Anniversaries

You know what day it is. A day when we should all be remembering those young men and women that we have repeatedly sent into harm's way, by lying to them, telling them they were fighting for their country, or democracy, or freedom, or some such other bullshit.

A day when we should be weeping over the fact that so many of them come home broken in body and mind to a nation that seems to have forgotten all about them, except when it comes time to buy yellow ribbon magnets from China for a dollar or two. A day when we should be doing something about the fact that SO fucking MANY of our vets are unemployed, or homeless, or struggling to get by.

Today is all those things. If you know a veteran? Give them a hug or a thank you, call them up to say hello, take them to lunch or dinner, offer to help them out with something, anything. It could be something as small as picking up groceries, babysitting their kids, polishing their resume, setting up their computer, taking their damn dog for a walk. Do something. Anything. Just to let them know you appreciate what they went through while they were sweltering in a trench somewhere getting their ass shot off or getting water tainted with decaying corpses and rotting food thanks to George Bush, Dick Cheney, KBR, and/or Halliburton.

If you don't PERSONALLY know a veteran, you can always volunteer with one of the many fine organizations that help our vets in various ways.

These men and women risked their lives and their minds and bodies to do what they saw as their duty to the nation. You don't have to agree with their politics or their service to do them the kindness you would do any other human being. Step up and do your bit for them, and remember, in one month's time, a WHOLE LOTTA them will be coming home from Iraq.

If you're a business owner, you can help by hiring them. If you're working for a big corporation, ask them if they're interested in hiring veterans. If you work at a restaurant or other service/retail business, ask your employers if they will offer vets discounts, then publicize those discounts. Everything you do helps.

And, if you're a voter? Get your ass out there, register to vote, make sure all the vets you know are registered to vote. They don't have to vote for YOUR candidate. Just make sure they vote. Offer to drive them to the polls if they're disabled. Help them register by mail. But make DAMN sure they don't vote for Mittens Romneycare, because that miserable plastic-faced billionaire bastard is talking about PRIVATIZING the VA. After G.W. Bush's disastrous experiment with Walter Reed, I don't EVAH want to hear about veterans lying in pools of their own piss while rats run across the floor and mold spreads from leaky ceilings.

Today is also a very sad day here at La Casa de Los Gatos. It is the anniversary of my father's death. Dad fought in WW II, and was on the losing side, initially, so he spent some time as a POW. He came back from the war deaf in one ear, due to shrapnel, and with an enlarged heart. He lived a long, and mostly healthy, life, but his war stories were enough to give us kids nightmares for weeks. And I know he suffered from PTSD, although he was a gentle man who turned it inward into deep depression rather than outward into beating his wife and kids.

Goodbye, Dad. I still miss you so very much. I think I always will. You loved me and you taught me to love myself, even if the lesson took a long, long time to root itself.

Today is also the anniversary of Zingiber's death. For 14 long years, he was with me every moment, a fat, silly, fearful, neurotic, sweet, affectionate, jealous, possessive, overweight lump of love. I miss him every single day. No one has ever loved me the way that fool did. No matter what I did to him — and here I have to admit, shamefacedly, that there were times when he got on my very last nerve, and I did yell at him and torment him in various small ways — he never, ever held anything against me, not even for a second. I could attribute this to his complete and total brainlessness, I guess, but every night when he put his fat, furry little head on the pillow next to me and breathed softly and warmly into my ear, I realized that he might have been as stupid as the day was long, but that was real love in those big green eyes.

I miss you baby. I wish I could tell you one more time just how much.

Stumble It!

Bring The Troops Home, Goddammit

A little reminder for all the Fortunate Sons:



Bring them back, goddammit, and not in body bags, either.

Stumble It!

The President Rocks The Audience

Live from the White House Correspondents' Dinner:



Contrasting this with Bush's last appearance, I can't help thinking how innately decent and fair our President is. Yes, he had fun tweaking a few people, but no one who didn't deserve it. Most important of all, he called for remembrance of our troops -- the Republicans pay a LOT of lip service to that, but they're the ones who keep cutting the VA budget and freezing the ordinary soldier's wage, and refusing to regulate the payday lenders who are driving our troops' families into foreclosure.

More touching was his call to remember those devastated by the storms that have struck the Southern states. Those red states are a hotbed of teabagger KrayZ. He didn't have to say word one about them. But, unlike Bush, who never mentioned Katrina after it happened except to complain that Kanye West dissed him, our President called for a show of kindness and help to those who hate and disrespect him with every breath.

Thank you, Mr. President. Here's looking forward to another five years with you at the helm.

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Memorial Day 2010

It's that time of year again. And while Americans all over the land rush to the beaches and parks to "celebrate" by eating barbecue and potato salad, others wait anxiously for news of those deployed; visit graveyards, lay wreaths; weep for those who never came home; or wonder why they lost their home, spouse, job, sometimes every anchor that holds them in place in society.

I never understood the "celebrate" aspect of Memorial Day. There is nothing to celebrate in the deaths of men and women, mostly young, of any race, nationality, ethnicity, skin colour, or religion. Rather, it is my sincere hope that all of you enjoying yourselves today will pause for a minute and contemplate this. Or simply bow your heads and think of the young boys and girls we have sent to so many places to be hurt and killed to make our oligarchic owners a little richer.

Today we at this blog bow our heads and think of Louis Rochat (Rocket, to members of the 1/9 Cav), who fought his last fight on Saturday. Rocket risked his life to save his fellow troopers. He lost part of a leg, the vision in one eye, and two fingers for them.

There's plenty of stories among troopers of the 9th Cav, that elite group of helicopter pilots who flew missions in VietNam. Most of them portray Rocket, fairly accurately, as an ornery SOB with courage and class, and a willingness to lay down his life for his fellow troopers. He was just a lad when he arrived in VN, and a wreck when he left, leaving behind pieces of himself. In his own words:

I was twenty years old and just married when I left for Vietnam, and I couldn’t wait to get there. I didn’t even think about the feelings of my folks or my new wife. . . . She watched a twenty-year-old, six-foot, 175-pound Army warrant officer gunship pilot, full of piss and vinegar and a will to live life to its fullest, leave for a place she had heard nothing but bad things about. She got back a 102-pound, dark hollow-eyed, morphine and Demerol dependent, shrapnel and nine times gunshot-wounded, nine-month and two-day Vietnam veteran, who barely knew where he was, much less that he was facing two years in the hospital and thirteen surgeries.

Despite his injuries and the horrors he had seen, Lou pulled himself together and went on to make a long and happy life with his doubtless-horrified young wife. And he took his time to say all his goodbyes when, wrecked by the horrors of that war, his body failed him. He found a new vocation and a voice as a writer, with passion reverberating in his stories. Here is his wonderful description of the sacrifice one of his fellow Troopers made for him.

