BUG-OUT? GUARDIAN interviewed experts on the likelihood & results of our bugging out (to b.o. is to pull troops out without victory). People say the Bushies are divided on the issue: Rumsfeld says they could have an election without the ornery Sunnis; Powell says this election would fool nobody.

If Kerry won the election, he'd be under almost the same pressures Bush is under 'not to bug out'. But if the violence got much worse, then a bug-out wouldn't look so unlikely. Also, if the Iraqi regime TOLD us to get out...

The present assault on Fallujah does not seem likely to promote a peaceful Iraq, ready to elect a legit govt. The assault will involve horrific bombing (recruiting new terrorists all over the world) and then city-fighting by our troops, with possible high casualties. Then the insurgents would likely fall back into Ramadi, and another fight would be necessary.

What evils would happen if we pulled out? Possible civil war; possible total anarchy, perfect for fostering terrorists. But both are pretty possible now; and certainly both are equally likely if we leave after staying there for several years, sacrificing huge numbers of GIs (they had to extend the tours of 6500 there now!)

 
CHAOS IN RAMADI: In a town near the hotspot Fallujah, the insurgents are not taking a conventional stand (one the Americans can blast with their bombs).

Instead, it's hit-and-run. The present governor of the province is also the mayor of the city, because nobody else would volunteer to serve as mayor.

The GIs suspect that many of 'our' native militia are actually helping the other side. NYTIMES

People say the election will be meaningless if the Sunnis don't participate. Well, it looks like they won't. (Why should they? they'd be outvoted 4 to 1 by an alliance of Shiites and Kurds. Even allied with the Kurds, they'd be outvoted 6 to 4.!)

Our spokesmen there talk with guarded optimism when their names are given; speaking off the record, there's more unguarded gloom.

 
MORE STRIKES AT OIL: Iraq guerillas blew up 3 Northern pipelines Sunday, largely stopping oil-exports through Turkey. REUTERS

 
HALF-FULL OR HALF-EMPTY? U.S. is in a bizarre situation. Whichever candidate wins by a whisker (likely Bush), we still know that about half of our population is ignorant and childish--and pig-headed and bellicose. And after the second alQuaeda attack, things will get much worse.

The right-wing half will likely have the army on their side; also the gun-nuts. Also, military robots, shortly. So the sensible left-wing half will be quite helpless. (Nothing would be dumber than quixotic rebellion--unsuccessful, but giving the tyrants an excuse to smash all dissenters.)
--------------------------
This may be the time for young 'liberals' to consider emigrating. But first, they'll have to pick up some skill that other countries (say, Canada or the British Isles) need. Before, one would have said, "Computer-skills"-- but now computer jobs are outsourced to Asia.

What jobs can't be done by computer, or outsourced? Medical 'hands-on' jobs (but reading sonograms is already outsourced!), or auto repair. (Most house-building will be automated, and indeed done in Asia!) Those are the type of 'hands-on' jobs that leap to mind. But intelligent immigrants from 3d-world countries might be ready to fill such jobs at very low pay.
Of course the study of languages is crucial.
------------------
Or perhaps the out-powered sensible people can form communes, to survive on low pay in America by 'dropping out' of the work-hard-spend-hard economy. This might be tolerated, at least for a while.

Some members of the Commune can work in town, perhaps at auto-repair or as medical-technicians. The Commune (growing their own food and building their own shelters) will need some cash, e.g., for medical care ..so it should perhaps take in some pensioners, treating them better than old-folks-warehouses will.

New members must be admitted on probation at first, just as monasteries do. (One big mistake of the communes in the sixties was indiscriminately allowing stangers to join.) Also, new babies must be minimized. (It's hard to believe there would be any more adultery than in suburbs.)

And preparing for possible emigration will be necessary.
---------------------------------
My savvy daughter tells me I'm not allowing for fights among the powerful Republicans, and perhaps a rebellion by military people against the Bush idiots. I hope she's right, and that this means more room for oddball liberals.

 
A honcho STILL WORKING IN CIA wrote a book HUBRIS in which he said that Osama is so anxious to have Bush re-elected that he will launch another attack before election (figuring that U.S. voters would then foolishly flock back to Bush).

Now it turns out that just days before the election, Osama has publicly thundered other threats against us, and insulted the Bushes. This will likely push the election to Bush.

Why would Osama want Bush reelected? Because the Bushies are so dumb they constantly help binLaden recruit NEW terrorists, by their stupid bombing campaigns. (A recent respectable study says that ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND Iraqis have died during our occupation: mostly from our bombs, mostly women & children!)

With dumb Bush as an enemy, Osama needs no friends.

 
U.S. OBSESSION WITH AGGRESSION
One wonders why so many Americans let themselves be talked so easily into this goofy, unjust war. Part of the answer may lie in the way our people start out (shaped partly perhaps by history,partly by propaganda) so FASCINATED with aggression.

A little child only knows to say he 'loves' someone or he 'hates' him--only later does he learn the subtle nuance of saying "I RESENT what you did today!". In the same way, Americans have a shrunken vocabulary when it comes to notable human activity.
VOCABULARY REVIEW:
'Aggression' is when you set out to harm someone. This can have at least two varieties:
--when the Other is in no position to resist: this is called HUNTING, and the hunter is called a PREDATOR, while the Other is a VICTIM.
--when the Other is a match for you: this is called FIGHTING; the aggressor is called a FIGHTER, and the Other is called his FOE or ENEMY.
-------------
'COMPETING' need not involve any will to harm the Other (except perhaps to humiliate him by his losing). Two swimmers in separate lanes are Competing..the two parties are called RIVALS.
--You can 'compete' against yourself, straining to better your previous performance. But this is a metaphor.
----------
'STRIVING' is when you exert yourself ENERGETICALLY for some goal, to meet some CHALLENGE-- which might involve no aggression OR competition--nor even, perhaps, trying to improve your previous performance. For instance, you might strive energetically to climb that mountain. (Seeing the uncaring mountain as 'being conquered' is a mere metaphor..used because talk of Competition or Aggression seems to rouse our adrenalin, making it easier for us to strive energetically.)
---------------
'ACHIEVING' need not be aggressive, competitive, OR EVEN ENERGETIC. The great Master is one who does great things without really straining. (In the movie AMADEUS, what grated most on Salieri was that Mozart's score showed no erasures--he wrote his masterpiece down as if by dictation!)

But in America all achievement is said to be attained 'aggressively'. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Mother Theresa worked AGGRESSIVELY to help the poor!
===========
A related foible is calling every struggle a 'WAR'.

We read in an obituary that Sam succumbed after a 'long, heroic battle' with cancer. What really happened might be this: Sam was so afraid of dying that,even when told his case was hopeless, he insisted that every new experimental treatment be used on him--prolonging his own agony and that of his family, and possibly bankrupting them as well.

When a WAR on cancer is mentioned, you can bet someone is asking for money.

And of course our young people are programmed for real aggression by being exposed to barbaric computer-games and war-movies and crime-movies.
-----------------------------
So naturally, after 9/11--when our efforts and money should have been devoted to protecting (as best we could) our most vulnerable assets from a possible repeat attack (e.g., by inspecting Ship Containers, or by recruiting nurses and developing vaccines and treatments to counter a possible germ-attack)--instead, the first day after 9/11 the Bushies cleverly said we were engaged in a WAR on Terror.

(They had already decided to invade Iraq; 9/11 gave them the perfect excuse. Never mind that Iraq was in no way connected with 9/11.

Never mind that with one billion Muslims scattered around the world , we couldn't possibly WIN such a 'war'. If only 1 in 10,000 Muslims are fanatics, that makes 100,000 individual fanatics,scattered all over the world, of many different races--people anonymous and unreachable until they attack!

Especially they can't be identified by ignorant Americans--the FBI has tapes of hundreds of thousands of suspect telephone messages--any one of which might call for an immediate attack on us--these messages have not been translated.)

If photos of children we've blown to bits recruit only 1 in 10,000 MORE Muslims into terrorists, that's 100,000 MORE terrorists facing us, thinking Allah will reward them if they die killing Americans.
----------------
Americans bought into this 'War on Terror' scam with enthusiasm--especially the testosterone-poisoned males-- because they're already in love with aggression--they foolishly think it's self-evident that in every kind of emergency, THE BEST DEFENSE IS A GOOD OFFENSE.

Since their gut decided to support the war, their brain followed meekly and endorsed the false factual claims that would justify the war: Saddam's ties with alQuaeda and 9/11. Bush supporters overwhelmingly still believe these falsehoods.
-------------
We are threatened by real human enemies--but our correct defensive strategy should be labelled 'partial self-protection', not another 'WAR'.

If we had kept our heads there's not much a bunch of individual terrorists could do to really harm such a gigantic, wealthy country as America (except perhaps by some versions of germ-warfare..a threat the Bushies have pretty much ignored.)

However, the terrorists may be like germs which don't themselves do much harm--but they trigger a great over-reaction by the immune system, so the organism is destroyed by its own immune system.

That's what seems to be happening to enraged,confused America.

 
The respected right-wing London-based journal THE ECONOMIST has endorsed Kerry for President, though with a 'heavy heart'.Defensively it said that half its readers were Americans, so it was not some foreign agency nosing into U.S. affairs.

The journal doesn't like Kerry, but it simply can't stomach Bush's incompetence.

 
WELL, WERE THE EXPLOSIVES STILL THERE AFTER U.S. TOOK OVER? Of course they were. ABCNEWS ran VIDEO PHOTOS of the UN seals still being intact (which showed the explosives had not been previously removed.)

Also, there were photos of GIs in APRIL '03--a month AFTER the invasion--opening the barrels of the hi-explosives and actually handling them!

