All reason and sense is utterly wasted on Shane the fierce warrior. It’s like reading a bad comic book from the far right to read his inanities, about Iraq, Vietnam and every other ongoing conflict he thinks he understands. Pat’s trenchant comments are lost on oafs like Shane, and he can’t even begin to comprehend all the good quotes Pat appended to her comments. One thing more, Shane the All-Seeing: You give way too much credit to what you keep calling “the left,” a movement you have precisely zero understanding of. If you think the protesters were what “caused us to lose” in Vietnam, you don’t even know what they were protesting about. There were virtually NO protesters then who “wanted the insurgents to win,” and to make that claim screams of your stubborn and pitiful ignorance. This is all you can ever retreat to, this kind of adolescent argument that any familiarity with that period would easily refute. Anyone who doesn’t want the wars drummed up by the US for all its devious, deceitful reasons, especially Vietnam and Iraq, are cheering for the insurgents and hoping our troops are killed. That is so absurdly idiotic there’s nothing to even say about it. Your mind obviously is incapable of grasping anything beyond such cartoonish foolishness and one is only left feeling sorry for you. These matters are way beyond you, Shane. Better leave it alone. History has already judged you a fool.

To Shane - Comment #34447 - Is that the best you can do?  How pathetic! If someone doesn’t agree with your belief in the mass killing of people in war after never-ending war, they must be a terrorist cheerleader.

To all who believe forcing regime change on other nations at gunpoint is somehow going to bring peace…I once believed as you do. That political leaders only want man’s best and highest; that Israel was THE promised land of only wonderful people; that all Arabs were bred in the bone maniacal killers. Years of studying the ‘truth’ found on BOTH sides changed one-sided bias to heart-breaking understanding. The vast majority of nations North Americans have been taught to see as enemies are not inherently evil, just as those countries our soldiers fight and die for are not all saints with only good motives.

I’ve spent years watching man’s inhumanity to man. I’ve heard excuse after excuse why men are told it’s necessary to go force people at gunpoint to accept the invading country’s military takeover, only to watch them begin stealing that country’s resources as soon as they ‘pacified the population. I’ve yet to see a single “war” produce peace, prosperity for all, or love for their conquerors. War creates only more hatred. That’s all it will ever create. To deny this won’t make it any less true.

Only man engages in wars to kill their fellow man while perpetually looking for more efficient ways to kill more of their ‘enemy du jour’ in bigger job lots. But killing ‘the current enemy’ just makes you less ‘human’ till in the end each new death becomes just another ‘snuff happens’. The more you’re taught to hate and de-humanize the latest ‘enemy’ the easier is it to view them as less deserving of life than you and your chosen faction.

I said before…I favor NO side in any of the countless current conflicts. Regardless of Shane’s stated opinion, I am also NOT a terrorist lover or supporter. Nor is the woman he ridiculed as a “moron” and tried to shame into shutting up by claiming her son would be ashamed of her for voicing her opinion that war is wrong and evil.

The problem with a one-sided mindset is that you blindly refuse to even consider that both factions, though technically justified in their anger because each has done horrible things to the other, will never come to peace by going to war. Those who accept war and killing as some sort of ‘solution’ can’t (or won’t) see this, so they continue trying to justify the killing. To you, those against war ‘foolishly believe’ the lying propaganda of your current enemies, yet you refuse to even consider that the faction you side with is also just as guilty of exaggerated or outright lying propaganda to win support for their “cause”.

I agree that many Iraqi hate and desire to kill those who don’t live and believe as they do. I also believe just as many Israeli hate and desire to kill others who don’t believe as they do, just as many Afghans, or Indians, or Chinese, or British, or Russians, or Americans, or Germans or little green men from Mars hate and want to kill those who believe or live differently than they do.

But hear this if nothing else…no amount of killing…no amount of force…no amount of creating gulags to pen people up as has been done in Palestine, Falujah, Baghdad and elsewhere will ever make people stop hating. No amount of waterboarding, jail for life without trial or evidence, killing, raping, terrorizing of people by waiting till midnight to bust their doors down while they’re sleeping, handcuffing and terrorizing their kids, destroying their electricity, water, sewage, food sources, etc…will make people anything but your implacable enemy. Enslaved people will always fight to free themselves. And if they have no bombs, they will use bullets. And if no bullets they will improvise whatever it takes to free themselves from their slave masters.

As long as politicians and their friends in the war equipment industry treat war as just another golden goose industry for amassing gigantic war profits…and as long as we the sheeple willingly take up the guns they supply to go and do their dirty work for them…we will continue to see human beings suffer and die and the only ones who will profit from it are the elite of this world who own all those war equipment factories and related supply services. And while they are getting still richer how many more will continue to die on both sides?

I’ve collected many quotes on this subject over the years. Others can say it far better than me…especially a few of America’s own past presidents:

** “Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.” John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963)

** The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essense of inhumanity: George Bernard Shaw

** Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny: Barry Goldwater

** What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose: Thomas Jefferson

** “It seems that ‘we have never gone to war for conquest, for exploitation, nor for territory’; we have the word of a president [McKinley] for that. Observe, now, how Providence overrules the intentions of the truly good for their advantage. We went to war with Mexico for peace, humanity and honor, yet emerged from the contest with an extension of territory beyond the dreams of political avarice. We went to war with Spain for relief of an oppressed people [the Cubans], and at the close found ourselves in possession of vast and rich insular dependencies [primarily the Philippines] and with a pretty tight grasp upon the country for relief of whose oppressed people we took up arms. We could hardly have profited more had ‘territorial aggrandizement’ been the spirit of our purpose and heart of our hope. The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.” : Ambrose Bierce, Warlike America

** “War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood. It degrades and stupefies with the sense that you are not responsible, that ‘tis not yours to think and reason why, but to do and die,’ like the hundred thousand others doomed like yourself. War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.” : Alexander Berkman

** “COWARDICE, n. A charge often levelled by all-American types against those who stand up for their beliefs by refusing to fight in wars they find unconscionable, and who willingly go to prison or into exile in order to avoid violating their own consciences. These ‘cowards’ are to be contrasted with red-blooded, ‘patriotic’ youths who literally bend over, grab their ankles, submit to the government, fight in wars they do not understand (or disapprove of), and blindly obey orders to maim and to kill simply because they are ordered to do so-all to the howling approval of the all-American mob. This type of behavior is commonly termed ‘courageous.’” : Chaz Bufe

** The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out ‘stop!’ When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable, the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer. - Bertolt Brecht

** How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder…. But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?: Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845

** There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used…. Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed: ~Gil Bailie

** “In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.”: Thich Nhat Hanh - Vietnamese monk, activist and writer

** “The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”: Thomas Jefferson

** “If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.” : Frank Herbert

** “What luck for rulers that people do not think”! Adolf Hitler

** “The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.”: Georges Bernanos

** “Between 1898 and 1934, the US Marines invaded Cuba 4 times, Nicaragua 5 times, Honduras 7 times, the Dominican Republic 4 times, Haiti twice, Guatemala once, Panama twice, Mexico 3 times and Columbia 4 times,” Washington has intervened militarily in foreign countries more than 200 times.” quoted from the book, “Addicted To War”

** Our men . . . have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of 10 up…. Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to “make them talk,” and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later. . . stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.”: Philadelphia Ledger newspaper in 1901, from its Manila [Philippines] correspondent during the US war with Spain for the control of the Philippines

** ” ... the United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed states of mind about military atrocities and human rights: one of U.S. benevolence, generally held by the public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored by counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry out their actions in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the public to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic interests are still protected in secret. “: Robert Parry, investigative reporter and author

** One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge—even to ourselves—that we’ve been so credulous: Carl Sagan

** Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner: James Bovard

** It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends $500,000 for every enemy soldier killed, and only $53 annually on the victims of poverty: Martin Luther King, Jr: 1929-1968

** If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one would remain in the ranks: Frederick The Great

** “The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.” : Franklin D. Roosevelt

** “We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.” : Woodrow Wilson

** “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Joseph Goebbels

** “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” - William Casey, CIA Director (from first staff meeting, 1981)

** Orwell got it right in this passage from Nineteen Eighty-Four, a tale of the ultimate empire: “And in the general hardening of outlook that set in . . . practices which had been long abandoned - imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions…and the deportation of whole populations - not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”

** “Television is altering the meaning of “being informed” by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation… Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.”: Neil Postman

** “I know of no civilized country, indeed, in which liberty is less esteemed than it is in the United States: certainly there is none in which more persistent efforts are made to limit it and put it down. Liberty is not for these slaves; I do not advocate inflicting it against their conscience. On the contrary, I am strongly in favor of letting them crawl and grovel all they please before whatever fraud or combination of frauds they choose to venerate…Our whole practical government is grounded in mob psychology and.. the Boobus Americanus will follow any command that promises to make him safer.”—H. L. Menchen—1956.

** “Under the influence of politicians, masses of people tend to ascribe the responsibility for wars to those who wield power at any given time. In World War I it was the munitions industrialists; in World War II it was the psychopathic generals who were said to be guilty. This is passing the buck. The responsibility for wars falls solely upon the shoulders of these same masses of people, for they have all the necessary means to avert war in their own hands. In part by their apathy, in part by their passivity, and in part actively, these same masses of people make possible the catastrophes under which they themselves suffer more than anyone else. To stress this guilt on the part of the masses of people, to hold them solely responsible, means to take them seriously. On the other hand, to commiserate masses of people as victims, means to treat them as small, helpless children. The former is the attitude held by genuine freedom fighters; the latter that attitude held by power-thirsty politicians.” : Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

** Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out… and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel…. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for “the universal brotherhood of man” - with his mouth: Mark Twain

** “It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.” -General Douglas MacArthur, Speech, May 15, 1951

** Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder: Percy Bysshe Shelley, “A Declaration of Rights”

** “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin

** “So let us regard this as settled: what is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.” Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

** “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.” : Samuel P. Huntington

** “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.” ..... George Orwell

** “We have flown the air like birds and swum the seas like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers”. Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

** “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” Honore de Balzac (1799-1850), French writer

** “Hypocrisy is not the hobgoblin of enslavable minds so much as it is the hallmark of their would-be slavemasters.”—Rick Gaber

** “We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. ”—Ayn Rand in “The Nature of Government”

** “Government, when it is examined, turns out to be nothing more nor less than a group of fallible men with the political force to act as though they were infallible.”—Robert LeFevre, in his essay, Aggression is Wrong

** “The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.” ~~Winston Churchill

** “We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to office.”: - Aesop, c.550 B.C.

** “The common excuse for those bringing misfortune on others is that they desire their good.”  : Luc de Clapiers de Vauvenargues 1717-1747

** Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought! Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder! Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings! Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction! : Helen Keller

** No one has ever succeeded in keeping nations at war except by lies: Salvador de Madariaga

** The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself. Robert Ingersoll

** The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. Aldous Huxley

Pat, keep being a cheerleader for terrorists;

Yes. I am aware Israel and Palestine started at each others throats in 1948. I am aware that the Muslims didn’t want the Jews in Israel and have faught since to kick them out. They have been funded by every country in the middle east to continue their war. They have been denied refuge in those same countries so the war can continue. Hama Syria in 1980 was a good example of this. The Arabs in that area supported Hitler during WW II. Hitler lost, those who supported him also lost. We have Israel. The Muslim do not live with other religons. Iran, Syria, Lebanon(now), Turkey, Jordan, Malasia, now Southern Thailand, Pakistan and the list goes on. They don’t want to live with other religons. So they want to kill or drive out all of the Jews from Israel. At least that is what THEY say they want to do. What is your solution? I know what your solution is, LET THEM KILL THEM.

The family on the beach story didn’t wash. Turns out it was one of the terrorists munitions that went off and not Israeli bombs. http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/13/mideast.probe/

This is only one of many articles describing that. But Palestine will be glad to know that you keep using their trumpted up version as propaganda.

As far as it being only two soldiers they took, so what? Invading another country is just a declaration of war. You don’t get to pick your opponents response.

As far as Mother of Special forces soldier goes; your list doesn’t impress me. In World War II in one day we had a list of 5,000. Would you have protested our government about going to war with them? Many of us understand we are in a global war with Islam even if Bush and Co. don’t say it. The Muslims are exploding bombs every where. Philipines, Thailand, Malasia and many others. You may not believe we are at war with the terrorists. That’s okay. Feel free to explain why the terrorists behead Buddist Monks in Thailand? They say they do it because they aren’t Muslim. As far as Iraq goes, I believe that it is the front lines on this battle. Iran, Syria and other Muslim countries are sending fighters, money and weapons to the terrorists in Iraq. I guess you approve of that outside influence because they kill Americans and you believe we are an evil country. That is all you have to hang on too. Your son fights for America, you lend your support to Iran, Syria and Jordan to kill him. Is it confusing for you? He tells you of a battle where his unit wins, yet you really wanted him and his buddies to die as you support the Insurgents. That’s gotta keep you up at night.

