!

So what would be a "win" in Iraq? Their soldiers have yet to "stand up and take over" like we've been hearing they're supposed to do since before Kerry tried to usurp the dictator of our country. (Hint: That was over two years ago: I was trained in less than six weeks to hold an M16 and shoot!) Face facts, people. Face facts before more pointlessly die in a war built on lies...

Perhaps if we just fed Bush some chocolate-covered pretzels, his blood lust for war would pass?

I don't think so, either...