- Cheney (Oct 30-04) stated "the invasion of Iraq
will go down in history, along with the war in Afghanistan, for its "brilliance".
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- President Bush stated this month [Aug-2005] "Your
loved ones died for a noble cause".
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- "The most heinous and the cruelest crimes of which
history has recorded have been committed under the cover of religion or
equally noble motives". Gandhi
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- If war is so brilliant and so noble why is it tha fat-satiated-bellicose-arrogant-self-centered-egotistical
-rich white men aren't all out on the battlefield? How is it that a few
cheap medals sent off to those ripped and shredded; are the spoils of war
for the dispossessed, poor, marginalized, cannon fodder of generational
war?
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- If war is so noble and brilliant why did those reservists
from the first Gulf War fiasco have to apply for welfare to receive the
needed medical care for themselves and their deformed offspring [depleted
uranium-anthrax shots]? What's so "noble" about begging for medical
care, living under a bridge, or being left behind in Vietnam?
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- It seems apparent that in time of 'war' those who identify
themselves as leaders-staying the course-liberating the multitudes-fighting
an elusive concept or ideology, might want to vacation with brilliance
and nobility in Iraq or search for Bin-Laden in the Afghan mountains? No,
these places are not Jackson Hole, Wyoming, or ranch living but hey,
"nobility and brilliance" aren't to be found at ease!
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- If war is so brilliant and noble where is the compensation?
GWB has taken, thus far, 319 vacation days. He is paid $1,123.00 per day
[year round mind you]. So far we have paid him $347,192.00 in vacation
pay alone. Those dying for noble causes are paid $49.00 per day. Per chance
they have already served once or twice in impossible conditions, they are
sent off again and again. If not this, then a "stop loss" order,
keeps them from that get away vacation or fly fishing in Wyoming! One is
of the mind that they keep sending these soldiers back until they die!
I note there is no "stop loss" for Foggy Bottom politicians
taking off for fly fishing-slurping and sunning!
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- Saddam is locked up [or so it's reported], Bin-Laden
has disappeared with his dialysis machine into the sunset-so why are we
still in Iraq? Would we be there at all if one of the world's largest
oil fields wasn't conveniently located here and everyone and his brother
wanting them? Who owns the Iraqi oil? Who has profited in the billions
upon billions these past few years as oil prices skyrocket? President Bush
and Vice-President Cheney aren't worried about heating their (our) homes,
flying around in Air Force One, or gas for their golf carts. Foggy Bottom
politicians aren't worried with gas write-offs, and automatic cost of living
yearly raises-plus all the perks of medical/prescription/hospital care
[which we still don't have]. Part time workers/sub-contractors, the new
American workforces don't get raises, health insurance or ha, vacations!
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- Between Afghanistan and Iraq we have spent to date approximately
349 billion! Veteran's benefits are being cut along with housing subsidies.
In the midst of terror alerts, warnings, retina scans, body cavity searches,
shoeless toddlers at airports, one asks who the enemy is. If we are so
vulnerable, and so at risk of imminent attack, why are all of our manufacturing
jobs, steel plants, machine shops, ship building, textile plants, and American
bases, being shipped overseas or closed down? Why are Americans put through
the humiliation of body searches by GED dropouts, while millions of illegal
immigrants pour across our borders [from all lands mind you] yearly. What's
wrong with this picture?
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- How do you support 'generational war' with sub-contracting
jobs [no benefits-no health-no insurance], convenience store clerks, Wal-Mart
Greeters, Home Depot Associates, groundskeepers, guest workers at resorts/tourist
Mecca's, prison guards, black jack dealers, show girls in Vegas, and garbage
men? How? How are domestic needs going to be met for our elderly, special
needs, veterans, and homeless when over 5 billion is being spent monthly
to install 'democracy' and fight an 'ideology' in a land the size of California.
Do we dismantle ours so that they might experience our triple ID, body
cavity search freedom?
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- If we are to believe the insanity that we are killing
thousands of our own, and thousands of foreigners, waiting to be liberated
into democracy, then what pray tell is democracy, if nobody is free and
all are suspect? The rich and well connected politically, aren't subjected
to insane searchers on their corporate flights! You don't see private schools
[for the well to do and politician's children] being searched by police
and drug sniffing dogs! You don't see recruiters dogging the footsteps
of their children, promising them that college education that will never
be realized on Mom's Wal-Mart wages and Daddy's unemployment check.
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- Nah-words like noble, courageous, valor, honor, duty,
are mere scripted nonsense. Who will tie a yellow ribbon [made in China
no less] round the amputated arms or legs of youngsters maimed and shattered?
It's easy to tend a flag or a ribbon. No worry over screams of pain, unemployment,
homelessness, mindlessness, or forever anguish. Noble doesn't pay the rent,
heat the house, or provide for one's children. To date I know of no utility
company or landlord that will take a drawer full of medals or old Army
gear for payment. "Brilliance" isn't going to buy that special
equipped car for the vet with missing limbs! Rest assured the billions
gone missing in Iraq [fraudulent contractors etc], won't be arriving by
check at their doorsteps. The obscene profits of the oil hucksters that
they fought so nobly for won't be taking care of their life time needs,
or putting their children through school. Patronizing, condescending,
empty words are meaningless in the real world of grief, pain and needs.
