Yesterday’s vote for cloture to end the filibuster of Sam Alito showed Democrats and the world that there is such a thing as a Closet Republican.

The 18(?) Democrats who chose to vote for cloture showed us that. In spades. As my previous post indicated, if the filibuster ended, all of those who voted No on Alito would in essence be voting Yes since the Republicans have the majority and only 51 votes were needed to confirm him. Hence a No = a Yes. As has been pointed out on many different and arguably better sites, we Democrats were betrayed. Betrayed by those we put into office. OUR voices and concerns about Alito meant nothing to them. They can pin a Jackass button to their lapel, but it does nothing to hide the fact they are Closet Republicans. Below is the list of the Closet Republicans:

Akaka, Hawaii; Baucus, Mont.; Bingaman, N.M.; Byrd, W.Va.; Cantwell, Wash.; Carper, Del.; Conrad, N.D.; Dorgan, N.D.; Inouye, Hawaii; Johnson, S.D.; Kohl, Wis.; Landrieu, La.; Lieberman, Conn.; Lincoln, Ark.; Nelson, Fla.; Nelson, Neb.; Pryor, Ark.; Rockefeller, W.Va.; Salazar, Colo.

My own Sen. Kohl even voted for cloture. I can hardly believe it. Well, at least now we have a hit-list compiled of who to run out of office next time they come up for re-election.

It’s actions like this that prove the Republicans right when they say we Democrats have no balls. If we’d have had balls, this wouldn’t have happened. If Sen. Reid were the arm-twisting, head-locking, ball-busting leader DeLay was, this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe it’s time to start playing hardball, eh Harry? You’re the Senate Minority Leader for God’s sake. Start leading! You should have corralled every Dem in the Senate and laid it down for them instead of letting this one and that one run their damn mouths in front of every camera or microphone within a 10-mile radius.

The Alito confirmation is done and over with and we missed the boat. However, this situation is not without a glimmer of hope. The netroots campaign to convince our Senators to vote against cloture is the same one we’ll need to pressure the DNC to start fielding candidates with some backbone and nice large set of brass ones. I mean, face it, Republicans fight better than Democrats because they put forth a united front on almost every issue. And when they don’t, a whole lot of arm-twisting goes on in the background.

On a lighter note, the title suggests Closet Democrats as well. They’re out there. Believe it. Too often Joe “sixpack” Republican continues to vote that way because he’s always voted Republican. More often than not, outside of a few minor issues, he agrees with our platform. The problem is that because it’s a “Democratic” platform he continues to vote Republican. I’ve talked to a few people who shall remain nameless for now who really identify with our core values and principles. We, as bloggers, as friends, and as family members, need to seek out those among us and lay on the sermon, so to speak. Our core values of Help the Needy, Feed the Poor, Women’s Rights, Affordable Wages, and Affordable Healthcare for EVERYONE are ones that a lot of people can buy into. Democrats as a party, because of large lobbying groups, tend to pander to the issues of gay marriage, abortion, and other very polarizing issues. This is where we lose. At least in Red State America. There is nothing that says you can’t live a religious life and vote Democrat every election.

All one need do is take a look at some of the biggest votes this past year to see what some of us have been saying for years. Medicare has become a nightmare for some most of our Nation’s seniors. My father included. The Highway Bill that passed was so infused with pork you’d swear it was bacon. I can just imagine that damn cartoon dog running in circles around Congress going “Bacon, bacon, bacon. BAAACCONN!!” The Kelo v. New London case that was brought before the Supreme Court was a slap in the face to Eminent Domain. These are things that affect real people everyday. No Child Left Behind is leaving a lot of children behind due to the fact it was underfunded. President Bush’s tax cuts, while they helped everyone somewhat, did not go far enough for the lower middle class and the poor. Sure, it put a few hundred bucks in our pockets, but how long did that last? A couple of hours at Wal-Mart? He should have put forth a graduated tax cut with the highest cuts going to the lowest wage-earners and vice versa. THAT would have put a lot more dollars directly into the economy instead of his plan.

The long and the short of it is this: Not everyone that has been elected to Congress is what they seem or belongs to the party they claim. Likewise, not everyone in this country claiming to be a Republican truly is one. We need to seek them out and mobilize them for our side. We do that and we will take back the Senate and the House.

Get your minds out of the gutter! I’m not talking about rape or anything else sexual. This is about the Alito confirmation. I know I said I’d post on some other things when I got back to posting, but this is too important to just get around to later.

Anyone who thinks that a Senator’s NO vote for Alito accomplishes anything other than easing their minds is fooling themselves. The fact of the matter is that a Justice Alito will continue to push the Bush Administration agenda of regression. Republicans and the Bush Administration are the only ones who stand to benefit from a Democrat NO vote because they command a healthy majority in the Senate; enough to confirm Alito and get on with overturning landmark civil and human rights issues that were decided long ago.