All this means for certain that the Bushies LET ALL THOSE SUPER-EXPLOSIVES DISAPPEAR, probably into the hands of terrorists inside & outside Iraq.

The GIs who handled the explosives were not ordered to GUARD them..of course not, when there were far too few GIs around then to guard ALL that explosive...and that was because Rummy Rumsfeld, the armchair general of all time, had decided--against the advice of the Secy. of Army--that NOT that many troops were needed!

After all, the Iraqis were expected to WELCOME our invasion!
---------------------
The commander of the 2d Brigade,101st Div, says that they stopped at the site just for convenience; HE WAS NOT EVEN TOLD THESE SUPER-EXPLOSIVES WERE THERE, let alone ordered to guard them!

Iraqis said THEY told the Americans that this site needed to be guarded; but the Yanks refused. INDEPENDENT

What does this show about the Bush-team that ONLY AFTER THE IRAQIS BLEW THE WHISTLE DO THEY START INVESTIGATING WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS CRUCIAL ARMS-DUMP ? ! ?


Rumsfeld is of course Bush's MAN OF WAR; Bush is too pig-headed to dump this clown.
----------
WHAT ABOUT THAT TERRORIST SAYING WE'LL BE ATTACKED IF BUSH IS RE-ELECTED? Aw, c'mon--that's too obvious a ploy of the Bush-regime to be taken seriously.

The truth is, we'll be attacked by alQaeda no matter which man is elected.
And we'll be extra vulnerable to such attacks because the Bushies have so grossly UNDERFUNDED Homeland defense!

 
"NEW OSAMAS BEING TRAINED IN IRAQ", says a former Brit officer now in charge of coordinating security for Iraq reconstruction. He also said that former Saddamite military are now offering their expertise to the Islamist guerillas. FinancialTimes

This was so obvious it didn't need saying--except to the idiots who think the Iraq campaign is making us safer!

 
ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND EXTRA IRAQ DEATHS? A study by JohnsHopkins U. found that increased death-rates after our conquering Baghdad accounted for 100,000 extra civilian deaths, mainly near Fallujah, (not in Fallujah), mainly from U.S. airstrikes, and mainly women & children. BLOOMBERG

This incredible finding was carefully reviewed, and approved, by LANCET, the respected British medical journal. JackStraw, Blair's front man in defending the invasion, said, "Because it was printed in LANCET, we are taking the report very seriously." InternatlHeraldTribune

 
'NO CASUALTIES', SAID BUSH! Fundamentalist televangelist Pat Robertson (a Bush ALLY!) just said that he warned Bush before the war that it would involve many casualties. "Oh,no, there'll be no casualties!" Bush replied.
(Clinton's war in Kosovo involved almost no U.S. casualties. Bush apparently couldn't see the difference between air-war in Kosovo and invading a ferocious Muslim country!)

Of course now the Bushies deny that this happened. AssocPress

WHY THE HELL WOULD ROBERTSON LIE ABOUT THIS?

How did this ninny get to be our President? Maybe he does represent the mental level of about half of our population.

 
HUSH! Bush just quietly signed a NEW GOP corporate tax giveaway of One Hundred and Forty Thousand MILLIONS of Dollars.

GOP Sen. McCain said this was the worst giveaway to special interests he has ever seen. (REUTERS) And McCain has seen many!

The bill includes MORE incentives to reward U.S. firms for SHIPPING U.S. JOBS OVERSEAS!

GOP FACES A SEVERE SHORTAGE OF SHAME.
----------
Some goofy libertarians say that a tax-cut is not a gift to the wealthy, just the feds grabbing less from them. But the GOP is spending hundreds of thousands of millions each year. (The natl.debt is several trillions--several millions of millions! Each year it costs us billions and billions more in interest.)

This debt must eventually be paid--if the wealthy get out of paying, then the rest of us must pay it. So every tax-cut for the wealthy has exactly the same effect on US as an open gift to the wealthy!

 
'YOU MAY NOT AGREE WITH ME", says 'W'--"BUT YOU KNOW WHERE I STAND.'

Also true of Hitler & Stalin.

 
IRAQ DRAINS WAR ON TERROR: The total spent (in 4 years since 9/11, until end of '05) on 'war on terror' is estimated at $225 billion (at a time when Pentagon spending will total far over ONE TRILLION dollars (a trillion is one million MILLIONS!) . The Pentagon's bombs and missiles are useless against individual terrorists.

However, 85% of this measly $225 billion will be spent on pointless Iraq fiasco, leaving only $35 billion--over 4 years!--for the REST of the 'war on terror'.
(Bushies will be asking for $80 billion more for Iraq after the election.)
GUARDIAN

AlQaeda has nothing to fear from Bushies!

 
HUGE CACHE OF HI-POWER EXPLOSIVES MISSING in Iraq.
380 tons of the stuff (needing 40 trucks to haul away) disappeared while Iraq was under U.S. control, in spite of many warnings from international agencies. One pound can destroy a plane; the stuff has destroyed large buildings.

Further looting was observed there a week ago!
UN said entire buildings disappeared AFTER U.S. took control.

It's the 'greatest explosive bonanza in history.' All this stuff is now available to the guerillas; or some could have been hauled to other countries (it's so stable without a detonator cap it can be hauled safely), to be used as trigger of nuke bombs. It's also been said by think-tanks that the guerillas have 'unlimited money'.

Condoleeza was told a month ago. The Bushies never announced the loss, but they have had to answer questions about it from the Press. NYTIMES

What better sign of Pentagon incompetence? Yet Bushies shovel $1100 millions each Day to the Pentagon..they must think it's somehow relevant to protecting us from terror-attacks.
----------
ONE NBC reporter said the munitions were gone before GIs arrived at the site.
White House seized desperately at this straw. (They were warned earlier of its crucial importance. How long did it take for them to get to the site?)

'Pentagon sources' said the munitions WERE SEEN THERE when GIs arrived. Both our puppet govt. in Iraq and the UN said the munitions were stolen because of lack of security there.

Someone said that ignoring that site would be like invading U.S. to check on our nukes, and then ignoring LosAlamos!

UN saw the munitions there in Jan.03, and put UN seal on the doors. In Mar.'03 they saw the seal still there, so they didn't inspect the contents again.

Bush said he was told of the problem only 10 days ago! In every sense of the word, 'W' is out of the loop.
-----------
Before they came up with the obliging NBC guy, Bushies excused their not noticing this gap because there were munitions lieing all around Iraq that had to be gathered up and destroyed. (There were stories that the ammo gathered up was then often left unguarded and stolen by guerillas!)

The question then is: how did they DARE invade a country they knew so little about? And worse, how did they dare to lie to justify such an invasion?
ChristSciMonitor

How did forty trucks haul the stuff off under our eagle-eyed darknesss-foiling intelligence planes, just before we invaded?
----------
Is MaiLingJew the 'NBC correspondent' the Bushes are counting on? He says he was with a Brigade of the 101st Division who stayed on night at this site on the way to Baghdad. They looked around for chemical weapons--but 'they had no orders to search the place.' He saw no search. (Looters were already running loose at the place, which was left unsecured.)

WhiteHouse says the place was searched and no weapons were found. They won't say if they informed the UN then that the weapons were gone.
Our Iraqi puppets say that the munitions disappeared AFTER Baghdad was captured. That left only one day between fall of Baghdad and arrival of 101st.
SeattlePost-Intelligencer

On the other hand, Cheney says the stuff MAY HAVE disappeared before we took over. That seems to contradict above WhiteHouse statement that the place WAS searched ! (Bush has ignored questions about the explosives.)

Cheney snarls that Kerry is 'arm-chair general'. REUTERS The arm-chair general was goofy Rumsfeld, who tried to run the war from the Pentagon.
----------
Now an officer says it was 'very unlikely' that a large fleet of trucks could have hauled off all those explosives after the GIs arrived. The WhiteHouse now says that the place was searched in MAY; no large amounts of explosive were there then, it's said. BostonGlobe

It's a mystery how our all-seeing spyplanes BEFORE the invasion could have missed such a large fleet of trucks...unless the Bushies simply weren't interested in this site. (It's been said that the equivalent would be an invasion of U.S. to check on our nuclear plans, without being interested in Los Alamos!)

The Pentagon is now searching through satellite pictures to try to find out when the munitions disappeared. USATODAY . What does it say about the whole Bush-team that they waited until the Iraqi govt. blew the whistle on this disaster to begin investigating it--two years after it happened ? ! ?

Luckily they won't have time before next Tuesday to achieve the whitewash.
They were caught flat-footed.
-------
Mystery: why so many Americans think nincompoop Bushies will keep them safe!
===========
It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that civilized people despise those savages who executed 50 unarmed youths training for our native militia, as well as the suicide bomber who blew up 35 children in Baghdad. Civilized people also despise those savages who ordered 500-lb bombs dropped on a CITY.

 
ALLAWI BLAMES US ! Our puppet Allawi is getting pretty nervy. 50 unarmed recruits for our native militia were just executed on an open highway.
Allawi said that 'major neglect' was involved on the part of 'multinational forces' (read 'U.S. forces') because the convoy did not have an armed escort.
Later he backed down a little, saying he'd wait to assess blame after the enquiry had taken place. REUTERS But the indictment is in, though the trial is not over.

 
THANK HEAVENS that 72% of U.S. Catholics (says USATODAY) DISapprove of bishops telling them how to vote. One devout person says, "I'm voting for Kerry, and I'm going to Communion--but I'm not giving them another damn penny."

Why siphon contributions for worthy causes (e.g., the Mission or FoodBank in Ft.Collins) through some priest or bishop? Instead, give the worthy groups the money you used to give to the parish.

