Current Commentary, Slings And Arrows

The U.S. Is A Known Historical Supporter Of Terrorism…

2008-03-21T10:15:00.000-05:00

An editorial in The Kansas City Star states that the U.S. is a "known historical supporter of terrorism in Pinochet's Chile, Batista's Cuba and Rios Mont's Guatemala."

Why do Americans think they deserve a pass?

Admiral William Fallon

2008-03-13T16:10:00.001-05:00

As an outspoken military family member who has unique and strong opinions, I regret the resignation of Adm. William Fallon. Despite the recent downturn in violence in Iraq, I don’t see how anyone could say that the rest of the way will be a cakewalk, and Afghanistan is far from a conclusion, as well. I don’t consider his comments to be that contentious. It was fear and blind patriotism that got us to this place and a man who has served his country with such honor and distinction should not feel pressured or compelled to resign for speaking his mind.

Republicans - Single-Minded or Just Simple-Minded?

2008-03-13T14:00:00.000-05:00

John McCain says we should stay in Iraq until the terrorists have been defeated. Has it ever occurred to the Republicans that maybe “al-Qaida in Iraq” would stop targeting innocent Iraqis if the U.S. were no longer there? They were not there before we invaded. Have the Republicans ever taken notice of the many “enemy combatants” that have been released from Guantanamo Bay without any explanation, whatsoever? It was recently revealed that the U.S. used the British outpost, Diego Garcia, for refueling during two “extraordinary rendition” flights, one of the captives of which has also been released. Are the Republicans unable to comprehend that this may mean that these people are innocent? Bush refuses to ban certain torture techniques. The “liberals” are not against torturing terrorists so much as they are against torturing innocent people. Are the Republicans single-minded or just simple-minded in their quest to do whatever it takes to make themselves feel “safe”?

Boeing And The Air Force Contract

2008-03-13T13:59:00.000-05:00

Going to war with the army you have means deciding to start a war without enough troops, armor or the right equipment, even without a plan for the aftermath. Bureaucratic delays meant lost lives when a vehicle designed to protect against IEDs was deemed too expensive. I was very upset to hear they were sending a new helicopter gunship - but without the gun and without the ability to land safely in the event of engine loss - but the violence has subsided and I have not heard any bad news. If the new Air Force contract was based on cost alone, they had better forget it; if it is a better product, put a sock in it.

Anthony H. Cordesman And Iraq

2008-03-13T13:57:00.001-05:00

Anthony H. Cordesman makes some fine points and I might even agree with him if he, unlike every other war supporter before him, would go so far as to actually come straight out and demand that the American people step up and make the sacrifices necessary to attain the success of which he speaks. I think somehow the American people have the idea about our all-volunteer army that they can just sit back while the same people keep fighting the long wars.

The Surge

2008-03-13T13:56:00.000-05:00

People who casually toss around “low” casualty counts are not to be trusted. There is hope and there is a very real strain on our military. Also, there has been much “treasure” squandered and still much more “treasure” will be required.

Free Trade And Pharmaceuticals From China

2008-03-13T13:55:00.000-05:00

I don’t know how to say “quality-control” in Chinese, but judging from the picture that accompanied your Heparin story (3-05-08), I doubt the Chinese do, either.

I would be very interested to know if the American pharmaceutical companies that import ingredients from these “developing” countries have ever been to see for themselves where these products are coming from.

Furthermore, according to the Republicans, there is no such thing as “economic injustice.” This story, and you know there are many more like it, makes a pretty good argument for sharing the wealth.

Forget What I Said Before...

2008-03-13T13:52:00.000-05:00

I don’t see why Geraldine Ferraro’s comments are so controversial when it is clear that Obama has the support of much of the black community and politicians of all persuasions hash and rehash the demographics and tailor their message to these specific groups. I am not sure if I am a Clinton supporter but I do feel that this country is not as ready for a woman president as one would hope, as evidenced by cartoons depicting Hillary as a nag and a wicked witch, and then, “Iron my shirt!”

One More Thing...

2008-03-11T18:26:00.005-05:00

Send your entry to karenb.kc@gmail.com

That About Says It All

2008-02-15T06:06:00.001-06:00

I hope these writings convey the deep contempt I have for this society. Goodbye.

Brianhoney

2008-02-14T20:58:00.004-06:00

Let me tell you about Brianhoney. He is adorable. He works at the railroad. He fights wars and rescues people in his spare time and he has two Harleys. You are all just wannabes when it comes to my Guardsman.

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Sunday, October 14, 2007.

To the Federal Bureau of Investigations:

I am a very sick person and I desperately need help. I have been harassed and followed - persecuted – for around ten years. Everybody knows about this, my entire neighborhood, the people at the store, my doctors, everywhere I go. You might already be aware of this. I wrote a letter to the FBI not long after this started. I also wrote to the Missouri and Kansas Attorney Generals as well as the IRS.

This all started at Mo-Can Flooring, Inc. I believe this is a conspiracy designed to enact revenge for any perceived slights or injustices by the “angry white male” crowd. I committed some unpardonable offense and they told their friends and they told their friends – maintenance men at the apartments where I was assigned work, mechanics, police (though not in an official capacity), and other trades people and they have not left me alone for ten years.

They were hostile, they sabotaged my jobs, I had goons following me everywhere I went and somehow they spied on me. They followed me to a short stint at RPS package service where some little punk tried to kill me on a conveyor belt. And they followed me to Carpet Factory Outlet where I worked as a salesperson. I began dating and working with another carpet layer and they harassed us, also. When we got married they interfered and harassed us where we lived (Adam and Jennifer – North Kansas City, Missouri). That marriage ended very badly.

I went to see Dr. Innocent Anya of Northtown Psyche & Associates through Tri-County Mental Health Services. I have every reason to believe that he, or through Tri-County, has somehow used this vile network to threaten everyone who was interested in me into backing off due to the traumatic nature of how my marriage was ruined. He has kept me a virtual prisoner for two years and four months now. There is an employee of Missouri Social Services who works in the basement of the Clay County Courthouse who is involved with the misappropriation of my divorce settlement. My lawyer, Doug Wemhoff is also involved.

I am in love with my next-door neighbor’s brother (Brianhoney) and he wants to marry me but he is being kept away by threat that these same (mostly) white trash thugs will come after him, too. His entire family knows about me. He has told everyone in the neighborhood, many of these people have been neighbors for decades, and he has people drive by and give me signs trying to help me but this doctor, for whatever reason, will not relent. He thinks he has the right to make my personal life decisions for me. It sounds incredible and I cannot believe it is happening and it has made me even more ill. This “psychiatric care” I have received has been as much or more traumatic than anything that has been done to me previously, save the terror of knowing that these people are not above going after my family, too.

I have, until recently, had goons drive by my house at all hours of the day and night. I believe the Clay County Sheriff’s Department and the Kansas City Police Department are already aware of this. Then, a couple (the dumbest, ugliest, most ridiculous clowns you have ever seen) moves in across the street from me here in Avondale and the husband deliberately does something to make his wife jealous and she has been parading around in her front yard for months, giving me these looks and putting on a show for my benefit and disturbing what little peace and tranquility I had left. This is the trash that has been following me around for ten years. This is the exact type of revolting and absurd behavior they have displayed in an intentional affront to my sensibilities for years and years.

I do not know for sure how they have managed to spread this around but with everyone from the people at the Wal-Mart where I shop, to the mailman and to strangers when I drive down the street clearly being aware of this I imagine it would not be hard to connect the dots at this point. I want my life back.

Who Among The Republicans Is Looking Out For The Troops?

2008-02-12T14:49:00.000-06:00

All I hear from the Republicans is how safe they feel. How George W. Bush has kept them safe and that to lose the White House to the Democrats would result in their being less safe. Pardon me for thinking more about my loved ones than myself, but who is looking out to keep the troops safe?

My understanding is that the surge was only made possible by extending tours to fifteen months, by all accounts putting additional strain on an already strained military. The number of “high-quality” recruits has continually fallen. As a military family member, when I hear this, I think about what would happen if the situation in Iraq or Afghanistan suddenly worsened, who would be ready to help? What “quality” of people are being sent to watch the troops’ back?

Never mind that a recent report by the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves says the nation "’does not have sufficient trained, ready forces available’ to respond to a chemical, biological or nuclear weapons incident, ‘an appalling gap that places the nation and its citizens at greater risk,’” and that, “Even fewer Army National Guard units are combat-ready today than were nearly a year ago.” They are still drastically short of equipment. To me, this means that my loved ones could be put in a position made even more dangerous by a lack of proper equipment and trained, battle-ready soldiers.

The current situation has resulted in an “unprecedented” reliance on our citizen soldiers – the National Guard and Reserves. Yet, the Commission’s first recommendation - pointing to the “continued strain on the military as it fights wars on two fronts” and saying there is "no reasonable alternative" - is to rely heavily on the reserves to supplement the active duty forces because it would be cheaper! What kind of gratitude is this?

John McCain, the war hero, says we will stay in Iraq 100 years, if that’s what it takes, and that it shouldn't be difficult to expand the U.S. military despite a shortfall in recruitment. Is he going to be just another flowery, patriotic orator who will not ask any sacrifice of the people?

The Effects Of The War

2008-02-01T10:45:00.000-06:00

I recently had an e-mail discussion with someone who is a contributor to americanthinker.com, which is almost as bad as townhall in its shrillness. I do not have permission to reprint the correspondance so I will just say that she/he indicated that the media, once again, was ignoring the "good news" from Iraq.

She indicated that she supports the troops but is against a draft, that the establishment of Israel was a "consolation gift" for the Holocaust and that the problem today is due to the simple fact that other Arab nations are somehow responsible for taking in the displaced Palestinians.

Among my responses:

I am not sure that my young nephew, who is a U.S. Marine, would have learned in school that the U.S. was once a supporter of Sadaam Hussein as well as other dictators and even terrorists, when it suited us. He certainly is not old enough to have done anything to contribute to the situation and I find it appalling that the people who did, will not acknowledge it.

Of course, I have no problem with my loved ones - I am also to be married to a Missouri National Guardsman who has served in Iraq - fulfilling their duty. I find the Republicans fervent opposition to a draft to be no different than the war protesters, both past and present, except that the war protesters don't want anyone to go while you people just don't want you to go.

Meanwhile, the Iraq war has diverted much attention and resources from the war in Afghanistan which you acknowledge has gotten worse and with the situation in Pakistan is more dire than ever. I fully supported that war but I am also aware of the continuing problem with women's rights as well as incidents like the recent death sentence for blasphemy of a reporter. "A young journalist in the north of Afghanistan faces the death penalty in what observers say is a well-orchestrated campaign of intimidation against the media."

