Thursday, May 31, 2007

READING BETWEEN THE LINES

May 23, 2007

President Bush Delivers Commencement Address at United States Coast Guard Academy

Alumni Building

United States Coast Guard Academy

New London, Connecticut

(Note: Mad Plato's words are in bold letters.)

Your teachers are proud, your parents are thrilled, and your Commander-in-Chief is grateful for your devotion to duty. (And another duty now calls you to go to Iraq.) Congratulations to you all.

(Applause.)

This Academy has tested your minds, your bodies, and your character, and having passed these trials, you now embark on a voyage as officers in the oldest continuous Maritime service. (You embark for Iraq.)

The history of the Coast Guard dates back more than two centuries, to the Revenue Cutter Service, established under the presidency of George Washington -- or as I call him, the first George W.

(His poll numbers were much larger than mine are.)

(Laughter and applause.)


On September the 11th, the home front you protect became a battlefront in a new and unprecedented war. That day, our nation changed forever, and so did the mission of the United States Coast Guard. This service assumed new and essential responsibilities: to defend our nation against terrorist infiltration, and to help stop new attacks before they kill our people.

To help stop new attacks on our country, we have undertaken the most sweeping reorganization of the federal government since the start of the Cold War. We created the new Department of Homeland Security, merging 22 different government organizations, including the Coast Guard, into a single Department with a clear mission: to protect America from future attacks.

(Meanwhile, only 5% of incoming shipments are inspected at our ports. And the southern U.S. border is very porous.)

To help stop new attacks on our country, we passed the Patriot Act, breaking down the walls that had prevented federal law enforcement and intelligence communities from sharing information about potential terrorist activities.

(And putting up walls around innocent Americans...checking what they read and write and say on the Internets.)

All these steps are making our country safer, but we're not yet safe. To strike our country, the terrorists only have to be right once; to protect our country, we have to be right 100 percent of the time. That means the best way to protect our people is to take the fight to the enemy. So after 9/11, I vowed to America that we would go on the offense against the terrorists, fighting them across the world so we do not have to face them here at home. And since 9/11, that is precisely what that United States of America has done.

(This war on terror will go on and on and on as long as I am your president. We will cultivate more and more enemies as long as we are on the offense. Our military will continue to receive its billions and billions. Our U.S. corporations will always be open for the business of killing!)

(Applause.)

Today, because we acted, the terrorist camps in Afghanistan have been shut down (but the Taliban are on the rise again), 25 million people have been liberated (and enslaved to the cultivation of poppy plants), and the Afghan people have an elected government that is fighting terrorists, instead of harboring them.

(Applause.)

In Iraq, we removed a cruel dictator who harbored terrorists (Which terrorists I can’t say), paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, invaded his neighbors, defied the United Nations Security Council, pursued and used weapons of mass destruction. Iraq, the United States and the world are better off without Saddam Hussein in power.

(Or I am in a state of denial)

(Applause.)


And today the Iraqi people are building a young democracy on the rubble of Saddam Hussein's tyranny.

(And on the continuing rubble of my SHOCK AND AWE INVASION and OCCUPATION.)

In 2006, a thinking enemy responded to this progress and struck back with brutality. They staged sensational attacks that led to a tragic escalation of sectarian rage and reprisal. If the sectarian violence continued to spiral out of control, the Iraqi government would have been in danger of collapse. The ensuing chaos would embolden Iran, which is fueling the violence, and al Qaeda, a key driver of Iraq's sectarian conflict. The chaos could eventually spread across the Middle East, and generations of Americans would be in even greater danger.

So I had a choice to make: withdraw our troops, or send reinforcements to help the Iraqis quell the sectarian violence. I decided to send more troops with a new mission: to help the Iraqi government secure their population and get control of Baghdad.

(Never mind that more of our troops and not fewer are being killed.)

Our security depends on helping the Iraqis succeed and defeating Iraq --- al Qaeda in Iraq.

(Defeating Iraq? Did I just say that? Need to get more sleep.)

(Applause.)

Some in our country question whether the battle in Iraq is part of the war on terror. (Some question whether we should have invaded Iraq to get the terrorists to come there in droves!) Among the terrorists, there's no doubt. Hear the words of Osama bin Laden: He calls the struggle in Iraq a "war of destiny." He proclaimed "the war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever."