Louis Rochat, you were a class act. You made the world a better place and showed how to live and how to die. Rest in peace, trooper, you've earned it.

So stop for a moment today and think about how you can make your fellow citizens' lives better. Send a letter to someone deployed out there, telling them you care. Put together a package for a trooper on the front lines. Volunteer for a couple of hours a week or a month with any organization that works with vets, especially the VietNam vets who didn't have the many opportunities we provide for troopers today.



As for all those people who wear flag shirts and "support the troops" with tacky crap made in China? Go read this. And then get off your fucking ass and do something. Other than flapping your gums, that is.

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Politics: Supporting The Troops

You know how we're always shooting off our mouth here at La Casa de Los Gatos, about how we should be doing more for our troops?

Because, you know, it's like the conservatives, ReUglycans, and teabaggers seem to have co-opted that issue right out from under us.

And we don't like that one fucking bit. All kinds of people end up in the military. Some of them are very rightwing, some of them are pretty fucking leftwing. As far as we here at La Casa de Los Gatos are concerned, their politics ain't the issue. Face it, you can't get most people to whistle a tune in fucking harmony, how the hell are you going to get an entire fucking military to have a single point of view on politics?

No, for us, the issue is, when you ask someone to go get killed because their Commander-in-Chief said so, then you owe them something. Maybe you don't need to wipe their fucking ass for the rest of their natural-born days. But you sure as hell don't kick them to the curb and treat them like bumwad, either.

Because once these guys join the military, the only way they can disobey orders (regardless about how they might feel about the righteousness or justice of those orders) is to risk the loss of their career, their benefits, few as they are, and jail time.

And you know how anxious the world is to hire a jailbird, especially these days when you're lucky to be underemployed, at best.

So it turns out that there's an organization that builds homes for vets who are severely injured in the line of duty.

And it warms the cockles of our shriveled black heart to hear that they're doing this for one Frank Pierson, who lost one leg and a significant part of another in Iraq. And the most touching part?

"Many people who volunteer to work on these homes are Vietnam veterans," Thomas said. "They said they've sworn that they wouldn't have another war where veterans were treated as they were when they returned from Vietnam."

Kudos to those VN vets who, after all they went through, still found room in their hearts to help their fellow soldiers out.



You know we don't support the war in Afghanistan, we didn't support the war in Iraq, we were opposed to the bombing of Serbia, and we utterly despised, resisted, and demonstrated against the war in Vietnam. But these guys who get their asses blown off and their heads fucked up? They're not the ones who are getting rich off any of this. They're not the ones making the decisions. Just like the rest of us working stiffs, they got hired into this organization which pays them in "pride" and "honour" rather than, you know, filthy lucre, aka money.

It suckers them into this whole ethos of "serving the nation" (even though that hasn't been an issue since WW II, the last "righteous war"), and then pays them squat to go out and be cannon fodder. It imposes a strict training system that creates lifelong bonds between these people who, depending for their very lives on their comrades, are more tightly tied to them because of shared danger and trauma than most people are to their spouses and children.

If they make it back less than whole, it does its best to deny them care for any suffering they might have undergone.

And those same assholes of the rightwing who scream the loudest about "Supporting Teh Troops" are the same motherfucking pig-diddlers who vote against any funding for the VA, for educational opportunities for vets, for any improvement in servicemembers' lives. They're the assholes who won't volunteer, who find ways to vote for every war that every existed and ways to avoid getting their own worthless asses shot up. Those are the same dicksuckers who piss and moan about how "the troops volunteered, they need to suck it up."

Well, suck this, assholes.



As for the rest of youse, if you want to lend a hand, donate money, supplies, or labour, get your ass over there and do your thang. You'll find them here.

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Health: Kidney Donations and Transplants

Today's health story is about a kidney donation.

I can't use the real names of the people featured in this story, so I'll call them R1 and R2. They served together in Vietnam as young men forty years ago.

As young draftees, they were part of a tight-knit group that repeatedly risked life and limb in the course of duty.

Yes, we all have strong opinions about that "war" that was never declared a war, about the millions of Vietnamese peasants and farmers who lost their lives, their homes, their farms, their families, their limbs; and the 58,000 Americans who came back in body bags. But the young draftees were not to blame for any of this, even if a few of them went on to commit war crimes. By and large, they were serving in the military for a myriad of reasons and most of them conducted themselves decently.

They are now in their sixties. Silver-haired men who continue to stay in touch, forever connected by the ties that bind, watching friends and old comrades drop away due to the ravages of old age.

So R1, a man who suffered many grievous wounds in the course of service, suffered a recent insult to add to all his injuries: his kidneys started shutting down. For close to two years now, he's been on dialysis. If you have healthy functioning kidneys, you probably don't know what dialysis is. Thank your lucky stars. It's not for the faint of heart.

Essentially, because your kidneys can no longer filter harmful wastes and extra fluids out of your body, you have to go to a location (a clinic or hospital) where you get hooked up to a machine that slowly filters your blood for you. This is called hemodialysis. Because only a few ounces can be filtered at a time, the procedure takes up to five hours. And you have to do this three times a week.

In addition, you don't get to eat tasty stuff anymore. No bacon, no salt, no cheese, no ketchup, no crackers, no chips, limited quantities of potassium-containing fruit and vegetables, or items high in phosphates (like chocolate), or protein (meat, dairy products, whole grains, nuts).

Fun, huh?

In the event, R1, after suffering through this and waiting patiently for a kidney donor, was finally told he didn't have much time left if he couldn't get a kidney replaced. So he put out the word to his old buddies: can ya spare a kidney for a fellow trooper?

Unbelievably, to this old cynic, at any rate, replies came pouring in. Yes, they would spare a kidney if they could, said his brothers in arms. Dutifully, they submitted to the tests required to determine if any of them qualified — and if they didn't make a perfect match, they'd donate anyway, if they could, just to bump their old buddy up to the top of the list so he could have the next kidney that did match his needs.

There is a special deity for old soldiers, methinks, and s/he lent a hand. After much trading of insults (which, really, is just another way of saying, "Hey, man, I fucking care,") one of his brothers in arms was found to be both in good enough physical shape to spare a kidney and to be a match for R1. So R2 (the trooper with two good kidneys and a clean bill of health) signed up to give one of his to his fellow serviceman, R1.

Sometime in January, the swop takes place. R2 goes home with one less kidney, and R1 emerges with one working kidney, to a life of, hopefully, no more dialysis. Send some good thoughts their way, peeps. Just because it's so fucking heartwarming that somebody would give up a vital organ for someone else, in commemoration of bonds forged four decades ago.

