More on the 'The Family'

If you didn't catch this today you may want to, finding out what some in and out of our government are doing as to International Policy, In Our Names, like anti-gay legislation in Uganda, but not through the channels and agencies our Government has established.

The Secret Political Reach Of 'The Family'

November 24, 2009

You may recognize these names from recent headlines: Sen. John Ensign, Rep. Bart Stupak and Rep. Joe Pitts. Stupak and Pitts have become familiar names through the media's health care overhaul coverage; their abortion funding amendment introduced an 11th-hour twist as the House of Representatives approached a vote on a landmark health care bill.

Snip

Sharlet returns to Fresh Air to talk to host Terry Gross about Ensign, Stupak and Pitts, and about new developments concerning the Family...>>>>>

"The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" By Jeff Sharlet who is also the author of "Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible", a travelogue based on a year he and Peter Manseau spent exploring the margins of faith in America.

Debate: Foreign Policy & Security {Or No Debate} Video's

Everyone knows that the first Presidential Debate is supposed to take place tonight, but once again we have a member of the GOP trying to put the skids on Democracy, read the 2000 election and the supreme's, by refusing to show because, admitted himself he understands little about economics, he's going to save Wall Street Bankers and the Country from Collapse. Now he's coming to the rescue some 10 or so days after all the bad economic news started survicing, but for Our Savior "Better late than never, Not!".


My guess is that if there is a Debate tonight it won't be on the main subject lines it was to cover: Foreign Policy and National Security. It will be covering the economy or at least much of it will be because of the News that has sucked the air out of everything else.


But wether it covers the intended subject matter, tonight or in another, or not, just in case there are extremely important things to be brought to the Debate about our now lack of a Foreign Policy especially as to our National Security.


The debate will, or will not, take place at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, known colloquially as Ole Miss. NPR has a very good writeup as a leadin: Site Of Presidential Debate Has Come Far From Past for this historic event in more ways than one.


We are a Nation and People that seem to like to use 'God' an awful lot, we say we are a Tolerant Nation, and a Peaceful Nation, we Condemn others for not being so and for practicing Inhumane Treatment of others.


But instead of following what we preach we have many, some elected and large portions of the population, that think we can go and Destroy and Occupy other Countries and somehow be Secure in the fact that we've Killed and Maimed others, instead of leading by example and word and making friends of others we Enhance the Hatreds and Create Enemies than call ourselves Secure. Through our actions even those that allie with us have Little Respect for us, not just our government but Us.


Lets look at the why our National Security is now in jeapordy for possibly decades to come and why the World has lost any remnants of Respect they once gave us:


Introducing Iraqi Refugee Stories:


Voices Missing From Media Describe Life in Exile


Watch "Hiba's Story," one in a powerful new series of video accounts by Iraqis who have had to flee their home.

Beyond the violence and instability of Iraq is the largely untold story of Iraqi displacement and exile and its enormous human consequences. A new website, Iraqi Refugee Stories, is now giving voice to the growing crisis and providing concerned individuals viable avenues to take action.

"The silent story of Iraq has been that of the millions who've been displaced within their country or who have fled to neighboring countries and are now living in limbo. In countries like Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, Iraqi refugees can't work legally and are often hiding at home for fear of deportation because they're unable to renew their visas," said Jennifer Utz, a video journalist, founder and creator of Iraqi Refugee Stories. "The media coverage of the issue has largely focused on the plight of military interpreters, while countless other vulnerable individuals have virtually gone unnoticed, such as single mothers, members of minority religions, the elderly and those in need of serious medical assistance."

In this video clip, a young woman named Hiba, whose family fled Iraq in 2003 only to be denied entrance to Jordan, describes the four years they spent living in a tent in Ruwayshed, a refugee camp on the border, saying that she often thinks about her classmates and wonders whether they lived or died.

To learn more, visit Iraqi Refugee Stories.

Or how about one of the main reasons the violence has dropped, even though Iraqi's and Soldiers are still being killed and maimed:


After Siege, Wall Sadr City’s New Oppression - 09.22.2008

Iraq, Baghdad/Sadr City – After the failure of many security plans proposed by the Iraqi government and US military strategists, a recent plan, hand-in-hand with the so-called “Surge,” was designed. It was a desperate attempt by the US and Iraqi military forces to control the Sunni-Shia militia. At the suggestion of military leaders, the Iraqi and US governments decided to build walls to separate neighborhoods and to control militias and insurgents from entering or exiting any neighborhood without passing a checkpoint. The first wall was built in Adhamiya, in April 2007. Despite protests and opposition, United States military and Iraqi National Guard forces began to erect a wall surrounding the neighborhood of Adhamiya. The people living in the neighborhood engaged in several demonstrations against building the wall, and even Prime Minister Maliki, a Shi’a critical of the neighborhood, publicly protested the plan. Despite his intervention and public discontent, the wall was built and finished by late April 2007.

These walls tend to be approximately 3 meters in height and made from concrete. In some areas the top of the wall is covered with concertina wire to prevent intruders from climbing over the wall. There are patrols set to guard the wall and they are present around the wall daily, and at all hours, to protract the wall from being attacked or bombed by insurgents.

Another wall built at end of April 2007, but this time in Ameriya, this wall is approximately 10 kilometers in length and again 3 meters high. In September 2007 yet another wall was built in the Saidiya neighborhood. The wall surrounding that district was 23 kilometers, and by the end of 2007 there were over 50 different walls built around different neighborhoods across Baghdad.

In May 2008 a wall was built in Sadr City after battles between the US military and the Mahdi Army. There are approximately two million citizens living inside the area now known as Sadr City, probably the largest single group impacted by one of Baghdad’s walls. Previously they could come and go via nine major entrances. Many shops were force to close because of the wall, the shop owners found they could not complete there work anymore due to the wall sitting just in front of their shops.

Or how about Getting to School in Iraq





Would you want to live like this, Would you want your children to live like this, Would you want to live in a Destroyed and Occupied Country, Would you develop growing Hatred for being forced to live like this in your destroyed country, Would you search for retribution for the loved ones, friends, and killed and maimed, and your country destroyed, in an occupation by an outside military force, What Would You Do??


And what happens in Wars of Occupation and Wars of Choice, the Soldiers know:


Winter Soldier: OIF and OEF Soldiers the Book


Back in March of this year History repeated itself. A history many of us Vietnam Veterans felt would never be repeated for we swore we wouldn't allow the country we served to ever allow itself to be led into another debacle of human destruction, a War Of Choice, an Occupation Of Innocent Others!! The country, back than, even seemed to grasp the huge mistake we had made in the policies set forth by those we elect to lead, they themselves said "We will learn from the mistakes made!", we didn't, and others don't neither!


Book Exposes Iraq Occupation Through US Soldiers' Eyes

Aside from the Iraqi people, nobody knows what the U.S. military is doing in Iraq better than the soldiers themselves. A new book gives readers vivid and detailed accounts of the devastation the U.S. occupation has brought to Iraq, in the soldiers' own words.

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations, published by Haymarket Books Tuesday, is a gut-wrenching, historic chronicle of what the U.S. military has done to Iraq, as well as its own soldiers.

Authored by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and journalist Aaron Glantz, the book is a reader for hearings that took place in Silver Spring, Maryland between Mar. 13-16, 2008 at the National Labour College.

"I remember one woman walking by," said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the U.S. Marines who served three tours in Iraq. "She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realized that the bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces."

Glantz admits that it would be difficult for the average U.S. citizen to read the book, and believes it is important to keep in mind while doing so what it took for the veterans to give this historic testimony.

