Good riddance

I'm so glad outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace, who hates gays, can have such a good time with Drunky McStagger during yesterday's farewell tribute.

With all due respect, General -- which is none -- fuck you.

UPDATE (5:46 pm 10/2/07): I'd just like to take a moment to elaborate on my oh-so-eloquent "fuck you" to General Pace.

Yesterday, he "warned" us that the issue of the war in Iraq was imbued with "personal venom" and that we cannot "vote our way out" of it.

As antiwar protesters demonstrated at the gate of Fort Myer, where the change-of-command ceremony took place, Pace said that democracy is strengthened by divergent views discussed "in a civil manner."

But, he said, "what worries me is that in some instances right now we have individuals who are more interested in making somebody else look bad than they are in finding the right solution. They are more interested in letting their personal venom come forward instead of talking about how do we get from where we are to where we need to be."

Excuse me, General, but do you not see the irony of your statement? Who is it that has been focused on making people look bad ever since the 2000 election? Hell, ever since 1994? How about ever since 1974?

You're a joke, General Pace. Exit stage right, and don't soil the uniform or disgrace our country anymore.

Separation of church and state? Not in Bush's America

One wonders what country Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thinks he is in when he cites "God's law" for his belief that homosexual activity is immoral.

"Are there wonderful Americans who happen to be homosexual serving in the military? Yes," he told the Senate Appropriations Committee during a hearing focused on the Pentagon's 2008 war spending request.

"We need to be very precise then, about what I said wearing my stars and being very conscious of it," he added. "And that is, very simply, that we should respect those who want to serve the nation but not through the law of the land, condone activity that, in my upbringing, is counter to God's law."

Anti-war protesters sitting behind Pace jeered the four-star general's remarks, prompting Committee Chairman Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., to abruptly adjourn the hearing and seal off the doors.

The hearing resumed about five minutes later in which Pace said he would be supportive of efforts to revisit the Pentagon's policy so long as it didn't violate his belief that sex should be restricted to a married heterosexual couple.

Lest anyone be deluded into thinking that the Bush crime syndicate believes in the Constitution, I'll remind you right now: they want to subvert the Constitution in every way and turn America into a fundamentalist theocracy, as hardline Christian as Iran is hardline Muslim. Put another way, the only difference in governance between Ahmadinejad's Iran and Bush's America is the deity they worship, not the fervor with which they worship nor the extent of their insistence that all citizens adhere to the same beliefs -- namely, theirs.

Gen. Pace's statement is not only abhorrent on its face, it's a sad, indeed tragic, indicator of just how far gone our government is. It will take years, probably decades, to undo the damage the Bush crime syndicate has inflicted on America in the last six and a half years. And the attitudes of people like Gen. Pace are perhaps the most injurious results of a series of heinous crimes against America.