Telling The Truth

Was it just yesterday? Or the day before? That senile warmonger John McInsane had the big brass balls to tell Barack Obama he was going to instruct Obama about how peaceful Iraq was and how things are going so fucking well in Iraq?

Let's see, here's a few pertinent spittle-fleckings:

[...] McCain added, he [Obama, Ed.] will change his position on the war because of the success the U.S. is having there. “Sen. Obama was driven to his conclusion by ideology, not by the facts on the ground,” McCain said. “Success in Iraq is undeniable.”

The Seattle Times responds with an editorial that basically informs McInsane of what everyone else with a working brain cell already knows: the aged, cranky, nasty old Republican nominee is fuller of shit than a constipated cow. A pertinent snippet:

McCain is having a jolly time pretending he is the only candidate with enough cachet and experience to lead the U.S. on military matters, even offering to squire Obama around Iraq.

McCain's posturing would be silly one-upmanship if the costs of the war in Iraq and at home were not so enormous and never-ending. McCain has the wrong position. He supports continued military involvement in Iraq. Obama, more credibly, vows to end the war and bring troops home.

Kudos to the editorial writer! More than two-thirds of the American electorate is utterly sick and tired of this bogus war. Bombing the helpless populace of a small country that has done nothing to us is nothing less than a war crime. A war crime that has, incidentally, destroyed our economy and is threatening the combined economy of the rest of the world.

Does anybody remember the last time McInsane went to Iraq? March of this year. Protected by about 100 Marines, in full body armour, with helicopter gunships overhead, McInsane was photographed (at taxpayers' expense, of course) strolling about in Baghdad, proclaiming it safe. The old geezer conveniently forgot to mention to anyone during his recent spittle-flecked rant that his army escort would not let him go to the Shorja market where he had his picture taken last year, because it was "too unsafe."

Of course, someone who can't tell Sunni from Shi'a and doesn't even know how many troops we have in Iraq is hardly the authority on the war. If only fate wasn't tempted to give the old man the smackdown every time he opens his mouth and switches feet. Pertinent snippet:

McCain's comments about Mosul being "quiet" have also been criticized. On the day he made them, 30 Iraqis were killed by suicide bombings in the Mosul area.

Meanwhile, the town of Hit, near Baghdad, didn't want to be left out of the rush to smear a little egg on the erstwhile candidate's face. A suicide bomber in that town, no doubt having read or heard McLame's comments, rushed off to glory, taking ten people with him and wounding 12 others.

McLame displayed his usual tin ear on the issue:

McCain, speaking to reporters in Milwaukee, refused to acknowledge a mistake, saying that "I said we have drawn down. And we have drawn down."

Gee, where have we heard that refusal to admit making a mistake before? Oh, yeah, the previous two terms of Gee Dumbya Pumpkinhead.

In an attempt to defend the senile warmonger, his advisers said the flap amounted to nothing more than "nitpicking" about "verb tenses."

"It is the essence of semantics," said a frustrated Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top foreign policy adviser, on a conference call organized by the campaign. "We're having this call about a verb tense."

Wow, they sure have learned their lessons well. They're borrowing from the arsenal of Karl Rove and Bill Clinton. Next they're going to tell us what the definition of "is" is. Good work, kids! No, let's rephrase that: Heckuva Job, Johnny!

In other convincing evidence of the peacefulness of Iraq, thousands of Iraqis turned out to protest the U.S. presence. Intelligence (a quality Mr. McInsane seems dreadfully short on) officials announced today that our progress in Iraq basically sucks wet monkey ass. The scheduled elections are already getting the Sunni mad at each other. Progress! Peace! Missing Limbs! Awakening Councils!

Is there anyone in Iraq that we haven't pissed off yet? Well, maybe McInsane's definition of "progress," "success," "drawdown," and so forth are not exactly the same as Merriam-Webster's or Oxford's OED, or, let's be honest, any fucking body else's.

Tell the truth, Mr. McCain. If you remember how that's defined any more, that is. And don't forget to tell all those American servicemen being blown up in Iraq and Afghanistan why you refuse to sign Jim Webb's GI Bill that would give them better benefits than the pile of steaming crap the Bush misadministration's been trying to feed them for the past X years.

Crossposted over at ThePoliticalCat

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Happy 5th Anniversary of "Suck On This" Day!