One imagines a man confessing to his priest: "I voted for Kerry", and the priest responding, "Of course. So did I."

Whether early abortion is a sin is one issue; whether it should be counted a crime is another; whether a politician should be condemned for voting a certain way is a 3d separate issue. On the last 2 issues, there's no reason to ascribe special authority to clergy.
-------------
If Catholics feel they must accept every edict from the 'Ordinary Magisterium' of the Church (i.e., that they must accept every edict from every Papal encyclical) then they should read my piece of 9/18/04 on PIUS IX.

 
'OUR' NATIVE MILITIA HEAVILY INFILTRATED: Again and again, the insurgents in Iraq seem to know just what plans our allies are making, so they can strike at just the right place & time. (This was especially true when 51 of our recruits, unarmed and out of uniform, were apprehended and executed by the guerillas.)

Several of 'our' high officers have been caught helping the insurgents. Sometimes it's a matter of our soldiers becoming sympathetic with the insurgents (perhaps after a relative is killed by U.S. bombs)--oftener it's insurgents brazenly joining up with 'our' forces so they can subvert.

Unemployed Iraqis can take money for joining our militia, then take more money from (wealthy) insurgents for planting bombs against us.

This is standard procedure for insurgents in a successful guerilla war. "In Vietnam, we knew there were infiltrators in the SouthViet army--but we didn't know how many! After Ho Chi Minh took over, substantial numbers of the Saigon forces turned out to be covert VietCong operatives." BostonGlobe

Continuing an occupation in a country where, say, 30% of the natives are willing to hide 12,000 guerillas, and where perhaps one thousand death-loving 'jihadists' have filtered in from other Muslim countries, being hidden by willing Iraqis...this is a sucker's game--and the Bushies are the suckers. (Millions and millions of Americans are equally suckers for being ready to give these clowns '4 more years' !)

 
IT'S FUN TO IMAGINE what possible reasons the DENVER POST could dream up for supporting Bush for reelection! (The real reasons were likely not intellectual, but economic: pleasing owners & advertisers--as perhaps the writers were trying to signal by the obviously awful photo they ran of Kerry!)

'BUSH IS DECISIVE!' So was Atilla the Hun--but he left behind him only destruction, no lasting legacy. And remember how decisively Hitler launched his self-destructive invasion of Russia! One commentator said, "Bush does stick to his guns..but when his aim is SO WRONG..this is bad!"

The DP writers admit that domestically, we're worse off than before Bush arrived--but then they focus on 'security': "On 9/11 this country accepted a great challenge: (a) to inflict justice on those who would attack us, and (b) to..protect our homeland."
About (a): we are not threatened by easily-identified (and easily-bombed) NATIONS, on whom we could handily 'inflict justice';

--we are threatened by perhaps thousands of INDIVIDUAL terrorists--whom Bush's incompetent intelligence cannot identify before they strike! (Hundreds of thousands of suspect phone messages have not been translated by Bush's FBI--any one could be calling for an attack on us tomorrow!)

(b) We can't protect our Homeland completely--but we could protect our most
obvious targets: e.g., from the thousands of huge ship-containers that enter our ports UNINSPECTED each DAY; each could contain a nuke that could destroy NewYork or LosAngeles.

But the Bushies REFUSE TO FUND HOMELAND DEFENSE ADEQUATELY!

The DP editorial lists damn good reasons to doubt the Bush-team's COMPETENCE in defending our security.

They admit Kerry's 'gumption', but then scold him for opposing Gulf War I (defending the dictators of Kuwait from the one in Iraq)..This war has left 1 in 4 U.S. veterans disabled from 'Gulf-War Syndrome', which turns out to be a real ailment caused by war-chemicals, not a psychological form of malingering.

The DPs say that most of the world supported GulfWarI--well, that shows that Kerry can stick by his guns when he knows he's right!

...and so on. As we say, the DP writers are clearly embarrassed that they have been compelled to support Bush for President.

 
DEALER TAKES TIES: Let's face it: U.S. is divided right down the middle.
It will be a close election. Just as in 2000, if Bushie-cheating wins it, it won't be a great injustice--it will, however, be a great catastrophe.

The real problem is with our electorate. Almost half of them believe that Bush will keep them safer! (Never mind that they're manipulated by the media.
They believe what they want to. Never before have Dems spent so much money on media. It hasn't worked with the yahoos.)

 
SHAMELESS CHENEY! He's warning about nuke or germ-war attacks on our cities...saying that Kerry can't handle these.

Neither of course can Bush. In fact, after 4 years, we know that Bush has no intention,say, of inspecting the thousands of huge ship-containers coming into our ports each day, each of which could contain a nuke!

Why does Cheney think he'll get away with this? Because psychologists say that when people worry about death, they irrationally vote more right-wing !

 
INCREASED GERM-WAR THREAT: The Brit.Med.Assn.has warned that there is an increased threat of terrorists using genetically-modified germs.
After all, Russia has made new anthrax spores--AND AMERICA HAS MADE NEW FORMS OF SMALLPOX, 100 TIMES AS LETHAL AS BEFORE. INDEPENDENT Word about those 'advances' tends to get out.

Meanwhile, the Bushies can't even manage to provide vaccinations for ordinary flu!

It's a mystery why so many dumb Americans trust Bush vs. terrorists. Bush has spent very little to counter terrorist attacks on America; and he has recruited perhaps thousands of NEW terrorists worldwide by his atrocious bombing of civilians in Iraq--500-lb bombs on city of Fallujah.
----------
To see my germ-war warnings back in '02 (repeated on 3 Oct.'04), click on GERMS .

 
GUERILLAS KILL 49 OF OUR NATIVE MILITIA, PLUS ONE U.S. DIPLOMAT. (Guerillas apparently had good intelligence on when to strike.) REUTERS
----------------------
TWO EXPLOSIONS, Thursday & Friday, ON OIL PIPELINES. REUTERS

Our first concern, presumably, is to protect the oil pipelines. The incompetence of our generals is shown by their inability to do that.
-------------
POLICE_CHIEF MURDERED IN KURDISH CITY TurkishPress

 
HOW DO GENERALS MANAGE?

Guerillas continue to succeed at killing Iraqis--on 23Oct a suicide bomber sent 50 to the hospital..REUTERS
but for the last week, no GI deaths have been reported.

Either a) GIs are being kept on base, out of harm's way--until 2 Nov.
The story about the 50 recruits being slaughtered because they had no armed escort on the open highway--this story would fit the hypothesis that GI casualties are to be kept down AT ANY PRICE till 2 Nov.

or b) their deaths are not being reported by Pentagon.
--------------
(This trick will have no effect on the election. Most Americans do not keep track of how many GIs are killed each week. They know the total is over 1000.
Those affected by that figure have already been affected.)
-------------
(1 GI was just killed, and 3 died from earlier wounds--and 6 GIs were wounded on 24OCT--but who cares? Americans don't count the wounded.)
---------
The pre-election strategy just failed spectacularly: 17 marine casualties yesterday (9 killed, 8 wounded.) REUTERS

 
sob! 5-pt.lead for Bush among likely voters; 7 points among registered voters; 53% approve of his performance...so says TIME
(Reuters says B.leads by 2%.)

 
AL QUAEDA NOT DECAPITATED: Bushies brag that they're 'decapitating' Al Quaeda, by nabbing their top leaders. But anti-terrorist experts say this isn't true..also that this is not the important way to fight terrorism. (hundreds of thousands of suspect telephone conversations are not being translated or audited..they could include calls for immediate attacks on our homeland!) LondonTelegraph

 
OUTSIDE WORLD LOATHES BUSH: In 8 of 10 countries, including our traditional allies, most people favor Kerry (unknown as he is) over Bush, whom they loathe. Also, more people are turning against America in general.
(That might affect sales of our brand-name products overseas!) GUARDIAN

Of course they think our Iraq campaign is a fiasco that is NOT making world safer!

It's not that we need the world's permission for our actions. But it is the mark of self-confident fools not to listen to outside ADVICE!

 
ELECTORS FOR KERRY? No matter who wins the popular vote, Kerry may well take the electoral college. He's running ahead in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. (Nader can't run in Ohio.) FinTimes

REASSURANCE ABOUT COLLEGIANS: Kerry's lead over Bush among collegians (ALL OF WHOM INTEND TO VOTE!) has soared to 13% !

Faculty who perceive that so many are subliterate and innumerate can at least now feel that they have not lost all their common-sense.

Of course we won't know until Christmas, or later--what with all the legal challenges.

 
WHERE ARE THEY? Of all the troops discharged, then CALLED BACK for Iraq, over one in three have failed to show up ! Surprise. CNN

 
WHAT BAD NEWS?! Texas Power Corp. benefitted from high gas prices.
Its profits went up nearly 70% in one quarter! REUTERS

SUV drivers, who'll be paying $2 to $3 per gallon shortly, should be happy that the money's going to Texas.
----------
NOT JUST TO TEXAS ! British Petroleum has been banking 1 million pounds each DAY from this crisis. INDEPENDENT

 
Republicans DESERVE upcoming Bush Disaster.

We can't always control the fate we FACE;

but we CAN control the fate we DESERVE.

 
ISLAMIST GOVT IN IRAQ:If election is really held, (says U.S. govt.poll--not released, but leaked to WashPost, says REUTERS) our puppet regime's support has dropped from 62% to 53%;
55% say this regime 'does NOT support my interests."/

45% say country is headed in wrong direction (up from 31%)

Who is wanted in new 'parliament'? 51% Hakim (Shiite pol)/ 47% Allawi(our puppet)/ 46% SADR ( an open U.S. opponent).