And Van F.;
The lesson of Vietnam is not that insurgencies can’t be beat. The can be. The lesson is, if people in your own country support the insurgency and the insurgency holds out long enough, public opinion will turn and we will leave. That is what happened in Vietnam. We were beat at home by the protestors. We left because we choose too. We decided not to follow the enemy to their cave and kill them. We allowed them to retreat to Cambodia, re-arm and re-group then come again. And people like you protested and passed laws that stopped us from killing the enemy. People like you passed laws to stop any winning strategy until all we could do is wait until they came to our camp and actually killed someone before we were allowed to fire back at them Guaranteeing we would have causalties instead of letting us go on the offensive.

Now ever fire fight is a criminal investigation by the US to see if our soldiers may have used to much force. The left has done this to ensure that morale is bad. That soldiers must think that every time they are in a fire fight is a chance to go to jail and the liberals are happy. They don’t have word one to say to the terrorists about killing kids with bombs. As a matter of fact, they blame America because we are there, for the killing of kids by terrorist bombs. You are anti-American. You don’t like America. You think its form of government is offensive and you wish it was replaced so you want us to lose all wars regardless of who you support. That is it in a nutshell. The lesson from Vietnam is that killers can win if you, Van F., give the the support you give them.

Great job, Pat. Now Shane, there’s your history lesson for today, from someone who knows more history than you ever will. The next time you feel like hectoring others for not knowing what you call history, remember Pat’s advice that you need a little more background before you start drawing insipid conclusions, such as in the Israeli-Palestinian-Lebanese conflict. The same half-baked notions you cultivate about that are like your tunnel vision on Vietnam, how it was “the left” and the media who made us lose that one.

Just because there are people criticizing military adventures that are utterly doomed to fail, for a variety of reasons, doesn’t mean the critics cause the failure. That was true in Vietnam and it’s true now. I knew in early 2003 that if Bush invaded Iraq it would turn out just about the way it has—a complete and total disaster, for Iraq and for us. There were many of us who understood this, but the media drowned out our voices. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon was incapable of learning the lessons of Vietnam—that guerilla insurgencies cannot be defeated by bombs and treating the indigenous population like ignorant children who must be killed if they don’t do what we say. We lose every time because our attitude, like our misguided cause, is bankrupt. Much like your version of history. It’s bankrupt, Shane.

Pat has just tried to explain to you what really was behind the recent Israeli-Lebanon madness, and she covered it quite thoroughly. Not that you’d notice, however. From all you’ve written here it’s evident your biases are so extreme you may never come back from the edge. But you serve as a perfect illustration for how we’ve gotten in the present mess, with the Bush White House alienating nearly all the world now, thanks to his belligerent ignorance, not only of history but of every aspect of foreign and domestic policy. Your raging, irresponsible stupidity is a fair echo of the same coming from 1600 Pensylvania Ave.

re Comment #33909 by Shane

Shane: I see you view/write political history only from starting points convenient to your point of view…

...“And maybe Pat could explain the Destruction of Lebanon by Israel. If I have the story right, Hizbollah invaded Israel and captured two soldiers and killed eight others. I don’t know about you, but I think after being invaded by Hizbollah, Israel had a clear reason to attack. I also notice you didn’t mention all the rockets they randomly launched into Israel. I guess launching random rockets into civilian areas after you invade a country is okay as long as it is Israelis you are killing.”

Well Shane, I guess you have the story right IF history only began on the day Hizbollah grabbed those two Israeli soldiers (on Lebanese not Israeli territory which Israel has since apparently admitted, not that it matters to some people). Israel openly admits that they’ve had a policy of assassinating or kidnapping political prisoners whenever they decide it’s justified. They don’t even attempt to hide it. They regularly and openly bomb cars or homes of those they consider enemies even if entire families of innocents are killed in the process. Yet I can’t help but notice you made no mention of Israel doing to others exactly what they claimed was their reason for going to war with others. Of course, their self-defense claim goes right out the window anyway when their own generals have publicly stated that they’d been preparing for this war for months.

By the way I noticed YOU chose not to mention the rockets Israel has been launching into civilian areas of Palestine and Lebanon for years, Shane. But then I guess they don’t count! As you just said, “I guess launching random rockets into civilian areas after you invade a country is okay as long as it is only” Arabs you are killing. I suppose in you political view of things the Lebanese and Palestinians should just ‘suck it up’ and be thankful if they’ve made it through another day without getting starved, bulldozed, shot or bombed by Israel. After all whatever Israel does is automatically right and whatever an Arab does is automatically wrong, right Shane.

So tell me Shane, as a patriotic soldier, does your view of the Israeli/Lebanese/Palestinian situation mean that the history of trouble between Israel and Lebanon began only on that particular day? How about the week before?...the month before?... The decade before? Try about 50 years before! Israel has been having little land appropriating wars since they first became a nation in 1949. Yet your statement implied that Hizbollah just decided ‘out of the blue’ to do a nasty thing for no reason whatsoever and poor innocent Israel was forced to defend the 10 soldiers killed or captured (even if those same soldiers were illegally in someone else’s territory.

And what was their oh so reasonable response to two captured soldiers (something they do themselves regularly)? They, in self-defense of course, dropped hundreds of thousands of tons of munitions on every bridge, road, water, sewage, and power plants, the public airport, schools, hospitals, factories, ambulances, convoys of fleeing Lebanese, apartment buildings, etc, throughout the entirety of Lebanon. Since you apparently feel their response was acceptable and not overboard, do you also feel their use of napalm, cluster bombs, etc (all war crimes), on civilian targets was also simply appropriate self-defense? I think you’ve been sniffing too much DU, boy.

According to Israel itself, only 12 Israeli civilians and about 50 soldiers died from Hizbollah rocket fire, and no public infrastructure (power, water, sewage, airports, hospitals, apartment buildings, etc) was targeted or destroyed during a 33 day war, although I admit I did see a picture of a small pothole created in a train station and a few small buildings damaged. Compare that to the number of dead Lebanese civilians and multiple billions of dollars damage done to Lebanese infrastructure and then tell me what those figures say about who was really targeting innocent civilians. If you want to argue at least use some logic.

Only days prior to the Hizbollah capture of the two Israeli soldiers, Israel had bombed a family enjoying a picnic on the beach, kidnapped (disappeared) a doctor and his brother (still missing along with something like 8,000 other still missing Lebanese who were taken by Israeli over the years, including non-combatant women and children), and committed many other acts against their neighbours in both Palestine and Lebanon, including other kidnappings and bombings as well as blocking Arab access to medical treatment, jobs, their own property, etc. Of course this is apparently all acceptable and justified in your opinion since you choose to ignore all those events and speak as if the trouble only began the exact day Hizbollah started being nasty to Israel by capturing two soldiers. So I guess 50 years of massively abusive behaviour toward their neighbours by Israel doesn’t count does it.

How about the elderly Palestinian woman who begged the Israeli not to bulldoze her home because her wheelchair bound husband was still inside, yet they brought down the building anyway and killed a trapped cripple? That one was actually filmed and seen on TV newscasts. I guess in your lexicon, that was somehow justified too, although this is only one of hundreds of similar stories, such as a woman filmed as she was run over by an Israeli bulldozer. I guess the driver was afraid she’d scare him to death with the weapon of her voice as she screamed at him that what he was doing was wrong so he had to kill her in self-defense.

How about the fact that Israel is the fourth largest and most powerful military on this planet, yet they constantly scream ‘everyone hates and wants to kill us’, while they in fact have created the world’s largest gulag. I think you may have heard of it. It’s called Palestine where something like 90% of the population lives on less than $3.00 per week per household. If you want to argue history young man, at least look at both sides of a conflict before you spout off that you know what you’re talking about. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, there are always two sides to a story…and I don’t just mean Israel’s and America’s.

I’m not pro or anti Israel. I’m not pro or anti Palestine/Lebanon. I’m not pro or anti America. I’m just massively anti the thin veneer of bringing democracy to people who didn’t even ask for it or deposing dictators as the perpetual excuse for deliberate acts of war by powerful countries against countries who are militarily weak but who happen to have large supplies of oil, gas, gold, uranium, etc that war profiteers just happen to want to get their hands on. I’m anti the political/corporate elite’s use of constant brainwashing to convince the sheeple to go be cannon fodder in another people’s land so they can get another few billion in their already bloated bank accounts. And I’m tired of hearing them called terrorists if they refuse to lie down and die at their invaders command.

If you can’t see that once all the published hype is cut out there’s never been a single war in all of recorded history where the bottom line wasn’t ‘for power and profit’ for a few and slavery for the rest, then you are clearly not a student of history. You’re just a historically illiterate sheeple who has thoroughly bought into the latest baloney line fed to people like yourself, to make you willing to to become an army of legalized killers to further line the pockets of those who want whatever someone else has. Some of you they con with “patriotism”. Others they bribe with money. Others they get because they can’t find an ordinary job that doesn’t involve killing. The bottom line is that it’s still a job of killing. That’s what you do. You kill. You may do it for the paycheck or for some form of patriotism…but it’s still killing. Hope you can live with it.

I especially hope you can live with it when the truth finally hits you in your concience and you begin to wake up in the night still seeing the headless baby lying in the rubble beside it’s mother, or the woman dead with her basket of food lying in the dirt and blood beside her when all she wanted was to get food for her kids. Or you look at the teenage boy raped and waterboarded at Abu Graib when he was guilty only of being an innocent kid in a country where some big shots wanted the oil. May God help you then as He’s had to help all those who are at the mercy of those with bigger guns and bombs.

As long as there are people like you willing to kill on order, there will be people like me willing to confront you. Had I the way to get there, I would willingly be one who would stand in front of a bulldozer for the innocent. Son you are wrong in your attitude. Someday you will realize that.

To Pat and Van F.;

Character attacks don’t make me wrong. I don’t care if someone called you a slut Pat, that is a stupid man’s attack. However, nice straw man attack. I didn’t call anyone a slut. Just ignorant of history.

As far as the terrorists on their own soil go, you may want to investigate Zarqawi and his boys a little deeper. They aren’t from Iraq. This is another fact you can look up on google of all places.

And maybe Pat could explain the Destruction of Lebanon by Israel. If I have the story right, Hizbollah invaded Israel and captured two soldiers and killed eight others. I don’t know about you, but I think after being invaded by Hizbollah, Israel had a clear reason to attack. I also notice you didn’t mention all the rockets they randomly launched into Israel. I guess launching random rockets into civilian areas after you invade a country is okay as long as it is Israelis you are killing.

By all means, use the victim status to argue from and don’t bother putting up a real fact.

and pat, as far as it goes with American haters; this is classic
“With the way America’s neo-con-artist leaders are trashing the American constitution so they can have another ‘convenient’ crisis and institute a ‘legal’ excuse to declare a national emergency and institute their own dictatorship, who knows…since Shane apparently doesn’t seem to have a conscience, he will probably find no problem getting a job with FEMA when he’s finished his tour of duty…or get an excellent job manning one of those new ‘detention centers’ his leader is building.”

Every leftist/socialist country in the world instituted a dictatorship based on a national crisis. Castro, Pol Pot, Moa, Stalin, Hitler. You are projecting your leftist ideals on the right.

Look at Shane hanging himself with his own rope, the one he pretends to be lassoing his critics with. He’s fine with no war planning, just improvising as we go along, so what if it’s a disaster, so what if we’re losing our asses even by our own standards of success, so what if the body armor is third rate and soldiers must pay for their own if they want to be protected, so what if Rumsfeld is a congenital liar and hypocritical egomaniac, just like his White House comrades, and who gives a damn about depleted uranium, which is “pyrophoric” so we don’t need to worry about that. DU is as harmless as brown sugar.

All such criticisms are to Shane just further proof that we “want the terrorists to win.” That perfectly displays how shallow are Shane’s critical capacities, how sophomoric his discernment and how pathetically sheeplike his moronic defense of the indefensible, which is this whole damn war and all the Shane-lies that have set it in motion.

C’mon Shane, sprinkle some of that DU dust on your breakfast Wheaties and then tell us how it’s all a myth. You’re like the Slim Pickens character in “Dr. Strangelove” riding the nuclear bomb out the bomb bay doors at the end of the film. Ride ‘em cowboy, destroy those commie-terrorists even if it means we all die! You’re a real piece of . . . work, Shane.

