The better angels are flapping their wings

I have lived long enough on this ball to know that all politics is NOW. Not the future, not even tomorrow. Just the course to satisfy the instant. That is what got us into Iraq in the first place. We had the tools, we had the reasons, we had the excuse of 911. So we all jumped off the cliff and are now trying to figure out how not to get splattered. I listened to the eloquent, intelligent debate from both sides on the floor of the Senate. I heard very little imperious flag waving on the part of the Republicans and heard little grand standing on the part of the Democrats. Mainly I heard a bunch of men and women basically saying to each other, “Yeah things pretty messed up…so what should we do?”

For myself I have had another phase shift in my own thinking on Iraq and where we are in the world. Pulling out of Iraq a year ago or 2 years ago is not the same equation as pulling out now. Staying is bad, pulling out may be worse. Here is one scenario that I view as possible, based on my knowledge of history:

We leave Iraq in the state it is now.

Reaction:

IRAQ: Shiite militants will dominated Iraq, Sadr will be the defacto leader with a puppet government beholden to him. Previous leadership will either be killed or flee. Sunni groups will be viciously repressed with methods that are being used now, just on a larger scale. Kurds will be forced to declare independence. This will cause Turkey to go on high alert.

EU: Extreme trepidation over what the force vacuum in Iraq will mean for stable oil prices and spread of militancy.

UK: Labor government will fall to conservatives

IRAN: Between a rock and a hard place it will be forced to significantly aid Sadr . It will also use this a justification for such aid and become the main military benefactor of Iraq.

CHINA: More liberal with anti-Taiwanese-independence rhetoric. Basically more saber rattling.

Russia: Happy. However also very nervous since so much of their own territory is prone to Islamic militancy.

Broader Mid East: The joy in the streets will last a few weeks and then settle back down into impoverished depression. Fear in the governments of Egypt et al over what the deadly brew in Iraq will do once it spills out. Probably increased arms expenditures by Syria, Egypt and of course Israel. Israel will probably see its own roll as airborne enforcer.

US: We will still have an air presence over Iraq, and have large number of forces in Kuwait. Though Kuwait may be nervous that the problems in Iraq might spill into their own country. Democrats will win White House but then lose it in the 2012 election.

Bin Laden: Busy with his own agenda

Who can we trust on the situation in Iraq?

The President: We cannot trust him because of the series of mistakes, lies, and continued blindness his administration shows towards this mess.

The Congress: Perhaps some can be trusted, but we need to be just as wary of those leaders who are happy to see Bush founder in his war. Not that I see too many doing this. But I do feel a smug sense of “I told you so” wafting up from the depths of the Democratic party. This also makes me not trust them. For people who see Iraq as a wedge issue to destroy Bush fail to see the real problem, the war itself. I would gladly sacrifice Democratic control of Congress for a successful conclusion to Iraq. This being said I feel the Democrats are really the only hope since the Republicans are so ill lead.

The people: I do not trust them either. I do not trust them since I do not think they really understand the nature of the conflict. They simply want the bad movie to be over. As I said in my previous post, I do not think the bad movie will be over if we leave Iraq in a big mess. The law of unintended consequences rules not only the act of staying in Iraq but also leaving.

What I wish we had was a group of people who really understood, in a pragmatic, visceral, non-aligned way, the nature of our dilemma. Only then can a good way forward be planned and achieved. When all sides are simply vying for the prize of the White House, or the Congress, the poor ill-treated soldier is still left sweating in the heat of a no-win situation.

God damn all of us for this madness. While we all fiddle with “Impeach Bush” bumper stickers, or little yellow “support our troops” ribbons, or “W” stickers, or “don’t blame me I voted for Kerry” our soldiers burn. As an American I am infuriated with the lot of us. If we want this war over then force the issue with millions in the streets of Washington, put our lives on hold, sacrifice our summer, and or jobs, and make a giant stink! Or volunteer to go to Iraq too!

Our sin is that we do nothing. We blog, was chat, we shake our heads and ask why. All while letting men and women, who actually put their real lives on the line for us, sweat in a holding pen waiting to get blown up. We are a nation of fat soft hypocrites. If we lose our democracy we will have deserved it.

Go Home? Hmmm.....?

The previous entry talked about going Big. Nobody wants to go big or long.

