How Ironic

Last night I went to see and hear Frosty Troy, the publisher of the Oklahoma Observer. Frosty was his usual self; ebullient, sarcastic and sticking political stilettos into elected Democrats and Republicans. He had come to speak about Oklahoma history, though.

Frosty said that when Oklahoma was granted statehood, it held the dubious honor have having the largest KKK in the country...who's posterity were now in the state legislature where HB 1804 was passed and signed by our part time governor. HB 1804 should be known as the "Oklahoma Latino Eradication" bill, for it's mean and hateful language and draconian mandates.

Here's the irony from a story in the McClatchy newspapers earlier this week:

"FORWARD OPERATING BASE WARHORSE, Iraq — The sign taped to the men's latrine is just five lines:

"US MILITARY CONTRACTORS CIVILIANS ONLY!!!!!"

It needed only one: "NO IRAQIS."

Here at this searing, dusty U.S. military base about four miles west of Baqouba, Iraqis — including interpreters who walk the same foot patrols and sleep in the same tents as U.S. troops — must use segregated bathrooms.

Another sign, in a dining hall, warns Iraqis and "third-country nationals" that they have just one hour for breakfast, lunch or dinner. American troops get three hours. Iraqis say they sometimes wait as long as 45 minutes in hot lines to get inside the chow hall, leaving just 15 minutes to get their food and eat it.

It's been nearly 60 years since President Harry Truman ended racial segregation in the U.S. military. But at Forward Operating Base Warhorse it's alive and well, perhaps the only U.S. military facility with such rules, Iraqi interpreters here say.

It's unclear precisely who ordered the rules. "The rule separating local national latrines from soldiers was enacted about two to three rotations ago," Maj. Raul Marquez, a spokesman for the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Cavalry Division, from Fort Hood, Texas, wrote in an e-mail. That was before his brigade or the 3rd Stryker Combat Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division, from Fort Lewis, Wash., the other major combat force here, was based at Warhorse."

So our racial segregation mentality has metastasised all the way to Iraq; where, at the same time, our president is spreading democracy at the end of a gun barrel.

Priceless.