Here we go! Just as I predicted(along with about a million other conservatives), the Democrats are already pork barrelling bills just as they derided the Republicans for doing since 1996 and and breaking the promise the Dems made not to do it themselves while stumping for the last elections. Their fight against the "culture of corruption" and the promises to make "real changes" that would send America in a new direction and the "first hundred hour" plan have all left their old opponents caked with mud from the slingfest, but have done little else. The new war spending bill is laden with pork ranging from subsidies to Wisconsin dairy owners to relief for the California Strawberry industry. It is absolutely pathetic. They call for our withdrawl from Iraq(and you watch, eventually from the war on terror) unless they can squeeze a few hundred million out of a bill that would expand and extend that very war.

It is politics as usual so I am not syrprised, I just like to point out these things to those who actually believed the Dems would do anything they promised to do or that they would do anything that would make a significant difference in Americas direction, especially if it was going to keep them from dropping some jack into their constituencies, no matter who actually suffered for it, which in this case, will be our fighting forces. Where is all the outrage at pulling pork out of a bill that may keep vital material flowing to our fighters? Does anyone other than me remember the fingerpointing and namecalling that went on over the last few years about why our guys were short on body and Hummer armor? Well, I KNOW where that shortage will come from this time and it isn't the Republicans demanding anything. This will be in the lap of the left and I will be interested to see if any of the usual anti-porkers have anything negative to say about where this pork is going and why it is going there. My money is on "NO".

I wasn't impressed with the Republicans job of handling many of the issues I feel strongly about, but I even less impressed with the left beacuse of all their

saintly talk of making changes and so vehemently denying they were a part of the problems of the last twelve years. Politicians don't get re-elected by fighting for what they believe in, they get re-elected by spreading the wealth around their districts and voter bases and selling out to special interests. It has always been that way and it's not likely to change anytime soon and maybe, just maybe, Americans are starting to wise up to that. Maybe so much so that in the next election, we will see a boatload of new faces elected and say goodbye to the old school, back door political hacks. I can only hope.

Before the elections, I said that no matter who won, nothing was going to change for the better, but most likely for the worst, and it looks as if I am being proven correct in that assessment. Timelines, milk, cheese, strawberries, cow farts and all manner of pork are being attatched to the funding of the war, which only proves that the left are more interested in the status quo than the soldiers that thiss bill was designed to help. You want to pork out a bill, fine, it happens all the time, but let's pork out a Welfare spending bill or some domestic subsidy bill and leave the saftey, security supplying of our guys and gals and the theatre of war alone!

Again, there is nothing unusual about this situation, I am just tired of the left bashing the right for engaging in the same games they play. Double standards are rampant in Washington and that is just a fact, but that doesn't mean I have to like it or that I am not going to speak my piece about it. I predict that the right will get the house back in the next elections because so many swallowed the left's yakkity-yak hook, line and sinker and are already severely disillusioned with where things are going, which is the same direction they were already going...right into the crapper! I knew this was going to happen, but apparently many Americans didn't. So..I am betting another lunch that the voters displeasure with the left's smoke and mirrors show when the house comes up for bid next time.

I was 19 and unemployed, living back at home with my Mom and Stepdad in Tehachapi. I had no real plan for my future, I just knew I needed a job. I needed to get out on my own for real and not rely on family to, pretty much, provide me with a place to stay. One day my Mom showed me a full page ad in the Californian. It said "Southern Pacific Railroad is hiring signalmen"...yada-yada.."Apply at the state unemployment office". So I did. I didn't know what a signalman was, but I assumed he was the guy who hung off the caboose and waved the lantern as the signal to stop or go..or whatever. I had always liked railroad lore, enjoyed model trains and had bugged the guys on trains a couple of times as they sat on the tracks downtown(I would later learn that it was called the "Tehachapi Crossover"), but I was no big railfan or anything, just a curious kid.

A week or so after I submitted an application, I was called for an interview. It was the most bizarre interview I ever had. I came to Bakersfield and was directed to the old Signal office which, at that time, was on the north side of the yard along Kentucky St. I met with one of the Assistant Signal Supervisors, a guy named Gray Tisdale, who took me in the back room and started asking what were obviously random and unrelated questions. It went something like this..

GT: "So, how did you hear about the job"?

me: "In the paper"

GT: "Ahhh, do you know anyone who works for SP"?

me: "No"

GT "OK, what made you want to apply here"?

me: "I have kind of always liked railroad stuff..plus I need a job"

GT: "Ahhh, OK, um..do you have any questions"?

me: "Yeah, what's a signalman do"?