We have gone long, longer the WWII, and spent a god awful amount of money and blood to create a state that is just shy of anarchic. Nobody wants to send more troops. Only a few diehards see staying in the current form, as a solution to anything. We are not making the mideast safer, or less unstable. We have not defeated the enemy that hit us on 9/11. The Iraq War is not indefinitely sustainable. If another crisis hit us our armed forces are thin, over worked, and burned out.

A democratic republic can decide to end a war whenever it wants. We wish to end this one now.

But…

The war will not end when we leave Iraq. It will continue there and millions will suffer because of our hubris, imperial stupidity, and lack of forsight. When we leave Iraq and it is not stable, or democratic, or free of terrorism, there will have to be a royal comeuppance for the people that lead us into this farce.

But…

There will be no comeuppance. They will go and write there books, and become pundits on Fox News, and either retire as millionaires, or work for fortune 500’s an retire as billionaires. The soldiers will come home, and there will be no parade. They will not be spat on or ridiculed. But they will, in their hearts, be fuming over the waste. Some will agree that the war was a farce, the height of vain glory, but others will see this as a sign of American weakness. They will not put down the sword but keep it at the ready.

Losing a war like this is what dictatorships of the future are made of. We tend to forget that we are a nation too. And that the rules apply to us aswell as Iraq. Two nations will suffer the consequences of pulling out of Iraq and leaving it a disaster.

This is not 1975 and Iraq is not Vietnam. Nor is this 1918 and Iraq is not Alsace Loraine. But the consequences for both nations will be real when we leave. When a nation puts for such an effort and then fails there is blowback. If the President pulls us out that would be a good thing and we could survive that. But if he is forced to pull them out then the fight will not be over and in that case I really fear for the future of America.

Go Big, Go Long, or Go Home

After 4 years the options are few.

“Go big, go long, or go home.” These were our options.

Go Big:
Well neither the Bush Administration nor the Congress nor the public seem to want to go big. Going big would mean a massive infusion of troops, not the poultry 30,000 we have put in now.

Go Long: Four years is a long time when no progress is being made either in infrastructure reconstruction, governmental institution building, the rebuilding of the Iraqi army, or the quelling of sectarian violence.

Go Home: This is a bitter pill, not beneficial to the US, Iraq, or world security.

We are stuck in Iraq. From my own point of view we only have one option left. It is not an option that the US public wants but the only one left to try. The only one that has not been tried. And that is to go Big. Going home would be morally reprehensible, to leave a nation shattered and dysfunctional would be a black mark on America far greater than Vietnam.

We are responsible for the mess in Iraq. Because of our early ineptitude, and hubris we allowed Iraq to devolve into chaos, while giving our true enemy a recruiting poster for their cause. Leaving will only exacerbate the problem. I see no way that leaving Iraq will in the long run benefit the US or the region. Things will not calm down. People who say for us to go are as shortsighted as the pathetic idiots that thought we would have a cake walk. I would love to have us get out of Iraq. I pray for us to get out of that dung heap. But we cannot simply walk away, nor can we rely on the UN or kindness of strangers. We are going to have to work the problem.

After reading much on the subject there is really no option that will bring stability to the region and security. War, once began, must be brought to a successful conclusion by the instigator or the instigator is made the weaker for it. That is why war must always be the very last option. This was a stupid war to start, but now we must finish it or the problems we will face in the future will be graver still. This is harsh but I see no other way.

Clearly Bush is a dead man walking (in the political sense) he lacks the leadership ability, the skill, and the political capital to bring the people together to solve this stinking problem. He will be gone long before this problem is solved. So the Congress, and the Pentagon need to really have a reality check and and begin to guide the President, not wait for the lame President to misguide them.

At this point it matters very little if the failure is upon the head of Bush. This is not a political game it is a war. I think some people in DC understand this. Many do not. The US is being pulled in two directions that are both wrong. The Surge is a big goose egg, as we all knew it would be, but to leave would be just as big a goose egg. Political suicide lays at the end of either road. Going big is really the only course left.

By going big I mean BIG. There needs to be 700,000 troops in Iraq, the population needs to be disarmed, and the population cowed. We do not need a provisional authority. We need the military administration of Iraq with civilian government on the lowest level first reporting to American generals not sectarian strong men in league with Iran. Furthermore people like Sadre need to be eliminated, and their followers crushed. Not talked to and brought into a cooperative government.

