The Cost of War

This video will just make you shake your head in disgust or make you angry at the stupidity of unnecessary armed conflict.

Toy Soldiers

I originally entitled this post "Outrage of the Decade." I have since thought that the current title is more appropriate for the story.

Wounded Soldier: Military Wants Part Of Bonus Back:

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ―

The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments.

To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases.

Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.

One of them is Jordan Fox, a young soldier from the South Hills.

He finds solace in the hundreds of boxes he loads onto a truck in Carnegie. In each box is a care package that will be sent to a man or woman serving in Iraq. It was in his name Operation Pittsburgh Pride was started.

Fox was seriously injured when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. He was knocked unconscious. His back was injured and lost all vision in his right eye.

A few months later Fox was sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.

"I tried to do my best and serve my country. I was unfortunately hurt in the process. Now they're telling me they want their money back," he explained.

It's a slap for Fox's mother, Susan Wardezak, who met with President Bush in Pittsburgh last May. He thanked her for starting Operation Pittsburgh Pride which has sent approximately 4,000 care packages.

He then sent her a letter expressing his concern over her son's injuries, so she cannot understand the U.S. Government's apparent lack of concern over injuries to countless U.S. Soldiers and demands that they return their bonuses.

If the Pentagon wants their money back, then give the soldiers their original limbs back. And their mental health back. And the time they lost with their families back.

I guess this is how the Bush Administration interprets "Supporting the Troops."

How Many Tears

This song, from the Dry Bones Dance CD, sure sounds like an anti-war song.

How Many Tears

Gunmetal grey for golden rules
White hot steel for the comfort of fools
Molten wills in iron hands
Forge new sons for the Motherland

How many tears will fall down
How many tears must fall
How many tears will stain this ground
How many tears must fall

Hidden mounds in jungle dust
Youthful voices forever lie hushed
Poets and peasants know the truth
But what in the world can one man do

How many tears will fall down
How many tears must fall
How many tears will stain this ground
How many tears must fall

A mother’s eyes ache with her hatred
Her lips they are crippled with fear
She waits for the news that she don’t want to hear
How many tears
How many tears
How many tears must fall down

Ain’t no funerals
Ain’t no prayers
Ain’t no blood in the Government Square
Reign of terror
True and tried
Dries the eyes before they’ve cried

How many tears will fall down
How many tears must fall
How many tears will stain this ground
How many tears must fall
How many tears
How many tears will fall down

Written by Mark Heard © 1990 Ideola Music

The song can be heard at Rhapsody.com. It is song #8 at the link.

National Debt Madness

Paulson Asks Congress to Lift Debt Limit

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told Congress on Wednesday the government will hit the current debt ceiling on Oct. 1.

He sought quick action to increase the limit, saying it was essential to protect the "full faith and credit" of the country, especially at a time of financial market turmoil.

The limit is $8.965 trillion. Unless Congress votes to raise it, the country would be unable to borrow more money to keep the government operating and to pay debt obligations coming due.

Actually having tax rates reflect what government services we have decided we need would be such a terrible thing, don't you know. According to the neoconservatives, borrowing and spending (and paying interest on the resulting debt) is far preferable to, you know, actually paying for it responsibly. Now if we could just get the Democrats to get a spine and stand up to the fiscally irresponsible neoconservatives, maybe we could actually have real discussion on what this country can really afford.

The real reason the neoconservative Republicans want to keep raising the national debt is to eliminate social spending through the Starve the Beast plan.

It really comes down to a values question of "guns vs. butter." I am curious if anyone has ever studied the return on investment of foreign entanglements where we try to acquire natural resources through military engagement vs. taking that same money and plowing it into America's infrastructure and alleviation of social ills. I think that we promote too much conflict in this world. There is too much spending on "guns" and not enough on "butter."

Iranian TV Shows Holocaust Movie

It wasn't that long ago that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held a conference suggesting that the Holocaust never happened. How things have apparently changed in Iran so quickly.

From Iranian TV shows Holocaust movie at Talking Points Memo:

Yet the series titled "Zero Degree Turn" is clearly sympathetic to the Jews' plight during World War II. It shows men, women and children with yellow stars on their clothes being taken forcibly out of their homes and loaded into trucks by Nazi soldiers.

"Where are they taking them?" the horrified hero, a young Iranian diplomat who works at the Iranian Embassy in Paris, asks someone in a crowd of onlookers.

"The Fascists are taking the Jews to the concentration camps," the man says. The hero, named Habib Parsa, then begins giving Iranian passports to Jews to allow them to flee occupied France to then-Palestine.

