But if you think for one moment that a religious zealot who is Allah's tool of destruction will spare anyone - man, woman, or child because we have treated people nicely or otherwise - then you do not understand the concept of Jihad.

If you think Saddam Hussein and the Baathist party ever embraced this religious doctrine, you must have had your head up your a** for the longest while.

but I do remember 4 contractors (security) who were killed, their bodies dragged in the streets, hung on a bridge and burned.

Nobody should have this happen to them.

But have you bothered to inquire what the contractors' general behavior in Fallujah and Iraq has been?

You should know that for a period of time (till about 2006 or so), the contractors were accountable to nobody. Neither US nor Iraqi law applied to them. And they used that to advantage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/opinion/08tue1.html

The NYT editors fear that the Supreme Court is set to strike down all limitations on corporations' political contributions.

There seems to be good reasons to fear this.

If this happens, as the NYT notes, the money power unleashed will swamp that of the individual citizens.

I predict further, that eventually corporations will then start monitoring their employees, suppliers, etc., to try to ensure that they are not opposing the corporation's political objectives. A condition of employment will be "non-compete" - even in the political arena. Corporations after all want to deploy their money efficiently.

If the NYT editors' worst fears come true, then that changes everything.

The person who wrote this is probably not a glibertarian:

"These are the same people who successfully promoted the ideas, which have no constitutional authority, that the federal government (1) can place its agents in locally owned airports to search passengers, (2) can ask the passengers to answer questions about themselves, (3) can insist that the local airports adopt a "security plan" that only the federal government can approve, (4) can determine which persons can have a "badge" to go onto your local municipal airports and to privately leased hangars and spaces at these non-federal airports, (5) can (try to) demand that you show a government identification card before you can board an in-country flight, (6) can create a "no-fly list" and claim to be able to determine who can and cannot fly on a privately owned airline in this country, (7) can get a court order allowing the seizure of personal information and property without supporting it with an affidavit made under penalty of perjury, and conduct secret searches and seizures, via the AntiPatriot Act, and on and on."

"Omar Samad, the Afghan ambassador to Canada, states that Afghanistan received “less than $80 per person per year for reconstruction over the past six years, as compared to $275 for Bosnians and $248 for people in East Timor”. According to the UN this is barely an improvement over the first two years of foreign intervention compared to the first two years in Bosnia and East Timor. “In the two years following international intervention, Afghanistan received $57 per capita, whilst Bosnia and East Timor received $679 and $233 per capita respectively.” "

You gotta love "Meet The Press". Every week we get to hear from the same revolving pool of 30 vetted DC mainstream media personalities on the issues of the day. Along with them- we get the same dozen DC politicians every week.

Isn't that show Press the Meat? Call it by its correct name please.

Via Wikipedia:

[In the late 60s] The military reached a strength of 98,000 (90,000 army and 8,000 air force) by this period.

1979:

"Before the PDPA takeover, according to military analyst George Jacobs, the armed forces included "some three armored divisions (570 medium tanks plus T 55s on order), eight infantry divisions (averaging 4,500 to 8,000 men each), two mountain infantry brigades, one artillery brigade, a guards regiment (for palace protection), three artillery regiments, two commando regiments, and a parachute battalion (largely grounded). All the formations were under the control of three corps level headquarters. All but three infantry divisions were facing Pakistan along a line from Bagram south to Khandahar."[11] "