Contrary to my observations about the Republican Party that I expressed in the piece immediately below, Ron Beasley sees signs that the wingut 28% dead-enders will not allow their elected representatives to extricate the nation from Mr Bu$h’s tar baby.

I recommend you read Ron’s piece and consider carefully. From six years study we know there is a strong emotion-based thread of anti-intellectualism and realism-denial deep in the Republican Party faithful. The party sought these people out and pandered to their fears and bigotries in a conscious act of solicitation.

It is one thing to ride the tiger, and something else to risk the injury when you dismount.

I want to ride the tiger
I want to ride the tiger
It will be black and white in the dead of night
Eyes flashing in the clear moonlight
I want to ride the tiger.

We are living in historic times. For one, we’re watching the slow dissolution of the Bu$h malAdministration. The eight year old mind and temper in the adult body, who was so manly and virile during the success of others has once again fallen back on his life-history of abandoning failing enterprises.

Beset by innumerable scandals and criminal investigations, the Republican government of George Bu$h is falling apart. Those members of his party who are not planning their own defenses in trials are quickly side-stepping away from a man considered more toxic to a political future than the classic being found in bed with a “dead woman or a live boy.”

Having spent the last two years in desperate pursuit of the Likud Party’s secondary goal of a pre-emptive war on Iran with the destructive ferocity of that visited upon Iraq, Bu$hCo finds itself once again tripped up by its own bad faith and automatic lying.

As Nicholas Kristoff wrote in yesterday’s NY Times [TimesSelect paywall] (Quote via Agonist)

Encouraged, Iran transmitted its “grand bargain” proposals to the U.S. One version was apparently a paraphrase by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran; that was published this year in The Washington Post.

But Iran also sent its own master text of the proposal to the State Department and, through an intermediary, to the White House. I’ve also posted that document, which Iran regards as the definitive one.

In the master document, Iran talks about ensuring “full transparency” and other measures to assure the U.S. that it will not develop nuclear weapons. Iran offers “active Iranian support for Iraqi stabilization.” Iran also contemplates an end to “any material support to Palestinian opposition groups” while pressuring Hamas “to stop violent actions against civilians within” Israel (though not the occupied territories). Iran would support the transition of Hezbollah to be a “mere political organization within Lebanon” and endorse the Saudi initiative calling for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
…
Instead, Bush administration hard-liners aborted the process. Another round of talks had been scheduled for Geneva, and Ambassador Zarif showed up — but not the U.S. side. That undermined Iranian moderates.

Because, above all else, the “War President” didn’t want to be seen as “weak” like his father, who stopped slaughtering people once the 1991 Coalition’s political goals had been met.

Now the Iraq catastrophe continues at full blast. We have seen almost 3,400 Americans killed there since 2003, and well over 25,000 wounded, brutally mutilated, and disgracefully ignored. We have no idea how many thousands of Iraqis have been offered up on the sacrificial altar of Bu$h ego and Likud plan, but scientific estimates claim more than half a million have died. The country is in shambles, and its infrastructure resembles that of Germany and Japan in 1945. There is no thought whatsoever of a Marshall Plan to rebuild the country.

The malAdministration is now searching for a “war czar”, someone to take control of the Iraq debacle, and somehow snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, or at least, to become the figurehead the be held accountable for the inevitable collapse.

Mr. Hadley is interviewing candidates, including military generals, for a new high-profile job that people in Washington are calling the war czar. The official (Mr. Hadley, ever cautious, prefers “implementation and execution manager”) would brief Mr. Bush every morning on Iraq and Afghanistan, then prod cabinet secretaries into carrying out White House orders. ...

“What we need,” he said in a recent interview, “is someone with a lot of stature within the government who can make things happen.” [emph added]

According the Constitution and Federal Law, there are two such officials. One, the National Security Advisor, is tasked with the daily reporting to the President on all matters relating to the security of the US, including matters of “domestic, foreign, military and intelligence and economics.”

The “make it happen guy” has an office right at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That’s the fellow we’ve been told for the last six years is the “Commander-in-Chief.” Art II, Sec 2 of the Constitution provides

The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

Based solely upon Mr Hadley’s own words, quoted in this article, I take it that he and the man he reports to are in agreement that Mr Bu$h no longer wishes to perform his Constitutional duties.

Well, there is a way of correcting that. (Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, please take note.)

Art I, Sec 2, US Constitution:
“The House of Representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers; and shall have the sole power of impeachment.”

Art I, Sec 3, US Constitution
“The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. When sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the members present.

Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States: but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.”

Art I, Sec 8, US Constitution
“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States…
…
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations
…
Art I, Sec 4
“The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

It appears to me that refusal to perform the constitutionally mandated office of the Presidency is an impeachable offense.

What say you, Madame Speaker, Senator Reid?

There is what you might call a “human interest” story in today’s WaPo and it’s sort of challenging in a way.

Modern Man, Neanderthals Seen as Kindred Spirits

Researchers have long debated what happened when the indigenous Neanderthals of Europe met "modern humans" arriving from Africa starting some 40,000 years ago. The end result was the disappearance of the Neanderthals, but what happened during the roughly 10,000 years that the two human species shared a land?

A new review of the fossil record from that period has come up with a provocative conclusion: The two groups saw each other as kindred spirits and, when conditions were right, they mated.

That’s right – it’s a soft porn story like those Danish and German nudist films some theaters used to show during the late 60s and early 70s. Filled with pretty, shapely blondes and redheads sunning themselves on beaches and joyfully playing volleyball on sweet green grass.

No, wait, that’s wrong. It’s really a serious scientific story, because for a long time scientists believed Homo Neanderthalensis just sort of died out, supposedly a weaker second cousin without the genetic materials and intelligence to successfully react to the stresses of modern life like creating your own fire and learning to form your own stone tools, although neither of those legends appear to be accurate.

In his latest work, published last week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, [Eric] Trinkaus, of Washington University in St. Louis, analyzed prehistoric fossil remains from various parts of Europe. He concluded that a significant number have attributes associated with both Neanderthals and the modern humans who replaced them.

"Given the data we now have, it would be highly improbable to argue there is no Neanderthal contribution to the early European population that came out of Africa," Trinkaus said. "I believe there was continuous breeding between the two for some period of time.

The “assimilation” theory, also called the “admixture” theory, seems more logical, since the idea of disorganized groups or clans of the two different types fighting a war of extinction just seems too complicated. There are no recognized examples of known Neanderthal genes residing in modern humans of European extraction but one can still find prime examples of this body structure in isolated parts of Northeastern Europe and Central Asia, which adds to the assimilation theory.

Some geneticists see residual genetic traits in modern humans that they believe originated with the Neanderthals, speculating that perhaps 10 to 20% of our present day genome was delivered by them through interbreeding.

While Homo Neanderthalensis has been traditionally associated with dull, brutish behavior and weak minds, this is not believed to be true. Despite differences in skull shape, scientists point to the relatively similar brain sizes to show similar levels of intelligence. [ed: Please. No Freeper jokes.]

So, where did they go? It’s believed that they were just outnumbered, and outbred, falling by the wayside in the competition for resources like food and shelter.

Paradox at The Left Coast writes a letter to Governor Dean.

