Yeah and while we’re on the subject what about that royal family eh!
Prince Charles=CHARLIE=English slang term for coke
They all ride horses=HORSE=another slang term for heroin!

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 13 2005 7:34 utc | 3

Why DID we invade Iraq?
Bush gave one reason, Cheney another, Condi another, the Pentagon another, the press another, Rummy and Crew another, each Congress critter cited his or her own, the tubefed multitudes all had their reasons, and new reasons are added almost daily as this thing boils over . . .
Ohhhh, Richard! It’s just too complex to ever figure out, to ever finally know — why DID we invade Iraq?
Unless . . . we talk about what goal every one of those myriad reasons points to. Let’s cook it down. What did everybody’s individual pot of justification stew have as a common ingredient? What was in every pot?
America Uber Alles. The PNAC creed.
Unspoken. Unexamined. Unquestioned.
Swallowed whole before discussion even began.
The presumption that we must come out ahead. That we deserve to be on top. Always. That America rules — or else.
That’s what we need to face, and disown, as a nation, as a people. That’s Lebensraum. That’s the Nazi creed of taking what you deem you need.
‘Or else’ is Cheney’s endless war from here on — until such time as we are stopped, just as the Nazis were stopped. That is all that lies down that road.
Are we, the American people, willing to live in this world without holding a pistol to their heads — all those variously unwashed, illiterate, multi-colored, billions of Others?
Are they all created equal, too? Are they human beings, with every one of our Declaration’s rights inborn? Do they deserve everything we deserve?
Or, are they untermenschen? Can we loot n’ shoot them, shock n’ awe, Baghdad style, and drive off into the sunset with what used to be theirs? Is everybody here . . . OK with that?
Are we, the people, willing to be one nation among a couple hundred nations? Talk things out, work things out, put the pistols down? Share? Or, is this whole planet our turf? Is Death to the Other our manifest destiny?
Nothing in America’s Declaration, Constitution, jurisprudence or international treaties asks or requires our loyalty to the PNAC creed. Quite the reverse.
With the Downing Street memo, and other papers, the recipe for this war is out in the open, and Americans of every stripe are asking themselves, who put Lebensraum in the soup?
The Project for a New American Century will get an up or down vote now, out on the street, where Frist can’t fudge or fake it.
As powerful as the sentiments that led to our first Revolution, as powerful as the sentiments that led to our Civil War, is the sentiment building among Americans today, as they realize the comic book creed of world conquest that Wolfowitz, Cheney and Rumsfeld slipped into our stew, at the cost of our entire Treasury, twice over.
An all American sentiment — aboveboard, honest, straight and sunny — just as jake as calling a foul ball when you see one.
It’s simply this:
We Don’t Want To Rule The World.
And we’re not gonna do it, Dick.
ref: http://www.newamericancentury.org/

Posted by: Antifa | Jun 13 2005 9:09 utc | 5

Psychological Warfare Effort To Be Outsourced
The U.S. Special Operations Command has hired three firms to produce newspaper stories, television broadcasts and Web sites to spread American propaganda overseas.
The use of contractors in psyops is a new wrinkle. But psychological warfare expert Herb Friedman said he is not surprised.
With only one active-duty and two reserve psyops units remaining, Friedman said, “The bottom line is, they don’t have the manpower.”

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 13 2005 9:54 utc | 7

@ Colman
Not only do we get the “manpower mantra”, we are also getting another tool to keep media purveyors “on message”:
if you’re being paid to tell lies in one venue, it’s not
likely one of your other subsidiaries is going to spill the beans. Of course, I don’t know if the “major media players” will also be eating from the outsourcing trough,
but imagining otherwise is ingenuous.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jun 13 2005 10:07 utc | 9

Proliferation of guerilla methods from Iraq to Afghanistan (and back)
Suicide bomber kills five US troops in Afghanistan

A suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives into a U.S. military convoy in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing at least five American soldiers, police said.

Posted by: b | Jun 13 2005 14:08 utc | 11

From atrios

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States will “have to face” a painful dilemma on restoring the military draft as rising casualties result in persistent shortfalls in US army recruitment, a top US senator warned.
Joseph Biden, the top Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made the prediction after new data released by the Pentagon showed the US Army failing to meet its recruitment targets for four straight months.
“We’re going to have to face that question,” Biden said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” television show when asked if it was realistic to expect restoration of the draft.
“The truth of the matter is, it is going to become a subject, if, in fact, there’s a 40 percent shortfall in recruitment. It’s just a reality,” he said.
I do wish people like Biden would stop saying things like this without actually offering any constructive alternatives or without properly laying this problem at the feet of the Bush administration. Pretty soon the Democrats will be the party of the draft, thus robbing of us of the opportunity to have exactly 100 Senate seats and 435 House seats.