Shane’s little but a common thug, as the mother of the soldier and Pat clearly see. He fancies himself a hard-headed historian and truth lover but he’s really just another authoritarian in love with his own belligerence. He shills for war and imperialism and see himself as a defender of democracy, much like his beloved leaders in Washington.

Shane’s sense of history is the sense Cheney projects—the the US is always right, that we only want to promote freedom, and that any countries who resist our invasions and occupations of their lands are TERRORISTS, pure and simple. This is Shane’s comforting dreamworld and he’ll demean anyone who challenges it, including women who have lost sons fighting to defend the lies Shane venerates.

Don’t mess with big bad Shane: he’ll waste you with an RPG while screaming that you’re a terrorist. His brain is obviously screwed in the same way Bush’s is: freedom is death to all who resist the dictator, democracy is control by a distant authoritarian government accountable to no one. That’s Shane’s world.

If we have any backbone as a people it will soon come to an end, and Shane can retire somewhere to continue his historical revisionism to his heart’s content.

re Comment #33751—Good for you Mom! I’m a grandmother and a minister but I recently got called a slut by a “proud to be a Republican” moron just like the immature ‘Shane’ who wouldn’t recognize truth or justice if it jumped up and slapped him in the face. To him war seems to be just another video game…not real…no “collateral damage” victims to affect his conscience. No soldier is dying needlessly. Maybe he’s afraid to look with an open mind because if he did he’d have to admit to himself that he’d been turned into a killer, not only of ‘terrorists’ but of countless un-named innocents for nothing except his immoral leader’s lies.

What was my big sin that got me labeled a slut? Simple…I dared to say I was sick of all the baloney being spouted that these wars were supposedly to free those oppressed by dictators and create democracy. If that excuse was true why do those same leaders who howl for more wars pick only weak dictators to ‘bring down’ while making profitable economic treaties with far worse dictators? Why support in word and financially, the destruction of the DEMOCRATIC nation of Lebanon by Israel yet never once criticize Israel for their treatment of their neighbours?

The leaders Shane follows so fervently secretly send troops in to foment strife and secretly weaken countries whose assets they want. After a few years of stirring things up by deliberately creating terrorists, they then announce that they are now ready and willing to go in and take care of the terrorists in order to free the people. What hypocrisy!

Obviously Shane is not a student of history or even a student of actual reasoning power period. Had he been one he might not have so willingly done his master’s bidding. No-one who understands history can help but see the secret hands who create strife in order to gain greater power and riches. Wars are created for power and profit and for no other reason, regardless of what prettied-up excuse is given to sheeple like Shane to turn them into willing killers. There has never been one single war in all of history that didn’t have money and power as the motivating factors.

Stand strong Mom! Be proud of a child who did what he felt was his duty…for whatever reason…and don’t ever take any guff from morons who are too stupid to understand what truly motivates politicians to go to war.

With the way America’s neo-con-artist leaders are trashing the American constitution so they can have another ‘convenient’ crisis and institute a ‘legal’ excuse to declare a national emergency and institute their own dictatorship, who knows…since Shane apparently doesn’t seem to have a conscience, he will probably find no problem getting a job with FEMA when he’s finished his tour of duty…or get an excellent job manning one of those new ‘detention centers’ his leader is building.

Keep the faith sister.

To Mother of US Special Forces Soldier;

He volunteered to fight in the US military. The fact that you think the body armor is third rate doesn’t matter. I’m guessing you can’t name better body armor. The fact that you think Bush is acting like Hitler shows that you are so utterly uneducated and it shows you are so rapped in Bush hatred that truth will elude you. Exactly what acts would you say were just like Hitler? Would it be kicking Saddam out of office and having an election you moron.

Please feel free to go back in history and give an example of “War Planning”. We go to war. The plan changes and morphs as conditions warrant. Only a complete liar or someone without the slightest education concerning history could make an idiotic statement like we didn’t plan the war well enough. How well was World War II planned honey? Iwo Jima would have been considered a complete failure and a political hack job for the flag raising by the left.

As far as Depleted Uranium goes; so what? It is used in tank armor and armor piercing rounds. The left has long premoted the lie that somehow that is causing some deadly disease. Well its atomic weight is 238. If you x-ray someone and they have DU in them, it will be in the brain. It is exactly like lead poisoning. The DU would have to be made into fine powder, then it would react with air(its pyrophoric). Then there would have to be no wind to carry it off. Then you would have to inhale it for long periods of time before it would effect you. The DU myth should die. Its a myth.

As far as the red voters promoting terrorism, are you really that ignorant of history? My god women, terrorism didn’t start when Bush took office. Terrorism started decades ago. Bush wasn’t in office and the Democrats were in charge when Iran took our embassy hostage. Clinton was in office and the democrats were in charge of congress when the first World trade center bombing happened. The USS Cole, the Kobe towers. Honest, you can look those up. They really happened before Bush was in office. You can enter Kobe Towers in google and read about it. Give it a shot.

Keep tarnishing your son’s reputation by lying and using his name and position to support your leftist agenda. I’m sure he is ashamed of you and wishes you didn’t.

TO:  #33404 by Shane

When the “LYING ”  starts at the gate of the MILITARY entrance than I will speak out loudly!

Military individuals are “suppose to” have ethics, morals and standards! And not Lie and Lie and Lie.  This strongly points to lying is “accepted and PROMOTED” at any LEVEL within the military! Another Great JOB created from the top down to the lowest level of rank, including YOU of lying!

He didn’t “volunteer” for his health records to be “literally forged” and a bottle of white used by the recruiter.

He didn’t “volunteer” to be LIED to when asking a recruiter if X frame was available for X position and bait/switch.

He didn’t “volunteer” to have his bonus taken away upon death or injury and be “charged back”.

He didn’t “volunteer”  to go to war with 3rd class body armor.

He didn’t “volunteer” to stand with the LIES,  and acts of a Hitler.

He didn’t “volunteer” for INCOMPETENT military management.

He didn’t “volunteer” for INCOMPETENT war planning.

He didn’t “volunteer” to have scrap metal served in his food consistently.

He didn’t “volunteer” to be intentionally exposed to DU.

Please don’t TELL ME what to do and what not to do, you DIDN’T give birth to him, I DID.  If you don’t like my posts than don’t read !!!!!! 

You desperately need to “acquire ” some ethics, morals and respect! I’ll bet you were one “hell kid” to handle from a parents perspective. By speaking the way you have to a Mother you show NO CLASS, Nada!

Now I’ll tell you want any good Mother would, place your nose in YOUR OWN plate and eat YOUR OWN food!

You stated and I quote:
“supporting the terrorists”

Why the hell do you think the attacks are coming across the pond? They are leaving Iraq after being trained you fool.  They have USED Iraq as a little training camp! Duh.  All coming to a theater near you relative to this great “reckless” WAR PLANNING! Keep staying and when they show up here, maybe YOU can figure out some great plan. Duh!

I know this if they ever show up at my door I ‘ll point them to any red voter. As the red voters have “promoted” all of this terrorism!

Behind every war there is a “financial cause” just ask Westmoreland history generals.  I have in deapth (emphasis added). And further, when you see the money switching hands, it doesn’t take long to follow the “coat - tails”!  And you young child will look back to realize that YOU have been played for a FOOL!

I sure hope you have enrolled in school and do wish you all the best with academics!

Sincerely,
Mother of US Special Force Soldier
d-green
green
rangers
seals

Even if Shane went to Iraq (?) it doesn’t give him “intellectual property rights” to tell everyone else what they are to think about this raging catastrophe. The mother he chides with such overbearing superiority knows more about what this disaster means than Shane ever will, with his brain dragging thru the mud. Just don’t try to drag the rest of us in your gutter, Shane. You volunteered maybe, but that doesn’t mean you understand squat. It just means you’re easily duped.

To Mother of US special forces soldier;

Your son, like me, volunteered. Whether or not you believe in the mission doesn’t matter. Just because your son or daughter is over there doesn’t give you some intellectual property rights. It’s your son or daughter that went. They didn’t ask you for permission and they don’t care if you approve. It’s an all volunteer force. If you want to speak out against the war, fine. Just don’t use your son or daughters name and drag them through the mud with you. They volunteered.

TO:  #33357 by Shane

You need an education ...................come on over on the next c-130, i’ll drive then drop you in….......weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
mother of us special forces soldier
d-green
green
rangers
seals

To Van F;
Truly a nice personal attack. We were asked to be in Vietnam by the leaders of South Vietnam. North Vietnam, like North Korea was another country at the time. The left, the democrats like Kerry and Kennedy and the left like Scheer all protested the US involvement in Vietnam. The key here should be the US involvement. They didn’t have a word to say about Chinese or Russian involvement. The protested when we went into Cambodia, they did this with the full knowledge that our enemy was retreating into Cambodia. So they had no problem with our enemy crossing the border and killing our soldiers but the would not allow our soldiers to pursue them. The message of course is that they wanted the North Vietnamese to win and allowing our troops to pursue and kill the enemy would have meant a US Victory and they were totally against that.

Now Iraq. The left wants us to lose to the terrorists. The left like you. They can claim there was no reason to go there. They claim Bush lied about the intelligence and there were no WMD’s and we are in an illegal war. So the left wants us to leave and allow the terrorists to win. We are in Iraq. Leaving Iraq will allow the terrorists a victory. I guess for the hate America crowd anyone who beats the US regardless of how bad they are is okay. They had no problem allowing a repressive regime to take over Vietnam and kill hundreds of thousands of people, they will have no problem letting the terrorists take over Iraq and wage a global war against the West killing millions. That is the left. It’s not Cowboy logic. It was not Cowboy logic when the left was told if we leave Vietnam hundreds of thousands would be executed. Guess what? That is what happened. It isn’t Cowboy revisionism like the left. Vietnamese Generals have told us it was our press and the left of our country that kept them going even when they lost the TET Offensive. Like the TET Offensive, no battle can be lost by the terrorists that you won’t call a victory to embolden them. That is why ever program to stop terror is protested by the left. They want the fall of America. They don’t care how many people die or who they need to support as long as we fall. It will make the complete failure of Socialism(slavery) okay as long as the system they hate falls.

Shane #33053 is a typical idiot of the right, chiming in with his blame-the-left stupidities about why and how we lost Vietnam, just as we’re losing Iraq. We were righteous in “going in” in both instances, according to Shane’s cowboy logic, and critics of Bush today are like the naysayers of 40 years ago—except of course that both are and were right, as anyone can see except tough guy cowboys like Shane. Sorry, sodbuster, but you’re logic is in the toilet, as everyone in Washington including your hero president now recognizes. We’ve lost because we should have never gone in, had no business there except to perpetuate lies and theft, and will likely never recover from the biggest blunder this country’s ever made. It was doomed from the start, and not because a few strangled voices from the left knew it and tried to say so, but because it was an unworthy cause founded on a mountain of lies. Take refuge in the lies of the Republicans, Shane, because nobody else is listening anymore.

We have no business being in Iraq today. There is no more Sadam ruling the country now. Let’s bring our troops back in phases now.  Let the Iraqi factions fight it out; they are doing it now anyway. Most of the Iraqi people don’t want us in Iraq now anyway; anyhow. If we want to employ some troops, send them to find Osama bin Laden in Afganistan. This is the country we should be in. Osama led the attack on 9/11, not Sadam! I agree Iraq is the new “Killing Fields.” Get out and stop the bleeding. It is Viet Nam all over again & Bush has agreed that it is. “Stay the course” is no longer relevant anymore. “Change the course” is correct now! Let’s do it now. We don’t have to wait for Baker’s report to Bush in January, 2007.We will take many lives in Iraq before the contents of his report to Bush is implemented. We know what to do now!

The Killing Fields started after we abandoned the South Vietnamese to the North Vietnamese. Our Democrats in the Congress and the Senate voted to remove all military aid from the South Vietnamese. About 9 months later after the resources of the South Vietnamese were depleted, the North still beiing supplied by China and Russia, overcame the South Vietnamese and started re-education camps and Pol-Pot had his killing fields. Unfortunately, Scheer and those on the left learned the real lesson of Vietnam. If you lie, tell lies night and day on the News and support the other side with propaganda, eventually the US will lose support from within and will quit. Then you can have the killing fields, you can help establish a killing field by supporting the terrorists and wash your hands of all the death you helped bring about by saying something like “we shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” Scheer and his buddies helped set up and then ignore the killing in Vietnam. Now they are working at it in Iraq.

The LA Times dropped Robert Sheers’ column several weeks ago and continues in its shift to god knows where.  Within the last two weeks, two articles from three staff writers, in reference to Hugo Chavez devil remark at the UN, labeled his remark as being “anti-american” and “anti-US”.  Does it follow that at least half of us who love our country are now considered anti-american?  One redeeming plus appeared in the comics section of last Sunday.  It was Lalo’s scary halloween scene with four trickortreaters: Cheney as a ghost with a money bag, Rummy with a busted sword, Condi with a black cat and a glowing wand, and Dubya as a devil with a torn bag.

