COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

"Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.”





The Last Letter
A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran
To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young
I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.
I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.
Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.
I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.
I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.
I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.
My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness. 
OORAH
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What Would a Rand Paul Libertarian Foreign Policy Look Like?
Posted on Mar 18, 2013
When the Senate passed a resolution in September pledging never to accept an Iranian nuclear weapon, there was only one dissenting vote: Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. 
“A vote for this resolution is a vote for the concept of pre-emptive war,” the libertarian-leaning Republican said. 
On Saturday, Paul emerged as the winner of the straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. Although none of the straw poll winners has gone on to become president, Paul can’t be ruled out as a GOP standard-bearer in 2016. 
But what would a libertarian foreign policy look like? Would it be, as Paul’s critics say, merely a retreat into isolationism?
Paul most recently made headlines with his nearly 13-hour filibuster of the confirmation of CIA Director John Brennan, an architect of the Obama administration’s drone program. He wanted assurances that the administration forswore the use of drones against U.S. citizens on American soil. His longer-term strategy to rein in the drone program is to try to have the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution repealed. Paul complains that the resolution is far too expansive and has authorized U.S. involvement in “20 countries.”
Paul’s strand of libertarianism, insofar as it deeply distrusts big government, typically opposes policies that increase the size and power of government, chief among them ones pertaining to war. He insists that Congress must authorize going to war, and he opposed the Obama administration’s intervention in Libya on those grounds. Paul, however, rejects the label “isolationist,” and his vision of the challenges facing the United States has an Islamophobic tinge to it. He underscores that the problem is not with Islam as a religion or with the Muslim mainstream, but with radical, political Islam. 
However, Paul does not see the latter as a tiny fringe. Rather he views what he calls Islamic radicalism as a large element in the Muslim world and among Muslims in the West, perhaps even a plurality. He lumps in conservative, pro-American Saudi Arabia with anti-American guerrilla groups such as the Taliban, and Iran’s theocratic Shiite state with the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood president in Egypt.
The front-burner issue that is now at the most risk of igniting hostilities is Iran and its civilian nuclear enrichment program, which Washington and Tel Aviv insist is aimed at producing a nuclear warhead. Iran’s supreme theocrat, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has forbidden the construction, stockpiling or use of nuclear weapons as incompatible with Islamic law, but his denials are discounted by Washington hawks and the Israel lobbies.
In February, Paul insisted that the option of avoiding war and simply containing a nuclear Iran, if the country did develop that capacity, should not be ruled out. He appealed to the model of how the U.S. handled the Soviet Union, a position that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel came under intense fire for from GOP senators during his confirmation hearings.
Paul sees containment as the key to fighting not just Iran but the general challenge of what he calls “radical Islam.” Although Paul positions himself as neither an isolationist nor a neoconservative, his reading of radical Islam takes a leaf from the neocon notion of it. On some occasions, he defines radicalism as support for traditional, if Draconian, laws such as the death penalty for apostasy (a law to which evangelicals with missionary ambitions in the Muslim world particularly object). At other times, he defines it as small guerrilla groups that take up arms against U.S. interests. Paul’s solution to what he sees as a challenge to the U.S. from radical Islam differs from that of the neoconservatives, lying in containment (diplomacy and strategic occasional applications of force) rather than war and occupation of the Muslim world.
Although Paul denies being an isolationist, the tenor of his positions is a profound American disengagement and withdrawal from the Middle East. He wants a quick and complete military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Paul is a deep critic of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and recently attempted to block the sale to that country of F-16s and Abrams tanks, on the grounds that President Mohamed Morsi hails from the Brotherhood and the nation is politically unstable. He characterizes Egypt as a place “that burns our flag and chants ‘death to America,’ ” which is not actually typical of that country. He has derided the elected Libyan government as helpless to organize the nation’s 100 major tribes (that largely urban Libyans are mostly “tribal” is a shocking piece of Orientalism). 
Paul, of course, is entirely opposed to U.S. entanglement in the Syrian civil war, and it was one of his points of disagreement with the Romney campaign. He points to the anxieties of Syrian Christians (who make up about 10 to 14 percent of the population) about whether the fall of the secular Baath government in Damascus would place them at the mercy of Muslim radicals. He cautions, “There is ample evidence the rebels are being funded and armed by the most extreme Islamist elements and governments in the region. Is that where we want our funds and weapons to end up? We need to stop and think before we act.”
There is much in Paul’s proposed foreign policy that will appeal to progressives. The American left typically also opposes war as anything other than a very last resort, and would favor withdrawal from Afghanistan and avoidance of a Syrian quagmire. Containment of Iran as a policy is obviously preferable to bombing it. Questioning of President Obama’s rather lawless drone strikes and an aspiration to finally end the Authorization for Use of Military Force are all to the good. Still, the grounds of Paul’s foreign policy should raise alarums. His expansive notion of “radical Islam” sweeps up many movements and countries that are not playing an adversarial role against the United States and do not need to be contained. In some ways, Paul wants to replace the neoconservatives’ war on terror with a containment of terror, yet he shares many of their mistaken premises about the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims. Sometimes his dismissiveness toward other countries, as with his reduction of Libya to 100 tribes, is almost racist.
Despite his disavowal of isolationism, Paul’s policy prescriptions would often have that exact effect. Would it be better to give aid to revolutionary Egypt in hopes of thereby remaining in a position to influence Morsi’s directives, or to cut it off because the country’s electorate dared to vote for a Muslim fundamentalist? There is also a danger that Paul’s instinct to disengage without delay could have the opposite effect of the one he is seeking. He acknowledges that after getting abruptly out of Afghanistan, the U.S. might have to go back in with aerial bombardment if the Taliban regroup. Wouldn’t it be ironic if a President Rand Paul one day had to initiate drone strikes on Kandahar and Khost? Moreover, some of the grounds of his reluctance to engage with the Middle East also have a whiff of prejudice and Islamophobia.
Ultimately, Paul’s favored tool for U.S. foreign policy is trade and the promotion of corporate interests. In this regard, he is a throwback to the principle of 1950s Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson that what is good for the United States is good for General Motors and vice versa. Paul holds that “all of us are corporations.
“They’re us,” he said. “They’re the middle class.” 
Paul wants deep tax cuts for corporations, and a reduction of services—including those of the State Department and American diplomacy—for the rest of us. Like most libertarians, Paul is naive about the power and abuses of corporations and uninterested in the welfare of ordinary people. The U.S. should not trade its overly muscular Middle East policy for one that seeks to allow American corporations to ride roughshod over the workers and middle class of the region.