When will Biden stop shooting the Democratic party in the feet, both feet?

Posted by: citizen | Jun 13 2005 17:50 utc | 13

b
i have a terrible feeling everybody is watching the courthouse for michael jackson’s trial or we are all in deep meditation over recent posts by razor concerning morality plays

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 13 2005 20:27 utc | 15

@RG:
Where were you when the workings of the american jury system was visible for all the world to see?
Apparently 12 white folk in a fairly conservative California county didn’t believe anything the prosecution said.
Bet the Wing Nut knickers will be in a twist tonight.
The poster child for decadence (and more in their minds) walks.

Posted by: Spanky Ham | Jun 13 2005 21:35 utc | 17

Michael Jackson verdict in, good time for a news dump.

Posted by: biklett | Jun 13 2005 21:55 utc | 19

Military don’t want to return to a draft.Bush admin don’t want it, and Momma don’t want it.
The military wants out of Iraq but will not be asked, but given orders.
Bush admin doesn´t want the draft before the 2006 elections.
Who cares about Momma?

Posted by: b | Jun 13 2005 22:23 utc | 21

Be nice B, or Momma won’t give you any apple pie.
Seriously, i think we are close to a public opinion tipping point on Iraq here, and, in any event reinstating the draft would be difficult.
Don’t know between 1946 and 1950,whether there was a draft or not, but it existed from 1950-1971 thereabouts. At beginning of VietNam war it had been running for at least 13 years continuously.
Much easier to stop something from being revived than stopping something that has existed for years.
And fuck Biden and the horse he rode in on.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Jun 13 2005 22:42 utc | 23

I’d bet they go one of two ways on the draft, depending on what their other objectives are. Probably they’ll call it “National Service” & build in system of financial incentives luring poorer folk into the military. Otherwise, they’ll pull off another incident to make xAmericans feel under attack.
But the former has the advantage of allowing them to slash all non-military items from the budget. So, they’ll eliminate even Head Start, filling the gap as it were by combo. of programs run by patriarchical monotheistic institutions & kids press-ganged via National Service – read 18 yr. old girls. etc.
Anyway, they’re just building the infrastructure for a full-fledged police state, so I don’t expect that to be implemented for a few yrs. til they’ve totally wrecked the economy, shipped out all the jobs, the housing bubble has collapsed… . In the meantime they control what candidates are nominated & elected via the media, financing & rigged computers, so no rush til the desperation of the masses explodes. Then they can stage another incident.
In the meantime, we have real grounds for impeachment, w/even a top bush economist seeing through the smoke of 9/11. That’s our last hope for sustaining a shred of a democracy… and a faint one at that, since most people are programmed like robots to shy away from it.

Posted by: jj | Jun 14 2005 1:11 utc | 25

RE: Pro-choice” John Kerry and zealot Rick Santorum are joint sponsors of a Senate bill to legalize pharmacists’ refusal to fill prescriptions for birth control and emergency contraception that “violate their beliefs.” Four states already have such laws; in other states, pharmacies restrict women’s access to these drugs by not stocking them.
————————————
From what I can tell Kerry’s bill is a compromise bill that allows for some pharmacists to refuse to dispense certain drugs as long as another pharmacist on duty in the same store does give the drugs to the patient.

Posted by: Gabby | Jun 14 2005 2:32 utc | 27

Ain’t Kerry a piece of work now. Must be triangulating himself for 2008.

Posted by: Garden Slug | Jun 14 2005 2:58 utc | 29

If one ever doubted that every single member of Congress is owned by or at the very least neutered by AIPAC and thier ilk then the failure of even a single Congressman to support the investigation of a prima facie case for War Crimes committed by Israels IDF against the USS Liberty 38 years ago is proof. Let alone the virtually deafening silence of US corporate media …
USS Liberty Veteran’s Association Announces War Crime Report Filed Against Israel

WASHINGTON, DC – Friday, June 10 at 1:00 pm, Hotel Washington, 515 15th.St NW, Washington Room 11th floor (hit R for roof in elevator), Moe Shafer, board member of the USS Liberty Veterans Association and Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, USN, Ret., Former Judge Advocate General of the Navy who was involved with the initial Court of Inquiry investigating the attack in 1967 will present details of the “Report of War Crimes” brief filed on behalf of the USS Liberty Veteran’s Association concerning the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.

