You can't leave.

All the plants will die!


This from today’s Boston Globe…

U.S. asks Japan to keep troops in Iraq

June 26, 2005

TOKYO --The United States has asked Japan to extend its troop deployment in Iraq beyond the scheduled expiration of the current mandate in December, a Japanese newspaper reported Sunday.

The U.S. State Department asked Japan's Foreign Ministry earlier this month to consider extending Japan's current mission, which is set to expire in December, the nationwide daily Asahi Shimbun reported.
…

The Japanese government had reportedly considered pulling out in December and switching to financial aid for other countries' deployments.

Defense Agency Chief Yoshinori Ono has said that the end of the year was being considered as a possible pullout date because that would coincide with the end of the U.N. mandate.

Late Saturday, Chief Cabinet Spokesman Hiroyuki Hosoda told a meeting of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in his home state of Shimane, western Japan: "We don't decide whether to extend (deployment) because another country tells us to do so. We'll make our own decision after studying how we can best contribute to global peace."

Some 500 Japanese soldiers are based in Samawah, part of a total deployment of 1,000 military personnel on a non-combat mission to purify water and repair infrastructure.

Man, Japan’s gonna miss all the Big Fun, ‘cause baby, this party’s just getting’ started!

Gonna miss all the many, many, many star-studded “Mission Accomplished” anniversary galas that we’ll get to have in the perfect, garrisoned safety of the Green Zone.

All the cool Iraqi petro-swag.

The employee discounts at the Iraqi National Museum gift shop.

The funnel cakes at the Falluja Renaissance Faire, which are to die for.

And frankly the weekly Gitmo Torture Charades (“OK, now guess if I’m being treated as an animal, a mineral or a vegetable?”) won’t be the same without them.

And what’s this about U.N. mandate ending in December?

I didn’t know that, and I read rather a lot.

Funny, you’d think that the impending expiration of the one rationale the Administration still clings to would be front page news. Not “All Missing White Girls All The Time”-news, but news nonetheless.

Still, it appears to be true. All the papers seem to be in order.

Now it’s also true that our pet Iraqi government has applied to the U.N. Security Council to extend the US occupation of their country based on an insurgent threat that is mysteriously simultaneously “in it’s last throes” (Cheney) and may go on and on for another dozen years or more (Rummy). And sure, that application has all the delightfully transparent and shamelessly incestuous stink on it that we have come to expect from the Halliburton-Cheney-Iraq-PNAC Big Inbred Fuck and Loot Hoedown.

Still, we all know how this Administration loves the ManDate.

They’re crazy for it.

Can’t stop talking about it.

Hell, every time Cheney is caught mauling a puppy on the South Lawn he stops just long enough to grin his blood-smeared grin into the camera and says, “Last November, the American People gave us a mandate to blah blah blah…”.

Then he springs into action, and with his powerful hind legs leaps the 30 feet between him and the hapless reporter and, with a single deathblow taught to him by G. Gordon Liddy himself, he pulls the reporter’s still-beating heart from his chest.

Then bays at the moon.

Then resumes with the puppy.

Which he can do, ‘cause he’s got a mandate. A big, swingin’ mandate.

Later he'll send the reporter’s widow a ham: And no, not because of some mandate, but because that’s just the kind of thoughtful guy Dick Cheney is.

A mandate-toutin’, puppy-torturin’, reporter-evisceratin’, ham-condolence-sendin’ kinda guy.

(See, he’s got a complicated mandate…and no one understand him but his lady. )

But remember, no one crosses Cheney.

No one takes sides against the family in public with Cheney.

And no one -- but no one -- leaves Cheney, see? No one!

Which is why, if I were Japan, I’d maybe think about moving.

And changing my phone number.

And for God’s sake, if you know what’s good for you, hide your puppies.