Review of Flags of Our Fathers

It is a very sad film. Sad in that a lot of money was wasted on very stupendous battle scenes and other cgi recreations of 1940's America. The story was a gripping one, personalities a plenty, and had a lot of worthiness to it. However it was a jumbled mess that told a story poorly and I left the theatre thinking to myself. "Yep war is pretty shitty." Eastwood did the best he could with the script. However he should have told the story in a different way. It was a jumbled mess about a pretty simple set of circumstances. Guys go to war, have to take an island, some die, others live. One group raises a flag then another group does. The second bunch look better, its just a better photo. The government uses the photo to sell war bonds. The men know the truth. The end. Gets a 6.5

Rama~Tet

Those pesky nay sayers trying to compare Iraq with Vietnam. You'd never here Bush do that! Oh...I guess he did. Then he said that the Democrats are all over the page on Iraq. I would say thank God somebody is trying to figure out what to do. Bush's deer-in-the-headlights approach is certainly not a winning strategy.

I was discussing this terrible problem with a freind over a drink, both of us lamenting the war, when I was asked what would constitue a good reason for going to war. I said I would only go to war if the survival of the United States depended on it. If the reason was given was anything longer than that it was probably not worth it. I would also say that any war is not worth fighting if a draft would be looked down on. I would fight for my country to keep us going. But not for some Iraq-like farce.

One other thing bothers me too. As a student of history I do not recall any Union troops being stop-lossed back into combat during the Civil War nor in WWI or WWII. How our worthless president can send these men back to hell because he can't figure out what to do, and still sleep at night is beyond me.

Frontline was great

If you missed this very well produced Frontline episode please think about watching it online at

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/yeariniraq/

From the mouths off Paul Brimmer, general Jay Garner, and a host of others responsible for post war Iraq we are led down a very sad rabbit whole in the Alice and Wonderland that was the White House and their misguided effort to recreate Iraq. This program should be mandatory viewing for all people wanting to topple nations then rebuild them as a case study in what NOT to do. My hats off the Frontline for such a great program.

How they see us

Every once in a while you get a glimpse of how they see us. Corrupt, hedonistic, selfish, lewd, imoral. We are not all this way. Freedom gives us the ability to do many things including being all of the above. It also forces us to make choices. In tyranny, whether religious or secular, people do not have choice. Freedom from authority forces upon us the mantel of the decider. We are all the decider. We annoint our own leaders and then unannoint them as we see fit.

There are, I think, many people who do not like this. They want the annointing to come from above or from something else that has more purity of puropse, or clarity of conscience. This is impossible but they seek it nonethless like Galhad seeking the grail. Forever do they throw up one figure after another to lead them only to find the leader only human. At least the free people of the Earth understand the structure of humanity, make and agree upon laws, and strive to accept responsibility for our own sucess and failure.

We have the capacity for loathsome behavior. But whereas those that believe in tyranny seek to push the blame for holocausts and death to God's shoulders, the free peoples of the earth accept that it is mankind who makes wars and concludes peace. We have been given the free will to either live or die. To kill or not to kill. To build or to destroy. Only the free people understand this responsibility. Only the free understand that the future is in our hands and that we are not puppets nor are we pawns in some war between the good God and the bad god whom we can blame when things do not go our way: ah it was God's will...or...the devil made him do it.

So who are they? The people who do not understand freedom. Or who do undertand it's implications, and have rejected it in favor of being pawns in a game out of their control. Freedom is a very adult thing. Many see it and then recoil, unwilling to take on the responsibilities of adulthood. Seeking the security of childhood where they are told where to go, what to belive, and who to follow. These people are children, seeing the complexity of the universe and rejecting it. They see no point in saving the Earth. It is too hard for them to comprehend such large acts. They throw up their hands and say it is all in some unwritten plan, or buried in ancient books whos authors simply cannot come out and tell them what to do. Bin Laden, seeking to destroy the evil, as he sees it in the world, and Robertson, asking if certain leaders should be killed, are the same. Instead of rolling up their sleeves and pragmatically seeking peaceful coexistance they shrink back into the womb of absolutism, claiming that they speak and act on Gods behalf.

What if the truth actually revolves around our own intellect, granted to us by millions of years of evolution, set up by God. Our own minds and will have made our human world. And to understand the history of mankind is to see a constant struggle between those who wish to broaden the human horizon and better the human condition, and those that seek to retrograde back into the womb. History teaches that the womb seekers always fail.

