I intended not to post anything right now. But when I came across this quote from Mississippi's Senator Trent Lott at Billmon's blog, I couldn't resist.
Ole Trent, you may remember, used to be Republican majority leader in the Senate until recently. Finally, his long association with white supremacist groups like the White Citizens Council caught up with him, after one Freudian slip too many at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday bash. Like a lot of Mississippi politicians, he's a graduate of Ole Miss Law School and was a cheerleader for the football team.
This is the military advice he offered on Iraq (my emphasis):
"Honestly, it's a little tougher than I thought it was going to be," Lott said. In a sign of frustration, he offered an unorthodox military solution: "If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens. You're dealing with insane suicide bombers who are killing our people, and we need to be very aggressive in taking them out."
Billmon's comment was, "I never realized you could major in genocide at Ole Miss."
Ole Trent, by the way, managed to avoid serving in Vietnam. As Joe Conason observes in his new book Big Lies, "The flag-flapping, ultranationalist Republican [Lott] had not only avoided the draft with student deferments, he had spent the early years of the Vietnam conflict waving pompoms as a cheerleader at Ole Miss."
Maybe the Pentagon shouldn't rush to take advice on counterinsurgency from Ole Trent.
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