The expectation of an American-style democracy in both Iraq and Afghanistan may not be entirely realistic. The mission should have been kept to hunting down Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

As for my knowledge of history, I am not a scholar, but I have spent much time studying my religon and I have a special interest in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict because, to me, I just find it incredible that anyone could read the Bible and not wonder about all of that outright slaughter. Do you honestly consider a Palestinian life to be as valuable as an American life? An Iraqi?

Honestly, I have found William Dalrymple's comment about simple-minded bigots to be quite appropriate when considering the remarks made on right-wing blogs. I do not judge your comments to be honest or convincing.

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Whatever. You go ahead and believe that you "support the troops." My local paper has reported - War? What war? - that the number of high-quality recruits has continually dropped since the Iraq war started.

The Bush administration is sending "strong signals" that the troop reductions will slow or stop altogether this summer (multiple tours - even longer than 15 months?) because the recent security improvements are "tenuous," and top U.S. commanders predict that the battle for Mosul will be a "grinding campaign" that will require more firepower from both the Pentagon and Iraqi allies.

That's OK, there is no limit to what you will ask of the troops.

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Also, this from TIME:

(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. military isn't ready for a catastrophic attack on the country, and National Guard forces don't have the equipment or training they need for the job, according to a report.

Even fewer Army National Guard units are combat-ready today than were nearly a year ago when the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves determined that 88 percent of the units were not prepared for the fight, the panel says in a new report released Thursday.

The independent commission is charged by Congress to recommend changes in law and policy concerning the Guard and Reserves.

The commission's 400-page report concludes that the nation "does not have sufficient trained, ready forces available" to respond to a chemical, biological or nuclear weapons incident, "an appalling gap that places the nation and its citizens at greater risk."

"Right now we don't have the forces we need, we don't have them trained, we don't have the equipment," commission Chairman Arnold Punaro said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Even though there is a lot going on in this area, we need to do a lot more. ... There's a lot of things in the pipeline, but in the world we live in — you're either ready or you're not."

You Got The Government You Deserve

2008-02-01T10:31:00.000-06:00

What I’ve been trying to say is that townhallers only look out for themselves. From your attitudes about “entitlement” programs to your mistaken belief that America has done no wrong, never has, never will – it’s your inability to look at anything from a perspective other than your own. You people are supremacists. You twist everything around until it suits you and you can look straight at the facts and only see what you want to see.

There are two very distinct groups of people here. The “religious right” types pretend that the “hateful redneck” types do not exist and vice versa. Come to think of it, the “religious right” types do display some “hateful redneck” tendencies, maybe that’s why it works. At any rate, I know from personal experience that the two groups do not even like each other. The beer-drinking, profanity-spouting, intolerant rednecks do not think much of the “Bible-thumping,” holier-than-thou Jesus-freaks. Mighty strange bedfellows.

What do you expect? Your government is the government you deserve. The Republicans you elect are RINOs and do not do what they say they will do, what you want them to do, because THEY are only looking out for themselves. They get elected and suddenly they forget the little peons even exist.

Did our representatives invent greed, graft? Maybe they ARE truly representative.

Religious Right Has Some Mighty Strange Bedfellows

2008-01-30T19:29:00.000-06:00

The religious right has some mighty strange bedfellows.

JD's Handsome Son says that liberals tell you where you can live, who you can live with, who you can associate with? I thought it was the "social conservatives" who want to tell people what they can and cannot do. John Edwards "legally steals" his money but rich Republicans who game the system are just good ole boys, I guess.

He says,"Being partly an indigenous aborigine, (all of us born here are native Americans, check your Webster's dictionary), does not give you license to make rules for the rest of us. I know this shocks you communists who've been raised on an ethnic entitlement mentality. Trust me, I'm white and I'm right. (How do you like that ethnic arrogance? How does it feel?)"

It feels like you are a snotty-nosed spoiled little brat. How contemptuous of our own much more recent history but try talking to him about Israel and he will probably spout off about the Islamo-fascist towel-head, camel-jockey, jihadi threat.

What about the threat that comes from an arrogant, smug, know-it-all populace that has nothing better to do but wallow in their hatred and have never learned to think for themselves?

Bush's Voodoo Economics?

2008-01-29T22:41:00.000-06:00

President Bush said in his SOTU address that we should not let his tax cuts expire and that he will balance the budget by 2012. A financial columnist in my local paper said that in order to have a "slight surplus" by 2012 we will have to let the tax cuts expire and we will have to keep the alternative minimum tax.

Voodoo!?!

Where Would "W" Be Without Daddy?

2008-01-29T22:35:00.000-06:00

wildwest writes: Tuesday, January, 22, 2008 5:31 PM
delusional lilly
you still refuse to accept thaqt the missus clinton acquired everything after college based on her marriage to a hick politician who became president. Without bubba she would have never acquired the positions she achieved. Without being bubba's long suffering victimized wife she would have had as much chance of of becoming senator as a snowball would last in a blast furnace. Without bubba she would have never been considered for president. To insist otherwise is total fabrication. She is now relying bubba's phony popularity to save her run for president. Without bubba oblahma would find the way to defeat her.

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Excuse me, without Bush Sr. where would W be? At least Bill Clinton chose his wife for certain attributes whereas W is just an accident of birth unless you believe in dynasties.

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lilly writes: "In addition to being First Lady (tea parties?) Hillary Clinton has worked in social policy law for 35 years. She has a distinguished law degree (Juris Doctor) from one of the most prestigious law schools in the world (Yale)."

Global Warming Is A Hoax - Right-Wing Says So

2008-01-29T18:16:00.000-06:00

Thursday, January, 24, 2008 7:18 PM

buzzkat writes: Thursday, January, 24, 2008 4:47 PM Not so fast ...For instance, Newt, just as GWB has, has thrown in the towel on the America's fault global warming hoax...

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Hicks.How can you look at the pictures of the pollution in Beijing and not be the least bit concerned? Are you aware that that pollution makes its way to California? Our demand for cheap goods is fueling China's growth. Of course, nobody can prove what is happening but many scientists find the evidence compelling. I think the Republicans who have proven they only look out for themselves are just afraid that they will make a sacrifice for their children and future generations and what if it turns out to be unnecessary? Oh, my gosh, what a horrible injustice. The biggest injustice in the history of humanity. Boo Hoo.

At Hateful Townhallers

2008-01-29T18:12:00.000-06:00

JD's Handsome Son writes: Saturday, January, 26, 2008 9:40 AM

JD's Handsome Son writes:Saturday, January, 26, 2008 9:40 AMDualityMr. Gates sits atop a $100 Billion estate and looks down at us to say we should sacrifice, forgo our pleasures and give to others.John Edwards lives in a 28,000 sq. ft. clear cut remote mountain top resort in North Carolina that he acquired from legally stealing from others and tells us we are selfish greed heads and must sacrifice for others.Al Gore cruises the stratosphere in Gulf Stream IIs, jetting off to exotic locales to cavort with other wealthy elites when he looks down and sees we still warm our meager homes and drive to work. This upsets him and he scolds us for destroying the planet. He tells the world it has to sacrifice and the inhabitants of the Earth really should just go away and die to save the whales.Our ruling elites are chauffeured in plush limousines with armed guards with automatic weapons, but they want us disarmed to face the criminals their foolish progressive laws have created and enabled.Liberals push for laws to control who we hire, fire and promote, where we live, who lives with us, what words we can and cannot say, and who we can associate with. After work they hop in their Volvos, BMWs, and Lexus vehicles to their homogeneous white exclusive non inclusive gated communities where they point their bony fingers of blame at us for being insensitive.Hypocrite evil despicable liberal sons a b****es!
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A little bitter, are we, a little envious? You people are just hateful.

I was born into a free country. People who came before me had established what is considered the greatest democracy in history.

They had already built much infrastructure, schools, government facilities, community buildings, fire departments, police departments, health departments, defense departments and on and on.

They established programs whereby ordinary people, who would have previously been laughed out of the banks, could buy homes, establishing a middle class who could then send their kids to college.

I find it very odd that the very system that has enabled so many to become successful suddenly becomes unnecessary once they do.

I was born in a beautiful city with numerous parks, fountains and boulevards (Kansas City, Missouri, the city of fountains) .

I also have Native American heritage and so I feel that people who are born here or come here have an obligation to give back and to work as a society to make this a better place than they found it.

Maybe you should be asking yourself what you can do for this country, not what it can do for you.

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JD's Handsome Son writes:
Saturday, January, 26, 2008 2:30 PM
Ick odd nuto
You did not comprehend what I posted above. I do not begrudge successful people in this country. I resent them when after they've succeeded, they arrogantly and hypocritically assume they've been chosen to govern the rest of us. They conspicuously violate and disregard the rules they issue to us.Being partly an indigenous aborigine, (all of us born here are native Americans, check your Webster's dictionary), does not give you license to make rules for the rest of us. I know this shocks you communists who've been raised on an ethnic entitlement mentality. Trust me, I'm white and I'm right. (How do you like that ethnic arrogance? How does it feel?)And I have and continue to give back to this country. I pay lots of taxes to underwrite the existence of many non-productive Americans and illegal citizens of the world who come here to get free food, housing, medical care and in state tuition, then turn around and pi$$ on the country that invited them and cop a victim entitlement mentality that you've shown above.Your posts are ignorant and degrade the high level of discourse here in Townhall. You should leave and not come back.

Republican Women Are An Insult

2008-01-29T12:37:00.000-06:00

Glenn McCoy’s cartoon (1-21-08) where Hillary is being heckled by men, “IRON MY SHIRT,” and her husband, “STARCH MY SHORTS,” is insulting – to Republican women. Why these women would remain in a party where such attitudes are rampant is beyond me. Disgraceful.

"Double Taxation" - Corportate Income Tax

2008-01-29T12:36:00.000-06:00

George Will states (Opinion, 1/05), without elaboration, that the corporate income tax rate should be zero. He has also said that the minimum wage should be zero and that car companies are welfare states that sell cars to pay the benefits that they agreed to. Maybe it is time for some disclosure. Is Will speaking from some twisted ideology or just plain greed and self-interest? How much does he have riding on the stock market and with which companies?

Corporations are formed by a deliberate legal maneuver designed to insulate the investors from the responsibility of day-to-day management and from personal risk. That is why they are taxed; they are separate legal entities. Otherwise, in a case such as Enron, for example, shareholders would not just lose their investment; creditors could come after their personal assets, as well.

Corporations also leave a huge footprint on the environment - think of all those trucks tearing up the highway – on our courts and regulatory agencies. Why shouldn’t they pay their fair share? Does Will think he is so revered that he can just make crackpot statements without explaining his reasoning or have the Republicans, all, lost touch with reality in their quest for the almighty dollar?