The deity of old soldiers would like both these fine men to know the following information, published in Science News (175:5):

The Jan. 29, [2009] issue of NEJM (the New England Journal of Medicine) has reported that Hassan Ibrahim and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis have found that kidney donors have the same probability of survival over several decades as the general population, including adequate kidney function and — surprisingly — even less risk of severe kidney disease. The data was derived from studying kidney transplants performed at U.Minn between 1963 and 2007, including selecting 255 of the donors to undergo kidney function tests. The test results were then compared with similar tests on individuals with two functioning kidneys, and donors were matched for race, gender, body weight, and age.

So, R2, for your great generosity in donating one of your healthy functioning kidneys to R1, the deity of old soldiers wants you to know that you're giving away nothing but your love, man. Power to you both, continued health and long life.

ICHC

And as for those who are all, like, supporting the troops? Consider donating an organ. Especially you rich young Republicans who don't ever plan to sign up for military service but support all wars with your mouths. Now you can show that you *really* support the troops. Sign those organ donor cards and carry them at all times. And if you have two healthy kidneys, go see if there's someone who could use one.

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Politics: Supporting Teh Troops

ICHC U NO WUT

You know how the 82nd Chairborne support teh troops? They caterwaul about how the VA is a total waste of money (ignoring the fact that it's a socialistic, government-run health care system that gives teh troops teh "best health care" available). They complain that Walter Reed hospital is typical of the VA hospitals (ignoring the fact that the Bushies turned it over to private, "for profit" profiteers who took it to egregious new depths, leaving injured and helpless soldiers lying in pools of their own piss, exposing them to mold and dirt and disease in the interest of making one extra buck or twoi). They fight people like Jim Webb who created the new GI Bill that will acknowledge and reward those who lay their lives down when their country calls, and put their minds and bodies in the line of fire in the name of duty. They try to overturn such legislation while buying enormous American flags (made in China) or those stupid little yellow ribbons (also made in China). They attack vets who might not agree with wars of choice. They attack these people, their homes, and their families. From the comfort of their airconditioned offices.

They think it's totally OK that Blackwater, that crusading Christian bunch of bloodthirsty child rapers, shot and killed Iraqis "for fun" while making tons more money than the troops who volunteered to serve the nation. They think it's totally OK that Kellog, Brown, Root and its parent company Halliburton got "no-bid" government contracts and supplied the troops with rotten food and water while spending taxpayer money on luxuries for themselves.

You wanna know what "supporting the troops" looks like? This is supporting the troops. Friends of this soldier, who served two tours of duty as a medic in Iraq, rebuilt his classic car for him as a welcome home present. FTA:

One of them volunteered to rebuild the rig while Chad was serving his country as a medic, the second of two tours to the Middle East. Chad also served as an active duty member in 1991 during the first Gulf War.

Chad's friends and family spent weeks re-wiring and re-building the 66 Chevy, then surprised him when his deployment ended.

To the 82nd Chairborne: That's supporting the troops, motherfuckers. Not threatening them and trashing them and criticizing them. Fixing the car they left behind. Helping out their parents, or their spouses, or their kids. Sending them things they need. Raising money to buy them decent body armor when Dick "Dick aka Satan" Cheney pulls strings to award taxpayer money to military contractors who give these poor guys and gals body armor worth less than shit. Adopting their pets so the soldier can leave with an easy mind and look forward to coming home to a friend who will probably console them better than most people could.

That's fucking supporting the fucking troops. Sign up, you chickenshit motherfuckers, before attacking those who have the guts to do so. Let's see you slog in the desert heat, live on contaminated supplies, and get your ass shot off a couple of times. Then come tell us about "supporting teh troops."

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The Countdown Clock

Man, those seconds just can't run out fast enough for me. Or any other of my fine fellow bloggers. The remaining denizens of La Casa de Los Gatos don't seem to care as long as they get their 18 hours of shuteye per day, interspersed with fine kibble, treats, toys, pets, catnip, and the daily constitutional exploration of the hillside, but.


Me, I can't bear waking up to a headline such as this:

Bush 'very pleased' with Iraq war outcome: Report

Is there anything that bothers this pathetic, revolting little man? Does he think for even one minute of the nearly 5,000 coffins in which the remains of his fellow-citizens lie moldering? The tears of their parents? Their spouses and children? The suffering their families and friends endure, having lost a loved one? The estimated 50,000 or so lying in their own piss in military hospitals or suffering quietly at home? Missing a limb or an organ, struggling to get along on disability payments, homeless? Doomed to a lifetime of fighting the mental and emotional impact of what has been seen and lived through?


And what of the Iraqis who have died by the hundreds of thousands? Does he ever think about, see, respond to, the sight of a pool of blood blackening in the desert sun? Filled with the limbs, separated from their erstwhile owners, of children, housewives, cab-drivers, innocent bystanders, stallholders in the marketplace where the latest atrocity occurred? A little more than two years ago, a Lancet study estimated the number of Iraqi dead at 655,000. UNHCR estimates 4.7 million refugees, both inside and outside Iraq, most in dire need of food, shelter, medical aid.

Does the monster-in-chief ever contemplate the children who have seen their parents blown up before their eyes, the fathers who have no jobs but still must feed their children, the mother whose child burned and stuck to her body when our troops opened fire on her car?


Because, in addition to that first heart-wracking headline, in fact, almost immediately below it, I notice this:

Baghdad blasts kill 19

The Green Zone blast splashed blood and seared flesh across the grey concrete barriers at the entrance, according to an AFP correspondent.

Meanwhile, the rotten thing that wears the mantle of this country's leader announced today that he

believes the Iraq war was a success and is "very pleased" with what is happening there.

[He added] ..."remarkable" progress had been made in Iraq since the late dictator [Saddam Hussein] was toppled in 2003.

"People have been able to take their troops out of Iraq because Iraq is becoming successful. I'm very pleased with what is taking place there now," he said, adding there still is "a lot of work" to be done.

"We are bringing troops home because of the success in Iraq. But Iraq is not yet completely safe.

"So there will be a US presence for a while there at the request of the Iraqi government," he said.

"The United States is willing to continue to help. Most countries there within a very broad coalition have come home but we want to help this government," he said without further elaborating.

Of course, without further elaborating. Either he's lying through his teeth or he, as usual, doesn't have the first fucking clue what he's talking about. He doesn't elaborate on his statements because someone, some very malevolent wretch in the bowels of this misadministration, writes these deliberately disingenuous things for him to say, and he parrots them as his "handlers" tell him to. He has nothing to say about the armless, the legless, the blind and insane, those proud wounded heroes of his money-burning war that is crashing and burning our economy around our ears. Jesus, what a fucking blind, limited, self-satisfied pig he is. A thousand, no, a million curses on his empty head.

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2008 Elections: A Summary of Facts, Part I

Eww, don't touch me, old dude!

We all know this is a very important election. So important that the handwringing has already begun and Concern Trolls (people who pretend they're very concerned about a candidate's chances while simultaneously sliming said candidate and severely depressing said candidate's supporters*) are surfacing like turds in the sewage reclamation plant.