We would be remiss today, if we didn't let the bubbly flow ...

Raise one up to one of our favorite, flat-headed pundits.

Yes, the title honoree of the "Friedman Unit", Thomas Friedman, celebrates today his bold foreign policy observation, as to our illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Or, as Atrios puts it;

Five years, or 10 F.U.s, ago today, America's leading foreign affairs public intellectual explained the Iraq war to us.

From Think Progress;

FRIEDMAN: You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society. You think this bubble fantasy, we’re just going to let it grow? Well, suck on this, ok. That Charlie, is what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could. That’s the real truth.

Jane Hamsher, over on Firedoglake, writes of future "Suck On This Days";

Folks of Middle Eastern descent will still be pissed that Americans thought it was acceptable to invade their country on false pretenses, slaughter their people and continue to revere a pundit who thought "Suck on this" was an appropriate expression of America's foreign policy.

Thomas Friedman Sums Up the Iraq War: "Suck. On. This."



What made Sammy run was shoes ...

What makes The Friedman Unit man tick? ... Who knows, although The Garlic did have one possible inkling;

"Thomas Freidman, Clearly, Is Eating Lead-Painted Toys From His Flat World Economy!"

Anyway ...

Happy Suck On This Day!


Bonus Friedman Suck On This Day Links

Charlie Rose: May 30, 2003

Barry Crimmins: Time's up for Thomas L. Freepass

David Rees: Thomas Friedman "Suck-on-this" Anniversary Celebratory Book Excerpt!

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Time to unleash the hounds on pro-war Dems

Writing about the recent House vote against more Iraq war funding, The Nation notes that growing numbers of Democrats in Congress are finding it safer to vote to stop funding the endless war and occupation. Susannah Vila writes:

Since March 2006, eighty Democrats have switched to voting no on war funding, due in part to persistent lobbying by local constituents and peace groups. After voting for funding as recently as December, veteran Democrats like John Dingell and Dale Kildee changed their votes in response to pressure from United for Peace and Justice's Michigan Peace Action Chapter. "They are riding the wave," says UFPJ's Sue Udry of the additions to the nay camp. "Now it's safe to vote against the war. There had been pressure on them from their districts, but it had been building slowly. The grassroots peace movement has been hounding Congress for years, and finally it pushed them over." The lesson of the May 15 vote? "The strength of the peace movement is people's willingness to keep hounding."

The appropriations bill is coming back for a House vote soon, since $193-billion for the war was restored by the Senate. It will almost certainly pass the House this time; it failed last time not only because Dems voted no, but because many Repubs, mostly angry about procedural issues, voted "present" instead of aye. That's unlikely to happen again.

But last time around, while 147 Democrats were voting against more war spending, 85 Democrats in the House voted for the bill. If hounding works, these folks need to be hounded a lot more:

Jason Altmire, Brian Baird, John Barrow, Melissa Bean, Shelley Berkley, Howard Berman, Marion Berry, Sanford Bishop, Dan Boren, Rick Boucher, Allen Boyd, Nancy Boyda, Corrine Brown, Christopher Carney, Donald Cazayoux, Ben Chandler, James Clyburn, Jim Cooper, Jim Costa, Jerry Costello, Bud Cramer, Henry Cuellar, Lincoln Davis, Susan Davis, Artur Davis, Norman Dicks, Joe Donnelly, Chet Edwards, Brad Ellsworth, Rahm Emanuel,

Bob Etheridge, Bill Foster, Gabrielle Giffords, Charles Gonzalez, Bart Gordon, Gene Green, Baron Hill, Ruben Hinojosa, Tim Holden, Darlene Hooley, Steny Hoyer, William Jefferson, Paul Kanjorski, Ron Kind, Nicholas Lampson, Rick Larsen, Sander Levin, Daniel Lipinski, Tim Mahoney, Jim Marshall, Jim Matheson, Mike McIntyre, Charles Melancon, Harry Mitchell, Alan Mollohan, Dennis Moore, John Murtha, Solomon Ortiz, Collin Peterson, Earl Pomeroy, Silvestre Reyes, Ciro Rodriguez, Mike Ross,

Lucille Roybal-Allard, Dutch Ruppersberger, Tim Ryan, John Salazar, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, Adam Schiff, Allyson Schwartz, David Scott, Joe Sestak, Brad Sherman, Heath Shuler, Ike Skelton, Adam Smith, Vic Snyder, Zachary Space, John Spratt, John Tanner, Gene Taylor, Mark Udall, Peter Visclosky, Timothy Walz, Charles Wilson.

