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- By Phillip Brownlee
- Posted Jan. 29, 2007 at 1:04 a.m.
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Published on Friday, August 11, 2006 by The NationMercenary Jackpot: US Pays Blackwater $320 Million in Secretive Global ‘Security’ Programby Jeremy Scahill
While the Bush Administration calls for the immediate disbanding of what it has labeled “private” and “illegal” militias in Lebanon and Iraq, it is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into its own global private mercenary army tasked with protecting US officials and institutions overseas. The secretive program, which spans at least twenty-seven countries, has been an incredible jackpot for one heavily Republican-connected firm in particular: Blackwater USA. Government records recently obtained by The Nation reveal that the Bush Administration has paid Blackwater more than $320 million since June 2004 to provide “diplomatic security” services globally. The massive contract is the largest known to have been awarded to Blackwater to date and reveals how the Administration has elevated a once-fledgling security firm into a major profiteer in the “war on terror.”
Blackwater’s highly lucrative “diplomatic security” contract was officially awarded under the State Department’s little-known Worldwide Personal Protective Service (WPPS) program, described in State Department documents as a government initiative to protect US officials as well as “certain foreign government high level officials whenever the need arises.”
A heavily redacted 2005 government audit of Blackwater’s WPPS contract proposal, obtained by The Nation, reveals that Blackwater included profit in its overhead and its total costs, which would result “not only in a duplication of profit but a pyramiding of profit since in effect Blackwater is applying profit to profit.” The audit also found that the company tried to inflate its profits by representing different Blackwater divisions as wholly separate companies.
The WPPS contract awarded in 2004 was divided among a handful of companies, among them DynCorp and Triple Canopy. Blackwater was originally slated to be paid $229.5 million for five years, according to a State Department contract list. Yet as of June 30, just two years into the program, it had been paid a total of $321,715,794. When confronted with this apparent $100 million discrepancy, the State Department could not readily explain it. Blackwater’s two years of WPPS earnings exceed many estimates of the company’s total government contracts, which the Virginian-Pilot recently put at $290 million combined since 2000. Six years ago the government paid Blackwater less than $250,000.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0811-20.htm
Anti-war protests took a NASTY turn when former American TRAITOR, Jane Fonda, showed up and was actually CHEERED by the protesters!
I’m literally shocked and sickened by the event, as millions across the nation are.
I support the peaceful protest by the anti-war crowd -but to include a woman who aided and abetted America’s enemy three decades ago by lending moral support and even posing for photo ops on top of the enemy’s missile launchers is a slap in the face of EVERY soldier that ever served our country.
Any modern-day protesters needs to see what this reprehensible woman stood for – and it was NOT the United States.
Had she pulled her treasonous shenanigans when Abraham Lincoln was President – she would have been exiled, or hanged, as he advocated against dissidents. She was part of a group that rallied NOT JUST against the war – but against the UNITED STATES. Members of that group actually SPAT upon our soldiers as they came home.
For her to enter the anti-war spotlight lends a whole new aspect to the anti-war crowd.
Do we actually have people who think in her genre?
I thought this despicable anti-soldier mentality was gone – but it appears not.
If the protesters don’t get rid of her quickly -the may lose support from the majority of the citizens.
“Members of that group actually SPAT upon our soldiers as they came home.”
I’ve heard that this is an urban legend. Anybody have any facts to back this one up?
I don’t think I caught the answer to this question, JR: The 401(k) that you redeemed, was it invested in stocks and/or bonds of American corporations?
crime stats at a glance:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance.htm#Crime
In the late 90’s a man named Lembke (I think) came up with a theory that all the previous stories of soldiers being spat upon when returning from the war were lies. He checked into a couple of cases and made that determination.
However, as a little child, I remember seeing news reports where protestors with very long hair (hippies?) were arrested and accused of spitting. Did they really do it? I don’t know, but back then no one questioned the authenticity of the news reports.
I DO know that the liberal bloggers took the Lembke story and ran with it like wildfire – trying to protect the ones who had been accused.
I also know that the spitting on soldiers seems to be rearing its ugly head once more:
“”A Syracuse woman is accused of spitting in a Fort Drum soldier’s face at Hancock Airport. Lauren Maggi, 35, was charged with second-degree harassment after the Nov. 22 incident, according to a police report.”
So it is Vietnam all over again, now that the Democrats have won. Now we have anti-war protesters living again the darkest days of the Vietnam War, when American soldiers got off the plane and anti-war types spit on them.
I was around for the Vietnam protest days. I wasn’t for the Vietnam War, but I was horrified people who opposed it would blame the soldiers themselves. The soldiers were doing their duty. They didn’t order themselves into that war, and they are not ordering themselves into this war either.
But here we go again. That grotesque sense of self-righteousness has evidently overtaken the anti-war types again, and it is to the great shame of the anti-Iraq war movement that this is happening again.”
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,235638,00.html
Debunking a spitting imageBy Jerry Lembcke | April 30, 2005
STORIES ABOUT spat-upon Vietnam veterans are like mercury: Smash one and six more appear. It’s hard to say where they come from. For a book I wrote in 1998 I looked back to the time when the spit was supposedly flying, the late 1960s and early 1970s. I found nothing. No news reports or even claims that someone was being spat on.