If you're an Obama supporter, there is plenty of evidence out there that you should calm down. The polls go up, the polls go down, your head goes round and round. Here, for example, is a wonderful piece by Seth Colter Walls, Political Reporter for The Huffington Post, explaining how pollsters weight their polls — and, incidentally, explaining why you should not trust polls!

But the Republican candidates — Sarah Palin and John McCain — appear to giving so many people the heebie jeebies that we're obliged to do a little rooting around here and find out exactly what gives.

Do you want to see that face for the next four years?

Here, in brief, is what John McCain says about his platform:

• You say you have "A pro-growth, pro-jobs strategy to get our economy back on track."
  
  Well, everybody wants one of those. How'd'you plan to deliver one, John? Especially after telling us “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should,” [...].
  
  Dude, it's 2008. There's a little over three months left to the year. This is not the time to be tellin' us you don't have a plan and you'll need some on-the-job training, because, um, you know, you shoulda got that training back in 2000 when you were running FOR THE EXACT SAME JOB, YOU FUCKING DOOFUS. You've had eight years to fix this gap in your knowledge. Surely you were contemplating a second run for the Presidency. So what the fuck were you doing the past eight years, porking lobbyists, or lobbying for pork?
  
  Based on the insults you're hurling at Democrats, it's kinda hard to believe you'll be able to scare up a "bi-partisan" National Commission on Workplace Flexibility and Choice. How long will they take to give you a "recommendation"? Because, y'know, that 9/11 Commission took a fucking long time to tell us anything. Just sayin'.
  
  Oh, and giving people comp time instead of overtime money is not really helpful when real wages have been stagnant for a decade. We don't all have $100 million in the bank and seven houses, yaknow. Finally, we're proud of you for supporting all that cool legislation to help families and all, but, um, 1993 was, like FIFTEEN YEARS ago? Y'know, 20th Century, vs. 21st? Things have changed a bit?
  
  
• You say "Bringing costs under control is the only way to stop the erosion of affordable health insurance, save Medicare and Medicaid, protect private health benefits for retirees, and allow our companies to effectively compete around the world."
  
  By giving us $5,000 per family (regardless of economic circumstances) for health insurance? Put down the crack pipe, dude. We pay double that for two adults with no degenerative diseases and few drug copays. That doesn't include vision or dental, which we pay separately. Besides, without jobs and unemployment hovering over 6 per cent and the current economic collapse, how the fuck are we supposed to pay for this insurance?
  
  Are you seriously going to hand every American family, rich and poor, $5K out of the treasury? Cause you might run out of paper to print that money, yaknow. You say: "When families are informed about medical choices, they are more capable of making their own decisions and often decide against unnecessary options." You mean when you tell them here's your $5K and you can't afford surgery for your kid's cleft palate on that, they'll forgo the surgery, right? Will Cindy's charity step up to the plate? I hear they do lots of cleft palate surgeries in other countries.
  
  Oh, btw, John? Your statement "John McCain will promote the rapid deployment of 21st century information systems and technology to improve patient safety, enhance quality and lower costs"? Doesn't sound too good considering how much of our medical information processing has been outsourced and leaked to identity theft rings.
  
  
• You say you "believe[s] that the highest priority for any President is protecting the lives of American citizens, defending their personal freedom, and securing our land and resources.
  
  Does that mean you'll be revoking the Patriot Act in accordance with the Fourth Amendment's guarantee of our right to be secure in our "persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures"? Will you force the telcos to obey the law and cease their unconstitutional spying on Americans?
  
  Will you restore the people's right "peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances" according to the First Amendment to the Constitution? Or was the attack on the protestors and the press at the RNC just a taste of things to come?
  
  
• You say you have "fought to honor our national commitment to our veterans who have given their careers and livelihoods to ensuring our freedom," you say.
  
  Why, then, did you vote against the Webb amendment to give troops more rest time between deployments? Why, in July 2007, did you vote against troop drawdown in Iraq? Why, in March 2007, did you not even bother to show up to vote on troop drawdown? Why, in February, did you fail to show up to vote against condemning the "surge"?
  
  Why did you vote against increasing the VA's health care facilities budget? Why did you repeatedly vote against increasing the VA's budget for outpatient care and treatment?
  
  Why, in February 2006, did you vote against closing the corporate tax loophole and awarding any monies thereby earned to the VA to provide treatment for injured veterans? You did the same thing in March 2004, preferring your corporate cronies to the veterans who have loyally served their nation.
  
  So when you say you have fought to honor these brave men and women, who were you fighting? Did you not know that injured veterans were lying neglected at Walter Reed?
  
  You're drawing 100 per cent disability pay, Senator. Nearly $60,000 a year. With a yearly income of around $6 million, why are you taking that pension, when you don't need it? You have seven houses, Senator. You spend $520 on a pair of shoes.
  
  Did you know that thousands of veterans have been denied disability benefits, Senator?
  
  Even without your wife's $100 million fortune, you're not poor, Senator. You earn $169,300 annually as a Senator. Add your tax-exempt disability pay and your Social Security income ($1,930/mo=$23,960/pa) and your book royalties of $176,508. That's a lot of money, Senator. $369,768 in taxable income and approximately $60,000 in non-taxable income. Your lifetime health care is provided by us, the taxpayers. You don't have to pay a cent for it. You don't pay a cent for housing, either, or for your children's food, clothing, health care, housing, transportation, education, and other incidental expenses.
  
  So why are you taking disability money and social security money when the median household income is $50,000 a year, Senator? If you're 100% disabled, you shouldn't be running for office. And if you're not, you shouldn't be taking the money.
  
  
• You say you have "a broad and cohesive vision for the future of American innovation."
  
  Really? Your "broad and cohesive vision" — that of a man who still does not know how to log on to a computer or access the Internet, who doesn't know the difference between Google and the World-Wide Web, appears to consist of fiscal incentives combined with low taxes and deregulation to stimulate innovation.
  
  Have you talked to Phil Gramm or Alan Greenspan lately? Because that approach was tried with the financials markets, and do you know where that got us? Oh wait, we forgot, your friend Phil Gramm is one of those rich scoundrels who helped respected Swiss bank UBS lose 70 per cent of its value since he signed on; he and his wife Wendy are deeply involved with deregulating the energy markets, the Enron scandal, and deregulation of the EPA. Plus, richie rich Phil thinks the recession is "mental" and Americans are a "nation of whiners" because they can't all land jobs as VP of UBS, helping wealthy Americans evade taxes.

So much for Part I. We're too exhausted to continue tonight. Tomorrow, same channel, please. We will present Part II. And we plan to investigate Mooseburger Mamma, too.

Meanwhile, for your delectation:

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Politics: Joe Lieberman Is a Boil

... upon the collective behind of humanity.