The reality is that if we want a democracy in Iraq then the forces that do not represent democracy need to be eliminated one way or another. Militant Islam and democracy do not mesh. You can have one or the other but not both.

This is a nasty problem and I in no way claim to find the solution palatable. But war has never been palatable, nor glorious, nor honorable, nor good. It is carnage pure and simple. We need to stop acting like school kids and start acting like adults.

My spur-of-the-moment weekend II

In the morning my daughters boyfriend came over and he and I completed the outfitting of our spacecraft. We then went and got my younger daughter and then my older daughter who was at a friends house. After stopping at Starbucks we were off to Elk Lake.

The journey from my home to the lake is about 200 miles along mostly open road. My main worry on such a trip is music, or rather the control of music or lack thereof. Do we plug the MP3 player in and listen to the soundtrack to High School Musical? Or do we plug the iPod in and listen to Metric. The kids trade off from time to time and no Jihad happens, not that there is much room for terrorist activity in such a cramped car.

We drive past ancient forests, alpine Mt Hood, and across the vast casino lands of the Warm Sprins tribe. We cross deep gorges in mere seconds that would have stymied Peter Skene Ogden for weeks, and go past luxury home sites surrounded by deep green lawns fed by the plundered central Oregon aquifer, until finally we are in Bend.

Bend has changed a lot since I was a kid visiting my grand parents in La Pine. Currently there are 75,000 citizens in the town, or rather the city. None of us our dressed in a way that the locals would approve of. We are not wearing Tevas, Patagonia, or Northface. Everyone seems like they are waiting for the photographers to get back from brake to finish the LLBean or Eddie Bauer catalog photoshoot. There are no fat people in Bend. This may be a local ordinance I am not sure. Neither are there many people of color, unless you count the leathery skinned white folks waiting for the results of their latest skin biopsy.

My kids haven’t been here for years so to them it is brand new. We slice our way through the confusing nest of streets and find our way to Century Drive and finally brake free of the last vestige of urban life, the Wigi Creek golf course and accompanying luxury subdivision. In ten minutes we are high in the pines with splendid peaks before us. I get nervous traveling to places I have not been in a while. Are they the same as last I saw them? Have they been corrupted by the bourgeoisie? As I drive on I see the titanic nature of the landscape develop. This is not land easily corrupted by roads or golf courses. Not up here astride the ring of fire. My kids note that the landscape in places seems like Mordor, from the Lord of the Rings. It is a land of stark contrasts.

On onside of the road are jagged black monoliths of fractured obsidian as large as office building, toppling like some satanic dark glacier spat up from Cocytus. Beyond them rise up a series of strato volcanoes each capable of destroying vast sections of Oregon should the crust shift just a bit. On the other sided of the road is an idyllic paradise of lush wetlands, tall firs, still lakes, and full of wildlife. We will be staying on the “paradise” side of the road not the “inferno” side.

My spur-of-the-moment weekend

Last week I decided about mid week that I was going to take my two daughters camping. On the surface this sounds like a typical American pastime for Summer. Lots of families partake in this time honored tradition. My family itself has a long tradition of camping at Yale Lake in Washington.

This time I was determined to camp at Elk Lake, in Oregon. I checked the Deschutes National Forrest website for particulars and discovered that the lake had a campground and no reservations were required. Just first come first serve. My two daughters and I, along with my oldest daughters boyfriend, would be camping in alpine splendor (elevation 4900 ft).

I drove home and stopped to pick up camping gear at mom’s house. I took my favorite camp item, a nice thick foam pad to sleep on. This little item gave me the first hint that there might be trouble ahead. I own a Scion xA; the tiny one not the box. Its trunk is about big enough to hold two bags of groceries provided they were filled with marshmallows and could be compressed.

At home I started packing in earnest. After an hour I came to the stark realization that I could take the gear required to support 4 people in the woods or the four people, but not both. So I started dropping items off the list. To begin with my nice sleeping pad. It had to go. I would simply stop at Fred Meyers and get a blow up mattress, one of the cheapies. This after all was going to be a cheap trip. I put one of my camp chairs away, I did not have to sit in a chair, the ground would be fine for a day or two.