I am writing to you about three extraordinary historical occurrences happening to our country in real time as we watch, and although I am sure you are very busy I plead with you in all humility and earnestness to take my eventual request seriously and craft a reply as soon as you are able. I rarely write to government or party official with your status, I don’t think little people such as myself are taken seriously by the Democratic Party or the United States, but for once I’m desperate enough for an answer to try.

The first occurrence is that fate has given our tiny time with the planet and our precious country the worst president of all time. I’m sure at this point a cursory listing of the heinously foul deeds this Texan has inflicted upon our country—war for lies, NSA & FBI spying, letting Osama escape, Afghanistan failure, war crimes of torture, civilian slaughter and incredible corruption—irrevocably cement this felon as the most evil incoherent freedom-stealing thug our populace will ever have to endure.

The second amazing facet to this situation is that this lying killing criminal President won’t be impeached. It’s not as if his gross malfeasance is merely fiduciary or the harm an abstract violation of principle, for hundreds of thousands have lost their lives from this felon’s foul deeds, and many more souls will be lost this very day. Yet even the loss of precious life among all the other chaos of incompetence from Bush does not warrant serious impeachment proceedings from Democratic Party leadership.

There’s quite a bit more, and I agree completely with the writer’s main complaint: you asked us to support you, Governor Dean, and we have. We’ve given ourselves, our time, and our money to assist your 50-state plan and it has paid dividends. Look at what we accomplished for you in November 2006, and consider what we can do for you in November 2008. But now it is time for us to receive some dividend on our investment.

The last dazzling element of incredulity to this odious felonious swamp is that the Democratic Party leadership isn’t going to explain to the base, the populace and the rest of the world why the worst of all time won’t be heaved. It simply defies belief impeachment does not begin immediately—if not now, in this time and place, then when? Why have a country and a constitution if it won’t be defended and upheld under the most gravest[sic] of threats?

That’s why I’m writing to you: I want a cogent, codified explanation from your office why our Party leadership won’t impeach Bush. I and the rest of the base have put up with unbelievable humiliating Democratic incompetence and failure from y’all 2000—2006, we’ve written, marched, signed petitions, contributed what we could, worked on campaigns, voted and even signed up for those insidiously pernicious Democracy Bonds, yet when the Party won’t get serious about impeaching the worst of all time it’s actually expected that we’re going to get stiffed with silence? That there won’t be any explanation at all for why the Party does nothing about impeachment?

If you have fears that the Republicans who are presently edging away from Mr Bu$h will suddenly blanch in the face of this Constitutional imperative and immediately rush back to defend him, you are wrong. They will be overjoyed to be given the chance to stomp this bastard’s lying killing guts. He’s destroyed their party for at least one generation.

So, how about it, Governor Dean?

Or do we only impeach men in the Oval Office for consensual sex?

In writing the two articles below detailing differences in operational and developmental approach taken by the US and UK militaries, I only briefly examined some of the many varied and permuting influences in the creation of a new operation doctrine. Please bear in mind that I took two discrete and diametrically opposed tactical situations and briefly examined the diametrically opposing solutions created.

One version is attempting to write history with a new, expensive and unproven technology. We are assured by the vendors of this technology, which has killed numbers of pilots during testing and break-in, that it will work better than my sainted granny’s oatmeal raisin cookies. The other is attacking its operational challenges with proven tactics and technology. I will note in passing that this approach seems to be working right now.

There is an important update at the end of the article about the Queen’s Royal Hussars detailing why this approach will not work for the US military.

CPT Jeff Leonard of the California National Guard is still working as a combat stress counselor in Iraq. In today’s column, part III of a long report about working a platoon with deaths, we learn that sometimes reality interferes with the best plans, whether it’s driving in a convoy with no radio, or attending a memorial.

When the two sergeants who had been standing with us by the vehicles ran off to find someone, Maj. Johns turned to me and said, "This is all pretty fucked up don't you think, Leonard?"

"Eh," I replied, indifferently and avoided eye contact.

Maj. Johns looked at the soldiers running around us and the ones on the truck, trying to mount the 240-Bravo. Turning back to me, he said, "I'm finding it hard to keep much confidence in these guys right now."

"Don't worry sir, these guys are killers," I replied, turning to look at him now.

"Killers? What the hell does that mean?"

"It means these guys would love to kill the enemy to save you, themselves, or the guys next to them. That, and they know how to do it. These are the people you want to be traveling with out here," I said, and looked him sternly in the eye.

Parts I and II preceded this report and set up the whole tale.

A while back I commented negatively on the V-22 Osprey and took a bit of flack from some loyal and sensible readers. I should mention that I don’t have a great deal of faith in the plane, based solely upon its history to date and my observations about vertical landings in “areas of stress,” as you could say. Opposed vertical landings can get very ugly quite fast.

Some quick notes: the apparent prescribed landing path is a “slow glide” at about nine knots. I take that to mean it’s a gliding down path, like landing a plane, and the nine knots would mean after transition from forward flight to hover in preparation for landing. I guess under those conditions, and at an estimated unit cost of more than $130 million each, you are damned well going to park these babies some distance from a hot LZ, and cargoes, both troops and materiel, will be ported in on foot. Well…….

David Axe has written a column about the plane and he seems to want the thing to work out, despite its development record and a bit of throat-clearing from some ground-pounding Marines.

Despite the Corps’ apparent confidence in their new bird, skeptics in the media and at think-tanks continue to predict disaster – foremost among them, Lee Gaillard from the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C., who last week weighed in with an email distributed to the media: “With lives at stake, the question bears repeating: how combat-ready and maintainable is the MV-22B Osprey?”

The heart of Gaillard’s criticism is, of course, that the V-22 is a fundamentally flawed design and will crash at a high rate due to the “vortex ring state” phenomenon that was a factor in the crashes during testing. VRS is, essentially, a chopper’s tendency to stall during certain descent profiles. But the Marines have proved in thousands of flight hours since 2000 that VRS can be avoided with proper training and tactics, as we reported at Ares in January.

A key component in Mr Gaillard’s criticisms seems to be the fact that the plane has no armament for assault fire, which will require Cobras to escort and prep the LZ, as well as conduct overwatch while you’re deplaning. And then you need a computer to get the thing down in rotor mode and…

MV-22Bs are restricted from taking radical evasive maneuvers. Planned three-barrel nose turrets for clearing hostile landing zones have been replaced by ramp-mounted guns that fire to the rear and impede troop egress. Despite the technical review warning of component and flight control computer obsolescence issues conducted by US Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) in 2003, all V-22s were grounded last month because of faulty Texas Instruments chips in their computerized flight control systems.

Unsurprisingly Colonel Glenn Walters, one of the Corps’ most experienced V-22 pilots is confident, discussing the “distributed operations capability of the unit.

“Aviation is the key enabler for distributed operations,” Walter says. He asks us to imagine ground ops at a distance of around 150 miles from their supply base. The Osprey can make multiple runs between the troops and their base on a single load of fuel at around 20 minutes per leg. An H-46 would require more than an hour. “Is that valuable?” he asks about the V-22’s superior speed. “Yes.”

OK. They built the thing because they needed to replace some old air units. And now they’re going to use it.

