Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 1324 Editor's Choice: 20
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Dark truths
[Read the article: The dark truth about Blackwater]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Still "winning their hearts and minds", I see.
Some people are still unclear on the concept. The real purpose of these contract killers is not really to "provide security". According to a couple of high-ranking wingnuts (you can guess which ones if you like) they actually have a number of related purposes.
First, it's pork for Bush supporters in the MIC. Iraq was conquered for oil and war profiteering. War is good for business, if you're politically connected and in the right business. But you knew that.
Second, the administration is fighting a guerilla war. The only way to win against guerilla tactics is to brutalize the population into submission and persuade the people to capitulate and give up their support of the guerillas, because they can't operate without it. Regular army can't operate this way because they have rules of engagement and a responsible chain of command. Mercenaries can.
Third, it's training for when they get home. Eventually they'll be used against Americans who may be resentful about being bankrupted in a formerly democratic country with a suspended Constitution. There could be a large number of such ungrateful Americans in the near future in a variety of likely scenarios.
Think about it. If Bush really wanted a democratic and peaceful Iraq, and not just a puppet to squeeze, he would have done things much differently. On the other hand, if the intention had been to conquer and pillage and get set up to do more of it to nearby countries in the future, he'd be doing exactly what he is doing.
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More dark truth.
[Read the article: The dark truth about Blackwater]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bush is already demanding an extra $200 billion for next year. He still has some largess to pass around to his buddies.
Who knows what they actually do with all these trillions that get shoveled at them. Even Rumsfeld was concerned that a couple of trillion seems to have fallen through the cracks over the years.
A trillion here, a trillion there. Pretty soon you're talking about real money. Rounded off to the nearest hundred billion. Singled-digit billions are just chump change.
Bush: "Gimme gimme gimme or the troops get it. And it'll be your fault."
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Do this.
[Read the article: The workers I supervise are out of control]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Require all the women to have their periods on the same day on the month. Then take that day off.
Just kidding!
Cary's advice is very sound management psychology, so far as it goes, but it does not go far enough.
I'm delighted that Cary has advised Our Manager to "lavish praise". But he must also help Our Devoted Staff to work out their difficulties, personal and technical, and do it personally. This shouldn't be overt. It should be done incidentally, while he's doing his occasional walk-arounds.
You want people to do what you want, knock themselves out for you, go the extra mile, put off their own stuff and grossly exceed your expectations? Become supremely competent at everything everybody does, and learn how to suck up to your reports.
You do this, the very waters will part for you. Guaranteed.
Of course, your funding gets cut off just as you're knocking down those milestones ahead of schedule and coming in way under budget, but that's just business, ain't it?
Then what do you do?
You move to Shanghai and write scruffy think pieces that get published in obscure British journals, fall in love with an underage almond-eyed beauty who runs off with a guy in the Australian merchant marine, and end up hanging yourself by your typewriter ribbon.
I must know ten guys this has happened to. Very tragic.
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Keep in mind as you read this article, that
[Read the article: The presidential primary scam]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Soviet Union used to do pretty much the same thing - except they had just one party, the Communist party, instead of two.
Other than that there really isn't much difference. It seems that both parties would prefer a Soviet-style, single-party "democracy" to the two-party system.
The process isn't nearly so simple as Scherer describes, as it omits discussion of the domination of special interests on both parties, particularly corporatists and militarists, in favor of this particular view. Special interests ensure that we vote for the candidates who have the best funding. Ultimately we vote for the candidates preferred by the moneyed and powerful in the ruling classes.
So they do let us "vote", but that's mostly just to make it look good.
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Neoconservatives
[Read the article: The ADL purports to respond again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And their friends, radical militant Zionists, are characterized as much or more by blatant hypocrisy as by their imperviousness to reality and outright lying, the traits with which they're more usually associated.
Nobody seems to have noticed that many Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians are also Semites, which makes Zionists rather vastly more anti-Semitic than anybody they could smear. Zionists don't want you to notice this hypocrisy either.
We're still waiting for justice to be served on behalf of the victims of the USS Liberty, by the way. Zionist terrorist attacks that aim to exterminate Americans appear to be quite acceptable, as are ethnic cleansing, assassinations and mass murder of civilians and POWs, and just about every other war crime on the books.
This article merely scratches the surface of entire national policies built on nothing but hypocrises.
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Reminder.
[Read the article: The liberal news media]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you weren't rah rah rah for the Bush administration, and the war, you were considered unpatriotic, even treasonous.
Does this remind you of anybody?
Maybe it should:
"A good leader must have the steadiness to accuse any critic of undermining the Leader's efforts and aiding and abetting the enemy...
"Criticism of the Leader must be equated with treason...
"...if the situation is there, the Leader must eliminate the critics..."
Adolph Hitler
Still, Bushites obviously aren't Nazis.
Bushites don't speak German.