A Deadly Year Ends

Nero fiddled while Rome burned.
Chamberlain claimed “Peace in our time” while Hitler invaded.
Stalin drank and ate while the peasants starved.
Hitler moved imaginary divisions while Germany was being destroyed.
Saddam promised “the mother of all battles” while America invaded.
Bush sought “A new course” while the 3,000th American was killed in his Iraq war.
What a milestone horror to end the year 2006.

Irai Solution

Dear Editor:

The president has left Washington for his ranch in Texas, a trip which has been described by the White House press office as a “working vacation.” Members of the National Security Team are flying there for further deliberations and suggestions to help Mr. Bush decide on a “new course” direction for the war in Iraq. This is also known as a further delay in taking any action, in view of the fact that it has been almost two months since the mid-term elections that provoked this deliberation. Evidently the president has been in the dark and hasn’t been aware of what to do, other than “stay the course.”

With all of these new solutions or directions being offered to our commander-in-chief, it seems there is one that has not been brought up, or at least made public. I believe that the best solution, that helps to protect our troops, is to pull back all American and Coalition troops to the Iraqi borders and block all possible entrances and exits to the country, both going in and going out. This would include policing a no-fly zone over the entire country.

Then, with our troops out of harms way, let the Iraqis settle their problems themselves. It doesn’t matter whether it be a civil war, sectarian killing, or peaceful negotiations. The ball would be in their court and we would just be observers and border patrol to keep out arms shipments and additional killers, and to keep in anyone wanting to get out.

If this works, maybe we should consider doing the same thing with the White House.

Investment Idiocy

(In answer to an op-ed piece in the Washington Post by Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and his plan to re-introduce a new version of the president’s “personal savings accounts” as a fix for future retirees need for additional savings. My answer was posted on that paper’s web site.)

This man is an elected Senator of the United States? Shows how little brains it takes to become one. Give every baby born in the US $1,000 in an investment account? Allow huge tax deductions for investment into these accounts? Have employers match the 1% placed each year automatically into these accounts? Looks like the Republican Senator wants to run our federal deficit and borrowings up through the roof, as if it wasn’t already there thanks to the present administration and the rubber stamp Republican congress.

Doesn’t Mr. Sessions realize that Americans are in negative savings due to two things: 1) Americans are following the lead of our federal government and spending more than they take in, without regard as to how it will be paid back, and: 2) The middle and lower class do not make enough money to set aside an additional 1% of their earnings. In case Mr. Sessions didn’t know it, people are hurting financially while top earners (and senators and congressmen) are gorging themselves with raises and bonuses.

A Little Bit of History During Hannukah

Today, December 17th is an interesting day in history. In 1862 during the American Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11, expelling all Jews from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. It stated that “The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department, are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.”

This was not the first time that Grant showed his bigotry, as on November 9 of that year he issued an order that said, “Refuse all permits to come south of Jackson for the present. The Israelites especially should be kept out.” And there were others from the alcoholic gentleman who later became president of the United States.

Thank God that the president that these orders were issued under, Abraham Lincoln, who, when he found out, rescinded them. He condemned the orders as an “enormous outrage on all laws and humanity…the grossest violation of the Constitution and our rights as good citizens under it.”

As a result, Grant revoked the orders three days later.

Jimmy Carter, Still Ineffective

Former President Carter, who history has shown to be not exactly one of our greatest presidents, has written a new book with the damning title Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. He, like the Iraq Study Group Report, claims that one of the cornerstones of a settlement for Iraq and the region is to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian problem. In other words, this is what has caused all of the Iraq/Iran/Syria/Hezbullah/Hamas problems. It must be true. After all, it has even brought to the spotlight the hatred of David Duke with his appearance at the Holocaust Deniers Conference in Iran. But, does this kind of thinking really have anything to do with our problems in the Middle East? Or is the Israeli/Palestinian problem just a whipping boy for the Arab/Radical Muslim hatred of the West, and especially the United States?

Okay, let’s imagine that peace happens between Israel and the Arabs. Or better still, that Israel is driven into the sea, as promised by the Arabs since its inception in 1948. What would that result bring? Will Shiite stop killing Sunni? Will Bin Laden come out of hiding? Will al-Queda stop killing Americans, as well as their fellow countrymen? Will Syria and Iran stop trying to destabilize Iraq? Will Iran give up its nuclear bomb program? Will the Muslim world start to love the United States? There are a thousand additional questions just like these that all deserve the same answer, and that is obviously: Of Course Not.

None of these problems have anything to do with the trumped-up charges of Mr. Carter’s phony, misplaced claim of apartheid in the Palestinian territories. There are no connections, but rather only excuses for the hatred, killing, and dangers, brought on by fourteenth century extremism, in the Middle East.

Mr. Carter should spend more of his time building homes for the homeless, and less continuing to show how ineffective he was as a governor and president. His book is a one-sided embarrassment.

Lies about Iraq and Vietnam

Dear editor:

For many months knowledgeable people have been comparing the disaster in Iraq to the horror of the Vietnam war. Of course the president, his administration, ex-Sect. of Defense Rumsfeld, Mr. Cheney, Sect. of State Rice, and the Republican toadies in Congress, who will agree with anything that “W” says, have insisted that there is no comparison between the two wars. They do not want to see any relationship between the two. Well, the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group has found at least one…..the ability of our military, under the leadership of the Pentagon, to be lying to the public.

The following was reported by the Associated Press:
U.S. military and intelligence officials have systematically underreported the violence in Iraq in order to suit the Bush administration's policy goals, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group said. In its report on ways to improve the U.S. approach to stabilizing Iraq, the group recommended Wednesday that the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense make changes in the collection of data about violence to provide a more accurate picture.
The panel pointed to one day last July when U.S. officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts of violence. "Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence," it said. "The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases." It said, for example, that a murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack, and a roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn't hurt U.S. personnel doesn't count, either. Also, if the source of a sectarian attack is not determined, that assault is not added to the database of violence incidents.

Evidently General Casey is following the leadership of Gen Westmorland, the commanding general in Vietnam, who had the amazing ability to not report many American casualties and to balloon enemy casualties reports, with the blessing of his then Sect. of Defense, Robert S. McNamara. Amazing similarity of out and out lies.