Howdy Pilgrim

Regime change is infectious--a militarily transmissible
disease, almost invariably fatal, so far, to any political party
or head of government so careless of hygiene as to have
had intimate relations with the Bush administration's
Mesopotamian misadventure
--Hendrik Hertzberg, New York Times (12/10/07)
__________

Speaking Tuesday with member's of his national security team and Iraq's Provisional Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), President Bush reportedly was pleased that "the PRT in southern Najaf has worked with the local government to build a modern airport to facilitate pilgrimages to that Shiite holy city."

So: Hard-earned U.S. tax dollars are going to build airports to allow Islamists to go to their local mosques. Now that is democracy in action. Fails on the side of separation of church and state, but for an administration looking for good news from a catastrophe in which almost none of their own benchmarks for success have been met, this suffices.

Ranger is proud that the U.S. government funds these upgrades to the Iraqi infrastructure to provide for these religiously-inspired jaunts. So much better than having the dollars go to, say, upgrading failed school districts in America.

This is how one goes about engineering a society safe for the likes of a Huckabee or a George W. Bush, one pilgrim at a time.