What I did find is that around 1980, scores of Vietnam-generation men were saying they were greeted by spitters when they came home from Vietnam. There is an element of urban legend in the stories in that their point of origin in time and place is obscure, and, yet, they have very similar details. The story told by the man who spat on Jane Fonda at a book signing in Kansas City recently is typical. Michael Smith said he came back through Los Angeles airport where ”people were lined up to spit on us.”
Like many stories of the spat-upon veteran genre, Smith’s lacks credulity. GIs landed at military airbases, not civilian airports, and protesters could not have gotten onto the bases and anywhere near deplaning troops. There may have been exceptions, of course, but in those cases how would protesters have known in advance that a plane was being diverted to a civilian site? And even then, returnees would have been immediately bused to nearby military installations and processed for reassignment or discharge.
The exaggerations in Smith’s story are characteristic of those told by others. ”Most Vietnam veterans were spat on when we came back,” he said. That’s not true. A 1971 Harris poll conducted for the Veterans Administration found over 90 percent of Vietnam veterans reporting a friendly homecoming. Far from spitting on veterans, the antiwar movement welcomed them into its ranks and thousands of veterans joined the opposition to the war.
The persistence of spat-upon Vietnam veteran stories suggests that they continue to fill a need in American culture. The image of spat-upon veterans is the icon through which many people remember the loss of the war, the centerpiece of a betrayal narrative that understands the war to have been lost because of treason on the home front. Jane Fonda’s noisiest detractors insist she should have been prosecuted for giving aid and comfort to the enemy, in conformity with the law of the land.
But the psychological dimensions of the betrayal mentality are far more interesting than the legal. Betrayal is about fear, and the specter of self-betrayal is the hardest to dispel. The likelihood that the real danger to America lurks not outside but inside the gates is unsettling. The possibility that it was failure of masculinity itself, the meltdown of the core component of warrior culture, that cost the nation its victory in Vietnam has haunted us ever since.
Many tellers of the spitting tales identify the culprits as girls, a curious quality to the stories that gives away their gendered subtext. Moreover, the spitting images that emerged a decade after the troops had come home from Vietnam are similar enough to the legends of defeated German soldiers defiled by women upon their return from World War I, and the rejection from women felt by French soldiers when they returned from their lost war in Indochina, to suggest something universal and troubling at work in their making. One can reject the presence of a collective subconscious in the projection of those anxieties, as many scholars would, but there is little comfort in the prospect that memories of group spit-ins, like Smith has, are just fantasies conjured in the imaginations of aging veterans.
Remembering the war in Vietnam through the images of betrayal is dangerous because it rekindles the hope that wars like it, in countries where we are not welcomed, can be won. It disparages the reputation of those who opposed that war and intimidates a new generation of activists now finding the courage to resist Vietnam-type ventures in the 21st century.
Today, on the 30th anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam, new stories of spat-upon veterans appear faster than they can be challenged. Debunking them one by one is unlikely to slow their proliferation but, by contesting them where and when we can, we engage the historical record in a way that helps all of us remember that, in the end, soldiers and veterans joined with civilians to stop a war that should have never been fought.
Jerry Lembcke, associate professor of sociology at Holy Cross College, is the author of ”The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam.”
PRINTER FRIENDLY E-MAIL TO A FRIEND
What Jane Fonda did was intended to be a slap in the face. It was a war we shouldn’t have been in and she felt very strongly about that. Her and about 70% of the country at the time.
If you don’t like what she did, fine, but don’t try to withhold her right to opinion and self expression by saying it was a “exilation or hanging” offense.
You’ve got a deluded view of this country.
Erik – I didn’t advocate exile or hanging – I said Abraham Lincoln would have done so based upon his view of dissidents. You might want to go back and reread that.
But I certainly think she fits the legal description of a traitor by her very acts.
.morg just posted about the man who wrote the book I was talking about earlier.
And take a look at the gal who is now renewing the spitting.
It’s a nasty thing.
http://www.harpers.org/StabbedInTheBack.html
The past and future of a right-wing mythPosted on Friday, July 14, 2006. Originally from June 2006. By Kevin Baker.SourcesFirst drink, hero, from my horn:I spiced the draught well for youTo waken your memory clearlySo that the past shall not slip your mind!
—Hagen to SiegfriedDie Götterdämmerung
Every state must have its enemies. Great powers must have especially monstrous foes. Above all, these foes must arise from within, for national pride does not admit that a great nation can be defeated by any outside force. That is why, though its origins are elsewhere, the stab in the back has become the sustaining myth of modern American nationalism. Since the end of World War II it has been the device by which the American right wing has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsibility for its own worst blunders. Indeed, the right has distilled its tale of betrayal into a formula: Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America. Repeat, always making sure to increase the number of internal enemies.
As the United States staggers past the third anniversary of its misadventure in Iraq, the dagger is already poised, the myth is already being perpetuated. To understand just how this strategy is likely to unfold—and why this time it may well fail—we must return to the birth of a legend.
* * *
The stab in the back first gained currency in Germany, as a means of explaining the nation’s stunning defeat in World War I. It was Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg himself, the leading German hero of the war, who told the National Assembly, “As an English general has very truly said, the German army was ’stabbed in the back.’”
Like everything else associated with the stab-in-the-back myth, this claim was disingenuous. The “English general” in question was one Maj. Gen. Neill Malcolm, head of the British Military Mission in Berlin after the war, who put forward this suggestion merely to politely summarize how Field Marshal Erich von Ludendorff—the force behind Hindenburg—was characterizing the German army’s alleged lack of support from its civilian government.