Food was already purchased, two cans of chili, a box of mac’n cheese, muffins, and begals with cream cheese. Pop etc. I took the requisite paper plates. I got some plastic cups too. All told the grocery bill was less than 40 bucks. Great!

After several attempts at packing my little Scion was ready to roll. The interior seating looked about as ample as a Mercury 7 space capsule. My older daughter and her boyfriend would be in the back seat with, three camp chairs, two sleeping bags, 3 pillows, and a bag containing a tripod, between them. They would not be able to see each other for the entire drive. My younger daughter would be packed with the dry food, her own cloths duffle bag on her side and I would have several stuff sacks of stuff under my legs and seat.

God does not need our help?

I know I have pontificated, no pun intended, on what I think is the ridiculous aspect of service to God. I know this sounds anti-God or anti-Christian but it really is not meant to be. It is just the logical conclusion to the acceptance of God as omnipotent. Simply put an omnipotent being does not need us to help it at all. Nor would an omnipotent being need to poke at us to do “the right thing”

Free will would seem to run counter to God’s omnipotent power. How could I write this if God did not want it written? Or how could Osama Bin Laden order the 911 attacks if God did not want it to happen. Or how could Michael Moore make Siko if God did not want him to make the movie. This sort of thinking really makes you dizzy. Either you end up thinking it is all part of Gods divine plan. Or it is the good god vs bad god scenario where God and Satan are vicariously beating up on each other using us. Sort of like the Russians the Americans used the Vietnamese. Both scenarios are pathetic for us.

I will take on the second scenario first since it is the easiest to poke a hole in. Either we live in a Universe that is made by one God or we live in a pantheistic universe with lots of gods, demi-gods, etc. From my standpoint there is no evidence of a pantheon of supernatural anything out there mucking about. Too much of life is ordered by physics, cause and effect, and all that. If supernatural forces were always playing around then the laws that govern, for instance electrical activity, would break down or simply stop working. This never happens. One could say that the supernatural forces work in such a way as to leave no physical traces of themselves. I would retort then that is the same as non-existence for us since the equations we have developed to explain physically reality must be able to predict the actions of these beings. So they would be more natural and not so super.

The first scenario is harder to put a hole in since it is so ingrained in our culture. God has this divine plan for all creation and everything is happening as it has been preplanned to happen. Like we live in a book. This makes us feel good when bad stuff happens. What can really be that bad if God wanted it to happen? Well this stinks, why bother worshipping or adoring a being that says it is part of his plan to have Jews undergo live dissection by Nazi doctors? Or children tortured to death by sadistic killers? I wouldn’t give that god the time of day let alone waste a breath of prayer to it.

Both these scenarios also seem to require us to help God out. Do stuff for him. Build his church, feed his sheep, defend his faith, fight for him, work for him, basically do all the things required of a servant. However there is a biiiiiiiiiiig problem with this. Human rulers need servants since they cannot do everything for themselves. They are not omnipotent. God, at least an all powerful one, certainly would not need us to work for him. The first scenario is slightly less silly since hour work would be the result of Gods plan working itself out. But if this is the case then you have no free will and all the acts you do are puppet maneuvers done by God for God. Become and atheist then, its all part of Gods plan!? The world could abandon the entire concept of God and it would all be part of Gods plan. Or perhaps we could all decide to worship Elmo or Barney.

This is not a silly little problem either. Scribes of old understood this quite well about our faith. Ecclesiastes is entirely about this problem. In the end the author basically says that all of the material world is vanity and the only thing you should do is keep the commandments, your duty is to honor God. Current scholarship questions the exact language of the end of Ecclesiastes. It seems the original text does not tell us that it is not our duty to follow God, but that it is we who are the commandment and that we are the manifestation of the respect of God.

I have felt the connection to God. That connection, when viewed, is obvious. Even though I have this connection to this being, I cannot fathom the totality of what that being is. Nor can I know what the full implications of this connection are. Somehow the light and fluffy stories of old, may not be too helpful when this being reveals more of itself to me. Or then again may God will be an old man with a crown. Either way I am on the ride and will have to accept whatever is the reality behind the enigma.

Yuck!

Okay the new workers are on vacation so how would I review them?