'Would vote for a pol the clerics recommend' 41% (--more than pols, tribal leaders, or present regime COMBINED!)
[Why be surprised? probably 1 in 3 Americans vote as their preacher/bishop tells them!]

On the other hand, 64% of Iraqis think their future will be better. (How could it be worse? Maybe they mean after U.S. is evicted!)
-----------
Bush says he'd grudgingly accept an Islamist govt. if it's freely elected.
C'mon! Bushies would accept a regime worshipping the god Baal, with infant sacrifice--if that meant they could bug out without humiliation!

 
"DON'T PANIC!" Aw, C'mon! Bush's federal Health dept. tells us not to panic:
36 millions flu doses are now available, with 22 million coming.CBS
That's 58 million, when 100 million are needed.

We're 42 million doses short (thanks to stupid Bushie negligence). Arghh!

 
EXPLOSION IN SAMARRAH: Just after U.S. bragged of 'retaking' Samarrah, guerillas set off two explosions there, killing 10, wounding 14.

Brag was also made that Iraqi airlines is back in operation.
Guerillas gunned down a bus full of women employees of the airline.

Brits' Blair WILL send 900 troops from relative safe-spots to hotspots, to relieve GIs so they can invade Fallujah (so Bushies won't look so helpless before 2 Nov. election.) Blair is in so deep he has nothing to lose by sacrificing troops to help Bush get re-elected.

Our puppets complain that UN is not sending enough observers for setting up the January election. (Perhaps UN folks won't volunteer to enter this volcano.)
USATODAY

 
BUSH'S PENTAGON expects Iraq GIs to ride bomb-infested roads in UNARMORED HUMVEES. Flak-jackets minimize deaths--but the defective humvees leave exposed legs, arms, faces, eyes, brains.

One transport platoon mutineed. Stars&Stripes Who'd blame them?

This in spite of $1100 MILLIONS EVERY DAY shovelled to Pentagon.
-------------
6 GIs were wounded in 'armoured' vehicle on 24Oct.
--------------------------------
UNINSURED VETS: 'Physicians for Natl. Health Program' says there are 1.7 million veterans who lack both health insurance and access to vet hospitals.
Bushie Veterans'AffairsBureau says,'Pooh-pooh': vets lacking health insurance number 'below 900 thousand'. USATODAY
------------------------------------------
Bush cares about our troops in the way that Tyson cares about chickens.

 
U.S. STRATEGY: Soften up Fallujah by heavy bombing; then GIs invade.
(Later, guerillas will murder our puppet adminstrators in Fallujah and take over again.)

But all that will be AFTER 2 NOV !

 
BLAIR SAYS BLACK-WATCH HOME BY CHRISTMAS--even if they ARE sent into worst Iraq area (so U.S. forces can invade Fallujah). TIMES

To speak more precisely, SOME OF THEM will be home for Christmas.

Blair seems to want to help Bush get re-elected, by facilitating a brutal attack on Fallujah before 2 Nov (so Bushies don't look so helpless), before the backfire can be observed.
-----------
Military experts worry that,sending Brits into this dangerous region--after noisy debate about this in Britain--will inspire the guerillas to pay special attention to killing Brits.

It's said that about one thousand jihadists from other countries have now infiltrated into Iraq, all willing to die for Allah while killing Brits & Yanks--all being harbored by Iraqis who hate us. INDEPENDENT

"Good to hear jihadists are going to Iraq. Better to fight them there than here!"
In other words, better to have them murdering our GIs than attacking here.

Out of one billion Muslims worldwide, suppose only one in TEN THOUSAND is a fanatic. That's ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND fanatics!
With twenty thousand in Iraq, that leave only EIGHTY THOUSAND to attack our homeland.

And of course the 20,000 in Iraq are getting great training in guerilla war, just as 'freedom-fighters' vs. Soviet in Afganistan got great guerilla training--e.g.. Osama binLaden!

Besides, as pictures circulate throughout Muslim world of Iraqi babies blown to bits by our bombs, more and more NEW terrorists are recruited.

With dumb Bush as an enemy, OSAMA needs no friends or allies!

 
RATIONAL VS. IRRATIONAL FEAR (letter to USATODAY):
Your headline says that both Bush & Kerry are using fear in their campaigns.
In fact, we have damn good reason to be afraid: of another terrorist attack, of more GIs killed or maimed in Iraq, of a lethal flu epidemic.

Psychologists say that fearful people tend to vote right-wing. But the Bush team, in all three of these issues, have proven themselves incompetent and corrupt.

When a caged rat receives an electrical shock, he promptly (but pointlessly) bites a nearby rat.

Our animal instinct is to strike back at SOMEONE when threatened in any way. People who decide by their glands will vote for bellicose Bush; those who decide by their brains will vote for sensible Kerry.

 
MAKING BAGHDAD SAFE: U.S. general says that TEN THOUSAND native policemen will be needed--and training them will take EIGHT MONTHS.

That means that this January, during the 'election', The CAPITOL CITY will not be safe for voters.
--------
U.S. generals worry that the super-generous money given out by our puppets, to buy weapons in Sadr City--might be used by guerillas to buy even more weapons!
DUH!

(Almost no heavy weapons were turned in.) ABC NEWS/19Oct.

 
TV-MOGULS WILL FLOOD U.S WITH PROPAGANDA saying that U.S. prisoners suffered more because Kerry told Congress about GI atrocities in Vietnam .

Black humor: Are we to believe that VIETCONG DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT ATROCITIES UNTIL KERRY TOLD THEM? (so ONLY THEN did they get nasty with our prisoners?) VC WITNESSED OUR ATROCITIES--while they were committing plenty of their own.

 
EMERGENCY ROOM DOCTORS PREDICT FLU CATASTROPHE ! SanFranChronicle
-----------------------------
FLU-SHOTS SCARCE AT SOME MILITARY BASES !!! [CNN]
---------------------------
BUSH SAYS HE'S DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE (now) TO ALLAY VACCINE SHORTAGE.

Door closing-- horse gone.
------------------
A.Grove is top honcho at top tech firm, INTEL. He's upset about Bushies' flu-bungle.."this is where I get rabid."/"When it comes to bioterror or epidemics, you look for government to protect you.."/"This [administration] can't prevent an ordinary market-failure from causing probably more deaths here than terrorism!" (51,000, says Bush's Center for Disease Control, Prevention).

Grove also deplores tech jobs streaming overseas under Bush. Health-care costs are soaring. "The Bush regime is not working and unlikely to change."
USATODAY

 
GUERILLAS INJURE 100 IRAQIS IN TWO DAYS: (INDEPENDENT)

Ignore optimistic 'body-count' tales of U.S. generals gloating over the number of guerillas their bombs have (allegedly) killed.

What counts is what power guerillas still show. Iraq looks no safer than before for vaunted 'election'.

 
BUSH DENOUNCES KERRY'S 'SEPT.10' ATTITUDE:
However, Bush has 'Sept.12' attitude; he's done little since that date to protect our Homeland from terrorist attacks!

 
BUSHIES run out of troops; they can't invade Fallujah unless sucker Brits fill in near bloody Baghdad! GUARDIAN

BOTH CANDIDATES SAY, "He'll renew the DRAFT; I won't !"

This much is clear; in '05, either we'll bug out of Iraq or President (whichever one) will have to restart the DRAFT ! I'd bet we'll bug out.

We're running out of suckers to enlist--especially to enlist in Natl.Guard or Reserves ! A recent study showed that the Iraq fiasco has put a serious strain on our armed services. UnitedPressUnited

Of vets called back for Iraq, ONE IN THREE has not shown up..Surprise!

A whole transport platoon went into mutiny in Iraq, furious at the way they were being asked to drive suicidally on a bomb-infested road without proper armor, or functional Humvees.
---------------
Problem would be solved if all Republican backers of Bush & his war--male or female--would enlist. But--like their leaders Bush & Cheney--they like the role of war-cheerleader more than actually playing the game.

 
TEAM-BUSH ATTACKS NYTIMES [ GUARDIAN ]

And this after TIMES recently apologized for helping Bushies con Americans into thinking Saddam was a real threat.

NO GRATITUDE !

 
HI-TECH JOB-CUTS SOAR; no extra plans to hire. REUTERS

LAMENT OF A MADM: "I rejoiced when companies moved to U.S. South to avoid the damn unions. I approved when low-level jobs moved to Mexico, and even to Asia--as part of great Globalization.

"But now they're outsourcing OUR hi-tech jobs ! And there are no unions left to protect my job.

"I used to be Young, & Upwardly-Mobile. Now I'm a MADM: Middle-aged
and Downward-Mobile!"

 
MY POSTER for Tuesday at CSU Plaza:

We REVERE the NOBLE TRADITION;

but we IGNORE the GOOFY bits, and also
the LOONY BISHOPS!
-------------------------------
CAFETERIA CATHOLICS
for KERRY !

 
'PRECISION' BOMBING: Again and again local doctors and outside observers say that mainly civilians are being killed or maimed by U.S. bombs in Fallujah. U.S. generals respond blandly that these are all lies; the bombs hit 'mainly terrorists. INDEPENDENT

The generals' line may reassure Americans who want to believe it; but what counts as far as enraged Iraqis turning into new terrorists is what IRAQIS believe.

 
'BUYING WEAPONS' CIRCUS: Iraqis in Sadr City have been selling $100 weapons to Allawi's regime for $1000. Naturally, weapons have flowed in from all over the country to be sold on such great terms. And the government couldn't buy enough, so people were selling weapons to black-market dealers.
FinancialTimes


Of course a terrorist could sell his weapon for $1000, then buy 10 such weapons with the money.