Our dear readers know quite well how fond we are of Senator Lieberman (I-Me). His placing the State of Israel's interests above America's interests has done more harm to Israel than good.

Frankly, we find the repellent little bottom-dweller (in every sense of the word) utterly unbearable. He is a sanctimonious, whining, liar. A greedy shill. A pathetic, craven little man, cowering at every shadow and willing to give up not just his, but our, collective civil liberties to assuage his pathetic, weak-kneed fears.

So, it is with great delight that we at this fine blog announce today that the Huffington Post is reporting that Brave New Films has collected some 43,000 signatures in a petition to the Senate Democratic Caucus' steering committee to strip Lieberman of his various positions of power within that Caucus.

From BNF's site:

We CANNOT tolerate a leader of the Senate Democratic Caucus who supports George Bush and McCain's War in Iraq. We CANNOT tolerate a Democratic chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee who endorses and stumps for McCain. We call on the Senate Democratic Steering Committee to strip Joe Lieberman of his chairmanship and his leadership role.

I should think not! This cowardly lyin' went to Iraq in full body armour with hundreds of ordinary GIs forming a human shield around him to stroll around the marketplaces of Baghdad and had the gall to come back here and declare that Iraq was "safe." In essence, telling the parents, siblings, lovers, children, neighbours, and friends of men and women in the uniform of the nation that it was OK to send their loved ones out there to be shot, wounded, maimed, and killed.

Jowls quivering with faux indignation, Holy Joe screeched and wept crocodile tears over Bill Clinton's sexual indiscretions with an adult woman in a voluntary liaison. Yet he has shed, to date, not a single tear for a million murdered Iraqis, or the 4.5 million refugees, the wounded and maimed. He has not shed a single tear for American soldiers and civilians killed, injured, and suffering because of that Barsoomianly bisyllabic bozo, Jor Jee Bush. Children of both nations have lost their parents, and parents have lost their children. But Holy Joe's children are not in harm's way, so what does he care? His children - Matt Lieberman, his son by his first marriage, Rebecca Lieberman, his daughter by his first marriage, Ethan Tucker, his stepson, and Hana Lieberman, his daughter with his lobbyist wife Hadassah - are all sitting safely in the U.S. out of harm's way.

Matt is, apparently, the head of the Katherine and Jacob Greenfield Hebrew Academy of Atlanta. He's unlikely to be killed or wounded unless the nerdy students of the Academy decide, a highly unlikely event, that he has inherited his father's nasal, complaining whine and decide to remedy such genetic inheritance by machine-gunning him right out of the gene pool.

Rebecca, when last publicized by the NYT, was making $75K p.a. at the New York City Board of Education; but that was eight years ago, and she's probably pulling down six figures now. Although we understand that New York City is probably more dangerous than Atlanta, Rebecca is also highly unlikely to be wounded or killed in the line of duty. It's our understanding that the Board of Ed in NYC may be more highly charged than similar bodies in other cities and states, but we have not heard any rumours of board members offing each other or undesirable employees. Let us fervently hope that she did not inherit Daddy Dearest's vocal chords. If there is one thing that could drive otherwise peaceable people to murder, that voice would probably be it.

Stepson Ethan Tucker is a Rabbi, according to the Jewish Ledger. Fortunately, he is the biological spawn of Lieberman's wife Hadassah, from a previous marriage. As a result, he is not likely to inspire anyone to wound or kill him to stifle the trademark Lieberwhore whine. To his credit, Rabbi Tucker is a committed supporter of Barack Obama.

Daughter Hana, now 20 years old, is in college. Hopefully, her father's vocal chords have died out with him. Otherwise, the poor child might find herself Darwinized, as the Sanctimonious Bleat that is the very life and trademark of Holy Joe is not to be borne by mortals.

While these four Lieberspawn live their lives untroubled by such matters as PTSD, destroyed limbs and lives, TBI, and inadequate health care and lack of support from the warmongers such as Lieberwhore himself who cheerfully send other people's children to die in places they would never send their own sacred spawn, we observe the daily body count in Iraq and Afghanistan and note that Usama bin Laden is still at large and the Iraqis are now demanding a withdrawal timetable from the U.S. Will wonders never cease?

At any rate, if you are as fond of the Liebergasbag as we are, we urge you to hie yourself forthwith to this site and sign the damned petition. Surely there's more than 43,000 of us that would like to see this sanctimonious prick cashiered.

Any feminists or nonfeminist women who might consider censuring us for stomping the pathetic old weasel are advised to consider Holy Joe's sanctimonious support for the right of medical personnel and hospitals to refuse contraceptive assistance to female rape victims. Consider this in the light of Holy Joe's support of Catholic, anti-women's-rights judges John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Holy Joe may pay lip service to women's right to choose, and how could he do anything else given the position of the majority of his constituents on the issue? But his support for women goes no further than his lips. He's pretty sanguine about telling a rape victim to get herself to another hospital if the one the ambulance takes her to won't help her exercise her right to choose.

Prick.

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The Invisible Cost of War

It appears, according to a RAND study as reported in Raw Story, that we can look forward to over 600,000 military personnel suffering TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) or PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) or both, as a result of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to the article, fewer than half have ever had head injuries evaluated by a doctor, and only slightly more than half have sought help for PTSD.

Of course, the TBI numbers (currently 300,000) might be much lower if the Bush Misadministration hadn't sourced inferior helmets to protect the brains of the people it sent into harm's way. Caveat: Requires login.

The article states, regarding the study:

The report is titled "Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery." It was sponsored by a grant from the California Community Foundation and done by 25 researchers from RAND Health and the RAND National Security Research Division, which also has done does work under contracts with the Pentagon and other defense agencies as well as allied foreign governments and foundations.

Over a year ago, we noticed that the TBI numbers were high, and blogged it. As most people know, TBI comes in two flavours, mild and severe, and both have serious long-term implications and painful costs. Here, a description of mild TBI:

the individual has cognitive problems such as headache, difficulty thinking, memory problems, attention deficits, mood swings and frustration. These injuries are commonly overlooked. Even though this type of TBI is called "mild", the effect on the family and the injured person can be devastating.

Symptoms include:

* Fatigue
* Headaches
* Visual disturbances
* Memory loss
* Poor attention/concentration
* Sleep disturbances
* Dizziness/loss of balance
* Irritability-emotional disturbances
* Feelings of depression
* Seizures
* Nausea
* Loss of smell
* Sensitivity to light and sounds
* Mood changes
* Getting lost or confused
* Slowness in thinking

These symptoms may not be present or noticed at the time of injury. They may be delayed days or weeks before they appear. The symptoms are often subtle and are often missed by the injured person, family and doctors.

The person looks normal and often moves normal in spite of not feeling or thinking normal. This makes the diagnosis easy to miss. Family and friends often notice changes in behavior before the injured person realizes there is a problem. Frustration at work or when performing household tasks may bring the person to seek medical care.