The vote takes place at 4:30pm EST tomorrow. If you haven’t done so, I urge you to contact your Senators and demand they join Sen. Kerry’s Filibuster of Alito. Numerous other websites are covering this as well. I personally got notified by a recent visit to Sine.Qua.Non’s Journal. Parroting her site, her is the list of sites covering this important development:

• Democrats.com - The Alito 48
• Digby
• Buzzflash and Buzzflash Editorials
• dKos tags Alito and Samuel Alito

There are others, of course, but I don’t want to steal all of Nancy’s thunder. Stop by and check out her place.

Remember to take action tomorrow and call, email, and fax not just your representatives, but ALL of the Senators that are on the fence about the filibuster.

I want to say thanks to those of you who’ve noticed I’ve been gone for a little bit. As I mentioned in my most recent comment, I’ve been busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. However, with that said, take a gander to the right and you’ll see a couple minor changes in my sidebar. Yes, Virginia, Bulldog has been cleaning house. Just a little though.

I’ve added a couple more categories to my links that I think will help out in organizing some of the site I like to go to and also give first-time visitors an idea of what kinds of issues certain blogs tackle. You’ll notice that not all of the sites that may fit a particular category are listed under said category. That’s because some of them I list as friends because they are. That in no way diminishes their sites from discussing certain things, though.

In my New Year’s Resolution post I indicated that I would be beefing up my blogroll. So far, I’ve kept to that promise. I hope to do a redesign of the entire site as well sometime this year, but it may be awhile yet. Since I’m a one-man show learning this stuff on my own, it will definitely take awhile. So whether you’re new or not, grab your popcorn, your favorite beverage and peruse my archives while I’m away.

Thanks for sticking around.

Commenter dannyinwisconsin decided to get himself a site of his own!

Danny, consider this a warm welcome to the blogosphere. It can be a cold, unloving place out here, but with a few good friends and something good to drink, it ain’t so bad after all.

Stop by and say hi to Danny at his new digs: Danny in Wisconsin or check him out on my blogroll to the right under the Friends category.

I’ve been kind of pressed for time the last couple of days, but I wanted to give, my readers, a quick update about what’s to come here at The Bulldog Says.

I have a couple of posts I want and need to write. Among them are the recent Supreme Court decision upholding Oregon’s Death with Dignity law. I also want to weigh in on Al Gore’s recent speech lambasting the Bush Administration over its illegal wiretapping by the NSA. Another post forthcoming will touch on the lack of a backbone many established Democrats appear to have. Not so for Ohio candidate for Senator, Paul Hackett. You’ll remember him as the candidate who almost took the House seat in a special election for Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District, one of the reddest in the state. He’s now running for one of Ohio’s Senate seats. I know these issues have already been covered by some of the bigger and arguably better blogs than my little corner of the blogosphere, but I feel the need to comment regardless.

In the meantime, check my links for a couple of new additions: Steve Gilliard’s The News Blog and Slow Turning. I found Slow Turning via a blog-ad over at Eschaton. I also want to direct your attention to the fantastic writing and passionate commentary by Athenae, Holden, Tena, and Pie over at First Draft which is already listed in my blogroll. Check out Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle which recounts snippets of the Whitehouse press briefings. It’s one of my favorite.

That’s all for today, dear readers. Check out the links and have a great week!

Today is the celebration of the birth, life, and dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., that stalwart in the realm of civil rights. Once upon a time, he had a dream. At the time it was considered to some to be an unrealistic dream. Yet he never stopped believing in, or working toward his dream. What a shame it is that we still have so far to go in realizing Dr. King’s dream. Sure, things are better for minorities today than they were 40 years ago, yet there are still some in this country who harbor notions of elitism based upon the color of their skin.

Dr. King’s dream of civil rights extended not just to the minorities in this country who were discriminated against. His dream extends to each and every one of us. The right to be treated equally under the law is something that all of us should strive for. That includes everyone; gays, blacks, hispanics, the poor, the rich, and yes, even whites. Everyone.