 
PUTIN ENDORSES BUSH: The former KGB honcho sees a fellow aspirer to absolute power in 'W'. MoscowTimes Many other foreign observers (and one honcho still working for CIA) say that with Bush as an enemy, Osama needs no friends!

The 500-lb bombs now raining down on the city of Fallujah will recruit ever more terrorists throughout the Muslim world. The $1100 millions Bush shovels to the irrelevant Pentagon each DAY assures the terrorists that money won't be spent to protect our Homeland from them.

 
"WHAT FLU CRISIS?" says Bushie Tommy Thompson. "We've got 24 million doses not given out yet!" Of course they planned on 100 million doses, 48% of which would come from Chiron, whose vaccine turned out to be contaminated. It's a U.S. corporation producing vaccine in Britain; Bush said, "Well, we caught it !" No he didn't; the Brits caught it!

[Britain & America both had a year's warning of this possibility; Britain promptly lined up another source--not so, the Bushies! ]

If they have 30 million doses ladled out already, plus 24 million held back, that makes 54 million available out of 100 million needed. Thompson never hints that they have extra doses they can line up. (Well, maybe a piddling 2.6 million doses from Canada. They also got vaccine,unlike Bush's America.)

That's not a crisis?

What alarmed the Bushies is that one old lady DIED while sitting in line in her wheelchair. Thompson tells the oldies NOT to get sick standing in line-- [CNN] that's bad publicity.

Bushies will give the oldies priority (over babies, presumably ! )--of course they will : the oldies vote and the babies don't!

Lucky for Bushies that the awful number of flu deaths--fifty thousands, predicts Bush's CenterForDiseaseControl--these flu deaths won't happen until after the election on 2 Nov..and that their supporters are too dumb to react ahead of time.
-----------
One headline read FLU VACCINE ANXIETY. Well, that's the right attitude; we give the mothers enough prozak to calm their anxiety---until the schools are closed, and the kids get sick.
--------------
HEADLINE: GOVT. CONSIDERS GUARANTEEING VACCINE SUPPLY!

Door closing--horse gone.
----------
Why in the world would we trust Bushies to protect us from Germ-Warfare?!

 
THE VACCINE DISASTER: The basic trouble is that producing flu vaccine is not profitable, (nor is it subsidized by the Bush-team) so more and more companies are pulling out of the business..until at last, U.S. was depending on Chiron company ( a U.S. corporation making the stuff in Britain) for 48% of its expected needs.

In June '03, a first warning went out that Chiron was allowing bacterial contamination of its vaccine--Britain was then depending on Chiron for only 14% of its vaccine, but Brits at once set out to line up backup supplies.
Not so the Bushies..even though there have been previous shortages of childhood vaccines.

In fiscal '02, they spent only $47 million against flu (equalling about one hour of Pentagon money.) Then this year they're spending $283 million (about six hours of Pentagon money). They're spending $5.6 billion (5 Pentagon days, spread over ten years) to develop vaccines against war-germs.

Some libertarian loons say it's not up to the government to guarantee flu-vaccine supplies.But in fact, the Bushies did buy up some millions of doses--only nowhere near enough. NYTIMES
-------------------------------
As I noted earlier, this Bush blunder may have made ordinary flu-germs handy for germ-war. If terrorists go through the impoverished parts of U.S. (where health clinics are almost nonexistent), they could spread the germs--say through the Greyhound Bus lines--and in men's rooms where many never wash their hands...then U.S. as a whole would face a real PANDEMIC of flu, at a time when our NURSE-SHORTAGE is already quite urgent (a shortage the Bushies have made no moves to mitigate).

This pandemic would cause staggering losses of worker-time, operating synergistically with the high gas-prices AND THE RISE IN HOME-HEATING COSTS to deliver an awful blow to our economy--let alone to the tens of thousands who would die.

This blunder alone should stop anyone from voting in the corrupt,incompetent Bush-team for 4 more years..ignoring the monstrous war, the record deficit, the worst job-record since the Great Depression, and so on.

However, around 50% of our people don't see this already, so the flu disaster probably won't affect their vote either. After all, the actual disaster will be barely starting by 2 Nov.

 
TWO SEPARATE QUESTIONS: 1) How justify STARTING the war?
All the Bushie rationales have been exploded: WMD's, Saddam's ties with alQuaeda, his connection with 9/11.

All they have left is the undoubted truth that he's a nasty bastard, and, ALL THINGS EQUAL--(which they NEVER ARE!)--it's better that he's out of power.

The second Question: 2) How justify CONTINUING the war? People don't realize that the hawks have the burden of proof for justifying EVERY DAY of continuing warfare. They can't just say, "Yeah, we'll quit killing,
IF YOU SHOW US WHY WE SHOULD!"

Once you see this point, then a simple question arises: why are we justified in continuing the mutual slaughter, when the sole justifying reason for war has been removed? ! ?

I'm waving this sign at busy corners (hundreds of people see it!):
========================
SADDAM'S in JAIL !
-------------------
so WHY must GIs
STILL DIE there?
===========
HOW MIGHT HAWKS ANSWER? "Well, in the process of jailing Saddam, there was a certain amount of collateral damage. We have to stay on, to reconstruct Iraq society!"

And so, in THAT reconstructive process, we are now dropping five-hundred-pound, humanitarian bombs on the city of Fallujah.
-----------
There is no doubt that most Iraqis would say, "You can leave now. You've done enough."

 
DELAYED COSTS OF WAR: One reason Americans let war-frenzy overtake them was the belief that lately we could smash our enemies at a cost of very few U.S. casualties (in Kosovo, almost NO U.S. casualties.)

We all thought that in Gulf War I, very few GIs were killed or injured. But since then, disturbing stories of 'Gulf WarSyndrome' have surfaced.

A scientific investigating committe has just found that (a) the Syndrome was caused by toxic chemicals that ourGIs were exposed to (NOT by psychological causes!), and that (b) twenty-five to thirty percent of the GIs returning home have showed damage. INDEPENDENT

The immediate damage to GIs in THIS war have been appalling..perhaps 20,000 GIs evacuated medically so far; of those returning 'whole', about 1 in 5 shows signs of shell-shock. We can bet that there will be DELAYED harms to the GIs that will show up later.

But frankly, who cares? At least the tens of m illions supporting Bush don't care much, even though there's ample evidence that the war was needless to begin with, and is now pointless to carry on.

 
YIPEE! Zogby poll shows that Kerry has trimmed Bush's 4-point lead down to 2-pt. lead, as voters reflect on 3d debate.

Among UNDECIDEDS, B's job-rating: good 39%, BAD 66% !/ Only 18% say B.deserves reelection;39% call for 'someone new'. 99% say they will vote.
(Dirty Nader still gets 1%) REUTERS

On the one hand, the 'vaccine' issue is bound to help Kerry. On the other hand, there's the despicable move by huge Sinclair TV chain to force all its stations to run a propaganda piece on Kerry's opposing Viet war after he came home.

The Sinclair chain, it turns out, has been a sinking ship for months; three of its top honchos have been accused of selling $18 million worth of stock before other stockholders could find out about its troubles. They fired one executive for saying bluntly that the propaganda decision was 'indefensible'.
Their idea of compromise is that the propaganda, instead of running for 42 minutes, will now be shorter. REUTERS

 
GIs & BUSH-SUPPORT: GIs sampled all over the world back combat-evader Bush strongly over decorated war-hero Kerry. Why the surprise? They were goofy enough to enlist.

GIs who have been to Iraq are less likely to back Bush. 2 out of 3 of them (& their families) say that Bush's Rummy didn't send enough troops to Iraq, and that it's a mistake to lean so heavily on undertrained reserve/Natl.Guard troops. REUTERS Asked a specific question about their own experience, they answer more sensibly.

[About the 'goofy enlistees' line above: In the last 170 years, the only 2 wars that were obviously defending America were (perhaps) the Civil War and WWII. The DOZENS of other wars, in Mexico, Cuba, Phillipines, Caribbean--(many wars)--France (WWI) ,Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Kosovo and Iraq were to defend corporate interests abroad, or the delusion of American empire. One would be goofy to enlist in such campaigns.

I myself could have avoided the draft in 1951, but I let myself be drafted because I wanted to serve in countering Stalin, the Anti-Christ (as I understood Our Lady of Fatima to intimate.) On arriving in Korea, I figured out pretty quickly that we were there to defend one dictator against another.

I was REALLY goofy.

 
UNSURPRISINGLY SILLY BUSH ENDORSEMENT
(by R.MtnNews,16Oct):

You endorse"The Bush doctrine:U.S. reserves the right to take preemptive action against terrorists wherever they dwell AND AGAINST THE REGIMES THAT HARBOR AND ENCOURAGE THEM."

Our intelligence services are incompetent--George Tenet admitted they won't be adequate for at least another five years (after Bush is out of office)--so there is absolutely no guarantee that Bushies will recognize accurately WHICH regimes are harboring and encouraging terrorists! (There's far more reason to think SaudiArabia and Iran were doing this than that Saddam was--the people who blew up the Spanish train were Tunisian; those who blew up the Sinai hotels with Israeli trourists were Egyptian; those who blew up the Bali night-club were Indonesian; and those who have been blowing up mosques in Pakistan are Pakistani--yet Bush chose to invade Iraq!)

You admit that the invasion has been mismanaged. You wonder why Bush didn't dump Tenet earlier; but you don't ask why he hasn't dumped Rumsfeld, who bungled the invasion so fatally.

