Dave and Blarney

Blarney: Did you hear the latest out of Iraq?

Dave: Do you mean the news from Bakuba? Yes, that is just wonderful news.

Blarney: Bakuba? Where is that? No, I mean from Haditha. You know, how the US Marines murdered a bunch of civilians. It is just awful.

Dave: OK, let's take that one at a time. The incident to which you refer occurred back in November. It is hardly "the latest". Second, it is still under investigation. It has not been established that the Marines did anything wrong. They were responding to an attack which began with an IED and were under fire from at least one of the buildings.

Blarney: Well, John Murtha is a former Marine and he says they are guilty. Anyway, what about Bakuba?

Dave: The coalition tracked down and killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. They hit his unsafe house with two 500-lb bombs. They also raided 17 locations after they knew Zarqawi was dead and got information leading to another 39 locations, which they also raided. They found several weapons caches and more intelligence.

Blarney: Yeah, but bin Laden is still at large.

Dave: Yes, but the coalition got Zarqawi by a tip from the Iraqis. They even had inside information.

Blarney: Well that would be because some al-Qaida dude wanted to move up. And worse, now Zarqawi's a martyr. The whole thing in Iraq just turned really sour. I tell you, it's a quagmire -- worse than Vietnam. And did you hear about Ann Coulter attacking a bunch of 9/11 widows?

Dave: Are you referring to the 'Jersey Girls'? They are four, count them, four widows. How many 9/11 widows are there total?

Blarney: Er, I don't know.

Dave: Well, how many people died in that attack?

Blarney: Somewhere around 3,000.

Dave: OK, suppose only one third were married. How many widows would that be?

Blarney: You can't just make an assumption like that. That is a trick question.

Dave: [sigh]