My fears about lack-luster Democrats that are not really up to the task of forcefully taking the nation in a better direction are proving well founded. The Democrats are still acting like they are the minority. They need to give the President an ultimatum on Iraq, keep the House and Senate open 24/7 until the President gives in or goes home. Furthermore there needs to be a unification of national action from Congress and the grass routes. A million people in the streets camped on the mall makinig noise would help. They also need to tell it the way it is. The surge sucks! It is not working, not even a little bit.

We need to redirect our war in a new direction, and I do not mean Iran. This campaign was misguided and sloppily put together and there is nothing that can be done about it now. Sometimes you have to redeploy and start over with a new plan.

Republicans have mental difficulties

Why do Republicans hate people who are actually qualified to be President? Why do they insist on pretenders? People who are not leaders but play them on TV. The Republican party actually has some talent in the running and they go for Fred Thompson? They are fools! I really think Republicans are mentally challenged. How can I respect a party that ignores talent? Is it that they are so full of in-bred-jeds that the only people they feel comfortable with are “backee-chew’n” hick-wanna-bees? God help us if Earl The Cable Guy ran for President. I am sure a sizable percentage of the misanthropic idiots on the Republican right would vote for him. I think that all those red stated morons have taken one too many tornado flung 2x4’s to the head.

Thank you Paris Hilton!

We almost had to pay attention to the G-8 summit but thankfully you have turned our silly heads again and we are all indignant over you getting house (mansion) arrest instead of the slammer. Oh and then back to jail again like a bimbo-yoyo . kudos to you Paris and to the other "hot"" news items in America... The pastor-killing wife may go free in 60 days, and the DA says Kansas Teen was strangled! Oh yes and did the dad drown the kid for cash?

Let me get this straight. We have 150,000 troops in a war, are over a financial barrel with China, we have Russia threatening to start up the cold war again, and the imagration debate is ended in a Homer Simpson "Doh!" moment. I guess the media wants us not to fret the small stuff while we myopically focus on Hilton and all other loonies.

"Bread and spectacle people! Bread and spectacle!"

Mercia revisited...again

This is a review of a book entitled “Mercia and the making of England”, by Ian Walker. This is the first and perhaps only book dedicated to telling the story of that shadowy Angle Kingdom. Walker takes great pains to note that Mercia, due to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle being a West Saxon affair, had its history played down or passed over. Walker try’s to redress this in his book.

However…..

As a student of this kingdom I would say that Walker’s book leaves a lot to be desired. For one thing, an aspect of Mercian history that is fairly well documented is the late pagan period of King Penda and his dynasty, arguably the longest dynasty in Mercia. Furthermore Walker, for reasons unknown, himself passes over Penda’s brother Peada, his sons Wulfhere and Aethelred. Wulfhere has just about as much written of him in the Chronicle as does Offa. He also myopically focuses on what he calls the C and B dynasties of Cenwulf and Burhred. Though he is quite capable of postulating ideas about who was related to whom by the first letter of their name, something I find silly, he totally ignores contemporary Mercian royal lineage lists as if they are all nonsense or made up.

He says nothing of Offa’s connection to Penda or Offa’s predecessor Aethelbold. Yet he try’s to show how king Cenwulf, who followed Offa after Offa’s son Ecgfrith died, was really related to Beornred who had been deposed by Offa. I know that all this sounds cryptic and horribly confusing. And it is to anyone who does not know the situation of 7th-9th century Mercia. Walker, in his illustrated Mercian lineages only shows these two C and B dynasties. This is ridiculous to me since the previous dynasty of Penda was the one that forged a unified Mercia that was internally stable enough to allow his descendants to take over most of Britain.

Walkers book, in my opinion is superficial where it needs to by deep and try’s to be deep where there is no depth to plumb. This is not to totally dis his book. There are some really astute points to be made about the Mercian~Wessex alliance against the Vikings and also about what you can tell about a king and kingdom by its coinage. But really it offered no great insight or information that I did not already know.