Interesting artical:  I think we are way off base attacking Iraq again in the 1st place, I know they went against the UN resolutions, but when did the U.S. become its strong arm enforcer.  I would like to know why no one acknowledges The Real Reason Were In Iraq:  Saddam tried to have Bush jr’s daddy Assassinated during Clintons watch! Clinton answered that attempt with one cruise missile. Now why doesn’t anyone remember this?  Do you all think jr needs any other reason to go for Iraq?  Another pointer: Saddam did not like, or support Al Qaeda, in fact he was a atheist.  One more pointer on Iraq, I think Saddam was one of the few people that could control that country in the first place, he was a ruthless killer, and thats what it seems to take to control all the factions there.  Want an answer to Iraq today?  I think its easy!  Let Turkey annex it.  End of story, they’d love the oil and the Turks can be ruthless, all we have to do is turn our collective backs on how they go about taking control.  “We’ve done alot of our own killing there, what difference will it make if they have there hand at it?”

  Point 2: If Iraq was the wrong country to attack, who was?  Of course we allied the country that had everything to do with Al Qaeda!  Pakastan!  Pakastan’s intelligence arm of there military created Al Qaeda!  Yes, we did know this!  And to boot we allied them, give them 10’s of millions if not 100’s of millions of dollars to help us fight in there boarderlands.  And we’ve found for our buck, that all the key leaders that Pakastan is claiming to be killing, are in fact being killed by U.S. predator drones.  How do you all feel about that?  The #1 supporting country of Al Qaeda is a supposed ally.  I love working constantly only to give 1/3 to my country only for them to squander it on our enemies.  I don’t think either of the main parties will ever get us out of this.. we need a true, and selfless leader, in this age thats all about me.  I pray we all can find some for all branch’s of gov’t.

I had the honor of being ordained as a “Chaplain for the Common Good” on Easter Morning this year with Cindy Sheehan and a hundred or so more by the Reverand Joseph Lowery at Camp Casey in Crawford,Texas.  This is a man who stood by Martin Luther King,Jr ‘s. side in the battle for civil rights and stood up to George Bush at the funeral of Coretta Scott King.  This is a voice that is speaking truth but not being heard. The news media is hiding from that voice.

How many of us are speaking to each other and how much is being heard?  The battle is not here on the blogsphere talking to ourselves,the battle is out there ...in America. 

Who in America that is now awakening and realizing their delusion are we telling with compassion: “I know why you wanted to believe in our country and our leader(s),  but now is the time to cast them out. In our democracy in our way, the first step is to put someone else in the seats of Congress,  someone who can wield the sword of supoena to seek the truth and expose the lies”. 

We need to be brave and be warriors in the three weeks remaining.  Speak the truth and speak it kindly and firmly (and not self righteously) to those who now might listen. 

We cant wait another four months for “Iraqi” politicians and those in control of our Congress to dicker, dither and debate.  The area known as Iraq needs to partition formally into three confederated areas and put Bagdad under jurisdiction of the UN as an international city. NOW. Share the oil revenues equitably for all areas and Bagdad for rebuilding and health and food only.  Give them this option and real international support and get our troops out of there.   

HC Jay Powell,  Navy Veteran

The Iraqi Body Count response is as follows. Its says the Lancet report implies that:

On average a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every day in the first half of 2006, with “less than a tenth being noticed by any public surveillance mechanism.”

Of 800,000 wounded people in the past two years, “less than a tenth received any kind of hospital treatment.”

Over 7% of the male population has been killed; 10% in central region.

Half a million death certificates were issued to families but not officially recorded.

The Coalition has killed far more people in the last year than in the invasion and Falluja type-operations of earlier years.

The IBC says that such assertions suggested incompetence/fraud on a massive scale by hospitals and ministries, self-destructive behaviour by the wounded, an utter failure by agencies to notice decimation of the male population and an abject media failure to observe the scale of events.

The IBC concludes: “In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy.”

jbloggz says,

As Franks said openly ‘we don’t count Iraqi dead!’ A sick remark from a sick general!
==================================
“They know we own their country. We own their airspace…We dictate the way they live and talk. And that’s what’s great about America right now. It’s a good thing, especially when there is a lot of oil out there we need.”

“If you wake up in the morning and you have no power to your house and no gas to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be lying in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, ‘Hey, Slobo, what’s this all about? How much more of this do we have to withstand?’”

I’m convinced that the Government must strengthen its negotiating position, and I believe that increased leverage at the negotiating table can only be gained on Colombia’s battlefields.(It is truly disgusting for a foreign militarist to propose a ground war in a nation where both adults and children are begging for peaceful negotiations.)

Now that we have as many of our military killed in Iraq as were killed in the Twin Towers, isn’t it time for the real truth to be understood by the American people!!

It’s time for a change—for the truth.

As Samm Simpson, candidate for FL Congressional Dist. 10, TRUTH IS OUR WEAPON—CHANGE IS OUR CHOICE!

I was informed of this web site from an article on the Tillman brothers.  I have been looking for a site like this for a long time.  Now what I have to say is:  I am extremely ashamed of our American government. To all the people of the world, please don’t hate us Americans.  Most is not our fault.  Primarily all we can do is vote, but no matter whom we vote for, we get the same results.  I don’t believe W. was elected in the first place, and I don’t believe it will ever change.  I have voted in every election since I came eligible to vote, and besides that, I’m planning not to vote in the near election.  Apathy has set in big time, and outside of illegal tactics, I believe little can be done.  I’ll try to be less negative in the future, but can’t promise anything.

re Comment #31069 by jbloggz—Thanks to you and others for your views re what I’d said. As it happens I’m Canadian not American, not that it really matters.

The reason I spoke strongly is because I see exactly the same phony political system in Canada and every other so-called democratic country that’s so clearly evident in America. Canada also uses the party system to fool the gullible into believing their vote will make things better in the “next” election. It won’t because Canada’s political leaders are just as much of a ‘good old boys’ club as is the American version of politics.

I know people of integrity who sought to change things for the better by getting involved in politics. Didn’t work! You either go along with your party’s wishes or whatever you try to do gets blocked,even by your own party.

I know of no solution that will correct the current state of affairs. How does the public “fire” such an enormous number of crooked politicians who are willing to sell their votes for free vacations to Hawaii, big contributions to their next election, limo services, or for a little insider trading advice? Corruption is so rampant it would be hard to get elected dog catcher unless you’re as crooked as the rest of the cabal at the top.

As for comment #31919 by John M Kane—Man I feel sorry for you. Maybe you should turn off Fox (propaganda) news and read/watch what’s coming out in newscasts around the world. As long as you look at life from only one side…America’s…you’ll continue to buy Bush’s neo-con-artist propaganda.

Try asking yourself ‘cui bono’ - who profits. This is the first thing one asks when investigating a crime…if they’re really interested in the truth. Who profits from all those claims that Iraqi are suicide bombing their own families or neighbours in marketplaces as they go to buy food? Who profits from splitting up the country into small pieces that will no longer be strong enough to fight back against their American overlords? Ever heard of divide and conquer? Maybe someone is making it look like suicide bombs to foment strife between different factions to further weaken their ability to stand together against American aggression and to make people like you buy the lie that all Muslims think about is killing everyone else, themselves included. (And before you accuse me of believing this because I must be a Muslim…I’m neither Muslim or Arab.)

You also blather the Bush mantra that they are mass killing around the world and that’s why America has had to bomb the crap out of one Middle Eastern country after another. Try looking at the actual numbers of dead. Far more of them are dying from coalition forces than others are dying from suicide bombs. And far more will die even after the bullets cease, from Bush’s love gift of tons of DU bombs.

Give them another 20 years or so and you will probably finally be safe from them at last because most of them will be either dead or dying of DU poisoning or starvation because nothing safe to eat will be able to grow on their land anymore. I guess at that time your great leaders will have to find a new enemy for Americans like you to be afraid of and turn into your new world-class boogie-man…maybe it will be us Canadians they will convince you to fear instead of all those dead Arabs. Don’t worry, I’m sure they will find a handy new enemy somewhere for you to fear and fight.

But…before you condemn them for fighting back against American aggression, John, ask yourself what you’d do if it were your family whose doors were being kicked in at midnight, your wife, mother or daughters who were being raped, your child’s ambulance being shot at by your liberators as you try to get their shot up body to a doctor who has no medicine to treat them with, your father or sons who are being sent to Abu Graib for torture and worse. Till you face what they face daily at American hands, you have no right to criticize them. Americans need to look at the mirror of how the rest of the world sees them before they condemn others as war-mongering killers. Maybe the willing killer you see looking back at you will be you.

Apparently you can’t tell the difference between someone invading the country you are actually living in and your country invading other people’s homelands! Forgive us if the rest of the world is getting a little tired of your latest president’s never-ending fear-mongering and his invading of other people’s countries ‘just in case’ they might possibly, maybe, perchance want to invade your own somewhere down the line some day, maybe, possibly, in the distant future. Maybe if Americans weren’t so willing to invade other countries, other countries wouldn’t hate America so much.

To all those who take time to read what we all have to say, please forgive this rant. I apologize for getting so fed up with those who label people “left” or anti-American or pro-Muslim, or anti-Semite or whatever, just because we happen to be so sick and tired of the never-ending wars started by people who should be looking for ways to get along instead of ways to kill more people with new and better bombs. Isn’t it funny that the one country that most loudly claims to want peace is also the country with the largest army and the biggest war budget, and are the only ones who’ve actually used ‘the mushroom cloud’ on others !!! And don’t we all wish Bush’s yea-sayers would shut up if they can’t say anything but “We’re the good guys and those other guys just want to kill us for no reason”.

To John

Sorry but the lancet report on the Iraqi deaths state clearly that at least 250000 deaths are directly attributal to the actions of American forces!

This country will take years to recover and my prediction is this.  That a new Saddam type will come along and he will take over in the same way that ole Saddam did. I can only guess who his paymasters will be but for sure not a million miles away from where you are. I said this from the beginning and my instinct tells me that not only will it happen, but it HAS to happen to put right the wrongs that have been done to this nation.  If it doesn’t then expect a huge wind of change that will engulf Saudi, the Emirates and of course all that lovely oil that the US needs so badly. So saddle up buddy you might just be needing one horse power real soon!

Where are the rest of the Vietnam vets. Surely they see our children going through the same horrors that we went through as children for a government who told the same lies about why we were there. The same government that wouldn’t let us fight the war, but instead let us endure hardships for political gain are at it once again. The same arguments were used then to terrorize the American people as they use today. ” If we don’t fight communism on their soil they will come here and destroy us”.I think the reason we so strongly support our troops in Iraq is because no one supported us and we know how that feels. God help those in Iraq and keep them safe. Bring them home before corporate America kills anymore of them. Patriotism means doing what is right for our country no matter how unpopular the stand, not blindly following like sheep until our rights are taken away and speaking out may land you in a prison without any recourse simply because you love America.

Let’s see if someone can oversimplify things more absurdly than John Kane. He sure has “the left’s” number. All we do is “side with extremists and terrorists,” and all this time I thought we were trying to show how Bush’s war is the height of criminality and the utter destruction of US foreign policy, to everyone’s detriment. Also, those suicide bombers (not “bambers”) wouldn’t be killing Iraqi civilians if we’d not invaded and taken over their country. We have created civil war there by unleashing anarchic forces born of Bush and Cheney’s illegal invasion and occupation. They’ll keep killing each other, Shiites and Sunnis, until we leave, so if that’s our mission, to have them kill each other off, then we’re succeeding. Then Bush’s oil cronies can freely steal all the oil, some Saddam-like strongman will once more be in charge, oppressing his own people at America’s direction, and I suppose that will pass for democracy. But we on the left need to understand, as Kane scolds us, that the terrorists there only need to “put down their weapons so they can enjoy freedom.” Right, the freedom to be under the total jurisdiction of American imperialism. It’s always doublethink time for the nabobs on the right, isn’t it?

“How hyper-rich do the elite of this world have to be before they will finally decide they don’t need to murder the innocent in order to steal any more wealth?
...
“It’s no longer about how much money they’re making from the misery they’re causing….  How can it be. They couldn’t spend all that money living high on the hog in a hundred years. It’s all about power over others…the ability to decide who lives and who dies…the ability to ‘play god’ with other people’s lives.”
===========
To pile my increment on the well-stated foundation by Pat, it’s not about how rich they are, but about how poor they can make others. Lacking the ability to become deities (except,perhaps, in their own fevered minds) they do the “best” they can —- they ruin others to enhace the comparison.

