We live by your comments …
… please feed us …
Back to Main
February 24, 2008
Open Thread 08-10
Comments
I used to thing the word mission was a homonym, as so applied to the word missionary. Not so much anymore. Maybe the Mormon’s or the Jehovah’s should take uncle sam’s example and dispense with the bible and simply work with a gun.
Posted by: anna missed | Mar 4 2008 5:01 utc | 101
“The challenge facing us is to determine which languages are the most critical to current and future mission needs,” Hammersen said.
I used to thing the word mission was a homonym, as so applied to the word missionary. Not so much anymore. Maybe the Mormon’s or the Jehovah’s should take uncle sam’s example and chuck the bible and pick up a gun.
Posted by: anna missed | Mar 4 2008 5:02 utc | 102
For those who thought, or otherwise hoped, that I was blowing smoke about Oybama being an even more extreme right-wing radical than Clinton, here’s a superb link that a poster listed @ Larry Johnson’s blog.
I thought I had a grasp on how they’d changed things this yr. virtually reducing the “primary contests” to an issue of who better manipulates the masses, while the real decisions were made last year as wannabe candidates struck deals w/Elites. But, reading the excellent work that’s being done by bloggers @ Larry’s to find the reality beneath Oybama’s bullshit, I’m struck by how the elites have established things now so that the window during which mass input is allowed is merely the perfect size to enable a new product roll-out. Take a “candidate” who is unknown to the masses. By the time enough information is dug up about them so that anyone could make an informed choice, the Mass Manipulators’ bandwagon has left the station. Facts are irrelevant. Propaganda is All. Oybama is new; Clinton has to run on a record of policies that screw the masses. The fact that her policies are only 95% right-wing anti-American extremist to his 100% is unavailable in such a short window. Oybama is a Narcissist; Clinton isn’t. Being programmed by tv to think that’s so much more “exciting”, there’s Nothing more to say.
Posted by: jj | Mar 4 2008 5:32 utc | 104
Marc Lynch weighs in on the Clinton/Obama/McCain foreign policy differential – as far as the ME goes:
The contrast is striking, and I think important for reasons that transcend the immediate Presidential campaign. Any new American President is going to get a window of opportunity to reach out to the Muslim world, a reprieve after the Bush administration. What they will do with it should be a major question for each of them. Obama’s call for a summit meeting with the Muslim world in the first hundred days of his administration would take advantage of that window. Even McCain seems keen to dramatically increase engagement across the Islamic world, though I don’t think he’s as likely to be successful given his other commitments (particularly Iraq). But Clinton seems determined not to offer any ideas about engagement with the Islamic world or public diplomacy, for reasons which I don’t entirely understand.
Posted by: anna missed | Mar 4 2008 7:32 utc | 105
More on the degenerating (depending on how you view it) Awakening Councils:
The U.S. command in Iraq provides no data indicating how many of its operations are directed at each of its adversaries. But Dan Gouré, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a conservative Virginia think-tank, told IPS he estimates that the U.S. military command in Iraq has been targeting ISI (Islamic State of Iraq) in 60 percent of its operations and other Sunni insurgents in 30 percent of them. The other 10 percent, he says, are focused on the Shi’ite Mahdi Army.
Insurgents are still mounting about 700 improvised explosive device (IED) attacks every month, according to the latest statistics issued by the U.S. command. Although they are not broken down by source, the vast majority are certainly carried out by the same Sunni insurgent organizations that fight al-Qaeda and have contributed tens of thousands of men to the Sahwa.
Posted by: anna missed | Mar 4 2008 8:42 utc | 106