The Surge

2008-01-29T12:05:00.000-06:00

Patty Matthews (Letters, 1-02-08) writes that it was the surge that enabled the Sunnis to turn against al-Qaida; it was the surge that took back the major cities from the extremists, etc. The dots that she and the conservative pundits seem to be unable to connect is that the surge definitively proved that there were never enough boots on the ground in Iraq from the beginning.

Many of our top military leaders were against a “surge” because they knew it would mean extended deployments for an already strained military and that the surge could not be maintained past this summer. What will happen after the additional troops start pulling out is not clear.
I am a military family member and I believe there should have been a draft a long time ago. The troops should have had the real support they needed to stay until the Iraqi people could produce a viable country.

Concerning "Saber-Rattling" Over Iran

2007-10-29T22:26:00.000-05:00

As reported in the Star, the recent summit concerning North Korea's nuclear program also yielded a provision whereby Japan and North Korea have pledged "'specific actions' toward settling issues of 'the unfortunate past' - a reference to Japan's war time occupation of the Korean Peninsula - and other 'outstanding issues' - such as Japan's bitterness that North Korean security agents snatched more than a dozen Japanese in the late 1970's and early 1980's to help teach the country's spies to speak Japanese."

Are Americans just too good to admit that they have ever done anything wrong?

Republicans are a disgrace, stick your heads up your ***. Act ignorant. Act superior. Start wars. Get a clue.

Your Typical Ignorant/Delusional Right-Wing Hick

2007-10-17T08:29:00.000-05:00

Some woman, "Goodwin," wrote into my local paper about the resolution condemning Turkey for genocide and the effect it would have on the troops. She said the Democrats should practice the "diplomacy" they are so fond of.

Goodwin is just your typical ignorant/delusional right-wing hick. “Diplomacy” as well as “good governance” and the “Bush administration” has nothing to do with the truth or reality. These kooks think they can just pick and choose the history that suits them - they have no use for it except to inflate their own self-worth or to nurse their own grievances.

It is absurd that ANYONE would even consider electing Republicans. They don’t read the paper, they only see what they want to see, all Iraqis killed are TERRORISTS, it would be irresponsible to pay for this war – better to pass the buck off to the grandchildren, new recruits can get the desert training they need in Iraq – IN COMBAT, troops don’t need body armor – it’s TOO HEAVY (Michelle Malkin - a ridiculous, superstitious and ignorant woman who has been insulting me, a military family member, since this war started), there is no shortage of these brave Republicans willing to fight this war they started, that is why the Army has lowered it’s standards AGAIN, taking violent criminals, and helicopter gunships don’t need guns. Petraeus “wrote the book” on counterinsurgency, which calls for as many troops to occupy Baghdad as are in the entire country, but it would be treasonous to call him on it. The glowing success in Fallujah, it turns out, is due to MARTIAL LAW, the city is under 24-hour lockdown, surrounded by berms and barbed wire, vehicles are banned and residents had to submit to fingerprints and retina scans to get ID cards that let them stay. How long can they keep this up after the troops pull out? Osama bin Laden, meanwhile, is not off in a cave somewhere plotting more attacks; he is “impotent.”

These backwards, backwoods throwbacks can even say with absolute certainly that global warming is a hoax while their own military leaders quietly go about discussing the need for new policies that would “oblige intergovernmental cooperation” by future U.S. administrations, knowing that environmental stresses may severely damage economies, destabilize political systems and upend millions of lives, causing mass migrations across international borders, including our own.

These hicks are a disgrace to this country.

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Your Attention Needed

2007-09-30T19:21:00.000-05:00

More apologies needed

In regard to “Clinton, Obama failed test” (9/24, Letters), I would like to make a few observations.

Perhaps apologies by these candidates “to the nation and to Gen. (David) Petraeus” are in order, but first maybe a few other apologies might be worth consideration.

We have seen John Kerry “Swift Boated,” John McCain’s patriotism and honor questioned, and Max Cleland referred to as unpatriotic.

As for the referral to Gen. Petraeus, it’s worth noting that the “betray us” phrase was first coined by Rush Limbaugh in referring to Sen. Chuck Hagel. (Earlier this year, he called him “Sen. Betrayus”). Has Limbaugh apologized? Has Karl Rove?

Is the White House (“We are not into nation building”) going to apologize for the lies perpetrated on the American people?

It appears the “radical left” is not the only one that owes apologies to the American people.

Ron Monnig
Slater, Mo.

Churches and politics

I am writing in reference to your story “Church will keep tax status after 2004 anti-war sermon” (9/24, A-4).

After all those years sitting in church listening to sermons that made it clear that to be a good Christian you had to vote Republican, I am outraged at the Internal Revenue Service for investigating whether an anti-war sermon in a supposedly “liberal” church would warrant the loss of tax-exempt status.

If you’re not outraged, then you’re not paying attention.

Scott Laurent
Kansas City

The "Jena 6"

2007-09-30T18:51:00.000-05:00

Jason Whitlock, a black sports writer, is clearly guilty, himself, of bias in his deliberate attempts to discredit any “cause” that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton involve themselves with. His Sept. 30th column on the “Jena 6” doesn’t address the attempted murder charges, at all, and he still proclaims that the nooses incident had nothing to do with it - his words, not the words of the young men involved.

I am not sure of what relevance it is whether the boys go to church or not and who they were living with at the time. Just because people like Alan Bean, Jackson and Sharpton make a scene doesn’t mean there is nothing to the story. And the fact that a teenager has been in trouble with the law before is not reason to dismiss everything he has to say, throw him in jail and throw away the key, along with all of his friends.

How is it to Whitlock’s credit that he, being more mature and accomplished, can so easily disregard the pointed intent of nooses hanging from a schoolyard tree? Maybe it is this callousness that got him where he is today? Does his apparent embarrassment over these media circuses entitle him to speak for everybody else?

As reported on Friday, black babies born here in the U.S. are twice as likely to die as infants and there seems to be no explanation except “the stressful effects of racism,” according to a new series of studies from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ Health Policy Institute.

It says the causes of black infant mortality can be attributed to poverty, poor nutrition, inadequate prenatal care, teen pregnancy, heredity, high blood pressure, stress, obesity, low birth weight and prematurity. But, over the past few years, it has become clear that whether rich or poor, well educated or barely literate, African-American women were still more likely than white women, first-generation, poor Hispanic immigrant women and foreign-born black women to have premature and low birth-weight babies.

Some things are not so easily explained away.

General Betray Us - Move-On Ad

2007-09-27T05:59:00.000-05:00

I guess since the right-wing Kulturkampf has been calling anybody who disagrees with them traitors as well as every other name in the book since before this war started, the move-on ad didn’t even strike me as being all that unusual. I took it to mean that the general’s testimony was not going to be entirely straightforward because he had been put in an impossible situation.

What I was thinking about was the army’s new counterinsurgency manual. As I have said countless times, it calls for as many troops to occupy Baghdad as are in the entire country. And General Petraeus was in charge of writing it.

The so-called religious right has joined forces in an Unholy Alliance with an extremist-leaning sort in the mold of a backwoods militia, not exactly your Sunday school crowd, and they just stand mute while the likes of Ann Coulter say that all liberals are “godless.” They can question your faith but you can’t question a general?

It is unpatriotic to question the president, the premise of this war or its execution? Bush has unequivocally stated that we will still be at war in Iraq when his presidency is over. Karl Rove has no regrets, Cheney would do it all over again and Bush is looking forward to raking in the dough making speeches and not one of them has the decency to acknowledge the lives that will be lost.

The right-wingers are livid if you should mention the strain on the military, lagging enlistments, a draft. It is unpatriotic to question why more of them are not willing to fight this war they started? The surge is purportedly tamping down violence in Baghdad, but it is treasonous to question why the commander-in-chief did not take any steps to prolong the surge, if necessary?

Nobody wants this war to have been “in vain.” But, if you are going to start a war you had better make damn sure you know what you are doing and you had better make damn sure, every step of the way, that the troops are getting the support they need, for real. Refusing to acknowledge the real cost of this war and refusing to address obvious problems reeks of politics, not patriotism.

A Common Thread

2007-09-25T14:31:00.000-05:00

TIME did a “10 Questions” interview with Lynne Cheney, why I don’t know. For a vice president who has tried his damnedest to stay out of the public’s eye, preferring to run his political machinations from some undisclosed location, who knows or cares what his wife has to say?

Surprise. Turns out his wife has no criticisms, whatsoever, of this administration. If you know what you are doing is the “right thing” to do, and you know “where you are going,” then, apparently, it doesn’t matter if somebody else’s kids have to pay for your botched war. We have been “safe” for six years because Bush and Cheney have doggedly adhered to their ideological beliefs.

Mrs. Cheney is an historian? Seems they grew up in small town America (read fly-over hicks), but how do you become a writer, historian and second lady and be so out of touch with reality?

There is a common thread running throughout the fabric of all the tales the right-wing weaves. Bush is gonna make some speeches, replenish the ol’ coffers, Cheney is going to have a cup of coffee and sit in her big leather chair at their Wyoming ranch in the Tetons, the surge is a success…OBLIVIOUS.

A Downright Moron

2007-09-23T14:17:00.000-05:00

Joe Galloway Commentary: Bush fulfills H.L. Mencken's prophecy

By Joseph L. Galloway McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Wednesday, September 19, 2007

It took just eight decades but H.L. Mencken's astute prediction on the future course of American presidential politics and the electorate's taste in candidates came true:

On July 26, 1920, the acerbic and cranky scribe wrote in The Baltimore Sun: " . . . all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily (and) adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/galloway/story/19824.html

America's Implied Bargain - Another Bogus Contract With America

2007-09-23T14:02:00.000-05:00

"The implied bargain America offers it's citizens is supposed to be that anyone who works hard and plays by the rules can support his or her family and move onward and upward." - Center For An Urban Future

A Proper War Memorial

2007-09-22T11:45:00.000-05:00

I found Michelle Malkin’s comment, concerning the airliner crash in Pennsylvania on 9/11, that a “proper war memorial should stir to anger and action” to be offensive. As a Kansas City, Mo, native, I have always admired our very own Liberty Memorial that is the only monument entirely dedicated to WWI in the country.

The Great Frieze on the north terrace wall depicts “progress from war to peace,” carved in stone that stretches 400 feet across and stands 13 feet high. The following is taken from the Liberty Memorial Museum’s website:

“In honor of those who served in the world war in defense of liberty and our country.” The quote best depicts the reasons and emotions behind the raising of the Liberty Memorial Monument. World War I (1914-1918), which ended on the Western Front in Europe on November 11, 1918, had dramatically changed the world and deeply affected future generations.