USS Liberty: 38 Years and Counting

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Middle East – 12 Jun 2005
THIRTY-EIGHT years have passed since Israeli aircraft and motor torpedo boats attacked and nearly sank the American intelligence ship USS Liberty …

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 14 2005 4:53 utc | 31

Monbiot: A truckload of nonsense
The G8 plan to save Africa comes with conditions that make it little more than an extortion racket

Who, apart from the leader writers of the Daily Telegraph, could deny that debt relief is a good thing? Never mind that much of this debt – money lent by the World Bank and IMF to corrupt dictators – should never have been pursued in the first place. Never mind that, in terms of looted resources, stolen labour and now the damage caused by climate change, the rich owe the poor far more than the poor owe the rich. Some of the poorest countries have been paying more for debt than for health or education. Whatever the origins of the problem, that is obscene.
Article continues
You are waiting for me to say but, and I will not disappoint you. The but comes in paragraph 2 of the finance ministers’ statement. To qualify for debt relief, developing countries must “tackle corruption, boost private-sector development” and eliminate “impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign”.

Posted by: b | Jun 14 2005 8:26 utc | 33

News and media in 2015 (Flash presentation)- interesting

Posted by: b | Jun 14 2005 11:42 utc | 35

Sens. John Kerry (D., Mass.) and Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) have introduced the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, a proposal that would allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense certain drugs as long as another pharmacist on duty would fill the prescription.
Can someone add an amendment allowing Doctors to refuse to treat politicians?

Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 14 2005 13:03 utc | 37

Here’s an interesting bit from the AEI Reader :-

Instead, the Bush administration should begin applying the
patience and persistent diplomacy necessary to gain access to
additional basing sites closer to Taiwan—with the Philippines
foremost in value. To be sure, an American military homecoming
would require great delicacy on Washington’s part and some time
to accomplish, but given the operational and strategic value of
the Philippines, it is time to begin laying the groundwork. And
the 2002 campaign to suppress the Abu Sayyaf terrorists on
Basilan Island should have reminded Washington and Manila
alike of the need for strategic cooperation, even aside from the
question of China.

Would have to be very delicate indeed. I’ll keep an eye open for any more suspect terrorist bombs in Manila.

Posted by: DM | Jun 14 2005 14:48 utc | 39

augusto pinochet put his heart behind the bolton nomination – “this s a man who knows democracies & how to destroy them – exactly what we need in the united nations – where illussions grow”

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 14 2005 19:51 utc | 41

FAMILY VALUES! 🙂
There’s Something About Mary – How did a porn king and his 36DD leading lady get themselves a sit-down with Karl Rove and President Bush?

Posted by: Fran | Jun 14 2005 20:59 utc | 43

Anybody know anything more about this? Looks like Pirates now hiding behind UN. OAS no longer doing bidding of the Pirates & it’s getting a little late in the day for xUS to send troops everywhere. So, if a Pirate controlled govt. is overthrown by a popular mvmt. in L.Am. No problemo, send in the UN, w/decisions made by Commission controlled by the Pirates…at least that’s what this sounds like.
From Rep. Ron Paul, libertarian from Tx:
The “United Nations Reform Act of 2005” masquerades as a bill that will cut US dues to the United Nations by 50% if that organization does not complete a list of 39 reforms. On the surface any measure that threatens to cut funding to the United Nations seems very attractive, but do not be fooled: in this case reform “success” will be worse than failure. The problem is in the supposed reforms themselves– specifically in the policy changes this bill mandates.
The proposed legislation opens the door for the United Nations to routinely become involved in matters that have never been part of its charter. Specifically, the legislation redefines terrorism very broadly for the UN’s official purposes– and charges it to take action on behalf of both governments and international organizations.
What does this mean? The official adoption of this definition by the United Nations would have the effect of making resistance to any government or any international organization an international crime. It would make any attempt to overthrow a government an international causus belli for UN military action. Until this point a sovereign government retained the legal right to defend against or defeat any rebellion within its own territory. Now any such activity would constitute justification for United Nations action inside that country. This could be whenever any splinter group decides to resist any regime– regardless of the nature of that regime.
…
This new policy is given teeth by creating a “Peacebuilding Commission,” which will serve as the implementing force for the internationalization of what were formerly internal affairs of sovereign nations. This Commission will bring together UN Security Council members, major donors, major troop contributing countries, appropriate United Nations organizations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund among others. This new commission will create the beginning of a global UN army.
link