These three Dems didn't vote last time: Diana DeGette, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bobby Rush. It wouldn't hurt to hound them a little, either. Here's the roll call.

Your representative is on a Memorial Day recess and probably back in the district until Tuesday. There's no better chance to tell him/her in person to vote to end the war. If you don't encounter your Congressperson over the weekend, call the office.

UFPJ has all sorts of information, resources and advice about how to have an impact. Here's the link.

And if your representative's name is not on the list of those who supported the war, maybe you'll find them here, among the 147 Democrats who voted no. There's no need to hound them, but a thank you would be nice:

Neil Abercrombie, Gary Ackerman, Thomas Allen, Robert Andrews, Michael Arcuri, Joe Baca, Tammy Baldwin, Xavier Becerra, Timothy Bishop, Earl Blumenauer, Leonard Boswell, Robert Brady, Bruce Braley, G.K. Butterfield, Lois Capps, Michael Capuano, Dennis Cardoza, Russ Carnahan, André Carson, Kathy Castor, Yvette Clarke, William Clay, Emanuel Cleaver, Steve Cohen, John Conyers, Joe Courtney, Joseph Crowley, Elijah Cummings, Danny Davis, Peter DeFazio, Rosa DeLauro, William Delahunt, John Dingell, Lloyd Doggett, Michael Doyle, Keith Ellison, Eliot Engel, Anna Eshoo, Sam Farr, Chaka Fattah, Bob Filner,

Barney Frank, Al Green, Raul Grijalva, Luis Gutierrez, John Hall, Phil Hare, Jane Harman, Alcee Hastings, Brian Higgins, Maurice Hinchey, Mazie Hirono, Paul Hodes, Chris Van Hollen, Rush Holt, Mike Honda, Jay Inslee, Steve Israel, Jesse Jackson, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Eddie Johnson, Hank Johnson, Stephanie Jones, Steve Kagen, Marcy Kaptur, Patrick Kennedy, Dale Kildee, Carolyn Kilpatrick, Ron Klein, Dennis Kucinich, James Langevin, John Larson, Barbara Lee, John Lewis, David Loebsack, Zoe Lofgren, Nita Lowey, Stephen Lynch, Carolyn Maloney, Edward Markey, Doris Matsui, Carolyn McCarthy,

Betty McCollum, Jim McDermott, James McGovern, Jerry McNerney, Michael McNulty, Kendrick Meek, Gregory Meeks, Michael Michaud, George Miller, Brad Miller, Gwen Moore, James Moran, Patrick Murphy, Christopher Murphy, Jerrold Nadler, Grace Napolitano, Richard Neal, James Oberstar, David Obey, John Olver, Frank Pallone, Bill Pascrell, Ed Pastor, Donald Payne, Nancy Pelosi, Ed Perlmutter, David Price, Nick Rahall, Charles Rangel, Laura Richardson, Steven Rothman, Loretta Sanchez, Linda Sanchez, John Sarbanes, Jan Schakowsky, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Robert Scott, Jose Serrano, Carol Shea-Porter, Albio Sires, Louise Slaughter, Hilda Solis, Jackie Speier, Pete Stark, Bart Stupak, Betty Sutton, Ellen Tauscher, Bennie Thompson, Mike Thompson, John Tierney, Edolphus Towns, Niki Tsongas, Tom Udall, Nydia Velazquez, Maxine Waters, Diane Watson, Melvin Watt, Henry Waxman, Anthony Weiner, Peter Welch, Robert Wexler, Lynn Woolsey, David Wu, Al Wynn, John Yarmuth

This is not to suggest, by any means, that you shouldn't hound your represenative if he/she happens to be a Republican. By all means, hound away. A few may end up doing the right thing. But it's clear that if we're going to end this war, it's the Dems who are going to have to do it. That's who we should sic the hounds on.

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Who Should Pay for the Iraq Occupation

If I made a major decision that I later came to regret because it is costing me much more than I can manage while still living my life of 'luxury,' what options do I have. Should I ask strangers to make up the difference so I can continue my comfortable lifestyle? Or should I take a look at my situation, my rationale for the bad decision, my way of life, my other resources, and then take responsibility and make some adjustments?


