More bad news from Baghdad

The front line news in every paper and news website was the story that 16 more soldiers died in Iraq on Sunday. The saddest part for me, was that they all were off on 2 weeks leave starting right then. Alex Brensen of the Times writes that, "The Army's experimental furlough program was introduced in September as a means to give a 'sanity check' to soldiers whose tours of duty in Iraq have been extended to a full year. "

Richard Stevenson asks the bigger question: "As Casualties in Iraq Mount, Will Resolve Falter?" I really wonder when the administration will get off its high horse and stop just defending their strategy with Orwellian rhetoric but actually fixing the problem at hand.

How about getting more troops in there with language skills (AKA Arab troops) and getting more intelligence folks looking for the guys that killing our soldiers not those long gone WMDs? Oh wait, you have no more Arab friends thanks to the rush to war. Oh I forgot too that the WMDs are the purported reason to go to war not "They tried to kill my Daddy!" Many of our troops have been killed while looking for their translator. Their lack of language skills makes them highly vulnerable to attack and deception.

Maybe the military should train its folks to learn some major languages they might need in a future war, like Arabic. No need to learn Korean, because they will all be wiped off the face of the planet if war breaks out. But Chinese for down the road (like 10-20 years) might be good for a fight over Taiwan. French and native African languages in case we have to do some peace keeping in Africa, that disaster of a continent (thanks Brits!)...You get the idea. Don't get me wrong, I think our troops are the best trained most highly skilled guys/gals out there.

But America lacks the desire/requirements that people learn a foreign language, and it hurts us internationally. Of course most people in the world might know or understand English, but that is not the point. It is a bit arrogant to expect them to, unlike the rest of the word who goes out and learns English and another foreign language in addition to their native tongue. Get with the program USA.