Posted by: jj | Jun 15 2005 3:19 utc | 45

Britain “is not worth an old shoe”
– Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf
(nor the BBC)

Saddam Interrogation Screened – in Silence. The Question Is: Why?
By Robert Fisk
The Independent UK
Tuesday 14 June 2005
There he was, just as his victims looked on his own television screens, his words censored, his arguments unknown, his case as undemocratic as the “judicial” courts in which Saddam destroyed his own enemies.
The Iraqis – or, let us speak frankly, the Americans who tried to censor the old reprobate’s previous court appearance – decided yesterday that his words would also be censored. That is Saddamism. This is how Saddam ran Iraq.
The words were obliterated. And now the Americans and their obedient, Shia-led government, are acting out the same Saddamite line.
The pictures, the BBC admitted, were “mute”. What in God’s name did this mean? Who emasculated the BBC to such a degree that it should say such a ridiculous thing? Why were they mute? The BBC didn’t tell us.
If Saddam was really being charged with war crimes over the killings of Shias – which I hope he was – then why, in heaven’s name, didn’t we hear what he had to say? Why use the methods of Saddam himself? The silent film, the assumption of guilt? Or was Saddam telling the court that the United States was behind his regime, that Washington had given him the means to destroy the Halabja Kurds with gas?
How can we know? And when so many of our journalistic brethren failed to challenge the reason why this tape should be “mute”, what does this say of us? We are told, by Saddam’s jailers of course, that he is being questioned about the murder of Shia villagers south of Baghdad in 1982. I hope so. But how do we know?
The reality is that Saddam is from Iraq’s past, something from the era before “our” insecurity and destruction and the rape and insurgency and death which has now overwhelmed Iraq.
Yes, there are those who would like to see Saddam brought to justice. But they want safety and law and order and freedom – freedom from us, too – before they care about this crazed old man’s trial. But we insist the Iraqis have bread and circuses before they have freedom. And they must experience our democracy by understanding that the defendant in a court must be shut up and denied his own words in order to appear on the BBC.

Posted by: DM | Jun 15 2005 8:29 utc | 47

Seems the Robber Barons are well and alive! No make it very well and very fat! From the Hill:
Tax cuts aid senators

Several senators — millionaires, many of them — have reported earning substantial dividend income in 2004, benefiting greatly from President Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, according to financial disclosure reports made available yesterday.
Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) reported earning $1 million to $5 million in income from the W.H. Frist 2000 Qualified Blind Trust, which has a capital value of between $5 million and $25 million. Another of Frist’s trusts, the William H. Frist GST Exempt 2000 Qualified Blind Trust, was valued between $1 million to $5 million.
Frist, well-known as a former heart-transplant surgeon, reported holdings of less than $15,000 in Lifepoint Hospitals Inc. and Triad Hospitals Inc. The majority leader also reported buying less than $15,000 of stock in Krispy Kreme, the Southern doughnut chain. The stock yielded a small amount of dividend income. The figures were obtained from disclosure reports put up on the website of PoliticalMoneyLine.

Interesting that he has stock in Hospitals and junk food. Sorry, no offence ment, but to me doughnuts are junk food, even if they taste nice. So he makes many from people eating bad stuff for their health and then cashing in from treating the effect off their bad eating habits.

Posted by: Fran | Jun 15 2005 8:32 utc | 49

DM,
“The pictures, the BBC admitted, were “mute”. What in God’s name did this mean? Who emasculated the BBC to such a degree that it should say such a ridiculous thing? Why were they mute? The BBC didn’t tell us.”
As Bob well knows, the BBC Director General announced a massive “redundancy” programme a few months before the General Election. There is a big fight on by the union to the effect that any such severances be voluntary. They’ve been on strike over this already, with more such action threatened.

Posted by: John | Jun 15 2005 10:26 utc | 51

Document printed from the website of the ICRC.

International Committee of the Red Cross
5-11-2002 by François Bugnion
Dialogue with the past: the ICRC and the Nazi death camps
François Bugnion, the ICRC’s Director for International Law and Cooperation within the Movement, reflects* on the organization’s failure to react vigorously to the persecution of Jews by the Third Reich

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 15 2005 12:27 utc | 53

This is the link to the International Red Cross supplied above (with a minor syntax error) by Outraged .