Most of us would probably take responsibility and work to figure out our own solution. More than that, most of us would probably not have made such a bad decision in the first place. Most of us would have considered the long term risks and decided not to jeopardized the future of our family.

On the other hand, we have an Administration that hasn't done as we would have done. Instead, they have made multiple bad decisions (invading Iraq, ignoring New Orleans after Katrina, tax cuts for the rich, unregulated subprime loans, etc.) and are asking other countries (China and Japan) and future generations to pay for their mistakes. Not only have they performed poorly as our leaders, they have actually made themselves, and their rich supporters, richer and more powerful (unitary president, over compensated CEOs, unchecked Blackwater Inc., suspension of habeas corpus, etc.) in the process.

The administration, their small group of avid followers and friendly media moguls actually don't mind having China and others pay for their expensive mistakes as long as they are getting richer in the process. These rich and powerful know as long as China is willing to loan the US much of what it needs, they can continue to enjoy their 2006 tax cuts. Isn't it time to take away their tax cuts and make them pay for their mistakes?

If you're not quite convinced, maybe a little historical perspective on income taxes would help. Take a look at US individual federal income taxes in effect during WWII in the tables below. The rich of the time were taxed at up to 94% of their income over $200,000 in 1945. After inflation, these 1945 dollars become $2,090,800 in 2005 dollars.

(Click on image to see income tax rates during WWII)

If The Greatest Generation supported WWII with higher taxes, shouldn't those who support the Iraq occupation pay with higher taxes?

(This posting was originally published on The WAWG Blog.)

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PTSD...

...is a bitch.

I haven't been officially diagnosed (that will have to wait until I get back stateside, in August) but the signs are all there: obsessive thoughts about horrific scenes I witnessed in Iraq, anxiety at the mere mention of anything having to do with that war, extreme guilt at having willingly participated in such a colossally wicked venture, sleepless nights, mood swings, constant fidgeting, and the strong proclivity to self-medicate by any means necessary. I have good days and bad days, but they've been mostly bad, and certainly worse than they were when I blogged about them before.

The worst for me is the guilt and the anger. Guilt for what I was a part of and anger that such a war could happen, or that people could still believe there is anything remotely positive about our military presence in Mesopotamia. As Thoreau put it so ably at Unqualified Offerings:

It outrages me more than I can describe that there are still apologists for this. It outrages me more than I can describe that there are people who can look at this and say "Yep, we sure made the right choice there!" And it outrages me more than I can describe that the people who look at this and see no evil are actually taken seriously. They are invited to speak and write in serious venues. They are warmly thanked for offering their amoral apologies. They are allowed to remain in power rather than impeached, convicted, removed, and stripped of privilege. They are able to walk down the street undisturbed when they should be cursed and pelted with trash. They should be sprawled on a sidewalk next the McPherson Square Metro Station, hoping to cadge enough quarters to enjoy the rare treat of laundering the vomit out of the only shirt they own, praying all the while that decent people do not recognize them beneath the matted beard and tangled hair.

In a real republic Bush would have been drummed out of office by now and the last thing any major candidate for the Presidency would say is that we might be in Iraq for another 100 years. Just thinking about it makes me so... anxious. Every time I hear a war apologist speak I am overcome with grief and it's a good hour before my mind's back on track. This is my war casualty: a complete inability to escape from that place for longer than a couple of hours.

Seeking mindless distraction, I went to see Ironman the other day, and boy was that a mistake. The predictably evil defense contractor (played by Jeff Bridges, who always looks like Jeff Lebowski to me, which is a bit disconcerting) reminded me so much of my old boss in the war-profiteering biz--warm and friendly on the outside, cold and heartless on the inside--that I spent half the movie trying to will away my flashbacks, then spent the next several hours after the movie drinking alone in my apartment. Such an innocuous reference from such a banal movie shouldn't produce such a powerful reaction, but such is life after war, for me at least. Suffice it to say I won't be watching Rendition or In the Valley of Elah any time soon.