There is a reason that bin Laden sent one of his most experienced paramilitary leaders to Iraq: He believes that if al Qaeda can drive us out, they can establish Iraq as a new terrorist sanctuary. Our intelligence community believes that, "al Qaeda leaders see victory in Iraq -- the heart of the caliphate and currently the most active front in their war -- as a religious and strategic imperative." If al Qaeda succeeds in Iraq, they would pursue their stated goals of turning that nation into a base from which to overthrow moderate governments in the region, impose their hateful ideology on millions, and launch new attacks on America and other nations. Victory in Iraq is important for Osama bin Laden -- and victory in Iraq is vital for the United States of America.

(But if the U.S. left Iraq, then Iran, Saudi Arabia---and other neighbors---would have to take over our battle. But we can’t let that happen…you have to have your gas---and you know where it comes from.)

(Applause.)

I've often warned that if we fail in Iraq, the enemy will follow us home. Many ask: How do you know?

(I keep in touch with God.)

Despite our pressure, despite the setbacks that al Qaeda has suffered, it remains extremely dangerous. As we've surged our forces in Iraq, al Qaeda has responded with a surge of its own. (Forget the fact that al Qaeda is only 5% of the total fighting in the U.S. occupation of Iraq and its civil war.)


In his State of the Union Address last Tuesday, President Bush warned that if the U.S. fails in Iraq, al Qaeda will gain a safe haven from which to launch attacks against America. It is an argument that the President, other members of the administration, and neoconservative hawks have been using for years.

In late 2005, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned that al Qaeda leaders "would turn Iraq into what Afghanistan was before 9/11 -- a haven for terrorist recruitment and training and a launching pad for attacks against U.S. interests and our fellow citizens."

Despite such scare mongering, it is highly improbable that al Qaeda could use Iraq as the kind of safe haven it enjoyed in Afghanistan. There, the organization had the protection of an entrenched, friendly government, which it will not have in Iraq. Al Qaeda also had a much larger force in Afghanistan -- an estimated 18,000 fighters. Even the U.S. government concedes that there are fewer than 2,000 al Qaeda fighters in Iraq, and the Iraq Study Group put the figure at only 1,300.

Indeed, foreign fighters make up a relatively small component of the Sunni insurgency against the U.S. and British occupation forces. It strains credulity to imagine 1,300 fighters (and foreigners at that) dominating a country of 26 million people.

The challenge for al Qaeda in Iraq would be even more daunting than those raw numbers suggest. While the organization has some support among Sunni Arabs there, opinion even among that segment of the population is surprisingly negative.

A September 2006 poll conducted by the University of Maryland's prestigious Program on International Policy Attitudes found that 94 percent of Iraqi Sunnis had a somewhat or highly unfavorable attitude toward al Qaeda.

[From The Myth of an al Qaeda Takeover of Iraq

By Ted Galen Carpenter

January 31, 2007

Ted Galen Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies and co-author of Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War Against Al Qaeda (2004).



Bush's Commencement Address at United States Coast Guard Academy continued:

The fight in Iraq is tough, but my point today to you is the fight is essential to our security -- al Qaeda's leaders inside and outside of Iraq have not given up on their objective of attacking America again.

(Remember what I told you before:

"In my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.")

Now, many critics compare the battle in Iraq to the situation we faced in Vietnam.

(Both were a quagmire. Both were based upon lies. Both were wrong and wasteful.)

There are many differences between the two conflicts, but one stands out above all: The enemy in Vietnam had neither the intent nor the capability to strike our homeland. The enemy in Iraq does. Nine-eleven taught us that to protect the American people, we must fight the terrorists where they live so that we don't have to fight them where we live.

(I’m still catapulting the propaganda!)

(Applause.)


However difficult the fight in Iraq has become, we must win it (Even if I am falling off of the mountain I must keep climbing it. Kind of like that Sisyphus guy.)

Al Qaeda is public enemy number one for Iraq's young democracy, and al Qaeda is public enemy number one for America, as well. And that is why we must support our troops, we must support the Iraqi government, and we must defeat al Qaeda in Iraq.

(Applause.)

(Good. The audience is buying this and swallowing it line, hook and sinker!)

I see the intelligence every day. The danger has not passed. Here in America, we're living in the eye of a storm. All around us, dangerous winds are swirling, and these winds could reach our shores at any moment.

(It is after all Hurricane season again.)




IT'S THE OIL STUPID!

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

WHAT MOM USED TO SAY


Son of a sea crook!
For Pete's sake!