After the guns were silenced and the huge celebrations had died down, concerned citizens in the United States reflected on the past War and on the losses sustained. What could be done to honor and remember, they wondered. Just two weeks after the Armistice, a meeting of Kansas Citians brought forth the idea and need for the creation of a lasting monument to all men and women in the war and to those who died.

A community-based fund-raising drive in 1919 raised over $2,500,000 in less than two weeks through public subscription in Kansas City and around the nation. This staggering accomplishment reflected the passion of public opinion about the Great War, which so recently ended.

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Malkin was also incensed about the use of a red crescent of trees. A quick web search on the red crescent provided many links to an organization similar to our own Red Cross and a web page that explores the history of the crescent as a symbol of Islam.

It states “the crescent moon and star symbol actually pre-dates Islam by several thousand years.” It goes on to say that the symbol was chosen to honor the goddess Diana or “to a battle in which the Romans defeated the Goths on the first day of a lunar month.” At any rate, it is “essentially an ancient pagan icon. It is certainly not in uniform use among Muslims.” The article lists countries whose flags depict the symbol and notes that “The majority of these countries are not Arabic-speaking, but rather are part of the greater Muslim world.”

9-25-05

War In Iraq Politics

2007-09-22T11:37:00.000-05:00

Michael Ramirez’s cartoon (8-29-05) depicts Cindy Sheehan holding a doll/baby labeled “POLITICS” and she is wearing a pin that says “LET MY SONS DEATH BE FOR NOTHING.” As if she, as a mother, wouldn’t be doing this if this had been a Democrat-led war.

The arrogance of those who would still have us believe that the justification for this war was not falsified and that the war is not going badly is revolting.

But, I can’t say it any better than to quote Molly Ivins, “…government policies have real consequences in people’s lives. This is not ‘just politics’ or blaming for political advantage. This is about the real consequences of what governments do and do not do about their responsibilities. And about who winds up paying the price for those policies.”

Ivins was speaking of certain environmental policies that contributed to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, but it is all the same. This administration’s vision is backwards and corrupt.

Personally, it insults my intelligence to have someone say that my opinions are politically motivated as I have no political affiliation and find politics in general to be quite repulsive and this is precisely why.

-9-04-05

Hurrican Katrina - New Orleans' Underbelly

2007-09-22T11:35:00.000-05:00

People, especially men, do not like to be rendered helpless and I don’t think it is so shocking that when a situation arises where there is no law and order and people are put in a desperate life and death situation that some will strike out at society, or what’s left of it. This helplessness is at the root of most violent crime. These are people who had nothing in a land of excess.

One thing that does strike me in this political climate is how easy it is for people to give when a crisis such as this strikes. But they seem incapable of comprehending that many people experience devastating personal crises: catastrophic illness, job loss, the breakup of a family, even a loss of transportation can be enough to incapacitate them, and somehow they are expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Many were born into poverty and many have no family and nowhere to turn.

There was a quote from a tourist who said she mistakenly thought New Orleans was a “sophisticated city.” With a poverty rate around 30 percent (40 percent for children), New Orleans must do a fine job concealing their “ugly underbelly” from the tourists. Who can say why so little of those tourist dollars and that of the “ostentatious wealth” of the city’s elite apparently never trickled on down?

9-05-05

al-Qaida In Iraq

2007-09-21T16:56:00.000-05:00

With so many right-wing pundits lauding the alliance between the U.S. and Sunni tribes against al-Qaida in Iraq, I have to wonder just exactly what would their reason be for staying in Iraq if we were no longer there? What purpose would it serve to continue to indiscriminately bomb civilians?

What would their chances be to convert the Iraqi population to their extreme version of Islam? Not long after the war started, an officer commented that the Iraqi people were not psychologically wired to suicide-bombing.

The Surge Has Failed? - Need Better Writers Than Michelle Malkin & Her Ilk

2007-09-21T16:41:00.000-05:00

Michelle Malkin is ridiculous with her broken-record bleating about “moonbats,” fear-and-warmongering. Does she have any knowledge, whatsoever, about the U.S.’s foreign policies, past or present? Does she have any understanding of Middle Eastern history and Western civilization’s involvement in it? Has she any idea of other perspectives - how people in the Middle East view the modern day establishment of Israel, for example, and how that has gradually grown into the extremist behavior we see today?

There are so many talented and knowledgeable writers out there – Fred Kaplan is the “war stories” writer for Slate. There’s Joseph Galloway with McClatchy Newspapers who General H. Norman Schwarzkopf said was, "The finest combat correspondent of our generation — a soldier's reporter and a soldier's friend."

Paul Krugman is a no-nonsense business writer who doesn’t mince words when it comes to evaluating the effects that Bush’s policies and the Iraq war has wrought.

He reported on the oil deal by the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas with the Iraqi Kurds. Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is one of Bush’s cronies and is a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. This makes him especially aware of the state of affairs in Iraq and in making the deal he is essentially undermining the efforts for the oil-revenue-sharing legislation that everyone has agreed is vital to a united Iraq, Krugman says.

“Follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed…Indeed, he’s effectively betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation in any meaningful sense of the term…

…Here’s how I see it: At this point, Mr. Bush is looking forward to replaying the political aftermath of Vietnam, in which the right wing eventually achieved a rewriting of history that would have made George Orwell proud, convincing millions of Americans that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but were stabbed in the back by the peaceniks back home.

What all this means is that the next president, even as he or she tries to extricate us from Iraq — and prevent the country’s breakup from turning into a regional war — will have to deal with constant sniping from the people who lied us into an unnecessary war, then lost the war they started, but will never, ever, take responsibility for their failures.”

A Hateful World

2007-09-21T00:36:00.001-05:00

The Five Forty-Eight

But still and all I’m better than you. I still have good dreams sometimes. I dream about picnics and heaven and the brotherhood of man, and about castles in the moonlight and a river with willow trees all along the edge of it and foreign cities, and after all I know more about love than you.
- John Cheever

"Religious Enlightenment" At Iraq Detention

2007-09-20T14:57:00.000-05:00

U.S. Working to Reshape Iraqi Detainees
Moderate Muslims Enlisted to Steer Adults and Children Away From Insurgency

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 19, 2007; A01

The U.S. military has introduced "religious enlightenment" and other education programs for Iraqi detainees, some of whom are as young as 11, Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, the commander of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, said yesterday.

Stone said such efforts, aimed mainly at Iraqis who have been held for more than a year, are intended to "bend them back to our will" and are part of waging war in what he called "the battlefield of the mind."

The religious courses are led by Muslim clerics who "teach out of a moderate doctrine," Stone said, according to the transcript of a conference call he held from Baghdad with a group of defense bloggers. Such schooling "tears apart" the arguments of al-Qaeda, such as "Let's kill innocents," and helps to "bring some of the edge off" the detainees, he said.

Stone said he wants to identify "irreconcilables" -- those detainees whose views cannot be moderated -- and "put them away" in permanent detention facilities. Psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors and interrogators help distinguish the extremists from others, he said.

After reassessments and interrogations, Stone said, some detainees are recommended for release. "If a detainee is an imperative security risk . . . then I'm going to reduce that risk and I'm going to replace that destructive ideology," he said. "And then when he's assessed to no longer be a threat, I'm going to release the detainee being less likely to be a recidivist."

Other initiatives at the facilities include vocational training and basic education programs for about 7,000 detainees. Stone said he believes his approach is "compelling because it's how you win this war, not only the one in Iraq, but the one on a greater basis." He quoted Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi as saying that "America could win the war if they just applied the exact process that you're putting in detention to the rest of the entire nation," in Stone's words.

Stone described a sort of religious insurgency that occurred at one detention facility on Sept. 2. "We had a compound of moderates for the first time overtake . . . extremists. It's never happened before. Found them, identified them, threw them up against the fence and shaved their frickin' beards off of them. . . . I mean, that is historic."

Other elements of Stone's program are being developed. He said he has created a "transition-out barracks" where detainees being released discuss civics and human rights. He has also begun a "huge, expensive" Rand Corp. research study on detainee motivation and morale and has plans for a major communication campaign.

He said he also wants to provide jobs for released detainees. "I'm not naive," Stone said. "If they don't have any income, they're going to go back" to the insurgency.

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This sounds like an excellent idea, but maybe the Major could be polished up a little bit himself, bring some of the edge off. - karennkc.

Palestinian Crisis Best Understood Under International Law

2007-09-20T14:50:00.000-05:00

John B. Quigley, Presidents' Club Professor of Law

Quigley, John B., "International Law and the Palestinian Refugees," Hastings International and Comparative Law Review, 2005

Steeped in emotion, history and religion, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is often thought of in the context of geopolitics and international negotiation. But in a recent symposium article, an Ohio State University Law professor argues that the conflict is best understood – and poses the greatest chance of ultimate resolution – in the context of international law.

Prof. John B. Quigley argues in a recent edition of the Hastings International and Comparative Law Review that under the established norms of international law, the Palestinian people have been unlawfully displaced and have a right to repatriation that is not able to be negotiated away through the international political process...

...“The displaced Palestinians should not have to lobby for their right of return vis-à-vis Israel or vis-à-vis the Palestinian leadership,” Quigley writes. “The right is guaranteed by human rights norms. Just as a state that tortures is obliged to desist without being cajoled and without negotiation, so a state that refuses to repatriate is obliged to desist, namely, by repatriating.”

Re-Examine Foreign Policy - John B. Quigley

2007-09-20T14:45:00.000-05:00

John B. Quigley, Presidents' Club Professor of Law

Quigley, John B., "Identifying the Origins of Anti-American Terrorism," Florida Law Review, 2006 (56 Fla. L. Rev. 1003)

The current “War on Terrorism” will fail unless the United States changes its policies in the Middle East, an Ohio State University Law Professor argues in the Florida Law Review.

“If terrorism is to be addressed rationally, its origins must be determined,” writes Prof. John Quigley of the Michael E. Moritz College of Law at the Ohio State University, an international human rights activist and an expert in international law. “Just as a physician cannot treat the patient without making a diagnosis, so with negative social phenomena, one must determine their origin before prescribing remedies or identifying appropriate actors to administer the remedies.” The cause of international terrorism, Quigley writes, is the history of heavy handed and self interested Western and, in particular, U.S. intervention in Middle Eastern affairs. The remedy is for the United States to change its policies in the Middle East and toward the Muslim world.