Having gone as far up the ladder of personal aggrandizement as a human can go, the only way they can increase the social distance between themselves and everyone else, is to suppress everyone else.  It’s a form of insanity that few can afford, but insanity it is, and few who reach that financial level are able to resist it, since their crazy financial peers won’t tolerate sanity in their midst.

Once again the LEFT looks at this from the wrong angle.  We are not killing the overwhelming majority of civilians.  They are being killed by suicide and car bambers from their own country.  All done in the name of a GOD that does not exist.  I can ssya this because no GOD would condone the type and scale of violence that they are perpetuating throughout the world.  We ALL know that if they laid down their weapons we would not be firing anymore.  We also know if we have 1/2 s brsin that they would continue to kill us under any circumstances.  Yet most of the left continues to side with the extremists and terrorists.  Here is a clue for you people.  They are not freedom fighters.  If they put their weapons down permanently we would leave and they would have all the freedom they would be able to enjoy!!

I am not claiming to be psychic, nor patting myself on the proverbial back, because the political/social/global situation we are in is as serious as cancer. But, before Bush got in office, I had predicted he would foul things up in more ways than can be counted and he has more than lived up to that assesment.  To make matters worse we foolishly and desperately put him back in office for a second chance to continue the debacle. He was a bungler before he took the presidency and continues to be one. How and why the citizens of our mighty nation have allowed this man to take our country this far into a political and social nightmare is beyond reasoning and common sense(which ain’t too common obviously).  Yet, we hung Bill Clinton for a far less “error(s) in judgment”.  The saying goes that a nation gets the leader(s) it deserves.  Have we truly come this low in choosing leadership?  God help us, because we don’t appear to be capable of helping ourselves.  The proof is evident in the choices we have made.  I pray we learn from our past mistakes and in the future choose leaders based on their knowledge, wisdom and compassion, rather than just their political affiliations.  It is my deepest hope we learn to judge by what a leader does or has done, more so than what they say or promise to do.  The best to us all. Amen.

quote:
“In response to the 9/11 killing of 3,000 Americans by a gang of mostly Saudi Arabian terrorists.”

It was Bush who accused 19 arabs (Bush is a liar)

Or was it 12 hijackers 7 of them turned to be alive. ( Bush doesn’t care about the exact number as long as US people swallow the frog)

Or it doesn’t matter how many arabs took part in 911 attack ( the number of hijackers is serious and Washington FBI NSA CIA Pentagon did not matter to them whether there were 12 or 19. the success depends on the number obviously with box cutters the operation succeeded.)

You still believe the liars who had no evidence that arabs executed 911 the evidence was shipped in record time and thats OK

USA has become the most popukated nation with gullible

Gullible State of America GSA is better Saddam is not Hitler nor Milosovitch

You be surprised that the Germans are so proud of Hitler he cleansed his country from a human desease that is controlling USA now and sending your kids to any war they wish

Iraq Afghanistan soon Iran and Syria
Keep wondering about the arabs
We think USA is the criminal country that the world is fearful what will they do with their WMD nagasaki and hiroshima isn’t forgotten
no country is willing to us WMD except USA
who threatened Iran with WMD and the threat is still on the table.
USA is worse than pol pot and his likes.
USA is not a democracy it is a charlatan of politics.

That is how it sounds to the administration

Right you are Pat #30938. There’s always this confusion over whether it’s about money or power or both, as if it has to come down to one single motive that keeps the totalitarian machine in motion. It’s about a shifting list of things that all include money and power. In a capitalist system there is no serious power anywhere without money behind it, big money. And anyone who has serious money will have power if s/he wants it, since all you need to do is pay for it. The Dems and Repubs have disintegrated to their present level because politics now is about nothing but money. People with real integrity need not apply, cannot apply. They’re driven out immediately. Both wings of the Big Business Party are on the corporate gravy train and cannot operate otherwise. That’s why voting has become meaningless—all we’re being enjoined to do is throw our support behind one or the other network of corporate board rooms. Our deep confusion over this is part of the process, without which the machinery of greed and imperialism isn’t properly oiled. We have to keep disagreeing and bickering about it all (who’s grabbing money, who just wants power, what they’re really up to) so that we keep hoping for some change from the voting booth, which of course never comes. By any clear reckoning this process will continue unabated indefinitely. The Karl Roves have done all their homework. They know all the strings to keep pulling.

For Pat

I have a very good friend who is an American and he lives in Nebraska. He is frightened to even put a bumper sticker on his car showing his views. Views of which are not a million miles away from your own from what I read from your posts.

I have spent my life living and working in some pretty crud places in Africa and the Middle East. I also lived and worked in Baghdad in Iraq for 3 very happy years. Happy because it was a pleasure to work with Iraqi engineers who were clever and knowledgeable. True they had their own problems, poor pay but at least they had full time work. They built huge hydro dams on a par with the Hoover project. They built roads and bridges and they had a sewage and electric system that worked.
All of which were destroyed by America! Yes Americans, they were the ones hurling their cruise missiles and God knows what at that unfortunate land. How those so called brave US airman can sleep at night defeats me, as they killed tens of thousands in their homes. Saddams country was controlled, I never personally came across any corruption, the people were too scared to try that one.  In my own way I did help some to leave to avoid being conscripted into the Popular Army to fight Americas surrogate war against Iran. Yes Saddam was veery obliging and he got a great deal of help too.  Even the Brutish
government too handed over every year around 400 million pounds to keep Saddam going. Oh yeah to buy British products of course.  I met many of the Thatcher in crowd as they came on their visits to Baghdad to hold court with Saddam. I travelled that country up and down from Mosul to Basra and never once did I experience any fear or personal danger! When my car broke down I was helped. My company lawyer was a wonderful man who had been imprisoned years before for being a ‘communist’. He defended Brtish subjects who were caught doing their deals and they went to Abu Ghraib jail too!

Now I asked the question about naming just one Iraqi dead to demonstrate just how little Americans care about the slaughter of Iraqis that they have engineered and condoned. Condoned by saying and doing nothing to get rid of this cancer that controls them now. I do follow American politics and that’s why you find me here.
I agree that the two parties are indistiguishable from each other in the US. That is why there must be a complete change not only in governance of America but in the method too.  It can be done it was done in the former USSR and true they struggled, but they got a worthwhile leader and a man who is a true Russian patriot.

Money is not the criteria now in the US. The greedy scum have gorged themselves to the point where this is meaningless. It’s only about naked power and as Hitler tried with his Third Reich, the GOP led by these loonies are trying to do the same.  They’re getting there too and it’ll be very hard to get em out. If Katrina couldn’t do it then I don’t know what will.  Perhaps a look back at your history will point the way. It may well be that this will show the direction to take. If it isn’t changed, the camps are built the rules are in place and the controls too. Land of the free? No I don’t think so. Maybe Russians nowadays have a better deal.  For sure they get free medical attention!

Now of course the present regime is having problems. You see it’s really easy to get ‘freedom fighters’ organized to kill in the countries like you mentioned. But as the British found out, it’s a different story when you are faced with this warfare. I imagine every time a Humvee leaves the confines of the camp the crew know darned well that they’ll be a target. They will NEVER win a guerilla war. Even Somalia told em that and at least they got out before it got bad. Now the elections are due and the GOP is frantically looking for a get out of jail free card! Hence the high talk about a new direction. I told em as did thousands more four years ago where that direction should be and was not go to war with Iraq!  But this low life knew better didn’t they?

Pat it has to change and only like minded Americans with some guts can do it. I hope you manage to find it before the next round of killing starts.

to Comment #30774 by jbloggz—- you are soooooo right! But then how can one possibly put names to over 600,000 people? And that’s in only one country! That doesn’t even count Japan, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Viet Nam, Haiti, and God Himself only knows how many other places around the world that Americans (and others) have taken part in stirring up wars, political strife, or have trained ‘insurgents’ to do their dirty work of destabilizing other countries, etc. How many dead innocents will be finally enough?

How hyper-rich do the elite of this world have to be before they will finally decide they don’t need to murder the innocent in order to steal any more wealth?

The oil company profits are now in the trillions every quarter instead of every year. The munitions company’s profits are the same. The companies making tanks, helicopters and war planes are doing a booming massive trillion dollar windfall of profits. Will trillions finally be enough? No they’re not rich enough yet! How many trillions does it take to live well so you won’t have to make war to make more? War is an industry that pay financial dividends like no other industry on earth.

It’s no longer about how much money they’re making from the misery they’re causing. How can it be. They couldn’t spend all that money living high on the hog in a hundred years. It’s all about power over others…the ability to decide who lives and who dies…the ability to ‘play god’ with other people’s lives.

As for just voting the Republicans out and the Democrats in to make things better…forget it. They’re all members of the same ‘club’. They just take turns over who gets to be the boss for a while. It’s all a game of ‘good cop - bad cop’. Anyone who actually wants to better the lives of the ordinary man doesn’t have a chance of being elected to a position where he can actually do any good. And with all the laws this latest cabal of war crimes thieves have enacted, the next batch of ‘elected officials’ will have an even freer reign to do whatever they want just as the current batch does now.

Unless “we the people” stop thinking in terms of electing either this or that ‘party’ and start electing only people who live at all times with clearly demonstrated integrity, America is in for full-blown dictatorship in the near future. You’re only a blink away from it already. The same is true of every single country where people insist on voting ‘party’ instead of ‘integrity. Writer Devvy Kidd made this statement, “My blind loyalty isn’t to either one of the evil machines passing themselves off as a two party system; they are just two wings on the same bird of prey.” How true!

This world is on the brink of an outright world dictatorship, not just a country here and there. Anyone who can’t see that is blind only because they are too afraid to even contemplate it. It’s just too horrific to even think about. All we need is a major (rigged)“terrorist” event here in Canada, in the US, in Britain, in Italy, etc…to see soldiers patrolling our streets and demanding to ‘see our papers’. Then we too will join the nameless 600.000 in Iraq…at the mercy of the very ‘party’ we foolishly chose to elect.

To concerned mother.

Re your list of US dead soldiers this month! Now name just one Iraqi that died and how! Oh you can’t, maybe you should try and find out. You see that’s the difference between you and them. As Franks said openly ‘we don’t count Iraqi dead!’ A sick remark from a sick general!

Uhhh, impeach Bush & Cheney. Try them, convict their criminal asses, or shut the F—- up. What else would we do with common criminals? This whole insane scene is too much for anyone to deal with…sanely. Either we seize these bastards and deal with them forthwith or we forfeit the right to call ourselves citizens of a democracy. Choose.

As long as the representatives in Government keep shovelling the sweat of the taxpayers brows into the ‘military industrial complex’ they will have to keep wars going everywhere…anyone such as the neo-cons with a war agenda will be listened to, and the wealth of the country will be squandered on buying us more well deserved hatred over a longer period than the Nazis created for Germany.
The future of this country depends on a severe clamp down on funds for weapons of mass murder.The war lords must be deprived of MONEY.

After reading all these comments just what do I tell my 15 year old that wants to go?

Bush is going to HIDE the DEAD Iraq’s in the broom closet!
================================================

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/19/AR2006101901799.html?nav=rss_print/asection

————————————————————————
Iraq Aims to Limit Mortality Data
Health Ministry Told Not to Release Civilian Death Toll to U.N.

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 20, 2006; Page A16

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 19—Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office has instructed the country’s health ministry to stop providing mortality figures to the United Nations, jeopardizing a key source of information on the number of civilian war dead in Iraq, according to a U.N. document.

A confidential cable from the United Nations’ top official in Baghdad, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi of Pakistan, said the Iraqi prime minister is seeking to exercise greater control over the release of the country’s politically sensitive death toll. U.N. officials expressed concern that the move threatens to politicize the process of counting Iraq’s dead and muddy international efforts to gain a clear snapshot of the scale of killing in Iraq.

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Qazi warned in the cable that the development “may affect” the United Nations’ ability to adequately record the number of civilians killed or wounded in the Iraq war as it endures a bloody new phase of sectarian violence. He said U.N. human rights workers would have “no guaranteed means to corroborate” figures provided by the government.

Iraq’s acting U.N. ambassador, Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi, said he was unaware of his government’s decision, “so I don’t know what the rationale for it is. It has not reached our mission.”

The ongoing debate over the Iraqi death toll was reignited this month after a team of Iraqi and American epidemiologists estimated that 650,000 more people have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 than would have died if the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime had not occurred.

Those figures, published in the British medical journal the Lancet, were dismissed by the United States and Britain as inflated. President Bush said in a speech last December that 30,000 civilians have died as a result of the war; the group Iraq Body Count yesterday posted an estimate of between 43,937 and 48,783 civilian deaths.