I'll be cow kicked!

Hill of Beans!

What in the Sam Hill!

Watch your P's and Q's!

Up the creek without a paddle!

Water under the bridge!

You can’t catch flies with vinegar (or You catch flies with honey).

You can’t get blood out of a turnip.

(More of something) than Carter has pills.

Until you can get on your own two feet.


Thursday, May 24, 2007

DEAF EARS A JUGGERNAUT A TAWDRY GAME OF CHICKEN AND A MEGALOMANIACAL LEADER


This image provided by the US Navy shows (from top to bottom) the USS Nimitz (CVN 68), the USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) and the USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) in the Gulf of Oman. The three ships are flagships for three different strike groups. The U.S. Navy staged its latest show of military force off the Iranian coastline sending the three strike groups through the narrow Strait of Hormus on Wednesday May 23, 2007. (US Navy - Denny Cantrell/AP Photo


HERE WE COME

READY OR NOT

TO

STOP YOUR PLOT

TO DEVELOP

YOUR NUCLEAR

JUGGERNAUT!

ONE WAR IS NOT ENOUGH

FOR US!

TO GIVE THE ECONOMY

A SHOT IN THE ARM!

HERE WE COME

READY OR NOT!

TO

STOP YOUR PLOT

TO DEVELOP

YOUR NUCLEAR

JUGGERNAUT!


IT'S THE OIL STUPID!



***


The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com
"I think everybody in the region knows that there is a proxy war already afoot with the United States supporting anti-Iranian elements in the region as well as opposition groups within Iran," said Vali Nasr, adjunct senior fellow for Mideast studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"And this covert action is now being escalated by the new U.S. directive, and that can very quickly lead to Iranian retaliation and a cycle of escalation can follow," Nasr said.

May 23, 2007

"Today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned. Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination."

"What is happening to this country--my country, your country, our country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends and calls them irrelevant? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomatic efforts when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?"

Robert Byrd in a Senate-floor speech on March 19, 2003…after George W. Bush ordered the Iraq invasion.

"The United States of America has spent over $378 billion in Iraq. Do you know how much a billion dollars is? That is $1 for every minute since Jesus Christ was born. So the United States has spent over $378 billion in Iraq, and we are all familiar with the horrendous tales of waste and abuse by U.S. contractors in Iraq. The taxpayer -- that is you out there -- has been ravaged by the profiteering in Iraq. But even worse, despite the billions, our brave troops have been shortchanged with inadequate equipment to protect their lives and shoddy medical care, if they make it back home, to treat wounds of the body and of the mind."

"Now the President has threatened to veto the House bill, which is before the Senate, because it sets a date to withdraw, provides funding until late July and "could unreasonably burden the President's exercise of his constitutional authorities, including his authority as Commander in Chief."

"President Bush has also objected to funding for rebuilding the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina, funding to improve health care for our troops and our veterans, funding for the shortfall in the State Children's Health Insurance Program, funding for Low-Income Heating Assistance Program, and more funding for Homeland Security."

"This President -- our President -- has a single-minded obsession with Iraq, and he appears to see no value in anything except continuing his chaotic "mission impossible." While tilting at windmills may have been a harmless procedure for Don Quixote, Mr. Bush's war is turning the sands of Iraq blood red."

"Mr. Bush raises constitutional concerns in his latest veto threat. I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. I don't no whether to laugh or to cry. I suppose one could be encouraged that "constitutional concerns" exist in the Bush kingdom. After setting aside the Constitution whenever convenient to justify preemptive attacks, illegal searches, secret wiretapping, clandestine military tribunals, treaty violations, kidnapping, torture, and a rejection of habeas corpus, one has to wonder about the nature of these purported "constitutional concerns."

"If the Constitution is finally to be read, let us read it in its entirety, including the articles which give the people's representatives -- that is us -- the power over the purse -- yes, the power over the purse; don't ever forget it. That is the real power. It gives the people's representatives the power over the purse and the power to declare war."

"In its statement of administrative policy, the administration claims that the House bill before us '..... is likely to unleash chaos in Iraq. .....' Mr. President, what do we have now if not chaos in Iraq? Securing Iraq has unaccountably morphed into securing Baghdad, and even that goal eludes us. I doubt if building a wall around the green zone is going to be of much consequence in securing Baghdad, not to mention the very strange message such a wall conveys concerning our purported liberation of Iraq."