GT "OH..well, we install and maintain the signal systems the trains use, we take care of the crossings and stuff like that" (At this point I am totally lost. Trains use signals?)

me "So you don't ride on trains"?

GT: "Naw, we just make sure they don't have to stop at red signals"

me: "They have, like, traffic lights?"

GT "Well, no,,well, kinda..It's hard to explain until you get used to it" (BOY, was he right!)

me: "So what will I be doing if I get hired"?

GT "Most likely putting in the new signal system out by Palmdale"

me: "What kind of work is it"?

GT: "Well, putting alot of underground cable and wires, putting in cases and buildings. It'll involve alot of digging, but we have backhoes and plows. There isn't alot of actual physical labor involved anymore" (LIAR!!!)

me: "OK"

GT "So, it sounds like something you'd be interested in"

me "Sure, why not?"

GT "OK, well, we'll call you when we need you"

I walked out thinking I would never hear from the RR again. A week or so later I went to work in a Carbon Plant in Mojave. i HATED it. It was hard work and extremely nasty conditions, but it paid well and most of the guys there were cool. Just after the second week I worked there I was called into the HR office and was told my services were no longer required. To this day I haven't figured out why I got canned. He said it was because I wasn't punctual, but I was generally the firt one there in the mornings, so I figured it was someone I must have pissed off(ME?). This was on Wednsday, May 3, 1979. I was bummed because I lost a job I really needed, but not too bummed becaue the job stank! I went to Bakersfield the next day to start looking for another job. I was staying with my sister when I got a call on Friday morning. It was Southern Pacific and they wanted to know if I could be in Palmdale the following Monday! And that is how my career with the Railroad began. I showed up at the big warehouse SP had leased for the duration of the project, went in and met my foreman and some of the guys I would be spending the rest of my working life with, got a hardhat, some gloves, jumped in the gang truck and began my career working with history.

Now that I was a full fledged "Assistant Signalman" I learned that we would be installing the latest electronic signal control system, called PMTC(Pulse Modulated Track Circuit)on the "Colton Cutoff" which had been built in the late 60s as a short cut to the huge classification yard at West Colton over the Cajon Pass. When we arrived at the jobsite we all bailed out and I will never forget the first order I ever received as a railroad employee, "Hey! Grab a shovel"! That was the first of many times I was to have had a supervisor be less than forthcoming with me(remember the guy who said the RR didn't do much physical labor anymore? HAH!). But what the hell, I was 19 and in great shape, what did I care as long I got payed? It still beat working on a drilling rig.

We were upgrading to PMTC from train order territory which is a train control system in which "Extra" trains were added to regularly scheduled trains that were designated by timetable. Orders were handed out by operators at specified locations along the line. They also had all pertinenet information such as slow orders or work on tracks and all trains were expected to be ontime at each station along the way. Thats why Railroad approved watches were always the best timepieces. Railroad employees were required to have timepieces certified every two years until the advent of quartz movements and digital timepieces in the early 80s. Operators typed orders onto special paper and tied them into strings that were then attatched to a "v" shaped, hinged holder called a Train Order Stand. There were two holders on the stand, one for the engine and one for the caboose. As the train approached the station the Fireman would hang out the window and grab the orders as he passed from the upper holder, the Conductor did the same from the caboose in the lower holder(unless it was a "Crows Nest" caboose, then the operator would reload the upper holder before the caboose got there)and if either missed the orders, the train had to stop and either back up or have someone run the orders out to the train. So you can see why the upgrade made sense.

My previous jobs had been, for the most part, in the oilfield industry, and while that industry has it's own unique history, the jobs I held were very mundane. There was no connection to the history of the oilfields when you were hauling sacks of cottonseed hulls to the mud tank for eight hours or scrubbing the drawworks of a rig. The Railroad was different. You are always in some sort of touch with the history and operation of the industry, no matter what you are doing, even just digging a ditch. Although technology and progress are a big part of the railroad, Many things were really "old school" when I went to work there. Microproccessors were in their infancy in general applications at that time and the vast majority of signaling then was still relay logic. Locomotives were a decade away from the computer driven CRT monitor display cabs they enjoy today and most of the "dinosaur" generation of management were still in charge and fighting the electronic and safety revolution at every step.

