Michael at Musing’s musings called his post, Six years on, while Eric Alterman at Altercation added a flourish with his post, Six years on …

Michael’s is a prose exposition, while Dr. A’s is a list, but the questions and contradictions are there and worth reading.

And while you are contemplating what you find, remember the anthrax mailings. They were after 9/11; they were never solved; they cost billions to guard against; and they are the reason it takes forever for mail to reach Congress. What did they do, enact a trademark restriction in the USA PATRIOT act that says Acts of Terrorism™ can only be made by al Qaeda^®?

The server change wasn’t the only distraction I have been dealing with for the last week, just the most visible on the ‘Net.

I’d like to spread around some congratulations for various milestone events that I noted, occasionally after the fact, but haven’t acknowledged:

Jack Cluth has been at it for 6 years over at People’s Republic of Seabrook and Elayne Riggs is just past her fifth blogiversary™ at Pen-Elayne.

The proprietors of Fallenmonk and Mad Kane as well as Jillian of skippy the bush kangaroo have managed to get a year older while I wasn’t looking.

Time varies. Cute kittens become annoying cats overnight, but the Hedgemony is creeping towards its metamorphosis to dust. It seems like they have been here for a century and they were the real Y2K problem that we should have been paying attention to.

First, every one of these “support the troops,” “you can’t say anything bad about people in uniforms,” clowns needs to read Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling’s Armed Forces Times article, A failure in generalship and take a hint – flag officers aren’t the troops.

Review what happened to Lieutenant General John Riggs and General Eric Shinseki when they gave their honest opinions about what was going on while they were still serving officers, and you come to the obvious conclusion that there isn’t a single honest flag officer [general or admiral] on active duty. You toe the political line or you are out. That is the Rumsfeld Department of Defense – honesty will be punished, integrity will not be tolerated.

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Things seem to be back to normal after about 22 hours of downtime.  The course of true love and server moves never goes smoothly, but it seems to be done.

As Kevin Drum noted in Double, Double, Toil And Trouble, the escalation surge was all about Baghdad. The number of troops was doubled in Baghdad to bring the city under control so that the political process could go forward.

With twice as many troops and 800,000 fewer residents, the effects on Baghdad were minimal, and there has been no political progress.

The only “bright spot” during the reporting period is Anbar province. But what happened there has nothing to do with the surge or American strategy. In point of fact, arming the Sunni tribes has probably extended and made more violent the civil war and made a political resolution less likely.

Troops will be pulling out in the Spring no matter what because there are no replacements for them. The cupboard is bare, and there are no reserves if the Horn of Africa should explode or there is a major problem in Afghanistan.

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September 11^th, 2001

On September 11^th, 2001 approximately 3,000 people died and the individual most responsible is still at large – why?

In the intervening six years we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, trampled on peoples rights, created huge new government bureaucracies, and can’t respond as well as the third world to a natural disaster.

Richard Clarke: “Your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard. But that doesn’t matter, because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness.“