13% of the American public wanted to wage a war of independence against Britain. The richest 13%, naturally.

Britain viewed our actions, then and now, as ungrateful. Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock were the terrorists of their day.

But these individuals are our heroes, then and now.

What our OCCUPATION of Iraq has accomplished is the mass exodus of nearly every educated, considerate individual from the country and left behind every angry, radical, spitting mad street fighter with a huge chip on their shoulder.

Why would these people have chips on their shoulders?

Try reviewing the history of WWI critically. I think you will discover that it wasn't about Archduke Ferdinanand, it was about the oil in Iraq and the British Navy's need for that oil. But you will have to dig because neither the Brits nor the Americans WANT you to know the truth in this matter. They want you to go on believing that you're dealing with the savages that our systematic abuse has manufactured.

Leaving the wire once a week and interacting with the Iraqis makes you a diplomat, not a soldier. Soldiers are leaving the wire EVERY F*KING DAY and coming back in pieces because this is a real war with the real stench of burning blood and red mist.

You are being held hostage by this corrupt, filthy, lawless administration. You are being traumatically abused and dehumanized on a daily basis whether you are engaging the enemy or not. Therefore, your judgment is NOT what it would be if you were stateside, out of harm's way and able to freely choose an idea other than "shut up and hang on."

No, our occupation doesn't change human nature. If the roles were reversed, you know damn good and well you would be fighting tooth and nail to get the occupiers out of your country.

Sunnis and S'hia, Baptists and Catholics, Catholics and Protestants -- it doesn't matter. The problem is organized religion and its capacity to chemically corrode the cerebral cortex of the human brain.

Get your happy ass, and those of your friends, the hell out of there safe and sound. We can argue the finer points of right and wrong in the safety of a Starbucks or a Waffle House.

Or a VA hospital. I'm in all three.

The truth always wins whether humans ever believe in it, or not.

Your buddy Bush is a friggin' idiot, his administration hopelessly corrupt, and the entire Middle East policy a pack of lies. It has always been about the OIL and it always WILL BE, until we have something new and interesting to fight over.

Just as an aside, I understand you have to get approval before you blog now...so are your commanding officers approving your every word of, "good news?" Such a turn of events makes you, as a source, highly suspect. Like a hooker at a sailor's convention.

Soldiers are not supposed to be diplomats. It is ignorant to use them in that way because it places them at a diplomatic disadvantage before they even open their mouths.

All putting soldier's in the wrong job category does is set them up to be defeated -- dead or mortally mentally impaired --which is what the geniuses up at the Pentagon wanted in the first place. They don't want ANY of you to come back whole or alive because once you've seen the business end of their actual policy, you become a liability to them. Like John Kerry became.

God damnit, major combat operations are over, according to your commander and chief! They ended YEARS ago. So did their willingness to give a rip whether any of you or your buddies live or die.

If you have to CLAW your way out of there, do it. Frag your butt all the way into Jordan and into Canada. You don't have a difficult, challenging mission -- you have an impossible mission that can only end with your personal defeat and someone else's extraordinary financial gain. Not the American people's financial gain, Dick Cheney's financial gain. Period.

Marine General Smedley Butler. He's the only soldier of merit who's ever made sense to anyone in the last 100 years. Hear his words well and get your ass out of there. You are overworked and underpaid. At least back home you won't be living with the constant threat of getting shot at or blown up on a daily basis. Not yet, anyway.

...I was dismayed at some of Olbermann's fawning praise of Republicans as, "regal," and somehow more worthy than their Democratic opponents.

Actually, I was more than dismayed -- I was shocked.

No one, it seems, escapes the fishing net of the mainstream media machine.

I remember when we used to have a Constitutionally protected fourth estate in the country. Alas, it looks as bad, if not worse, than the heydays of Pravda.