Shipping Silly String to Iraq

That sounds like a great idea and a wonderful cause! Hat's off to this lady for her efforts!

Wow. At first I thought you were going to say the silly string was for fun and I thought that was stupid. But now that I know they can use it to help them, I think it's awesome! A few weeks ago outside a store a cubscout and mom were trying to get donations to send popcorn to Iraq. All I could think is, isn't there anything BETTER we could send them? Silly string is cool if it helps them, but popcorn seems lame. Seems like healthy foods or medicenes would be a better investment.

It's definitely very admirable on the mom's part, but the Silly String incident also reflects very badly on other aspects of the Iraq War, not the least of which is the necessity of the mom having to do something the Defense Department should be doing. During the run-up to "Operation Iraqi Freedom," which was authorized by a gullible U.S. Congress five years and one day ago, I truly believed the Bush Administration's claims that Saddam Hussein still had stashes of weapons of mass destruction hidden away somewhere and that something needed to be done. I didn't - and still don't - believe he had anything to do with 9/11, but I did think he was a possible - if rather reduced - menace to U.S. interests in the region. Now, of course, we know that there were no WMDs in Iraq, and that by disbanding the Iraqi army and police in 2003, the U.S. helped to create the current insurgency. For many Iraqi men, the army was their sole source of employment and social status, and by failing to co-opt them over to our side, the Cheney-Rumsfeld gang of neo-cons merely assured that ex-soldiers who knew where all the ammo dumps and arsenals were would go over to the resistance to fight the "invading crusaders." So, yeah, the mom is admirable, and so are all the military families, but what about US? What are we doing to support the men and women who are serving our country? What sacrifices are we being asked to endure by the government?

Wow! That's a great idea. Who can ever get tired of silly string and if it can save lives I say go for it!