Dementia at the Palm Beach Post

I pick on Post editorials everyday. Its very easy to do with the whacky thinking of Randy Schultz and his crew. They have already earned two Knucklehead awards towards the 2006 competition. If I gave one for every silly editorial at this paper, I'd never give anyone else an award.

Today's Iraq editorial is as bad as it is hysterical. Its titled High bill for re-building. It starts-

Why don't Americans hear all the good news coming out of Iraq? Because sometimes it isn't safe to report the good news.

It isn't safe? Military bloggers stationed in Iraq have been reporting good news for over two years. Its a hell of a lot safer in West Palm Beach than Baghdad.

So the editorial starts off sounding dumb. It gets worse plus it never returns to explain why it isn't safe to report good news.

The United States expected that $18.4 billion allocated to rebuild Iraq would result in lots of good news. The Washington Post reports that since payouts started two years ago, 3,600 projects have been completed or soon will be. Those include schools, clinics, water systems and roads. On a recent day, 865 U.S. reconstruction projects were ongoing.

Unfortunately, protecting work at all those projects required 200 missions that day. Officials have been reluctant to draw attention to completed projects because doing so only would make them prime targets for insurgents. And when saboteurs knock out electricity or water to a project, contractors often don't restore service because they know it shortly would be knocked out again. It's cheaper and makes more sense, they say, to wait until times are more stable and restore it once.

The result is that security costs -- which no one anticipated before the invasion or in the early days of the war -- have consumed up to a quarter of the money that was supposed to rebuild Iraq. In addition, billions of the original allocation have been diverted to train Iraqi forces, build judicial facilities and conduct Saddam Hussein's trial.

I just can't understand the whacky thinking here. Terrorist are destroying construction projects and then the Post complains that money is being diverted to train Iraqui forces? Aren't trained Iraquis going to help protect these projects. Apparently the Post editorial writer has dementia, they forgot what they wrote two paragraphs earlier.

Almost every day I get to read editorials like this. Do you now know why I'm a masochsit? I pay $45 for three months delivery of the Post to my house.

Open Post- Basil's Blog, Wizbang, Bright & Early, TMH's Bacon Bits, Uncooperative Blogger,