The Iraqi government has long resisted efforts by U.N. officials and human rights workers to obtain reliable government figures on mortality. But since July 2005, the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad, which is controlled by the Iraqi health ministry, has supplied U.N. investigators with raw figures from morgues on civilians who have died violently. The health ministry’s department of operation has provided the United Nations with similar figures from the country’s hospitals.

Those numbers attracted relatively little attention until June, when the U.N. human rights office in Baghdad estimated that more than 100 people a day were dying in Iraq. In August, the office recorded the largest spike of violence since the invasion, with more than 6,600 people killed in Iraq in July and August.

A spokesman for the prime minister subsequently voiced suspicion to the United Nations that the health ministry, which is controlled by officials linked to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, was overstating the numbers, according to Qazi.

Qazi said the prime minister’s office sent a letter to the Iraqi health minister instructing him to “no longer release data on mortality.” The prime minister’s communications director, the letter stated, would be responsible for “centralizing and disseminating such information in the future,” Qazi wrote.

Iraq’s health minister appealed to the prime minister to allow his agency to continue providing the United Nations and the U.S.-led military coalition with “data on the dead and wounded,” according to Qazi. That request was denied.

Qazi sought to defend the U.N. efforts, noting that Maliki confirmed that 100 civilians were dying each day. He also noted that the Washington-based Brookings Institution characterized the U.N. estimates as “perhaps the most accurate estimate of the number of civilians killed and wounded in Iraq.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061020/pl_afp/usiraqpoliticsvote_061020210546;_ylt=AscApCfr38SitbuUQpvUwUNX6GMA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

————————————————————————

US Democrats pressure Bush over Iraq strategy

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Leaders of the opposition Democrats appealed for     President George W. Bush to revise the US approach in war-torn     Iraq before the situation becomes “irretrievable.”
Noting growing violence and US and Iraqi casualties that are “unacceptable and unsustainable”, Democratic leaders in Congress said Bush had to take a new tack in the war that included an international conference to settle the strife.

“We strongly believe your administration needs to more proactively pressure Iraqi leaders to disarm the militias and to develop a broad-based and sustainable political settlement, including considering amendments to the constitution to achieve a fair sharing of power and resources,” said an open letter to Bush read out by Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate.

“We also believe it is imperative to convene an international conference and contact group to support a political settlement in Iraq and to preserve Iraq’s sovereignty.”

“We urge you to change course, level with the American people, and join with us to develop a policy that will work, before the situation in Iraq is irretrievable.”

Reid released his letter on the eve of key consultations Bush plans with his top generals Saturday to review Iraq strategy and tactics.

After nearly 40 months, public dissatisfaction with the continuing US occupation in Iraq and struggle to bring peace to the country has become the key factor in Congressional elections on November 7 that could end the control of Congress by Bush’s Republican Party.

Bush & Co, Republican House and Senate members are nothing MORE than

        M U R D E R E R S
  of the current 76 deceased soldiers!

        (emphasis added)

Sincerely,
“Concerned Mother”

They had names, familes, loved ones and lifes to carry-on, so I guess the republican joke is on them:

3025 10/20/06 NAME NOT RELEASED YET Not reported yet   U.S. Army Multi-National Division – Baghdad Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Baghdad (southwest of) Not reported yet Not reported yet US

  3024 10/19/06 NAME NOT RELEASED YET Not reported yet   U.S. Marine Regimental Combat Team 7 Hostile - friendly fire Al Anbar Province Not reported yet Not reported yet US

  3023 10/18/06 Brozovich, Daniel A. Sergeant 1st Class 42 U.S. Air National Guard 1st BN, 213th Air Defense Artillery Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Ashraf Greenville Pennsylvania US

  3022 10/18/06 Perez, Jose R. Not reported yet 21 U.S. Army 1st BN, 6th Infantry Reg, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Ramadi Ontario California US

  3021 10/18/06 NAME NOT RELEASED YET Not reported yet   U.S. Army Multi-National Division – Baghdad Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Baghdad (south of) Not reported yet Not reported yet US

  3020 10/17/06 Winegeart, Daniel W. Specialist 23 U.S. Army 5th Group Support Bn, 5th Special Forces Non-hostile - vehicle accident Baghdad Kountze Texas US

  3019 10/17/06 Dumas Jr., Joseph C.  Specialist 25 U.S. Army 1st BN, 22nd Infantry Reg, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Baghdad (near Abu Ghraib prison) New Orleans Louisiana US

  3018 10/17/06 Unger, David M.  Corporal 21 U.S. Army 1st BN, 22nd Infantry Reg, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Baghdad (near Abu Ghraib prison) Leavenworth Kansas US

  3017 10/17/06 Culbertson III, Russell G. Corporal 22 U.S. Army 1st BN, 22nd Infantry Reg, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Baghdad (near Abu Ghraib prison) Amity Pennsylvania US

  3016 10/17/06 Loudon, Christopher E. 2nd Lieutenant 23 U.S. Army 1st BN, 22nd Infantry Reg, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Baghdad (near Abu Ghraib prison) Brockport Pennsylvania US

  3015 10/17/06 NAME NOT RELEASED YET Not reported yet   U.S. Army Multi-National Division – Baghdad Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Baghdad (north of) Not reported yet Not reported yet US

  3014 10/17/06 Haupt, Ryan E. Staff Sergeant 24 U.S. Army 1st BN, 68th Armor Reg, 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Ba’qubah Phoenix Arizona US

  3013 10/17/06 Taylor III, Norman R. Sergeant 21 U.S. Army 1st BN, 68th Armor Reg, 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Ba’qubah Blythe California US

  3012 10/17/06 Frigo, Nathan J. Petty Officer 1st Class 23 U.S. Army 1st BN, 68th Armor Reg, 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire Ba’qubah Kokomo Indiana US

  3011 10/17/06 Sizemore, Garth D. Staff Sergeant 31 U.S. Army 1st BN, 26th Infantry Reg, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Baghdad (southern part) Mount Sterling Kansas US

  3010 10/17/06 Booth, Joshua L. 2nd Lieutenant 23 U.S. Marine 2nd BN, 3rd Marines, 3rd Marine Division Hostile - hostile fire - sniper fire Al Anbar Province Fiskdale Massachusetts US

  3009 10/15/06 Baroncini, Jr., Lester Domenico Sergeant 33 U.S. Army 2nd BN, 505th Parachute Infantry Reg, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Samarra Bakersfield California US

  3008 10/15/06 Bicknell, Stephen Private 1st Class 19 U.S. Army 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Samarra Prattville Alabama US

  3007 10/15/06 Deese, Joshua 1st Lieutenant 25 U.S. Army 2nd BN, 35th Infantry Reg, 3rd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Kirkuk Robeson County North Carolina US

  3006 10/15/06 Lootens, Jonathan E. Sergeant 25 U.S. Army 2nd BN, 35th Infantry Reg, 3rd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Kirkuk Lyons New York US

3005 10/15/06 Paine, Mark C. Captain 32 U.S. Army st BN, 66th Armor Reg, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Taji Rancho Cucamonga California US

  3004 10/15/06 Babb, Brock A. Sergeant 40 U.S. Marine Reserve 3rd BN, 24th Marines, 4th Marine Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Al Anbar Province Evansville Indiana US

  3003 10/15/06 Hines, Joshua M. Lance Corporal 26 U.S. Marine Reserve 3rd BN, 24th Marines, 4th Marine Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Al Anbar Province Olney Illinois US

  3002 10/14/06 Moore, Keith J. Private 1st Class 28 U.S. Army 2nd BN, 14th Infantry Reg, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division Non-hostile Baghdad San Francisco California US

  3001 10/14/06 King, Charles M. 1st Sergeant 48 U.S. Army 1st BN, 67th Armor Reg, 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Baghdad (south of) Mobile Alabama US

  3000 10/14/06 Kane, Joseph M. Staff Sergeant 35 U.S. Army 1st BN, 67th Armor Reg, 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Baghdad (south of) Darby Pennsylvania US

  2999 10/14/06 Lauer, Timothy J. Specialist 25 U.S. Army 1st BN, 67th Armor Reg, 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Baghdad (south of) Saegertown Pennsylvania US

  2998 10/14/06 Simpson, Jonathan J. Sergeant 25 U.S. Marine 1st Reconnaissance BN, 1st Marine Division Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Al Anbar Province Rockport Texas US

  2997 10/14/06 Chavis, Leebenard E. Airman 1st Class 21 U.S. Air Force 824th Security Forces Squadron Hostile - hostile fire Baghdad Hampton Virginia US

  2996 10/13/06 Craver, Johnny K. Lieutenant 37 U.S. Army 1st BN, 22nd Infantry Reg, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Baghdad McKinney Texas US

  2995 10/13/06 Stanton Jr., Kenny F. Private 1st Class 20 U.S. Army 57th Military Police Company Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Baghdad (southwest of) Hemet California US

  2994 10/13/06 Hewett, Thomas J. Private 1st Class 22 U.S. Army 1st Squadron, 89th Cavalry Reg, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Divi Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Walter Reed Medical Ctr. Temple Texas US

  2993 10/12/06 Hawkins, Gene A. Sergeant 24 U.S. Army 14th Engineer BN, 555th Combat Support Brigade (Maneuver Enhancement) Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Mosul Orlando Florida US

  2992 10/11/06 Walsh, Justin T. Sergeant 24 U.S. Marine 8th Engineer Support BN, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, II Marine Expeditionary Force Hostile - hostile fire - disarming IED National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda Cuyahoga Falls Ohio US

  2991 10/11/06 Adcock, Shane T. Captain 27 U.S. Army 3rd BN, 7th Field Artillery, 3rd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - grenade Hawijah Mechanicsville Virginia US

  2990 10/11/06 Sowinski, Nicholas R. Sergeant 25 U.S. Army 4th Squadron, 14th Cavalry Reg, 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Baghdad (central part) Tempe Arizona US

  2989 10/09/06 Feniello, Shelby J. Private 1st Class 25 U.S. Marine 1st BN, 6th Marine Reg, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Al Anbar Province Connellsville Pennsylvania US

  2988 10/08/06 Jones, Derek W.  Lance Corporal 21 U.S. Marine 2nd BN, 3rd Marine Reg, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force Hostile - hostile fire Al Anbar Province Salem Oregon US

  2987 10/09/06 Bowman, Jon Eric Lance Corporal 21 U.S. Marine 1st BN, 6th Marine Reg, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Al Anbar Province Dubach Louisiana US

  2986 10/09/06 Williams, Phillip B. Private 1st Class 21 U.S. Army 4th Brigade Troop BN, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Baghdad (eastern part) Gardnerville Nevada US

2985 10/08/06 Secher, Robert M. Captain 33 U.S. Marine 3rd BN, 12th Marine Reg, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Forc Hostile - hostile fire - sniper fire Al Anbar Province Germantown Tennessee US

  2984 10/08/06 Austin, Shane R. Private 1st Class 19 U.S. Army 1st BN, 35th Armor Reg, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armor Division Hostile - hostile fire - grenade Ramadi Edgerton Kansas US

  2983 10/08/06 Johnson, Stephen F. Lance Corporal 20 U.S. Marine 2nd BN, 8th Marine Reg, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Al Anbar Province Marietta Georgia US

  2982 10/09/06 Arechaga, Julian M. Sergeant 23 U.S. Marine 1st BN, 6th Marine Reg, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Al Anbar Province Oceanside New York US

  2981 10/08/06 Monroe, Jeremy Scott Sandvick Lance Corporal 20 U.S. Marine 2nd BN, 3rd Marine Reg, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Al Anbar Province Chinook Montana US

  2980 10/08/06 Fulkerson, Timothy Specialist 20 U.S. Army 1st BN, 82nd Aviation Reconnaissance BN, 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division Hostile - hostile fire - mine Tikrit Utica Kentucky US

  2979 10/07/06 Wood, John Edward Specialist 37 U.S. Army National Guard 891st Engineer Battalion Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Baghdad Humboldt Kansas US

  2978 10/07/06 Parrish, Lawrence Sergeant 36 U.S. Army National Guard 110th Engineer Battalion Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Baghdad Lebanon Missouri US

  2977 10/07/06 Johnson II, Carl W. Corporal 21 U.S. Army 2nd BN, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Mosul Philadelphia Pennsylvania US

  2976 10/07/06 Asbury, Brandon S. Sergeant 21 U.S. Army 4th Support BN, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Baghdad (northwest of) Tazewell Virginia US

  2975 10/06/06 Hale, John Edward Lance Corporal 20 U.S. Marine 2nd BN, 8th Marine Reg, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Al Anbar Province Shreveport Louisiana US