Sherri, Baby–
So you are outraged–OUTRAGED!–that a vet (who didn’t serve in Vietnam) stood in line for a half an hour at a Fonda book signing and then spit tobacco juice all over her?
I don’t love Hanoi Jane or anything, but who was ultimately more correct about Vietnam? Gen. William Westmoreland who continually told us the war was being won and there was light at the end of the tunnel or the Jane Fonda’s and the Dr. Spock’s who said “get out now”?
Peaceful opposition to mendacious, self-serving, and murderous acts by our government is not treason–it is the highest form of patriotism.
It is our ENEMY who wanted this war and want us to continue the war. Drawing us into an unwinnable war was the entire long-term goal of the 9-11 terror bombing.
You gung-ho types are the ones that aid and abet the goals of Al Qaeda.
Hanoi Jane gave aid and comfort to the enemy during a time of war. That is the pure definition of treason and she should be hanged.
Yup. Great article, .morg. I read it in Harper’s too.
It wasn’t that the NVA fought us to a stalemate in Vietnam after 10 years and 58,000 dead.
Oh, hell no. It was Jane Fonda. Yes, Jane Fonda lost the war in Vietnam . . .
Blow it out your ass, raptor . . .
Good posts, .morg and Cap’n. You’ve saved me from having to weigh in on the ’spitting on the troops’ lie that resurfaced last week in stories in the New York Times.
As usual, Digby has a nice rundown on all this.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
As Digby notes, another alleged spittee, Cpl. Joshua Sparling of the 82nd Airborne, apparently is well-connected with Hannity/Ollie North et al, and is something of a professional Right-Wing victim. Setup, methinks.
Since when has war been a virtue and a thing of moral superiority?Somebody is immoral because they protest war?
Oh, I forgot.Conservative hawks live in opposite land.
raptor,
So, if that’s how one should treat Jane Fonda, how about McFarlane, Poindexter, and North, who sold arms to Iran after the taking of our hostages? Wasn’t that treason? By your ‘logic,’ shouldn’t they be killed?
Right-wing activists have a long history of these staged outrages by “leftists.”
Consider the case of the winger who had his teenage son pose as a liberal who then tore a sign out of his little sister’s hands (she was sitting on their dad’s shoulders) and ripped it into pieces.
The news media breathlessly reported on the boorishness of the big mean liberals with the dad chiming in vociferously.
It was all a set up . . .
So the left is busy rewriting the legacy of Hanoi Jane. Interesting.
I think the reports of spitting on soldiers returning from Vietnam were probably exaggerated. After all, if you are actually looking to get your ass kicked, you couldn’t find a better way.
Yep. Janie did a dumb thing.No chance of a repeat, as there’s not many places in Iraq safe enough for a photo op.And I see no reason to re-live the whole hardhats vs hippies thing.
BTW, the old women singing their stew-pud song at the rally would have made me ashamed to be there protesting!The old bags are making a joke out of this thing that is DEADLY serious.There, I said it.
But the fact was that they were not held in the regard that they should have been for their service to the country.
And someone like Jane Fonda, who openly met with and gave aid and comfort to the enemy should be held in high regard by no one.
I stated my opinion..and for that I get a vulgar insult from Capn.
Typical.
I was on active duty from 1973-78 I saw alot of these things going on. The military was a mess.
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/Vietnam/heinl.html#8
Drugs and the Military
The drug problem – like the civilian situation from which it directly derives – is running away with In March, Navy Secretary John H. the services. Chafee, speaking for the two sea services, said bluntly that drug abuse in both Navy and Marines is out of control.
In 1966, the Navy discharged 170 drug offenders. Three years later (1969), 3,800 were discharged. Last year in 1970, the total jumped to over 5,000.
Drug abuse in the Pacific Fleet – with Asia on one side, and kinky California on the other – gives the Navy its worst headaches. To cite one example, a destroyer due to sail from the West Coast last year for the Far East nearly had to postpone deployment when, five days before departure, a ring of some 30 drug users (over 10 percent of the crew) was uncovered.
Only last week, eight midshipmen were dismissed from the Naval Academy following disclosure of an alleged drug ring. While the Navy emphatically denies allegations in a copyrighted articles by the Annapolis Capitol that up to 12,000 midshipmen now use marijuana, midshipman sources confirm that pot is anything but unknown at Annapolis.
Yet the Navy is somewhat ahead in the drug game because of the difficulty in concealing addiction at close quarters abroad ship, and because fixes are unobtainable during long deployments at sea.
The Air force, despite 2,715 drug investigations in 1970, is in even better shape: its rate of 3 cases per thousand airmen is the lowest in the services.
By contrast, the Army had 17,742 drug investigations the same year. According to Col. Thomas B. Hauschild, of the medical Command of our Army forces in Europe, some 46 percent of the roughly 200,000 soldiers there had used illegal drugs at least once. In one /35/ battalion surveyed in West Germany, over 50 percent of the men smoked marijuana regularly (some on duty), while roughly half of those were using hard drugs of some type.
What these statistics say is that the Armed Forces (like their parent society) are in the grip of a drug pandemic – a conclusions underscored by the one fact that, just since 19168, the total number of verified drug addiction cases throughout the Armed Forces has nearly doubled. One other yardstick: according to military medical sources, needle hepatitis now poses as great a problem among young soldiers as VD.