The British faced a somewhat similar challenge with “distributed operations” and came up with a slightly different solution, which we’ll look at separately.

In September 2006, and January 2007 I highlighted a surprising British solution to the guerrilla problem in southern Iraq.

LTC David Labouchere, of the Queen’s Royal Hussars, put all their tanks and AFVs into storage and stripped down his battalion to fighting weight, loaded them all onto Land Rovers and trucks and moved out into the countryside. He left his heavily fortified base, which was a big mortar-magnet, and decided to bar the Iraq-Iran border by constant movement. He seems to have been right.

They get air delivery every day or two of food, water and other expendables, and seem to be very active, since there is no specific patrol pattern.

This is the current British version of “distributed operations.” Rather than cut and paste to create commentary, just go here. There is a long article about this operational style. It’s a unique form of online reading, so juggle around a bit and read about a success story in Iraq. It makes a nice change.

LTC Labouchere is apparently doing with Merlin helicopters what the USMC is hoping to do with their new V-22 Osprey. It’s probably worth noting that the Merlins haven’t taken much fire on the resupply missions.

The Hussars seem to be quite successful at interdicting what little bit of gun smuggling is doing on in Maysan Province, which must annoy Mr Cheney no end.

UPDATE: It's probably also worth noting that the Augusta/Westland Merlin helicopter is one shit of a lot cheaper than the V-22 Osprey, has no annoying handling and teething problems (like frequent crashing) to overcome, and seems to work like a charm in both Northern European winters and Southern Iraqi summers - two temperature extremes that pretty well define the operating envelope of the US Army and US Marine Corps land warfare locales.

The big disadvantage of course is that it suffers from the NIH syndrome, and our buying a couple hundred copies won't make Boeing stockholders happy, which in the long run is far more important than delivering live troops onto an LZ in a timely and safe fashion.

More poisoned pet food has been found in the US. We discussed it here. And here. And here. And here.

There has been yet another adulterated pet food recall. It seems that not only was wheat gluten and corn gluten adulterated with melamine, but also rice gluten. How surprising.

Now the latest recall(s) are listed here.

Just root around the page(s) and read carefully. On specifics, Ol’ Roy food (WalMart) and Kirkland (CostCo) brands are now recalled but there are many others, so check the lists carefully.

And the FDA of course, is thoroughly astounded. Who knew that food suppliers would adulterate food if they were not rigorously checked day after day? And here they thought that when Mr Bu$h drastically cut back on factory and bulk supply inspections, large corporations would voluntarily take up the slack as part of their civic duties.

The FDA is claiming it has a solution to all this, but was unable to implement it because they lost a lot of their budget in order to finance the Iraq war to feed George Bu$h’s ego, and steal the Iraqi oil for Dick “dick” Cheney’s friends in the oil business.

WASHINGTON — After Sept. 11, 2001, the Food and Drug Administration developed a comprehensive plan to guard the nation's food supply against tainted imports, which were seen as a serious security threat. But nearly six years later, the plan has languished because of a lack of official will and tight federal budgets, according to former senior officials involved in formulating the strategy.

That pains lawmakers and others as they deal with the discovery of chemicals used to make plastics and treat swimming pool water in pet food ingredients imported from China. The contamination is believed to have killed or sickened hundreds of animals, forcing the recall of more than 100 brands of pet food. Similar ingredients common in humans' food are imported with little government supervision.

"It was a bitter pill to swallow," said Benjamin L. England, a former FDA regulatory lawyer who worked on the plan for the agency's enforcement branch. "I'm disappointed that they are basically sitting on the solution."

By the way the FDA, which is rather toothless as far as protecting the nation’s food supply, did have lots of time and energy to spend in persecuting a veterinary who resisted a dangerous money-making drug for animals promoted by a Big Pharma company.

Doing nothing, which is the Bu$hCo way, because it’s not enough to ignore intelligence warnings and get 3,000 Americans murdered in a preventable act of terrorism. It’s not enough to get thousands of Americans and Iraqis killed and mutilated in an unnecessary ego-war, it’s now required that Rover and Muffy be sacrificed on the altar of George Bu$h’s corporate agenda.

After all, why should we worry about food attacks with the Republican Party in charge? They were so good protecting us from flying airplanes and anthrax attacks.

But now we have a Democratic Congress, and will have a Democratic President in 2009 if enough people go out to vote and overturn the built-in edge Karl Rove will order put into the voting computers. And Rudy Giulani has promised us more 9/11 attacks if we elect anyone but him as President.

I’ll be home tomorrow – thanks to all for the kind wishes.

Blogging will commence forthwith.

Feel free to express yourselves with all your wild abandon. And remember: criticizing wingers with bad language is legal as long as you remember to claim to be memorializing Dan Burton.

Friday looks to be a light blogging day, with a prolonged procedure scheduled at my local hospital. It’s nothing too serious, just long and involved, and probably involving medication that will keep me from driving home afterwards. There is a possibility that I’ll be attending the Friday night pajama party, and I learned the hospital has a wifi area, so I’m bringing along the laptop, just so I can play solitaire and Monopoly and maybe get to write something insulting about politicians and the never-right wing, for a change.

I'll post an Open Thread and will encourage all 21 of my regular readers to practice your mad typing skillz.

If a bomb explodes and only kills Iraqi, does it really exist? This thorny variant on the Buddhist thought experiment about trees in the forest has become a showpiece of the latest Bu$h malAdministration’s propaganda offensive that things are really, really, really getting better in Iraq.

WASHINGTON - U.S. officials who say there has been a dramatic drop in sectarian violence in Iraq since President Bush began sending more American troops into Baghdad aren't counting one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians.

Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn't include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

So, if a tree falls in a forest, and no one heard it, does it really make a noise? Not if you’re George Bu$h, alleged warlord, war president and resident-in-chief of BizarroWorld.

One might call this the Mesopotamian variant on “IOKIYAR.”

BizarroWorld has other oddities, too:

President Bush explained why [bombings don’t count] in a television interview on Tuesday. "If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory," he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose.

Others, however, say that not counting bombing victims skews the evidence of how well the Baghdad security plan is protecting the civilian population - one of the surge's main goals.

"Since the administration keeps saying that failure is not an option, they are redefining success in a way that suits them," said James Denselow, an Iraq specialist at London-based Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank.

It would probably useless to try to impress on an eight-year-old mind that the world is not black and white, and the reality slice of the day doesn’t just include bomb attacks or no bomb attacks. A reduction in the number of car, truck, and vest suicide bombings might indicate some kind of progress.

By ignoring the bomb count the Bu$h fantasists in the White House and CENTCOM are taking a giant step forward in mendacity and cloudy logic. Since they aren’t counting bomb deaths anymore, and the number of tortured bodies discovered each morning has gone down, the surge is working.

In fact the daily deaths from all causes hasn’t gone down.

According to the statistics, which McClatchy reporters in Baghdad compile daily from Iraqi police reports, 1,030 bodies were found in December. In January, that number declined 32 percent, to 699. It declined to 596 February and again to 473 in March.

Deaths from car bombings and improvised explosive devices, however, increased from 361 in December to a peak of 520 in February before dropping to 323 in March.

