As you can tell there has been light posting here due to being out of the loop for the past two weeks but regular blogging will resume once again. A lot has actually happened the past two weeks.

I’m glad I had no access to TV or the internet the past two weeks so I didn’t have to listen to the congressional election nonsense. Hopefully sanity will return to the US media now that the election is over and the Democrats won. The results may actually be a good thing if the Democrats don’t turn the next two years into nothing but revenge politics. Now that they are in control of Congress they now have to play a constructive role on issues such as Iraq instead of doing everything possible to criticize and undermine.

I for one seriously doubt the Democrats will force a withdrawal of troops from Iraq like many of them and their opponents claimed during the election run up. A US troop withdrawal followed by the evacuation of the Green Zone that brings back images of the fall of Saigon would be political suicide for the Democrats. Americans don’t want to lose the war in Iraq they just don’t like the status quo where it appears the US is losing. So look for a bunch of talk to happen about changing strategies but I really don’t expect any grand change in strategy besides what the US is already doing, which is training Iraqis and handing over areas of responsibility when ready. If the politicians really want to help they need to get the Iraqi government to allow the US military to go after Sadr and his thugs.

A great thing that happened just this past week was that Secretary Rumsfeld was removed. It was about time. Rumsfeld actually did some good things shaking up the Pentagon and as Robert mentioned his USFK policies were very sound, but he has out lived his usefulness because he has pretty much alienated himself from the military leadership at the Pentagon. I think President Bush actually kept him around this long just because he didn’t want to be seen as caving into Democratic demands, but he definitely needed to go and the election results gave the President the cover he needed to get rid of him.

Also as Nomad pointed out, this blog was mentioned in the Korea Times in a rather badly edited article but thanks none the less to the author for mentioning this exactive duty soldier who operates the GI in Korea site.

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