Though the Habib character is fictional, it is based on a true story of diplomats in the Iranian Embassy in Paris in the 1940s who gave out about 500 Iranian passports for Jews to use to escape.

The show's appearance now may reflect an attempt by Iran's leadership to moderate its image as anti-Semitic and to underline a distinction that Iranian officials often make _ that their conflict is with Israel, not with the Jewish people.

The show is reportedly wildly popular among the Iranian public and people are watching the state-run show instead of watching satellite TV.

It raises a lot of questions given the Bush White House's insinuations of intentions to attack Iran.

Sunday Music: Wake Me Up When September Ends

This song was originally written as a memorial anthem about lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong's father, a jazz musician and minor league baseball catcher, who died of lung cancer when Billie Joe was only ten years old. The song -- as all great songs are -- are written with many interpretations. The song has expanded its meaning beyond the death of Billie Joe's father to represent feelings about the war in Iraq (which is what the video seems to show), as an anthem for Katrina victims and as an ode to those who lost their lives in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Actually, now that we are in the month of September, I would like to pass along an interesting historical fact that was brought to my attention several years ago: many wars and conflicts start in September. The reason being, I was informed, was that September was the month when crops were starting to ripen and become ready to harvest. Therefore, if one tribe wanted to wipe out a rival tribe -- or simply steal their food -- the time to bring an attack would be September.

So, I think a lot of Americans feel this song speaks to them at this time in our history. They would just assume that September pass by as quickly as possible.

I will probably come back to Green Day's music at a later time, but I think this song needs to stand on its own.

Waste, Fraud and Abuse In Iraq, Oh My!

From Talking Points Memo:

We've all heard the expression "no good deed goes unpunished," but this is ridiculous.

One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted. Or worse.

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers — all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co. "It was a Wal-Mart for guns," he says. "It was all illegal and everyone knew it."

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn't know whom to trust in Iraq.

For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.

Why has waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption flourished over the last several years in Iraq? This might have something to do with it.

Of particular interest, the AP noted that whistleblowers are offered an avenue under the federal False Claims Act to file what's called a "qui tam" lawsuit, which allows private citizens to sue on the government's behalf. (The policy was developed under Lincoln to help root out corrupt contractors selling defective products to the Union Army.)

The Justice Department has the option of signing onto these lawsuits, 12 of which have been filed dealing with alleged Iraq reconstruction abuse since 2004. To date, how many qui tam suits have the Bush administration endorsed? Zero.

A little more on qui tam:

The full phrase qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hoc parte sequitur, means “he who sues for the king sues for himself."

More information can be found on qui tam lawsuits at Answers.com. Of particular note, there's this:

The False Claims Act provides incentive to relators by granting them between 15% and 30% of any award or settlement amount. In addition, the statute provides an award of the relator's attorney's fees, making qui tam actions a popular topic for the plaintiff's bar. Indeed, a private [natural] person may not be able to commence a qui tam action "pro se" -- that is, without representation by a lawyer -- since the private person is actually representing/filing the suit on behalf of the government and that may only be done by a lawyer.

Once a relator brings suit on behalf of the government, a U.S. Attorney for the district in which the suit was filed has the option to take over the case. If he or she does so, the government will usually notify the company or person being sued that a claim has been filed. Qui tam actions are filed under seal, which has to be partially lifted by the court to allow this type of disclosure. The seal prohibits the defendant from disclosing even the mere existence of the case to anyone, including its shareholders (a fact which may cause conflicts with the defendant's obligation under Securities & Exchange Commission or stock exchange regulations that require it to disclose lawsuits that could materially affect stock prices). The government may then, without disclosing the identity of the plaintiff or any of the facts, begin taking discovery from the defendant.

If the government does not decide to participate in a qui tam action, the relator may proceed on his or her own, though such cases classically have a much lower success rate. Conventional wisdom states that this is due in part to the fact that the government will get involved in what it believes are winning cases, but will avoid losing cases.

Or, I suppose, if you don't want even greater corruption exposed.

No End In Sight

This movie is only showing in New York City and Washington, DC currently. To find other cities where it will be showing and their opening dates, go to the No End In Sight movie homepage and click on "theatres."

The movie shows how incompetently the Bush Administration handled the Iraq war. Many people argue that we should not have gone at all. Perhaps so, especially given what we've seen happen.

Donald Rumsfeld famously said: "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want or wish to have at some later date." It is also true that you go to war with the army you need, not the army that is the cheapest possible.