“To turn this situation around, the United States must promote serious negotiations over the Israeli-Palestinian question based on universally recognized principles,” Quigley writes. “More broadly, the United States must cease trying to micro-manage the Middle East to its political and economic advantage. It must promote a collaborative relationship that can be seen to reflect respect for the people of the area...”

"...“But in the Middle East, a perception developed that the United States was out to promote its own interests.” These anti-U.S. perceptions were further solidified by the continued one-sided U.S. backing of Israel and Cold War decisions to support causes like the Islamist revolutionary Mujahideen in Afghanistan, Quigley writes..."

18,000 Native Americans In The Fight In Iraq, Afghanistan

2007-09-19T23:26:00.000-05:00

...Across the country, the journey from reservation to battlefield is a common passage. American Indians sign up at greater rates than virtually any other ethnic group. That’s partly because their cultures often give special status to warriors, and partly because economic prospects in many tribal areas remain so bleak.

While American Indians and Alaska natives account for just 0.8 percent of the country’s population, they make up about 1.6 percent of those serving in the U.S. military.

That translates to almost 22,000 people in uniform, more than 18,000 sent to Iraq or Afghanistan and almost 3,800 of those deployed today. More than 300 have been wounded in battle in the past six years, and 46 died...

...Since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military recruiters have found it ever harder to find people willing to sign up knowing deployment to a trouble spot was likely. Besides lowered standards and pumped-up bonuses, the wartime environment has produced a change in demographics.

Enlistment among most ethnic groups, especially African-Americans, has declined this decade. But the rate for American Indians has increased...

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America Is Sick

2007-09-16T17:34:00.000-05:00

America is sick. Blind patriotism is just another way for these soulless people to take credit for something they didn't do. I have been regularly censored at townhall.com which is full of delusional freaks. They claim to be the defenders of free speech - prayer in school, ten commandments in courthouses, etc., but just you say anything that would cause these hicks cognitive dissonance and you are censored and locked out faster than you can blink an eye. Frauds. You present them with facts and they just write their own reality. They all think they are so cute and clever. Everything is funny, just like the Daily Show. Clowns. Everything is a joke except their foolish pride.

************************************

The Buzz - Osama bin Laden Joke? 9-17-07

Wed, Sep 19, 2007 at 6:44 PM

To the Kansas City Star: You have no class, whatsoever. I can't belive you have the nerve to ask my loved ones to put their lives on the line for you. Osama bin Laden is the man behind the thousands of deaths at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the airliner that crashed in Pennsylvania. He is the reason this country is at war in two foreign lands.

This is sick, whoever finds this funny is sick.

America You Are A Fraud

2007-09-15T01:40:00.000-05:00

What I want to know is where are all the badasses who were frothing at the mouth to start this war?

According to Fred Kaplan - writer of "War Stories" for Slate - the Army has a hard time getting 7,000 NEW recruits a year.

That's NEW recruits, not reenlistments:

Guilianni says that we need ten more combat brigades:

"Ten combat brigades translate to 40,000 to 50,000 soldiers. The Army has a hard time recruiting 7,000 new combat soldiers a year. Does Giuliani have any ideas on how to get more?"

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2172285/

Cowards. The people of America had enough information - that it would take several hundred thousand troops to occupy a country the size of Iraq, according to a four-star general - not to start this war but they all knew they would not have to fight it. America is a fraud.

They have sat there and let this thing drag out for five years, they get on the Internet and talk real big. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong, and still they just talk, talk, talk. What big men.

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Here are a couple of responses to this paper that I posted at rightwingnews.com. These people have no class, whatsoever - they are clowns:

Heh trolls are cute

Posted by Christopher_Taylor
September 15, 2007 11:48 AM
-----------------------------
NoSoSmart,

"According to Fred Kaplan - writer of "War Stories" for Slate - the Army has a hard time getting 7,000 NEW recruits a year.

That's NEW recruits, not reenlistments."

You and Fred had better check your sources. To claim that the Army is having difficulty "getting 7,000 NEW recruits a year" is only off by a factor of 10. According to the official DoD Recruiting report, for the 11 months ending on 31 Aug, the Army had recruited 71,987 so far this FY, 102 percent of their goal of 70,500.

I attended a brief by the Army Vice Chief of Staff, General Cody, this week and he stated that all services will probably reach their recruiting goals, with the possible exception of the Air National Guard. They are currently recruiting at 93% of their goal. The Marines (you know, those guys who are "First to Fight") are at 109% of their goal.

It is sad that Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray and Sgt. Omar Mora died in a TRAFFIC ACCIDENT. Our condolences to their families. Would this have been news if they had not written the od-ed and had died in a TRAFFIC ACCIDENT at Ft Bragg? What about the hundreds of other service members who died in TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS? Aren't they news?

In case you are missing my point, they died in a TRAFFIC ACCIDENT. They could just as easily died in a TRAFFIC ACCIDENT at Ft Bragg, in their home towns, or elsewhere.

You are a fraud. If you are American (which I doubt), you are a traitor. If you aren't American STFU (Shut The Fuck Up).

Posted by A-10
September 16, 2007 9:47 AM
-----------------------------

My nephew is a U.S. Marine, you scumbag, and he REENLISTED. They can extend tours to 15 months and talk about extending them to 18 months and you cowards who started this war would still not go fight it.

Because they were killed in a traffic accident while on duty in Iraq - this makes a difference? The army is a dangerous thing, people get killed all the time in training and exercises. You didn't get in a traffic accident in Iraq simply because you did not put your life on the line. And why not? What is stopping you, loser?

Posted by NoSoIncognito
September 18, 2007 9:44 PM

http://www.rightwingnews.com/mt331/2007/09/john_kerrys_startlingly_dishon.php?comments=show#comment-85018

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And this would break your heart, if you frauds had one:

Why the deaths of Yance T. Gray and Omar Mora are particularly galling.
By Fred Kaplan

On Monday, while Gen. David Petraeus prepared to testify before two House committees about the successes of the surge, seven of his soldiers died when their transport vehicle overturned in a highway accident west of Baghdad.

Two of those soldiers, Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, 26, and Sgt. Omar Mora, 28, were part of another group of seven—the seven noncommissioned officers of the 82nd Airborne Division who wrote a brave, well-reasoned op-ed in the Aug. 19 New York Times, calling the prospect of victory "far-fetched" and appraisals of progress "surreal."

It is galling that so many pundits and legislators touted a Times op-ed by two Brookings scholars who spent eight days in Iraq and came away persuaded that the war might be won—but paid virtually no attention to the far more unusual, even unprecedented, op-ed by seven active-duty soldiers still based in Iraq, some on their second or third tour of duty, who dared to step forth and argue otherwise.

http://www.slate.com/id/2173860/

Also:

war stories

Deceptive or Delusional?
Bush's appalling Iraq speech.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007, at 11:42 PM ET

http://www.slate.com/id/2173902/

On The Vietnam War And President Clinton

2007-09-13T17:27:00.000-05:00

On The Vietnam War And President Clinton

The war supporters, and Bush himself (the nerve), have tried to paint the Democratic Party as anti-war or "weak" on defense. They frequently cite the Vietnam War as an example, saying that if the Democrats had not withdrawn we would have eventually won the war and the subsequent killing of millions of people in Cambodia would have been avoided and Vietnam would be a democracy. Of course, there are those who dispute that. They say it was the war, itself, that led to the destabilization of Cambodia. Vietnam, although not a democracy, is a prosperous country now.

I was thirteen years old in 1972. To have been old enough to vote during that time would make you over fifty years old now. While many of our representatives have indeed reached that ripe old age, the war supporters are, in effect, discounting the opinions of an entire generation that never actually were involved in the Vietnam war and who have never lived through a war of that magnitude and therefore may have an entirely different perspective on that engagement and on war, itself.

What they are saying is that American can do no wrong, never has, never will. If your president says we should start a war, he must be right. Four and a half years later, in spite of everything, Bush must be right. This is simple-minded and I don't like it.

Many war supporters have likewise smeared President Clinton, relentlessly - he didn't do enough to catch or kill bin Laden after the embassy attacks and the attack on the USS Cole.

It was reported that Clinton testified at the Congressional hearings that he was "obsessed with bin Laden" and had signed an order to have him killed. Unfortunately, there was disagreement with the wording where the CIA, etc. were not comfortable, considering America's dark history, of assassinating him and there never was "actionable" intelligence. Clinton testified that he gave the Bush administration a war plan for al-Qaida but that Bush and Condo Rice was more concerned about China.

Like all cheap tricks, the sword cuts both ways. Here are some differing opinions.

**********

"Clinton became obsessed with capturing and convicting Ramzi Yousef [the mastermind of the attack]." U.S. officials apprehended Yousef in Pakistan in 1995, and he is now serving a 240-year sentence for his crimes -- hardly an abject failure of policy...

However, the manner in which the attack on the USS Cole was handled does more to damage the Bush administration's reputation than it does Clinton's, as his term expired three months after the bombing of the Cole.

In June 2001, five months after Bush had been sworn in, al Qaeda released a videotape claiming responsibility for the Cole operation. If the Bush administration needed a casus belli to destroy al Qaeda, here it was, broadcast around the world. Instead, the response was to do absolutely nothing...

…The American inability to truly comprehend the al Qaeda threat was a systematic failure of many institutions, including the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI and the media, failures that cannot be pinned on any one administration. Beyond all that, you, gentle reader, are also at fault. There was no political will to go to war against al Qaeda because there was no public will to do so. The public had made it very clear during the '90s that even small numbers of U.S. military casualties were unacceptable, whether in Somalia or in the Balkans.

All that changed with Sept. 11. Now two wars later, at the cost of hundreds of American deaths, thousands of Afghan and Iraqi civilian dead and untold billons of U.S. taxpayer money, the Bush administration is still "losing bin Laden" -- two years after Sept. 11...

Peter Bergen is a fellow of the New America Foundation and the author of "Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden." ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8174-2003Nov6?language=printer

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The Blog From Another Dimension: Further Proof Damning Bush for 9/11 (as if it were really needed)

March 21, 2004

With the recent revelations brought forth by Richard A. Clarke (former counter-terrorism coordinator from both Clinton and Bush 43 administrations), the picture of the Bush administration's malfeasance regarding terrorism has been made more complete.

We already knew that Clinton had put together a solid plan to fight terrorism. Clinton, in fact, had gone after al Qaeda as best he could, and the Republicans had even termed Clinton's attacks on bin Laden as excessive, just an excuse to avoid attention on more important matters, such as whether or not he had gotten sexual favors from an intern. Of course, after the 9/11 attacks, suddenly Clinton was attacked as having been soft on al Qaeda, and the whole mess was his fault. But we found out soon that Clinton, in fact, had a bold plan to hit back at al Qaeda after the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in late 2000, and had presented those plans to Bush.