For symptoms of severe TBI, look here.

These symptoms do not bode well for the 300,000 or so Americans who are suffering them. Especially as Boy George continues to gut the VA. When you have a significant number of people in the population who are trained to view problems as amenable to the application of force, and these people are suffering symptoms that include irritability, inability to concentrate, memory loss, and the like, their prospects for long-term gainful employment are, necessarily, small. Their ability to provide for themselves, whether in the sense of basic necessities such as grocery shopping, cooking, making and keeping medical appointments, and the like, or in more sophisticated ways such as undertaking job training or further education, meeting goals, career planning, are affected.

Goodness knows there have been many days over the past eight years when those of us with uninjured brains and untraumatized spirits have wanted to choke the living shit out of all and sundry as we watch our jobs disappear, our wages fall, our homes foreclosed, our bank and retirement accounts and benefits shrink, and the dollar sink to new and terrifying lows.

Imagine you're a newly returned injured and traumatized veteran of a war you still can't figure out, except that you know it was based on lies. And all these things that are happening to the general populace are also happening to you, except thanks to your newly damaged bits, they're harder for you to deal with. And you have no job or no job prospects, and the VA denies your health care and contests your disability. And you don't want to tell anyone that you're having all these problems because you might not be able to get a job, which you need in order to stay alive. And you probably don't want to tell the military about your problems because what if you can't get a job and have to re-enlist?

There's a light at the end of the tunnel, folks. Unfortunately, it's starting to look like a speeding train. And it's headed for us.

Crossposted over at Out of Iraq Bloggers' Caucus

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Bring The Troops Home NOW!

Well. Isn't that just ducky? Raw Story tells us that, after reviewing hundreds of thousands of captured Iraqi documents, the Pentagon has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein had any connection at al with al-Qaeda.

Apparently, the only links between Saddam and any terrorist groups were just like ours. Just as we funded and armed Osama bin Laden to wage Islamic Jihad against the Russians when they invaded Afghanistan in support of Babrak Kamal's government, Saddam Hussein funded and armed groups to attack "Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime."

The study is due to Congress and for general release by midweek.

The article, penned by Warren Strobel of McClatchy's Washington Bureau, states, in part:

[...] the upcoming Pentagon report promises to be a particularly stark and thorough refutation of one of the primary Bush administration arguments for the invasion of Iraq [i.e., that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaeda. Another Bush Misadministration argument, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, has already been thoroughly refuted.] The subsequent war has come at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, nearly 4,000 US troop deaths, and some half a trillion US dollars and counting.

Mr. Strobel's math skills are poor &mdash or perhaps McClatchy prefers to err on the cautious side of the balance ledger. Current wisdom has it that the total cost of Shrubya's Little Misadventure will run to over three trillion dollars. These costs do not address the Iraqis we've maimed and wounded, or the bills that other countries foolish enough to join in the "coalition of the willing" face. Britain, for example, announced today that their estimated cost will total approximately ten billion pounds sterling.

The article adds that the Bush Misadministration continues to lie about Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda, despite previously released documents and reports indicating the same findings as the forthcoming extensive review. As recently as last April, Vice President Dick Cheney again asserted a link between the Iraqi dictator and the terror network. So, if you know anyone stupid enough to listen to them and believe, please buy a copy of the review when it is released and use it to beat some sense into them.

The study is entitled "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents." Although it has been essentially complete since last year, it has been undergoing what one U.S. intelligence official described as a "painful" declassification review.

The article notes, in a painful aside, that "In fact, al Qaida in Iraq didn't emerge until 2004, a year after the invasion." Was that before or after Commander Codpiece was strutting around on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a uniform before a banner that screamed "Mission Accomplished," to the collective spooging of the shameless press corps?

Photo montage from grupo-utopia.com with the request that you spread it around

Meanwhile, we note that almost exactly a month ago, Auntie Beeb published a piece about the "reverse surge" that appears to be grimly prophetic. That article was pointing out the increase in violent incidents, many of which seemed to be targeting the Sunnis that the U.S. has been wooing with large sums of money:

US commanders on the ground [...] have pumped money into local economies by employing tens of thousands of young Sunni men as local auxiliaries - now re-named "Sons of Iraq" after several unhappier titles such as "Concerned Local Citizens" - to act as the eyes and ears of the US and Iraqi troops in the struggle against the militants.

They are also trying to encourage the Baghdad government to be more proactive in providing services and job-creation schemes in areas where the insurgents have been driven out.

But as we, and many others, have pointed out, the war has been going on for five years at this point. It's a bit late to start trying to win "hearts and minds." What's more, as the U.S. military strategy in Vietnam might suggest, the buying over of the "Sons of Iraq" sounds suspiciously like Tricky Dick's "changing the color of the corpses."

Al-Qaeda, and those Iraqis who are fighting the U.S. military will treat as traitors any Iraqis who side with the U.S. military. The U.S. is not going to stay in Iraq forever, John McCain or no John McCain. We simply cannot afford to. Sooner or later, our internal economic straits will be so dire, as a result of siphoning money out of the country to fund a prolonged war, that our economy will collapse. The U.S. is not willing to accept Iraqi refugees in any significant number. Despite the fact that more than 4 million Iraqis are now refugees, either in their own country or in Syria, Jordan, and other neighbouring nations, only approximately 7,000 have been accepted into the U.S. to date, and the original target of 25,000 has been lowered to 7,000.

Besides, the "hearts and minds" that the U.S. military is trying to win are deeply split even among themselves. We've said this repeatedly: Iraq has always been a fractured, heterogenous nation, with many different ethnic and religious groups, divided loyalties, in many ways still adhering to family, clan, tribe and feudal notions of society.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that Auntie Beeb once again informed us just yesterday that a woman had detonated her explosive vest when she came calling on a Son of Iraq. Chances are that, just like the Issawi celebrants mentioned in the previous link, the woman was either a member of the tribe of the slain "Son of Iraq," Thaer Ghadban al-Karkhi.

According to Auntie Beeb, Al Karkhi was the head of one of the majority-Sunni Arab Awakening Councils, allied with the US military against al-Qaeda in Iraq. How true that is, we have to wonder, since the same piece identified "Sheikh" Abdul Sattar Abu Risha as the head of the Awakening Council in Anbar, a key US ally who was widely credited with having defeated al-Qaeda in much of western Iraq. Greg Palast can give you the lowdown on the "Sheikh."

We ourselves have blogged about the "Sheikh's" mysterious trips with U.S. money. $75 million worth, fellow-taxpayers.

Meanwhile, to add further credence to Auntie Beeb's prognostications, Raw Story is telling us that forty-two people died in Iraq today as the result of violence. Forty-two. Do you know forty-two people? Add up your family members. You might have to include a few neighbours or colleagues.

