Letters to the Editor
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I vote Ron Paul for....
The Surgeon General Sneeze ~No~ podiatrist?
W.T. for hooping-cough-green-leaf stained!
Bad breath teeth dentist with dirty fingernails.
Ron Paul for foot washer and sneezing atheist?
Mr. Huclkeberry for the new pastor Dingleberry.
Good Night.
Too silly.
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why they cave
maybe because they're dealing with the kind of people who send anthrax in the mail?
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Wow pow wow
Just before I posted my question I had copied 8 pages of your recent letters and printed them out for careful study. I had also done a quick search of several terms (reverse, 2248, 3773, etc.), but didn't see any matches within those posts.
I poked around the ACLU site last week and found lots of info, but I never found a side by side comparison of the two bills. I will also check out Feingold's site (thanks for that idea).
However, my next item of business is to wrap my mind around all of things you described and transcribed in your recent posts.
Nice job!
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apologies. I'll go. felix the cat wants garden mushroom pie for vim and vigor.
Pay attention to Glenn's serious desire for transparent leadership. Serious.
I'll go play with a squeeze toy to alleviate today's accumulated bad stress.
In DC those who visit the sophisticated prostitutes hand out name cards.
The identification card says if you sneeze post-screwing me ~ Bless you.
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@ casual_observer
-There's a Greenwald update up top, the 4 year may be 2 year, based on TPM reporting. Government surveillance may not have "gone dark", but the sausage-grinding in the Congress sure has...-
Thanks. I found that as well, after I commented.
I dare say two years is better than four or six. Small comfort.
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@ walter_map
Well, honestly, I think that there's a vast difference between what they'd like to do, what they might attempt to do, and what they can get away with doing.
Just two or three observations in that regard: First, I think that George Bush would have preferred not to have been so obvious in the way he lied us into the Iraq war. I think he would also have preferred not to have had the extraordinary renditions of the CIA exposed, or the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. I also believe that his attempts to gut social security, and pass an immigration bill favorable to his corporate allies were sincere, and not just some sort of inept pandering. What I conclude from these observations, and others, is that he and his ideological allies are at least as incompetent as they are malevolent.
I know that many here are convinced, given how much of GWB's agenda seems to have gone unchallenged, that these gaffes are simply an indication of GWB's complete success, that he and his counselors and allies need have no qualms about showing public contempt for anyone who opposes them, and need not be bothered with what once were obligatory fig leaves.
Perhaps, but anyone with a shrewd sense of history -- as shrewd as GWB et al. are supposed by our doomsayers to possess -- should understand that such openness is risky unless you're absolutely certain that all your enemies are impotent. Even if they are, a brazen show of power when it isn't necessary runs the risk of creating enemies where none previously existed. The Greeks understood this; so did Sun Tzu.
Yes, some say, but this situation is without historical precedent. Nonsense, in my opinion. Those who believe this either don't know much history, or have willfully misunderstood it.
I would also say that our present economic difficulties are not, as some insist, a clever ploy to make us all helplessly dependent on our masters, but a result, rather, of throwing two trillion dollars down a Middle Eastern rathole without understanding either the economic or political consequences of doing so. Spain would have her Armada despite royal counselors who at the time were deemed the cleverest of the age. Sadly, they are not held to be so clever nowadays.
Frankly, I see the issue as still being in doubt, and the right-wing and all its sad and craven enablers trembling on the brink of their comeuppances. The damage to the rest of us may well be severe, but even the devil himself is as clever as some commenters here believe our current crop of imperialists and authoritarians to be. As GoodCelery! has remarked once again on this thread, neither the gods nor nature are mocked, not for long anyway.
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@ JackieBinAZ
-maybe because they're dealing with the kind of people who send anthrax in the mail?-
Thats what I had in mind...and have thugs posing as intelligence officials in their employ who post high-alert false security threats at critical moments such as that preceding the August break.
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@ William Timberman
-What I conclude from these observations, and others, is that he and his ideological allies are at least as incompetent as they are malevolent.-
An excellent point. Its at least as much incompetence as it is hubris (and a huge dollop of hypocrisy) as illustrated by the recent Vanity Fair article by David Rose, The Gaza Bombshell.
"After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleeza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever."
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804
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Purpose
Since the type of war being waged is a preemptive limited perpetual war there is no requirement for victory, because it would end the war. Before the spread of ICBMs world wars provided economic stimulus that lasted over half a century following the Second World War. Since world war among the nations with the most nuclear missiles would result in a disaster of epic proportions, it is no longer reasonable to engage in this type of war. Limited wars are not all out war. The U.S. could destroy Iraq completely if were not for the nightmarishly high loss of life. Therefore, enough troops remain engaged in a state of equilibrium unable to win, but determined not to lose.
Most people perceive wars to have a reason for beginning, effective strategies and tactics for engagement with the enemy, and a known method of extracting forces depending upon diplomatic gains and or military control that brings war to an end. The best generals end the violence; their role is not to cause violence without end. The rape, pillage, and plunder method employed in the beginning of the invasion did nothing for the concept of "winning hearts and minds". Unfortunately that is not the intent. For productivity and profits equivalent to the stimulus of world war the limited war must be perpetual.
Many Americans would be disappointed to learn that their sons and daughters are being sacrificed in a war calculated not to be won. By accepting a minimal loss of American soldiers' lives and major losses of the enemy without it giving the appearance of genocide the war can last as long as it is profitable. Most demoralizing is the concept of war without end, because eventually it degrades the quality of life in one's own society, regardless of the outcome of the war. The unattainable goal is to end the occupation with uncompromising objectives achieved. An unrealistic desired outcome provides the justification to continue in the same direction, by the same means when proven historically to be ineffective.