I don't know how this myth of America as "good guy" of the world has persisted for so long. I believe the rest of the world has already seen through the myth sometime around the Korean war or at least in Viet Nam. But somehow the US citizens still believe that this country stands for high and lofty principels, principles we violate daily, such as human rights, equality ect. When will people wake up and see that America has been sold to heartless corporate interests long ago and is not an ailing hegemon on the verge of collapse? That is unless the American people say ENOUGH and we get a modicum of legitimacy back on the world stage.

IMPEACH BUSHB AND CHENEY NOW

sub sole sub umbra virens

If just one oe Bush's extended family, some thirty or more, would join in the "... most important international conern of our time" maybe we could half-believe the Coward-In-Chief.

Until anyone related to That Man In The White House engages his twins to do their duty for America we should let the military do without our manpower.

Maybe at age 56 I have lived long enough to see history repeat. The same lies: 2006 and 1966. Send more

troops and victory is ours. When will we be picking out the designer of the Iraq War Memorial on the

Mall in D.C.? What name will be on the last panel of that memorial? What U.S. city will have largest

"Little Bagdad" in 2012?

I told my two sons when they were teenagers "Be carefull for whom and what you die for". I told them our friends were once our big enemy and our former enemy is now our big friend. More then 58,000 of my cohorts are now dead forever for a war that was a mistake. Some "B" school graduate tonight is in a 5 star hotel in Ho Chi Min City. He is there to negotiate a deal for 4 million widgets to made by our former enemy. The biggest problem he will have in his visit will be the mellon was not

quite ripe at breakfast.

Our cannon fodder is now the bottom 50% of the high school graduating class. Do not revive the draft, the government would just look for another war where Exxon could make more profit.

An Army of One!

General Pettite told Congress simply: "The military is broken," barely suppressing the emotions he felt in making that declaration. Al Gore called the invasion "the worst strategic blunder in American history," a point of view echoed by many foreign policy realists.

Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican veteran of Vietnam, warns that "Our ongoing deployment in Iraq is debilitating our military force structure. We are decimating the most powerful fighting force the world has ever known."

One study cited in the article states flatly that American military forces have sunk to readiness levels not seen since the end of the Vietnam War. I believe, however, that our present position much more closely mirrors England's at the end of the Second World War than it does our own at the end of the Vietnam conflict.

Britain entered the Second World War as the undisputed ruler of an empire so vast they rightly claimed the sun never set on the British Empire. They were the mightiest power the world had seen up to that time and completely dominated world affairs. Yet they ended that war broke, heavily indebted, it's military in tatters and it's empire crumbling.

The bloody and costly binge this president has set us on may yet prove as costly to our own future. As Senator Hagel states, "we are only beginning to understand the astounding cost and time it will take to rebuild our force structure."

The war in Iraq is already lost. All that remains is to try to contain the damage - to the region, our allies and to our own future. The question no longer is "How do we save Iraq?" The question of our time has become: "How do we save America?

If McCain and other Neocon dead-enders were serious about a military "victory" in Iraq, they'd have to publicly endorse the two criteria that would be necessary for victory to even be remotely possible: a draft and tax increases to pay for this misbegotten debacle.

Either proposition would be political suicide.

The American people will not willingly sacrifice their sons for this misadventure, and even the most die-hard flag-waving right-wingers will balk at tax hikes to pay for it.

McCain's hardline "Go Big" posturing is just shameless pandering to the rubes.

Oh, come on now...

The U.S. has 1.4 Million Active Duty military members, and probably one million or more Guard and Reserve soliers.

We could easily put 500,000 troops in Iraq to win that war, AND have 500,000 more invade Iran, AND have 500,000 more to topple the Chonger's regime in North Korea and create a Unified Korea...all during the same timespan (next ten years, possibly 20 or 30).. We would still have hundreds of thousands of troops left over for natural disaster relief and huminatarian operations and small-scale military contingencies around the world.

Why do you think people volunteered to join the military...to fight for their country! We have big issues to seetle, and we have a big military to do it! It's time to pull everyone out from behind their desks, order them to stop working the Toys for Tots programs, tell them to put down thei personnel awards packages and installation excellence awrd staff summary sheets, get them on the rifle range, and ship them out to do the jobs they joined to do.

Do we citizens pay 500 Billion dollars a year to fund well over a couple of million military warriors then sit back passively and hear them whine that they can't suatin a mere 140,000 troops in Iraq??? No! Pack up your field rations, tents, bvackpacks, chem gear, and deploy and do the job! Do we think these people joined and get paid big bucks to train forever behind the fencelines of their state-side military bases and watch Monday Night Football and Survivor after their duty days end???? No, it is Go-Time...Quintuple the Defense Department budget, equip and train our forces the right way, and show some backbone and send them out into the world to create and enforce PAX Americana, 21st century-style.

I'm not saying that peoples' hair wouldn't get mussed...10 to 20 million casulties, tops, over 10-20 years...most of these casulties the people whom we will save from themselves...the people who didn't have the brains, inclination, and intestinal fortitude to fix their own problems. With proper contractor support and expertise, the war and Marshall-Plan-type rebuilding efforts would easily come in under $100 Trillion over 25 years, tops. We will recoup our investments in spades by importing cut-rate good from our re-imagined former enemy countries and selling them millions of Chevy and Ford SUVs to inculcate them into the American Dream. Glorious!