Is there any chance that drugs are involved? Is the LW's dad using drugs? Is his second wife? Is his sponging son-in-law?

If drugs are involved, there's not point in trying to make sense of it. Irrational fiscal behavior is par for the course.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the US military and the local Iraqi communities where American men are stationed took steps to start allowing love and relationships between young American soldiers and local, young Iraqi women? What better is there to foster compassion, empathy and understanding between Iraqis and Americans than through the power of love?

We could loosen up the rules for granting visas to Iraqi ladies with boyfriends in the American military. We could take steps to make weddings between American GIs and Iraqi ladies quick, easy, efficient and inexpensive.

Imagine how wonderful it would be to have thousands of Iraqi "war brides" here at home in the US, promoting love and understanding between the American people and our Muslim cousins in Iraq and throughout the rest of the Islamic world.

Make love, not bombs!

Do it!

I seem to recall seeing several collections of 18th century Indian erotica wherein acts of lesbianism were graphically portrayed. I've assumed that there is a respectable place in Indian culture for healthy homosexuality.

The fact that the parents cited were able to transcend their initial misgivings is a reflection of that historical tolerance.

A few days later, an Iraqi diplomat working for the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in Baghdad tells me: "First al-Qaida came in and said, 'We will give you $200 to place an IED.' Then the Americans came in and said, 'We will give you $200 not to place an IED.' You get some amount of money and you don't have to do anything for it.

Unfortunately, too many choose to take $200 to NOT plant the bomb yet plant it anyway.

Your point raises a question for me...

Is the "blood feud" system of honor and revenge explicable through general laws of economics, or is it an aberration?

This is yet another masterpiece of uncomfortable insight by Chris Hedges. Thank you, Salon, for printing the excerpt. Thank you, Chris Hedges for writing and sharing it. I've read your previous books - I will most certainly read this new one as well.

What a bizarre article - an apologia for boorishness. The author cites post-Soviet exuberance three times in the article as an "excuse" for behavior that I daresay most of us middle-class folks in the US reading Salon find inexcusable. Post-Soviet exuberance? It's been nigh TWENTY YEARS since the Soviet Union collapsed. How long should we cling to this event as justification for what many would simply call gross-assholism?

The article failed to mention the role that organized crime plays in this theater of obscene consumption. Does a single Russian oligarch exist who doesn't at least rub elbows with the Russian criminal underworld? Indeed all the riches produced by GAZPROM, et al represent massive theft from the Russian people.

To the author: Don't be starstruck. They may be billionaires, but the beds they sleep in aren't any more comfortable than the one you sleep in. The food they eat isn't any more delicious than your own.

Since pharmacists are licensed by the states they work in AND Americans are obliged to purchase prescription medication through licensed pharmacies/pharmacists, the pharmacists should be compelled to handle and sell any/all medications that their customers seek. Failure to do so should be punished by revocation of their license(s). This should be a simple matter: If you are a licensed pharmacist in [insert your state name here], you must dispense any/all medications prescribed to your customers. You have every right to personally and religiously reject the sale of birth control, for example, but those rights are trumped by the requirements of your licenses position in the eyes of the state.

Some day the regular folks in Iran will rise up and regain control over their society and its laws. Is this repressive bullshit really as bad as it sounds? Yes, it is.

Iran wants it all: it wants to be accepted as a modern, progressive nation. It wants to be accepted as a modern Islamic state... It also allows the narrowest-minded brutal petty religious figures to legislate the whys and hows of everyday human existence in the country. To an American, the idea of being punished for revealing too much hair or ankle is incomprehensible.

There are too many people in Iran who are nothing short of evil religious fanatics - and they have far more power in Iranian society than they deserve.

The rest of the normal folks in Iran are believers in Islam but also modern citizens of the global economy who realize that exposing a bit of female flesh isn't criminal.

Someday the normal folks - people just like you and me - will regain control of the country and pull it in the right direction.

One hopes that our own American government will react to this change properly when it takes place and embrace the new Iran as friends - not enemies.