So there it is: I'm pretty messed up in the head right now, and there's not a lot I can do but try to work through it. It's not like there are VA programs for DoD Contractors with PTSD. That's why the federal government loves contractors so much: there's no long-term commitment. A servicemember has all those whiny legislators demanding benefits (and overriding Bush's veto... we hope) for the troops, but us temps, we're on our own. Now that I'm not working for the company that paid me to go to Iraq, I'm nobody's problem but my own. Hell, I don't even have medical insurance any more. I swear to FSM I'm moving to Canada or Denmark some day.

Discovering that your soul has a price isn't a pleasant experience, but I'm the guy who signed on the dotted line, so it's my cross to bear. I wish I had read the fine print.

Cross-posted at Decline and Fall.

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Speaking for the Soldiers

Cross-posted from The Paragraph.

In June 2005, Major General John Batiste, commander of the First Infantry Division in Iraq, leader of 22,000 troops fighting in the Sunni Triangle, passed up a third star, and quit the U.S. Army to speak out against the Iraq occupation.x¹⁰ Last August, he wrote:

I realized that I was in a unique position to speak out on behalf of Soldiers and their families. I had a moral obligation and duty to do so.x¹¹

...

The only way to stabilize Iraq and allow our military to rearm and refit for the long fight ahead is to begin a responsible and deliberate redeployment from Iraq and replace the troops with far less expensive and much more effective resources—those of diplomacy and the critical work of political reconciliation and economic recovery.

In October 2005, Congressman John Murtha (D-PA), a long-time Marine, decorated Vietnam War veteran and then-ranking member on the defense appropriations committee, caused a stir when he proposed a complete pull-back of troops from Iraq to begin immediately.x¹² When told that two Republican senators argued that they had never met a soldier that wanted to start pulling out, Murtha responded:

Is that right? What do you think they’re going to tell you? We’re here to talk for them! We’re here to measure the success. ... We are here—we have an obligation to speak for them.

In March of this year, U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations testified at hearings called “Winter Soldier”.x¹³ Aaron Hughes, an Iraq veteran and an organizer of the hearings, described the idea of Winter Soldier:

This is a moment when veterans won’t let anyone else speak for us. We hear from the pundits, we hear from the politicians, we hear from the generals, but we don’t hear from the soldiers who’ve walked the streets, who’ve been there and know what it’s about. We’re the ones who can bring out the cruelties and dehumanization in US foreign policy.x¹⁴

Among those testifying at Winter Soldier was Jason Hurd, who was with Tennessee’s 278th Regimental Combat Team in Iraq.x¹⁵ Here is one of the stories he told:

My platoon specifically was tasked with running security escort for two explosive ordnance teams, one US Navy and one Australian EOD team. On day one, the US Navy team took us all aside for some specialized training. They took us aside and said, “Look, EOD teams are some of the most highly targeted entities in Iraq. The reason being is because, hey, we’re the guys that go out and we disarm car bombs, we mess up the tactics and the operations of the insurgency. That’s why we’re highly targeted. So you guys have to use more aggressive tactics to protect us.”

And they explained to us that what we were to do is keep a fifty-meter perimeter, a fifty-meter bubble around our trucks at all times, whether we were driving down the road or whether we’re stationary. And if anything comes in that fifty-meter bubble, we’re to get it out immediately. If it doesn’t want to move, we use what are called levels of aggression. Your first option is to try to push it out by using hand signals, hand and arm signals. Your next option is to fire a warning shot into the ground. And from there on, you walk bullets up the car. And your last option is to shoot the person driving the car. This is for our own protection. Car bombs are a real danger in Iraq. In fact, that’s the vast majority of what I saw in Baghdad, is car bombings. My unit adhered strictly to these guidelines for a few weeks.

But as time went on and the absurdity of war set in, they started taking things too far. Individuals from my unit indiscriminately and unnecessarily opened fire on innocent civilians as they’re driving down the road on their own streets. My unit—individuals from my platoon would fire into the grills of these cars and then come back in the evenings after missions were done and brag about it. They would say, “Hey, did you guys see that car I shot at? It spewed radiator fluid all over the ground. Wasn’t that cool?” I remember thinking back on that and how appalled I was that we were bragging about these things, that we were laughing, but that’s what you do in a combat zone. That is your reality. That is how you deal with that predicament.