McClatchy was careful to note that the daily executions had tapered off before the surge escalation began in February, due to the Sadr Mahdi Army being ordered to step down in anticipation of Mr Bu$h’s Last Gasp offensive.

Ryan Crocker who was appointed as Ambassador to Iraq this month, cited the bombings as a reaction to the escalation, saying, "The terrorists like al-Qaida would make their own surge." Several US officials have been quoted as saying they don’t expect the escalation to stop the bombings.

If you don’t expect the escalation to stop the bombings then why claim it’s working just because you stop counting them?

Tired of being a third-tier winger-blogger, Michelle Malkin tries out for the Varsity, and Wonkette is there to share the moment with about 30 admiring readers, who make the event extra-special.

That skirt makes me think of Billy Joel.

Many thanks to Atrios for the heavy lifting.

The AP is reporting that astronomers have discovered a new planet with temperature ranges similar to that on Earth, making it potentially capable of sustaining life as we know it.

WASHINGTON - For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe."

The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.

There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.

There is no truth to the rumor that Mr Bu$h immediately ordered a space mission to be prepared to send Senators Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi there to see if it will support intelligent life.

Phoenix Woman discusses Nooners and her issues about psychological abandonment and self-loathing.

The Harpy stared at the bottles lined up in front of her like a glass menagerie. They were cold comfort, to be sure, but they were the only company she had now that she'd driven away everyone else in her life: The men, with her shrewishness and backstabbing; the women, with her Queen-Bee-ism and backstabbing.

She looked at the bottles, and then she looked at her face in the mirror — in her near-complete lack of self-awareness, she blamed her advancing age and not her nasty untrustworthiness for her lonely state.

And then she looked at her computer keyboard.

A smile twisted its way onto The Harpy's lips, thinned by decades of bitterness. She knew just the thing to make her feel better.

And from there it just gets better. I always knew Noonan was a drunken, shriveled-up waste of skin. I’ve never seen her dead sober. She has a good command of language, and a particularly emotive style of writing. What a shame it has never been harnessed for the good of mankind.

This is a delightful story, a tradition from before the Bu$h era, when military service was honorable and worthy of pride.

LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE -- Lisa Field watched the F-22A Raptor taxi to its parking place on the flight line, a slight grin moving across her face.

She stood where the pilot - her husband, Air Force Brig. Gen. Burton Field - would climb down from the cockpit. She held a fire hose.

He knew what was coming.

As the outgoing commander of Langley's 1st Fighter Wing, Monday's flight was his last with the unit. It was also his last in a Raptor, he said.

After a change of command ceremony next week, Field will head to Iraq's Balad Air Base to command the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing.

Monday's ceremony is an Air Force tradition reserved for aviators leaving their posts. It originated during the Vietnam War for pilots taking their last combat flight, one Langley pilot said.

Catch the rest at the link.

Congratulations to BG Field, and good luck to him and his subordinates at his new command.

It seems a soldier in Afghanistan understands something is amiss, but doesn’t quite get the point.

KABUL, Afghanistan: A U.S. Army sergeant complained in a rare opinion article that the U.S. flag flew at half-staff last week at the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan for those killed at Virginia Tech, but the same honor is not given to fallen U.S. troops here and in Iraq.

In the article issued Monday by the public affairs office at Bagram military base north of Kabul, Sgt. Jim Wilt lamented that his comrades' deaths have become a mere blip on the TV screen, lacking the "shock factor" to be honored by the flag as the deaths at Virginia Tech were.

"I find it ironic that the flags were flown at half-staff for the young men and women who were killed at VT, yet it is never lowered for the death of a U.S. service member," Wilt wrote.

He noted that Bagram obeyed U.S. President George W. Bush's order last week that all U.S. flags at federal locations be flown at half-staff through April 22 to honor 32 people killed at Virginia Tech by a 23-year-old student gunman who then killed himself.

"I think it is sad that we do not raise the bases' flag to half-staff when a member of our own task force dies," Wilt said.

Full credit to SGT Witt for his comment. (It would be demeaning to the flag and to his honored service to term it a “complaint.”) It is traditional to fly the national flag at half-staff in times of national mourning, and, in a very unusual moment of comity, we agree with Mr Bu$h that national flags should be flown at half-staff in commemoration of the massacre at Virginia Tech, not only in the United States, but all over our world-wide empire.

And we whole-heartedly agree with SGT Witt that the flag should be flown at half-staff whenever a member of the forces in Afghanistan dies there.

Naturally, to extend the policy logically, flags must also be flown in honor of US troops who die in the service of their country in Iraq, too. Leaving aside the issue of why they are there, their sacrifice demands this honor. It is unconscionable that a malAdministration, so eager to use the uniformed troops as political props for photo opportunities, is so disrespectful of them as representatives of the nation that their sacrifice is not only humiliated by a mask of secrecy when they are returned home, but this sacrifice is not memorialized by a simple symbol as the lowering of the flag for which they died.

According to the Defense Department, 315 U.S. service members have died in and around Afghanistan since the U.S.-led offensive that toppled the Taliban regime in late 2001, 198 of them in combat.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force said the flags of all its troop-contributing nations are flown at half-staff for about 72 hours after a service member's death "as a mark of respect when there is an ISAF fatality."

At one time the United States was considered the leader of NATO. It is galling that this organization of free countries is more aware of the sacrifice of their citizens, and more willing to honor that sacrifice, than we are.

As well as patriotism, common decency requires that all national flags, at all Federal agencies and military posts be flown at half mast to honor the daily deaths, until the deaths stop.

The “long war” of GEN John Abizaid is over. The NY Times reports this morning that CENTCOM and MNF-I plans to replace that phrase with something… catchier.

WASHINGTON, April 23 — When the Bush administration has sought to explain its strategy for fighting terrorism, it has often said the United States is involved in a “long war” against Islamic extremists.

The phrase was coined by Gen. John P. Abizaid before he retired as head of the Central Command. It was intended to signal to the American public that the country was involved in a lengthy struggle that went well beyond the war in Iraq and was political as well as military.

It would be a test of wills against “Islamofascism,” as President Bush once put it. It would also be a historic challenge that spanned generations much like the battles against Communism.

As it turned out, however, the long war turned out to be surprisingly short-lived, at least at the command that pioneered the term. After taking over last month as the head of Central Command, Adm. William J. Fallon quietly retired the phrase.

It is believed that Mr Bu$h’s beloved phrase “Islamofascism” will remain in use, although incorrect by virtue of the fact that Muslims are not fascists. A study panel of political, linguistic, and cultural experts have determined that Mr Bu$h’s use of this term is a certified case of Winger Projection Syndrome, and that, as wrong as everything else the man says and does, it is expected that it will remain in the Republican Party’s list of political invective, along with the stupidity of referring to the Democrats as “Democrat Party” and “some people say.”

Military officials said that cultural advisers at the command had become concerned that the concept of a long war alienated Middle East audiences by suggesting that the United States would keep a large number of forces in the region indefinitely.

Admiral Fallon was also said to have been unenthusiastic about the phrase. He has stressed the importance of focusing on the difficult situation in Iraq and in achieving results as soon as possible. The notion of a long war, in contrast, seemed to connote an extended conflict in which Iraq was but a chapter.