At Ft. Bragg, the Army’s third largest post, adjacent to Fayetteville, N.C. (a garrison town whose conditions one official likened to New York’s “East Village” and San Francisco’s “Haight-Ashbury”) a recent survey disclosed that 4% (or over 1,400) of the 36,000 soldiers there are hard-drug (mainly heroin and LSD) addicts. In the 82nd Airborne Division, the strategic-reserve unit that boasts its title of “America’s Honor Guard”, approximately 450 soldier drug abusers were being treated when this reported visited the post in April. About a hundred were under intensive treatment in special drug wards.
raptor,I doubt any of us are surprised.
In all the years protesting the Nam war whether in Wichita,Tulsa or D.C. I never saw anyone spit on our military. Would never support such behavior. Bring OUR troops home now and send Bush to do battle for the oil fields! Jane Fonda’s mission was to share that all americans did not support the unnecessary police action which took 50,000 american lives. How many lives will anyone allow Bush to waste?
The only mideastern entity that could threaten the USA is the 6th largest nuclear power aka Israel who has come up with some rather crazy leaders of late who do not represent the majority of Israelcitizens. Why did the world and the USA allow Israel to develop nuclear weapons?==============================
The president’s logic is deeply flawed. If victory is all-important, why were so few troops committed to the fight four years ago? Why, with so much at stake, are we again being exhorted to go shopping instead of beating our credit cards into swords? And why, when “our own security is at risk,” as the president put it in the same speech, has the commander in chief ordered a paltry 21,000 fresh troops into the fray?
Why these half-measures when our very survival hangs in the balance?
For one, it makes little sense to sacrifice on the altar of a lie. By now the majority of Americans know that the reasons for the invasion were bogus, the intelligence cooked. Going in, Bush was convinced, given the sorry state of the enemy’s capacity to fight back, that victory could be achieved on the cheap. With Iraq’s oil supplies, the world’s second largest, nailed down and our strategic interests in the Middle East served, the mission seemed indeed accomplished. Hail to the chief.
But the script failed to make it past the first act. Four years of miserable failure later, our “war president” has run out of options. At this point one would expect the president to cut his losses and to start implementing some of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, including talks with Syria and Iran. But this president only listens to his gut, and his gut tells him that victory can yet be achieved, despite everything, as long as there is the will to make it happen. Triumph of the will redux.
It is folly to believe that Bush will accept failure in Iraq. Our commander in chief will stop at nothing to achieve the victory that has so far eluded his grasp. But the options are few or nonexistent. In Bush’s world, there may not be room for anything other than one last swing for the fences: “victory” through mass destruction. The return of shock and awe. This, then, will be the Bush face of victory.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/boas.php?articleid=10420
==============================================
The New SaddamIssandr El AmraniJanuary 25, 2007
Issandr El Amrani is a Moroccan-American independent journalist based in Cairo. His work about Middle East culture and politics regularly appears in American and British magazines and newspapers. A former editor of two independent liberal weeklies in Egypt, he also publishes a collaborative weblog on the Arab world, http://www.arabist.net.
Making a renewed appearance in the State of the Union address this year was Iran. Bush set out an agenda that puts the U.S. on a path of confrontation with Iran—the latest installment in the haphazard collection of ideological fads that passes as Middle East policy in Washington these days.
Having made a mess of Iraq, continuing to refuse to play a constructive and even-handed role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and having gotten bored with democracy promotion, the Bush administration now appears to be fanning the flames of sectarian strife region-wide. Since September 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior administration officials have made trips to the Middle East to rally the support of what Rice has described as the “moderate mainstream” Arab states against Iran. This group has now been formalized as the “GCC + 2,” meaning the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman) as well as Egypt and Jordan.
I suggest that this new coalition be renamed to something less technocratic: the Sunni Arab-Dominated Dictatorships Against the Mullahs, or SADDAM. I have to confess I was inspired by historical precedent. In the 1980s, some of you may remember, there was another Saddam who proved rather useful against Iran. Saddam invaded Iran without provocation, sparking an eight-year-long war that was one of the 20th century’s deadliest. Along the way, the U.S. and the Arab states listed above provided much in funding, weapons and turning a blind eye when Saddam got carried away and used chemical weapons against Kurds (it did not raise that much of a fuss when he used them against Iranians, either).
By forming SADDAM, the Bush administration hopes to do several things. Firstly, encourage countries with ambivalent policies towards Israel to accept a new regional security arrangement with the Jewish state firmly as its center—the holy grail of the neo-conservatives who, despite reports to the contrary, continue to craft U.S. Middle East policy. (Otherwise, why would Elliott Abrams still have his job?) Secondly, it is securing the support of these countries against Iran, in preparation for a possible strike against its nuclear facilities or some other form of military action, or at least to ensure the recently announced United Nations sanctions against Iran are effective. One tactic is getting the oil-producing SADDAM countries to up production and bring the price of the oil barrel back to under $50, as Saudi Arabia is obviously doing by boycotting calls by fellow OPEC members to cut production.
At stake is limiting one of the biggest effects caused by the administration’s decision to invade Iraq (and subsequently failing to maintain order): the rise of Iran as a regional power ….. more on this story:http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/01/25/the_new_saddam.php
Well, having Fonda show up could really hurt the anti-war crowd’s message if the rest of the nation begins to see them in the same like as they do her.