Here is some information that is not in this so-called book about Merica. Using Walker’s letter idea here is my “P” dynasty:

K. Penda died 655
His brother was Eowa who was father of Alweo, who was the father of K. Aethelbald 716-757
Eowa’s other son Cneba was the father of Thringsfirth, who was the father of K. Offa 757-796
Penda’s son Peada became king in 655-659
Penda’s other son Wulfhere became king in 659-675
Penda’s last son Aethelred became king in 675-704
Aethelred’s son Cenred then became king 704-709
When Cenred abdicated Aethelred’s other son Ceolred became king 709-716
After Ceolred died, “in a drunken frenzy” according to Boniface, his cousin Aethelbald, who was in exile retunred and took the throne and reigned for 40 years.
When Aethelbald was finally murdered another clan tried in vane to take the throne but was gotten rid of by another member of the P dynasty namely Offa Thringsfrithson, son of Cneba, son of Eowa, brother of Penda, who himself was the son of K. Pybba, the first true king of Mercia!!!!!

So Ian Walker you can talk to me whenever you want to have a discussion of Mercia.

My sources are:
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 9th-10th Century
Historia Ecclesiastica Anglorum by Bede 7th Century
Historia Brittonum by 9th Century

Star Adventures II - Design changes

The command center for the Foghorn is different now. To recap: The original wooden set of the Foghorn was a rectangle with three command seats glued to the deck and a booth in the rear for "eating" and in the very back were 3 chambers for cryogenic suspended animation.

The problem regarding the interior size of the Foghorn with the exterior was never really addressed. There was this looooooong corridor shot near the equipment room that could not possibly have fit into the size of the Foghorn. The Equipment room itself was huge, and the bridge was big enough to hold the entire crew of the Enterprise.

The new Foghorn is smaller still. It is insectoidal in external appearence and so this requires basically a single habitable unit within. The interior is basically the bride and nothing else. The cryo-chambers have been moved far forward and the "living" area is in the center. I changed the big giganto seats into smaller seats that can allow easier access. They swival 360 degrees, and each has a joystick controler. Note Joe the Handyman for scale.

This is still a work in progress. More to come...

Reconstructing Iraq

This document was published in February of 2003. Unfortunately it was not read by people who were incharge of the coming f-up.

Star Adventures II -Foghorn Bridge nearing completion

The bridge of the Foghorn is almost ready. Command seats, chart table, and three cryochamgers are in place. Now all we need is a script and well you know the rest.

Why are Fox News viewers so screwed up?

Above is a screen cap of the FOX NEWS web site. This is first thing a viewer of the news site sees. Compare it to any of the other 4 major news org sites. Can anyone really claim that FOX is an actual news network? Or that they are really trying to present fairness? I guess by fairness they mean National Enquirer type stories. Let CBS, CNN, and the BBC do all those hard hitting “liberal” stories. Fox will make up for that with the cat fights, and strange pig stories.

I am not saying that the other news orgs are good and Fox is all bad. All of them have basically the same crap on them. The difference is the visual emphasis. Fox consistently has biased tag lines, biased stories, or non-stories, or muck raking stories. To Fox any journalism that is not slanted is “liberal” It has to be pro-right wing ideology or it can’t pass muster. The people who pay big bucks to Fox for ad placement understand this too. Look at who is advertising on a web site and you will know what point of view it is trying to get across.

Star Adventures -Foghorn Bridge

The command bridge is more complete. There are some things missing and you can see space in a few places that you should not. However more googah will be added. I became a control pannel making fool and created 10 new ones that can be used in all sorts of configurations. They are all pretty high-res (TV res that is not cine) So you can view them up close as set decor and they will look good. The screens are static for now. But all can have their video screens made active without too much trouble. Just throw in a quicktime or AVI file onto the screen and there you go, glow and all.

The second view is of Sam's staion. In this config the fire-control section is on the left side, flight control in the center, and navigation to the right.

Bush News Conference

I got to hear the idiot this morning. So here is some things that our so-called press should have pointed out.

1: President mentioned UN SC resolution 1441 in that Iraq was in violation of that as a pretext for the war.

2: President admitted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

3: If Iraq had no such weapons then they could not comeply with 1441 which told them to get rid of the weapons they did not have.

Also the inspectors were there on the ground continuing their quest to find the non-existant weapons when they were told to leave by Washington so that Bush could have his war.

Bush always trys to turn the question back on the reporters by saying stuff like "So your saying that the world would be safer with Sadam?" Well no this is not what the reporters are asking.

4: Bush said that Sadam got a level of justice that was not seen under his tyranny. Well to most of us who watched this "justice" we are not impressed. And Sadam met the typical fate meated out by his own brutal regime.

