For those who wonder how we will wage a war against Iran given that our military is already stretched thin, I suggest that our present certifiably insane administration probably hopes a massive campaign of aerial bombardments--with low-yield nuclear weapons NOT excluded from the armaments used--will do the heavy work of bringing Iran to bay.

However, if heavy use of ground forces becomes necessary I also suspect they will reinstitute a draft to draw the necessary manpower. For those who doubt they could get away with this, I remind you of Li'l Butch's recently minted Executive Order in which he grants himself dictatorial powers "in the event of a national crisis," which you can be sure will be invoked if there is a national resistance to a draft. Hell, the crisis ignited by our attacking Iran might give the Drunkard-in-Chief cause to impose martial law.

I feel a horrible inevitability about the catastrophes coming our way--financial collapse, total war, suspension of (what remains of) Constitutional order and rule of law.

"Why why why the fuck would anybody want a pilotless plane?" indeed!

When I hear such talk I know the consumers are being had again...that it's the gleaming-eyed zeal of owners lusting after the excision from their books of yet another expense...more salaries to be wiped out, more profit to be nickel and dimed for themselves at the expense of all the rest of us.

Hell, I live in New York and when I hear talk of robot subway trains, no live person aboard--save, maybe, MAYBE, a conductor--I think, "these greedy fucks don't care about rider safety, and the city fathers who are willing to allow such a plan to go forward are obviously bought off lackeys." I've never heard any riders say they think driverless trains are a good idea.

I'm sure pilotless airplanes would be several orders of magnitude more difficult to realize, if even possible at all. And if the owners of the airlines want to see an exodus of travelers to rail travel, let them announce "For your convenience, we have...PILOTLESS PLANES! No longer will you have to endure the tedium of a pilot's announcements to the cabin, no longer will you suffer the worries that the pilot might be sleep-deprived, hungover, drunk, or crazy. You can relax and know that our computerized cockpit will take you thousands of feet into the air at speeds of hundreds of miles and throw you down to the ground without possibility of human error endangering you. A NEW ERA IN FLIGHT ENJOYMENT AND SAFETY HAS ARRIVED!"

In addition to the efforts by Ledeen, et al to assist Iran in obtaining weapons during a time when, ahem, Iran "was at war with us,"(sic), would it not also be treason for representatives of that administration--prior to their even having won the election--to engage in negotiations with "the enemy" to reject diplomatic resolution of the then ongoing hostage crisis with the sitting Carter administration, and to actually have the American hostages held for longer than they might have been, simply in order to better assure a Reagan victory at the polls?

Why should it matter if a military leader is active or retired, whether he or she is leading troops in battle or working a desk job at the Pentagon? Since when have military men or women of any rank accrued a sacred patina, rendering them out of bounds for criticism, derision, or attack? If we are free to vilify the fools, crooks, and poltroons that riddle our ranks of government, why should we refrain from similar free attacks on the military? This is the most obvious form of sentimental twaddle, that the men and women we send to face bullets and bombs on our behalf (or on the behalf of corporate or imperialistic interests) are too frail to withstand criticism, warranted or not, fair or unfair. Those who voice such shocked dismay at criticism of those in the military have no true respect for the military, but merely use them as sacred cows in a propagandistic attempt to promote their objectives or to condemn those who oppose those objectives.

And who says Petraeus was NOT acting as a political operative?

Thomas C.'s analysis of the breathtaking nature of Congress's vote for the Lieberman-Kyl amendment is chilling, but I question his ending comments where he says the Democrats were "duped again." Were they duped, or have they duped us? Do they really want to roll back--"if only only they had the votes" (sic)--the change in the balance of powers effected by this criminal regime? Or are they only all too happy to affirm their status as part of the club, the elite that rules this country in the end?

Despite minor and perhaps even merely cosmetic squabbles among themselves, don't we recognize, really, that the Dems--if they are not simply spineless quislings--see themselves not as an opposition party but as part of Congress, as ambitious, deceitful, power-hungry, and anti-Constitutional as the loathesome Republicans and their rotten leader?