The change “is a product of our ongoing effort to use language that describes the conflict for our Western audience while understanding the cultural implications of how that language is construed in the Middle East,” Lt. Col. Matthew McLaughlin, a spokesman for the command, said in an e-mail message. “The idea that we are going to be involved in a ‘Long War,’ at the current level of operations, is not likely and unhelpful.”

In an effort to assist out Republican brethren and sistren we would like to suggest an alternative phrase that is accurate, catchy, and recognizes the reality of their position. Mindful of the fact that “The Forever War” is already taken, we’ve come up with a working title.

“The war to maintain a permanent Fascist Republican majority and to steal all the world’s oil reserves.”

It’s a bit long, and we will work on honing it down.

Strange day today; woke up late, couldn’t find my eyeglasses; couldn’t find my prosthetic brain. The omens were bad: I couldn’t find a sheep to augur its entrails, my Tarot deck disappeared, and the I Ching delivered the 5th gua: Hsu (Waiting). This is basically a good prospect, as there is an implication of nourishment.

The image is:

Clouds rise up to heaven:
The image of Waiting.
Thus the superior man eats and drinks,
Is joyous and of good cheer.

The “superior man” refers to a man who is wise and waits for a propitious moment and since nourishment implies more than food and drink I decided to write about a new stage venture started by some Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who are trying to work through some issues while educating Americans to what sometimes happens in war.

LOS ANGELES - The house lights go down and the stage lights come up on The Wolf, the first production of VetStage, a non-profit theater company run by veterans of the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It opens with a funeral: a Roman Catholic priest preparing to deliver a eulogy for a US soldier killed by a roadside bomb.

Quickly, the scene changes and we're transported to a group therapy session under way at military mental institution. It's here
that we meet our two main characters. Both are members of the US Marine Corps facing court martial. The first, a female soldier accused of killing a fellow marine after he raped her. The second, for massacring an entire Iraqi family in their home.

The therapy session does not go well.

"A lot of f---ed-up shit happened in combat, that's what I think, Supershrink," a third solider in the therapy session tells the military psychiatrist. "You know what, I'm tired, so why don't we move on?"

Returning vets always bring a lot of issues with them. During this round of war America has been made a lot more aware of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder than was the case in past wars. After WWII, a lot of people were concerned about millions of troops with hair-trigger combat reflexes all suddenly being turned loose on a country, and GIs were given a series of lectures before release that tried to explain the phenomenon, and how they had changed during war. There was an effort to ease these veterans back into society.

I don’t think there was as much effort taken during Korea and Viet Nam. Basically it was final pay, “Thanks a lot. Bye.” Our society is still paying the price for Nam-era troops who didn’t adjust.

It’s a problem again today, since most vets returning don’t even get the “Thanks a lot.” Mr Bu$h, who’s been seen with more uniformed troops than GEN Pace, Chief of the General Staff, seems to feel that they’ll settle back into civilian life fine, just the way he did after his stint in the Texas Air National Guard. He’s so confident of this, in fact, that he’s spent the last few years cutting back on the VA’s budget. After all, he transitioned back in just fine, where’s the worry?

Last year fellow vet Bulldog wrote:

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is the one of the most common health issues to affect troops who have deployed to Iraq to fight. Yet, not enough funding to take care of and treat these soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines has been allocated. As of 2004 and according to an article in Psychiatric News, by the American Psychiatric Association,

…less than 9 percent of the VA health research budget is dedicated to mental illness and substance use, even though 35 percent to 40 percent of VA patients need mental health care.

And in the face of mounting numbers of injured solders and a malAdministration that thinks of soldiers as disposable razors VetStage’s play notes:

Near the end of the first act, the two soldiers break out of the mental institution, but they can't lie low - violence seems to follow them wherever they go.

This is how the play's main character describes the massacre he perpetrated to his local priest: "They were sheep," he says, "and I am a wolf and I did what wolves do, and that's what I told 'em, and that's why they keep me locked up."

"And what about now - you're still a wolf?" the priest asks.

"You can't turn someone from a sheep into a wolf and then back again, so where does that leave me now?"

Where, indeed, are we leaving our vets?

When I wrote about the poisoning of pet food with melamine, a chemical that is frequently found in fertilizer, I expressed concern about the adulteration of both pet food and the human food chain. Melamine is rich in nitrogen, and therein lies the tale.

When reader Mike the Navigator wondered whether our most favored trading partners, the Chinese, a.k.a. “the landlord” might be sending us a message, I answered facetiously that more likely they were just following our examples in corrupt capitalism.

As it turns out…..

A nitrogen-rich chemical used to make plastic and sometimes as a fertilizer may have been deliberately added to an ingredient in pet food that has sickened and killed cats and dogs across the country, public and private officials say. A leading theory is that it was added to fake higher protein levels.

Melamine has been found in wheat gluten, rice protein concentrate and, in South Africa, corn gluten, all imported from China, and all meant for use in pet food, the Food and Drug Administration confirmed Thursday.
…
ChemNutra, which imported the wheat gluten linked to last month's massive pet-food recall, says it is concerned its Chinese supplier spiked the product.

In a letter on ChemNutra's website, Chief Executive Steve Miller said, "We are concerned that we may have been the victim of deliberate and mercenary contamination for the purpose of making the wheat gluten we purchased appear to have a higher protein content than it did."
…
But it does have a lot of nitrogen in it, says Ron Madl, director of Kansas State University's Bioprocessing and Industrial Value Added program. The most common way to test protein levels in the grain industry is to test for nitrogen, a major component of protein.

Adding melamine, with its high amount of nitrogen, to wheat gluten would give the illusion of a higher protein content, Madl said.

I’ve said it before, and it bears repeating: it’s bad enough when food adulteration affects Rover and Mittens. When it gets into the human food chain it’s past time to call for an examination of how we protect ourselves.

Unsurprisingly, under the Bu$h malAdministration the FDA food and food plant inspection program has been gutted. We seem to keep having this same tired discussion; relying on capitalists to self-police themselves is as effective as having a drunk behind the bar, serving drinks. The robber-baron free market lies of the Republican Party not only cheats people, it kills them. Corporate managers have no stake in their employers’ enterprise beyond the next quarter’s profits and their own bonuses.

The blogging phenomenon is too often seen as a platform for partisan political content, and I’m as guilty of it as anyone. I could offer as justification the fact that the last six years have seen so much that has abused the concept of what America is and what it was established to be, but that has been covered many times in many posts, often by writers more talented than I am.

It’s hard to define blogging other than by content. It’s a diary, a journal, a daily or weekly or occasional place for thoughts. Sometimes the blog is a place to rant, a chance to vent a spleen, and at other times it’s a method of communication about our daily lives. It’s no surprise that soldiers “over there” (the generic soldiers – Air Force weenies can write, too) maintain their own blogs.

One of the nicer milblogs I’ve encountered is The Sandbox a site established by Gary Trudeau, of Doonesbury fame. While Trudeau and his comic strip tend to have a certain ideological and satiric edge there is no such sense when reading The Sandbox. It’s just average Americans writing about the unusual moments in their unusual lives in an unusual (to Americans) place.