We have not managed to identify or attack the individual terrorists who carry out these attacks.Nor could we; the Bushies have so alienated other nations that few other governments would share intelligence information with such a collection of clowns. Indeed, experts from all around the world (from Israel,recently) have said that Bush's Iraq war has recruited new terrorists around the world, from Muslims outraged at pictures of violated prisoners and children blown to bits.

"Americans need not wait for another attack on their soil before they act." In other words, before they attack some other nation. But we now have no troops left to invade any other nation! Bombing Jakarta won't work; these terrorists often are working to undermine their own government, besides attacking America.

The acting we should do is protecting the most obviously vulnerable targets in our homeland. For instance, ABC/NEWS has shown that a nuclear bomb could easily destroy NewYork or LosAngeles, hidden in one of the thousands of huge ship-containers which enter our ports, UNINSPECTED, each DAY. The Bushies simply refuse to spend for adequate homeland defense, though the GOP Senate just felt that it could afford to give away to corporations in one day a further tax-cut of $136,000 MILLIONS (more than we've spent up to now on the Iraq war!)

"America is called to lead the cause of freedom in a new century." Bush-shit! Americans are so uininterested in the outside world that we can't get our youth to study foreign languages, let alone foreign cultures. (Colorado State University tried to require high-school students entering CSU to have studied one language. When the applicants simply ignored that demand, CSU quickly dropped it.)

Our 'foreign-policy elite' are also ignorant; hundreds of thousands of suspect phone-tapes can't be translated--they could be describing an imminent attack on our homeland! As noted before, our intelligence services can't be adequate in the next five years. What Bushies plan is a series of blind interventionist lunges based on ignorant isolationist thinking.

Ignorant Americans are 'called' to back out of international affairs, and concentrate on Homeland Defense--at least until our typical citizen is sure that Iraq is not a Scandinavian country.

 
NOMINAL SHIITE ALLAWI ('PrimeMinister') has all the real power in our present puppet regime, but the 'Sunni'man named as 'President' has tremendous influence among Sunnis.

He just announced that IF the Sunni areas are not safe for voting, then the election COULD BE POSTPONED! [ GUARDIAN ] That's the first real sign of weakening on that issue; Shiite leader Sistani has signalled that the election MUST happen on that date, because of course Shiites are going to win (60% of whole population). And of course Allawi and Bushies keep saying that date is sacred.

Recently, the Sunni King of Jordan, an old ally of ours, said the election MUST BE POSTPONED--because, held in January, it would give victory to 'organized extremists' (presumably Sadrite Shiites.)

Americans plan on offensive against resistant Sunni cities. One would expect they'll win temporarily, but then their puppet administrators in these cities will get assassinated, and a 'fair' election in these Sunni areas will not be possible.

People are saying that an election without the Sunnis (20% of population) will be a farce, and so will the constitution set up by the Council elected in January.

An impasse. But maybe the triumphant new Shiite-dominated council will be smart enough to write into the new constitution very generous , guaranteed 'minority' rights for Sunnis, and thus bribe the Sunni guerilla leaders into submitting.

One doubts that any 'rights' generous enough to satisfy the Sunnis will be offered by the Shiites &Kurds. Of course the alternative might be that Shiites & Kurds simply destroy the Sunnis in a bloody civil war. Will the Sunni leaders prefer to fight to the death?

 
SOB! One day after 3d debate, Bush is FOUR PERCENTAGE POINTS ahead of Kerry ! REUTERS

But one pollster says UNDECIDEDS lean toward Kerry.
[ Financial Times..full story available only to subscribers. ]

Coloradoans for Kerry want to work hard to get Amendment 36 passed (dividing electoral votes proportionately, not 'winner takes all'.)
If this amendment had been in effect in '00,they say, Bush would not now be President!

 
NUKE STUFF STOLEN: Bushies said they had to invade Iraq to prevent nuclear material from being passed on to terrorists. That was never a problem under Saddam, it turns out. But he did have 'dual-use' stuff, that could be used for nuclear electric generators..

However, large amounts of that stuff HAVE DISAPPEARED UNDER U.S. OCCUPATION! ..enough to require heavy moving equipment for its removal! Yet neither U.S. forces nor our puppet Allawi's forces were aware of this. Internatl.Rel.&Security

 
UGLY TURN: For a while, it seemed the Bushies woudn't launch their offensive against Fallujah,etc., until after 2 Nov. But then guerillas hyped up their attacks (14 GIs killed Wed.& Thurs.) So the generals are launching their bombing now.

It looks like our generals are going to try the 'shock & awe' strategy they didn't have the nerve to carry out in March '03--to smother the area with big bombs, hoping to shock the enemy into awed submission.

It might work--who knows?--but with Ramadan beginning, and the belief that if you die fighting infidels during Ramadan, a special reward awaits you Above...this brutal bombing might encourage the guerillas to hurry up their attempts to get deliverable mortars with poison gas to use against the Infidel Invaders. But this development wouldn't come until after 2 November, so who cares?

We dropped 500-lb bombs on ToraBora in Afghanistan, hoping to blow Osama to bits. They didn't. He said afterward he just lay in a ditch and waited till it was over. (He was saved by Allah, or the devil, or just luck.) I'd guess that his scorn for the big bombs might mean that our present bombing might shock the Fallujahns, but it won't awe them.

 
MORE CHICANERY: Bush appointed wily James Baker to negotiate with Iraq's creditors, hoping to get them to forgive Iraq's crippling debts.

It turns out that Baker negotiated with Kuwait, all right; if they hoped to get any of the reparations owed to them, they'd better fork over millions to U.S. 'foundations', some of which profit Baker and the Bush family. NATION

see also GUARDIAN and GUARDIAN

Actually, things wouldn't be so bad if Daddy Bush & his gang of thieves were still in charge; a few billion here and there...Sonny Bush & his 'neocon' friends are NOT just corrupt...they are honest fanatics..that's what makes them a unique threat to America.

 
LETHAL SHIP-CONTAINERS: Every day THOUSANDS of huge ship-containers enter our ports, UNINSPECTED--each big enough to contain a nuclear bomb.

ABC/NEWS last year deliberately smuggled in some uranium from Indonesia into LosAngeles WITHOUT SETTING OFF ANY ALARMS. Immediately, the Bushies said that a real bomb could never get in..but an Inspector General just reported that a real bomb COULD get through.

We can't afford to inspect those containers--not while Bush shovels $1100 MILLIONS EACH DAY to the Pentagon,whose bombs and missiles are absolutely USELESS against the real threats to our Home Security (like nukes smuggled in).

for a similar experiment on East Coast in'02, click on ABC/NEWS

Bushies are spending millions on 'anti-missile-missiles'--but enemies don't need to send nukes by missile--they can just send them here by ship! There goes NYCity or Los

 
WAR-LORDS MOVING TO AFGHAN POWER: A human-rights group has warned that known murderers are moving into power in Kharzai's government.
INDEPENDENT

 
GOOD NEWS FOR U.S. GOOD SENSE: INDEPENDENT says that CNN poll shows 52% of listeners saying that Kerry won the 3d debate, only 39% saying that Bush won.

TIME poll later shows issue-support for Kerry (and increasing) and agreement that he won the 3 debates overall..but still, among 'likely' voters,Bush is two points ahead. TIME
------------------------
(We can hope that 'UNlikely' voters will show up, voting with their brains, not their glands.)

Trouble is, so many Americans are too dumb to be impressed by debate.

 
LETHAL FLAWS OF DEMOCRACY: The ease with which Bush spinners can manipulate half of U.S. voters forms a grim illustration of worries I expressed in 2000 in a book DEMOCRACY,RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS: WHAT ARE THEY, WHAT GOOD ARE THEY? (available at CSU library, or by interlibrary loan).

In democracy the ignorant ordinary man is flattered by the pols, so he thinks he doesn't need to really work at education. Also, late capitalism deliberately makes people stupid, to get them to consume insanely the goods overproduced by modern firms. This stupidity, unfortunately, extends beyond consuming, e.g., into politics.

The self-confident ignorance of the populace undermines any real hope of their seeing through the cons of the pols--so the vicious cycle is repeated again and again, on lower levels.
---------------
A study showed that, after several decades of chatter about educational reform, our youth are NO BETTER PREPARED FOR COLLEGE than their aunt/uncles were TEN YEARS AGO! (NYTIMES14OCT.)
also click on CNN .

And yet far more of them (presumably more ignorant than college freshmen before) are now being admitted to 'college'; and they are 'passing'. The colleges and universities are simply relaxing the standards.

(ColoStateU. has NEVER raised its standards voluntarily, only when forced by State Govt. And even now, 20% of frosh at CSU can be admitted with no reference at all to entrance standards--to allow for athletes and children of the rich & powerful.

CSU a few years ago required freshmen to have studied a foreign language; but when the high-school students simply ignored this requirement, CSU quickly dropped it. )

Well, what's the harm? Trouble is, college grads now will be competing--thanks to outsourcing--with hundreds of thousands of Indians and Chinese, who may comprehend English and math better than our grads, and who are willing to work for one-sixth the pay our youth expect.

American workers are now NOT WORTH THEIR KEEP. As humans, they are of course--but as adding value to corporate earnings, not so.

Students who want to survive in the middle-class had better work like the devil in college, no matter how easy it is to get a 'B' without working.

 
SOME COLORADO GOOD NEWS: Bush & Kerry are neck-to-neck in Colorado, BUT SALAZAR IS ELEVEN PERCENT AHEAD OF COORS.
(I hear that Coors disgraced himself in MEETthePRESS: apparently he warned of the dangers from a nuclear-armed North Dakota.)
However, as expected, Colorado voters seem to be going by whom they LIKE! FinancialTimes

 
FOURTEEN AMERICANS KILLED IN IRAQ ON WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY/NatlPublicRadio
---------------------
BRITS WARNED ABOUT IRAQ: Bushies have been hoping that private contractors from around the world would flock to Iraq to help reconstruct it (after we wrecked the place).