"They could have been heroes, but what they are doing here is even more heroic -- which is telling the truth," Glantz told IPS. "They didn't have to come forward. They chose to come forward."

Few are Sacrificing yet there are still many, who aren't, that support our aggressive actions towards others and seem to relish in making the tens of thousands of enemies that will only take a few to destroy any feeling of a strong national security, for the country or the citizens wherever they travel.


The Brave New Foundation, for the past thirteen weeks, have had a series of very important online inner active Video Shows called "In Their Boots".


The last three weeks have covered a group who have Sacrificed Everything, their Spouses, but are coming together to move on with their lives and give meaning to the loss of their loved ones.


You can watch the video's here, they are about a half hour each, or at the site, where you can catch the previous important episodes and sign up to be notified prior to the wednesday evening coming episodes, But These Three Are Extremely Important, Especially For Those Not Sacrificing Anything!!


Topic: The American Widow Project We Regret to Inform You Chapter 1
Originally aired on September 10th, 2008


Led by Taryn Davis, a group of young military widows band together in a new peer support network called the American Widow Project.


Taryn Davis
War Widow


James Sheeler
Author
Final Salute Site: A Story of Unfinished Lives
Jim's Book: Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives

Taryn Davis
Last year, 22-year-old Taryn Davis' world crumbled. On May 21, 2007, Taryn was told her husband, Army Cpl. Michael W. Davis, had died from wounds sustained from an IED explosion in Iraq. She was crushed. Unable to find the peer support she needed from other recently widowed military spouses, Taryn founded the American Widow Project four months later to help her cope with the loss of the love of her life. Using the power of the internet, Taryn has been able to reach out to over 100 young military widows (the majority of which are under 30), offering them peer support and help with whatever they might need.

Nicole Hart
Nicole Hart, found her soul mate when she was 16-years-old and married him three years later. Then, this past winter she lost him. On January 8, 2008, Army Sgt. David J. Hart was killed while trying to help one of his wounded men. Nicole, now a 23-year-old widow, didn't know life could go on without David, and sometimes she still doesn't understand how the earth continues to rotate. But, with the peer support from her new friends at the American Widow Project, she's realizing that if she gets into her wedding dress on her anniversary and flips through wedding photos, she's not weird, and she's not alone.

Windy Link
Windy's husband Sgt. Joey Link died while serving in Quatar as Air Support for the war in Iraq. Not only did he leave behind his wife Windy, but he also left behind two sons, and their baby daughter, Rylee. This summer, Windy left Rylee for the first time to travel to Austin, Texas to hang out with, and lean on, her new friends with the American Widow Project.

Topic: The American Widow Project ***** We Regret to Inform You Chapter 2


Originally aired on September 17th, 2008


Nicole Hart

Ami Neiberger-Miller
Communications & Public Affairs Officer
Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS)






Topic: The American Widow Project**** We Regret to Inform You Chapter 3


The Women of the American Widow Project


Originally aired on September 24th, 2008





We Regret to Inform You Chapter 3


The Women of the American Widow Project


And a short clip of these young widows moving on together.


American Widow Project--A Light-Hearted Video Clip‏


In Their Boots: We Regret To Inform You - Surfing



Visit their site and show your support to these Military Widows and their families

Condi, Condi, Condi.......................

You gotta get your ducks all in a row there before tooting those horns:

At a press conference she and Zebari said the negotiators were close to signing the deal but cautioned it had not yet been clinched.

Everyone says how intelligent you are, and after all you're the Secretary of State with a whole department working for you, or are they being allowed to.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said on Thursday after a meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Baghdad that the agreement was concluded and that it would be discussed Friday by the Political Council for National Security.

Really?

"I was surprised when I heard about the meeting of the council," said Hadi al-Ameri, lawmaker and a top Shiite leader from the powerful Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), a key party of the ruling Iraqi government.

Could the surprise trip and the horn blowing have anything to do with trying to sell how great the 'surge' worked or is working?


If so you had better go back, as well as the talking heads controlling the talking points, and study up on the reasons for the policy known as 'the surge', and how it all came about and was sold, and let the Iraqi Government in on the Policy.


Seems they have different idea's, like getting the occupiers the hell out, and continuing the ethnic cleansing we unleashed:


Iraq Takes Aim at Leaders of U.S.-Tied Sunni Groups

The Shiite-dominated government in Iraq is driving out many leaders of Sunni citizen patrols, the groups of former insurgents who joined the American payroll and have been a major pillar in the decline in violence around the nation.

It seems you've overlooked a few things of extreme importance in trying to make your boss look good, or more than boss.

While the crackdown appears to be focused on a relatively small number of leaders whom the Iraqi government considers the most dangerous, there are influential voices to dismantle the American backed movement entirely.

“The state cannot accept the Awakening,” said Sheik Jalaladeen al-Sagheer, a leading Shiite member of Parliament. “Their days are numbered.”

Looks like, while not being consulted on extremely important and highly touted meetings, the Iraqi Government leaders are forging ahead with their own agenda and it don't look promising for your plans.


Although could this

Visiting Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Seniora and Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Wednesday agreed, among other things, on the export of Iraqi crude oil to Lebanon during talks in Baghdad.

be the wanted, by the cabal and friends, long awaited oil pipeline to Israel as well?


I really don't think so, you see Israel has more than just egg on their faces,

However, the impression that Israel had helped bolster the Georgian military was one the Israeli Foreign Ministry was anxious to avoid. Last Saturday it reportedly recommended a freeze on the further supply of equipment and expertise to Georgia by Israeli defense contractors. (Israel doesn't supply foreign militaries directly, but its private contractors must get Defense Ministry approval for such deals.) The Israelis decided to refrain from authorizing new defense contracts, although those currently in effect will be fulfilled. Israel stressed that the contracts are to provide equipment for defensive purposes. But if the Israelis were looking to downplay the significance of military ties, they weren't helped by comments like Yakobashvili's — or by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's enthusing at a press conference earlier this week that "the Israeli weapons have been very effective."

and something tells me that Israel's neighbors are going to be searching out more sophisticated weapons for their National Security arsenals and guess where they'll be doing their shopping.


Though apparently Israel might have had a feeling for the near future

Israeli officials say that, in anticipation of a showdown between Georgia and Russia, Israel began to scale back the involvement of Israeli companies in Georgia as early as the end of 2007. Georgia's Yakobashvili charged this week that Israel, "at Russia's behest," had downgraded military ties with Georgia, a decision he branded a "disgrace.",

I don't think you're going to get what you think you are. What seems to be growing is the examples and proof of the extremely failed administration policies you've been a part of all along.


Iraq is still very unstable, Afghanistan is growing in danger, the border with Pakistan and Pakistan itself spiralling out of control.


The only thing you all are getting is the perpetual conflicts sought from the growth of the hatreds and the increased enemies, who not only despise the policies our representatives set forth but us as well.


Hell of a Strong National Defense you've all created, Worldwide!!

July 21 in History

Brought to you as This week in History by Peace Buttons.



July 21, 1954

Major world powers, meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, reached agreement on the terms of a ceasefire for Indochina, ending nearly eight years of war. The war began in 1946 between nationalist forces of the Communist Viet Minh, under leader Ho Chi Minh, and France, the occupying colonial power following Japanese control during World War II.
The Geneva conference included France, the United Kingdom, the U.S., the U.S.S.R., People’s Republic of China, Cambodia, Laos, and both Vietnamese governments.

It ended with a peace treaty that called for independence for Vietnam and a 1956 election to unify the country. However, only France and Ho Chi Minh's DRV (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) signed the document.
The United States did not approve of the agreement. Instead, they backed Emperor Boa Dai and Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem’s government in South Vietnam and refused to allow the elections, knowing, in Pres. Eisenhower’s words, that “Ho Chi Minh will win.” The result was the Second Indochina War, more commonly known as the Vietnam War.