112 comments:

  1. Can’t you just wait to get it on with Iran?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wonder if AIPAC has their brigade up to strength?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They will he shoulder to shoulder with the CPAC brigade.

      Delete
  3. from a posted letter:

    I believe in the idea that is America, but I also believe in Tomas Young, who was re-introduced to me by way of a Chris Hedges article that should be mandatory reading for every sentient American on the continent. Young was shot through the spine and permanently paralyzed during his deployment to Iraq, and later went on to be one of the first veterans to actively and publicly denounce the war...and now? Now, after a number of physical setbacks, he actively seeks his own death, but lacks the capability to do it himself, and will not allow anyone to finish things for him. So he sits in hospice and waits to die.

    I believe in the idea that is America, but Tomas Young is dying because he believed, too. He is dying, and the people who delivered him to the slow sunset of his death remain utterly unmolested by the rule of law we Americans take so much misguided pride in. I live with my idea of America in one hand, and the dying light of Tomas Young in the other, and when I look in the mirror, I cannot meet my own eyes. I spent all those years fighting against everything that is ending Tomas Young's life, I made documenting their serial crimes my life's work...and then I let it slide, because Bush was gone, and I couldn't summon the necessary energy to remain outraged over the fact that they all got away with the crime of the millennium scot-free.
    It is enough.

    I am finished with the moral geometry that says this is better than that, which makes this good. This is not good; this is, in fact, intolerable. Allowing the perpetrators of war crimes - widely televised ones at that - to retain their good name and go on Sunday talk shows as if they had anything to offer besides their ideology of murder and carnage is intolerable. Entertaining the idea that the billions we spend preparing for war cannot be touched, and so the elderly and the infirm and the young and the weak and the voiceless must pay the freight instead, is intolerable.

    The pornography of America's global killing spree is intolerable, and, by the by, I am sick of hearing about drones. A child killed by a Hellfire missile that was fired from a drone is exactly, precisely as dead as a child killed by a Hellfire missile fired from an Apache attack helicopter, precisely as dead as a child killed by a smart bomb, precisely as dead as a child killed by a sniper, precisely as dead as a child killed by a land mine, or by a cruise missile, or by any of the myriad other ways instant death is dealt by this hyper-weaponized nation of ours.

    Exactly, precisely as God damned dead, and the blood is on our hands regardless of the means used to do the killing. The issue is not the drones. The issue is our hard, black hearts, and the grim fact that the debate in this country right now is not about whether the killing is wrong, but about the most morally acceptable way of going about that killing. Drones are bad, but snipers are better, because you don't hear the buzzing sound in the sky before your lights go out forever. Or something.

    It is the killing, it is the permanent war, it is our deranged national priorities. It is the system we live under which requires the serial deaths of all those innocents to maintain our economic health that should appall us. We sup upon the blood and bonemeal that is the byproduct of the idea that is America, and we sleep. And we sleep.

    I mean to face the stranger in the mirror tomorrow, and so I must acknowledge my own culpability in all this. I am to blame; I went to sleep, because I have an idea of America that I cling to desperately, and so I bought into the soothing nonsense of cosmetic change even as the sound of the same old gears ground on around me.
    I am sorry.
    I still believe in that idea.
    And I am awake.

    ReplyDelete
  4. attribute

    William Rivers Pitt | Waking From My Moral Coma
    Wednesday, 13 March 2013 09:07

    ReplyDelete
  5. check out the video , part four.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Happy Anniversary

    (Reuters) - A dozen car bombs and suicide blasts tore into Shi'ite districts in Baghdad and south of the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people on the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

    Sunni Islamist insurgents linked to al Qaeda have vowed to step up attacks on Shi'ite targets since the start of the year in an attempt to provoke sectarian confrontation and undermine Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government.