Jane Fonda did not give aid and comfort to the enemy.
snopes.com/military/fonda.asp
I would have loved to had been at that peace rally in DC.
…Leftists beginning to bash soldiers…urban legend? soldiers spit on….Leftists will bash any one as long as it benefits them…CapnAmerica, Morg need Marine blanket party…let the soap flinging begin…
PM – Fonda certainly DID give aid and comfort to the enemy.
She actually broadcast a radio show that trashed the United States during her sojourn.
She’s not someone the current anti-war protesters ought to tie their kite to…..at least not in my opinion.
PM..there is a well known picture of hanoi jane at the controls of an enemy AA gun..laughing and encouraging them to shoot down US planes.
mom: The link you posted is to an article that sets out the harm that Hanoi Jane did. You should read it. Maybe then you won’t fall for the pathetic attempt at revisionism.
Jane has enough money to do whatever the hell she pleases.We waste time jaw jacking about it.
Consider that the end goal of the conservative movement is to repeal Johnson’s ‘great society’ and Roosevelt’s new deal.They are currently carrying out this strategy by bankrupting our country in a time of “war”.When we can no longer sustain this massive debt, social programs will dissapear, while military spending continues to skyrocket, effectively ending the great society and new deal reforms.IF they get social security ‘privatized’, it will be the final nail in the coffin.Investing in [i]only[/i] private corporations is asking us to invest in our own demise, as the companies we invest in plan to outsource, downsize, and lower wages as part of their business plans.
Internet revisionism is a relatively new ploy. Since many articles from before the invent of the Superhighway are not archived online – bloggers feel free to dismiss any history they can’t find a link to substantiate.
If Fonda keeps up her shenanigans – I’m sure someone will pull up some microfiche of old reports and settle it.
Lembcke waited thirty years to make his accusations. That’s kind of a cheap shot.
tracy- And you say you are not a you people. But there is nothing wrong with that.
triple dot bring it on girly boy
“She’s not someone the current anti-war protesters ought to tie their kite to…..at least not in my opinion.”
GSheridan,
Maybe. Maybe not. But at the moment, I suspect Jane Fonda’s approval numbers are well above this President’s current 28%.
“It was arrogance in the face of history that led us to blithely assume we could invade without preparing for an occupation, and we would do well to show greater humility when assimilating its lessons about what we fear will be the next step in Iraq’s tragic history.”
The above a comment from the Brookings Institute’s analysis in dealing with the regional spillover from the Iraq invasion and resultant civil war.
http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/analysis/jan2007iraq_civilwar.pdf
Outlander, I don’t consider what she did treasonous. I don’t consider it a good thing either.
…Lembcke proves a negative…no spitting occurred?…How does someone prove something that didn’t occur?…Did Lembcke interview non spitters?…Lembcke didn’t check the fecal slinging or rotten vegetable tossing news articles…Lembcke on list of top 100 most liberal professors in America…Lembcke another flacid, limp,impotent liberal…
Bringing up Jane Fonda only distorts what is happening with the failed foreign policies of George W Bush.
Iraq has accomplished exactly the opposite of his intentions, with the minimal exception of dethroning Saddam. The McCain Doctrine of escalation will not solve any problems in Baghdad, but will bring more killing of our troops.
Meanwhile, Iran is emboldened by our failures to secure Iraq. Hizbollah grows stronger in Lebanon and Hamas dominates the Palestinian territories. There are 270,000 illegal Jewish settlers on Palestinian lands that eliminate any possibility of a Jewish/Palestinian solution. Bush continues to support Olmert despite universal condemnation.
And the beat goes on……
…Bringing up Israel’s policies on Palestinians only distorts what is happening with the failed limp and impotent policies of Leftist Liberals…
I posted a link to a current case of spitting on a soldier – let’s hope this doesn’t stir up a repeat of Vietnam.
Jane Fonda once apologized – but that falls on deaf ears now that she has reentered the spotlight.
Does anyone remember the damage Winter Soldier did?
G.shurdum, why talk about thirty years ago?Let’s talk about how terribly wrong all the winger hawks are.
Tracy – we’re talking about thirty years ago because that’s when the events in question took place. Although it seems they are starting up again, sadly.
Hillary’s kind of a hawk.
“Leftists beginning to bash soldiers”That’s so much worse than putting them in a situation where they get shot.
“urban legend? soldiers spit on.”A wives tale.
“Leftists will bash any one as long as it benefits them”Brings to mind Coulter’s bashing of the 9/11 wives. Oh wait, that wasn’t the leftists.
“Does anyone remember the damage Winter Soldier did?”
Okay, I’ll take the bait – what damage did Winter Soldier do?
I think tripledot forgot his viagra today. He seems to be focused a lot on ‘limp and impotent’.
GS, I don’t think apologizing for what she did in Hanoi was meant to say she changed her view on the whole thing. She’s always been anti-war.
Saddam Hussein attacked us on 9/11.Critics of the war are liberal, left-wing radicals.Opposition to the war gives aid and comfort to the enemy.Democrats hate America.Dissent is unpatriotic.The Iraqis will welcome us with open arms and flowers.It could take six days, six weeks – I doubt six months.