Clarification of what DPRK has done

North Korea evidently does not have a thermonuclear weapon. They have an atomic bomb. There are large differences. The weapons currently in the US arsenal need a bomb the size of the one dropped on Hroshima just as a fuse to set them off. A fission bomb works by detonating TNT around fisiable material. The fissionable atoms break and realease its engery. A thermonuclear bomb uses an atom bomb to cause its nuclear material to fuse. This creates enormous heat hence the term thermo. The fusion bombs we have are basically small Suns that we can start. They are thousands of times more destructive than the DPRK's little bomb. They are overkill made flesh. This is not to diminish the problem caused by the DPRK testing their fire cracker. If you can build an atom bomb you are not too far from building a super-bomb.

DPRK's Bomb estimated at: 15,000 tons of TNT

Us bombs: 100,000,000 tons of TNT or about 7,500 times more powerful than the DPRK's bomb

Birthdates

We all live on such a razor thin margin of existance. That life will continue for any of us for more that a nano second is in no way certain. I could pop off to death right now for all I know. A very nice man I know died a couple of days ago, doctors were able to bring him back to life and he will go home from the hospital tommorrow. My daughter and I were having a deep conversation of the problems of living forever on Earth. She came to the conclusion that the only way she would want to live forever is that if all her family and freinds could too. She figured that it would be pretty sad to hang around while all her family and freinds dopped one after the other. She also said, at the end, she could still make new freinds.

Benito ~ Limbaugh NO YOUR ENEMY NO YOUR FASCIST

HIV Epidemic not credible

Good news! Aids is not a problem in Africa or Asia. All the statistical analysis has been shown to be not credible. By who? By that paragon of science GW Bush. This is of course nonsense. The statistics he doesn't like are usually the ones that show his war to be going badly. He hates the truth, can't stand the pesky thing. So he simply says that the analysis showing over 1/2 million war dead in Iraq is not credible. He does not back up his assertion with any coroberating data whatsoever. We are just supposed to trust him. Him? Trust Bush? Well all I can say is that his little "comma" is turning into an exclaimation point. The wreakless brutality of the Bushleague is matched in scope only by their utterly dilusional belief in their own views. Their mindless adherence to the two-headed pig that is their war policy. They give aid and comfort to our enemies and will win nothing but the mantel of failure. Yet it is not their blood and guts that get blasted out in their stumbling and lurching to loss. It is the soldier, the child screaming in the streets, the families wailing over their dead fathers only to be blown up by the coffin.

Who's Fault is DPRK's Bomb?

This guy is to blame. It would be nice to blame Clinton or Bush, but this guy had way more to do with the bomb than either of those other two guys. To my knowledge neither Clinton or Bush was in the decision making process in the North Korean bomb making program. North Koreans planned their bomb, north Koreans built their bomb, and north Koreans exploded their bomb. So blame North Korea.

Now it is up to Bush and company to keep us safe. I know this really sounds bad, and it probably is. Bushco is as pathetic a bunch of losers as can be imagined, but hey they are all we have....for now...

Nuke Test In Korea

The situation with North Korea and Iran has been made inevitable by a lack of coherent post cold-war nuclear policy by the US and Russia. Instead of joining forces to help other nations see the futility of such weaponry both nations have drifted without direction, caught up in their own internal problems and unwinable wars. The lack of world leadership by the two most powerful nations has hurt our chances as a spieces to survive.

The solution to Korea is certainly not further sanctions. The country is already to most isolated nation on earth. Using medieval siege tatctics against Korea will do nothing to combat the threat of them selling technology to our real enemies. Only full on engagement will help matters. For those who think that war is the answer I would ask what we are going to fight that war with? GI Joe figures? Forceful engagement is the only way forward. All the big-stick approach does is allow Korea to react. It gives them no way forward other than bluster. By handing down ultimatums we hand the regime in Pyongyang more power. It gives them a legitimate way to explain away why they do what they do.

Civility, and carrots, a desire to negotiate gives us legitimacy and would put the DPRK in a weaker position. I am really at a loss as to explain the logic behind the current administrations policies. Other than to assume they mean to harm the US and deminish our role in the world.

Spet Oct Poll Crunch 2006

I have not done a Poll Crunch since the summer. So to rectify the situation here is the Presidents standing as of today. Much has been in the media about a "bump" for Bush. I see no real evidence of this as the poll-crunch plainly illustrates.

Approve: 36.5%
Disapprove: 58.5%
Duh: 5%

This has one of the lowest "Duh" ratings of any poll cruch. Very few undecided people in these polls. These number are derivedd from 7 national polls taken between 9-01-06 and 10-06-06. The spread on the Approval side ranges from a low of 33% to a high of 45%. The most recent polling from CNN/Wall Street Journal/ and NBC has him at 39%. This is down from a high of 42% two weeks ago.