Hurd ended his testimony like this:

And I’d like to sum it up like this: the prevailing sentiment in Iraq is this—another time that I was out on patrol in the Kindi Street area—as I said, part of our mission was to meet and greet the local population and find out what their problems were—and so, I approached a man with my interpreter on the side of the road, and I asked him, I said, “Look, are your lives better because we’re here? Are you safer? Do you feel more secure? Do you feel like we are liberating you?” And that man looked at me straight in the eye, and he said, “Mister, we Iraqis know that you have good intentions here. But the fact of the matter is, before America invaded, we didn’t have to worry about car bombs in our neighborhoods, we didn’t have to worry about the safety of our own children as they walked to school, and we didn’t have to worry about US soldiers shooting at us as we drive up and down our own streets.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the suffering in Iraq is tearing that country apart. And ending that suffering begins with a complete and immediate withdrawal of all of our troops. Thank you very much.

Sources

¹⁰ ‘“Somebody Had to Speak Out. If Not Me, Who?”–Maj. Gen. John Batiste Fired by CBS News for Anti-Iraq War ‘Advocacy’’ – Democracy Now!, May 25, 2007

¹¹ ‘Gen. Batiste’s Op-Ed That The WSJ And The Washington Times Didn’t Want You To See’ – Ret. Maj. Gen. John Batiste, 2007-08-22

¹² ‘The Obligation to Speak for the Soldiers’ – The Paragraph, 2006-05-31

¹³ ‘Winter Soldier FAQ’ – Iraq Veterans against the War

What is the history of Winter Soldier? – In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” In 1971, a courageous group of veterans exposed the criminal nature of the Vietnam War in an event called Winter Soldier. Once again, we will demand that the voices of veterans are heard.

What will happen? – Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan will feature testimony from U.S. veterans who served in those occupations, giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground.

Why is IVAW doing this? – We are fighting for the soul of our country. We will demonstrate our patriotism by speaking out with honor and integrity instead of blindly following failed policy. Winter Soldier is a difficult but essential service to our country.

¹⁴ ‘Winter Soldiers to Testify Against War’ By Maya Schenwar, TruthOut.org, Saturday 01 March 2008

¹⁵ ‘Winter Soldier: US Vets, Active-Duty Soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan Testify About the Horrors of War’ – Democracy Now!, March 17, 2008

* * *


By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

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Memories...

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Memorial Day 2008 - A Time To Break The Pattern

American cemetery north of Verdun, Meuse, France

Photo: Yann Arthus-Bertrand

From a distance the image above is but an abstract pattern, almost like some fabric that would be used for a garment or an adornment. On closer observation, one realizes the objects are stark, white crosses, grave markers, casting their black shadows on green, grass covered graves. A pattern with meaning.

A pattern that comprises just one segment of the final resting place for 14,246 American soldiers who fought on behalf of their country and the allies in World War I. The first world war which was also known as "the war to end all wars" resulted in the deaths of 116,708 Americans, out of 5,696,056 allied deaths and 4,024,397 Central Powers (Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, German Empire; Ottoman Empire) deaths, and 8,869,248 civilian deaths, for a total of 19,772,701dead (military and civilian) and 21,228,813 military wounded after cessation of hostilities with Germany on 11 November 1918 and the Treaty Of Versailles on 28 June 1919.

History, indeed our own experiences through the decades, have taught us that those 116,708 were not the first Americans to give their lives in service to their country, nor have we, if we ever will, seen the last time Americans give their lives for their country. It is truly mind boggling to consider tabulating the numbers of our countrymen who have had their lives ended while serving this country for the past 232 years.

On this Memorial Day, 2008, we remember and honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf, whether before our time, or now, during the first eight years of the 21st century, but let us also resolve to never needlessly continue the pattern, let us exert our will upon those who would ask us to make the ultimate sacrifice to do so only as a last resort to protect not our particular political beliefs, not our wealth nor our power, but to protect our fundamental right to learn, thrive and live in peace with all humankind.

Cross posted from BFD Blog!

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Memorial Day

On this Memorial Day let us remember all those who sacrificed their lives for this country. Currently in Iraq that number is 4,081 American soldiers killed. Noone should have to give their life for light and transient reasons. That is why we are opposed to this war.

Here is my Memorial Day cartoon based on the theme song to the 60's television western "Rawhide". I thought a song about cowboys herding cattle to slaughter somehow appropriate for our current "cowboy" President.

Click on cartoon for larger image.

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