The fact that you automatically associate liberals with Jane Fonda is what angers me (and no, I don’t consider myself a liberal, although I do think we are in this war for the wrong reasons and we should bring our soldiers HOME) I would NEVER protest against the war – because to me, that would be a slap in the face of our soldiers who are giving their lives. I will however, make it perfectly clear to my elected officials that I think this war is a mistake and that we need to get out NOW – or at least make a start to getting our men out of there (yes I am aware that we can’t just “pack up and leave”
Yellow ribbon magnets on your car mean you support the troops.
Iraqi oil will pay for the war and the reconstruction.
US liability for the war shouldn’t be more than a billion dollars.
There is a large international coalition participating in “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
We know where the WMD are.They’re in the area around Baghdad and Tikrit and north, south, west and east somewhat.
Those trucks we found in Iraq were mobile biological weapons labs.
Iraq sent its WMDs to Syria.
Mission accomplished.
Well for whatever it’s worth, I traveled by airline in uniform (we got a discount that way) from 1968 through 1970 and no one even looked crosseyed at me. Hundreds of other service men in airports weren’t bothered either.
And remember Kent State please. Soldiers fired on and killed protesters. You can’t blame college-aged people for distrusting or even hating soldiers after that.
As for the spitting incidents, I think it probably happened but was rare.
Wendy, you ARE protesting.Right NOW.And rightfully so.At least you’re doing so here in a dignified manner that doesn’t make light of the situation.
Well, I personally got out and protested the war BEFORE it began – frozen my ass off but made a point of being part of the loyal and informed opposition before the carnage began.
Dorking, I remember vividly.Those awful, evil protesters put flowers in the gun barrels.Reportedly, nobody was injured by the offending flowers.
And “our” president had to fly via fighter plane to the deck of the Air Craft Carrier because it was too far out to sea to be reached by helicopter.
Of course, the Carrier delayed it’s arrival in San Diego by 36 hours to accomodate Bush and was actually just 30 miles from port.
But Bush did look like “our young warrior king” (C. Matthews) in his flight suit.
Bring It On.The insurgency is in its last throes.No one could have anticipated the Iraqi insurgency.There is no civil war in Iraq.We’ve turned a corner in Iraq.A spike in violence in Iraq is a sign of American success as insurgents resist positive changes.A decline in violence in Iraq is indicative of American success in getting a handle on Iraqi security.
Protesting to bring our soldiers home is a slap in the face to them?
No. Protesting the war means just that, we protest the people who created the war, not the ones who have to actually fight it.
And if you’ve ever been to an anti-war protest, TONS of ex soldiers are there too.
… another scared chickenhawk bawk bawk girly boy too scared to walk the walk its easy to talk the talk
They voted – three times!
They have a Constituion!
They are a Young Democracy!
We will stand down when they stand up!
…Protesting about war…Survey reveals that concern for soldiers was 9th on list of concerns by protesters…
Tripledot, do you always talk out your ass or do you actually have something to back that up?
Progress as a result of the “historic” pass of sovereignty, formation of government, election in Iraq will be seen in the next 6 to 8 months.When they stand up, we’ll stand down.A plan to withdraw troops is defeatist.
I move that we refer to “…” as Dothead for future posts.
Like a Ditto-head, there is no substance, no facts, just mindless recitation of talking points.
Dothead. Works for me.
“talk out your ass”
“gleaning example”
“forgot his viagra”
More trailerpark shibboleth…
Terry Schiavo wanted to live.Michael Schiavo wanted to murder his wife.Michael Schiavo abused his wife.Terry Schiavo can laugh, smile & communicate.Terry Schiavo can recover.The country is ‘bitterly divided’ over the Schiavo controversy.George W. Bush is a war hero. John Kerry isn’t.John Kerry shot himself in the leg to earn his medals.Bush is a war president.Bush is a popular president.
…Notes leftist affinity to label people with names…Fighting back for the limp and impotent….
Balls, you turning heeb or sumpin?
Bush is a war president.Bush is a popular president.Diebold voting machines are secure.Fox News is fair and balanced.Jeff Gannon is a journalist.
Testicles, I can’t think of anything more trailer-parky and un-original than saying that one would shave his dog’s ass and make him walk backwards.
You’re fronting, and pathetically at that.
heebie jeebie!
I figure Bush must be a popular president – hell, people talk about him every GD day. Now that’s popular!
“fronting”
Out of the trailer park and into the gangland ghetto.
…Forty percent of Veterans who had a broken limb from enemy combatants did not get a purple heart…Seventy percent of all superficial wounds did not qualify for purple hearts in WWII…
You guys are killing me… seriously… lol.
Great sign at the War Protest in Washington D. C.:
“Impeachment – It’s not just for blowjobs anymore.”
Look out Balls, she’ll get ya’ when it comes to the part where she’s goana ‘represent’.
Jeff Gannon, the former White House reporter whose naked pictures have appeared on a number of gay escort sites, says that he has “regrets” about his past but that White House officials knew nothing about his salacious activities.
“I’ve made mistakes in my past,” he said yesterday. “Does my past mean I can’t have a future? Does it disqualify me from being a journalist?”
dothead, which war did YOU fight in?
Howdy Andrew!WSC, I’m opting for the more politically correct:MOUTH HUG.
Something Gannon is very fond of giving.
“Seventy percent of all superficial wounds did not qualify for purple hearts in WWII”
BS – My father received a Purple Heart when the Jeep he was driving went off the road during a blackout and he received a cut over his eye in 1945.