Now imagine that these people who you, maybe, love, or like, or just know, were blown to smithereens. An assemblage of body parts, bloody meat, barely recognizable as human. Now imagine that happens to you every day. You probably don't know enough people to sustain that kind of loss every day for a year, probably not even a month. Well, for the Iraqis, this has been going on for five long years. And some days, it's a lot more than forty-two people.

In other news, eight U.S. servicemen were also killed. When are we going to bring our troops home? Because this has gone on too damned long. The troops did the job they were sent there to do. An army's job is to fight. They fought. The other stuff has to be done by non-military qualified and experienced civilian personnel. But Boy George wanted to send his friends and cronies out there to bilk the taxpayer, and because they're the friends and cronies of an incompetent boob, to no one's surprise they too are incompetent boobs. So now we have a failed state, in which people are being killed every day in large numbers. And it's too dangerous to send qualified experienced civilian personnel out there to help to fix the mess we made.

Every day that the soldiers stay there is one more day that they present a target to a people furious that their country has been invaded, their jobs are gone, their economy is faltering, they don't have power or light or working telephones, their streets are unsafe, and their wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters are being raped and beaten and killed, while their sons, brothers, fathers, and husbands are kidnapped, tortured, and killed. Get them out NOW. Bring them home.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, articles like this are just beginning to show up on the radar. The article states that railcars due to ease congestion in Philadelphia will be delayed. See if you can guess why.

New SEPTA Regional Rail cars will be at least four months late, delaying relief for riders on the increasingly crowded rail lines, SEPTA officials said yesterday.

[...] delivery of the rest of the 120-car order will also be pushed back at least four months, Nowakowski said. Final delivery of all the railcars is now scheduled for October 2010.

Rotem [the company building the cars, Ed.] was unable to procure enough of the type of steel specified in the SEPTA contract because the U.S. government has cornered the market; it is using the steel for armoring vehicles bound for Iraq, Nowakowski said.

For the sake of the dying, dead, maimed and wounded, in Iraq and at home; for the sake of the faltering economy, the people losing their homes, the people without health care, or with inadequate care; for the sake of the families that are being fractured by the stresses of this war; for the sake of the nation that is tottering under the accumulation of debt and the loss of its sons and daughters &mdash bring them home. End the war now.

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March 19 Iraq War Blogswarm

Image from March 19 Iraq War Blogswarm

La Casa de Los Gatos is proud to join the March 19 Iraq War blogswarm to try and end this illegal and immoral war of occupation and genocide. To find out how you can join, click the caption.

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World: Poodle Clipped

Keresaspa tells it like it is

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! Sorry, people. After the most recent and really depressing post, we had to find something to take our mind off the tragedy, and Tony "T3h P00DL3" Blair obliged so obligingly, we gotta give him two thumbs up! (Up what, we refuse to say.)

The Guardian finds that much of Europe is violently opposed to the idea of Pretzelnitwit McChimpyDunce's favourite lapdog heading the EU. We couldn't agree more! In fact, we hope someone in the U.S. creates a web site much like the European Stop Blair site. That kneepadded lickspittle Tony Bleargh deserves to go down in infamy.

What's the matter, Tony? Your attempts at bringing your own IraqWarLike brand of peace to the Middle East showing the same kind of "success" the Iraq War did?

Glob-a-log Shows Us Tony's Work For MidEast Peace

That fat bank gig that Dimwit McPretzelChimp arranged for you run out of money? What?

We'd really like to know why that pathetic bastard of a war criminal needs another job. His bank job is a part-time advisory gig that pays over $1 million a year. Here's the Times' analysis of the son-of-a-swine's fiscal picture:


Meanwhile, the soldiers he threw into Iraq to suffer injuries and die have a very different financial picture. Here's an excerpt from the Times:

Iraq veteran Colonel Tim Collins discovered after leaving service that he was entitled to compensation for neck and ankle injuries sustained in a parachuting accident. It took him six months to arrange monthly payments of £114.

He said: "This Government mistreats soldiers and wants the cheapest Army it can get. Even the largest payments available to service personnel are barely a living wage.

As for his attempt to polish the stinking turd that is his legacy to the world, The Guardian says, in part:

A "Stop Blair" website run by pro-Europeans has launched a petition against him; a transnational, cross-party caucus in the European parliament is forming to campaign against a Blair presidency; senior officials in Brussels are privately dismissive about the new post going to a Briton; and senior diplomats in European capitals also doubt that Blair is the right person for the post being created under Europe's new reform treaty.

[...]

"But more generally the German political elite would be puzzled by the idea of Tony Blair. His track record on EU matters is not so great. There is unease about a Briton at the top in that job. And then personally with Blair, there's the Iraq thing."

Sources close to Merkel confirmed her opposition. "He made a lot of fine speeches about Europe but, essentially, stood on the sidelines when it came to concrete steps forward," they said.

HAHAHAHA!!! Oh, this is rich! The Europeans are, once again, proving that they actually pay attention to politics, unlike the morons that seem to form the bulk (yes, we do mean bulk) of the American voting public.

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Iraq: British Leaving Basra

Photo from The Sun

Today's Sun - well, tomorrow's, actually - carries a lovely picture of Gordon Brown, the current British premier, with a bunch of British troops in Basra, and an accompanying article titled "Happy Xmas, your war is over."

So for all of you who have doubted that the British are really and truly done with Iraq and are getting out as fast as they can, I'd say there's your proof.

We've warned repeatedly of the dire consequences of a British pullout. The article states, in part:

By early next year, our contingent in Southern Iraq will be cut to 2,500 – and may be withdrawn completely in March.

The PM broke the good news in a flying visit to Iraq.

He landed at the Army’ s base at Basra airport in darkness in an RAF Hercules transporter plane.

The article fails to mention why Mr. Brown has to fly in to Iraq under cover of darkness. But those of us who have been following the news rather than listening to the lies of the Misadministration know quite well that our wild success in Iraq has resulted in the insurgents taking down aircraft. So the Leaders of the Free World must sneak about in the dark and dare not fly into Baghdad at all.

As for Brown's sudden incentive to declare the war over, could it have resulted from this?

Before flying out, Mr Brown insisted five Brits kidnapped in Iraq’s capital Baghdad in May must be freed immediately.

The kidnappers warned last week the men will be killed unless troops are withdrawn, but Mr Brown said he would not be forced into changing his policies in the country.

Reminds me of a Monty Python skit. Loudly declare victory then run away as fast as possible. "You can't force me to do that. I'll do it anyway, but it's only because I meant to, see?"

As previous blog posts on this fine blog have stated, we need troops in Basra because our supply lines and evacuation path run through that province. The British will soon be well and truly gone. The puppet government is incapable of holding on to power. Violence that used to ravage Baghdad has simply moved northward as the "surge" of U.S. troops moved into Baghdad, says The Impudent Observer. The Boston Globe agrees, adding this ominous note:

the recent uptick in attacks raised questions whether anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, head of the Mahdi Army militia, would call off the six-month truce he ordered last August.

