Thank you for your post. Its worth seeing again:

A little perspective about Senator McCain's foreign experience: McCain still maintains, as he always has, that the USA should have and could have won the war in Vietnam. This is the bedrock of his “experience”. This is what we know about that. His experience in Vietnam was 22 bombing runs over Vietnam and one unsuccessful run where he was shot down, imprisoned and tortured for 5.5 years in Hanoi. His experience in Vietnam is analogous to an Afghani fighter captured in Afghanistan and put in Guantonimo for 5.5 years. That Afghani would understand as much about the USA and its people as McCain learned in his experience about the Vietnamese. (The biggest difference in those two experiences is that McCain actually killed thousands—which may make his torture by the Vietnamese more understandable.)

If McCain had studied the history of Vietnam he would know we should never have waged that war and would never have succeeded. If he had studied the history of that nationalistic war for independence he would have realized the immoral nature of his bombing runs. The Vietnamese have been successfully beating back foreign invaders for the last 1000 years in the same way they defeated us.

do you know how depressing your Odom post was? here we have someone who if they were per impossible to become president could apparently really change things for the better and instead we have to go with lesser qualified folk or even unqualified ones for various irrational factors . . .

standard operating procedure

your questions seem to me to be passing strange. "Will they be as quick to shoot at checkpoints if Obama is elected." Well, I imagine they shoot when they think, mistakenly or otherwise, that their life is in danger. And you ask if they would be so quick to kill civilians if obama was president. Do you think s9ldiers are as it were primed to kill civilians? I was taught in basic training that to do that would be unlawful, that I would go to jail for it. In officer's basic course we had units of study on war crimes and what makes up a lawful and unlawful order. People go nuts everywhere, and I would imagine a war is a little stressful and people might be liable to go off the deep end a little more easily there, but that is still what it would be. Am I to imagine all non-military suspect because they too commit murders and crimes? The people I spent my time in the military with were in the overwhelming majority thoughtful and careful people, to a far higher percentage than I have found in any other field I have worked in. As someone who spent a lot of time in the military your words sound strange and out of touch.

I went to a move on org demonstrateion the other day with my kids. We stood there and held up a sign that said: support the troops, bring them home. One of the move on people came over and asked: why are you holding up that sign? Don't you know the troops are volunteers who volunteered to kill? When I told her I had been a soldier, what did you think of me, she said: that you were a volunteer murderer too. She then stalked off to the other side of the street to wave her sign.

Will they be less likely to kill civilians if obama is president? I reject the premise of the question (that they are even likely to kill as some sort of sop.)

you said: "RMP, do you think the troops in Iraq will be just as inspired to patriotic valor by a Commander-in-Chief Obama as they were by President Bush?"

well, I was in the army reserve for twenty years, going from private to captain, and I never met anyone inspired in any way by the the politicians or who even gave much of a damn about the colonels and the generals. Usually you care about the people around you, your unit. I think if you asked a lot of guys and they knew you could keep it to yourself they would tell you to piss on valor inspired by a commander in chief, no matter who that guy was. At the level I was at, private to captain, politics was of no real effect (above captain it seemed to get political to me, and by the time you hit general it really seemed those bastards had turned into politicians.

That was my experience, anyway.

As a Black man whenever I get the courage I read Black American History afterwards I am also so angry or exhausted I simply fall asleep when I wake up of course nothing has changed externally but I still must wake up..

Yes. Sometimes I teach a class with a colleague on Native American history and thought. In a good part of it we simply expose students to a straightforward account of the history based on eyewitness accounts. After class it is often like we are all, students and teachers, shell-shocked. I always feel this urge to run out to the flag pole and pull down the flag and put it back up to fly upside down. And scream and scream.

Look at all the ugly puss and such that spews forth. You have

a strong stomach, Glenn. I think of you as wearing the logical equivalent of a hazmat suit.

"I get so confused."

You and me both, buddy: you and me both.

go check out the wiki on her: amazing lady.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannette_Rankin

I plan on finding out about Rankin.

sweet dreams.

"the conscienceless prophets, both political and military who, boldly promising victory, prolong the war, and behind them the hired chorus, the 'word makers of war'"

does anyone else feel like howling in agony today?