Military service

A biographical note states that he "was recruited by the CIA in 1973 while in the U.S. Navy. He became part of an Outside Paramilitary Special Operations Group where he spent 8 of his 27 year career working against Narco Terrorists. Simmons spearheaded Deep Cover Intel Ops against some of the world's most dangerous Drug Cartels from Central and South America and the Middle East. In addition to working against Narco terrorists he ran Special Operations against Arms Smugglers, Counterfeiters, Cyber-terrorists and Industrial and Economic Espionage. His Deep Cover Intelligence Operations helped lead to the seizures of marijuana, cocaine and heroin with a combined value of over $1 Billion Dollars."[2]

"In 2004, under Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, he became a part of the Pentagon Outreach Program for Military and Intelligence Analysts. Simmons was one of the first outside Intelligence officers to visit GITMO (Guantanamo Bay, Cuba) in July, 2005 and again in July, 2006. Also in July, 2006 Simmons was given the distinguished honor and pleasure to serve as a consultant to the White House as they constructed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which was signed into law by President Bush in October 2006," it states.[2]

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Pentagon military analyst program

In April 2008 documents obtained by New York Times reporter David Barstow revealed that Simmons had been recruited as one of over 75 retired military officers involved in the Pentagon military analyst program. Participants appeared on television and radio news shows as military analysts, and/or penned newspaper op/ed columns. The program was launched in early 2002 by then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke. The idea was to recruit "key influentials" to help sell a wary public on "a possible Iraq invasion." [1]

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Wayne_Simmons

for a district judge in the Southern District of New York, and for an appellate judge on the Second Circuit. He spent some time as an associate at the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell. http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:r8XXdgnpongJ:www.brookings.edu/experts/chesneyr.aspx+%22robert+chesney%22+texas+clerk&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a . He was a law professor at Wake Forest Law School from 2002 on, before going to the University of Texas.

But never fear, he attended a five-day course at the Judge Advocate General's Legal Center & School at Charlottesville, and he has somehow acquired a TS/SCI clearance.

members of Congress (with a few exceptions, notably some African Americans) -- going to start reflecting this new view?

Every American president since Harry Truman (with the possible exception of the current president) has supported Israel.

I wish our current politicians would distinguish between U.S. and Israeli interests as much as Eisenhower did.

I wish it could be forced to practice separation of church and state, and equal protection.

or did they only become cults after they lost power?

(I remember reading a passage in Tacitus, I think it was, that described the Christians in whatever the Latin is for "cult".)

(recent news about the captured tanker trucks and the kidnapped journalists makes it clear that even Kunduz in the far north is far from secure), one must wonder when Bagram is going to fall to the Taliban.

This article in Ha'aretz reports the poll: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1117995.html:

Poll: 56% of American Jews think U.S. should strike Iran

One day ahead of talks in Geneva between Iran and six major powers - the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany - on Tehran's controversial nuclear program, a national poll finds that 56 percent of American Jews support a U.S. military strike against Iran.

The annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion, commissioned by the American Jewish Committee, revealed a 14 percent rise in the number of U.S. Jews in support of such a military strike, whose aim would be to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. 36 percent of those polled - self-described adult Jews ? were against such an attack.

Asked whether Israel should attack Iran, 66 percent of those polled said they would support such a move.

Until now, I didn't believe war with Iran was very likely. But this poll makes me think that politics may make it impossible for U.S. politicians to avoid attacking Iran -- or at least giving a green light to an Israeli attack on Iran.

Look what happened to him.

Who does that better characterize than the people now leading Israel and its c. 200 nukes?

then I guess Christians for 2,000 years must have been nut jobs. Funny they regarded the willingness of the kamikaze pilots to attack in a suicidal way as so outlandish.

have rejected the Enlightenment. They've rejected all modern belief in knowledge and scholarship.

characterizes the last thousand years of Christians -- a blanket characterization, not just of isolated individuals -- as murderous nutjobs is sane or paranoid.

And is it safe if a paranoid nation has c. 200 nukes, and is so intent on maintaining a regional nuclear monopoly that it threatens to go to war to preserve it?

about Muslim Iranians.

I take it you do not like what Christians have done to Jews. I still think it is very wrong to generalize from this to the idea that Christians in general are dangerous nut jobs. And I still appeal to people's own experience for them to judge for themselves how wildly irrational -- and dangerous -- your way of thinking is.

But forget Christianity. You do not seem impressed by Islam's -- and especially Iran's -- history of toleration of Jews either.

And that is supposed to justify characterizing Iranian leadership as ultrareligious nut jobs against whom it is justifiable to wage war to stop their getting nuclear weapons, just because Muslims too happen -- like Christians -- to believe in an afterlife?

Because that was Winsmith's point.