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jun 15 2005 13:19 utc | 55

@Hannah K. O’Luthon
A search on Google News re ‘USS Liberty’ and one will be amazed at the deafening silence … various surviving crewmen have been forced to post articles on obscure journals and even foriegn news services in order to get any sort of coverage … the USA media dutifully reported various summary articles re the War Crimes press release and then dropped the story entirely … no analysis, no followup, zip, nada, zilch …
The real issue here though is that there is no element of the political system, not even a single politician of any persuasion, that will comment let alone support the investigation … sheez, we went to war with Vietnam re the ‘Gulf of Tonkin incident’ that never actually happened yet with the USS Liberty we just look the other way.
I’m not into conspiracy theories of ‘scale’, however, the only conclusion one can draw from these events and the treatment of the story is that the Likudniks (i.e. AIPAC and thier ilk) own, or are in a position to destroy every single serving politician.
What the FU– is going on here !

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 15 2005 13:55 utc | 57

That should have been
“and moot the whole question”.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jun 15 2005 14:13 utc | 59

” … the object lessons of Findlay, McCloskey, Adlai Stevenson III, and lately Cynthia McKinney are not lost on our courageous “public servants”.
Precisely. Object lessons.
But what we’re talikng about here is a determined, pre-meditated attempt to sink the ship aad eliminate the crew by an ‘ally’ whilst in international waters … right down to machinegunning wounded in lifeboats.
If you’ve read the PDF from the press realease link the most chilling aspect is the sudden abort by the IDF choppers containing assault troops just after the ROE’s were sent in clear from the carrier group to the (about to be aborted) Strike and S&R airctaft …
One can only speculate that if the ROE’s had’nt been sent in clear and therefore intercepted by the IDF that the Liberties crew would have been boarded and slaughtered to the last man in Close Quarter Combat by the heliborne assault teams … yes, choppers that according to the IDF’s disinfo lads were there to rescue/assist, although without any room onboard to do so (assist/rescue) because they were full of assault troops !!!

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 15 2005 14:28 utc | 61

For a complete copy of the War Crimes brief re USS Liberty go to here for a PDF version of the Report, or here for an HTML version of the Report.
Its succint, clear and concise.

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 15 2005 14:56 utc | 63

The israelis are masters of ‘false-flag’ Ops and especially skilled at using them to have desirable foreign proxies unwittingly conduct Ops aginst third parties/nations. However, without direct particiapant accounts or declassified/leaked documents such activities are lost in the ‘fog’.
One of the other issues is that with ultra-sensitive Ops, such as possible involvement, by whatever nature or degree, in the events of 9/11 for example, results in multiple layers of pre-planned cover-stories and carefully co-ordinated mis and dis-information campaigns that run for literally decades.
The masterful multi-decade, multi-level campaign by the US Airforce in conjunction with the CIA starting in the fifties re UFO’s to conceal ‘Black’ strategic R&D programs (U-2, SR-71, F-117, etc) is just one example.

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 15 2005 15:08 utc | 65

Asia Times – a long and good article:
The coming trade war and global depression

Structurally, the real cause of the Great Depression, which lasted more than a decade, from 1929 until the US entry to World War II in 1941, was the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs that put world trade into a tailspin from which it did not recover until the war began. While the US economy finally recovered through war mobilization after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, most of the world’s market economies sank deeper into war-torn distress and did not fully recover until the Korean War boom in 1951.
Barely five years into the 21st century, with a globalized neo-liberal trade regime firmly in place in a world where market economy has become the norm, trade protectionism appears to be fast re-emerging and developing into a new global trade war of complex dimensions.

Posted by: b | Jun 15 2005 15:32 utc | 67

wow. the AT article was a mind-melt:

The law of one price says that identical goods should sell for the same price in two separate markets when there are no transportation costs and no differential taxes applied in the two markets. But the law of one price does not apply to the price of labor. Price arbitrage is the opposite of wage arbitrage in that producers seek to make their goods in the lowest wage locations and to sell their goods in the highest price markets. This is the incentive for outsourcing, which never seeks to sell products locally at prices that reflect PPP differentials. What is not generally noticed is that price deflation in an economy increases its PPP, in that the same local currency buys more. But the cross-border one-price phenomenon applies only to certain products, such as oil, thus for a PPP of four times, a rise in oil prices will cost the Chinese economy four times the equivalent in other goods, or wages, than in the US. The larger the purchasing power parity between a local currency and the dollar, the more severe is the tyranny of dollar hegemony on forcing down wage differentials.