    Tuesday's bombs exploded in a busy Baghdad market, near the heavily fortified Green Zone and in other districts across the capital. A suicide bomber also attacked a police base in a Shi'ite town south of the capital, officials said.

    "I was driving my taxi and suddenly I felt my car rocked. Smoke was all around. I saw two bodies on the ground. People were running and shouting everywhere," said Ali Radi, a taxi driver caught in one of the blasts in Baghdad's Sadr City.

    A decade after U.S. and Western troops swept Saddam from power, Iraq still struggles with insurgents, sectarian friction and political feuds among Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish factions.

    ( Well at least they have democracy)

    In a sign of concern over security, the cabinet on Tuesday postponed local elections in two provinces, Anbar and Nineveh, for up to six months because of threats to electoral workers and violence there, according to Maliki's media adviser Ali al-Moussawi. The polls will go ahead elsewhere on April 20.

    ReplyDelete
  7. "America's global killing spree"

    heh

    You are a work all right.

    Stockholm all the way.

    As if we set those bombs off in Baghdad.

    Let's see, o I remember, the start of the whole affair was Iraq going into Kuwait, and George I saying 'this cannot stand', and a United Nations resolution to get them out of there, and we and others did just that, and then went back, and deposed the dictator, and now we are out of there, totally.

    And we are responsible for the bombings in Baghdad.

    And I am a coward for not avoiding the draft when I was a youth. Not even joining the Air Force to avoid being a grunt. Just standing for the draft, like all the others.

    bob






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    Replies
    1. You see, the problem with Saddam was he might well have gone into eastern Saudi Arabia. And this would have been bad. We had to not let that happen. We have been good stewards, until now, letting the oil flow out to all the world. Now who knows what we will do. We have a sunni in the White House.

      We created the technology to get power to the world, and protected the sea lanes.

      And you of course you have us as the 'bad ass'.

      bob

      Delete
    2. We gave them a democracy too, which may have been foolish. They may not be able to handle it

      Time will tell.

      bob

      Delete
    3. We = the west

      Created the technology.

      We were in Saudi way before Israel even became a state.

      I recall you making a bad mistake on your history there.

      And wanted to correct you.

      Israel became a state just after the second world war.

      We were in Saudi doing business way way back.

      First world war time of frame, the beginnings of our relationship.

      bob

      Delete
    4. Good God, they can't even handle a democracy in Philly, or Chicago, or Detroit anymore.

      Maybe Boise. There is still some hope there.

      Detroit now has an overseer. A legal mind, running the city of Detroit.

      Philly is a mess, unlivable, Chicago a total crime scene, and Detroit, o well....

      And you preach.

      bob

      Delete
    5. I don’t run Philly, but you inadvertently make my point. We have enough misery in our own country to clean up without wrecking lives and property throughout the Middle East. You obviously did not bother to look at any of the videos.

      Delete
    6. I think this qualifies as a global killing spree:

      When it comes to our wars overseas, concern for the victims is limited to U.S. troops. When concern for the native populations is expressed, it tends to be more strategic than empathetic, as with Gen. David H. Petraeus’s acknowledgment in late 2006 that harsh U.S. tactics were alienating Iraqi civilians and undermining Operation Iraqi Freedom. The switch to counterinsurgency, which involves more restraint by the military, was billed as a change that would save the U.S. mission, not primarily as a strategy to reduce civilian deaths.

      The wars in Korea and Indochina were extremely deadly. While estimates of Korean War deaths are mainly guesswork, the three-year conflict is widely believed to have taken 3 million lives, about half of them civilians. The sizable civilian toll was partly due to the fact that the country’s population is among the world’s densest and the war’s front lines were often moving.

      The war in Vietnam and the spillover conflicts in Laos and Cambodia were even more lethal. These numbers are also hard to pin down, although by several scholarly estimates, Vietnamese military and civilian deaths ranged from 1.5 million to 3.8 million, with the U.S.-led campaign in Cambodia resulting in 600,000 to 800,000 deaths, and Laotian war mortality estimated at about 1 million.

      Despite the fact that contemporary weapons are vastly more precise, Iraq war casualties, which are also hard to quantify, have reached several hundred thousand. In mid-2006, two household surveys — the most scientific means of calculating — found 400,000 to 650,000 deaths, and there has been a lot of killing since then. (The oft-cited Iraq Body Count Web site mainly uses news accounts, which miss much of the violence.)

      Delete
    7. During that same period, what other country comes close to killing on such a scale?

      Just how many Koreans, Vietnamese, Laotians,Cambodians and Iraqis came to the US to kill Americans?

      Were any of those that we slaughtered by the millions less worthy than:

      NEWTOWN, Conn. -- A lone gunman shot and killed his mother, then drove to the school where she reportedly taught and went on a shooting rampage Friday morning, killing 26 people, including 20 children, before turning a gun on himself.