The Sandbox is a clean, lightly-edited debriefing environment where all correspondence is read, and as much as possible is posted. And contributors may rest assured that all content, no matter how robust, is currently secured by the First Amendment.

Trudeau has a place for policy and partisanship. I don’t find it quite as interesting. Although, sometimes.......

I’ve often termed Republicans, and their cousins Conservatives, neocons, paleocons, Fascists, proto-Fascists, Christo-Fascists, Crypto-Fascists and so forth as “nitrogen breathers” because so many times when we examine their actions, myths, legends, beliefs and thought patterns it seems as though they came from another planet.

Well, I was only half right. Most are probably Earthlings, but they are different. Nicole Belle, writing at Crooks and Liars points out there seems to be some correlative and observational data pointing out how different they really are, and how far back into their childhood the core features of their personalities extend.

Nicole points to a study reported in Psychology Today. Her money quote only tells part of the story.

"All people are born alike-except Republicans and Democrats," quipped Groucho Marx, and in fact it turns out that personality differences between liberals and conservatives are evident in early childhood. In 1969, Berkeley professors Jack and Jeanne Block embarked on a study of childhood personality, asking nursery school teachers to rate children's temperaments. They weren't even thinking about political orientation.

Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects' childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. They found arresting patterns. As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics.

Is anyone surprised that righties are introverts, loners, unable to form associative relationships with ease? Heck, I knew by the age of ten that some children were broody and lacked communication skills, but despite this were surprisingly more likely to be abusive to others at recess. By the time I was a Junior in high school I’d realized that some of my fellow students (all-boys high school) were quick to resolve disputes with their fists rather than talking the differences out.

OK, you know where we’re going with this, but other studies have observed specific cultural preferences:

Most people are surprised to learn that there are real, stable differences in personality between conservatives and liberals—not just different views or values, but underlying differences in temperament. Psychologists John Jost of New York University, Dana Carney of Harvard, and Sam Gosling of the University of Texas have demonstrated that conservatives and liberals boast markedly different home and office decor. Liberals are messier than conservatives, their rooms have more clutter and more color, and they tend to have more travel documents, maps of other countries, and flags from around the world. Conservatives are neater, and their rooms are cleaner, better organized, more brightly lit, and more conventional. Liberals have more books, and their books cover a greater variety of topics. And that's just a start. Multiple studies find that liberals are more optimistic. Conservatives are more likely to be religious. Liberals are more likely to like classical music and jazz, conservatives, country music. Liberals are more likely to enjoy abstract art. Conservative men are more likely than liberal men to prefer conventional forms of entertainment like TV and talk radio. Liberal men like romantic comedies more than conservative men. Liberal women are more likely than conservative women to enjoy books, poetry, writing in a diary, acting, and playing musical instruments.

Something happens, very early on, that causes these differences. Perhaps it’s in the genes, like blue eyes, or red hair, right-handedness or even a bend towards homosexuality. Or it might be in that very first year. Maybe Mommy doesn’t hold some kids and cuddle them, talk to them as often as other Mommies do.

The Psychology Today article is five pages long and discusses quite a few studies over the years that point out significant differences in the way righties’ minds work differently than lefties’. It’s well worth going through the article, if for no other reason than to make you marvel about the accuracies.

After the tragedy of Virginia Tech psychologists are once again talking about developing better determinant tools in order to identify twisted personalities like Cho Seung-Hui, and treat them earlier so as to avoid such tragedies.

I’ll bet they could also develop programs to identify and sidetrack those kids who sit and brood in the schoolyard and then try to steal your lunch when you’re not looking.

Yahoo news is reporting this morning that the expected six months time period for the surge demanded by the noted Napoleonic war expert and Likud operative Fred Kagan may last longer than originally sold to the American public.

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon is laying the groundwork to extend the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq. At the same time, the administration is warning Iraqi leaders that the boost in forces could be reversed if political reconciliation is not evident by summer.

This approach underscores the central difficulty facing
President Bush. If political progress is not possible in the relatively short term, then the justification for sending thousands more U.S. troops to Baghdad — and accepting the rising U.S. combat death toll that has resulted — will disappear. That in turn would put even more pressure on Bush to yield to the Democratic-led push to wind down the war in coming months.

Normal people have been counting this as the second month of the surge escalation that Mr Kagan, who works out of the American Enterprise Institute, the primary US office of the Likud Party, but they obviously do not understand the nature of the proposal. Mr Kagan didn’t mean we would have six months to turn things around in a massive re-enforcement of troops. He meant we would have six months from when he says the six month period begins. Currently the six month period begins in June.

First, the surge escalation has not even begun yet, although it is true that approximately one-third of the necessary 21,000 have been accounted for by the recent Pentagon extension of the typical Iraq 12 month tour into a 15 month deployment, and the greater part of another third have already been deployed to Iraq. The remainder should be in place sometime in June, at which point the official surge escalation will commence. At that point we will have six months to see if the surgeescalation can work its magic and make everyone in Iraq stop fighting so that the US military can concentrate on its close horizon goals: protecting the oil that will be handed over to US Big Oil interests and stirring up some sort of military confrontation with Iran, in order to justify a nuclear attack against that country so as to make the Middle East safer for Israel.

More than half of the extra 21,500 combat troops designated for Baghdad duty have arrived; the rest are due by June. Already it is evident that putting them in the most hotly contested parts of the capital is taking a toll. An average of 22 U.S. troops have died per week in April, the highest rate so far this year.

"This is certainly a price that we're paying for this increased security," Adm. William Fallon, the senior U.S. commander in the Middle East, told a House committee Wednesday. He also said the United States does not have "a ghost of a chance" of success in Iraq unless it can create "stability and security."

If the surge escalation doesn’t work we will then revert to Plan B, which is to point out that things are getting better, and since that is proof that the surge escalation is working, we just need to add a few more troops, and wait another six months until we see final victory.

The best solution, of course, is to collect up every single walking soldier – everyone in uniform – every swinging dick of them (apologies to the ladies reading this) – including all those female soldiers, who obviously are not as above, and move them all the Iraq. NOW. AT ONCE. TODAY. That includes all the training cadres and Drill Sergeants, except a few that we’ll keep at one training base in the US. It includes every single last solitary Brigadier General and Colonel messenger boy in the Pentagon, every last Major assigned to counting paper clips each morning and ensuring they’re all facing in the same direction. Every single Captain whose job is to carry a General’s briefcase. Everybody goes.

Then, six months from now, there will be no more excuses, no more mealy-mouthed weaseling from these warmongering cowards at the White House, AEI, Weekly Standard, and Fox Noise. And then the nation can get on with repairing the damage these creatures have caused.

Military,com has a flag-waver video clip from Russia that lasts almost 10 minutes. If you are a military equipment fan, or like clips of rockets and missiles being fired, this is your big chance. Complete with pulse-stirring chorus accompaniment, it’s sure to stir the blood of any Russian patriot. There are a few quick shots of what I think is the new 9M330 “Tor” AA system at work. This is the system recently sold to Iran.

Some nice shots of Sukhoi SU-30’s at work in air defense and ground attack as well as the new MiG 1.42 (canard equipped fighter) doing its party trick.