Nice try, Dothead.
More trailerpark shibboleth…
come on nut another 432 payments and … will have that double wide paid for, cut the elitist talk you latte drinking volvo drivin liberal
..or bring in her ‘posse’
“oh no you di-unt”
Starbucks latte: grande, low foam, non-fat.
mmmmmm.
Oh yes I di-ud!
…Bush I War Combat Controller US Air Farce…
Harriet Miers would be a great Supreme Court justice.Tom DeLay is decent Christian businessman.The Delay investigation is the result of a rabidly partisan prosecutor.Nobody at the White House knows Jack Abramoff.Democrats took money from Jack Abramoff too.The Corruption scandals are bipartisan.
George W. Bush is a decider.Dick Cheney is a sober shooter.Joe Wilson admitted that Valerie Plame wasn’t covert.Valerie Plame is a traitor.Joseph Wilson is a traitor.Patrick Fitzgerald is going to indict Joe Wilson.Karl Rove has a faulty memory.Scooter Libby has a faulty memory.Gas prices are high because of liberal environmentalists.Gas prices are high because of taxes.Drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge will lower the price of oil.Gas is still cheaper in America than in Europe.Windfall taxes on high oil company profits is socialism.
Ken Lay – He was the man that gave money to my opponent’s (Ann Richards) campaign for Governor.
The Bush Team used Enron private jets on loan from Ken Lay during the recount fiasco of 2000.
Don’t make me go all black on your ass.
…Tracy is not a spammer…
…At least 200 insurgents killed…Not on Front Page News…
Sort of the body counts from Vietnam, right Dothead?
You know, a hundred Americans killed, but 10,000 VC and NVA.
By the end of the war, every man, woman and child in ‘Nam had been killed at least once.
Typically the Eagle has local stuff on front page (with nice color pictures) and national/world inside. This story got prominent coverage in the usual national/world location.
Barbaro has at last been helped to peace.
After many months, the injured and suffering horse has been mercifully euthanized.
I’ll have you limp-rist libs know that I fought in the Great War to end all Wars, Grenada! Now that was a war! Even tho I was kicked out of the Air Force for being a sissy, I led a super-secret force of Marines called Alpha Force and wiped out several thousand Islamo-Facist Grenadians.
LOL lest we forget, trolling goes both ways.
That’s too funny.
…notices the leftist liberal trolling “…” and finds it amusing…recommend that WE Blog pay special attention to January 29, 2007 11:47 am troll…:-)…
“At least 200 insurgents killed…Not on Front Page News”
Don’t read much, do ya?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/29/AR2007012900289.html
http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6003339&nav=1TjD
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/hundreds-die-in-battle-near-iraqi-holy-city/2007/01/29/1169919274631.html
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/news/article_1253091.php/Up_160_militants_dead_in_fierce_clashes_close_to_Najaf__Roundup_
…
I mean the original …
Though I think you are likely the creation of KSGolfnut or maybe fleetwood, I have decided we will give you a name!
You are “dotty”. And here is a definition that suggests you earn that nic well!
dotty – informal or slang terms for mentally irregular; “it used to drive my husband balmy”bats, batty, bonkers, buggy, around the bend, balmy, crackers, daft, haywire, kookie, kooky, loco, loony, loopy, nuts, round the bend, wacky, whacky, nutty, fruity, barmy, crackedinsane – afflicted with or characteristic of mental derangement; “was declared insane”; “insane laughter”2
…Request: that WE Blog pay special attention to poster J R for increasingly personal attacks and false accusations…:-)…
I thought we had already decided on Dothead…
Request: that everybody look at me and pay attention to me. But nobody knows who I am on account of I use periods for my name. I’m sooooo kewl! See how cunning I am?
Yeah you’re a reallllll winner.
Dothead it is – reference Ditto Head.
Sorry, J R, you did good work, but Dothead is more fitting for “…”
LOL doh, that was a troll post lol. Forgive me, carry on.
Yeah! Andrew, stay safe, young man!
We want you home soon in one piece!
Soon!
…Predicts Andrew gets early out…Andrew changes major to journalism…
…Leftist Liberals afraid of “…”…:-)
Haha… I’m planning on double-majoring when I get back but not to Journalism.I wanna get paid, Son!I’m going to finish my History degree because I only need 15 hourse of course work to finish it.Then I want to get a BS in Petroleum Engineering as well. Isn’t that funny for a liberal? But I was raised in West Texas, and I want to be able to live there eventually and work abroad some too. So this is my best option, plus the starting salaries are insane…
…Sell oil rigging parts to Iran…Iran embargo on oil rigging parts making Iran suck dry desert…
Andrew – I wonder if pet eng is the best option now. Perhaps another engineering field? Electrical? Wondering what fields will be important for new-generation wind turbines, hybrid vehicles, etc.
Reading cnn.com story on the battle around Naja to which reference has been made here; worrisome aspect is that apparently, the “insurgents” were after al-Sistani, among other Shi’ite clerics. I cannot fathom what would take place should they have succeeded; apparently, I’m not alone, based upon the comments contained in the article. No link posted, to avoid the bot catcher.
Yeah, I saw that too. Seems like a fringe cult believing that if they could trigger Armageddon they would pave the way for a second coming of sorts.