      The shooter was identified as Adam Lanza, 20, who was found dead inside Sandy Hook Elementary School of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

      The incident -- among the worst school shootings in U.S. history -- is the latest in a series of mass shootings in the U.S. this year, including Tuesday’s assault by a lone gunman at a Portland, Ore., shopping mall that left two dead and one wounded.

      Delete
  8. You area welfare drone, boobie.
    Living for generations off a Federal grant.

    When 3% of the population controls 25% of the wealth and spends 45% of the combined global expenditures for guns and soldiers, yeah, they are the "Bad Ass".

    They are the driving, motivating force of economic discontnent and revolution in the whirled.
    Those in the Middle East have been held down by the Capitalist boot since Churchill's time. That Churchill and the folks he worked for while in the Colonial Office provided for systematic exploitation of the people there and their natural resources, celebrated by you. boobie and his ilk wish to spend US blood to maintain the economic exploitation of the people of the Middle East.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No crapper, I have paid much much more to the Feds than I have ever got back.

      I wish it were not so, but it is.

      You are working for the Feds, again?

      Teaching Fed agents how to ride horses?

      My daughter could do the same, she chooses not to.

      "the Capitalist boot"

      What stupidity.

      bob

      Delete
  9. There are no Islamoid military bases in the US. Nor in Mexico or Canada. The Islamoids do not have fleets of wr ships patroling the Hudson Bay or the Gulf of Mexico.

    No, there are no Islamoid armies stationed in the Americas or Europe.

    The military footprint on the people of the whirled is US. Some good has come of it, some not so good, too.

    The US is chasing boogie men that do not exist.
    There is no global military threat to US dominance, certainly no military threat projected by Iran. The threat we do face, we face by choice. The price we pay for the economic dominance we enjoy across the world.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "The US is chasing boogie men that do not exist."

      The dead of 9-11 will be interested in that statement.


      bob

      Delete
    2. The Irish cause a lot of death and destruction during the Irish Republican war against the British. The Brits didn’t respond by attacking Denmark. They were Saudis on the plane not Iraqis.

      Delete
    3. You are right. They were Saudis.

      But what are you going to do about it? Saddam invaded Kuwait.
      Saddam was a true killer

      The whole area is chaos.

      The ruling class of Saudi is more or less sane, as far as ruling goes, and if you can actually talk of sanity in an Islamic land. It was not the ruling class of Saudi that attacked us. It was the fans.

      I just get tired of statements like "America's global killing spree".

      I do not think that is an accurate representation of what has occurred.

      bob

      Delete
    4. The miscreants of 11SEP01 died at the scene, boobie.
      The governments that supported the raid upon NYC and DC received billions USD in direct aid and magnitudes greater in trade, after the attack. The US is now more deeply allied with both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the governments that supported aQ training centers in Afghanistan, than prior to the raid.

      The US has not prosecuted a single individual for the raids of 11SEP01.
      Wonder why?

      What truths could be reveled in open court?

      Who are the guilty parties in the planning, funding and staging of those raids?

      Delete
    5. Of course it is a Global Killing Spree supported by the US government boobie.

      It is the US that provides the weapons to the governments.
      It is the US that finances political subjugation of the Shia, by the Wahhabi, in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

      It is the US and its' proxies that invaded Iraq, well, just because ... and that are threatening Syria and Iran with military intervention and invasion, today.It is not the Iranian fleet is not steaming for Charleston, no it is the US fleet in the Persian Gulf.

      The headlines about Israel and Iran paper over the real story ...
      The reality of Shiite demographic domination of the Middle East oil reserves.

      The US government and the Wahhabi, joined at the hip, in the effort to keep the Shiite in their "proper" place.

      Iranian drones are not flying over Idaho.

      Delete
    6. Saudi Arabia is a police state, boobie.

      Of course it was the Saudi "Ruling Elite" that funded the Pakistani nuclear project, the Pakistani "Defense in Depth", the Taliban, aQ and Osama bin Laden.
      In fact bin Laden was a part of their Ruling Elite, members of his family still are.

      You are so ignorant of reality, it becomes comically entertaining.

      Delete
  10. In 1971 the Texas RRC took the shackles off, and said, "go get'em boys."

    The East Texas Oil Field rolled over, and farted.

    And, we've been planning the take-over of the Mideast oil fields ever since.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No, our companies, and the British, were there at the turn of the last century.

      Those companies powered the whole world, brought millions out of poverty.

      Do your research.

      bob

      Delete
    2. Leave me alone, Bob. I know all about the history of Saudi Aramco. The fact is, the first modern-day plans for the take-over of the Persian Gulf fields were drawn up by Carter.

      Delete
    3. Wrong O

      You are wrong by about 70 years.

      bob

      Delete
    4. What part of "modern" don't you understand? Go away.

      Delete
  11. Look, I can understand people getting ticked at the government. It is normal, and what we should do.

    But it is just a government, after all, like the Catholic Church, we should try to make it better, sometimes it is not so good, but it is needed.

    We have the choice of voting, unlike the Catholics. It is not all bad.