  2974 10/06/06 Payne, Bradford H. Corporal 24 U.S. Marine 2nd BN, 8th Marine Reg, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Al Anbar Province Montgomery Alabama US

  2973 10/06/06 Arvanitis, Nicholas A. Corporal 22 U.S. Army 1st BN, 505th Parachute Infantry Reg, 82nd Airborne Division Hostile - hostile fire Bayji (near) Salem New Hampshire US

  2972 10/06/06 Hjort, Martin Not reported yet 20 Danish Army Jydske Dragonregiment Hostile - hostile fire Basra Not reported yet Not reported yet DK

  2971 10/04/06 Rosales, Benjamin S.  Corporal 20 U.S. Marine 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance BN, 2nd Marine Div, II Marine Expeditionary Force Hostile - hostile fire Al Anbar Province Houston Texas US

  2970 10/04/06 Garvin, Edward M. Lance Corporal 19 U.S. Marine 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance BN, 2nd Marine Div, II Marine Expeditionary Force Hostile - hostile fire Al Anbar Province Malden Massachusetts US

  2969 10/04/06 Moudry, Christopher O. Staff Sergeant 31 U.S. Army 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Taji Baltimore Maryland US

  2968 10/04/06 Obourn Jr., George R. Specialist 20 U.S. Army 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Taji Creve Coeur Illinois US

  2967 10/04/06 Burke, Timothy Specialist 24 U.S. Army 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Taji Hollywood Florida US

  2966 10/04/06 Bright, Dean Private 1st Class 32 U.S. Army 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Taji

2965 10/03/06 Rojas, Jonathan Staff Sergeant 27 U.S. Army 1st BN, 17th Infantry Reg, 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Baghdad Hammond Indiana US

  2964 10/03/06 Isshak, Daniel Staff Sergeant 25 U.S. Army 2nd BN, 27th Inf, 3rd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Tikrit Alta Loma California US

  2963 10/02/06 Perry, Joseph W. Sergeant 23 U.S. Army 21st Military Police Company, 16th Military Police Brigade, XVIIIth Airborne Corps Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Muhallah Alpine California US

  2962 10/02/06 Oremus, Michael K. Private 1st Class 21 U.S. Army 57th Military Police Company, 8th Military Police Brigade Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Baghdad Highland New York US

  2961 10/02/06 Jarrett, Justin R. Specialist 21 U.S. Army 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Reg, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Taji Jonesboro Georgia US

  2960 10/02/06 Ellis, James D. Staff Sergeant 25 U.S. Army 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Reg, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Taji Valdosta Georgia US

  2959 10/02/06 Armijo, Raymond S. Specialist 22 U.S. Army 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Reg, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Taji Phoenix Arizona US

  2958 10/02/06 Walker, Kristofer C. Specialist 20 U.S. Army 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Reg, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Taji Creve Coeur Illinois US

  2957 10/02/06 Greenlee, Satieon V. Private 1st Class 24 U.S. Army 4th BN, 31st Infantry Reg, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Baghdad Pendleton South Carolina US

  2956 10/02/06 Narvaez, Joe A. Staff Sergeant 25 U.S. Army 1st BN, 26th Infantry Reg, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire Baghdad San Antonio Texas US

  2955 10/02/06 Brady, Dennis Lance Corporal 37 Royal Army Medical Corps Royal Army Medical Corps Hostile - hostile fire - mortar attack Basra Barrow-in-Furness England UK

  2954 10/01/06 Lannaman, Denise A. Sergeant 46 U.S. Army National Guard 1569th Transportation Company Non-hostile Arifjan, Kuwait Bayside New York US

  2953 10/01/06 Nelson, Mario Sergeant 26 U.S. Army 1st BN, 36th Infantry Reg, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division Hostile - hostile fire - RPG attack Hit New York New York US

  2952 10/01/06 Haag, Chase A. Corporal 22 U.S. Army 1st BN, 22nd Infantry Reg, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack Baghdad (west of) Portland Oregon US

  2951 10/01/06 Peterson, Justin D. Captain 32 U.S. Marine 1st Tank BN, 1st Marine Div, I Marine Expeditionary Force Non-hostile - vehicle accident Al Anbar Province Davisburg Michigan US

  2950 10/01/06 Cosgrove III, Christopher B.  Lance Corporal 23 U.S. Marine Reserve 2nd BN, 25th Marine Reg, 4th Marine Division Hostile - hostile fire Al Anbar Province Cedar Knolls New Jersey US

  2949 10/01/06 Seal, Aaron L. Corporal 23 U.S. Marine Reserve 6th Engineer Support BN, 4th Marine Logistics Group Hostile - hostile fire Al Anbar Province Elkhart Indiana US

Pat is right in his comments concerning the total lack of care from the people of the US at what their government is responsible for!

GENOCIDE! That is the word to describe what the US has done in Iraq together with it’s so called coalition. And they have the neck to say that Saddam committed this crime!  More deaths in Iraq attributed directly to the US war and it’s aftermath even more than Rwanda (which was also GENOCIDE.  Why, the way they’re doing things, soon they’ll soon be level with that scumbag Pol Pot and they make Milosovic look like a saint by comparison. No good looking now at the likes of Baker, all he is, is yet another smokescreen. The ONLY way the US can change is by removing the government and starting afresh. I would say that now that every time we read of US casualties no one outside of the US gives a damn and worse still neither does the US population it would seem.  By the end of this year we’ll be looking at close on 3000 US dead. Tens of thousands wounded and maimed for life. Countless ready to be institutionalized with PTSD.

The Iraqi nation has been raped, destroyed and has had billions stolen from it’s exchequer. It has lost hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed not to mention the dumped DU munitions. And you guys can only talk about paedophiles and list out political has beens for comment.  Why can’t you for once, just once, start thinking and talking aloud about the destruction that you have wrought upon this world?  9/11 is always brought up but no one talks about the nearly one thousand foreigners that died in that action. Only Americans died did they?

I live in Europe, I can say that these days when we look at the likes of Putin we actually like the guy. Not so the great ‘decider’ or his cohorts! It’s a crap government there is no doubt, but it is ordinary Americans that must bear the responsibility for the damage that has been caused.  Like it or not, you’re all tarred with the same brush. Sad but true.

All this because the US has to be a world power! Well we don’t like this idea so take your toys and go home!

Bushie boy stole the last election but Kerry had the saying right when he said who will be the last to die for a war that is not winnable, he said it somewhat different but the idea is the same.  If Kerry runs for president again, I will be there voting for him.  Anyone but the GOP.  Maybe people in this country will wake up and realize that bad political leaders is something that we can change.  The founding fathers will be shocked at the bitter fighting between the two parties.  Half truths and truth taken out of context is wrong.  I believe that debates on issues is the way to furret out who will be the better canditate.  Another thing if Clinton runs I believe Bill could be vice president because it is very unlikely that Hilery will come incompacated, and if he cannot take the presidency then there is the chain of command.

Margaret from Vancouver, Washington

Regardless what the administration’s arguments are, 650.000 dead because of war on false pretenses are wrong. To boot, the world knows Abu Ghraid, Guantanamo Bay and all of the human rights violation come with this war. We are supposedly one of the world’s civilized nations and we are supposedly have rule of law. Now they are all flushed down the drain in such short time.

How ironic that James Baker is co-chair on a ‘special Iraq panel’ overseeing US military policy in Iraq. The same James Baker that’s Senior Counsel for The Carlyle Group, the nation’s 10th largest defense contractor with extensive ties to Enron and Arthur Andersen.  The same James Baker who watched the September 11 attacks at the Ritz-Carlton with the Bin Laden family. The James Baker who’s defending the Saudi’s against a trillion-dollar lawsuit brought forth by the September 11 families. The same James Baker who in 1991 raised his hand high at the UN to authorize an attack against Iraq.

Don’t be fooled by BushCo’s attempt to appear concerned with the situation on the ground in Iraq. It is all pre-election garbage.

http://www.operation2012.com

We were wrong to go into Iraq.  We’re wrong to stay.  Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Good article and some great comments here. Especially banjobailey’s—I think he’s put his finger on it. It is very strange that Jim Baker, who was instrumental in stealing the election for Bush in 2000, in Florida, would now head a commission to blow the whistle on W’s illegal war and all its bungling idiocy, not to mention outright murder on a genocidal scale. Why else would he be leaking the commission’s findings before the election when it’s not to be released until afterward? I think banjo’s right: they want Republicans to think responsible adults are taking charge of the Party, so don’t vote them all out just yet. Later they can purge W’s core enablers and return to Poppy’s style of Republicanism. They’re sane enough to know W has completely the botched the job they gave him and now they’re taking back the reins of power. McCain will probably be their boy in ‘08, another fraud if there ever breathed one, but he’ll be their fraud, fooling half of America with his phony “maverick” image. We’ll be right back where we’ve always been.

Having just read every single comment by readers regarding this article, I am left wondering in ‘shock and awe’...where are the consciences of the vast majority of the American people? Where is the horror from street to street all over America, over the unbelievable bloodbath being committed by American soldiers at the orders of Bush and his war-mongering elite, against so many non-combatants (in country after country) whom the majority of Americans (according to ‘official mainstream’ news sources) claim are being invaded to liberate them from murderous dictators like Saddam? Where is the horror over what has been taking place in Palestine with America’s approval and weapons/financial support for fifty years? Where is the horror over the massive destruction of Lebanon with the total approval of America’s elite? Yet Americans claim they don’t understand why so many people around the world despise all America has come to stand for and continue to insist America is the most free and democratic country on Earth???
Saddam kills a few thousand and he’s an evil murdering dictator. George Bush and his cabal of war-profiteering elite, say torture is acceptable, prison without evidence or trial is acceptable, kill at least 10 times as many of those same people…and totally destroys their homes, jobs and lives…and is allowed by mainstream media to get away with the constant claim that these poor victims of American war profiteers are better off under America’s guns and torture than under Saddam’s guns and torture! How sickening and disgusting!
I’ve come to the conclusion that although I’m sure there are many Americans who hate what their leaders are doing in their name, there is still a vast majority of Americans who are either indifferent to the carnage, or who must love being known as the world’s newest, most militarily powerful empire. How else does one explain how so many Americans willingly lay their lives down as new cannon fodder in countries not their own the moment their great leader tells them someone else is evil and must be destroyed…no matter how many innocents die along with the evil one George Bush wants destroyed? How much ‘collateral damage’ will finally be enough? How many more deaths of innocents will it take for the American people to finally put a stop to their leaders wars for power and profit?
How else, besides indifference, does it explain their acceptance of their leaders insistence that less than 6,000 American lives have been lost in this so-called humanitarian venture, when so many studies show that the government manipulates numbers to make them say whatever they want the American sheeple to believe.
How many soldiers died AFTER they were evacuated from the spot where they were bombed/shot so they deliberately weren’t added to the ‘deaths on the ground totals? How many soldiers have died from DU poisoning, enforced dangerous vaccinations, or suicide because they couldn’t live with what they were being ordered to do to so many innocent civilians? Add to those figures the number of civilian contractors (better known as high paid mercenary soldiers) who have also died but not been included in the American death totals in order to keep the true number of deaths from the sheeple? How many soldier’s lives have been destroyed due to serious medical problems directly related to the war-mongers love of armed conflicts for profit?
If Americans won’t stop their war-mongering leaders due to brotherly compassion for those suffering at the hands of American occupation of other people’s homelands, why don’t you at least have a care for your own soldiers who are also suffering for no other purpose than to make Bush and his friends richer?
Support your troops! Boycott war! Refuse to fight another war unless enemy soldiers are actually invading the USA itself (and not just one of it’s outposts in other people’s countries where Americans have no business being anyway)!

Killing fields, indeed.  Cambodia v2.0 . 
Keep it up Robert.  You seem to be one of the few true gumshoes that remain in the mainstream.  Thank you, for that.  And keep that habeas corpus fire burning!

There is the estimated 2 bil per week we are currently borrowing to prosecute this war.

Then there is the cost associated with the destroyed Iraqi infrastructure and the loss of Iraqi life—600,000 and counting. We may “cut and run,” but who is going to foot this bill?

While our culpability for harm caused in Vietnam may be no less than that in Iraq, is our subsequent loss of position in the World such that we, and the coalition of the willing, are going to be prevailed upon to make war reparations? Could a people who claim to be moral even consider evading our responsibilities in this regard?

Given all our current and emerging needs at home, our growing debt, and now the obligations attendant to this disaster, it is hard to see how all this is going to work out.

This is going to be a very, very expensive lesson.

From the political and 4th estate classes, I hear very little that suggests we are prepared to learn that lesson ie to face the root cause of this disaster—our hubris. Therefore, it is hard to find much encouragement that we are in for a soft landing.

