The Last Reasonable Republican President

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...."

- Dwight D Eisenhower 1952

Obama finally ‘taking control’ on Afghanistan?

First we see this: President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

Then this: In the wake of an AP report on Wednesday that President Barack Obama is not satisfied with any of the options on Afghanistan he has received from his national security team and is demanding revisions, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow turned to veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh for insight.

"It could be huge," Hersh told Maddow, "simply that the president's finally saying, 'I'm taking control.'"

"The one thing that mystified a lot of people," Hersh explained, "was the decision to let General McChrystal write a report. There's no general in history that will come back, given that assignment, and say 'We can't win.'"

"This is basically a war, at best, that's going to be a stalemate," continued Hersh. "And so Obama is just putting his foot down, and that's great. ... He's grabbing it and he hasn't been grabbing it until now."

Hersh also commented on a New York Times story which revealed that the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, former Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, had cabled Washington last week to express "his reservations about deploying additional troops to the country," thereby putting himself "in stark opposition to the current American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who has asked for 40,000 more troops."

Hersh described Eikenberry's cable as "big news," especially because Eikenberry has been one of a group of generals -- which also includes McChrystal, Petraeus, and Odierno -- who graduated from West Point around 1973-75 and have stuck together over the years as what is seen by other military leaders as a "West Point Mafia."

According to Hersh, this has caused "a lot of trauma within the Army, which is very resentful. ... The top of the Army ... they've been very unhappy with the McChrystal appointment and the way things have been going."

That is why Hersh sees it as significant that Eikenberry is now steering an independent course. "This summer inside the embassy," he told Maddow, "there was a lot of concerns about the stability -- literally the mental stability -- of Karzai. And I think Eikenberry probably knows more than most people."

"Eikenberry is simply, I think, reflecting a huge split," Hersh concluded, "because he's now splitting from the McChrystal counter-insurgency wing that's been dominated by Petraeus."

Hersh called his conclusion about Eikenberry a "heuristic guess," but it is supported by one online analysis which tracks Eikenberry's statements since 2007 and suggests that "General McChrystal is on a special mission based a specific philosophy of warfare and that General Eikenberry is performing his duty according to his current assignment with an ongoing evaluation of the various players and facts at hand."

"General Eikenberry is both a soldier and scholar of history and political science," this analysis concludes. "He knows the history of occupations that fail to deliver for the populace and he's telling us right now that the U.S. can't succeed with more military forces in a nation run by an illegitimate president who has been exposed for election fraud. More troops are not the solution."

It will be interesting to see what comes next...

Marines Distributing Coins for Christ in Iraq

At the western entrance to the Iraqi city of Fallujah Tuesday, Muamar Anad handed his residence badge to the U.S. Marines guarding the city. They checked to be sure that he was a city resident, and when they were done, Anad said, a Marine slipped a coin out of his pocket and put it in his hand.

Out of fear, he accepted it, Anad said. When he was inside the city, the college student said, he looked at one side of the coin. "Where will you spend eternity?" it asked.

He flipped it over, and on the other side it read, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16."

"They are trying to convert us to Christianity," said Anad, a Sunni Muslim like most residents of this city in Anbar province. At home, he told his story, and his relatives echoed their disapproval: They'd been given the coins, too, he said.

If you read the linked story you'll learn that this practice is causing unrest among the Iraqis. Of course it is! The US Marines should not be acting as christian missionaries (or any type of religious missionaries, for that matter). How could anyone think that this is going to work? And who is paying for the coins, I wonder? I bet it is us. I bet tax dollars are being used to create these monstrosities.

Armageddon in Retrospect

Like an unexpected visit from a lifelong friend you thought you'd lost forever, Kurt Vonnegut's *NEW* book, Armageddon in Retrospect, popped up on a shelf in a book store in the Dallas airport -- and I snagged it up immediately. I was not aware that Vonnegut had any unpublished work remaining that would be published posthumously. But here, in all its glory, is a collection of short stories all focused on war.



I've been a lifelong fan of Vonnegut's and I'm cherishing this book slowly - a story or two a day. If you've enjoyed Vonnegut in the past, you'll thoroughly enjoy this new book. Armageddon in Retrospect contains twelve new and unpublished writings on war and peace. The stories range from from a nonfiction recollection of the destruction of Dresden during World War II to a very funny story about three privates and their fantasies of the perfect first meal upon returning home from war...

And sprinkled throughout the book are examples of Vonnegut's drawing and art, like this one:


If you've ever enjoyed Vonnegut's work, do yourself a favor and find a copy of this book. His take on war... and peace... is "on the mark" even as he "speaks" to us from beyond the grave.

What Does $720 Million Buy?

The daily cost of the Iraq War is estimated at $720 million. The Iraq War supplemental funding bills passed by Congress comes to $410 billion for four years or about $280 million/day. The additional $440 million/day represents the costs already incurred but not yet paid for such as paying the interest on the war debt, caring for the wounded, replenishing military equipment and rebuilding Iraq. These future costs are based upon the work of Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Does anybody think this is a wise expenditure at this point? Think about what $720 million could buy instead:

• Health Insurance for an adult costs $4,403 per year. $720 Million could cover 163,525 people.
• The average cost of a new elementary school is $8,497,627. $720 Million could pay for 84 brand new schools.
• It costs $624 to give a child free school lunches for a year. $720 Million could buy lunch for 1,153,846 kids.
• An affordable housing unit costs around $111,061. $720 Million could buy 6,482 homes.
• A year of Head Start costs $7550. $720 Million could open 95,364 new slots.
• The average cost of renewable electricity for a home is $565/year. $720 Million could pay for 1,274,336 homes to have it.
• An average school teacher’s salary is $57,000. $720 Million could put 12, 478 new teachers in the classroom.
• The average cost of a four-year state university is $20,628. $720 Million could put 34,904 students through college.
• Health insurance for a child costs $1,700 per year. $720 Million could cover 423,529 kids.

Are we any safer for having invaded Iraq? I don't think so. Add in the cost of the lives lost and the billions squandered and it is a sorry fucking state of affairs that this administration (and the rubber stamp Congress) has gotten us into.

Here's hoping Obama wins and gets us out of Iraq quickly.

Is That Oversight I Smell?

Yahoo News reports: House Democrats demanded documents Thursday about a multibillion-dollar overseas contracting loophole to track down how — and why — the Bush administration slipped it into plans to protect taxpayer money.

Isn't it about time to track down where all of the missing money is that was sent to the war effort, but then looted by war profiteers? But I understand why the president wouldn't want to pursue war profiteering, I mean, after all, some the biggest war profiteers are his family members! Why aren't more people outraged that billions of dollars are unaccounted for, and there are widespread allegations of waste, fraud and war profiteering.

If you read that first Yahoo News story a little further, it notes that: The United States has spent more than $102 billion over the last five years to help rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. In that time, the Justice Department has uncovered at least $14 million in contract bribes in those two nations alone.

I hate that we are spending so much on this war in the first place, but the least we could do is try to ensure that we are competently spending what has been allocated!