Though we were reported as helping transport French troops to Vietnam our real history, in Indo-China, starts shortly after the above.

Read about the signing of the treaty with the French

The fall of Dien Bien Phu signalled defeat for France in Indo-China

President Dwight D Eisenhower said in a statement from Washington the agreement contained elements which he did not like - such as the division of Vietnam between north and south - and a great deal depended on how they worked in practice.

Senate leaders from both parties went one step further and expressed their alarm at what is widely regarded as a victory for Communism.

What followed the treaty and our start of destructive Indo-China History


July 21, 1878

The eight-hour was an established concept before the song. Shown is an 1856 banner from Melbourne, Australia.

Publication of "Eight Hours," written by Rev. Jesse H. Jones (music) and I.G. Blanchard (lyrics), the most popular labor song until "Solidarity Forever" was published by the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) in 1915.

Eight-Hours
Rev. Jesse H. Jones (music)
I.G. Blanchard (lyrics)

We mean to make things over,
We are tired of toil for naught
With but bare enough to live upon
And ne'er an hour for thought.
We want to feel the sunshine
And we want to smell the flow'rs
We are sure that God has willed it
And we mean to have eight hours;
We're summoning our forces
From the shipyard, shop and mill

Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will;
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will.

The beasts that graze the hillside,
And the birds that wander free,
In the life that God has meted,
Have a better life than we.
Oh, hands and hearts are weary,
And homes are heavy with dole;
If our life's to be filled with drudg'ry,
What need of a human soul.
Shout, shout the lusty rally,
From shipyard, shop, and mill.

Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will;
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will.

The voice of God within us
Is calling us to stand
Erect as is becoming
To the work of His right hand.
Should he, to whom the Maker
His glorious image gave,
The meanest of His creatures crouch,
A bread-and-butter slave?
Let the shout ring down the valleys
And echo from every hill.

Ye deem they're feeble voices
That are raised in labor's cause,
But bethink ye of the torrent,
And the wild tornado's laws.
We say not toil's uprising
In terror's shape will come,
Yet the world were wise to listen
To the monetary hum.
Soon, soon the deep toned rally
Shall all the nations thrill.

Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will;
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will.

From factories and workshops
In long and weary lines,
From all the sweltering forges,
And from out the sunless mines,
Wherever toil is wasting
The force of life to live
There the bent and battered armies
Come to claim what God doth give
And the blazon on the banner
Doth with hope the nation fill:

Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will;
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will.

Hurrah, hurrah for labor,
For it shall arise in might
It has filled the world with plenty,
It shall fill the world with light
Hurrah, hurrah for labor,
It is mustering all its powers
And shall march along to victory
With the banner of Eight Hours.
Shout, shout the echoing rally
Till all the welkin thrill.

Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will;
Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest
Eight hours for what we will.

Visit their site and sign up for their newsletter, and celebrate the 50th year of the Peace Symbol.

A Just Foreign Policy

YES Magazine, Summer '08 Edition, has a number of really good articles, and an interview, that should be read and obsorbed as to some of what we should be putting into public discussion as we try to turn this ship of state around and head in a direction that should already have been. These articles touch on a number of important issues, Very Important, not only for us, as a country, but our place in the world and for the world as a whole. They are also a matter of our Security and the Security of the planet

This one with Shultz might sound abit familiar for any who heard him talking when they returned from this conferance, but this is an Extremely Important subject and not only for us, and our National Security but the Security of everyone.

George Shultz: No Nuclear Weapons
Nuclear weapons abolition is not only possible, but necessary for our security and perhaps even our survival.

It starts of thus:

George Shultz was there when nuclear disarmament slipped through our fingers. Today, he says, action is even more urgent. Sarah van Gelder interviews George Shultz, former Secretary of State.

This near the end stood out:

Shultz: I’m not trying to prescribe for the next president. We’re trying to get the building blocks ready. We’ve talked to people from some other countries, and they’re interested enough so that if the United States, working with Russia, were to take this initiative and get other people to join, it might be pretty exciting. And it might once again put us in the role of doing something that people feel good about.

"Doing someting the people feel good about." Not just something, for we have an awful lot to do, but this issue would bring back much of what we lost in our Moral Standing as a world neighbor. The Neo-Cons, or whatever label one would smack on them, have not only destroyed the arms talk tables, they are developing other uses, under the Nuclear Umbrella, for ordinance, with no worry as to the damage it will inflict nor the long term lasting effects, all for the Now, in Power and Blood Wealth!

Smart Security and the End of War
David Korten's thoughts on a just foreign policy and an emergent social movement calling the world’s parliaments to adopt the principles of Article 9 added to the Japanese Constitution following World War II.

This touches on a number of important issues and leads off thus:

David Korten’s thoughts on a just foreign policy (the theme of the summer 2008 issue of YES! Magazine). “We humans have arrived at a defining moment. We must bring ourselves into balance with one another and Earth or suffer the consequences of social and environmental collapse. It creates a unique opportunity for bold action to end war as an instrument of foreign policy, convert to a peace economy, and create a world that works for all.”

He breaks this down to topics on:

The End of Excess

A Defining Challenge

The Last Superpower

Getting Smart

A Global Movement

A Smart Security Policy for the United States

And ends it with this:

It is an opportunity to at once increase our security, improve the quality of our lives, and regain a position of principled global leadership.

Talking NAFTA and Immigration.

Reclaiming Corn and Culture
For 14 years, NAFTA has displaced farmers and spurred migration. The answer from Mexico’s grassroots: co-ops and fair trade.

Mexicans doing it themselves, and to help solve the immigration problems We should be helping them.

They have sounded their voices loudly in Mexico’s capital, while quietly developing their own answers to NAFTA in farming communities throughout the country—working models of “fair trade” that consider people and the environment, not just profit margins.

Who are the losers.

By 2003, 1.3 million Mexican peasants had lost their livelihoods because of NAFTA. Many of the displaced farmers came north in search of work. Mexican migration to the U.S. increased an estimated 75 percent in the five years after the trade agreement took effect.

And in the name of Corporate, not to mention others seeking lowscale wage earners, profits and to force wages down, what has been presently going on.

Pickard has been a vocal critic of a new trade initiative under the Bush Administration that broadens NAFTA with increased emphasis on border security and corporate access to natural resources. The initiative, called the “Security and Prosperity Partnership,” or SPP, was launched two years ago in a series of negotiations with the Mexican and Canadian governments. Because the SPP is not a treaty, there is no congressional oversight, nor any process for citizen comment. The only input comes from a council of 30 advisors, ten selected by each government. The list reads like a Who’s Who of corporate North America, including the CEOs of Bell Canada, Chevron, Ford, General Electric, General Motors, Home Depot/Canada, Kimberly-Clark/Mexico, Lockheed Martin, Scotiabank, and Wal-Mart.

Just the Facts: Military Spending versus Foreign Aid
The U.S. spends piles of money on foreign aid, right? See how the spending actually stacks up.

Just The Facts Poster in PDF

The top link above gives a smaller version of the tables on spending, the PDF can be downloaded and saved.

Raiding the War Chest
How to cut billions in unneeded weapons systems—and redirect the money towards health care, the economy, and climate.

It’s called “defense” spending, but how much of it is actually about defense? Here’s how we could save billions, and still have billions left to make the U.S. and the world more secure.

This speaks for itself, our continuing wasteful Huge and ever growing Defense Budgets, Questions Never Asked, Schrugs when coruption comes to light, and back to continuing growth of budgets, lining the pockets of the few rather than giving Us what we led to believe we are getting.