Andrew, based upon comments of elder daughter, BioMedical Engineering is also worthy of consideration, if future salary, etc. are important to you. I agree with Ben; the choice of Petroleum Engineering would seem not the best, IMHO.
Nuclear eng?
Ah,
But he wants to live in Texas! Petroleum engineering will be a good profession for many, many more years!
Believe it or not, nuclear engineering isn’t a great choice!
Hank
Haha… Growing up in the industry (Dad, Grandads, Uncle, Mom, etc…) and working in the field during the summers gives me a little more insight than most into the industry. Even if we stopped using gasoline/diesel/JP-8/etc… today, there would still be a huge demand for oil. Fuel makes up only a small fraction of the industry. The vast majority goes into everything from plastics to paint. And Ben, all of those things you mentioned from turbines to hybrid vehicles all require plastic, wiring, synthetic fabrics and lubricants and thus… oil.Plus, the value of oil will continue to rise, and for at least a generation or two, there will still be demand for that kind of job.
Absolutely true Andrew. In fact, one of the reasons I favor alternative energy is to devote petroleum to chemical feedstocks.
Interesting point – if we do that then we will have to completely re-tool refineries to make the feedstocks rather than fuel. Lots to do – selective partial oxidation, monomer/polymer, etc etc.
Then add engineered plastics for strength/lightweight and they can keep you busy.
Makes you wonder what we are going to do when it really is all gone… A hundred years from now the world will literally be unrecognizable… This could be a good thing or a really really bad thing. But if it is the latter, I hope I won’t live to see it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMMIxFM4gog
Bush could pull it off if the Iraqi army is getting better. Several recent incidents seem to indicate so, that is if the reports aren’t all lies.
I hope we get ‘er solved, but people had better remember what caused the problem in the first place.
Hint: It wasn’t 9-11.
A working version of pmom’s link:
http://snopes.com/military/fonda.asp
all you had to do was put the w w .w . part in. And you set off the spam block whereas I didn’t.
Heh.
Actually, … is reminiscent of the bots in Yahoo Chat. They don’t discuss, they just constantly throw out garbage that no one cares about. Total. Waste. Of. Time. And. Bandwidth.
Roxie,…’s posts have considerable meaning. They’re succinct and clear. I know you don’t agree with most of them, but that doesn’t make them wasteful.
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=Iyn1LexYZ5M
I can’t watch the utube stuff, can you tell me what it’s about?
Poli-Mom:
This video is a permanent rembrance of all who lived to fight and die on battle fields of this earth…may we one day learn to settle our disagreements with words…not guns.Image Album link:http://picasaweb.google.com...To view this video with “(near) Studio Resolution” click the small screen button immediately to the right of the sound icon, bottom right of the video.
“And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda”Now when I was a young man I carried me packAnd I lived the free life of the roverFrom the Murrays green basin to the dusty outbackWell I waltzed my Matilda all overThen in nineteen fifteen my country said SonIt’s time you stop rambling there’s work to be done So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun And they marched me away to the warAnd the band played Waltzing MatildaAs the ship pulled away from the quayAnd amidst all the cheers the flag waving and tearsWe sailed off for Gallipoli
And, How well I remember that terrible dayHow our blood stained the sand and the waterAnd of how in that hell that they called Suvla BayWe were butchered like lambs at the slaughterJohnny Turk he was waitin, he primed himself wellHe showered us with bullets, and he rained us with shellsAnd in five minutes flat he’d blown us all to hellNearly blew us right back to AustraliaBut the band played Waltzing MatildaWhen we stopped to bury our slainWe buried ours and the Turks buried theirsThen we started all over again
And those that were left, well we tried to surviveIn that mad world of blood, death and fireAnd for ten weary weeks I kept myself aliveThough around me the corpses piled higherThen a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over endAnd when I woke up in me hospital bedAnd saw what it had done, well I wished I was deadNever knew there was worse things than dyingFor I’ll go no more waltzing MatildaAll around the green bush far and freero hump tent and pegs*, a man needs both legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me So they gathered the crippleds, the wounded, the maimedAnd they shipped us back home to AustraliaThe legless, the armless, the blind, thee insaneThose proud wounded heroes of SuvlaAnd as our ship pulled into Circular QuayI looked at the place where me legs used to beAnd thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for meTo grieve, to mourn, and to pityBut the band played Waltzing MatildaAs they carried us down the gangwayBut nobody cheered, they just stood and staredThen they turned all their faces awayAnd so now every April I sit on mye porchAnd I watch the parade pass before meAnd I see my old comrades, how proudly they marchReviving old dreams of past gloryAnd the old men march slowly, all boned, stiff and soreThey’re tired old heroes from a forgotten warAnd the young people ask, “What are they marching for?”And I ask meself the same questionBut the band plays Waltzing MatildaAnd the old men still answer the callBut as year follows year more old men disappearSome day no one will march there at allWaltzing Matilda, Waltzing MatildaWho’ll come a waltzing Matilda with meAnd their ghosts may be heard they march by that BillabongWho’ll come-a-waltzing Matilda with me?
Oh come on people don’t go to bed yet!!
Things definitely need to spice up around here.Although I did enjoy the “escape from California” article today.The comments were particulary entertaining.
I guess I missed it.
It’s still on the front page there of kansas.com
ah nice story.
and some moving from my current hometown!
Yeah I’m reading the comments now.