"The President -- our President -- continues to miss the point. Iraq is at war with itself. America cannot create a stable democracy in Iraq at the point of a gun. While our troops succeeded in toppling Saddam Hussein, it is the President's profound misunderstanding of the dynamics in Iraq that have led to the failure of his Iraq policies. Why in the world should we now believe the claims that he makes in his veto threat?"

"There must be an end to this occupation of Iraq. Yes, I say occupation for it is no longer a war in which U.S. troops should be involved. Our troops won the war they were sent to fight, and they should not now be asked to serve as targets in a religious conflict between Sunni and Shiites that has raged for thousands of years. It is reported that even a majority in the Iraqi Parliament now supports legislation which demands a scheduled withdrawal and an immediate freeze on the number of foreign soldiers in Iraq."

"In April, Congress set a new course for the war in Iraq. Sadly, the President -- our stubborn, uncompromising President -- chose to veto that bill. As we prepare to go to conference again, the President continues to close his eyes and cover his ears to the reality in Iraq, and the urgent need for a new direction. Whatever decision is made in conference will not be the last chapter in this sad story. God willing, this Senator will not close his eyes, nor will he cover his ears, nor will I stand by in silence."

"Hear me."

"We need to conclude this terrible, awful mistake that we have made in Iraq. I said in the beginning that we ought not go into Iraq. But we are there. Anti-Americanism is more robust now than in any period in our history because of Iraq. Do you hear that? The international community is skeptical -- why should they not be? They are skeptical of U.S. intentions because of Iraq. Our Constitution has been trampled -- hear that. Our Constitution has been trampled because of Iraq. Thousands of U.S. troops and Iraqi citizens have lost their lives because of Iraq. Thousands more are maimed physically or mentally because of Iraq. Billions of U.S. dollars have been wasted because of Iraq."

"President Bush has lost all credibility. President Bush, our President, has lost all -- all -- credibility because of Iraq."

"Terrorism is on the rise worldwide because of Iraq. May God grant this Congress -- that is, us -- may God grant this Congress the courage to come together and answer the cries of a majority of the people who sent us here. Find a way to end this horrible catastrophe, this unspeakable -- unspeakable -- ongoing calamity called Iraq. May God help us in the United States."

Robert Byrd

Senate floor speech

May 17, 2007


Wednesday, May 23, 2007

A COMET AND A FARMHOUSE



In the winter of 1973 an artist friend invited me to live in a farmhouse in Longmont, Colorado.
I was walking down a country road to get to the farmhouse called Innisfree.
I was wearing my warm vest made from the fur of a beaver.
I suppose it was partly because I was wearing this fur vest that I was not attacked by a charging Doberman pinscher.
He started running after me and I started to run.
Then I stopped in my tracks.
This surprised and disoriented the snarling canine.
He stopped his charge and retreated.
I began walking slowly again to the farmhouse.
Innisfree had about 8 bedrooms, and it was in its huge kitchen where the only warmth was to be found, because there was no other heat in the huge farmhouse.
It was this same winter when people got all excited about the Comet Kohoutek appearing in the sky.
It never did appear.
One of President Nixon's more memorable lines was when he said "No comet" after he was asked to comment on Kohoutek.
Ha! Ha!
Here is the poem called The Lake Isle Of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree
And a small cabin build there of clay and wattles made
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there
for peace comes dropping slow
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now
for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore
While I stand on the roadway or on the pavements grey.

IT'S THE OIL STUPID!

Monday, May 21, 2007

MORE SELF-DELUSION



To call Iraq a TERRORIST DISNEYLAND is a disingenuous oxymoron.

Disneyland does not have blood and bones splattering its cartoon characters and rides.

Iraq is a TERRORIST PARADISE LOST, a TERRORIST GRAVEYARD or a TERRORIST CORNUCOPIA…

but it is NOT a TERRORIST DISNEYLAND.

To string together opposing terms that do not reflect the tragic reality (and unreality) of the Iraq debacle is horrendously wrong.

Has it dawned on your minds that the Iraq civil war is perfect for the Pentagon’s plan to remain in Iraq in order to fight the “terror” there indefinitely so that an occupation in the Middle East can continue indefinitely?

It is the work of a comb-licking, mad genius.

Got oil?



IT'S THE OIL STUPID!