But now the British Foreign Office has officially warned Brits (after the one Brit was beheaded!) to beware of going to Iraq. The 'security situation' is grave;the FO points out that there is even the possibility that the guerillas will shortly have chemical & germ-war weapons to play with! GUARDIAN
----------------
TWO MORE BOMBS IN 'GREEN ZONE': 2 GIs killed, 8 Iraqis, many wounded, by hand-carried bombs. Our generals can't protect an area 4 miles by 4 miles in the capitol city, where our top honchos live in palaces. (Unfortunately 10,000 Iraqis live in that area also.) REUTERS

Meanwhile the guerillas are working (effectively) on developing mortars loaded with poison gas.

Don't read how many guerillas we killed in various air-raids; pay attention to whether the attacks on Americans & our puppets go down--instead of steadily rising, as they have been. (6 GIs killed yesterday. All that money, all that blood--BUT WE'RE NOT WINNING!)

In Tokyo, donor countries have pledged millions in aid to Iraq; but they're hesitant to send the money until the guerillas have been blocked. Our puppet Allawi told them that this would be after the January election...why should they believe him? CNN

WHENCE THIS 'ENDLESS SUPPLY' OF IRAQI SUICIDE BOMBERS? (as Reuters says). U.S. & puppet Allawi say they're all foreigners; but they've captured few foreigners. Anyway, such foreigners are being sheltered by Iraqis.

Let's face it: at least a large minority of Iraqis HATE AMERICANS SO MUCH that they're willing to kill themselves & other Iraqis (at least 1000 so far) in trying to kill GIs.--or they're willing to help such fanatics.

We keep GIs there just to save face for Bushies..they're doing more harm than good by rousing more Iraqi hatred.

 
RUSS FINISH BUILDING IRAN N-PLANT: REUTERS Iran is our 2d-oldest enemy (after N.Korea). Iran is the only nation that EVER dared to kidnap all our embassy staff & hold them hostage for months.

Recently they thanked us for eliminating their worst 2 regional enemies: Taliban in Afghanistan, and Saddam in Iraq.

We'd love to harm Iran; but we have no troops left to invade them; Russia can block by veto any sanctions against Iran (as we veto any sanctions against Israel). And Russia might react somehow to our bombing the plant they just built in Iran. (Also, our invasion enabled Iran to smuggle hundreds of agents into Shiite Iraq; if we bomb Iran, they could stir up a major Shiite rebellion in Iraq, to match the Sunni guerillas.)
-----------
One wonders what stakes the Russ have in helping Iran? Well, the incredible world-demand for oil means that the 2 nations are not now competing to sell their oil. (The guerillas we've triggered have stopped Iraq's oil-exports for the foreseeable future. That means Iran and Russia are going to get very, very rich!)

Maybe it's just that Putin wants to make us fail in Iraq, just as we helped the rebels (including binLaden!) to make the Soviet fail in Afghanistan.

But what could the Russ do to block our bombing the hell out of Iran?
Well, they could take a couple of H-bombs from their ENORMOUS SURPLUS STOCKPILE and donate them to Iran. These completed bombs could be easily hidden from our bombs, in a way that a huge plant for making nukes could not be hidden.

The Iranians have intermediate-range missiles. They could wipe out Israel, our masters. (Of course the Israelis would then remove Iran from the map.)
But this would be another game of 'chicken', with world-destruction as the stake.

 
SHARON'S TAME DOG BUSH: "ISRAEL SAYS PALESTINIAN STATE SHELVED WITH U.S. BLESSING."
"U.S VETOES UN CONDEMNATION OF ISRAEL." (for the umpteenth time!)

Such headlines are so common that nobody even wonders now why the Bushies are so subservient to Sharon.

Brent Scowcroft is a right-wing intellectual, one of the top advisors to Daddy Bush--he is a man who was perceptive enough in '02 to try to dissuade 'W' from rushing into Iraq. He says Bush is 'mesmerized' by Sharon.

I put it this way: Bush and Sharon are politically in bed together; Sharon is on top.

 
NOBODY DESPISES ORDINARY REPUBLICANS AS MUCH AS THEIR GOP LEADERS:

$136,000 MILLIONS were just given away to corporations, in the form of tax-breaks, by Republican leadership in Senate. This included a present of $44,000,000 to China ! (eliminating tariff on Chinese ceiling-fans, to help Home Depot).

GOP leaders gave away IN ONE DAY about as much as the IRAQ WAR has cost us since March'03 !

Some people say that cutting taxes is not giving a gift to the wealthy--it's just grabbing less from them. But given that the feds are going to spend trillions (much of it shovelled to the Pentagon)--and the GOP leaders certainly are spending trillions !-- given this inevitable spending, then whatever the wealthy DON'T pay in taxes, WILL ultimately be paid by ordinary people. So a tax-cut for the rich has the same effect on ordinary people as an open gift of money to the wealthy.

This is the most brazen pork-deal in twenty years--and just 2+ weeks before elections, too! You'd think GOP leaders would worry about a tax-revolt by the little-guy Republicans.

After all, think of how much TV time could be bought for $136,000 millions, to preach against abortion and gay marriage!

But these GOP leaders know just how dumb their followers are. They can get away with anything.

 
WHAT GALL!
Bush snickers that Kerry can't put through his worthy projects (e.g., improving education & health-care) without plunging us further into debt. If that's true, it's because Bush has shovelled so many hundreds of billions to the war-corporations that we already face a crippling national Debt.

It's interesting that our annual deficit (between $400 billion and $500 billion) is roughly the size of the annual Pentagon budget. Our deficit is basically a Pentagon deficit.

And of course the Pentagon bombs are completely useless against the INDIVIDUAL terrorists who threaten us, perhaps with germ-warfare.
But thanks to all that Pentagon money (forget education & health-care!) we can't afford the needed precautions for Homeland Security--e.g., recruiting and training enough nurses for the probable flu pandemic coming up this year--thanks to the Bushies' shameless neglect in lining up an alternative source of vaccine. Let alone enough nurses to handle a possible germ-war attack!

Whoever wins the election, one wants to weep that anywhere near 50% of Americans are too dumb to realize the tragedy of 4 more years of Bush!

 
VVAW, KERRY, & LYONS:
BACKGROUND: in the late 60s and early 70s (Viet war days) an unheard-of organization sprung up of peacenik veterans who called themselves VIET VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR (VVAW). (In America, being prowar is part of the DEFINITION of 'veteran': so combat-shirker Bush counts as a vet, while decorated war-hero Kerry does not. Nutty!)

JohnKerry, horrified by the real face of war he saw, was an early member of VVAW.

At CSU, every official campus club had to have a faculty sponsor (so that in case the students acted up, the prof could be punished). The lads in the CSU chapter of VVAW were looking for a peacenik veteran as sponsor, so they recruited me.

Lew Walt was the top Ft.Collins military hero: quite a remarkable person--he started out in WWII as an enlisted marine, went through sergeant and then was made an officer and rose to the rank of general. He ended up commandant of all the marines in Vietnam.

Then he was, rumor said, forced into retirement because he took seriously the chatter about our prevailing by winning over the hearts and minds of the natives--whereas the real slogan was "Grab 'em by the balls, and their hearts and minds will follow!" (We did grab 'em there, but they didn't follow--they threw us out on our ass.)

Anyway, Walt was back in Ft.C. after his retirement.

People thought that the Svengalian peacenik faculty were leading the students astray; but in fact, the activist students led and the profs followed meekly.
----------------
THE STORY: One Saturday just after the war ended, I got this phone-call from a VVAW member: "Tomorrow, Lou Walt is going to talk at a Communion Breakfast; we have to picket that son-of-a-bitch!" (I had tangled with the right-wing pastor of St.Joe's earlier, so the project appealed to me). I made a large poster that said, "WHATEVER YOU DO TO VIETNAMESE CHILDREN, THAT YOU DO UNTO ME!" (with a cross in each corner.)/

We got to the Knights of Columbus hall in Ft.Collins a few minutes before Mass ended: one marine vet with only one leg, and another marine vet (a very jumpy little guy filled with shrapnel) both of them in uniform, plus myself in civvies. Around the corner came a boy-scout parade, with a band and many flags. Then, accompanied by various burly real-estate salesmen and car-salesmen, came the Pastor, accompanied by Gen. Walt.

Satisfyingly, the Monsignor nearly dropped his teeth when he saw me waiting for them with my sign and my two acolytes.

The leaders huddled about ten feet away from us, muttering what they'd like to do to us.But the general calmed them with one imperious wave, and came walking over, with a genial smile.

He wore an electric-blue civilian suit, and he was a sight: about 5' 2" and about that wide across the shoulders--no fat. I could have sworn the shoulders had corners.

We all shook hands, and Walt asked the one-leg guy, "Where did that happen?" The lad responded that he never got to Vietnam; he lost the leg in California, in a motorcycle accident. /Walt smiled broadly, "You know, all along, we lost more men to highway accidents than through combat!"

Then to the jumpy little guy: "And where were you stationed?"/ "At Yong-dong-phu."/ "Wait a minute!" ( a suspicious scowl appeared on the noble brow) "The Marines were never at Yong-dong-phu!"

The kid thrust his face toward Walt: "The MARINES were at Yong-dong-phu-- but YOU never showed up at Yong-dong-phu!"

Seeing a guy in enlisted-marine uniform daring to talk back, Walt lost the civilian-suit veneer and the sophisticated-general veneer, and reverted to pure Sergeant. A vein pulsed in his thick neck as he went face-to-face with the kid.