Getting back to the WMD that was not there:

It seems to the rest of the world that the only people telling the truth in the run up to the war was the regime of Sadam. The weapons inspectors were finding this out so they had to get yanked. Bush made an assumption that Sadam was lying just like Bush was lying so he sent our army in.

5: Alquieda in Iraq, during the Sadam years, was operating in the northern regions of the country. Why? Because that region was out of Sadam's control. The US Airforce enforced the no-fly zones in effect saving the terrorists from Sadam. Only after the regime came crashing down did the terrorists move south into areas that had been off limits to them.

6: The "democracy" that Bush talks about is a two party government. Dominated by DAWA and SCIRI. DAWA was started back in the 70's and was the creator of Hezbullah. SCIRI was created in Tehran by the revolutionary radicals in Iran. So we replaced a facist dicator with a government that is owned and operated by Islamic militants.

7: The world and region are NOT safer. The region is spiralling downward in Gaza, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq. They feed off each other and we provide an easy scapegoat. Our fuckup in Iraq is almost complete.

8: Iraq is not an open ended war. Our armed forces face major equipment and man-power problems because of it. And after 500 billion dollars of American tax money spent and 3400 lives lost, and 20 thousand lives broken, what have we gained? Nothing good.

Star Adventures II

The preproduction, seemingly unending preproduction, on a film that seems never going to be made, progresses none the less. Above is a not-finished set of the Foghorn Bridge. The command seats and much set decor googah is still to be added. The console closest to the camera is the navigation console. Note the gas gauge at far right. The ceneter console is from a 747 jet liner panel. The other panels are a mishmash of different kinds of control panel redouts.



This is the current final design of the Foghorn for SAII.

No WAR on TV no more

From 1962 until 1967 we had Combat
From 1963 until 1969 we had Gomer Pyle
From 1965 until 1971 we had Hogan’s Heros
From 1972 until 1983 we had MASH

So what happened to all the army shows? Those shows, made during the a BIG war, were all hits. So why no war shows now? Is it perhaps that the studio execs are all too candy-assed? Certainly Gomer Pyle would be viewed today as insulting of the USMC. MASH would be too insulting too since it was critical of the army and war in general. Hogan’s Heros was about the really old WWII, but would be scandalous since it made a German POW camp a place of laughs. And Combat, well combat was pretty realistic even for the 1960’s and nobody really wants to see a show about soldiers getting hurt in war.

So we get to watch FOX and CNN and their pundits spew crappola about our war. But the self sanitization system built by modern media keeps us a long way away from the men and women at war. They are oddities to be seen walking through airports in their new ACU’s and shaved heads. Off in their own little world, a world and reality we are forcibly kept away from. They are correct to say that the average citizen is ignorant about what it means to be in the military or about what is happening in Iraq. We are ignorant about that stuff like we are ignorant about what happens in a sewage treatment plant. We don’t want to know.

Those old TV shows gave us some connection to that aspect of our culture. The people in those shows were…people. They were not righteous war-gods, but flawed humans that could still crack a joke in the middle of hell. It was not reality TV, but I would take any of the above over the wasteland of TV now.

Check this out. It isn’t Gomer Pyle, but there is laughing.




Of course now the Pentagon wants to keep stuff like this off the air too. I guess the bad guys will view it and refine their skills.

Yeah...right...

War Czar?

We now have a War Czar. A man who is the “point man” for the wars (fiascos) in Afghanistan and Iraq. I guess the pressure was too much for Bush, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Defense Secretary, and all the other generals off in foreign lands. We were able to fight WWII without a “war czar” So why do we need yet one more “point man” ?

The reason is that Bush wants someone else to be the target of scorn when his fiasco’s go awry. Bush is a tough talking cowherd. He flinches and recoils from all real responsibility, braking most things he touches despite all this sanctimonious good intentions.

So the RMS Titanic has a “sinking Czar” now all aboard can be assured that the “sinking Czar” will handle things. Of course the ship is doomed and 1500 people will die because of the stupidity of the planning behind the construction of the ship, but hey they have Czar.

At least the poor Russians new what to do with a Czar.

But then again maybe the War Czar will be as successful as the Drug Czar? We won the war on drugs right? I think what Bush really needs is an Impeachment Czar, otherwise known as a special prosecutor to get him and his incompetently evil scumbags to jail where he belongs.