in case you missed it | The war is over-ish

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The war is over-ish

It’s a big day in Iraq. After seven and a half years of bloody combat in the streets, deserts and palm groves of Iraq, the end of “combat operations” was announced this week. On Wednesday Army Gen. Ray Odierno transferred U.S. military command to Army Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin.

And you know what that means, right? Don’t you? Neither do we, and neither does anyone else. The “combat troops” are coming home, ostensibly forever. A mere 50,000 American troops will remain in the country until the end of 2011, CNN reported. Their mission will be to train, assist and advise the Iraqis.

It should be noted that the Iraqis, the ones in charge and in the most danger of being brutally murdered as traitors once the Americans leave, don’t want the troops to leave. They aren’t ready to fight their own battles, and 50,000 troops won’t help.

The real question is this: What constitutes a “combat” soldier? If, by some strange, inconceivable chance, one of the remaining soldiers is attacked and he fights back, is he not in combat? And when the rest of the soldiers go out looking for the attacker and his jihadist friends, is that “training?” We suspect the difference is academic to the soldiers left to wait out the arbitrary end of the war in Iraq while they engage in the futile task of rebuilding the Iraqi army they were charged with decimating less than a decade ago.

A miner problem

We don’t think anyone expected officials in Chile to announce they’d found 33 trapped miners alive. But some of the joy and relief was soon squashed by the realization that the men, trapped 2,200 feet below the surface for a month following a collapse of their escape route, were way, way out of the reach of rescuers.

We’re no psychologists, but the next bit of advice given to the families of the men, who just recently discovered their dads and husbands were alive and relatively well, seemed a little absurd. The families were asked not to tell the men that it would be at least two months and probably four until rescuers could reach them.

Is it just us, or does that seem like information the trapped men could use? Granted, it wouldn’t be the easiest pill to swallow, but these men are made of some tough stuff, right? And what if knowing their stay will be a long one helps them prepare mentally? They have decisions to make and things to consider that no one on the surface could possibly imagine. Having the facts might help. The other option is to lie to them, over and over, until rescuers finally reach them. Somehow that doesn’t seem fair.

Poop in the coop There are so many things wrong with Wright County Egg facilities that picking out one seems a little silly. FDA inspectors found salmonella in nearly every conceivable place on the farm: in walkways, in chicken feed, on eggs and in the water used to wash the eggs. No, really. There were also maggots and flies, dead and living, “too numerous to count.” It’s a lot to take in.

But one detail struck us as, well, monumental: eight-foot-high piles of manure. The poop was stacked so high and in so many places that doors to the chicken houses could not be closed, allowing all sorts of critters access to our nation’s egg supply. Even the chickens had to walk through the mess to get to their egg-laying area.

Hillandale Farms, one of those under scrutiny, said it has already fixed most of the problems and is looking forward to returning to the egg-shipping business. Good for them, but we find it hard to believe they’ve truly removed 8-foot-deep piles of chicken poop in a way that wouldn’t cripple its ability to produce eggs. Trust whoever you want, but we’re going to substitute home fries for the breakfast omelet for a while.

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