U.S. officials have said the truce was generally holding and partly responsible for a 55 percent decline in attacks nationwide since June.

So the drop in violence that Queen George kept assuring us occurred thanks to his "surge" might actually be attributable to Moqtada al-Sadr's orders and not to the surge at all?

The article goes on to state that violence in Kirkuk has led to imposition of a curfew:

Kirkuk has seen a rise in violence that authorities blame in part on insurgents who fled security crackdowns in Baghdad. Tension among the city's Kurdish, Arab and Turkomen population is running high because of Kurdish aspirations to incorporate Kirkuk into their semiautonomous zone.

Hardly surprising. It is a very well-known axiom of guerilla warfare that one never attacks the enemy when he is strong, only when he is weak. When the enemy is attacking, the guerillas retreat. When the enemy retreats, guerillas attack. The Iraqi insurgents are simply practising well-known guerilla tactics.

Xinhua News Agency reports bombings in Salahuddin province that wounded four people and an attack on the "local leader of an anti-Qaeda group" wounded three of his family members.

Not that the insurgents have anything to fear from the "surge." According to Dahr Jamail, the troops' morale is really low and they're basically hanging out trying to avoid getting killed till their tour of duty is over and they can come home to their families.

Now that the British are leaving Basra, some American soldiers will undoubtedly be shipped off there to protect the supply lines and evacuation route. So if you have friends or relatives out there, start praying for them now. And ask Commander Awol von Bunnypants when he's going to bring the troops home, since, according to him, the Mission was Accomplished over four years ago.

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Iraq: Bonus Update On Afghanistan

Because we're winning so winningly. In the winningest way. So winningly, in fact, that the poor exhausted soldiers - yes, those very troops whom we support by buying made-in-China yellow ribbon magnets for our SUVs while they lose their brains, bodies, minds, souls, and lives to keep those SUVs supplied with gasoline - are deserting! Those lousy cowards! How dare they refuse to sacrifice for us? How dare they force the Young Republicans on fine college campuses and golf courses everywhere to face the dreaded possibility of a (shudder) draft?

What's the matter with them? Have they stopped listening to Their Masters' Voice? Apparently. At least, Raw Story tells us that the number of soldiers deserting this year marks an 80 per cent increase over 2003. You think these guys might be tired or something? Too many deployments and stop-loss orders? Nah! They're children of the working class. They're used to working. Unlike the rich Republican youth, who've never had to soil their hands with work a day in their lives.

Besides, the Republikids are just following the excellent example of their duly appointed leaders. Didn't Shrubya's daddy get him a plum job in the TANG, so he'd never have to put his own butt on the line? Didn't Richard Bruce the Dork Lord have "more important priorities" than fighting a war meant for the "little people"? Didn't Mittens of Teh Sacred Underroos have God's work to do, instead of getting drafted?

The desertion rate is 42 per cent higher than it was last year.

According to the Army, about nine in every 1,000 soldiers deserted in fiscal year 2007, which ended Sept. 30, compared to nearly seven per 1,000 a year earlier. Overall, 4,698 soldiers deserted this year, compared to 3,301 last year.

Despite the continued increase in desertions, however, an Associated Press examination of Pentagon figures earlier this year showed that the military does little to find those who bolt, and rarely prosecutes the ones they get. Some are allowed to simply return to their units, while most are given less-than-honorable discharges.

Well, there you have it, boyz and girlz. That's one way to show your discontent. If enough of you desert or refuse to fight, you can stop the war. Instead of waiting for our political class, who don't have a single testicle or ovary among the lot of them. The Republicans will never cross Shrubya, who is holding on to the war with all four feet and teeth. And the Democrats don't have a veto-proof majority and are too fucking wimpy to rescue you from the quagmire.

If you want out of Iraq, lay down your arms and refuse to go. It's nothing short of horrifying that so many young people, American and Iraqi, are suffering unspeakably for the sake of cheap gasoline. Because, after all, as the AP points out, 2007 was the worst year in Iraq in terms of American casualties.

Meanwhile, over in Afghanistan, things are going just swimmingly. Here, for example we show you 59 dead Afghani children, five of their teachers, six lawmakers and five of their bodyguards, the handiwork of some crazed suicide bomber. One hundred other children were wounded in the attack. The population will totally support a war effort that ends up killing them and their children in droves, yeah.

The article goes on to state:

The insurgency being waged by the Taliban and other extremist outfits has gained steam since it was launched in the months after the hardliners were driven from government in 2001 by a US-led force.

More than 5,500 people have been killed so far this year -- most of them rebels.

It does not define how one ascertains that the dead might be "rebels." Given the high number of civilian deaths, one wonders if anybody, the Afghan government included, has the first fucking clue.

Meanwhile, the WaPoo announces that Afghan's opium production last year was a record-breaker. Yay! More street drugs for the average American to get hooked on. [/end sarcasm and disgust.]

Proving once again that the WH has the capacity for humour, the article went on to say:

In addition to a 26 percent production increase over past year -- for a total of 5,644 metric tons -- the amount of land under cultivation in opium poppies grew by 61 percent. Cultivation in the two main production provinces, Helmand in the southwest and Oruzgan in central Afghanistan, was up by 132 percent.

White House drug policy chief John Walters called the news "disappointing."

Well, of course they're producing record-busting quantities of opium. It's not like they have health care, education, peace, a working infrastructure, or jobs. Sheesh. The administration claims "a resurgent Taliban" is behind the increase in drug production. Given Shrubya's daddy's peeps' involvement in the drug trade in Nicaragua, one can't help but raise a questioning eyebrow.

Especially when one Gen. James L. Jones, the supreme allied commander for NATO, states that drug cartels with their own armies engage in regular combat with NATO forces deployed in Afghanistan,

"It would be wrong to say that this is just the Taliban. I think I need to set that record straight," he added.

In other news, MSNBC announced that 2007 was the deadliest year for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the invasion of that country in 2001.

Violence in Afghanistan this year has been the deadliest since the Taliban's ouster. More than 5,800 people, mostly militants, have died so far this year in insurgency-related violence, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials.

Meanwhile, we're most decidedly winning in Turki, Reuters reports. The majority of Turks support an incursion into Kurdish territory in Iraq, and are dubious about joining the EU. They also view the U.S. as the chief threat to peace in the Middle-East.

And China just announced that they refuse to attend a meeting with the U.S. to discuss tougher sanctions on Iran. Given that we owe them the house, the car, and one and a half of the children, there's not much we can do about that, huh, Chimpidiot? Because you gave them the keys to the bank, fool, and now they just laugh when we bluster and howl.

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