Pence: Baghdad Bazaar Is Like ‚Äö√Ñ√≤Any Open-Air Market In Indiana In The Summertime’
Snipers back at Baghdad market after McCain visit
On Iraq, Reporters May Be Missing Their Mark(et)
And so it went, up and down the street, in between tents and tables, squeezing past pedestrians to inspect the offerings in one booth after another, we milled around this marketplace in downtown Baghdad for more than an hour. I told reporters afterward that it was just like any open-air market in Indiana in the summertime. I didn’t mean that Baghdad was as safe as the Bargersville Flea Market; I just meant that that was what it looked and felt like‚Äö√Ѭ∂lots of people, lots of booths and a friendly relaxed atmosphere.
Man, I had NO idea that the flea market in Bargesville, IN was such a free fire zone. You’d think the locals would be up in arms over this threat to there safety, but in typical stiff-upper-lip Midwestern fashion, people just deal with it. Apparently, the idea of car bombs going off or suicide bombers detonating themselves amongs the cucumber vendors is not enough to keep the local shoppers from their appointed rounds.
It would seem that Pence fails to grasp the reality that those dying in Iraq at the hands of suicide bombs are people. Yes, they’re Iraqi, but they’re flesh-and-blood people, with families, loved ones, and lives they’d been trying to live before some nutjob wearing C-4 in his jockstrap blew himself and everyone around him up. Then again, if they were Americans, Pence would be apoplectic that nothing is being done to protect them. The victims are Iraqis, though, so it’s just a cost of business for the Republican war manchine, no?
Thankfully, at least some of Pence’s constituents are not so sanguine about the situation in the Shorja market:
“There’ve been no shootings or car bombings” at that market since it opened a few years ago, said Robin Gibson, assistant metro editor of the Star Press in Muncie. ‚Äö√Ѭ∂ “Maybe some overeager dogs jumping at people,” she ventured.
Avon Waters, a former features editor and writer for the Herald Bulletin in Anderson, the other relatively big town in Pence’s largely rural congressional district, said he never wore a flak jacket and “never felt afraid” when he spent a couple of recent years covering farmers markets in Madison County.
How Mike Pence could POSSIBLY compare the security situation at the Bargersville flea market to the market in Shorja simply defies explanation- particularly after 21 innocent people were executed the day after his visit. The last time anyone was executed at the Bargersville flea market was…well, never.
Yes, you can bet that shoppers winding their way through the vegetable stands in Bargersville never have to worry about dodging sniper fire while they’re trying to buy provisions for their family. The same can’t be said for the innocent people shopping in Shorja, especially since they don’t have the benefit of the security cloud that covered Pence’s visit to Shorja with John McCain.
You know, if you take away the flak jacket, the helicopters hovering overhead, and the armed troops…it looks JUST like Bargersville…only maybe a little bit dustier….
Jeebus, what a clueless DUMB@$$….
