lemme get this straight

I've heard a lot of rhetoric how the soldiers are in Iraq so we don't have to deal with terrorists back home. That line got into a lot of GOP campaign ads, fighting the terrorists overseas so we don't have to face them at home. So, help me understand this better:
1) stretch out and strain our troops in a foreign land.
2) underfund our local police and protection agencies.
3) leave refineries, chemical and nuclear plants underprotected.

Since 9/11 the only terrorist attacks on our soil have been domestic ones (the anthrax guy(guys?) was almost certainly homegrown). Domestic terrorism threats (clinic bombings, doctor and judiciary assassination, militia uprising) remain the form increasingly likely to happen on our soil. Nothing has happened here, but does anybody feel safer?

Finally, let me ask this: if it's acknowledged that the bulk of insurgents in Iraq are foreign-led cells, and that it's essentially proven that al Qaeda's presence in Iraq was nil before they came in after our invasion, and it's acknowledged that terrorists harm both military and civilian targets... did we send our troops from Afghanistan to Iraq in order to bait terrorists into accumulating in Iraq so they can't attack America? There already were terrorists in Afghanistan. More were likely to file in as a war stretched out there. Were we disinclined to fight them there? Or did we want to expose Iraqi civilians to daily attacks too? Or did we really want to turn our sons and daughters into bait? What? Our men and women in uniform are bait?
My cousin's wife (currently on maternity leave from the US Army) is not fucking bait!

dice are rolling, the knives are out

Wal-Mart falls short
sweet. on the not-sweet side, how many low paying jobs for already-desperate working families is this going to cost?

Wrapt In the Pale White Arms of Lovely Memory, We Hungered for a Forward Plunge

We ate grapes, cherries, plucked things with the sun in them. Then someone murmured memories of the taste of mussels (steamed in vermouth, fresh garlic, a dash of chili) and breathed little sculptures of language in our ears: "victory. victory." No, the chorus won't grow that quickly, we demurred, but there's plenty of room under the bridges. Let's go capture all the tiny refractions from the river for an hour, and feed them--just so--to the first lovely strangers we meet in the first open square just inside the gates of the city. I wanted to memorize Shams for him, proclaim wild gospels of friendship above the glass desert. I didn't though; couldn't let go that way, whirling into the unbroken horizon. Instead clung to my reminders: fallen grape leaves for steaming, her whispered words, a handfull of cherry pits.

I stared and stared at her, my jaw like drying gears, my heart the rising heads of birds in the nest. Your voice came at us as a white plume of water exploded upon the caked and trackless ground. Lifted eyes behind a veil of hair, then my wits so many snail shells among the sand and utterly lost in the sparks of sunlight caught there. Like unemployed gods burned their canvases, tossed cinders at the shoreline.

Were these any good once I'd seen those hands of his, the sweet dark ligaments beneath his shiny skin? oh. hanged man, remind me why I want this river, sketch something clearly in the air and let me follow. Then hold me in those arms and amaze my heart, scattered and opaque in all its pieces.

Won't you meet me there at the river, run down her banks with me and hide in the cool rich green of the leafy undergrowth? Kiss me then, find the contours of my ears and speak only small truths into my flesh. I'll reward you just so, my limbs transformed into wings at your touch. All these for those tiny reveries out of your hands, your mouth at my neck, my hands in your hair.

My love, he is a trail of gravel, hidden among the sharp emerald grasses of the riverside. Our fingers spill from spiders' webs and run gleefully free among the brown rootstocks of our bodies. I hear fire upon my hair and the flavor of her remembered through that spill of liquor from the crown of her head, the opening of our lips and those remnants. A torrent of flavors dry and hot, electric spices poured out on our food, our open palms, the cracks between the cobbles.