The “saving’s glut” or the problem of “overaccumulation” is partly addressed by trade/currency policy. Am I right the demand of US that China float yuan will increase PPP in China, thus forcing China central banks to retain dollar dominated assets–thus keeping US investment bubbles inflated, subsidizing US domestic consumption? The article also, after some annoying detours into Roman law, notes how interest rate hikes in US actually delay inflation because creditors are less likely to dump US treasuries. And, by all means, make sure policies widen wage differentials between US and other workers. When will the turmoil end?
what a tangled web…
chicken & egg…good luck untying all these contradictions.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 15 2005 17:32 utc | 69

The Movement is building. Rallies being organized quickly around the country for tomorrow after the Conyers hearings. For more info

Posted by: jj | Jun 15 2005 18:26 utc | 71

@ Elliot
Maybe the hope for a Constitutional Alliance (cf. at le Speakeasy) isn’t completely
devoid of foundation. The U.S. House of Representatives voted yesterday to curtail some of the most iniquitous provisions of the Patriot Act,
namely those regarding government snooping into library records.

It’s a significant positive step.
@Outraged
Thanks again for interesting material. As I stated
on another thread, I consider “factual” documentation
and links to be more precious than even the most
acute and elegant analysis. I have no idea what your
professional background is, but your postings seem to
be those of an (erstwhile?) insider.

Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 16 2005 8:23 utc | 73

You’re welcome. Each of us in these virtual communities contribute our small portions to add to the value of the whole …
My skills as a wordsmith are limited, especially of late … largely restrict my contributions to quotations and researching/providing reference source and background material for certain topics … as some may recall my former life was career Military and civilian Intelligence … these days one finds oneself holding diametrically opposed views to those held back then … despising labels, however, I’m humanist-socialist I suppose, holding out a forlorn hope for a societal return to sincerely held core values such as honesty, morality and principle. Not to mention the breakup of corporate power and media domination …

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 16 2005 8:43 utc | 75

It’s not much, but every journey begins with but a single step …
Lawmakers Want to Pull Troops Out of Iraq

By LIZ SIDOTI
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 16, 2005; 3:56 AM
WASHINGTON — A small bipartisan group in the House, including a Republican who voted for war, is urging President Bush to start bringing home U.S. troops from Iraq by Oct. 1, 2006.
Two Republicans and two Democrats in the House were introducing a resolution Thursday calling for withdrawal. It is the first such resolution put forth by lawmakers from both parties, although an overwhelming number of Democrats and six House Republicans voted in 2002 against sending troops to Iraq …

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 16 2005 9:05 utc | 77

Fewer Applying To US Military Academies …

June 13, 2005 By Brian MacQuarrie, Boston Globe Staff
WEST POINT, N.Y. — The Long Gray Line of cadets still drills on the impeccably groomed parade field as it has throughout the 203-year history of the US Military Academy. Reminders of the calling and challenge of military service are everywhere, from the statues of Generals Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower to the meticulously maintained monuments to West Point’s war dead.
But across the nation this year, the number of high school seniors hearing the call to service is down; applications to join the Long Gray Line dropped 9 percent. And that was the least-discouraging news for the nation’s top three service academies, where room, board, and tuition for four years of a sterling education are free.
Applications for the US Naval Academy plummeted 20 percent, and the number for the US Air Force Academy fell 23 percent, military officials said.
”All together, these factors amount to a kind of referendum on one aspect of George Bush’s policy, and that’s the Iraq war,” said Michael T. Corgan, a Boston University professor of international relations who graduated from and taught at the US Naval Academy and served in the Vietnam War.
”Parents, in particular, are simply not encouraging their children to go into the military because, for many, this means an immediate posting to Iraq or at least to forces in that region,” Corgan said.
The decrease occurred as many colleges and universities experienced a record number of applications.
About 80 percent of the West Point class of 2005 could serve in Iraq and Afghanistan within two years.
Frank Sullivan, guidance director for Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School, said student interest was almost nonexistent this year. Academy recruiters visited the school once or twice this year, Sullivan said, but the presentations didn’t yield any applications from the class.

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 16 2005 9:38 utc | 79