A Mother's Love
This story about a mother's love for her son to the end is heart-wrenching.

Little in the world makes me angrier than people with no experience or say in the matter piping up at situations like this and saying "all life is sacred," and calling this murder. When you're confined to a bed for the rest of your life, can't move, can't see, can't speak, can't LIVE...then you come and tell us how sacred "life" is.

We were never soldiers, but we can still destroy armies...
How to ruin a great army? See Donald Rumsfeld is an excellent editorial from Joy Gallaway (the author of We Were Soldiers Once...and Young) detailing how Rummy and friends have run the US Army into the dirt.

--"It took the better part of 20 years to rebuild the Army from the wreckage of Vietnam. With the hard work of a generation of young officers, blooded in Vietnam and determined that the mistake would never be repeated, a new Army rose Phoenix-like from the ashes of the old, now perhaps the finest Army in history.

"In just over two years, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and his civilian aides have done just about everything they could to destroy that Army."--

He goes on to list these ways to destroy an army, and gives examples of how Rummy and Co have done them all.
-Work it to death (very scary statistics here)
-Neglect its training and education
-Politicize the Army promotion system
-Decide that you've discovered a newer, cheaper way of fighting and winning America's wars.

Finally, he ends with this very important and haunting reminder: "Another defense secretary who could not admit he'd erred was Robert Strange McNamara, who, like Rumsfeld, was recruited from corporate America. By the time he did, it was too late."

(Thanks to Bohemian Mama for the link.)


Speaking of armies, some Israeli pilots have broken ranks and are refusing to fly missions that require them to fire missiles into civilian housing. They claim, who knows why, that it's immoral.
(Note: CNN's World Edition had a much lengthier story about it and excerpted the protest letter, but I can only find this puny little blurb on-line.)

Welcome to the Party.
From the most recent Democratic Candidate's debate:

Al Sharpton to Wesley Clark: "Don't be defensive about just joining the party. Welcome to the party. It's better to be a new Democrat that's a real Democrat than a lot of old Democrats up here that have been acting like Republicans all along,"

Clark: "We elected a president we thought was a compassionate conservative. Instead, we got neither conservatism or compassion. We got a man who recklessly cut taxes. We got a man who recklessly took us into war with Iraq."

Howard Dean: "I am tired of having John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney and Jerry Falwell and Rush Limbaugh lay a claim to patriotism and lay a claim to the American flag. That flag belongs to every single one of us. And I am tired of having our democracy hijacked by the right wing of this country."

John Edwards: "What this president is doing is trying to shift the tax burden in America from wealth to work. He wants to eliminate the capital gains tax, the dividends tax, the estate tax, all the taxation of wealth or passive income on wealth, and shift that tax burden to people who work for a living. It's an enormous mistake. The middle-class working people made this country what it is today."

And the "Dick of the Night" award goes to, fittingly, Dick Gephardt. For a guy who jumped on board the Republican Witch-hunt of Clinton, I can't believe he had the audacity to chastize Dean for siding with Gingrich on a medicare cut.

Quote of the night, from Dean in rebuttle: "That is flat-out false, and I'm ashamed that you would compare me to Newt Gingrich. Nobody up here deserves to be compared to Newt Gingrich."

No WMD...no kidding.

Even the official Bush-regime-appointed team assigned to find WMD is admitting they haven't found DIDDLY SQUAT.


And thanks to Atrios over at Eschaton for pointing this one out. An Australian journalist, critically reviewing his own leader's position on the war in Iraq (as the US media SHOULD be doing), found recorded statements from early 2001 of Colin Powel and Condi Rice boasting about how Iraq had been completely disarmed by sanctions and containment and posed no threat to the world.

--Pilger uncovered video footage of Powell in Cairo on February 24, 2001 saying, "He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours."

Two months later, Rice reportedly said, "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."--


But it's not just some rogue, Aussie reporter talking. There's a transcript on the US State Department website that quotes powell in February of 2001 saying of US-led sanctions against Iraq:
"And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, " (emphasis added).

I DID think of it first!
A week ago, I posted a link to an Onion article and said "Why didn't I think of that?" This week, I looked at their latest issue and am saying, I DID think of it first...and why aren't they cutting me a check?

Calm down...I'm not seriously crying "plagerism" here...I know great minds think alike. Still, I can't help be a little perturbed and think, why can't I get anything published anywhere?

For information, I wrote my piece in early 2001.

A real President
While America is still split on the Clinton legacy, most of the rest of the world agrees: he was a great leader inside and outside the US. Living in Europe, I talk to average people all the time who tell me how great Clinton was and then ask me "What happened?" with a pained confusion, when talk turns to the present "president".

Anyway, the people of Srebrenica showed how much they think of Clinton when they personally invited him to a mass funeral for members of their town slaughtered in a massacre during the former-Yugoslavia wars.

I'll be interested to see if the current administration just ignores this world event or tries to put some spin on it. Remember, these are the same people who, less than a year ago, claimed we needed to go into Iraq no only to find ficticious WMD, but also for humanitarian reasons (you know, because Saddam gassed Kurds way back when he was still the US's ally, in 1988). They are also the people who OPPOSED Clinton's actions to stop the Balkan slaughter, the same actions the people of Srebrenice hail him for.

Baghdad Slaughter not confined to humans

Of all the crimes and disasters commited in Iraq since the US invasion, I think this one is the worst I've heard about.

It reminds me of some of the propoganda that was stirred up against the Taliban (not that they weren't evil, mind you) back in late 2001...the many pieces about the abused and neglected animals in the Kabul Zoo. And now this...a rare, majestic tiger shot dead because a group of soldiers snuck into the Baghdad zoo, got drunk, and started messing around.

Voters in England deliver a shock for Blair

Well, in what is hopefully a foreshadowing of the next US elections, voters in a district of England elected a new MP from the Liberal Democrats party. That party opposed the war in Iraq, and the upset victory marks the first time since taking power in 1997 that Tony Blair's party have lost a previously-held seat.

Now the question is, will American voters do the same.

And...well...then, the question is, will the powers that be honor the will of the American voters this time. We'll see.

The Onion.
Once again, I read The Onion and shake my head, thinking "why didn't I think of that one".

The Article is titled: Revised Patriot Act Will Make It Illegal To Read Patriot Act

Freedom...
...is measured by the distance between church and state. (one of my favorite bumperstickers).

This story from Nigeria illustrates that point, wonderfully. What's really amazing is the way people who want to institute the same kind of fanatical "christian" law system here in the US are outraged by this type of thing in other countries. The distance between that nutbag in Alabama and the "Islamic" law of Nigeria is a narrow margin indeed.

As for the heinousness of stoning a woman to death for adultry...it'll be interesting to see if any conservatives in the Bush regime condemn this. It's a lose-lose situation for them...if they say nothing, they're condoning it. If they denounce it, then they're hypocrites.
As Governor of Texas, Bush did nothing to stop the execution of a man convicted because of the testimony of ONE SINGLE WITNESS, despite no physical evidence and the fact that the witness was some distance away at night. So, pointing the finger at another country for brutal executions (which Nigeria is indeed guilty of) isn't something Bush can do, for lack of any moral high ground.
Likewise, any harping on the fact that adultery isn't a severe enough crime to warrant execution will raise the eyebrows of any listener with a memory, since the conservatives impeached Bill Clinton for the same "crime" a few years ago.

Whether Nigeria carries out this sentence or not, it should be an eye-opener to all Americans. First, it shows--once again--how our own leaders have no moral authority in the rest of the world anymore. And second, it's another reminder of the kind of nation John Ashcroft and his "christian" coalition want to build here in the US.