***


President Bush forced Democrats to “fold,” the press reports. He vetoed the Iraq funding bill that set a deadline for getting U.S. troops out of the war. The Republican minority blocked any effort to overturn the veto. Now Congress is about to vote on a funding bill the president will accept, one that doesn’t offer a path out of the mess. Bush wins, the Republicans exult, the Democrats “flinch.”
But this isn’t poker. This is life and death. The president insists on escalating the catastrophic occupation of Iraq. He scorned the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton Commission that offered a way out. He scorns the American people who voted in 2006 to bring the debacle to an end. He scorned the majority of both houses of Congress that voted to start bringing the troops home on a date certain. He sustains an occupation opposed by a majority of Americans, a majority of Iraqis and a majority of the Congress.

From Funding Bush's War: This Is No Game
By Robert L. Borosage
May 23, 2007

www.tompaine.com

Saturday, May 19, 2007

KICKING THE SAME DEAD HORSE AND SPITTING INTO THE WIND

Here is a short letter that I sent to msnbc. Time has not altered its accuracy.
To: <onyourmind@msnbc.com>
Subject: Commentary on the debacle of Iraq, etc.
Date: Sunday, July 10, 2005 4:03 PM



Sadly, I do not trust President Bush.
I do not trust what his administration did and is doing.
I do not believe that President Bush or anyone who works for him is telling the full truth.
The occupation of Iraq will continue to produce more and more tragic moments of death & barbarity.
I am outraged at what Bush has done to Iraq and America.
Now, not just Islam, but much of the world detests what President Bush has done.
America will become more and more repressive, more and more totalitarian-like,
unless the Supreme Court, the Congress, and the voices of the American people
stop President Bush from his occupation of Iraq.


IT'S THE OIL STUPID!

Friday, May 18, 2007

WHAT IS LOVE?

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
Emily Dickinson


Miss Dickinson's description of poetry could be a description for love.
Love can make the body feel cold like poetry does.
Romance is a blazing fire.
Witness how it was between Romeo and Juliet.
Their love, however, did not have an opportunity to mature and become cold.
The blood that flowed through their arteries and veins did not have time to slow down and become colder.
Their hot romance died within a cold tomb.
A cold but brilliant diamond is like love---but a fiery romance becomes a cold fire.
Love transforms passions into compassion.
Lust becomes friendship.
Romance becomes love.
Love is more enduring than romance though it becomes cold.






Wednesday, May 16, 2007

LOSER AND LIAR



He tried to conduct an orchestra with a baton.


He tried to pick up his dog.


He tried to bounce a basketball.


He tried to play some drums.


He tried to ride a bicycle.


He tried to dance.


He tried to talk.


He tried to eat pretzels (without choking).


He tried to be a National Guardsman.


He tried to win a losing, lying and illegal war.


He tried to be funny.


He tried to be the Decider.


He tried.


But he lost.


He lost more than a war.


He lost the respect of his country and the world.


He lost the precious treasury of our nation.


He lost the lives of our brave soldiers.


He tried.


But he lost.



IT'S THE OIL STUPID!





Sunday, May 13, 2007

HOUSE SITTING TICKS AND COCKROACHES

insects have their own point of view about civilization a man thinks he amounts to a great deal but to a flea or a mosquito a human being is merely something good to eat

archy (the cockroach)

From certain maxims of archy

By Don Marquis



***


My first experience with cockroaches occurred during the summer that I lived in Boston.

I don't recall ever seeing one cockroach in Colorado.

Plenty of ants and spiders, but no cockroaches.

In Boston (the summer of 1968) I rented an apartment on Symphony Road.

At one end of Symphony Road was Symphony Hall---home of the Boston Pops.

At the other end was the apartment from which Art Linkletter's daughter died after she jumped out of a window (while she was under the influence of LSD.)

My Boston apartment was austere and empty.

I had a mattress on the bedroom floor.

The kitchen had a refrigerator, stove and sink.

I also had a small radio.

One night a couple of cockroaches scurried across the floor.

I jumped up from my mattress, but then laid back down.

Then...

OUCH!

One cockroach took a bite out of my neck and ran away.

I immediately pictured my body transforming into a cockroach.

Luckily, nothing happened.

I didn't get sick or anything.

And after this one encounter with roaches I didn't see any more while living in Boston that summer.

In 1979 I moved to Guam to teach high school English.

This beautiful and humid island has a lot of cockroaches.

My trailor was filled with cockroaches.

Big ones.