    I remember you, crapper, when we were going into Iraq, moving your troops about the field. Having a field day with that. You the imaginary General. I think you were right about some things, I thought highly of you then. I believe you had some of it right.

    bob

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    Replies
    1. Military maneuvers, boobie, are pretty simple things.

      You are the one who has been wailing that "We're Doomed", because of who was elected the President.

      The rest of us know that is not as important as the governing system.

      We are not doomed and the governing system is still robust.
      As a nation, well, it is simple to see, we will ...
      Stay the Course.

      The US is in no position to start a war with Iran.
      Not economically.
      Not politically.

      Especially when Iran poses no real threat to US, today.

      Delete
  12. "We're Doomed"

    Flor God's sake, Rat O, I was mocking what's her name.

    No, I do not think we are doomed, nor, in her words., "deserve to be".

    I think the sun also rises.

    bob



    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bullshit, boobie.

      You have been wailing about how America is lost, since November of '08, when you called for the abortion of black babies.

      No revisionism allowed now.

      Delete
    2. You have been a fountain of defeatism and sedition.

      You are moral coward that refused to stand up for the women in your own community.

      You are a sorry excuse of a citizen.

      Delete
    3. :)

      And, you beat your wife.

      Why ever ever give a hand of friendship to the crapper?

      bob

      Delete
  13. It's kind of funny; One country, North Korea, that is governed by an absolute certifiable crazy that already has nukes, and missiles, and is threatening, as we speak, to shoot them at us, draws no attention/concern, whatsoever.

    Meanwhile, some get their panties in a wad that another country, much farther away, with no missile delivery system, no bomb, and no program to sufficiently enhance the Uranium to make a bomb, might start such a program.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is not about the nuclear program, rufus.

      It is that the Iranians do not defer to the Wahhabi, as the Masters of Islam.
      The US does. The Brits do, as go the French.

      No one is allowed to color outside the lines.

      The Chinese, though, see things differently.
      Pakistan has made China the number five arms supplier in the world, displacing the UK.

      "China Will Not Hesitate To Protect Iran Even With A Third World War"

      Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/30/2011 17:09 -0400
      http://www.zerohedge.com/news/china-will-not-hesitate-protect-iran-even-third-world-war

      "It is puzzling to some that Major General Zhang Zhaozhong, a professor from the Chinese National Defense University, said China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a third World War... Professor Xia Ming:

      "Zhang Zhaozhong said that not hesitating to fight a third world war would be entirely for domestic political needs...."

      And don't forget Russia, which recently said it is preparing to retaliate against NATO and has put radar stations on combat alert:

      "Russia is another ally of Iran, with similar policy to that of China. Toward Iran."

      Watch, and please forward the entire video, for an explanation of how China is approaching the situation not only in Iran, but a perspective of how they view the western "threat", as well as what tensions they face domestically.

      Delete
    2. The Chinese fields have topped out. Any further growth will have to come from Imports. Iran is a major factor in those plans.

      Delete
  14. "We shouldn't overestimate our abilities," said German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere in his speech at this year's Munich Security Conference, adding that Germany and its partners could only make a limited contribution to solving disputes.

    "We shouldn't believe that we can control all developments around the world. There will never be global architecture under our leadership."

    ReplyDelete
  15. As for the "Capitalist boot", why is it, do you think, that the World TRADE Center was the target of Islamoid attacks, not once but three times?

    What was the symbolism in their choice of targets on 11SEP01, if not attacking Global Capitalism?

    ReplyDelete
  16. Housing continues to improve, markedly. Starts up 27.7 YOY, and Permits up 33.8% YOY.

    Housing Report

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. .

      Only 2500 condos still unsold in Miami from astock of 50,000 a few years ago. And they are still building.

      Of course there are reasons.

      .

      Delete
  17. “If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law." - Henry David Thoreau

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. :)

      Do I have to pay my taxes then, deuce?

      Or should you do that?

      You are all totally fucked up. We must have a government, and taxes, to clean the streets, if nothing else.

      But it has to be done right.

      Go live with Quirk in Detroit.

      Earlier on here, I was found guilty of sedition by a man that has threatened me with death.

      I can't win.

      bob

      Delete
    2. When are you going pony tail?

      Sleep on the park bench, paid for by us, of course.

      bob

      Delete
    3. A man who has paid much less taxes than myself.

      bob

      Delete
  18. .

    old hawks peer thru rheumy eyes,

    at martial scenes bereft of pain,

    while seers see black reality.

    .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. excellent, where did get that?

      Hawks with seeing eyes

      peer through reality

      and strike

      for the betterment

      of the nest


      bob

      Delete
    2. .

      I have taken up haiku since you departed.

      As a form, it is minimalist and thus a good fit for any discussion involving you.

      Not good but I keep trying. Luckily the modern form does not require some of the constraints of the original.

      .



      Delete
    3. .

      The point is the minimalism, not the word flow or the sound.

      Along those lines, though it might not flow as well,



      rheumy hawkish eyes

      view martial scenes sans pain,

      seers see bleak reality.


      .