However, there are other interesting scenes in the clip. There are a few nifty scenes of their T-80 going through its paces on a training course: the image of an (estimated) 100,000 lb vehicle floating over suspension test bumps was fun. Also interesting was the sight of one of them, completely submerged, rising out of a river. Plus a quick clip of the T-80UM2 “Black Eagle” which is believed to be a technology upgrade incorporating new armor.

There were a couple of scenes of MI-24 Hind gunships attacking troops. The Soviet military was famous for carefully choreographing every step of its military maneuvers, and I imagine setting up this bit at about 6:00 was trouble to create.

Rising tensions between the US and Russia over our current ambitious Middle East policy has undoubtedly spurred this film to be released for public consumption.

Sunday is Earth Day, a landmark intended to focus our attention on the rapidly-dwindling resources of the planet that bore us and sustains us through our lives. We have not been good stewards of the land. It has been ravaged, torn apart for its mineral and fossil wealth. Forests that maintain our atmosphere have been cut down, to make McMansions for people with more wealth than sense, ore ego than sensibility. Other forests have been cleared and burned to create arable land to be used for spot farming, and after that land is barren and exhausted, more forest will be destroyed.

We poison our planet’s air with carbon emissions, and refuse to make those polluting the air pay a price for the destruction they wreak.

Sustainability. It’s important to sustain our planet because we will die if we continue our foolish ways.

The US Army is concerned about sustainability.

The Army is proud to join with the nation in celebrating the 37th anniversary of Earth Day this April 22nd. Our Earth Day theme, "Sustaining the Environment for a Secure Future," reflects the spirit of a Soldier's Call To Duty. Every day our Soldiers are called upon to defend the nation; that mission includes our ability to protect the country's precious natural resources. It is a mission our nation expects of us.

On Earth Day, we reaffirm our commitment to Army Sustainability.
…
What has the Army done? We are working to establish and sustain the land, water, air and energy resources required to support our transformation from the current to the future force. In doing so, we are applying the principles of our business transformation effort, now well under way. Sustainable practices directly support our business transformation, because they seek to eliminate waste, drive innovation, and promote collaboration across the Army
enterprise.

I’m not completely certain they understand the concept, but I know they understand about dwindling resources. They have used up just about all the wheeled and tracked vehicles in our inventory, and troop exploitation has reached the point that with Mr Bu$h’s latest escalation in Iraq of something just barely south of another 50,000 soldiers, airmen and sailors there is nothing left to deal with a new crisis.

Joe Galloway is also concerned about sustainability.

Here's a question for those who still support President Bush's strategy to stretch out the Iraq War until after he's left office, and for those who think we should be prepared to continue our bloody occupation of Iraq for five or 10 more years:

Are you ready to support reinstating Selective Service - the draft - even if that means your sons and daughters or your grandchildren will have to put on the uniform and go hold the cities and towns of a nation in the middle of a civil war?

Until now, the burden and sacrifices of military service in Afghanistan and Iraq have been borne by volunteers - young men and women who in large part hail from small towns and counties of our nation.

But the volunteer military, especially the Army and the Marine Corps, has been ground down by endless combat deployments that began with the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and may continue for years.
…

Our nation for the first time in many years has no strategic reserve available to respond to a crisis elsewhere in the world. The Army division that was the tripwire in Korea has dwindled down to a brigade of 3,000 troops. The Ready Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division is standing down after decades of being ready to parachute into a trouble spot on 12 hours' notice so that it, too, can shuffle in and out of Iraq or Afghanistan.

The brigades and divisions home from a deployment cannot be counted on in a major crisis. Most are immediately whittled down to 65 percent or 70 percent of their authorized strength upon their return home as hundreds and thousands of troops complete involuntary extensions of their enlistment or are assigned to military schools to study or teach. Most of their combat equipment, including armored vehicles, is left behind in the war zone to be used by their replacements.

The barrel has been scraped so hard and so often that it no longer even has a bottom.

It’s true. If we’re going to spend the next 20 years protecting the oil in Iraq we need a draft. But it should be a real draft, spread across the entire population. It will require not only inner city gang-bangers but white bread boys and girls planning on attending Ivy League colleges as their first step up the corporate ladder. Let’s get ‘em all if we’re planning on stealing the rest the oil in the Middle East.

Faced with man’s stupidity (and the stupidity of one man’s ego) it’s sometimes hard to sustain any hope for the future.

One of the most heat-breaking results of Mr Bu$h’s ego-war is TBI. In many ways this is worse than amputations because there are prostheses available to assist vets in getting back to a semblance of normal life. There are no prosthetic devices to help a wounded vet deal with the minutiae of life such as recognizing what time it is, or how to tie shoelaces, or fill out a form on paper.

Four years into experiencing the medical phenomenon, the VA has issued a new directive on Traumatic Brain Injury. The eight-page .pdf document is available from Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and McClatchy has provided a direct link to the document here. Click on “TBI” for the document. Click on the IAVA link to learn more about the work this dedicated group is doing to alleviate the suffering of our veterans.

Now, if only we could get Mr Bu$h to actually spend some money to help with this problem……

McClatchy Newspapers is reporting some hard truth about Iraq this morning – or at least part of it.

WASHINGTON - Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces.

Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.

No change has been announced, and a Pentagon spokesman, Col. Gary Keck, said training Iraqis remains important. "We are just adding another leg to our mission," Keck said, referring to the greater U.S. role in establishing security that new troops arriving in Iraq will undertake.

The reversion from the 2004 happy-face-forward confidence to the 2007 reality-challenged pretense indicates the shifting to the next phase of justification for US troops to remain in Iraq.

Let’s see if we can quickly review and pinpoint the progression: the original March 2003 invasion and conquest led automatically to the occupation. The world watched with horror as one of its oldest civilizations looted in a spasm of revenge public hysteria but there was calm in one quarter. The key point of this phase was highlighted by the fact that the only facility in the country considered worth protecting and preserving was the Oil Ministry, with its incalculably valuable maps of the oil fields. Some still remember Mr Bu$h’s invasion announcement to Iraqis that the US Army was coming, asking them to lay down their arms, welcome the American troops, and under no circumstances blow up or destroy any of the oil production facilities.

As elation over the removal of Saddam Hussein swept through the country American troops did in fact see the rhetorical equivalent of flowers and candy. (“Democracy, whiskey, sexy.”) By April 2003 Iraqis had decided it was time for us to leave, and public demonstrations and marches in Fallujah, for instance, were met with gunfire on several occasions.

We entered a phase of attempting to rebuild all the infrastructure we had destroyed during the “shock and awe” phase of ruthless bombing. There were great fortunes made as Bechtel, CACI, and especially HalliCheneyBurton snapped up no-bid contracts. It was during this phase that GEN Petraeus, then CG of the 101st Airborne Division, made his name as he actually spent discretionary funds employing Iraqis to do reconstruction work.

By 2004 the resistance had begun. Unsecured storage bunkers were looted of their contents, military explosives and weapons. The Al Qa'qaa bunker is the most well-known, as more than 300 tons of military-grade explosives went into the wind, perhaps because there were not enough troops to secure them.

The bombings began.

By 2005 we began to hear about training the Iraqi Army and national police so that they could “stand up.” Month by month, the blood toll increased, devouring Iraqis and Americans as a horrified world looked on, and our allies began to melt away.