In the end they proved to be a joke, at some exclusive black tie dinner,
as GWB made a mockery of looking under tables and chairs, for those [ha-ha]
"weapons of mass destruction". God knows there will be no veteran's
shelters down at the ranch or at Kennebunkport [George Senior also vacationed
while nobility died]. No war isn't a cheap joke nor is it a perfunctory
'they died for a noble cause'. Oil, trophy homes, yachts, exotic vacations,
off-shore tax free accounts, and college educations for the profiteer's
of war isn't 'noble'.
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- I think the words of Smedley Butler, Commanding General
U.S. Marines [one of our most decorated soldiers-served 34 years] are a
little more insightful than the scripted public relations jabberwocky.
I believe that it takes a man, who has seen and experienced war first hand,
to inform society of its inhumanity, not those who costume themselves in
heroics. "War is a racket. I was a gangster for Wall Street: I helped
make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914
, make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to
collect revenue in; I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking
house of Brown Brothers, in 1909-12; I bought light to the Dominican Republic
for American sugar interests in 1916; and I helped make Honduras "right"
for the American fruit companies in 1903".
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- "One of the saddest lessons of history is this:
If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of
the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The
bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge-even
to ourselves-that we've been so credulous". Carl Sagan
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- "War should ONLY be declared by the authority of
the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead
of the government which is to reap its fruits" James Madison
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- "A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it
can nominate [or select jm] its successors..Who wields power is not important,
provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same."
George Orwell-1984
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- "Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted
upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something
which, in fact, was false." Bertrand Russell
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- "A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon
devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment
from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand,
they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on
his side." Aristotle
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- "God gave the savior to the German people. We have
faith, deep and unshakeable faith that he was sent to us by God to save
Germany." Herman Goering
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- "If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck
of a lot easier---just so long as I'm the dictator." GWB-Dec 18-2000
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- "They have always taught and trained you to believe
it to be your patriotic duty to go to war to have yourselves slaughtered
at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people,
have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears,
no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people."
Eugene Debs
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- "My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country,
not to its institutions or its office-holders. The country is the real
thing----to watch over. Institutions are extraneous, they are its mere
clothing and clothing can wear out or become ragged. To be loyal to rags,
that is the loyalty of un-reason. It is pure animal. The citizen who thinks
he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet,
holds his peace, and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is
a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does
not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway." Mark Twain
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- Most alarming, in all aspects of today's society; is
how slavish, acquiescent, unquestioning, passive, and apathetic men have
become in following the edicts, policies, corrupt contractual agreements,
insane regulatory rules, and orders from those dressed in authority.
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- From an early age, I realized that man was his own worst
enemy. Growing up in coal mining and steel mill country; it appalled me
to see men in security uniforms, beating down working men because they
wanted decent wages and better working conditions. The robber barons who
ordered such attacks were nowhere on the scene. It seemed to me that for
a pittance man could be hired on for any and all atrocities! As a small
child I could see that men would even kill their neighbors for a buck.
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- During the Civil Rights days, I remember coming home
from school and watching horrified as white people screamed, swore, and
attacked Black children, trying to go to school or adults wanting to vote.
The world watched when students at Kent State were shot by our own military
men! Various protests have seen people kicked, gassed, punched, and shot
with various weapons of plastic and wooden bone shattering bullets. Helmeted
troops crash into people's homes across the land, supposedly looking for
drugs, duh, with our borders an open sieve. A man is in the lobby of his
building, taking out his keys, and is dead in moments from a hail of bullets!
A man [Brattleboro Vermont] seeks sanctuary in a church and is shot dead
in a matter of seconds. No matter the horror or injustice; a simple hearing,
a whitewash commission, settles the matter until the next outrage. I watch
these Ninja dressed troops beating down citizens at conventions or protesting
over their jobs being sent to Third World countries, and I wonder, will
I be standing next to them at the grocery store, or will they be playing
with their children in city parks after their mercenary work is done? Who
are these men and whose orders do they follow that causes them, for a mere
few dollars, to beat down fellow Americans?
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- Perhaps that's the terror of today. When you see a man
shot execution style, on his way to work, by plain clothes men-is anybody
safe? His crime was that of being from Brazil (dark skin) and wearing a
denim jacket. And men followed orders, from someone, to "shoot to
kill" him. And they did!
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- Men march off to a foreign land to shoot and bomb strangers.
Most likely the majority of them could not find this land on a global map.
No doubt the majority of troops in Iraq, know next to nothing of the region's
history of war, and how many before them have died for rich men's "noble"
purposes. Doesn't matter---someone ordered a war for vague reasons and
everybody went. Some said it was for "weapons of mass destruction,
liberty, democracy, voting, an ideology and now a concept"? Nobody
talks about oil. Word has it, that somewhere in the distant future, history
will write of how "brilliant" it all was. Thankfully everyone
dead and maimed can rest easy knowing that it was for a "noble cause".
"I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."
Jay Gould, robber baron 19th century. Here we are in the 21st century
and the killing continuesneighbor killing neighbor, stranger killing stranger,
for the robber barons now called transnational corporations and hucksters
of plunder.
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