An economy slouching toward recession, or—depending on who you talk to—already there, has produced two seemingly contradictory effects. It has pushed the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history off the top of the list of citizen concerns. And it has simultaneously gotten those citizens, and even their members of Congress, talking much more about that disaster’s economic costs.

And how much are the 'Look the other way' Representatives, Our Representatives, reaping.

Since 2001 the Administration’s military budgets have more than doubled. Congress has approved every one, sometimes even expanding them a bit

No accountability for the "Worst Foreign Policy Disaster in U.S. History!", just rubber stamp what's requested, and tack on more, to continue the disaster, the disaster not only for us but especially for those we reaped it upon

Just some of what should be eleminated.

A half-dozen items that top this list are:

* The F/A 22 Raptor:
An obsolete, ever-more-costly aircraft designed to counter a Soviet model that was never built.

* Ballistic Missile Defense:
A system that doesn’t work for a threat that doesn’t exist.

* Virginia-Class Submarine:
Any conceivable mission for this new sub can be handled by the existing fleet.

* DD(G-1000) Destroyer:
Another cost-escalating program whose missions are well-covered by existing ships.

* V-22 Osprey:
This hybrid plane-helicopter is being rushed into service in Iraq despite safety, technical, and cost problems, both old and new.

* C-130J transport plane:
Has 168 documented deficiencies that render it unsafe.

And closes with this:

And while we’re repairing the damage to our relations with the rest of the world, we will need to put some of the money into repairing the social contract with our own citizens, by investing in our battered economy.

Just investing in our infrastructure would reap benefits across a number of area's, and investing in other much needed area's would expand those benefits and keep expanding them.

You can go here:

Theme Guide :: A Just Foreign Policy

To catch the ones above and a few more, all in the same issue, and online.

Superpower? Get Over It

Five years into the occupation of Iraq, the American public has had it. Add in an overstretched economy, spreading nuclear arms, climate disruption, and scrambles for scarce resources, and many are ready to ditch the superpower role and join a world of equals to confront our common challenges.

bet you thought I was through passing on some good reads and important information, well I'm not

The ACLU Releases Navy Files On Civilian Casualties In Iraq War (7/2/2008), this will take you to the Press Release.

Public Has A Right To Unfiltered Information About The Human Cost Of War, ACLU Says

Today's documents are available online

Attorneys involved in this project are Bargzie, Ben Wizner and Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU National Security Project. In a separate lawsuit, the ACLU sued for records concerning the abuse of prisoners held by U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay. To date, that request has resulted in the release of more than 100,000 pages, all of which are available online

And another documentary of importance:

The Trailor

ON THE LINE is an inside look at the people behind one of the largest nonviolent movements in America today: the movement to close the School of the Americas/WHINSEC, a U.S. Army school that trains Latin American soldiers. In a world where politics, passion, and Constitutional rights collide, protesters discuss their activism, the dark side of U.S. foreign policy, and the challenges of protesting since 9/11.

The principal cast includes:

* Martin Sheen, actor

* Susan Sarandon, actor

* Fr. Roy Bourgeois, Founder of School of the Americas Watch

* John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman

* Bob Barr, political analyst and former US Congressman

* Gerry Weber, ACLU-Georgia

The film is 55 minutes long.

"Those who make peaceful evolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable." -- John F. Kennedy

The revisionist approach to Vietnam

When Iraq became the quagmire it is, I used to wonder how we could make the same mistake again so soon. But then I realized that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were in the Oval office with President Ford when Saigon fell. Perhaps they, and the worshipers of American power, felt that, this time, we would get it right.

read more | digg story

A Discussion for Thought

The following is a short discussion, abit of a long read, by two Vietnam Veterans, on a VFP/VVAW, group board. The first post is a copy of a question asked and answered by another Vietnam Veteran. The two posts following that are a reply to the original than an answer to that reply.

I would hope that it might help our present Brothers and Sisters, serving in Theaters of War and when they return from, to help find the answers to any questions that may be.

With the Mutiple Tours, Extended Tours, ever Changing Reasons For, and the initial ignorance of what type of Conflict they were led into, as this countries military had already had a long running battle with Guerilla/Insurgent warfare and those lessons still aren't being applied, there will be many more questions that need answering than even we 'Nam vets have been seeking answers for, to the closed ears of our Government and the People of this Country.

"WHAT IS A VIETNAM VETERAN?"
by Dan Mouer 1996

A college student posted a request on an internet newsgroup asking for personal narratives from the likes of us addressing the question: "What is a Vietnam Veteran?" This is what I wrote back:

Vietnam veterans are men and women. We are dead or alive, whole or maimed, sane or haunted. We grew from our experiences or we were destroyed by them or we struggle to find some place in between. We lived through hell or we had a pleasant, if scary, adventure. We were Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Red Cross, and civilians of all sorts. Some of us enlisted to fight for God and Country, and some were drafted. Some were gung-ho, and some went kicking and screaming.
Like veterans of all wars, we lived a tad bit--or a great bit--closer to death than most people like to think about. If Vietnam vets differ from others, perhaps it is primarily in the fact that many of us never saw the enemy or recognized him or her. We heard gunfire and mortar fire but rarely looked into enemy eyes. Those who did, like folks who encounter close combat anywhere and anytime, are often haunted for life by those eyes, those sounds, those electric fears that ran between ourselves, our enemies, and the likelihood of death for one of us. Or we get hard, calloused, tough. All in a day's work. Life's a bitch then you die. But most of us remember and get twitchy, worried, sad.
We are crazies dressed in cammo, wide-eyed, wary, homeless, and drunk. We are Brooks Brothers suit wearers, doing deals downtown. We are housewives, grandmothers, and church deacons. We are college professors engaged in the rational pursuit of the truth about the history or politics or culture of the Vietnam experience. And we are sleepless. Often sleepless.
We pushed paper; we pushed shovels. We drove jeeps, operated bulldozers, built bridges; we toted machine guns through dense brush, deep paddy, and thorn scrub. We lived on buffalo milk, fish heads and rice. Or C-rations. Or steaks and Budweiser. We did our time in high mountains drenched by endless monsoon rains or on the dry plains or on muddy rivers or at the most beautiful beaches in the world.
We wore berets, bandanas, flop hats, and steel pots. Flak jackets, canvas, rash and rot. We ate cloroquine and got malaria anyway. We got shots constantly but have diseases nobody can diagnose. We spent our nights on cots or shivering in foxholes filled with waist-high water or lying still on cold wet ground, our eyes imagining Charlie behind every bamboo blade. Or we slept in hotel beds in Saigon or barracks in Thailand or in cramped ships' berths at sea.
We feared we would die or we feared we would kill. We simply feared, and often we still do. We hate the war or believe it was the best thing that ever happened to us. We blame Uncle Sam or Uncle Ho and their minions and secretaries and apologists for every wart or cough or tic of an eye. We wonder if Agent Orange got us.
Mostly--and this I believe with all my heart--mostly, we wish we had not been so alone. Some of us went with units; but many, probably most of us, were civilians one day, jerked up out of "the world," shaved, barked at, insulted, humiliated, de-egoized and taught to kill, to fix radios, to drive trucks. We went, put in our time, and were equally ungraciously plucked out of the morass and placed back in the real world. But now we smoked dope, shot skag, or drank heavily. Our wives or husbands seemed distant and strange. Our friends wanted to know if we shot anybody.
And life went on, had been going on, as if we hadn't been there, as if Vietnam was a topic of political conversation or college protest or news copy, not a matter of life and death for tens of thousands.
Vietnam vets are people just like you. We served our country, proudly or reluctantly or ambivalently. What makes us different--what makes us Vietnam vets--is something we understand, but we are afraid nobody else will. But we appreciate your asking.
Vietnam veterans are white, black, beige and shades of gray; but in comparison with our numbers in the "real world," we were more likely black. Our ancestors came from Africa, from Europe, and China. Or they crossed the Bering Sea Land Bridge in the last Ice Age and formed the nations of American Indians, built pyramids in Mexico, or farmed acres of corn on the banks of Chesapeake Bay. We had names like Rodriguez and Stein and Smith and Kowalski. We were Americans, Australians, Canadians, and Koreans; most Vietnam veterans are Vietnamese.
We were farmers, students, mechanics, steelworkers, nurses, and priests when the call came that changed us all forever. We had dreams and plans, and they all had to change...or wait. We were daughters and sons, lovers and poets, beatniks and philosophers, convicts and lawyers. We were rich and poor but mostly poor. We were educated or not, mostly not. We grew up in slums, in shacks, in duplexes, and bungalows and houseboats and hooches and ranchers. We were cowards and heroes. Sometimes we were cowards one moment and heroes the next.
Many of us have never seen Vietnam. We waited at home for those we loved. And for some of us, our worst fears were realized. For others, our loved ones came back but never would be the same.
We came home and marched in protest marches, sucked in tear gas, and shrieked our anger and horror for all to hear. Or we sat alone in small rooms, in VA hospital wards, in places where only the crazy ever go. We are Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and Confucians and Buddhists and Atheists--though as usually is the case, even the atheists among us sometimes prayed to get out of there alive.
We are hungry, and we are sated, full of life or clinging to death. We are injured, and we are curers, despairing and hopeful, loved or lost. We got too old too quickly, but some of us have never grown up. We want, desparately, to go back, to heal wounds, revisit the sites of our horror. Or we want never to see that place again, to bury it, its memories, its meaning. We want to forget, and we wish we could remember.
Despite our differences, we have so much in common. There are few of us who don't know how to cry, though we often do it alone when nobody will ask "what's wrong?" We're afraid we might have to answer.
Adam, if you want to know what a Vietnam veteran is, get in your car next weekend or cage a friend with a car to drive you. Go to Washington. Go to the Wall. It's going to be Veterans Day weekend. There will be hundreds there...no, thousands. Watch them. Listen to them. I'll be there. Come touch the Wall with us. Rejoice a bit. Cry a bit. No, cry a lot. I will. I'm a Vietnam Veteran; and, after 30 years, I think I am beginning to understand what that means.

