New Plan for Iraq

I have a new plan for Iraq that I thought of earlier today that makes a lot of sense to me.
 
Let's pack up every damn thing and person we have in Iraq and bring them home by Christmas leaving behind only signs that say,
 

'Merry Christmas.
Be good ...
or we'll be back."

 
After New Years re-deploy the troops to New Orleans to do the job FEMA can't seem to do.
 
Oh yeah. We should disarm them when re-deployed. Other than the MPs. These guys seem a little trigger happy. Remember what a hard time General 'What's-his-name' had getting them to lower their firearms?
 
Also ... let's throw in a $1,000 Christmas bonus for our folks in uniform.
 
Whadda ya say?

New Orleans

George Bush gave a speech yesterday detailing his plans for the future and rebuilding of New Orleans and any who has read my writings here know that I am no admirer of this president.  However; in this case I have inexplicably decided to take him at his word and to believe there is a remote chance he has been converted into a liberal.  His plan seems on the whole to be reasonable and comprehensive if followed through on with thoughtful determined action and good faith.
 
One thing that has often appalled me with George Bush is his ability to turn a word on it's head. Like clear skies, Healthy Forests and etc. to refer to bills which are harmful to both those desirable ecosystems.

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11:50 AM Sept. 4, 2005

    Celine Dion is a wonderful person. I saw her tonight on a special Larry King Show on CNN - How You Can Help - to aide the the people of the world in figuring out how they can help New Orleans. She cried. She sang a song. She donated a million dollars to the Red Cross. She also strongly expressed her rage with 'them' - whoever it is who failed in their responsibility to provide for the welfare of the all the people in New Orleans.
 
    Maybe it was unknowable that the electricity would go out. Maybe it was unknowable that the water would stop and toilets wouldn't flush. I rather think those things were highly predicatable in a worst case scenerio. However, that isn't what outrages me.
 
    Someone put over 20 thousand persons into the SuperDome without provision for food. And this one thing was absolutely knownable. All those people sent to the SuperDome would require food. This one over-sight alone proves to me not just poor planning. It proves to me gross incompetence. And it probably proves to me (if anyone asks me to decide) criminal negligence.
 
     I further think it time we all take a look at what our government has in store for us in the case of some great emergency. I doubt any of us wants to end up in a SuperDome - or worse.
 
'Screaming' Ray 'Get off Your Asses' Nagin, irate Mayor of New Orleans, deserves some credit for calling the cat black. One might call him a 'whistle-blower'. Instead of following the political safe road of wringing his hands and saying in the collective 'we', 'We are doing everything that is humanly possible ... ', Ray Nagin called bullshit bullshit and put it out in the open where it belongs, stinking up the place like it should, and hopefully splashing back on those dumping it.
 

Cindy Sheehan lays seige to vacationing president's Crawford ranch.

A brave young soldier who was killed April 4th 2004 on the dusty streets of Baghdad.  He was on a voluntary misssion to rescue fellow soldiers pinned down by insurgent fire.  It was was the soldier's second tour of duty in Iraq. He died performing the very duty he had told his mother he had to return to Iraq to do.  He was defending his fellow soldiers.  He was just 24 years old.
 
     By anyone's reckoning or standards that soldier, Casey Sheehan died a hero.
 
     On Saturday Aug. 6th 2005 Cindy Sheehan, the outraged mother of Casey Sheehan, arrived in Crawford, Texas and pitched herself a small pup tent in a ditch that runs along the road there leading up to George Bush's 1,583 acre Prairie Chapel Ranch (also know as White House West and announced to the world she was staying encamped there, sleeping nights in her tent, until the president of the United States George W. Bush came out to talk to her face-to-face, commander-in-chief to angry mom, and explain why the nation was lied to during the build-up to the war in Iraq, about both reasons for and about the urgent necessity of it.     Cindy's message.
 
Four days later, On Wednesday Aug 10th the president acknowledges at a press conference he is aware of Cindy's encampment ( which has come to be referred to as 'Camp Casey' ) at his gate.

"I sympathize with Mrs. Sheehan," Bush says. "She feels strongly about her position, and she has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America. She has a right to her position, and I thought long and hard about her position. I've heard her position from others, which is: Get out of Iraq now. And it would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace in the long run if we were to do so"

 No mention is made of Cindy's accusations of administrative deceit leading up to the war and no indication is given by the president he intends to meet with Cindy ever.  That evening a rumor runs through Camp Casey that the protestors, now numbering around 50, will be arrested at midnight but the night passes without incident.
 