However, Clinton was perhaps too much more a considerate president leaving office than he should have been. In 1992, Bush Sr. decided to send troops into Somalia while he was a lame duck, essentially sticking Clinton with the check, forcing him to either accept a losing battle in the country or look weak by pulling out the troops. That is one of my greater criticisms of Bush 41, that he played politics with soldiers' lives to give Clinton a black eye as he entered office. Bush never would have engaged in a military action in Somalia had he won reelection.

Clinton, instead of starting a major military offensive at the end of his term and sticking it in turn to Bush Jr., instead gave the new administration his battle plans and let them make the call.

And the Bush people crashed and burned, ignoring the advice and letting their guard slip dangerously. Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and Richard Clarke briefed Condoleezza Rice on the plans just a few weeks before Bush took office, making their urgency and utility well-known to the Bush White House. And the Bush White House shut them down, cold. Part of the reason for this was that Bush was busy pushing a missile defense shield, and the idea of terrorist attacks played contrary to that. After all, it would be inconsistent to be fighting an active war on terrorism while developing a missile shield which, by nature, was completely ineffective in countering terrorist threats.

And now we hear from Clarke not only a solid confirmation that the Clinton plan was shunted aside, but that further reasons included the fact that Bush & Co. were far too busy planning an attack on Iraq to be bothered with minor-leaguers like al Qaeda. This despite Bush's campaign pledge against nation-building, as he secretly planned for regime change and nation-building in Iraq.

So focused were they on Iraq, that when 9/11 happened and it was clear that the enemy was in Afghanistan, Donald Rumsfeld pushed for attacks on Iraq, suggesting Afghanistan--where bin Laden was--be left alone. Why? Clarke claims that "Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq, and we all said, 'No, no, al Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan.' Rumsfeld said there aren't good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq."

It strains credulity that more Americans do not hold Bush culpable for the disastrous errors that led up to 9/11, and the obvious prior intent Bush & Co. had to invade Iraq, no matter what evidence they claimed. And this is not just people who worked for Clinton speaking, that includes Bush's own man from the Treasury Department, Paul O'Neill, confirming Bush's intent to invade Iraq pre-9/11.

Add to that the fact that Bush selfishly refused to create a commission to research the security deficits that allowed 9/11 to happen, and then created a hand-picked executive commission (avoiding a congressionally-appointed one) only when his hand was forced--and even still today demonstrates strident unwillingness to assist that very commission.

The answer could not be more clear: Bush screwed up on 9/11, big time, and he knows all too well exactly where the blame lies. Clarke's new disclosures on the matter simply bolster that particular conclusion.

Posted by Luis at March 21, 2004 10:03 PM |
http://www.blogd.com/archives/000518.html

**********

Cowardice Lurking Behind Smoke And Mirrors

2007-09-12T23:14:00.000-05:00

Sen. Joe Biden's statement is one of the most intelligent things that I have heard a politician say in quite some time. His and all of the generals' and journalists' comments, however, will likely fall on deaf ears. They are too complex and too "sensitive" and just too damning when this country is being led by a ham-fisted clod whose followers would sell their own souls and their children's futures before they faced reality or admitted they were wrong. Their cowardice is lurking there just behind all of this smoke and mirrors. - karennkc.

**********

“The fact of the matter is that American lives remain in jeopardy and...if every single jihadi in the world was killed tomorrow, we’d still have a major, major war on our hands.” – Sen. Joseph Biden

**********

Speaking at a symposium on terrorist threats at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, retired four-star Gen. Barry McCaffrey said, “U.S. politicians need to act as if the country is at war and ask for sacrifices accordingly.” He also said it would be a mistake to retool the military firepower and strategy too dramatically to meet the threat of insurgencies like that in Iraq and Afghanistan and to do so would leave the U.S. ill-prepared for its next major conflict. “I don’t want to see us spend the next 15 years creating the military that would have been optimized to fight the counter-Sunni civil war campaign in Iraq. I’d rather conclude that we shouldn’t fight that campaign.”

**********

Retired Army Gen. John Abizaid said that beyond attacking the global threat of terrorism with military strength, the United States has done a poor job of applying the economic, political and diplomatic means to fight Islamic extremism. “We need to change that as a matter of national priority.”

**********

This from Warren P. Stroebel, McClatchy Newspapers:

… There was one question that Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker could not, or would not, answer. It was the question that Petraeus posed rhetorically back in 2003 when he led the Army’s 101st Airborne Division into Iraq: “Tell me how this ends.”

Asked whether his proposal for Iraq would make the U.S. safer, Petraeus replied, “Sir, I don’t know, actually.”

Petraeus “is almost certainly the right man for the job in Iraq, but he’s the right person three years too late and 250,000 troops short,” Rep. Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat, said Monday.

*********

“It is a measure of how vaporous the ground truths in Iraq have become that George w. Bush had to sneak into the country he conquered. Extra security was needed to proclaim that Iraq was more secure, the surge was working and the country was worth more American blood and treasure...What U.S. strategy could avert the wider bloodshed that looks inevitable in the wake of a smaller force? One small advantage of extending the surge is that it postpones having to find the answer to that question.” – Michael Duffy, TIME 9-17-07.

**********

Crocker is decidedly above party politics. Yet in representing Bush in Iraq, he has inevitably become drawn into the administration's effort to salvage its colossal mistakes. Buying more time may help Bush exit office without experiencing a humiliating withdrawal from Iraq. But it is wrong to ask the troops for more sacrifices without leveling with Americans about what kind of longer-term commitment is really at stake and coming up with a sensible plan to get there. Thus far, the administration has proved either unable or unwilling to get Shiites and Kurds to offer Sunnis a meaningful stake in Iraq's future. And it has done next to nothing toward accepting two of the Baker-Hamilton commission's crucial recommendations about working with Syria and Iran.

Just as with its wishful thinking in invading Iraq four years ago, the White House seems to think that it can eradicate Iran's influence in the region simply by wishing it away. If Bush is sincerely thinking about solving the Iran problem by bombing Iran's nuclear program, then its hard to take seriously its appeal for a little more time to set Iraq on the path of democracy. War with Iran would simply send Petraeus's mission in Iraq into the realm of the unknown. If Americans are being asked to keep armed forces in Iraq, a little more coherence and transparency is in order. - Scott MacLeod

**********

The nature of military leadership is congenital optimism; officers are trained to complete the mission, to refuse to countenance the possibility of failure. That focus is essential when you go to war, but it lacks perspective. That's why civilian leaders—the Commander in Chief—are there to set the mission, to change or abort it when necessary. The trouble is, George W. Bush's credibility on Iraq is nonexistent. And so he has placed David Petraeus, an excellent soldier, in a position way above his pay grade. He has made Petraeus not just the arbiter of Iraq strategy but also, by default, the man who sets U.S. policy for the entire so-called war on terrorism...

...Crocker also testified that the Iraqi Shi'ites were Arabs who had fought fiercely against the Iranians in the eight-year war and were very unlikely to cede control to their Persian neighbor without a fight. - Joe Klein, TIME.

**********

My Patriot Day

2007-09-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

I would like to tell you all about My Patriot. He is adorable, he works at the railroad, he fights wars and rescues people in his spare time and he has two Harleys. You are all just wannabes when it comes to my Guardsman.

Because of you, we were kept apart? It was agony.

Because of you, we found each other. Now you are history.

Patriot Day? More Shifting Sands In Iraq

2007-09-10T18:27:00.000-05:00

How can Bush's homeland security adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, say that Osama bin Laden is “virtually impotent,” contrary to top intelligence experts, and when no one even knows where he is or what he has been doing?

The Bush administration would have us believe that Iraq is the “central” front in the global war on terror, and that bin Laden is on some permanent vacation in a cave – no longer a threat? Do these people ever think before they speak? “al-Qaida in Iraq” is only loosely affiliated with al-Qaida and did not even exist before we invaded Iraq. It has been widely reported that al-Qaida is back, in strength, in the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.

According to some, a debate over the various progress reports from Petraeus, other commanders, government agencies and diplomats is “moot” because Bush has already decided to carry his “new” strategy forward and Democrats lack the votes to stop him.

All I have heard from the war supporters is that the mainstream media is so liberally biased as to be unreliable. Yet, it almost seems forbidden that anybody should ask any hard questions. Why hasn’t Bush taken any steps to alleviate the strain on the military? In a country of 300 million “patriots,” why is it unreasonable to call for a draft? This ill-conceived war in Iraq has put this country in a very precarious position.

The surge was not a number deemed necessary by military experts but rather just a number they were able to scrounge up by extending to fifteen months the tours of the already overtaxed troops. General Petraeus, himself, wrote the army’s new counterinsurgency manual, which calls for as many troops in Baghdad, alone, as are in the entire country. His silence on this point brings into question anything he has to say in regards to the success of the surge or the strategy going forward.

At least it does for me. But, I am just one military family member, a minority, who is not blinded by “patriotism.” I am not willing to sacrifice my loved ones needlessly and recklessly. The military comprises not even 1% of our population and it speaks greatly to the character and honor, or lack thereof, of our “commander-in-chief” and the other 99.99% that the lives and well-being of those brave soldiers who have carried this entire burden does not even rate the slightest consideration.

"Bring It On" Again? - Osama bin Laden Deemed "Virtually Impotent"

2007-09-10T14:05:00.000-05:00

Seemingly taunting Osama bin Laden, President Bush's homeland security adviser (Frances Fragos Townsend) said Sunday the fugitive al-Qaida leader is "virtually impotent" beyond his ability to hide away and spread anti-American propaganda.

The provocative characterization came just days after bin Laden attracted international attention with the release of a video in which he ridicules President Bush about the Iraq war and reminds the world that he not been captured.

...The consensus of the nation's top intelligence analysts is that bin Laden's terrorist network is anything but impotent.

Terrorism experts say the network is regrouping in the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The latest National Intelligence Estimate says al-Qaida is growing in strength, intensifying its efforts to put operatives in the United States and plotting against U.S. targets that will cause massive casualties. The U.S. is in a "heightened threat environment" and al-Qaida is the most serious threat, the analysts found...

..."While he may be physically contained, his influence is not bounded by any physical barriers," said Thomas Sanderson, an authority on terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Obviously, in a sense, it does not matter that we've got him trapped in a cave. He has sent forth enough messages to incite violence worldwide against us," he said in an interview Sunday...

...Taunting bin Laden as "virtually impotent" would likely not provoke him to respond, because his strategy of attacks involves lengthy planning that would not be derailed by a single comment, said Sanderson, a senior fellow at CSIS. But such a comment could prove incendiary to like-minded followers of bin Laden who see themselves as a "vanguard of a global assault on the United States," he said.