      Delete
  19. Mere sabre rattling, boys. It only happens when the loonies don't get enough attention. If the state ran media would refrain from the sensational. Iran. NORK wouldn't even be on your radar.

    ReplyDelete
  20. You have to keep the loonies on the grass.

    ReplyDelete
  21. What a stupid blog.

    Hamdoon

    ReplyDelete
  22. There is more sense at the stables.

    Buck

    ReplyDelete
  23. Sleep is best.

    Chief Plenty Coups

    ReplyDelete
  24. When you have no grasp of the facts and cannot produce a counter argument, insult people. The best you can do is to Ignore or rewrite history. The right wing is very good at that. And if they tell the story enough times people like you believe it. Is the truth too awful for you to contemplate?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey Jenny
      What's the left wing good at? Please tell us.

      Delete
    2. The dems are just as at fault. Don't be so naive.

      Delete
    3. Glad you cleared that up for me : )

      Delete
  25. Bob,

    Why were you so quiet for that last little while?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Been moving to new digs.

      Downscale in a way.

      Everything is on one floor now.

      Easy living.

      bob

      Delete
    2. Did you ever move to South Carolina? Never been there. Nor North Carolina. Though my kids have an uncle there.

      In my old age, Ash, I am beginning to think, politics sucks.

      I trade music with an old friend every two days or so, that is about it.

      No lawn to mow now, a blessing.

      We ate steelhead the other nigh, a real treat.

      bob

      Delete
    3. shit! I was hoping it was something that could be replicated.

      Delete
    4. :)

      You are hoping for my early demise, perhaps.

      :)

      Delete
    5. naw, I don't wish you dead, just silent in a web way.

      Delete
    6. Good old Ash, the potato head, he that loves Idaho, and was born somewhere else, alas. We might have been friends. I might have been able to teach him to work, and vote Republican. Ash the blogger whose blog has never had a single hit, our golfer, and yachtist, maybe twenty years my younger, and two thousand years less wise, my life would not be the same without ye.

      It might be better, but not the same.

      bob

      :)

      Delete
    7. Ash, I want to ask you a question.

      When I say, as I have many times, that time is just a mode of human perception, a category of our understanding, do you have an idea what I am talking about?

      The idea is that time = experience = a chance for growth. And that we must do our best, because there is always something more, do we best, or worse, and it is much better for us to do best.

      Do you know what the real definition of love is? It is seeing the other as oneself, at last.

      bob

      Delete
    8. bob, honestly, I scroll past your posts as much as possible. It is literally like trying not to step in dog shit. In your case boobie droppings.

      "the real definition of love" riiiiight - what a load of crap. I'll labor under a fake definition for now. lordy.

      Delete

    9. Theodore Roethke


      Words for the Wind

      1

      Love, love, a lily's my care,
      She's sweeter than a tree.
      Loving, I use the air
      Most lovingly: I breathe;
      Mad in the wind I wear
      Myself as I should be,
      All's even with the odd,
      My brother the vine is glad.

      Are flower and seed the same?
      What do the great dead say?
      Sweet Phoebe, she's my theme:
      She sways whenever I sway.
      "O love me while I am,
      You green thing in my way!"
      I cried, and the birds came down
      And made my song their own.

      Motion can keep me still:
      She kissed me out of thought
      As a lovely substance will;
      She wandered; I did not:
      I stayed, and light fell
      Across her pulsing throat;
      I stared, and a garden stone
      Slowly became the moon.

      The shallow stream runs slack;
      The wind creaks slowly by;
      Out of a nestling's beak
      Comes a tremulous cry
      I cannot answer back;
      A shape from deep in the eye--
      That woman I saw in a stone--
      Keeps pace when I walk alone.

      2

      The sun declares the earth;
      The stones leap in the stream;
      On a wide plain, beyond
      The far stretch of a dream,
      A field breaks like the sea;
      The wind's white with her name,
      And I walk with the wind.

      The dove's my will today.
      She sways, half in the sun:
      Rose, easy on a stem,
      One with the sighing vine,
      One to be merry with,
      And pleased to meet the moon.
      She likes wherever I am.

      Passion's enough to give
      Shape to a random joy:
      I cry delight: I know
      The root, the core of a cry.
      Swan-heart, arbutus-calm,
      She moves when time is shy:
      Love has a thing to do.

      A fair thing grows more fair;
      The green, the springing green
      Makes an intenser day
      Under the rising moon;
      I smile, no mineral man;
      I bear, but not alone,
      The burden of this joy.

      3

      Under a southern wind,
      The birds and fishes move
      North, in a single stream;
      The sharp stars swing around;
      I get a step beyond
      The wind, and there I am,
      I'm odd and full of love.

      Wisdom, where is it found?--
      Those who embrace, believe.
      Whatever was, still is,
      Says a song tied to a tree.
      Below, on the ferny ground,
      In rivery air, at ease,
      I walk with my true love.

      What time's my heart? I care.
      I cherish what I have
      Had of the temporal:
      I am no longer young
      But the winds and waters are;
      What falls away will fall;
      All things bring me to love.