Most positive poll: LA Times/Bloomberg of 9/16 has him at 45%
Least positive poll: Newsweek at 33%

My bellweather poll is the FOX/Opinion Dynamics poll and it places him at: 42% on 9/26

To anybody from the Clintonian school of politics this would be a disaster. To the bushleague they couldn't care less. They do not care how unpop[ular Bush is. All they want is enough of the true-believers to come out to vote to swing things their way. I am not sure if this calculation is going to come out in their favor this time.

Warriors One and All

I was watching Trinity Broadcasting Network. There was a nice Christian guy talking about how fun paintball was for everyone from Christian youth groups to Young Republicans. But there was a danger too. According to the church guy Jihadists are using paintball games to practice their jihadist ways. Behind the church-guy were a bunch of white Christian guys in white t-shirts and face masks shooting at each other with paint guns. I found this a little blindly hypocritical.

Here you have a bunch of religious fundamentalists practising shooting at each other with paintballs. How is this different? Oh yes, these are "our" fundamentalists. But it gets better and far more murky...

I am very much of an anti-war person. As far as fighting wars that we don't actually have to fight. I am all for getting the SOB's that want to attack us. That is cool. But Iraq is not the way to go about it. Anyway here is the murky part. After watching this hypocracy on the church channel I take my computer over to my brothers house and hook into a LAN game of Battlefield 2. Here we spend hours battling muslim armies and chinese armies killing as many of the badguys as we can.

The point is that these games are popular for all sorts of people. So is paintball. There are probably just as many liberal paintballers as righties. The desire to fight is part of the human condition. It is always lurking beneath our superfical civility. All little boys, big boys, and many girls, like playing WAR. There are some who question the ethics of people who like games like paintball or BF2. Does this predispose people to violence? Probably. My testosterone goes up when playing such games.

Major General Batiste

"We certainly had the troops necessary to win the fight to take down Saddam Hussein, but we in no way considered the hard work to win the peace. There was 10 years of good, deliberate war planning by U.S. Central Command that was essentially ignored."

"We went to war with a flawed plan that didn't account for the hard work to build the peace after we took down the regime. We also served under a secretary of Defense who didn't understand leadership, who was abusive, who was arrogant, who didn't build a strong team."

We are so F#$%'d and so are the poor Iraqi's

The Washington Post reported today on the Iraq Study Group and its recomendations about what we should be doing in Iraq: (It isn't good, not even a little bit, not even a tiny weeny bit)

Go to :http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/19/AR2006091901341.html
If you want to read the whole article

The synopsis goes something like this:

James Baker and Lee Hamilton represent the Iraq Study Group. A bunch of old politicians who want to help the US in its war in Iraq. They havebeen working diligently since March 15th of this year. So today that had a press conference

Q: Can the war in Iraq be won?

A: We're not going to make any assessments today about what we think the status of the situation is in Iraq

Q: Could they at least explain their definitions of success and failure in Iraq?

A: Baker -We're not going to get into that today
A: Hamilton -We've made no judgment of any kind at this point about any aspect of policy with regard to Iraq

Q: When will you report?

A: After the midterm elections

Q: Shouldn't the urgency be propelled by developments in Iraq rather than the calendar here?

A: We think it's more important, frankly, to make sure whatever we bring forward is taken, to the extent that we can take it, out of domestic politics

Q: How much were you able to leave the Green Zone while you were in Baghdad?

A: It was recommended to us that it would probably be something that we ought not to do but they were willing for us to do it if we insisted

Q: ..do you think Iraq is still winnable in any substantive sense, or is the issue for your panel now minimizing the scale of U.S. loss and the suffering the U.S. may have going forward?

A: Secretary Baker and I simply are not able at this point even to give you a good idea of where the study group exists with regard to recommendations

Q: Can you at least explain certain definitions?

A: That's the very question that Mr. Hamilton just said we're not going to get into

At the end of this total farce Lee Hamilton said, "The people of Iraq have the right to expect immediate action,"

Washingtons Swamp gass has killed off all the brain cells of our leaders. We are so F'd

The NEOCON Future of the World!

"Hey you! Yes you. Stop screwing around."

All of you are saved. I did this. You should really stop making life hell for yourselves and love each other. What gives? What will it take for you to catch a clue? A big miracle? Well you are a living miracle. You developed from hydrocarbons over billions of years on a little dirt clod in the midst of empty space to become self aware. You have the ability to change and have a moral compass should you chose to pay attention to it. For My sake mankind, get with the program. Remember you can be in Heaven or hell. Currently you are in the later. Though only by your own wishes. I am still confident that you will be with me. Not because you are particularly swift but since I am God and can pretty much save everybody I want to and I chose to save you.