     By Friday Aug 12 the stable population of Camp Casey nears 100 and During the day Veterans For Peace members from southern California install a replica of the Arlington West memorial along the side of the roadway near Cindy's camp. It consists of almost 1000 white crosses bearing the names of soldiers killed in Iraq since President Bush declaired an end to the 'major hostilities on board a battleship on March 1st, 2003.
 
 That afternoon George Bush's motorcade passes within 100 ft. of Cindy Sheehan on his way to a 2 million dollar republican party fund raiser at a nearby neighbor's ranch.  No report if the president saw either Cindy or the crosses. Cindy's husband Patrick Sheehan also files for divorce back in Calf. siting 'irreconcilable difference'.
 
Next day, Wednesday 13th. Cindy is Front Page News
 
Cindy has been joined by more Gold Star moms.  

Wed. Aug 30th 2005

    I went down to k-mart yesterday and bought a 69 cent piece of white poster board to make new business cards with.  This evening I sat down and designed this card on the left using Paint Shop Pro.
 
So ... What do you think?
Keeper?

The War on Terror

Thursday, August 18, 2005        Today a report was leaked to the British press suggesting the circumstances under which Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazillian worker mistaken for a terrorist and shot eight times (original reports staed five or six times) in the head in the days following the failed London bombings in July, were 'doctored up'.        Seems perhaps he wasn't wearing a padded coat at all and that he never jumped a turn-stile or started running as was reported by police directly following the tragedy.

Sunday, July 24, 2005         I have been against this 'War on Terror' since it's inception.  Not because I didn't think it a good thing to track down, apprehend, and punish ( using any force reasonable and necessary ) lunatics who would harm innocent people.  My problem with this nation's 'War on Terror' was simply this; ; It is not 'OK' to kill and maim innocent people in order to get to guilty ones.        It doesn't matter at all in an ethical sense if the person causing harm to innocents is a moslem extremist like Bin Laden or mighty and powerful leaders like George Bush and Tony Blair.  It is not only Bin Laden who has lost sight of a simple fact -   innocent people have a right to live in peace.   Jean Charles de Menezes is an innocent victim of the 'War on Terror'.  Shot six times in the back of the head and taken out of his life as a result of a misguided 'shoot to kill' policy adopted by the British under the tutaledge of the Isreali military.  ( And we all know what a great job they have done of ending terror. }

My Reaction to the London Bombings

I spent the afternoon of 7/7 building a new bookshelf for my overflow of books.  As I worked I listened attentavely to live reports on my local National Public Radio station, WOUB feed from the scene of the bombings that day in London.  My shock and my horror were were amplified.  Each report was a painful reminder of all I had felt on our own country's tragic day - 9/11.        I also remember wondering, "Was I wrong to think our response to the earlier attack in New York was extra-legal? Were these terrorists exactly as evil and terrible as George Bush had proclaimed they were and, had his administration's doctrine of preemption been justified by these new attacks in London?"

this

Summer has come to Ohio

Months have passed since last I posted here and days are warmer now. Yet, I remain pessimistic.   Not about myself. Not about my family.   About my nation.

Some years ago an internet friend entered the Amusement Park chatroom at webmaze using the nic 'Helena Handbasket'.   I bring this up for two reasons. first: I admire how accurately Helena Handbasket describes the course George W Bush has set us on as a nation. and second: I intend to be chatting more with you, my visitors. With the momentum of a 51% election victory in Nov. 2004 at his back George W. Bush, ( with republican majorities in both the house and the senate and quietly nodding acquiesent from a largely conservative judiciary ) has felt free to further thrust this nation into a governmental mumbo-jumbo land where 'the truth' is edited for impact and 'the news' is generated largely by governmental press release.   Meanwhile; the 49% minority ( represented as they are by the democrats and a lone independent from Vermont ) stands impotent before this concerted effort by the president and his administration to reshape this nation in aborant ways.   Retirement's Unraveling Safety Net

A Cold Winter's Day

It's 12:36 Tuesday night. The trash is out by the tree. The family is asleep and I am listening to Radio Paradise.

Today my friend Jeff came by. We sat and watched some of the Senate confirmation debate over Condoleezza Rice on CSPAN.   13 Senators voted against her confirmation:   Akaka (D-HI) Bayh (D-IN) Boxer (D-CA) Byrd (D-WV) Dayton (D-MN) Durbin (D-IL) Harkin (D-IA) Jeffords (I-VT) Kennedy (D-MA) Kerry (D-MA) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Levin (D-MI) Reed (D-RI)

Three big lies