It's almost odd that I am a history buff and a railroad employee, but not a railfan. In my experience with trains in my everyday life I find them noisy, dirty behemoths and there always seems to be one in my way when I need to get something done. It's not like the movies or TV where you jump on the tracks between trains and hope for the best. To foul the tracks(to be withing four feet of them)you have to aquire, from the dispathcer, positive on track protection of which there are a few different types, and if there is a train lined up withing 20 or so miles of where you want to work, you are not going to get that permission, so trains can be a real hinderance in getting my job done. I like to say the the railroad would be a great job if it weren't for trains! It's also an interesting note, I suppose, that in 27 years with the railroad, I have ridden the head end of a train twice. Once from Bakersfield to Tehachapi and the other from Yermo to Las Vegas. I rode a caboose once from Tehachapi to Bealeville and have ridden an AMTRAK once!

Not being a fan of todays railroad doesn't mean I don't love the history of the place and I own dozens of books on different railroads across the country. When traveling I always look for abndodned rail lines or empty roadbeds and then search until I find the history of that road. It's amazing to see what used to exist as compared to what exists today. Like teh auto indsustry, the railroads once boasted over one hundred different companies. Today there are five major railroads in America; Union Pacific, Burlington Northern-Santa Fe, Norfolk Southern, CSX and Conrail. There are about a dozen short line operators today who run the lines the old railroads built and developed. You can say what you like about how the railroads made their bones by stealing and killing(and you would be right!), but without them, America would never have become what it is today. They blazed the trail for the development of the west beginning in the 1840s and are still the major transporter of goods across the country.

Back to the history thing! Back in the SP days, our bosses were called "Supervisors" as opposed to UP's "Managers". I always felt that "Supervisor" had a more stoic ring to it where my job was concerned than the more sterile and white collar sound of "Manager". My first Supervisor was a man named Bill Stokoe and he was a rabid railfan and the most complte railroad buff I have ever known. His expertise was in the signal history and he had a yard full of completely restored and functioning signal apparatus'. Entering his front gate on the corner of 'F' and Hayes St. in Tehachapi, you could get a clear or approach to diverging route from the two aspect colorlight at the gate to the Facing control semaphore signal halfway to his porch. His backyard had every manner of wayside signal and crossing warning system you could think of. When I first met him I was young and cocky and my primary interest in the railroad was as a means to support my bachelorhood and party animal lifestyle. His talk of history and railroad lore only made me think of him as a geek, which I would find out in the years to come, was a total misconception!

When I went to work out on the Colton cutoff, I really wan't working with much history as it was a relatively new line. Then one Saturday Bill asked if I wanted to go down and work on getting some trucks unstuck after a severe storm in the Soledad Canyon on the original line from San Francisco to Los Angeles. On that line, at a place called "Lang" which is now part of the city of "Canyon Country" there is a monument along the tracks commemerating the driving of the "Golden Spike" on that line. It was a great moment in Californias histroy, but most people as unaware of it today as I was in 1980 when I first saw it. At the time of that lines completion in 1876, it boasted the longest tunnel in the country at 6,996 ft. There were four other tunnels on that line when it was completed, but only two are still in use due to line changes over time. Bill was the one who told about all this history as we drove down from, and back to, Tehachapi, where I also lived at the time. I was starting to soften to this man who reminded me, till the day he died, of John Wayne.

In June of 1980 my job on the Palmdale gang was abolished and I "bumped" a job on the Tulare gang(I bumped a guy named Phil, who is today, a very good friend and co-worker)and went to work installing, for the most part, crossing warning systems on the branch lines in the ag areas between Fresno and Tulare and Coalinga and Porterville. It was fascinating to begin to understand the extent of the branch lines that were put in in the San Joaquin Valley just to serve the agricultural needs of the area. There was once a line called the "Visalia Electric" that ran trolleys as well as trains all over the central valley. Most of those lines are gone today, but there are remnants of them everywhere. We put crossings in in Exeter, Reedly, Porterville, Clovis and Visalia before I was laid off in August of 1980.

It was really not a big deal because I had been, in reality, a laborer the year and a half I was there and I could get a job like that anywhere. I workd driving trucks for a year and a half, then ran a backhoe in the oilfields. I was miserable in the "patch" again and I had pretty much forgotten about my railroad job when in January of 1984 I came home from work and my wife told me I had a message from some guy named Ray. That Ray was Ray Freeman(who very recently passed away)an assistant Siganl Supervisor in Bakersfield and he wanted to know if I wanted to come back to work. I didn't even ask what or whewre, I just said yes. The job was back on the Tulare gang and went back to work on January 24th, 1984 as a full fledged Signalman under a guy named Randy Taylor, who is my Manager today! I always say that this was the day I really started my career as a signalman.