This was posted in response to the above, by Jay Janson:

Fine article, CORRECTION: THEY DID NOT SERVE THEIR COUNTRY
Excellent text except for one horribly insensitive slip into a
sickening corporate media war promoting post Vietnam War propaganda
lie:

" Vietnam vets are people just like you. We served our country,
proudly or reluctantly or ambivalently"

Killing Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodian in their very own lands
DID NOT 'SERVE' OUR COUNTRY! On the contrary, this brutal massive
killing and maiming in the French colonies of Indochina seeking their
independence, was a genocidal crime against humanity, the shame and
dishonor of which will forever printed in history books and
encylopedias for our children, and children all over the world will
read about for untold generations of the future.

Jay Janson's much reprinted article below, quotes Eisenhower, John
Kerry and Bob Kerry.

TITLE:
Respect Vietnamese Patriots Gunned Down by “Beloved” Swift Boats

AUTHOR:
Jay Janson, Feb. 4, 2008

DESCRIPTION:
Jolted to read in Jan. 23, Huffington Post article, “Swiftboating”,
John Kerry’s insensitive references to, “the Swift Boats we loved
while we were in uniform on the Mekong Delta" -“the boats we honored
when we were in uniform in Vietnam”. Kerry experienced the death
these boats brought, called the war an atrocity. Remarks especially
sickening for those who, like Jane Fonda, sided with Vietnam fighting
Japan, France, and U.S.

TEXT:
I mean what shock do Americans need to back off from accepting,
cheering on, and aping corporate media entertainment/news adulation
of war?

This is a heart breaking subject for one, who has lived in Hanoi
among Vietnamese who all lost family during what the Vietnamese call
“The American War.” “Killed by the Americans”, they would answer
with an expression of Buddhist equanimity on their faces upon inquiry
during a festive annual dinner in their traditional custom of
honoring of a deceased family member.

The U.S. government now makes nice with the same Vietnam communist
dominated government presidents from Truman through Ford sought to
destroy, seemingly oblivious to the incredible loss of life. America
has come to respect the Vietnam it could not defeat, and could not
cut in half.

That is why this writer, was jolted to read in the Jan. 23, 2008
Huffington Post article, “Swiftboating”, John Kerry’s insensitive
references to, “the Swift Boats we loved while we were in uniform on
the Mekong Delta" ... “the boats we honored when we were in uniform
in Vietnam”.

What chilling lack of compassion and poor taste, to call attention,
even in retrospect, to their having “honored” and “loved” war
equipment that brought undeserved death and destruction to Vietnam.

These unthinking hurtful written remarks are especially sickening for
those of us who, like Jane Fonda, were on the side of the Vietnamese
who fought first the Japanese, then the French, and thereafter
endured years of carpet and napalm bombing by the U.S. during their
American crucifixion.

What is most appalling about Kerry’s slip of conscience, is that we
have always supposed that given the memory of Kerry’s famous brave
action saving his ship and the lives of his comrades by shooting to
death a Viet patriot about to launch a rocket, that Kerry must have
nightmares about that Viet soldier’s grieving family.

Is this the same John Kerry who denounced the U.S. war in Vietnam as
an atrocity in testimony before a congressional committee?

No, one quesses it is the John Kerry who thirty-five years later
saluted the Vietnam Veterans, warriors who fought a near defenseless
population in a poor Asian French colony of rice farmers, parading
across the stage with large American flags to thunderous applause at
the convention that would nominate him the Democratic presidential
candidate? During his campaign, Kerry and commercial media made the
'Vietnam War' strangely heroic again.

With all the U.S. rapprochement in backing that same communist
government for World Trade Organization membership, one wonders if
Kerry ever try to contact the family of that Vietnamese patriot he
shot to death in combat?

One wonders why Kerry would not be embarrassed to recall love for his
swift boat. What of his memory that the crews of those boats
participated in a war on the Vietnamese that Kerry testified to have
been an atrocity?

Kerry reenlisted for a second tour of 'duty', but took discharge to
run for Congress. Did he not know when he enlisted the first time,
that Eisenhower had written in his book "Mandate for Change" in 1963,
that if there had been an all Vietnam election (blocked by Ike
himself), that Ho Chi Minh would have won by a plurality of more than
80%? Oddly enough Kerry would run in part on his military service
record in Vietnam fighting to prevent Ho Chi Minh from becoming
elected president.

Why does Kerry now believe that he or any Vietnam vets 'served' their
country by taking part in a war that killed Vietnamese in their own
country, often enough in their own neighborhoods and homes as he
deplored in his testimony at the time?

Kerry had a fine college education, which must have included a
history of colonialism, which would have included the brutality of
French colonial subjugation of the Vietnamese. He must have known
that Ho Chi Minh was decorated by our OSS as a dedicated ally of ours
against the Japanese and Vichy French. He must have known that
Truman, against Roosevelt's promise, had brought the French army back
in US ships to fight an 8-year war against our former allies, the
Vietnamese. All this because Ho Chi Minh was a communist? A top
cabinet minister of the U.S. allied French government was also a
communist, but that was OK. Martin Luther King spoke of this history
in his 1967 condemnation of U.S. imperialist war.