"A provocation like that," he said, "is not helpful."

Patriot Day 2007

2007-09-09T10:57:00.000-05:00

Last night one of those creeps drove by my house, you know who they are, they are the ones who would make you very nervous if caught in a dark alley at night. This is the kind of riffraff that I have had following me around for years. But, that's ok, this is how the ignorant hicks here in Kansas City have decided to run things. This is how they are going to take back "their" country. And all the "good" people will stand mute.

Do you ever take a good look at your neighbors, coworkers or some of these trashy people on the street and actually think about them as far as being a "patriot"? Are they somebody who is actually worth having someone else die for? Are you?

I am writing this, a work-in-progress, published as I go, in honor of "Patriot Day" here in America. This is about some little girl's hopes and dreams smashed, and being imprisoned in some kind of really bad sci-fi B-movie nightmare. Like Groundhog Day but instead you get this white trash, everyday, popping into your life. It is how they amuse themselves since not everybody was able to get on the Jerry Springer show.

It is not too much of a stretch, considering that a lot of young adults get their "news" from the Daily Show, the endless sleaze and hatefulness on the Internet, and the lack of people willing to enlist and fight this war they started, to say that ours is just a parody of a society...

...Here is what America means to me. I live in Kansas City, Mo, the "Heartland." This is a city that is still incensed that a rapist and murderer who snatched a young woman from her school bus stop many years ago is caught up in death row appeals. Recently, another young woman was snatched, in broad daylight, from a Target parking lot in a suburban neighborhood. She was also sexually assaulted and murdered. These same people think it is good sport to watch everything I do, follow me wherever I go, and drive by my house at all hours of the day and night.

They have interfered in every aspect of my life. They have meddled with my family and marriage. I have not been able to work for several years, I have struggled to get through every day and still, these Jerry Springer Clowns just keep coming. This is mostly of the generation that would have grown up on Jerry Springer, but no, there are old men, old women, everybody. An army of hateful, stupid, coddled, selfish, nasty clowns. This is America.

They are trash and they are supremacists.

They are dumber than a box of rocks. They have never had to think for themselves.

The Kansas City Star said in an editorial that the U.S. is a "known historical supporter of terrorism in Pinochet's Chile, Batista's Cuba and Rios Mont's Guatemala."

But that does not even register with these dolts. They just file it away in their memory hole and go back to taking credit for every accomplishment and acheivement made by other white people besides them. They are bumpkins who just fell off the turnip truck but they don't even know it. They do not have to apply anything they have learned to reality, the need does not exist. They are oblivious.

Ignorant bliss - that's what it is to be an American.

***********************************************

This all started at some outfit called Mo-Can Flooring run by a couple of fine, upstanding goons - Harry Himmelstein and Jeff K(?) - it's been a long time. What happened is not important - it's all BS. What is important is that I refused to back down and I actually had the nerve to tell these bozos what I thought of them. Their delicate, fragile, little white trash egos simply cannot handle it.

How else can you explain this? They had never had anyone with any class walk in their crummy carpet store before? These hateful, nasty freaks were dying to try out their newfound power. I didn't want to play their stupid games, charades? Nobody even had the decency to clue me in. I never had a chance to defend myself, I didn't even know what I was charged with, I was deemed guilty by a bunch of GD pretty rough and ragged carpetlayers and warehousemen.

Now, I should just accept this trade off - The Constitution, The Bill Of Rights, our justice system for some stupid system designed by so-called grown men who act like they are still on the elementary school bus. KMA. (That's blogspeak for Kiss My A#$!)

Setbacks Outweigh Successes - The Surge

2007-09-09T10:51:00.000-05:00

This should come as no surprise considering that the so-called surge was not a number deemed necessary by military experts but rather just a number they were able to scrounge up by extending tours of duty to fifteen months. The cowardly president - who is not ashamed to ask for more and more from the same troops - and his desperate followers - followers who are not exactly running to enlist - are just hoping for enough "good news" to maneuver themselves into a better campaigning position.

Bush has not taken any steps to prolong the surge - calling for a draft, if necessary - in fact, he has not taken any steps, whatsoever, to relieve the strain on the military and to protect our position in the world which has been greatly weakened by his ill-conceived war in Iraq.

You don't have to look very hard or far to find the cowards who are holding Bush up. Go to Townhall.com - they don't care about facts, they don't care that there has never been enough troops. They don't even care that the Iraqi people are innocent of any wrongdoing in the attacks of 9/11.

No, all they care about is their bloodlust and hiding behind their blind patriotism, waving their little flags and singing their tearful anthems.

************************************************

Posted on Sat, Sep. 08, 2007

Setbacks outweigh successes in Iraq since surge began
By LEILA FADEL
McClatchy Newspapers

•Baghdad has become more segregated. Sunni Muslims in the capital now live in ghettos encircled by concrete blast walls to stop militia attacks and car bombs.

•Shiite militias continue to push to control the city’s last mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods in the southwest by murdering and intimidating Sunni residents and, sometimes, their Shiite neighbors.

•Services have not improved across most of the capital. The international aid group Oxfam reported in July that only 30 percent of Iraqis have access to clean water, compared with 50 percent in 2003.

•Each month tens of thousands of Iraqis flee their homes in search of safety.

• Iraqi security forces remain heavily infiltrated by militias, and politicians continue to intervene in their activities.

•Civilian deaths have not decreased in any significant way across Iraq, according to statistics from the Iraqi Interior Ministry, and numbers gathered by McClatchy Newspapers show no consistent downward trend even in Baghdad, despite military assertions to the contrary. The military has provided no hard numbers to back the claim.

...Baghdad

Taking control of Iraq’s capital was at the center of Bush’s surge strategy in January. At least half the U.S. troop surge is taking place in Baghdad and its suburbs, where the U.S. focused on establishing joint security outposts in Iraqi neighborhoods to be closer to areas where sectarian violence was claiming dozens of lives each day.

The military threw up concrete walls across the capital to foil car bombs and stop Shiite militia members or Sunni insurgents from entering targeted neighborhoods. One military official said U.S. troops were erecting walls as “fast as they could build them.” Most “hardened” neighborhoods, encircled with towering gray walls and with single entrances and exits, are Sunni enclaves, military officials said.

The result is a city now sharply divided into sectarian boroughs where the battle lines have only hardened. Some Baghdad residents say they feel somewhat safer in their neighborhoods, but they fear traveling anywhere else in the city.

Anbar province

No one disputes that Anbar province, once the heart of the Sunni insurgency, is far more secure now than it was this time last year.

But what credit American troops can claim for that and how likely it is to remain that way are hotly debated.

The tribal rebellion against al-Qaida in Iraq began last September, well before the surge was even contemplated. That was when tribal leaders, fed up with al-Qaida in Iraq’s attacks on moderate Sunnis and its efforts to impose strict Islamic fundamentalism, formed the Anbar Salvation Council to battle the group.

Tribal sheik Fassal Gaoud, a former Anbar governor, told McClatchy Newspapers in June that the tribes previously had asked for U.S. help in attacking the group but had been rebuffed. By the time U.S. troops began working with the tribes, the battle against al-Qaida in Iraq was well under way. Gaoud was killed in a bombing in July at a hotel in central Baghdad...

Elsewhere in Iraq

In other areas in Iraq, violence has increased and conditions are deteriorating.

Oxfam estimates that 28 percent of Iraqi children are malnourished, compared with 19 percent before the U.S. invasion. No Iraqi whom McClatchy spoke to for this report expressed confidence in the government.

Sunni militants remain openly active in the north. Three weeks ago, fighters for the Islamic State of Iraq, a front organization for al-Qaida in Iraq, paraded through the streets of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, said tribal sheik Fawaz Mohammed al-Jarba.

In August, the largest attack since the war began killed at least 322 people in two impoverished villages in Nineveh province, one of a series of deadly bombings, each of which briefly held the title as the deadliest of the year.

A blast in March killed 152 people in Nineveh’s Tal Afar, and 150 people were killed in an explosion in July in Amerli in Salah ad Din province. A double suicide bombing in July left at least 85 people dead in the northern city of Kirkuk.

In the Shiite-dominated south, violence is rising as Shiite militias vie with one another for control.

At least 52 people were killed this month when fighting broke out between the Mahdi Army and the rival Badr Organization during a religious festival in Karbala.

In Basra, a strategic port city on the Persian Gulf, those militias and one from the Fadhila party have fought pitched battles for control, with the death toll rising throughout the year, from 59 in January to 134 in May. In August, 90 people died there.

Overall, civilian casualties in Iraq appear to have remained steady throughout the siege, though numbers are difficult to come by.

-----------------------------------------------------
Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on Monday will warn Congress against making major changes to the war strategy, sources say.

Bush's "Parting Gift" To Coal Industry

2007-09-09T09:51:00.000-05:00

Posted on Sat, Sep. 01, 2007

Satisfying U.S. energy needs should not involve defacing Appalachia
By C.W. GUSEWELLE
The Kansas City Star

In what the head of an environmental watchdog group terms “a parting gift to the coal industry,” the Bush administration has moved to give surface mining companies greater freedom to disfigure Appalachia.

The effect of the proposed new rule, drafted by the Interior Department, would be to extend and expand the ability of strip miners to dump debris from shattered and decapitated mountains into the streams and valleys of the region.

It is a practice whose consequences are horrific. According to the mandatory environmental impact statement, some 33 miles of waterways are being buried under mine rubble yearly — a rate that is certain to increase.

And that is only one aspect of the catastrophe.

In 1971, I spent a month in eastern Kentucky on a magazine assignment to write what was to have been a 3,000-word piece about the people and conditions of life in the all-but-moribund coal fields...

• • •

On a clear day, above the hamlet of Lookout, Ky., I’m standing at an overlook with a young man, Estil Bartley, not yet 21 but already a veteran of two years in his family’s underground mine.

He has parked his pickup truck at the very lip of a dizzying ravine and stares now across a gaping reach of distance.

“Lookit there,” Bartley says, and has to whistle to himself. “They’re tearing that mountain all to pieces!”

But it is not a mountain any longer. It is a mesa, its side remade in shelves and verticals, a step-pyramid with its top removed.

And down the side of that has come the mud, glacial in proportions — a flow of sterile muck not to be measured by the foot but by the quarter-section of frontage. So large that the gullies eroded in it are themselves considerable terrain features, carrying foul streams of a size almost to deserve naming.

Down all of that reaches — 800 feet, a thousand — down to the bed of Sycamore Creek, which vanishes entirely under the slide and comes out the lower side as a snaking, ochre ribbon.