Dr. King’s Jesus is a far different man than the Jesus who gets worshiped today. Yes, there are some believers who still know the Jesus Dr. King knew. Yet, I somehow feel that believers today don’t have that personal relationship they should. You can see it by the way they treat others, by the way they spew slogans of “We’re not perfect, just forgiven”, and by the way they worship. The Jesus that Dr. King worshiped was one who believed in equality for all, whether they chose to follow him or not. He believed that we should help those less fortunate than ourselves and to turn the other cheek when wronged. He also wanted us to treat others as we would be treated. Unfortunately, you don’t see much of that today. Today, we have ministers such as Pat Robertson who feel it justified to claim that Ariel Sharon’s stroke was somehow punishment for the so-called dividing of Israel. Less than a week later, when faced with diminishing support for one of his pet projects in Israel, he suddenly backtracks. As I read on another site recently “God talks to Pat Robertson; Money talks louder”. Those who believe in this country need to seek out Dr. King’s Jesus and ask for forgiveness for the wrongs they have committed against others. Those who don’t believe can still find truth in King’s sermons on civil rights. It is up to us - each and every one of us to right the wrongs we see on a daily basis and not let ourselves fall into that well-worn path of discrimination and hate.

We are in sad shape as country with regards to basic human and civil rights. We has seemingly lost our moral compass. We would be wise to heed Dr. King’s words in his famous “I Have A Dream” speech. We need to visualize and work toward the day when black children, white children, red children and yellow children play together without a thought toward the different colors of their skin. We need to enact policies and legislation that goes further than ever before toward eliminating racial, gender, or sexual discrimination. Not just because it is something that Martin Luther King Jr. would do, but rather because it’s the right thing to do. The Civil Rights Movement did not end with Dr. King’s death. Don’t let it end with you either. Below I offer you, my visitors, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous speech:

I Have A Dream by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. we must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Dr. King’s speech courtesy of the National Civil Rights Museum (old site at mecca.org)

Well, I said I was going to start updating my blogroll and let me give you the first couple sites here:

Informed Dissent - Michael Miller is a very passionate guy when it comes to politics and the state of the nation. I highly advise visiting him and checking out his Selected Posts.

Hillary Now - Jami was kind enough to link to me under her category “Those who link to me”. Had I not found that she linked to me I wouldn’t have been able to make good on her category placement. She’s in tune with women’s rights issues and advocates Hillary for the first woman president.

These are just the first of many new sites I will be linking to this year. I also need to do some serious housekeeping concerning the categories of links to the right. Just having Acquaintances and Friends really doesn’t do justice to all of the links. Perhaps the addition of new categories is in order.

Judge Alito’s ability to avoid Democrats’ questions during his confirmation hearing leaves many to believe he’ll declare himself for the upcoming NFL draft. While this may sound funny, the future of our country is at risk as a result.

I was not very impressed with Alito during the hearings. Although many pundits and even politicians have stated that they didn’t really find anything worth filibustering about, I did. Specifically his answers to Sen. Kennedy about his prior pledge to recuse himself from cases involving Vanguard. Specifically, Kennedy asked Alito about how long his pledge of recusal would last:

You made a pledge to the Senate — effectively, to the American people — that you were going to recuse yourself. Now you say, well, it was just for any initial time, and I think 12 years is more than I really had in mind — you just qualified your answer.

That, in my mind, constitutes a lie. If you pledge to do something without qualifying how long that pledge is to last, doesn’t it stand to reason that your pledge can be interpreted to be a lifetime pledge? I understand the limits of human frailty and our inherent weaknesses, but a judge that makes decisions daily that could potentially affect their ability to be fair has to be above those issues of human weaknesses in order to be truly fair. Alito, regardless of his statements about “trying to personally go above and beyond the code”, has proven that he can’t and won’t do that. There are obviously other things from the hearings and from his legal opinions and rulings that are very disturbing as well, but this was just one issue that showed me what he could be like on the Supreme Court.

As has been mentioned by Dems, liberals, and progressives for a couple of years now, the Democratic Party needs to grow some balls. We, as a party and as a country, have been getting steamrolled by the current crop of legislators that call themselves the Republican Party ever since they won back Congress during Clinton’s second term. As an aside, Alexander Strategy Group which is closing up shop as a result of the Abramoff-Delay scandals, had a quote posted somewhere in their building that basically said “If you don’t define yourself, you will be defined by your enemies.” That is what has happened with the Democratic Party. The Steve Miller Band also had a line in the song Jet Airliner that says “You got to go through Hell before you get to Heaven”. We haven’t even begun to get close to going through hell yet as a political party. I say filibuster Alito’s nomination. Force Frist’s hand to invoke the so-called nuclear (nucular for the Bush-types) option. Then, and only then, will I consider our party as having balls again. If not, then we need to can the whole damn crew.

I was never much involved or even interested in politics as a kid. The most I ever really knew was who was President at any particular time. It didn’t interest me because it didn’t affect me. Or so I thought.

As time went on, I stayed about as far away from politics as I could since polite folks never debated politics or religion. At least that’s what I had been told on many occasions. I remember the highlights; the Star Wars program, Iran-Contra, Reagan’s summits with Mikhail Gorbachev, the Berlin Wall coming down and so on. But never did I really immerse myself in the real meat of `80s and early `90s politics.