Perhaps it useless to fault the mature John Kerry for a commonly held
American attitude of disinterest in the suffering of families of the
millions slaughtered in America’s mistaken and unwinnable wars and
nostalgia for his stint in the Navy.

Recruiting our boys to go kill around the world is made easier for
the ‘glory’ now associated with the massive killing of Vietnamese,
Laotians and Cambodians. ‘U.S. Big Brother’ media has turned the
pre-1975 [shame] into [fame] in the new millennium. No more mention
of the war having been ‘a terrible mistake’, and every single
politician who ‘served’ in Vietnam is acclaimed as a hero!

Calling the Iraq war a mistake, as do the Democrats, does not carry
with it any horror, shame or even the slightest interest in the
million Iraqi lives lost. It’s the very few, by comparison, American
military lives lost that are worthy of attention and mourning. In
American media, a million Iraqi, Afghani, or Vietnamese dead do not
equal the weight of one American fallen in the occupation of these
nations.

The only attention non-American deaths get is in the highly heralded
insurgent, and suspected insurgent, body counts that include men and
boys who join up to fight against the American occupation of their
countries and are automatically labeled terrorists in U.S. military
reports.

The world, watching satellite TV, notices that the general American
public, indifferent to its government policies, nevertheless seems to
enjoy hearing of the U.S. killing record and body counts in the many
small nations its always heroic military invades.

There is zero interest in the suffering of the family members of
'foreigners' who die ‘in harms way' of U.S. military firepower.

With John Kerry recent acquiescing to today’s wars, it is both dismal
and disheartening, even bizarre, to recall that young Kerry
denouncing the U.S. war on Vietnam as an atrocity in testimony before
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971.

Muhammad Ali did not need to go to Vietnam to know it was wrong, and
he has never changed his mind.

This is a response to what Mr Janson had posted, by George Weber who brought us Dan Mouers well thought answer to a simple question:

Mr. Janson,

I would argue that we did indeed serve our country....meaning that as young recruits our intentions were honorable, regardless
of the fact that we were deceived and ultimately used as pawns by a dishonest government in an unjust war.



Perhaps you overlooked the sentence.......


"We came home and marched in protest marches, sucked in tear gas, and shrieked our anger and horror for all to hear."

I would guess that there are many Vietnam vets who disagree with our point of view......but in this case you're preaching to the choir.

I think perhaps you may have overlooked the spirit in which the piece was written.



In Peace,

George Weber
VFP Tappan Zee Chapter 060
VVAW NYC Clarence Fitch Chapter

I leave you to Think on the many similarities to than and today, the many differances as well, and the perceptions of this Country brought about back than to the perceptions we live with now and well into the future!

Add-On: I posted a response to both of the above writings by my brother 'Nam Veterans, on the Morality and Reality of our Country and received this Response back; Moralism Vs. Reality: Take your pick. from another brother.

American Justice - To the Dark Side

We are all torturers now

4 Minute Video

This is the America that our leaders want us to be proud of? This is the America we have built. This is who we are.

Who is accountable?

You Are

This is who we are.

Clips from Academy Award Doc "Taxi to the Dark Side," produced by an independent filmmaker, for Information Clearing House.



"Taxi to the Dark Side", Trailer and Two Shorts

Click To Play

Above can also be viewed at Google Video
You can find further information about this Documentary At it's website

The Documentary started showing in Theaters on 1-25-08 you can find further theater openings here.

Conservative Idea of 'Strong on National Defense':
Enhance more Hatreds anywhere possible, through propaganda, destruction, mass death, in order to Continue threats against from similar Failed Policies of Past!

Those Hatreds lead to 'Blowback' by recipients of the many Failed Policies called 'Criminal Terrorism'!

Take the word 'Terrorism', while practising same, and paste it on any group needed to Enhance the Fear in Populations causing Perpetual Conflicts and Huge Profits for any Military Industrial Complex and Control by same for Further Policies setup to Fail!

And when 'Johnny and Jane' come Marching Home, Dump Them {that one cuts across all Political Ideology and Society }

It's Not 'Strong on National Defense', it Destroys 'National Defense' and brings about more and more 'Conflicts of Choice' for Greed and Power!

If we don't hold those Responsible for the Wrath of Failed Policies instituted than in the eyes of the World 'We Have Excepted All That Has Been Done In Our Names' and are thus Just As Guilty!!

Got Kids, Meet Their Future

Thanks to us Responsible Adults!


An Iraqi boy reacts after seeing his sister and both of his parents killed in the car, in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad, Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2005

As we bring Freedom and Democray at the point of a gun!



Thousands of Homeless Children in Iraq Survive by Begging, Stealing or Scavenging Garbage for Food.

IRAQ: Child beggars proliferate in Baghdad


Child beggars are a common sight in the streets of Baghdad

Ahmed said he would rather beg than steal and that he had started begging before his parents died because they were a poor family. He said his mother died in Fallujah in August 2004. She was visiting her parents when their house was bombed by US-led coalition forces.

His father fell ill and could not work so he sent his children out to beg. If they did not come home with enough money, he would beat them, Ahmed said. His father died of kidney failure in April 2005

Only four years ago, the vast majority of these children were living at home with their families.

Many of those we are have been fighting, since we invaded, are the children who have grown since the first Gulf War and through the years of Sanctions, the ones who survived!


Illiteracy increasing among Iraq's refugee children


Azhar al Haidari, 47, center, is an Iraqi refugee in Damascus, Syria. While her two daughters, Inam, left, and Mary, are excelling in school, their older brothers are illiterate because they've been out of class for so long

Illiteracy is spreading rapidly among refugee children from Iraq, with at least 300,000 young Iraqis not attending school in the countries where their families have sought safety.

"The last time my kids were in school was 2003, right before the American invasion," said Hanaa Majeed, 32, an Iraqi refugee in Damascus who can't afford to send her two sons to school. "They can barely read. I buy books and try to teach them at home, but it's not the same. My boys see other kids with backpacks on, going off to school, and they ask why they can't go, too."
Education is a point of pride for Iraqis, the descendants of civilizations that invented cuneiform, one of the world's first writing systems.

Iraq: Children with serious illnesses abandoned

Over 1.6 million children under the age of 12 have become homeless in Iraq, according to the country's Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. That's almost 70 percent of the estimated 2.5 million Iraqis who are homeless inside the country.

"There are no reliable estimates of how many orphans and abandoned children are in Iraq today but we believe, according to some data collected by local NGOs, that over 8,000 children are in the same or a similar situation to that of Faleh," Mayada said.

Few Iraqis returning home from Jordan

Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, more than two million Iraqis have fled to neighbouring countries, with Jordan (500,000-750,000) and Syria (1.2-1.4 million) hosting the greatest numbers.

The plight of Iraqi refugees

Demanding of our attention and action today is the terrible plight of Iraqi refugees, both those outside the country and internally displaced persons (IDPs). They number to date a fifth of the Iraqi population.

This tragic human dislocation has been created by the active violation of the UN Charter and other aspects of international law. This violation was demonstrated during the American terrorism of "Shock and Awe", and the invasion of sovereignty, disruption of culture, destruction of civilian infrastructure that it entailed and epitomised. Irreparable damage to society and fundamental human rights has ensued. This outrageous unprovoked act of aggression brought to Iraq yet again the horrors of war. Bush and Blair's pre-emptive strike has led to the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Current credible estimations put the figure at over one million since 2003.