SP still operated the branch lines then and we were doing the same thing I had done three years earlier, installing crossings on teh branch lines. I worked with a guy named John McIntyre who was my age and another big rail buff like Bill Stokoe. I learned much about history from him too. During this time I also worked, for the first time, with the huge rail and tie gangs fixing the signal equipment they tore up changing rail and ties(they STILL do that, I just don't have to follow them anymore!). Watching the modern equipment they utilize for todays projects, I can't imagine what it must have been like to have to do all that by hand the way the original builders and track crews had to back in the day!

During this time I really began to apply myself to learning all I could about my job, as my single days were behiund me and I needed to start thinking about a long term career. In May of 1984 a job opened up on the Tehachapi "peanut" gang(a term for a two or three man gang with no foreman). I bid the job and was awarded it. This began my time as an apt pupil of Bill Stokoe, who was the Supervisor in Tehachapi. We were a bit unsure of each other at first, but as he realized I was willing to learn and I realized he was willing to be patient, we struck a friendship that would see him mentor and protect me through some of the rough spots in my career and personal life. When Bill was dying of colon cancer in 1999, I asked him why he did so much for me. He said, "Well, something just told me you were worth saving". Considering all the reasons he had to get rid of me, I can honestly say that I owe my career to him. Bill was one of those men who would go to the ends of the earth for you if he liked you, if not, you were on your own and he DID play favorites, and for some reason, I became one of his "fair haired children". It seemed I could do no wrong. As I learned from him about signaling, I also learned about railroad history. It didn't seem so geeky now and I began reading anything on RR history I could find.

I began to learn, through Bill and books, that I was very much in the middle of railroad history working in Tehachapi. The line over the 4,000 ft pass between Bakersfield and Mojave is rich with histroy of all sorts. I don't know about now, but in the 80s it was the busiest single track mainline in the world as it serviced two major railroads(it still does). It's average 3.2% and maximum 3.4%(between Cable and Marcel)grades make it one of the steepest standard gauge roads in the world. The world famous Tehachapi Loop, that gains seventy seven feet of elevation in 4,400 ft. of track by looping around a hill and crossing over itself, was an engineering marvel when it was completed in 1876. It's still a pretty impressive sight. I was amazed at the people who came to see the Loop from all over the world. There are people who spend their entire vacations there! You can go online and watch realtime streaming video of the place! All over the "Mountain", as the line is called, there are remnants of the history of the railroad. The huge concrete blocks the watering towers for the steam engines used to sit on, the old "STOP" blocks(gone now)to tell engineers where to stop so their renders were under the spouts, abandoned tunnels and roadbeds from line changes, and a couple of "dumps" where they used to throw out broken dishes from teh passenger trains. I have found the pieces with the SP logo still intact and through Bill's contacts, had them made into jewelery(which unfortunately, my first wife has).

Even though I think trains are an intrusive cacaphony in my workdays, there is nothing quite like being in close proximity to a set consist of engines pulling an eight thousand ton train up the grade under full power at 20 mph. I think the only thing that would comparably shake the ground is a Top Fuel dragster! One of the other unique sounds of the railroad is the ear splitting squeal of steel wheels grinding steel rail to dust in curves. I swear it makes your ears ring! Working there gives me access to places that most people will never see, like the siding at "Cliff". So named for its perch on the edge of the mountain 1,000 feet above Tehachapi Creek a few miles above Bealeville and the half mile stretch between tunnels seven and eight between Cliff and Rowen that is inaccessible except by foot, train or hi-rail vehicle. In the spring it is truly one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen with the green grass covering the surrounding mountains and the waterfalls down in the creek a thousand feet below. It is also, when no trains are around, one of the most serene places I have been.

I have been an assistant signalman on a huge construction gang in Palmdale, Ca., A Signalman, Lead Signalman, Gang and Maintenance Foreman there. I spent time in Tehachapi on the gang covering an "extra" gang that changed out or transposed rail every day back before the time of continiously welded rail. Transposing was when one side of the rail was worn from the trains and they would swap the rail from the right to left sides and let it waer that side out before changing it out. I was the Tehachapi Maintainer for a few years, maintaining and troubleshooting from Cameron Canyon to Keene. I have been the Lancaster Maintainer with a district from Mojave to Palmdale. I have been a Foreman on a traveling gang that ranged between Fresno and the Cajon Pass and I am now a Maintenance Foreman who, at one time had a territory from Bakersfield to Cajon Pass and from Dagget to Las Vegas. I currently work from Bakersfield to Merced. It has been an interesting and challeging career(in more ways than one!), one that I have alternately loved, hated and been indifferent about, but through it all, I have enjoyed working with history.