I joined the Marine Corps in my junior year of high school shocking almost everyone who knew me, including my parents. They could have never guessed that the military was for me. Then again, neither did I really. I guess I saw the Marine Corps as a way out of the dead town that we lived in. Even though ours was the second largest city in the state, it was still effectively dead, unless you wanted to get into manufacturing. I did briefly follow the rise and fall of Ross Perot’s bid for the Presidency. His idea of running the country like a business seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately, his dropping from the race and subsequent reemergence left a bad taste in my mouth about politics that would last a long time.

Starting in late 1992 and early 1993, I began listening a bit more to the goings-on of D.C. politics. My upbringing being as it was, I was firmly against anything Slick Willy tried to pull on us God-fearing Republicans. While in the service, I was not too fond of his dealings with the military and I sure didn’t want to serve with any gays. Time, as they say, has a way of tempering your views. By the time I left the Marines in 1996, Clinton was being re-elected and the country was doing pretty well for itself, but still I didn’t educate myself politically. I was still an apathetic young man who couldn’t comprehend how much politics really affected me and my way of life. I had been all about the party.

In 1999, I met the woman of my dreams and got married at the ripe old age of 25. No real interest in politics yet. I was a young man in love who just inherited a family I could call my own. The upcoming election of 2000, was one that got me ever more interested in politics and one that I finally voted in as a way of expressing my strong views against anyone associated with those Jack-Asses (Dems). I firmly believed that Bush was going to do great things for the country. But as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

After 9/11 changed the face of American politics and our lives forever, I really started to take a more active role in defining my political beliefs on the basis of my views rather than my mother’s and father’s. I knew almost immediately that Bin Laden was involved with that sad day in our history and felt a strong, immediate response was necessary to “teach them a lesson” so to speak. The beginnings of the Afghanistan campaign as launched by President Bush was just the kind of response that I thought we needed to finally catch the madman responsible, however long it took. Then, all of a sudden, the message changed. The focus stopped being about Bin Laden and Al Qaeda and became about Iran, Iraq, and North Korea-those 3 nations that comprised Bush’s Axis of Evil.

Bush’s January 2001 State of the Union address absolutely floored me, as I’m sure it did many of you. The allegations that were made concerning Iraq were outrageous to say the least. Of course Saddam failed to comply with 12 years of sanctions, but did that warrant the end of trying to find a diplomatic solution? Not in my mind it didn’t.

By the time we invaded Iraq in March 2003, I couldn’t tear myself away from CNN and their embedded reporters. Like many of you, I laughed long and loud at the Iraqi Information Minister’s cries that the Americans are dying at the walls of Baghdad, that they will never take Saddam International Airport even as we had already done so. I became more and more convinced that Bush’s way was not the right way to handle Iraq nor our country. Leading up to the Presidential Election of 2004, I devoured political reading material on the Internet in an effort to try and separate the wheat from the chaff in the multitude of candidates running against Bush. I personally like Dean and his Internet groupies until that fateful scream after the Iowa Caucus. I started to delve deeper into John Edwards’ platform in an effort to kind of feel out his politics as well. Unfortunately, John Kerry became the Democrats lone hope against War-President Bush. I won’t go over my thoughts about what killed the Kerry campaign suffice it to say that he didn’t fight back as hard as he could have.

Those of you who have followed me from my humble past at Unpopular Opinions to my humble present here at The Bulldog Says… know that the final nail in the coffin for me was when my brother RoadRage was stop-lossed and sent to Iraq just days before Christmas 2004. Since then I have posted about policy failures by Bush, some family issues, the injustice of RoadRage’s stop-loss which prevented his retirement, and other things as well. I also made the crucial decision to enter politics myself. No more am I apathetic about politics. No more do I think that politics doesn’t affect me. Political decisions affect everything from the amount of sales tax you pay for a bag of groceries to the condition of the streets you drive on to the amount of income tax you are subjected to. It affects all of us, everyday.

So now you know how my political awakening came about. Tell me about yours…

Dateline Washington: Darth Dick Cheney, Vice President of the United States, is in the hospital this morning after suffering shortness of breath. Sources have revealed that doctors at George Washington University Hospital were also checking for bruising of his neck. A high level Administration official has informed CNN that Cheney may have been choked by someone not happy with the VP’s views on torture.

Administration officials familiar with the VP’s condition have indicated that the breathing trouble could also be related to foot problems Cheney has had for some time. It seems that every time the Vice President speaks, his foot wants to place itself in his mouth.

On a related note, the Rev. Pat Robertson has indicated his belief that this is just God’s punishment for being one of those responsible for killing thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

This is parody. In case you couldn’t tell.