But I rarely saw them.

They were terrified of my vacuum sweeper.

If I saw any cockroaches, I quickly got out my vacuum sweeper and sucked them up.

When I moved I found a lot of egg casings in book boxes that I had stored in my trailor.

My neighbor, a native of Guam, had little cockroaches crawling everywhere.

On one visit I saw them crawling in and out of a plastic bag containing a loaf of sliced bread.

These other island natives didn't even phase my neighbor.


One summer on Guam I decided to house sit a home to make some extra money.

I did very little except sleep and feed two boonie dogs that lived at the back of the house.

One of them was vicious, but the other one was friendly.

I could get close to him.

I noticed that he was full of ticks.

I took him to a vet to have them removed.

He was even friendlier after that.

(Dogs show more gratitude than humans.)


I slept on the living floor in this house.

Most nights cockroaches were having races across the rug where I was sleeping.

I have no idea why (or where) they were racing to.

But some of them would run over my body and keep going wherever they were going.

They took off some days (I think it was on weekends. Maybe they were barbecuing at the beach.)

I remember one day (before I went to Guam but after I lived in Boston) when I was in Texas.

I think it was Amarillo.

I was asking a man at a gas station for directions.

A big cockroach was strolling across the floor.

The gas attendant quickly squashed the cockroach with his boot heel and didn't miss a beat giving me directions.

A cockroach can hold his breath for 45 minutes and go without food for a month.

But such amazing facts do not stop humans from detesting and killing them.

I suppose I have a different perspective on cockroaches because of my personal experiences with them.

I've read that cockroaches could one day be one of our main sources of food.

But even that's going a bit too far for me.



IT'S THE OIL STUPID!

Thursday, May 10, 2007

EDUCATED FOOLS



Educated fools, teachers, can say some dumb things.
Dangerous and repugnant things.
Stupid things.
One social studies teacher recently told me how it would be fine with him if the world's economy collapsed because, in his words:
"It would get rid of a lot of worthless people."
Ugh!
Another teacher (yes, also a social studies teacher) told me before George W. Bush invaded and pre-emptively bombed Iraq that:
"The whole country should be wiped off of the map."

It is no surprise and not too extreme or inaccurate for President Putin to say:

"We do not have the right to forget the causes of any war, which must be sought in the mistakes and errors of peacetime. Moreover, in our time, these threats are not diminishing. They are only transforming, changing their appearance. In these new threats, as during the time of the Third Reich, are the same contempt for human life and the same claims of exceptionality and diktat in the world."
Victory Day speech (commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany)
May 9, 2007


IT'S THE OIL STUPID!

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

THE WHITE HOUSE THE THREE STOOGES AND THE 2008 ELECTION

The Three Stooges would be preferable to a continuation of the Neo-CON Pre-Emptive Can't Shoot Straight GOP gang and its Decider.

But both parties are part and parcel of one party:

The Corporate Money Party.

The Pentagon is still in the driver’s seat in the White House regardless of whom is selected or elected.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Duck Rumsfeld told us that over 1 Trillion dollars are missing from the Pentagon.

No wonder new Pearl Harbors and wars and terrorists are needed to replace those tax dollars that are missing.



IT'S THE OIL STUPID!

Monday, May 07, 2007

WHISPERS OF BONES AND THE PERPETUAL WAR



“We are getting to the point now with the Baghdad security plan where there is going to be real engagement in tougher neighborhoods and you're likely to see escalating levels of casualties."

Tony Snow
May 7, 2007

Escalation in Iraq is escalating the violence and the deaths of American soldiers and Iraqi citizens.
Escalation is not calming the storm of civil war or saving lives.
Escalation is not stabilizing the country.
The White House wants us to have patience.

THE WAR MACHINE
IS QUITE OBSCENE
THE WAR MACHINE
IS QUITE UNCLEAN
BUT THE WAR MACHINE
WILL NOT STOP
BECAUSE THE WAR MACHINE
MUST BE FED
THE WAR MACHINE MUST HAVE BLOOD
THE WAR MACHINE MUST HAVE DEATH
THE WAR MACHINE MUST HAVE LIFE
THE WAR MACHINE MUST HAVE STRIFE
THE WAR MACHINE MUST BE FED
THE WAR MACHINE LOVES THE DEAD
THE WAR MACHINE WILL NOT STOP
BECAUSE THE WAR MACHINE
IS ANGRY MAN.