Having ceased to be water and become some other substance, the stream would most certainly stop flowing if the valley were less steep. By gravity’s persuasion, it oozes on, mingling all the while with the ruins of other hillsides in torpid suspension.

There is about this a kind of magnificence, the grandeur of sheer scale — of blitzed cathedrals, of killing grounds after the battle has passed on, of nuclear clouds over coral atolls. It does not merely deface what is. It changes what is — creates new facts for eternity’s contemplation.

Estil Bartley’s pale eyes traverse the hideousness.

He whistles softly again, then climbs in and lets the truck roll on down in gear.

• • •

“Lookit there,” Bartley says, and has to whistle to himself. “They’re tearing that mountain all to pieces!”

- This is the same as the ignorant hick elected president of the U.S. - karennkc.

Whistleblowers Persecuted Under Bush Administration

2007-09-08T17:58:00.000-05:00

Whistleblowers on Iraq reconstruction are punished, a NAVY VETERAN even imprisoned and tortured - that has typical Bush/Cheney, greed and malfeasance stamped all over it.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/24/ap4052736.html

Associated PressWhistleblowers on Fraud Facing Penalties
By DEBORAH HASTINGS 08.24.07, 3:16 PM ET

One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.Or worse.

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers - all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said.

He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co."It was a Wal-Mart for guns," he says. "It was all illegal and everyone knew it."

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn't know whom to trust in Iraq.For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.

Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics "reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants."

Corruption has long plagued Iraq reconstruction. Hundreds of projects may never be finished, including repairs to the country's oil pipelines and electricity system. Congress gave more than $30 billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it has disappeared, according to a government reconstruction audit.

Despite this staggering mess, there are no noble outcomes for those who have blown the whistle, according to a review of such cases by The Associated Press."If you do it, you will be destroyed," said William Weaver, professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

"Reconstruction is so rife with corruption. Sometimes people ask me, `Should I do this?' And my answer is no. If they're married, they'll lose their family. They will lose their jobs. They will lose everything," Weaver said.They have been fired or demoted, shunned by colleagues, and denied government support in whistleblower lawsuits filed against contracting firms.

"The only way we can find out what is going on is for someone to come forward and let us know," said Beth Daley of the Project on Government Oversight, an independent, nonprofit group that investigates corruption. "But when they do, the weight of the government comes down on them. The message is, 'Don't blow the whistle or we'll make your life hell.'"It's heartbreaking," Daley said. "There is an even greater need for whistleblowers now. But they are made into public martyrs. It's a disgrace. Their lives get ruined.

"Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse knows this only too well. As the highest-ranking civilian contracting officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, she testified before a congressional committee in 2005 that she found widespread fraud in multibillion-dollar rebuilding contracts awarded to former Halliburton subsidiary KBR .

Soon after, Greenhouse was demoted. She now sits in a tiny cubicle in a different department with very little to do and no decision-making authority, at the end of an otherwise exemplary 20-year career.People she has known for years no longer speak to her.

"It's just amazing how we say we want to remove fraud from our government, then we gag people who are just trying to stand up and do the right thing," she says.In her demotion, her supervisors said she was performing poorly. "They just wanted to get rid of me," she says softly.

The Army Corps of Engineers denies her claims."You just don't have happy endings," said Weaver. "She was a wonderful example of a federal employee. They just completely creamed her. In the end, no one followed up, no one cared."But Greenhouse regrets nothing. "I have the courage to say what needs to be said. I paid the price," she says.

Then there is Robert Isakson, who filed a whistleblower suit against contractor Custer Battles in 2004, alleging the company - with which he was briefly associated - bilked the U.S. government out of tens of millions of dollars by filing fake invoices and padding other bills for reconstruction work.He and his co-plaintiff, William Baldwin, a former employee fired by the firm, doggedly pursued the suit for two years, gathering evidence on their own and flying overseas to obtain more information from witnesses.

Eventually, a federal jury agreed with them and awarded a $10 million judgment against the now-defunct firm, which had denied all wrongdoing.It was the first civil verdict for Iraq reconstruction fraud.But in 2006, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III overturned the jury award. He said Isakson and Baldwin failed to prove that the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-backed occupier of Iraq for 14 months, was part of the U.S. government.Not a single Iraq whistleblower suit has gone to trial since.

"It's a sad, heartbreaking comment on the system," said Isakson, a former FBI agent who owns an international contracting company based in Alabama. "I tried to help the government, and the government didn't seem to care.

Violence In Iraq Doubled

2007-09-08T17:54:00.000-05:00

Posted on Sat, Aug. 25, 2007
Data show no surge in safety in Iraq so far in 2007
The Associated Press

BAGHDAD | The U.S. troop buildup has brought violence in Baghdad down from peak levels, but the death toll from sectarian attacks nationwide is running nearly double the year-ago pace.

*****

The surge is just a battle for Baghdad. Iraq may be like Afghanistan, "not looking good outside of Kabul." - karennkc.

http://www.kansascity.com/news/world/v-print/story/247449.html

Giuliani's Loopy Foreign Policy - Only 7,000 New Recruits A Year

2007-09-08T17:52:00.000-05:00

"The U.S. Army needs a minimum of ten new combat brigades" - Rudy Giulianni.

"Ten combat brigades translate to 40,000 to 50,000 soldiers. The Army has a hard time recruiting 7,000 new combat soldiers a year. Does Giuliani have any ideas on how to get more?" - Fred Kaplan

(Fred Kaplan - Giuliani's Loopy Foreign Policy Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2172285/)

Bush And His Minions - Oblivious

2007-09-07T02:07:00.000-05:00

It concerns me greatly to see the bold headline “American casualties plunge in Iraq” on the front page of the Sept. 2 (Kansas City) Star, with speculation that the troop surge may be working.

Taking the surge months June, July and August, records show 232 U.S. personnel died in combat compared with 158 for the same period last year, giving a higher death rate per 100,000 troops with the larger force.

Also, year-to-date numbers are 689 killed compared with 414 for the first eight months of 2006.

The only way to claim a dramatic improvement, such as the news writer contrived, is to compare an aberrational high May (123) with the slightly lower-than-usual month of August (59).

A broader evaluation of the www.icasualties.org records being used by Nancy Youssef would suggest that it is premature for McClatchy News Service to spread such optimism nationwide based on her selective data snapshot.

Robert K. Russell
Kansas City

The headline on the front page on Sunday was very misleading. It claimed a “plunge” in American combat causalities in Iraq and debated whether it was due to the “surge” in American soldiers or due to a tactical redeployment of insurgents. It was neither, because there has been no plunge in combat deaths.

The number of such deaths in August was virtually identical to the combat deaths in August 2006. And, in July, the number of combat deaths was 65 compared with only 40 in July 2006.

For every month in 2007, the number of American soldiers dying in Iraq was substantially greater than for the same month last year.

During the brutally hot summer, soldiers and insurgents alike move around a lot less in Iraq, and fewer die. Still, more Americans have died every month this year than last. There has been no plunge. Believing Americans are ignorant of the facts on the ground, President Bush continues to lie to the country in a desperate effort to keep this failed war going long enough to hand it to his successor, who can then be blamed for his failures.

Arthur Benson
Kansas City

http://blogs.kansascity.com/unfettered_letters/2007/09/casualties-in-i.html

Stick It To The Democrats

2007-09-06T22:36:00.000-05:00

Now that an incompetent Attorney General, a political hack, has rightfully stepped down and Karl Rove has “cut-and-run” the Bush administration should “stick it” to the Democrats and demand that the tax cuts be made permanent, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Some of us actually have loved ones who are putting their lives on the line for this country, loved ones who have actually made real sacrifices, spending months at a time away from their homes and families. The day after it was reported that an alleged attack on a U.S. military base in Germany was thwarted, some people just go about their lives, oblivious, showing their true colors.

Beyond Charity - Call For Justice

2007-08-24T10:25:00.000-05:00

Beyond charity

Your (The Kansas City Star) call for the community to donate canned goods to charitable organizations to offset the dilemma caused by rising food prices on poor families is a commendable (8/18 editorial, “Essentials out of reach”).

There is another call just as noble: the call for justice in these matters. While charity alleviates the effects of poverty, justice seeks to eliminate the causes of it.

It would be great if public good automatically followed from private virtue. We know that it does not. If we never go beyond charitable works, we are accepting the ways things are, inequitable and shameful. Justice is needed on these issues. The status quo must be challenged, and the injustices must be brought to light.

The rising costs of food, inadequate health care, the lack of affordable goods and services illustrate that it is our economy that consigns people to the ranks of the underclass — to homelessness, hunger, poor nutrition and education, and the cycle of poverty.

Poverty is a communal failure. It has been said, “In a free society, some are guilty but all are responsible.” Our Congress will not reorder its priorities unless it consistently hears from us — the people with the power.

Delores R. Linn
Kansas City

http://blogs.kansascity.com/unfettered_letters/2007/08/beyond-charity.html

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Just another example of compassionate conservativism (code for CHRISTIANS for those of you not in the know).

The Surge Schizophrenia

2007-08-24T08:53:00.000-05:00

First, there were reports of a humanitarian crisis, a threat of a “real civil war” from a Kurdish leader and a report that it is the Shiite militias, not al-Qaida in Iraq, who are causing all of the bloodshed and chaos.

Then, there was a column by two hawkish Democrats at the Brookings Institute saying we have a chance to win this war. Now, it is Bush himself telling the VFW that as long as he is president, we will be fighting in Iraq.

George Will put it this way, “The rapturous reception of that column by one faction was evidence of the one thing both factions share -- a powerful will to believe, or disbelieve, as their serenity requires.”

Somewhere along the way there was the report of the possibility of a Shiite-on-Shiite civil war in the south where the British are holed up in Basra, surrounded, like cowboys and Indians – “Three major Shiite political groups are locked in a bloody conflict that has left the city in the hands of militias and criminal gangs, whose control extends to municipal offices and neighborhood streets. The city is plagued by ‘the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors,’ according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group.”

Pardon me, I am just a military family member, not a part of any faction. And I would like to know why, if it is so important to keep fighting this war and if the surge is making such a difference, why doesn’t Bush, the commander, the decider guy, make the necessary moves to get more troops in Iraq, to sustain the surge, why doesn’t he call for a draft if necessary?

President Bush is a fraud. The right-wing Kulturkampf on the Internet is an embarrassing joke - they won’t even read the newspaper - and the future of this country and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be decided by sound bites and the thoughtful, deliberate and educated pronouncements of ignorant hicks like John Hawkins and Ann Coulter. These fools might be able to fool themselves all of the time, but I don’t think the rest of the world is buying it. This is a total disgrace.