Over and above massive loss of civilian life, is the tragic consequence of refugees. It is estimated some 4.7 million children, women and men have been forced from their homes and have fled -- some displaced within and some outside Iraq. More that 20 per cent of the entire population have been brutally uprooted by the violence of this war of aggression -- a war crime for which the US-UK, along with others, must be held responsible.

Of these refugees, and those who haven't fled, many are the children, the children who we have stripped of their childhood! Those that are still in the War Ravaged Country of Iraq will try and maintain some semblance of chilhood activities, but their games of pretend are carried out amoung the devestation and destruction around them. And much of their pretend activities are the acting out of the forces of destruction they have witnessed, the only thing they know.



Money, Time Runs Out for Iraqi Refugees

The Iraqi government, eager to claim credit for the decline in violence, offers returnees free transportation to Iraq, provides protection to the bus convoys and gives families $800 each to help with resettling.

But American and U.N. officials warn that a big return of refugees could rekindle sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites and that some returnees have found their homes occupied by members of the other Muslim sect. Even the Iraqi government acknowledges it cannot handle a huge influx.

Harsh refugee life rather than improved security spurs return of Iraqi refugees

Most returnees did so because they were running out of money or because their visas had expired, states the report, with less than 15 per cent found to be returning because they believed the security situation had improved.

Recent visa restrictions in both Syria and Jordan have made it virtually impossible for new refugees to gain access to either country, and in Syria in particular, Iraqi refugees now find it hard to remain. By being denied work permits, Iraqis across the region are rapidly depleting their savings and are facing ever-worsening economic conditions.

Iraqi International Initiative on Refugee's

More than 4.5 million Iraqis — a fifth of the population — have been displaced inside and outside their country due to the sectarian policies of the occupation and the governments it has installed since the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003

The international community, the occupation powers, and the government in Iraq are legally required to support and protect Iraqi refugees

Iraqi refugees are Iraqi citizens who have a full right to live in dignity, a right to benefit equally from national resources, and a right to return to their homes

The UN Security Council, as the highest body of the UN, has the power and legal duty to ensure that the needs of Iraqi refugees are met by passing a resolution to require that the Iraqi state allocate proportionate revenue to responsible agencies and hosting countries

Visit above site and sign their Petition: Humanity is in distress in Iraq. Our moral responsibility is to save it. Join us.

And follow the many links given!

The Children Of Iraq - Photo's

Most of those who led the charge to War, and their supporters, try and lay the blame for what some of these children will, or already have, do on others who they say entice these children into violence and violent acts. These children don't need to be pushed nor taught, their anger and the life forced on them shapes what many will become, and it only takes a few, but there will be more than just a few. Those who lay the blame on others fear their own guilt that eventually will catch up to them!

And this is only about the Children of Iraq. How about the Children of Afganistan, or Darfur, or Palestine, or the many many other troubled spots on this planet! The disenfranchised have been rising up from the failed policies practiced by the powerful, leaving legacies of destruction to come!

U.S. empowering Iraq warlords

{Here we go again, though it shouldn't be a surprise, that's how we do our foreign policies, and how we got Saddam in the first place!}

'Strong like Saddam'

Oct. 15, 2007 issue - Kanan al-Sadid was not yet 10 years old on the afternoon that his father opened the trunk of the family car and Saddam Hussein popped out. It was the early 1960s, and the future dictator was hiding out from the Iraqi authorities, who accused him of plotting to assassinate the country's then strongman, Gen. Abdul Karim Qassim. Kanan's uncle was a member of Saddam's revolutionary Baath Party clique; when the conspirators needed to lie low, they would disappear to the Sadid family estate near the Syrian border. Once, when Syrian soldiers came looking for the men, Saddam and the boy's father ducked into a linen closet. Another time, as the family Volkswagen approached an Iraqi Army checkpoint, Saddam ordered all the children in the car to blow on the windows, steaming them up to conceal the fugitives. While visiting a family home in Baghdad one afternoon, Kanan's father told his sons to get into the car; they were going to a park to play. But after driving around for a while, the car stopped, the boy's father opened the trunk and Saddam Hussein—curled up and dressed in a dishdasha—stepped out and walked off. Kanan's father drove away in silence. "When are we going to the park?" the deflated boy asked. "Keep your mouth shut," his father replied.

SNIP Rest can be found here

War’s Arab supporters bitter over its results

Gee I wonder why!

Resentment speaks volumes about U.S. standing in the Middle East



"What's coming is worse than what is now," columnist and editor Ghassan Tueni wrote in Beirut's an-Nahar newspaper.

Slowly the mainstream are finally putting out what has been stated over and over outside of them for these past tragic years, Too Little and Way To Late, Damage Done and the Blowback nobody wants to see will be the Reality for many coming years!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Forced To Recruit Convicts

Escalating the war in Iraq means the military will grant more "moral waivers" -- permitting recruits with criminal records and emotional problems who would otherwise be unfit to serve.


And not only those with records, of which how serious, but those who would normally be found that are not as stable as a professional military would require. And as the article points out, what of the ones who once were but after this debacle, especially multiple tours, are no longer!

History: U.S. and Iraq

I got extremely sick and tired, loooong ago, about our 'Choices of Responsibility' in the Actions of those, we hire and pay, into power supposedly leading this Nation, and the brokers behind the scenes, skimming off the public troth, that we all know exist, and what they do In Our Names! Everything done, in a Democracy, wether good or bad is done In Our Names and We Are As Responsible As They Are!

One can't grab their share of resposibility, of any good actions/policies, by grabbing the flag and drapping themselves in some sort of Patriotic goody goody feeling, cheering "We're Number One", and than scream "I'm Not Responsible" for the bad done 'In Our Names'! In a true Democracy, something we still haven't obtained, the Whole shares The Responsibility Equally!

I don't belong to a lot of online boards, not enough time and one gets really tired really fast of reading idiotic responses from lazy lamebrains who try and act like their guro's, limbaugh being only one. And a guro he is to a group of {add any label one wants here, they are numourous}, that give their empty racist/bigotted thoughts with nothing to back them up or attempt to back them up with the empty thoughts of others equally lamebrained {add guro name here, they to are numourous also}, making a damn good living off these sheople as they lead them like the herders they are. And the lazy fools, who refuse to think for themselves, suck this bullshit up!

Lets take a look at our dealings with Saddam, who won't RIP, I'm sure. You can take your pick of Many tyrants and dictators who over the years we've supported with a total disregard to the countries citizens they led. Paying lip service about 'Human Rights' and 'Freedom' and 'Democracy', which we seem to think that by Destroying Others Countries and Their People', they will except and embrace with Open Arms these self instilled ideologies, we say we would like many of these countries to have, hell we pay lip service on our own soil to many of our own!

U.S. and Saddam:

First take a quick walk down memory lane with a short but historically filled video that Eric, over at bushflash put together shortly after Saddam was captured:

Thanks For The Memories
There's much more to the relationship but this gives one an idea of what has been going on all these years.

One thing about this technology, even for the lazy, one needs only read or view something get backtrack links or grab names, reports, files, whatever out of the read or view and do quick backtracks themselves, retrieving the evidence or the pros and cons, the Real Lazy, like the limbaugh himselve or his wanna-be's seem to find this exhausting as they don't even attempt to gig deeper

Now lets take a look at some of these parts of the Documented Known history:

Front page of Italian Newspaper Corriera della Sera


As Dean Hartwell, political scientist, you can visit his site Here, writes:

Hussein's Bloody Hands Drip on United States

With the execution of Saddam Hussein, the United States has lost an ally-turned-enemy. What it has gained remains to be seen.
When Hussein invaded Iran in September 1980, the Carter Administration applauded. When he used chemical weapons during that war, the Reagan Administration looked the other way. When he told us he would invade Kuwait in 1990, the Bush I Administration said we would stay out of it.