See my post "Some Folks' World," which was written several months ago.

The End of the Innocence

These are becoming turbulent times. We are constantly at war. And it's a war financed not by shared sacrifice, but by a massive debt that will be heaped upon an American populace already burdened by personal and consumer debt (at outrageous interest rates and fees). Americans feel like they are running faster but falling farther behind because of all their debt.

Things that used to be staples of the American dream are becoming out of reach. The college degree -- even a graduate degree -- no longer guarantees financial success. Schooling that used to be paid through tax dollars and scholarships have been replaced by student loans that are not dischargeable in bankruptcy if things go horribly wrong. The student loan payments become a house -- or at least a car -- payment. Such debt payments starting out in life increase the risk of failure. As I have said before, it creates a barrier to entry to American college graduates. Pensions that were part of the benefits promised by businesses to the workers can be paid to executives in bankruptcy proceedings. Health insurance that used to have some semblance of protection is now a sieve that helps almost no one, as Michael Moore's new movie SiCKO has shown.

There is a general feeling of malaise in the country. Everything is just out of whack. Our leaders, who have held themselves out to be paragons of virtue are turning out to be boors of vice. They often talk about "values," but they live lives that are the antithesis of those values. They oppose taxation to support programs to help their fellow man at their weakest, in favor of "private charities" which they do not support with their own wealth.

Frankly, I am tired of the hypocrisy. It is the very message that Jesus tried to convey in the Good Samaritan story. The Samaritans were considered a heretical group by other Jews, so by using a Samaritan for the parable, Jesus conveyed the idea that the most ungodly people could be more righteous than those who proclaimed themselves pious. Do you ever get the idea that God is trying to teach us this very same lesson all over again?

It makes me think of a song from the 1980s: Don Henley's The End of the Innocence. Some of the lines -- which I have bolded below -- have particular significance for us today. The song, originally written during the Reagan Administration, has come full circle -- although under somewhat different circumstances.

Don Henley - The End of the Innocence


Lyrics:

Remember when the days were long
And rolled beneath a deep blue sky
Didn't have a care in the world
With mommy and daddy standin' by
But "happily ever after" fails
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers dwell on small details
Since daddy had to fly

But I know a place where we can go
That's still untouched by men
We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind
You can lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

O' beautiful, for spacious skies
But now those skies are threatening
They're beating plowshares into swords
For this tired old man that we elected king
Armchair warriors often fail
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers clean up all details
Since daddy had to lie

But I know a place where we can go
And wash away this sin
We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind
Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair spill all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

Who knows how long this will last
Now we've come so far, so fast
But, somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us
I need to remember this
So baby give me just one kiss
And let me take a long last look
Before we say goodbye

Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

Politically Incorrect Nature of Man

From The Nature of Humans:

4. Most suicide bombers are Muslim – I think we already knew this, as I can’t remember any other type of suicide bomber. Almost all of them are Muslim. The author ties this to polygyny as mentioned above. Muslim society allows for polygyny, thus depleting the pool of available women for the guy on the street. There is also the mention of the 72 virgins available for Muslims who martyr themselves. Stay on Earth and have no wife and no sex or blow yourself up and find 72 virgins at your disposal?

It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings. Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their own extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide bombers are single.

Translation – the lack of sex and promise of it in the hereafter makes men blow themselves into little pieces.

This statement was only one of 10 controversial ideas posted today over at Audience of One, a local Oklahoma blog by a Tulsa school principal. The idea ties into other ideas about power and sex in society. Here is another example from his post today:

2. Humans are naturally polygamous – I wrote about this some time ago in this post. There is certainly much in human history to indicate that monogamy does not come naturally. My friend Patrick (Patrick is the author of Optimus: Praetorian Guard and who is a regular commenter here. --OkieLawyer) commented on that post that monogamy evolved to keep men from killing each other in competition for women. Monogamy increases the number of available women as opposed to wealthy men monopolizing them in a polygamous society. The article agrees with Patrick’s assertion.

Among primate and nonprimate species, the degree of polygyny highly correlates with the degree to which males of a species are larger than females. The more polygynous the species, the greater the size disparity between the sexes. Typically, human males are 10 percent taller and 20 percent heavier than females. This suggests that, throughout history, humans have been mildly polygynous.

Translation – Tall dark handsome men get to have more sex and produce more children, thus increasing the average height of men as compared to women.