When I first learned about the Baker-Hamilton Commission, the article stated that James Baker enforced the greatest discipline on the participants and they were to say nothing whatever about the commission, like, whether or not they were on such a commission.
  Now, he is leaking like a sieve.  He announces that the findings of the commission will be released after the election.  He then proceeds to leak the findings of the commission. 
  Why is he selling this to the country right now?  The story he’s selling is that the commission has decided to recommend “changing course”.  Why is he leaking something entirely in contradiction to Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld?  At this time?
  Is he trying to reassure Republican voters that the “adults are going to be back in charge?”  W. can’t say it himself at this stage so perhaps Baker has stepped in one more to time to pull his fat out of the fire?
  But, what if it is true that W. has no attention span, so no capacity for critical thought, and sensible Republicans in the establishment simply cannot dissuade him, consult with him,
talk sense to him, or in any other way, influence him?  What if Baker & Company have decided that THEY have had enough?
And they are sending a shot across the bow of the sinking good ship of W. Cheney Rumsfeld.
  What if this is part of an internal Republican power struggle between Republicans and Neo-Cons? What if things are so much worse than any of us regular folks knows - what if rational people in the Republican party can see where we are going if they don’t neutralize Cheney and Rumsfeld and marginalize W.????
  Just wondering.

If we can impose our “justice” in our war against terroism, example those held at Guantanomo Bay, then is it possible for Iraq to prosecute our soldiers for committing horrednous crimes? The latest revelation, similar to Abu Grub, that American solidiers raped a 14 year old girl and then burned the house, is a perfect example of a bad war gone bad. How are we supposed to win over a country when our freedom fighters are raping people?

I say, the Iraqi’s should be allowed to impose their justice against those humans that commit rape in their country. Why should the soldiers have political immunity and be charged in an American style court martial?

Then again, as one American Freedom Fighter was quoted in the LA Times years back as saying that the Iraqi’s “do not value life like the Americans do.”

Wow. We wonder why the war has gone to hell and a handbasket!

The best explanation by far for the Iraq war is the one given by Robert Greenwald in his recent movie, “Iraq for Sale:” the war is meant to produce lucrative business for military contractors with good connections at the highest echelons of the federal government. It’ll be great while it lasts.

As Michael Moore quoted from George Orwell, the war is not meant to be won, but to be continuous.

As the Iraq war grows increasingly unpopular, perhaps some neocons are hard at work to ensure that the USA finds itself somehow militarily antagonized. Cornering Iran and North Korea into becoming nuclear may just be this strategy at work.

Against some stiff competition (administration officials and neocon hacks automatically disqualified), the 2006 Award for Political Unprophecy goes to. . .Bill Nash, retired major general and Vietnam vet, who said in 2003: “This doesn’t mean Iraq is a quagmire. It doesn’t mean it’s not winnable and all that Vietnam stuff. But it’s the straight story, good and bad, that we need to articulate to the American people.”

Um, Bill? The not-so-straight story’s been articulated to the American people; they’ve overwhelmingly rejected it; and Iraq’s an unwinnable quagmire and all that other “Vietnam stuff.” End (I wish) of not-so-straight story.

BTW, Dr. King also wrote that the people of Indochina “must find Americans to be strange ‘liberators’  as we destroy their families, villages, land [and] kill a million acres of their crops” and “send them into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one ‘Vietcong’-inflicted injury’” Vaguely deja vu?

For an extended discussion of the similarities—-and differences—-between “the two quagmires,” see

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10138

Baker’s comment, that his ISG report “might contain things the administration doesn’t like,” is a charade.  Cheney and Rummy will pretend to grimace.  This will give congressional Dems cover to go along with a re-warmed “stay the course” policy, seasoned with buzzwords about progressive sovereignty and iraqification.  Baker knew that his task was to draft something that both sides could claim was new and represented a change: a few deck chairs closer to the bar, others closer to the starboard shuffleboard court.

Bushonauts at the NR and WSJ have already “refuted” the Iraqi JHU death count.  One writer even claims Bush merits praise for saving the lives of 100,000, since the low end of the 2002-6 death estimate is that much below the high end of the UN estimate of 1992-2000 Iraqi deaths under the trade sanctions.

Exact numbers?  Probably impossible.  Causation and guilt are also hard to track.  But think: 600,000 dead dead in the four years since “liberation” would mean 150,000 per year, 411 per hour, or 8 per minute.  It would be 2% of Iraq’s population, exacly the same quotient of US dead (>3,000) out of 150,000 personnel (only a portion of which routinely faces mortal danger).  No matter how much Bush people pooh-pooh the JHU study, I’d bet Iraqi’s will one day subscribe to a much higher number and relegate Cheney operative Steven E. Moore to the realm of nuts who deny histories other “exterminations.”  Turks still insist that most Armenians perished due to flu.

Our media refrain from tallies of daily Iraqi dead, whether based on morgue statistics or but those are not impossible numbers for a country of 27 million.

The 600,00 innocent deaths is not really telling the whole story.  The whole story, for Americans, requires multiplying that figure by 12 - the difference between the populations of the US and Iraq before Emperor Bush started the carnage.

Do you think Americans would be welcoming an outside force that was responsible for 7.2 MILLION civilian deaths?  Any discussion of deaths of Iraqis should be transformed so that we understand the incredible level of violence our country initiated.

great piece bob!

All that the W adminstration had accomplished in Iraq is death and destruction, not democracy. Simply stated, “we screwed up.” We need to accept our mistake and pull out our troops. Our troops are nothing but sitting ducks for the Iraqi freedom fighters.

If we were invaded by another nation and occupied, similar to Iraq, I ask my fellow Americans, how would you respond? We can not fix a nations domestic problems.

Dropping bombs and killing innocent Iraqi’s is not going to win the hearts of the people. The logic: you invade my nation, destroy my nation, kill my family, yet because you bring Democracy to my nation all the mistakes will be forgiven.

W, you need to commuicate with God a little more often. Or, has He stopped communicating with you?

We can only hope the adults finally step in to get a handle on this mess.

Great JOB, Senators…................how much MORE american BLOOD do you want 2 or 3 months worth?  How many CUPS can I deliver to YOUR home door?

MOTHER

************************************************
U.S. death toll in Iraq hits 69 in Oct. By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061018/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_061016170373;_ylt=Au_G8Uu_5xU0S1Jw0gDUjgtX6GMA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Iraq attacks kill 10 US soldiers

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6061488.stm

A high school student had read,
re-read “studied” several of little george speech’s (62) in detail for a theory class. The following was her own conclusions, although I wish I could print the entire report, it might send you all to the laughing halls.

Mom I have concluded the following facts for my report of george’s education:

the average 9th grader knows more grammar and pose than he does,

it clearly shows he isn’t a reader or a writer, nor was he ever a reader,

it clearly shows in how he speaks within the last 6 years, that he is very uneducated,

and the last chance he had to show he was educated was through math and science theories; he failed here too, (ie. math dominate)

it clearly shows he is unable to utilize deductive and inductive critical thinking ( N/A math or science brained)

it clearly shows the YALE degree was
” acquired ” but he didn’t attend the classes for the education, so therefore the graduation grades were “purchased”.

And so just what the hell is george, I asked my 9th grade daughter?

A fake, no further educated than I. Can I be president mom?

A report by a 9th grader who loves language/writing.

Sincerely,
“concerned Mother”

When Lidle’s fatal crash on October 11 does anyone know where’re our King and his Vice-King ?

The King was hiding in his cellar ! while the Vice-King was self-buried under his bunker and in a steel coffin covering with black velvet and securely welded.

That’s just precautionary measure to keep the leaders safe and alive !

At least 135 federal employees, including a White House staff member and NSA employees, bought bogus online degrees from a mill. This story has shown a huge question regarding King George’s curriculum and academic title. Did he buy a diploma from Yale ? Because lot of people always wondered about that. They do not think that King George would pass a very simple English 1 Course at a community college anywhere in the United States.

That’s enough, I really do not want to get involved King George business like Dan Rather and Robert Scheer when Dan did try to find out King’s military status during the Vietnam war; because of this Dan had lost his job at CBS, while Bob Scheer had been fired at Los Angeles Times when King’s father is buddy of Otis Chandler, formely LA Times publisher.

The monarch claws are so sharp and cruel !!!

If Baker can drag George W’s ass out of the fire in Iraq the more power to him! I’m sure the President is marking the days on his calendar, anticipating a return to the ranch. He will eventually conclude that his stay in the Oval Office was just a bad dream.

An article by the estimable Michael Schwartz in Asia Times Online details the contradictions face by both the US and Iraq in this mess, as “The Nine Paradoxes”.

Paradox 1:
The more you protect your force, the less secure you are

Paradox 2:
The more force you use, the less effective you are

Paradox 3:
The more successful counterinsurgency is, the less force can be used

Paradox 4:
Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction

Paradox 5:
The best weapons for counterinsurgency do not shoot

Paradox 6:
Baghdad doing something tolerably is better than US doing it well

Paradox 7:
If a tactic works this week, it will not work next week

Paradox 8:
Tactical success guarantees nothing [I argue in an adjacent article—Reflecting on Rumsfeld—that most of these tactical “successes” are nothing of the kind. -SG]

Paradox 9:
Most important decisions are not made by generals

Mission accomplished.  What was the mission?
Access to the oil for our oil companies and lots of profit for a small handful of companies with direct ties to those in power.  I suspect President Bush may be a mere puppet (with a microphone in his ear) carrying out the orders of his masters.

Playing both ends against the middle? Isn’t that like burning the candle at both ends? TruthPlease your post couldn’t have been more accurate. We as a society have become lazy and others who may or may not be benefitting from our current situation seem to think all is okay. I am alarmed at how many here in So Cal that have no problem with the occupation of Iraq, the lies from this administration, spying, and the fact that little by little our constitutional rights are being flushed down the toilet.
The fact that Congress passed HR 6166, Military Commissions Act, without reading it and lack of care by Americans has me baffeled. Even more alarming is Bush took over two weeks to sign after he said he needed right away.

Some people say well there is nothing we can do anyway has me upset at my fellow citizens, because that is a defeatest attitude, and saying that the government is too big. Yet I believe if we want our country back, we must do so by making an effort to start supporting other parties like Independants (Joe Lieberbush excluded)contacting our reps and letting them know how Americans feel. This in itself is a tall task, because some people will vote for who is favored or voting because of one position a party represents, such as abortion, gun rights, taxes. We have been divided and conquered, but it may not be too late, however for now as far as rights,w e have been taken back to the days of pre revolution. Just think how these war supporters would view our founding fathers today which I believe they call them terrorists.

James, you mentioned that it was written that Bush Sr may have to clean up Jr’s mess, because I ran accross an article title:
US Looks for Way Out of Iraq Situation:

http://www.plenglish.com

The link was too long, just click on the title under other top news

I’m not all that sure that GW really is against the Baker report’s suggestions - Karl has told him to play it that way.  So…this is their Iraq war strategy!!  Play both ends against the middle and haul in as much of the dough while we’re all busy looking the other way.  Now, anything that anyone tries to do to fix the absolute mess they’re leaving behind - it will be easy for this administration to follow it’s reliable pattern of finger-pointing and history rewriting - all the while, counting on the apathy and short attention span of the modern American.  Let’s prove them wrong!  The Japanese, before the Pearl Harbor attack, used ‘the decadence and laziness of the Americans’ as their reason for attacking us - but that generation proved them wrong and won a world war - during the 60’s and 70’s, people put their actual lives and futures on the line for principles of democracy and freedom and they were spied on, beaten, maced, shot and drafted by thier own government. But they did it anyway, because they knew it was the right thing to do.  Same with the Civil Rights movements of the time - people actually cared enough to take their eyes off of the TV long enough to get involved in their national conversation.  And the current crop of thieves have it honed to a fine edge - we are being manipulated - fear of losing our jobs, our retirements, our medical coverage, both parents having to work longer and longer hours just to get by, while their kids grow up at the daycare center - whole generations now, brought up by the electronic babysitters - TV and Computers.  It’s no wonder people don’t know how to tell truth from fiction when everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is about situational ethics - it’s OK if I do it, but WRONG if you do it.  Sure is a lot of that going on in both parties.  It’s time for a real flush of the system, right on down the line…Hope we survive it.

Sydney Blumenthal wrote a telling piece in the Guardian a long time ago that the war in Iraq will require Bush’s daddy to “clean up the impending mess.”  I can’t believe it’s starting to happen now.  If there is ever a father who dotes his W son as much as HW Bush, he must be a celestial being.  Sheesh, I wish I had a father like HW.  He deserves all the Father’s Day cards and gifts in the world.