They started to yell at each other, each citing his wounds. I recognized that any minute the kid was going to leap at the general--so I said, "Gentlemen! Surely our differences can't be settled by counting wounds!"

At once Walt came back to reality and calmed down. Ignoring the young Marine, he turned to me: "And where were YOU stationed?"/ "In the Korean war, at Inchon."/"HUH! That doesn't count!" He turned his back on us and returned to his cohort.
------------------
Now I had a great comeback I could have delivered; I would have achieved rhetorical fame, posthumously.. because I had no doubt that, after its delivery, Walt would have leaped up and chewed out my throat.

The line I could have delivered--if I weren't such a coward--was this:
"HUH yourself! At least we TIED OUR war!"

 
'COLLATERAL DAMAGE': The Marines are beginning to try to 'take back' Fallujah, (to erase their embarrassment over handing the place over earlier to insurgents).

We hear a lot about 'precision bombing', hitting only the bathroom inhabited by a terrorist. But now they've dropped four FIVE-HUNDRED-POUND bombs..they doesn't sound as if they COULD be very precise.

A Marine officer confided in Martha Raddatz, of ABC NEWS: "If there are ten bad guys out of 15 people there, we'll strike."

That tells about the value they put on innocent lives, especially when it happens so often that the 10 bad guys have moved on and are no longer there!

And of course the brothers, parents, and cousins of the five innocents tend to be unreasonably resentful, and are apt to volunteer to swell the terrorist ranks.

 
CONDOLEEZA WEIGHS IN: The desperation of the Bush camp to justify our invasion now that their own appointee says there were no WMDs, and no real program for making them--though Saddam did dream of making them some day--this desperation was manifested by the silly remarks of Condoleeza Rice: "We would have invaded even if we knew he had no WMDs. Saddam had an insatiable desire for WMDs; he had the means, the intent, and the money." FinancialTimes

Imagine someone having an insatiable desire for something, plus the intent, the means, and the money--yet he had made no real moves toward getting that something!

Condoleeza said "it was time to take care of him." That illustrates another feature of hawk rhetoric, its abstraction. She didn't say, "It was time to bomb the hell out of Iraq cities, and sacrifice 20,000 GIs (killed, maimed or wounded--SO FAR!) No , it was just 'time to take care of him."

 
ISRAELIS SAY BUSH'S WAR WEAKENS WAR ON TERRORISM:
CBS NEWS
An Israeli think-tank echoed observers all over the world in saying that the war has recruited new terrorists; (Bush-team still insists that our war in Iraq is 'central front' in terror-war. If that's so, we're losing terror-war; because we certainly can't win Iraq war!) 52% of Americans and 70% of foreigners polled also think this war has increased danger from terrorists worldwide.
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The much-bragged-of PRE-ELECTION OFFENSIVE (to make Iraq cities safe for election) has been postponed till after our election! Obviously the Bushies fear much higher U.S. casualties in this offensive, which MIGHT upset voters; after 2 November, who will care?

 
MONEY FOR BOMBERS, NOT FOR FIREMEN: Terrorist attacks will involve individuals, not nations..often the terrorists are working AGAINST their home government, as well as targetting Israelis & Americans.

So Pentagon bombers are useless against this new kind of threat. What might help is large numbers of policemen, firemen, nurses, etc... 'first responders' to a terrorist attack.

But it turns out that federal grants to ALL the states for '1st-responders' have totalled only $8 billion over the past TWO YEARS--a total that matches what goes to Pentagon every WEEK!

On top of that, the money is doled out the way all pork is doled out. Wyoming has two senators, just as California does, so Wyoming gets far more money per citizen; there is no attempt to ration the money corresponding to which state is more likely to be attacked.

And of course there's no guarantee that the money will be spent for increasing anti-terrorist security. The GOP governor of Alaska tried to use it for buying a personal plane..that was going too far. NYTIMES

All this shows that Bush's GOP doesn't give a damn about Homeland Security; the tragedy is that so many American yahoos 'trust' Bush for this protection!
NYTIMES

 
SUNNI & ELECTIONS: [NYTIMES story,11Oct]
Sunni leaders who want to take part in the Jan. elections don't dare meet in public, for fear of insurgents.

Americans fear that the Sunnis will not vote in any great numbers, discrediting the election (and dooming--probably illusory--hopes that guerilla attacks will subside after January.)

The Americans intend to 'open up' large Sunni areas now dominated by insurgents, so people there can vote. But the way they 'open up' these areas (temporarily) is by fairly indiscriminate 'pinpoint bombing'! Unsurprisingly, this makes inhabitants LESS friendly to U.S.-sponsored election. "I lost my whole family. Why should I trust this government? Why should I vote?"

Leaders of Sunni-based political parties say their attempts to rouse interest are not resonating, due to cynicism and fear. Registration is supposed to start on 1 Nov. Some hope that Sunni enthusiasm will pick up, ESPECIALLY IF THE VIOLENCE IS BROUGHT UNDER CONTROL. [by 1 NOV ? ! ? !]

Many Sunnis fear persecution under the elected govt., where the Shiites and Kurds (whom Sunnis recently oppressed) will outnumber them as voters , and therefore by Parliamentary Representatives, by four to 1--even if Sunnis DO vote!

Already, the Association of Muslim Scholars, (claiming to represent 3000 mosques) say they will boycott the election. Observers fear that if the Sunnis have almost no elected representatives, their interests will be neglected. [If they have one representative out of five, will their interests be better protected?']

"The Sunnis have been in power for 500 years," said one pro-election leader."They are afraid of losing their power..this is nonsense." Oh,yeah?

Some leaders say that if the Americans pull back into their bases during the election, and promise not to interfere...but Yanks say they have no intention of withdrawing completely during the campaign or the election. Some leaders say, "If they don't meet our conditions, we'll call for a boycott. Otherwise we'll be called American puppets."

In areas recently 'freed' by U.S. (e.g., Samarrah), Iraqis are more angered than grateful. In Fallujah: "We will not vote..we will not support imperialism." (This fellow admitted that Sunnis will suffer if they do not participate..but they might suffer even if they do!) He went on, "All Iraq revolutions have been made by Sunnis. We will make a revolution [against the elected govt.] again!"

Sistani and his Shiites won't tolerate any postponement of the elections--not when they're certain to win (they outnumber Sunni-Muslims-plus-Kurds by six to four!)

"If the Sunnis don't participate...the elections will be meaningless."
---------------
No easy solution is visible. IF there were operating now a firm constitution guaranteeing very generous Sunni rights under the Shiite/Kurd government...but the council to be elected (dominated by Shiites & Kurds) are the ones who will write the Constitution! (Sistani earlier squelched the idea that the council to be elected should be restricted by a previous constitution written by U.S. puppets!)

Why should the Sunnis trust these former victims to put Sunni rights into the constitution, especially when the RULES for this election will be formulated by Allawi and his gang of U.S.puppets?
-------------
It could be that peace will never return to Iraq until (a) the Yanks pull out completely, and then (b) the Kurds & Shiites unite to CRUSH the Sunni rebellion--the Sunni Arabs, after all, will be outnumbered four to one. Then the Kurds will secede, and the Shiites will take over all the rest of Iraq.

 
PRICE-GOUGING? NONSENSE: (ltr to CSU COLLEGIAN)
In your story on scarce flu vaccine (11Oct) I was offended by the term 'price-gouging'. In our free-market,GOP Colorado, there's no such thing as price-gouging: there's just price magically adjusting excessive demand to short-supply!

When the possibility of a contaminated supply of vaccine first surfaced in August '03, the Brits, with their cursed system of Socialized Medicine, promptly found a new backup supply. The Bushies wisely stood back and let the market work its magic.

Life and death have always been on sale here, to the highest bidder--as they should be, in a free society. GOP-run Colorado has a worse record than Mississippi when it comes to immunizing children;many children have surely died from this. Yet I knew a woman here who could pay for a second super-expensive liver transplant when the first one failed.

I'm aged 74, and I'm told there's no flu vaccine for me. That's all right; I choose not to outbid the mother of a baby for such vaccine. After all, dude, that's the price of freedom!
==========
Look at the bright side ! Heating oil up 24% in last month. Old folks (chilled, without vaccine) will hurry on to Jesus. Medicaid bills will go down.
The only disadvantage will be for corporations running 'old-folks homes', warehousing mindless old ladies for their uncaring children.

The only attitude for 'Bush-times': laugh at Bushies' stupidity during the day--weep for their victims (including their dumb supporters) at night.

 
TROOP-SHORTAGE: Bushies have said they provided all the troops asked for. Now Bremer says he asked for more, and was refused.
Now Condoleeza says 'We provided all the MILITARY asked for!"
(But they fired the army chief of staff who said they'd need more!)
[See DanThomasson in R.Mtn.News,11Oct.]

So the GIs now in Iraq agree with the experts that Rummy didn't send enough troops.So what?

Kerry pointed out in 2d debate that we left almost ONE MILLION TONS of ammo unguarded at the beginning of the occupation. This ammo is now being used against our GIs.
----------------
Huge amounts of material that could be used for nuke weapons seem to have disappeared from Iraq, under U.S. 'control'. Terrorists all over the world lust for such materials. NewScientist

Terrorists in Iraq have plenty of explosives available! Simply wrapping these in radioactive shells makes 'dirty bombs', which need no complex chain-reactions to cause damage. They spread radioactivity all around them, rendering whole areas uninhabitable for some time. If one were lobbed into the 'Green Zone', then our honchos would have to abandon the palaces they now inhabit, and perhaps live in vulnerable tents as our GIs do.