The same man whom Donald Rumsfeld went to make peace with in 1984 as an emissary of the Reagan Administration was our new punching bag from Desert Storm on. Several times under Presidents Bush I and Clinton we bombed Iraq, ostensibly for disobeying United Nations resolutions. Yet we had hid our anger over his previous transgressions, like the invasion of Iran, because they favored us. Whether we admit to it or not, we assisted Hussein in his early crimes.

If the Iraqis ever do switch to a democracy, they ought to consider the lack of principle the United States has shown in dealing with Saddam Hussein. A nation that says it opposes invasions of other nations and the murder of its people cannot hold the hand of one who commits these crimes. Even if the nation shakes off the hold of the dictator, it cannot shake off the blood from his hands.

Now Hartwell does a quick writeup of our involvement in the crimes of Saddam, and as I said above one only needs to pick certain things and find the proof of themselves, it's all out there and documented, hell with this technology it's even hard to scrub the evidence, the facts, the talking points on news video's, you name it it can be found.

Lets visit another recent post of points:

Source: Juan Cole

But the following comes from Black Listed News

Top Ten Ways the US Enabled Saddam Hussein

The tendency to treat Saddam and Iraq in a historical vacuum, and in isolation from the superpowers, however, has hidden from Americans their own culpability in the horror show that has been Iraq for the past few decades. Initially, the US used the Baath Party as a nationalist foil to the Communists. Then Washington used it against Iran. The welfare of Iraqis themselves appears to have been on no one's mind, either in Washington or in Baghdad.
The British-installed monarchy was overthrown by an officer's coup in 1958, led by Abdul Karim Qasim. The US was extremely upset, and worried that the new regime would not be a reliable oil exporter and that it might leave the Baghdad Pact of 1955, which the US had put together against the Soviet Union (grouping Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Britain and the US). (Qasim did leave the pact in 1959, which according to a US official of that time, deeply alarmed Washington.)

Iraq in the 1940s and 1950s had become an extremely unequal society, with a few thousand (mostly Sunni Arab) families owning half of the good land. On their vast haciendas, poor rural Shiites worked for a pittance. In the 1950s, two new mass parties grew like wildfire, the Communist Party of Iraq and the Arab Baath Socialist Party. They attracted first-generation intellectuals, graduates of the rapidly expanding school system, as well as workers and peasants. The crushing inequalities of Iraq under the monarchy produced widespread anger.

If one visits the title link, or the Juan Cole link, one will find more backtrack links and information to each item listed below:

1} The first time the US enabled Saddam Hussein came in 1959. In that year, a young Saddam, from the boondock town of Tikrit but living with an uncle in Baghdad, tried to assassinate Qasim. He failed and was wounded in the leg. Saddam had, like many in his generation, joined the Baath Party, which combined socialism, Arab nationalism, and the aspiration for a one-party state.

2} After the failed coup attempt, Saddam fled to Cairo, where he attended law school in between bar brawls, and where it is alleged that he retained his CIA connections there, being put on a stipend by the agency via the Egyptian government. He frequently visited US operatives at the Indiana Cafe. Getting him back on his feet in Cairo was the second episode of US aid to Saddam.

3} In February of 1963 the military wing of the Baath Party, which had infiltrated the officer corps and military academy, made a coup against Qasim, whom they killed. There is evidence from Middle Eastern sources, including interviews conducted at the time by historian Hanna Batatu, that the CIA cooperated in this coup and gave the Baathists lists of Iraqi Communists (who were covert, having infiltrated the government or firms). Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer of the 1960s, alleged that the US played a significant role in this Baath coup and that it was mostly funded "with American money.". Morris's allegation was confirmed to me by an eyewitness with intimate knowledge of the situation, who said that that the CIA station chief in Baghdad gave support to the Baathists in their coup. One other interviewee, who served as a CIA operative in Baghdad in 1964, denied to me the agency's involvement. But he was at the time junior and he was not an eyewitness to the events of 1963, and may not have been told the straight scoop by his colleagues. Note that some high Baathists appear to have been unaware of the CIA involvement, as well. In the murky world of tradecraft, a lot of people, even on the same team, keep each other in the dark. UPI quotes another, or perhaps the same, official, saying that the coup came as a surprise to Langley. In my view, unlikely.

4} In 1968, the civilian wing of the Baath Party came to power in a second coup.

5} The second Baath regime in Iraq disappointed the Nixon and Ford administrations by reaching out to the tiny remnants of the Communist Party and by developing good relations with the Soviet Union. In response, Nixon supported the Shah's Iran in its attempts to use the Iraqi Kurds to stir up trouble for the Baath Party, of which Saddam Hussein was a behind the scenes leader. As supporting the Kurdish struggle became increasingly expensive, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlevi of Iran decided to abandon the Kurds. He made a deal with the Iraqis at Algiers in 1975, and Saddam immediately ordered an invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan. The US acquiesced in this betrayal of the Kurds, and made no effort to help them monetarily. Kissinger maintained that the whole operation had been the shah's, and the shah suddenly terminated it, leaving the US with no alternative but to acquiesce. But that is not entirely plausible. The operation was supported by the CIA, and the US didn't have to act only through an Iranian surrogate. Kissinger no doubt feared he couldn't get Congress to fund help to the Kurds during the beginnings of the Vietnam syndrome. In any case, the 1975 US about-face helped Saddam consolidate control over northern Iraq.

6} When Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, he again caught the notice of US officials. The US was engaged in an attempt to contain Khomeinism and the new Islamic Republic. Especially after the US faced attacks from radicalized Shiites in Lebanon linked to Iran, and from the Iraqi Da`wa Party, which engaged in terrorism against the US and French embassies in Kuwait, the Reagan administration determined to deal with Saddam from late 1983, giving him important diplomatic encouragement. Historians are deeply indebted to Joyce Battle's Briefing Book at the National Security Archives, GWU, which presents key documents she sprung through FOIA requests, and which she analyzed for the first time.

7} The US gave practical help to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War:

8} The Reagan administration worked behind the scenes to foil Iran's motion of censure against Iraq for using chemical weapons.

9} The Reagan administration not only gave significant aid to Saddam, it attempted to recruit other friends for him.

10} After the Gulf War of 1991, when Shiites and Kurds rose up against Saddam Hussein, the Bush senior administration sat back and allowed the Baathists to fly helicopter gunships and to massively repress the uprising. President GHW Bush had called on Iraqis to rise up against their dictator, but when they did so he left them in the lurch. This inaction, deriving from a fear that a Shiite-dominated Iraq would ally with Tehran, allowed Saddam to remain in power until 2003.

Now these are just a couple of recent postings but all of the above has been known and followed, by many, over the years. Giving voice of opposition to these practises of destructive policies as the majorities ignored what was going on 'In Their Names'!
This is the history of our Nation, not only as to the above, but in the Policies set forth under the guise of 'National Security' which has only made 'National Security' even less than 'Secure' but giving Wealth and Power to the Military Industrial Complex and Rampent Growth of the Corporate Mindset of a Capitalist Society run amouk!

Throughout our history there have been, and continue to be, Voices of Opposition to what has been going on, knowing full well they themselves Share In The Responsibilities of the Actions set forth, believing that which we teach and say has a deeper meaning and truth and when we sway from our words of describing ourselves not only do we suffer the consequences but those consequences effect many many others as well!

Oh by the way, Saddam isn't the only one, while you might still be wondering where oh where bin Laden might be and Why He Hasn't Been Brought To Justice!