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Arguing affects me differently at different times for different reasons and it flows that way with no rhyme or reason. I guess it's just the way it is. Sometimes I enjoy it, as I do here when there is a lively debate on this, that or the other issue that challenges my knowledge, intellect and opinions. Sometimes, while at work or on a ride, I actually think about the storms some issues create here and on other sites and get that tingly feeling in my gut as I form replies in my mind to what I know will be said. Sometimes I like to argue because I am in my a$$hole mode and am eager to pick a fight with anyone who feels like going at it, and I don't care if I am right or wrong or whether I win or lose, I just want to argue.

Other times though, I just don't feel the passion in it. Whether it's a debate here, an argument at home or at work, I just don't have it in me to make the effort. I sometimes seem to have enough irons in the fire that another argument just bogs me down or something in my life has just taken the fight out of me, and I seem to be in that mode now. Arguing just seems to stress me out and stress is something I can do without more of right now. I have stress in spades and don't need another dose, especially from, for the most part, faceless antagonists. I'm not sure that I can point to any one thing that has me in this mode, but I know it's there and who am I to question my inner self?

I am sure an item will crop up that will compel me to post, but I will most likely, not return to to debate opposing views although I will read them. I welcome people to duke it out among themselves over what I have to say, but at least for awhile, I just don't feel like getting into it until this passes. It is obvious that as we debate across tables here that we are not going to change one anothers minds on much of anything, but it is usually fun to try, but right now, it's not fun for me.

So, before I am labeled a "hit and runner", I thought I would explain myself to my friends, foes, supporters and detractors. Feel frre to knock eahc other out in my absence and I'll be back for you to kick around soon enough.

It seems that the insurgency is alive, well and growing in Afghanistan, just as I have been saying it was and would all along. While the anti-war and anti-Bush crowd have been distracted by all the crap in Iraq, they have(again as I said they would)lost focus on the war on terror and now it's time to face the music.

I have contended since all the hubbub in 2003 over going onto Iraq, that the insurgents(who we called 'terrorists' before that became politically incorrect)would go wherever we were fighting terrorism from wherever they lived(like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, just to name a few of our "buddies" over there)to take up arms against us. Thay have now succeeded long enough in distracting the politicians and bleeding hearts here the states that their numbers have had time to grow into a large enough force to take the fight to us in Afghanistan as well as Iraq. Now, here we are, right where we have placed ourselves by showing our enemy that we are more concerned with fighting each other than we are with fighting them. They sit back and laugh as they watch us on CNN taking about "diplomatic solutions" to the war on terror, and they're not laughing WITH us, They're laughing AT us.

Every time a member of Congress or some other Beltway Buffoon speaks out against the war it emboldens our enemies. Our uncertainty is dividing us and uniting them. They have a much better understanding of the damage politics plays in this war than the average American politician, Bush hater, paecenik or bleeding heart seems to have. Our enemy has no political agenda(beyond the fact that Islam IS their politics)they just want us dead or converted and they understand that we are afraid to kill them even as they celebrate killing us. I don't like that. It makes me a coward by association. It generalizes Americans, and even though I only know a very few who think we are doing the wrong thing, the media never show folks like that because it doesn't make good copy. The American politicians are only interested in votes and keeping their party at the apex of power and seem to have little or no actual interest in winning this war. So afraid are they of alienating a voting base that they are willing to sacrafice our troops and belittle their efforts in pursuit of their agendas, and today, I speak of BOTH parties.

It sickens me to see our troops die knowing that(thanx to CNN and the other media dipsticks)their lives mean nothing more to Washington than votes and nothing more to anti-war boors than stats to throw at politicians who will then cower like whipped puppies so people who have their own agendas can gloat and say, "See, our anger WAS righteous"!

The war on terror is on the verge of being lost because so many people refuse to accept the fact that they are at WAR with us, and not just trying to get us to go home. We, as Americans are in grave danger because our enemy knows us better than we do. In WWII, Hitler was unsure of what he was up against. The terrorists are absolutely ceratin what they are up against and it is not the same country that Hitler had to fight and that playe into their hands very well. They know America better than Americans do.