      4

      The breath of a long root,
      The shy perimeter
      Of the unfolding rose,
      The green, the altered leaf,
      The oyster's weeping foot,
      And the incipient star--
      Are part of what she is.
      She wakes the ends of life.

      Being myself, I sing
      The soul's immediate joy.
      Light, light, where's my repose?
      A wind wreathes round a tree.
      A thing is done: a thing
      Body and spirit know
      When I do what she does:
      Creaturely creature, she!--

      I kiss her moving mouth,
      Her swart hilarious skin;
      She breaks my breath in half;
      She frolicks like a beast;
      And I dance round and round,
      A fond and foolish man,
      And see and suffer myself
      In another being, at last.

      1958

      bob

      Delete
    10. God old Ash, our blog idiot, true to his earthly form, forgiven.

      bob

      Delete
    11. And I dance round and round,
      A fond and foolish man,
      And see and suffer myself
      In another being, at last.

      This is meaning, for those that can feel. For those that cannot, alas.

      bob

      Delete
    12. Kant, Schopenhauer ,Whitman, Roethke.......


      bob

      Delete
    13. Good old Ash, not God old Ash, our blog idiot, our internet partner in the exploration of the meaning or meaninglessness of life.

      bob

      Delete
    14. Your choice,

      The future of your entire world depends upon it.

      Choose Life.

      Wisely.

      bob

      Delete
    15. a garden stone
      Slowly became the moon.


      :)

      bob

      Delete
    16. O where o where have we ever hear of a garden stone before?

      And one that becomes a moon, and even beyond that......

      bob

      Delete
    17. bob, honestly, I scroll past your posts as much as possible.

      But you must have missed me when I was gone.

      Or you would not have asked me where I was.

      Because even you know I am right in the main, and are beginning to pick it up.

      bob

      Delete
    18. .

      Wash, rinse, repeat.

      It was truly a restful period.

      .

      Delete

    19. a garden stone
      Slowly became the moon.

      The stone was rolled away from the tomb.

      This, I submit, is the deepest thought mythology has to offer.

      In Christian form, we are talking about Christ.

      In the form of your life, you are talking about yourself.

      bob

      Delete
    20. But Quirk, I have introduced you to a poet you never knew before.

      How about Five Bucks?

      Surely you.....

      Even you

      Can pop that...

      bob

      Delete
    21. You can change the channel, Quirk, with the flip of a industrial age button.


      A strange man you are Quirk-O, once a Catholic, always a Catholic, given to despair on occasion, fierce for the Church, yet quoting Patroclus. and misreading the Illiad.

      bob

      Delete
    22. .

      You are a prancing bi-polar fool, a jester with two faces.

      You quote poets and philosophers on life and love, you exult in the emancipation of slaves and in women's liberation, and at the same time, promote wars of choice and the bombing of villages, women and children, ignoring or writing off life's potential as mere collateral damage.

      You are an aging elitist who places more value in some hysteric jingoism than in the life and potential of a child or mother in the ME who is caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

      I wouldnt' give you a nickel.

      .

      Delete
  26. The real “failure” in Iraq was the emergence of undeniable evidence that the media had all along ignored.

    It is a bitter, even surreal, irony that the media “failure” on Iraq is now being lamented by journalists who have since repeated the same performance on Libya, Syria, Israel-Palestine, Iran, and much else besides.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There has been no American failure in Iraq. We set them up with a new government, and they are fucking it up of course over the same old arguments. Maybe going in was a mistake, but we did set them up with a new government.

      We are not always to blame.

      As Deuce would have you believe.

      I think we should have stayed around longer, but I am called a war monger and draft dodger for such a thought, a coward who stood for the draft, took his chances, and didn't join the Air Force like my mother urged me to do.

      Jenny, I hate, and don't even want to think about, what is going to happen to the women in Afghanistan when we are gone. That is going to be a slaughter. We had to go, though, Bush would have been impeached for not responding.

      The vote to go was nearly 100%.

      bob

      Delete
    2. .

      Nearly 100%.

      But even so, some have the capacity to learn from past mistakes. Others, well...

      They berate those who seek the 'impossible' and passively accept the pragmatic; why struggle against the waves when there are so many riding the current with you? Ethics and morality become quaint ideals to be ignored within the walls of this relativistic pragmatism.

      They establish a debatable punctum saliens and ignore both context and consequences.

      dulce bellum inexpertis

      .

      Delete
  27. It seems the Cypriot parliament has rejected the bail-out deal. I wonder what will happen to those depositors now? I read that the Government needs, which they don't have, 30 billion Euro to indemnify the insured deposits. That is a liability of 37,500 Euros per Cypriot...

    ReplyDelete
  28. Excellent blog you've got here.. It's difficult to find excellent writing
    like yours nowadays. I honestly appreciate people like you!
    Take care!!

    Also visit my website; view more about

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We are a curious group, Anon.

      Many of us, perhaps all, should probably be in prison.

      We are very much into our precious egos.

      And we argue the same old points ad nauseum.

      We are skilled, very, at back biting though.

      bob

      Delete
  29. I do think it is time for the host to clear some of the boobie droppings that are not germane to the thread.