Today there are more than 400,000 Iraqis trained to serve in the Army, and more than 175,000 trained for the police. All our allies have left Iraq, save the UK, which two days ago handed control of Maysan Province back to the Iraqis. It now holds only Basra Province, the key to the Persian Gulf, through which oil is shipped. There is an oil production law pending in the Iraqi Parliament, drafted in English by some unknown persons in Washington. It amounts to a diktat as it assigns 75-80% of the oil profits to several Western oil companies, basically until the oil runs out.

Since the Iraqis, apparently fully trained, can seemingly “stand up” we suddenly find the mission of our forces has changed to “security.” The fully-trained Iraqi Army is suddenly not up to the job, and US forces will have to remain until the insurgents are defeated, and the country pacified.

Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who's in charge of training Iraqi troops, said in February that he hoped that Iraqi troops would be able to lead by December. "At the tactical level, I do believe by the end of the year, the conditions should be set that they are increasingly taking responsibility for the combat operations," Dempsey told NBC News.

Maj. Gen. Doug Lute, the director of operations at U.S. Central Command, which oversees military activities in the Middle East, said that during the troop increase, U.S. officers will be trying to determine how ready Iraqi forces are to assume control.

"We are looking for indicators where we can assess the extent to which we are fighting alongside Iraqi security forces, not as a replacement to them," he said. Those signs will include "things like the number of U.S.-only missions, the number of combined U.S.-Iraqi missions, the number where Iraqis are in the lead, the number of Joint Security Stations set up," he said.

That's a far cry from the optimistic assessments U.S. commanders offered throughout 2006 about the impact of training Iraqis.

Many officials are vague about when the U.S. will know when troops can begin to return home. Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. is trying to buy "time for the Iraqi government to provide the good governance and the economic activity that's required."

There is a pretty clear date when this will happen, although it is a bit provisional because no one knows exactly when the oil will run out.

I don’t know what the Kitchen Window Woman has been putting in those cookies, but I’d like two dozen, please!

President George W. Bush stands in front of an army while he turns his back on soldiers who suffered TBI (traumatic Brain injury) in Iraq. Similarily, he has turned his back on soldiers who are suffering the ravages of PTSD. This week GWB threatened American people who disagree with his failed neoconservative policies. We were told that the troops who form the army he stands in front of will have to stay in Iraq longer if we refuse to support his stay the course surge.

It has been reported that a supplier in China has delivered corn gluten contaminated with melamine to a pet food manufacturer in South Africa. Reports indicate that there have been 29 cases of renal failure.

We stress that NO US OR CANADIAN CONNECTION HAS BEEN REPORTED.

BREAKING NEWS: Melamine in Corn Gluten Linked to South African Pet
Illnesses
April 19th, 2007

The 29 cases of renal failure in South Africa has been linked to
melamine in corn gluten used in pet food. Corn gluten is used extensively in
the US.

Tests have confirmed that Vets Choice and Royal Canin dog and cat
dry pet-food products contained corn gluten contaminated with melamine, says the manufacturer.

The contaminated corn gluten was delivered to Royal Canin by a
South African third-party supplier and appears to have originated from China.

We were tracking cases of the South African pet deaths before and have heard rumors of corn gluten contamination.

At this point, we believe that all corn gluten should be considered at risk for contamination and should be tested by every pet food
manufacturer and the FDA.

I wasn’t going to comment on the Virginia Tech massacre because there’s just no simple solution to matters like this. The United Sates is a prime example of a profoundly immature society. We are manipulated like lab rats. Corporations, politicians, and fake religious leaders inundate us with daily messages, most of them lies, in pursuit of their own agendas, which generally are not in agreement with the principles on which this democracy were founded.

A broad spectrum of inefficient and underfunded schools across the country have helped make us dumber than previous generations. We have lost the ability to logically analyze situations and problems. This loss of good education has resulted in a society unable to perform many of the jobs required by the new technologies, and resulted in official programs to import technicians from other countries. As our school graduates become dumber, it’s sometimes hard to remember that these graduates will teach the next generation. Imagine that. The official solution to school graduates unable to meet the nation’s technological challenges is to continue to starve the schools and produce poorly-educated people, while insourcing the technicians needed to do our scientific research. We’ve got $200 sneakers and children who can’t tell you what an adverb is, or where to find Algeria on a map.

The upward spiral of the cost of living in this country has forced most of our families into becoming two income families, often needing the support of three jobs to stay level with things. This forced absence from the house of a strong supervisory and monitoring influence that used to be filled by parents has now been shrugged off to other authority figures. Now we expect our schools to teach our children such basic principles as honor, decency and morality. The new technologies of the last 20 years, promising to make life easier, has in fact just made it more expensive. It’s a good thing that parents have to work three jobs, because it’s expensive to put food on the table, heat and cool our homes, put a television in every room, and supply a computer and assorted iPods and walkmen (if they still exist) to each child and also one for their parents. Parents who don‘t have the time to exercise adequate supervision of their children worry about predators the kids will encounter online, but often don’t even have the technological skills to keep those predators out of the home. They are so distracted by keeping their heads above water that they have lost sight of their primary responsibility: caring for and raising the next generation.

The reaction of our nitrogen-breathing brethren and sistern on the never-right to the Virginia Tech massacre has been yet another example of poor education, evidenced by their inability to logically analyze a problem. Perhaps driven by feelings of inadequacy or childish resentment of some sort or other, they see every aspect of our society as a black or white choice. They view life as a series of vast conspiracies against them, and spend their days terrified by threats that reside thousands of miles away. When a young man who was born in another country and came here 15 years ago with his parents goes on a killing spree their solution seems to be to close the borders, let no one into the country, and make sure every American carries a gun at all times. They seem to have no patience with the concept of figuring out why this man lost his center, analyzing why our society failed to observe, identify and treat his mental issues. While we and they both agree we don’t want to see this sort of thing ever happen again, we produce diametrically different solutions.

I truly do not understand their thought processes. A good friend of mine opined the other day that “An armed society is a polite society.” I tend to agree with that philosophy in theory, but believe that as our society exists today such an answer is inadequate. To arm each (supposedly adult) citizen would surely create mayhem in our streets. I’ve personally observed fistfights over parking spaces. I’m probably not unique in this sort of observation. Does anyone doubt the use of firearms if they were available?

I am a gun-owner, and a gun-user. I target shoot, and I do so, quite honestly, in order to keep my skills up. But I consider a firearm a defensive weapon, and would have no hesitation about using it in my home if I felt threatened. Since I live in Florida, where ex-governor JEB! ramrodded an insane law through our legislature, when the police arrived there would be only one story to tell. The thought of carrying outside the home, like carrying a cell phone, strikes me as an invitation to anarchy.

Perhaps if we had an adult, and effective, national leadership in both the White House and Congress we might be able to address these problems. I think the long-term solution lies in our public schools. The nation must express its needs and desires to our elected leaders, and demand they be dealt with. And if politicians refuse to answer these demands, they must be pruned, ruthlessly, from the tree of liberty.

A society driven by fear cannot survive.

I touched on all of this peripherally in something I wrote last month, but to try to re-introduce those thoughts here would be tedi