While we sit in our living rooms thumbing our remotes at our big screens and scratching our fat asses, the big picture becomes muddled for us while it becomes clearer to our enemy. If people are upset about the war in Iraq, I say "Wait till they are fighting it here".

I would have voted in 1980 when I was twenty but I was probably drunk, stoned or otherwise engaged, so the first election in which I voted was the 1985 Presidential election. I wasn't really into politics but I understood the importance of keeping Ronald Reagan in offin at such a cricial time for America and every majority in every state but Minnesota(Mondale's home state)agreed with me.

I wasn't really a righty or a leftie back then. Starting a family, doing alot of moving to keep up with my job, partying as much as I could get away with and trying to stay out of trouble left little time to take a serious interest in anything outside my little world. Soon enough though, through listening to others arguing at work and in the bars over politics and world events I began paying closer attention to what was going on and figuring out what made both parties tick. In an era before FOX, CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN, and the internet I had very few options when it came to keeping track of the goings on in the political arena, but even with so little info about available back then I began to see how easily the liberals were distracted from the big picture by "Shiny Objects". It always seemed they were so ready to jump at some gaffe on the right that they lost sight of the real problems. It doesn't seem as if that has changed much.

In 1984 the Cold War was really hitting its stride and it was obvious we needed strong leadership with an eye to the future of America and not to a party or a special interest and Reagan provided that. The very survival of America was at stake and Reagan had a grip on that fact and wasn't interested in compromising our future in the name of headlines and a few votes. He wanted to ensure that America not only endured, but emerged victorious.

During the Cold War it was clear who and what our enemy was. There was a government with an appointed leadership that operated from a center of power in Moscow. They had a standing military with clear cut objectives and and headquarters. All of these things made it easy to identify who and what we were up against and who we would engage in combat should that situation arise and that made it easier to focus on the big picture with regard to the USSR, even to the left who generally opposed the president.

Todays war on terror is no such animal. The invasion of Iraq began with an identifiable enemy to engage and clear cut objectives for our military to acheive, and the majority of the liberal members of congress were behind the war, no matter what their selective memories tend to make them say today. America devestated the Iraqi military and wiped out the leadership of the country with little trouble because we knew exactly who and what we were fighting and we did it with few losses compared to the gains we made from a military standpoint.

Enter the insugency. This is not an enemy with a centralized government or an army protecting a specific territory. They don't wear uniforms and are not easily identified, but it IS the enemy and we are at war with them. This is no longer the war against Iraq, it is the war on terror, it is just being fought on another front now. You can say we opened this can of worms, but it was inevitable. The timing may have been ill advised, but it is now what it is and it is littered with shiny objects. That fact has probably played into the hands of those actually prosecuting the war a few times, but more often it simply distracts our forces from being able to do what needs to be done. Take abu-Graib. I am sure that while the left and the media were distracted by a couple of MP's in a prison full of grunts for six months, the people who know how to get information out of people were doing so with prioners who actually had knowledge in some bunker(or whatever)the media and the anti-war crowd(is there a difference?)missed while they were focused on that shiny object.

What is a sacraficial lamb here and there if it takes the focus off of what really needs to be done? I am always amazed at the arrogance of the media and the liberals who think they actually know what is going on everywhere at all times or that they will find out if they make some noise chasing shiny objects. If the powers that be decide we don't need to know something, we are not going to know it. The media and their obsession with bad news is, I am sure, as big a help as a hinderance to the people tasked with trying to get things done by unwittingly dangling shiny objects in front of thosew who would politicize our war efforts for a little short term attention.

Nobody, not even the left, wants America to lose the war on terror, but so many seem unwilling to fight it when the realities of such an undertaking become evident. Had the media been allowed the freedom they enjoy today during WWII, that conflict may well have been lost. When casualties begin mounting in Afghanistan or wherever else the war takes us, will the left lose its will to fight there too? Right now they seem willing to do what needs to be done, but with all due respect to the forces fighting and dying there, Iraq is, right now, another shiny object in the war on terror and the terrorists know it all to well. When that problem is solved, one way or the other, we will be purused by the insugents wherever we fight against their radical bretheren and that would have happened whether or not we ever went into Iraq.

These people aren't interested in us simply leaving Iraq, or even the middle east all together, they want us wiped from existence and that includes every man, woman, and child who doesn't come to believe in their twisted view of Islam, and that fight will eventually lead them back to our shores should we quit the fight over there because we paid too much attention to too many shiny objects.