My God, we started our Saturday morning bike ride at 6:30 and\u00a0were toast by 8:00, with a few miles still to go.\u00a0 But we gutted it out to the end, then sat outdoors . . . albeit under patio umbrellas . . . at our local coffee shop.\u00a0 My one concession to the heat was\u00a0drinking iced latte rather than my usual cup of coffee.\u00a0 As I write it’s somewhere above 105 degrees Farenheit.<\/p>\n
At the coffee shop, we bumped into a friend from our neighborhood and sat down with him.\u00a0 He happens to be the guy who put in our new air conditioner a couple of years ago, and even though we had a good visit, I\u00a0pray our encounter wasn’t an omen.<\/p>\n
So what did we do when we got home?\u00a0 We (that would be the royal “we,” you are to understand) put away the bikes, cleaned up the patio, picked up dog poop, did the chemicals in the spa,\u00a0refilled the bird feeders, put charcoal in the smoker . . . and we have so far (it’s 4:00 PM now) spent more time outdoors than in.\u00a0 I’m smoking a side of ribs and two chicken halves.\u00a0 It’s going a little slower than I thought it would, but boy does it smell good.\u00a0 While the meat finishes smoking, I’ll start heating up beans and boiling corn on the cob.\u00a0 Company’s coming over later to help us eat, and I hope someone brings watermelon.\u00a0 It’s a watermelon kind of day.<\/p>\n
A hot watermelon kind of day . . . not a day to get too fired up about things, but . . . I had an interesting\u00a0discussion with a hashing<\/a> friend a couple of months ago.\u00a0 This man, educated and intelligent, a former US Air Force officer and recently retired airline pilot, expressed to me the interesting belief that the men who hihacked and then flew airliners into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon were Iraqi members of Al Qaeda, and that Saddam Hussein was Osama bin Laden’s co-mastermind.\u00a0 Yes, he believes just that, and consequently\u00a0believes our invasion of Iraq was righteous and that nothing we dish out to Iraqis can be severe enough.\u00a0 There’s no talking to him on this subject . . . well, you can talk to him, but he won’t hear you.<\/p>\n Of course, during the Bush\/Cheney\/Halliburton administration’s preparations for invading Iraq, we heard our leaders say, over and over, that\u00a0there was a connection between Osama and Saddam.\u00a0 After the invasion, when the insurgency started,\u00a0our leaders began saying we had to “fight them there” so we didn’t have to “fight them here.”\u00a0 Pretty soon\u00a0our leaders\u00a0were talking about fighting a group called “Al Qaeda in Iraq.”\u00a0 Now they’re simply talking about fighting “Al Qaeda.”\u00a0 In Iraq.\u00a0 In other words, they’re now calling\u00a0Iraqi insurgents Al Qaeda<\/a>, and the media seems to be going along with it.<\/p>\n You would think educated, informed people . . . never mind the media . . . would see right through this shit.\u00a0 What was an insurgency is still an insurgency, and although there are militant factions inside Iraq that have recently incorporated the words “Al Qaeda” into their names, the real<\/em> Al Qaeda, and its leaders, are elsewhere . . . in Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and soon again Afghanistan . . .\u00a0presumably planning\u00a0new attacks on the USA and the\u00a0West.\u00a0 Nothing we’re doing in Iraq has anything to do with that, and, should Al Qaeda be on the verge of another attack,\u00a0nothing we’re doing in Iraq will prevent it.\u00a0 Surely everyone\u00a0understands that.<\/p>\n And then I remember my friend, the\u00a0administration’s ideal citizen.\u00a0 Sad to say, many educated people choose not to be informed, and not only don’t<\/em> see right through the shit, can’t get enough of it!\u00a0 For all our talk of freedom, rugged individualism, and questioning authority, many of us are happy to swallow whatever those in authority say.<\/p>\n Now I know US special operations forces are risking their lives in other parts of the Middle East, going after the real<\/em> Al Qaeda.\u00a0 We don’t hear about that, and we shouldn’t.\u00a0 Covert ops don’t work if they aren’t covert.\u00a0 And I wish them all success and hope some day soon to see Osama bin Laden’s head on a pike, but I worry that Bush and Cheney’s sideshow in Iraq is using up the resources and support we need for the real battle against terrorism, the real battle against Al Qaeda.<\/p>\n Yeah, I guess I am a little fired up, even though it’s a hot day.\u00a0 Question authority, people, and think critically.\u00a0 Don’t believe everything you hear, and whatever you do . . . get outdoors and smoke some ribs!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My God, we started our Saturday morning bike ride at 6:30 and\u00a0were toast by 8:00, with a few miles still to go.\u00a0 But we gutted it out to the end, then sat outdoors . . . albeit under patio umbrellas . . . at our local coffee shop.\u00a0 My one concession to the heat was\u00a0drinking 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