Have a nice day

God

September 11, 2006

Our response to 9/11 has been to make matters much much worse. Negotiating with terrorists, putting them in power, selling them f-16's, inviting them to your house fo dinner, and letting them have billions of taxpayer dollars is no way to defeat them. All of this Bush has allowed. How in the hell can we trust this incompitent President to lead us to awywhere but disaster?

Prince Abdula of Saudi Arabia - gives lots of money to terorrists and like to visit Bush
We sold f-16's to Pakistan, a country that is admitting it gives safe haven to Taliban
We helped DAWA (hezbulha creator) and SCIRI (created by Iran) to get into power in Iraq
We have given billions into the hands of people in Iraq who simply take the money and vanish.

The best way to start to win this war is to fire the morons who are trying to prosecute it.

The Bush league is the problem.

Yellow Jackets

Today a 3rd grader at my daughters school decided he had had enough of the honets coming in and out of a little hole in the ground. So he took a pine cone and shoved it in the hole. This accomplished the following as related by KGW NEWS :

Eighteen youths and two adults were stung by wasps at an elementary school in Boring on Friday morning. The Boring Fire Department responded to a two-alarm medical call to Naas Elementary School, located just north of Highway 212. A group of 1st through 3rd graders were out at recess when the attack took place. Some children were stung multiple times. Two adults were stung while coming to the aid of the children.

-By FRANK MUNGEAM, kgw.com Staff

Okay here is another news line. See if you can figure out the parrelells? Come on..school is back in session:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Thirteen people, including a U.S. soldier, were killed over a 24-hour period in scattered attacks across Iraq, and 14 bodies showing signs of torture were found around the capital. A roadside bomb exploded Friday in central Baghdad, killing three people, including a mother and child, and wounding six, three of them police officers, Iraqi emergency police said. The attack appeared to target a police commander's convoy, a police official said. The American soldier died when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb while traveling south of Baghdad.

The number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq stands at 2,660 since the 2003 invasion. Seven American civilian contractors of the military also have died in the conflict.

The evil doer terrorilists are like Attila

And now a word from President Attila the Hun:

As of today AD 446 things look great. We are on our way to a new Hun Century. Our way of life is spreading like wildfire, and just about as destructively. So we can look forward to a new mellenium of Hun prosperity. No one will get in our way now. The world is our oyster. We can pretty much do whatever we want. I am sure that our continued greatness will go on and on....


AD 453: Attila is dead, his empire dies with him. The Huns settle down in eastern Europe though many go back eatward. So much for the New Hun Century.

Enough of lackluster non-leadership

The situation: global jihadist movement, that has the suicidal desire to inflict carnage on western nations, is at war with America.

This should be something that right and left can agree on.

Current Reaction: US needs to hit the enemy hard and where it counts. Unlike wars of the past that required massive engagements with land armies, navys, and massive air power, this war will only be won by winning small "quiet" battles. The right has a problem with law enforcement measures but this is really the only way these groups are stopped. In order to do this correctly civil liberties need to be realistic. We cannot stop jihadists without surveillance, and that has to be a series of nets going from broad nets to smaller nets. Filteration. Liberals hate this. So our war fighting capability is hamstrung by the right and left. The unfortunates caught taking up the slack is the foot soldier. The soldier, who may indeed by needed for small quite fights, is now over extended. Meanwhile the national threats still exist that would actually require large armed reponse. The Tiwan straight is still a potential flash point as is North Korea and even a neo-dictatorship in Russia. Large force deterance is at an all time low now since large potential national adversaries see us as bogged down in Iraq.

Path forward: Disengagement in Iraq is important for the afore mentioned reasons. However quick withdral is impossible and dangerous. An Afghanistan in the middle of the middle east is not a good thing. Even a totalitarian regime in Iraq would, in the short run, be better than anarchy. The best way to avoid this is to partner with neighboring states but this is problematice since they are dictatorships and theocracies. A large Egyptian/Turkish/Jordanian force would be more help. Such a force needs to be assembled under the auspices of the UN.

Intel gathering needs to be explained to the US citizen so they understand the scope, neccessity, and limits of what the government has to do. They also need to be given an end-game view so they know how the war is progressing. It must be unbiased and non-partisan. The American people are highly resilient and would be very willing to help their government if they thought they could trust it. Liberal and Conservative voices, and actions, have done nothing but destroy the citizens view of their national government.

More to come