Mess O' Potamia

That was the header on the Daily Show whenever they were going to talk about Iraq.

Of course the Assyrians are still around.  Google shows me four Assyrian churches in Chicago.  Christian of course, for some reason they didn't roll over when the big Moslim wave went through.  Remember how the first Iraq war started with shock and awe?  There were American reporters in Baghdad then waiting for the first bombings to come.  And who was up there on the rooftops along with the reporters?  Plastic Santas.  Omigod I thought, we are going to war with a country that also believes in Santa Claus

Remember Iraq?  Remember the Shias and the Sunnis and their respective neighborhoods and the elections?  I remember I knew the names of several of the presidents of Iraq, but I can't remember any of them now.  Went to the wiki and discovered that the last few have been from the national Kurdistan Party.  It turns out that the president is one of those ceremonial posts that is given to minor parties as a sop, and the real power resides with the prime minister.  Actually few of the names of the prime ministers rang much of a bell with me.  Well they all sound kind of alike, al this and el that,

I remembered the green zone though and that was where Trump spent his brief sojourn.  I don't know whether you can apply the rubric of knowing what he is doing or not knowing to Trump.  Clearly he knows nothing of the complexity of the situation, but on the other hand he knows what Trump wants at the moment and that is all that matters.  I don't like much having our troops willy nilly in the mideast, but this appears to be a case where we were getting a lot of bang out of a few bucks, and there is the matter of stabbing your allies in the back, leaves a bad taste, and makes others less willing to be your allies in the future.  Afghanistan I would make the best deal I could with the Taliban and get out, but it appears that Trump, the deal maker, wants to just get out and not bother to make any kind of deal.


Got myself one of those Ancestry kits, me and my sister made a deal where she gave me the kit and I got her something else because as brother and sister we have the same parents so there was no need for us getting two.  I've filled the little tube with spit and sent it off and now it will be six to eight weeks,  Oh, I think a lot of it is hokum, but I'm kind of curious about my mother's side of the family about which I know little,.