Let's roll; hold the crescents

Now that U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) has managed to rid the Shanksville, PA, memorial to the Flight 93 victims of 9/11 of a crescent-shaped area of maple trees, I wonder what his next target will be. Crescent rolls? Crescent City, CA? The upscale Crescent Hotel in Dallas?

A more likely target, in theory, should be the new Iraqi flag (above). It's nice to know that a man - Tancredo - has so much dislike for the crescent when it manifests itself as a small forest of trees in a memorial, but he apparently doesn't have a problem with over 2,100 U.S. troops killed and over 15,000 U.S. troops injured while defending just such a crescent on the new Iraqi flag.

Many right wingers may be convinced that our brave young men and women are fighting for the good old Star Spangled Banner over in Iraq. Nope. They're fighting for the crescent that seems to have drawn so much ire from Rep. Tancredo. But is Tancredo or his Republican brethren going to demand a change in the Iraqi flag? Is he going to demand that we pull our troops out of a country whose flag depicts the "evil" crescent? Yeah, right.

The irony, not to mention the hypocrisy, drips like blood from a gaping flesh wound. I hope Tancredo is happy that he got his wish in Shanksville, while our troops continue to die in Iraq.