    ;-0

    ReplyDelete
  30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2Kn3j7o2yY

    There is really only one topic, Anon.

    The rest is just politics.

    bob

    ReplyDelete
  31. Hamdoon looked across the square, and taking a sip of his coffee, sighed. There was an old man clearing the tables at the cafe across the street, and an older women sweeping.

    He looked down the river, towards the Cathedral, and to the bridge, where the men were fishing, and sighed.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2Kn3j7o2yY

    bob

    ReplyDelete
  32. Quoting Patroclus, as the meaning of the poem, when he was just a personality in it.

    And you might now notice, but you won't, we have characters here, personalities, unlike the literature of the Great East.

    All the Buddhas are the same, there. And the sinners as well.

    A serious misreading from our man in Detroit, where the 7-11's are all the same.

    And excuse is drinking and driving and listening to radio

    bob



    ReplyDelete
  33. I like the valuable info you provide in your articles. I'll bookmark your blog and check again here regularly. I'm quite certain I will learn many new stuff right here!
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    ReplyDelete
  34. The very reason I lurk here. So I can learn many new stuff!

    ReplyDelete
  35. 10 years after the launch of the Iraq War, a number of critics and analysts have been pointing to war’s extravagant financial cost – to say nothing of its toll on human lives. But a surprising report shows that nearly 150 years after its conclusion, the U.S. government is still paying relatives of Civil War veterans.

    An analysis from the Associated Press found that more than $40 billion annually is being spent on veterans and survivors of wars dating back to the Spanish-American War of 1898 up through the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

    There are actually only two recipients of Civil War benefits, both children of veterans and receiving $876 per year.

    Although their names are being kept private, the AP estimates that they were both born between 1920 and 1930, meaning their parents were themselves upwards of 80-years-old when their children were born.

    Juanita Tudor Lowrey, 86, received Civil War benefits tied to her late father from the age 2 until her 18 th birthday.

    Former Republican senator and military veteran Alan Simpson said the government should consider means testing veterans as the burden on the federal debt continues to grow.

    "Without question, I would affluence-test all of those people," Simpson told the AP.

    Simpson co-chaired President Obama’s deficit reduction committee in 2010, which offered a number of recommendations for reducing the federal budget defecit.

    And while it would be natural to assume the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are the most costly, the payments to Vietnam War veterans nearly doubles the cost of our two current wars, $22 billion to $12 billion, respectively.

    Simpson said that a number of new ailments added to veterans coverage, including heart disease, has been driving up costs.

    "That has been terribly abused," he said.

    Meanwhile, World War II is still costing the federal government about $5 billion a year. And the Korean War still costs taxpayers about $2.8 billion annually.

    Amazingly, $20 million is still being paid each year to 2,289 veteran family members from World War I, many of whom are over 100-years-old. But perhaps even stranger, 47 benefit recipients were not even born until after the war ended.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Adds new meaning to "thank you for your service." Doesn't it?

    ReplyDelete
  37. NewStuffRUs

    Learn new shit here.

    bobo

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. NewStuffRUs

      But remember

      That O Patroclus

      Was just a character

      Sculpted

      One of the first

      By a culture

      Not only a poet

      (who was he?)

      In our beginning of literature

      Handed down

      The glory of the west

      Where people are not just the same

      bobo

      Delete
    2. NewStuffRUs

      But remember

      That O Patroclus

      Was just a character

      Not the theme of a culture

      (hardy that)

      Sculpted

      One of the first

      By a culture

      Out looking, and curious

      Not only by a poet sculpted

      (who was he? this poet?)

      In our beginning of literature

      Handed down

      To the glory of the west

      Where our people are not just the same

      Where we can celebrate

      Our differences

      And the spirit of Christ

      Hovers over us all

      All unknown

      bobo

      Delete
  38. NewStuffRUs

    But remember

    That O Patroclus

    Was just a character

    Not the theme of a culture

    (hardy that)

    Sculpted

    One of the first

    By a culture

    Out looking, and curious

    Not only by a poet sculpted

    (who was he? this poet?)

    In our beginning of literature

    Handed down

    To the glory of our west

    Where our people are not just the same

    Where we can celebrate

    Our differences

    And the spirit of Christ

    Hovers over us all

    All unknown

    bobo

    ReplyDelete
  39. NewStuffRUs

    But remember

    That O Patroclus

    Was just a character

    Not the theme of a culture

    (hardy that)

    Sculpted

    One of the first

    By a culture

    Out looking, and curious

    Not only by a poet sculpted

    (who was he? this poet?)

    In our beginning of literature

    Handed down

    To the glory of our west

    Where our people are not just the same

    Where we can celebrate

    Our differences

    And the spirit of Christ

    The spirit of Imagination

    The beginning of Being

    Hovers over us all

    All unknown

    bobo

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am working on it, O Quirk.

      Give me time, which doesn't exist, of course, of course.

      bobo

      Delete
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    pleasant for me to come here and visit more often. Did you hire out a developer to create your theme?
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    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Go way asshole you irritate.

      bob

      Delete
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