What constitutes "tall, dark and handsome?" Scientific studies seem to indicate it is related to symmetry. I wrote about it before, but only as a brief blurb. The basic idea is that people whose faces and bodies are more symmetrical make more money, have more sex, are more popular and enjoy more power than others. Kinda fits in with my Four Corrupting Influences.

Whatever the motivations are, it is worth talking about.

Losing the American Dream

Go and watch the clips from Boston Legal over at Independent Christian Voice and then think about what it means to be an American.

Whitewash

Seymour Hersh recently wrote an article in The New Yorker wherein he reports on what General Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, found during his limited investigation.

But even with the limited investigation, General Taguba doesn't believe the official story that the soldier's were renegades acting outside the military command:

“From what I knew, troops just don’t take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups,” Taguba told me. His orders were clear, however: he was to investigate only the military police at Abu Ghraib, and not those above them in the chain of command. “These M.P. troops were not that creative,” he said. “Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority. I was limited to a box.”

And from a report in the Washington Post:

In interviews with New Yorker reporter Seymour M. Hersh, Taguba said that he was ordered to limit his investigation to low-ranking soldiers who were photographed with the detainees and the soldiers' unit, but that it was always his sense that the abuse was ordered at higher levels. Taguba was quoted as saying that he thinks top commanders in Iraq had extensive knowledge of the aggressive interrogation techniques that mirrored those used on high-value detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and that the military police "were literally being exploited by the military interrogators."

Taguba also said that Rumsfeld misled Congress when he testified in May 2004 about the abuse investigation, minimizing how much he knew about the incidents. Taguba said that he met with Rumsfeld and top aides the day before the testimony.

"I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib," Taguba said, according to the article. "We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable."

Not allowed to ask questions that will get to the ultimate truth of the matter? Sounds like whitewash to me.

***Update***

Here is a video report:

The Middle East Mess

Today in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman in his column entitled What a Mess lays out the conundrum in the Middle East:

Just look around. Gaza is turning into Mogadishu. Hamas is shelling Israel. Israel is retaliating. Iraq is a boiling pot. Iran is about to go nuclear. Lebanon is being pulled apart. Syria is being investigated for murdering Lebanon’s prime minister. I could go on. Yes, this mess is so big and so tall. Who knows where to pick it up at all?

In Israel, officials are mulling all alternatives — from the Saudi peace initiative to negotiating with Hamas to opening talks with Syria to reoccupying Gaza to looking for a “trustee” for the West Bank — because no one is sure anymore what to do.

That is, the Left’s way — land for peace — was discredited by the collapse of Oslo. The Right’s way, permanent Israeli occupation of all “The Land of Israel,” was made impossible by Palestinian demographics and two uprisings. The third way, unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon and Gaza, has been discredited by Hezbollah’s attack from Lebanon and the Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza.

“Israel is in a place it has never been before,” said Moshe Halbertal, a Hebrew University philosophy professor. “It does not have a picture of where to go and how, so people are looking for a fourth way.”

...

Israel’s real choice is between dealing with a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority or watching it collapse into little pieces, which Israel would have to pick up. (Think Iraq and Somalia.) West Bank and Gaza unemployment is now around 40 percent. Talking with Palestinians in Ramallah, the phrase I heard most was not “Israeli occupation” but “Palestinian disintegration.”

Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki told me that as bad as things are today, his polls show most Palestinians still don’t blame Hamas. They blame Israel and America for withholding funds from the Hamas government that Palestinians elected. The best way to diminish Hamas’s influence, or to moderate it, is by forcing it to assume responsibility. Ask it: “Do you want Palestinians to be able to work in Israel? Then sit down with Israel and work out the details.” We need to “force Hamas through a corridor of difficult decisions,” said Israeli strategist Gidi Grinstein. If America can talk to Iran, Israel can talk to Hamas.

Second, Hamas says it will only offer Israel a long-term cease-fire. Fine, take it. Fact No. 1: the real history of Israeli-Arab relations is: war, lull, war, lull, war, lull — from 1948 until today. Fact No. 2: “Since 1948,” said Mr. Yaari, “the Jews have always made better use of the lulls than the Arabs.” Israel doesn’t need Hamas’s recognition. It needs a long lull.

The third new reality is that Hamas’s shelling of Israel from Gaza means Israel can never hand over the West Bank to the Palestinians, without an international trustee — because from there Palestinians could close Israel’s airport with one rocket. Only Jordan, or an international force, can be that trustee.

Bottom line: I don’t know if there is a fourth way, but, if there is, it will have to include these new realities. Otherwise, this mess will get even bigger, deeper and taller.

Thomas Friedman is right: what a mess!