Monday I took my brother to the Army recruiting station in Murfreesboro. The plan was for him to spend the night in Nashville courtesy of the army, and then travel with others to Fort Bragg North Carolina for basic training and then advanced training.

With pictures at This is Smyrna 

I regret to report that this is not an April Fool’s joke. KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary company has a cost plus contract for supplying our soldiers with necesities. It seems that means simply that if they can come up with a way of increasing the cost of something they can pass that cost, and the increase in profits associated with a higher cost basis, straight on to the taxpayers. Can you say KBR-embroidered terry cloth towels for our brave boys?

Whatever your views the fact remains we are and will remain in the country well into the next year, the next administration and for who knows how long. Casualties, costs both economic and ethical, and more are still to be counted. I mourn for our losses and for the future. Seems all the decisions that led us there and those made in the early days were - at best - full of colossal blunders.

Read more at Cuppa Joe

I was disturbed to read in a Jim V post this evening that the purported cost of the war in Iraq is $3 Trillion (believe it or not, someone has written a book about it!). That is a staggering sum. “Dang,” I thought (Jim facilitated me), “think of all the things we could have used that money on . . . think of how much we could have done for future generations?!”

First I wondered if that number was accurate, so I did a little digging. I trust Jim and all, but . . .

The Congressional Research Service (run by the Democratic-controlled Congress) determined in October of last year that the cost of Iraq War had been $455 billion. That’s not quite as staggering.

Then I wondered how that number compares with spending on other wars? According to data from the not-Neo-con Arms Control Center, we benefit from some perspective on our war-debt to income ratio:

As a percentage of U.S. gross-domestic product (GDP), however, the FY 2008 combined base budget and war funding requests remain well below previous conflicts. Funding for “National Defense” (budget function 050) was about 4.5% in FY 2007, compared to 14.2% and 9.4% at the height of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, respectively.As a portion of the overall federal budget, defense spending declined from nearly 70% at the height of the Korean War, to below 50% percent at the height of the Vietnam War, to less than 20% in 2007.

And on the subject of debt, the data seems to demonstrate that we could still readily “grow” our way out of our current hole with reasonable restraint on spending.

If you’re wondering what was America’s most expensive war, it was WWII, which was supposed to have cost $ 3.2 trillion in today’s (actually 2007) dollars. For a majority of Americans at the start of this war, putting Jihadists on the defensive and removing Jihadist sanctuaries one by one if necessary was a worthwhile objective. And I still think that is a legitimate conclusion to draw.

As in trillion. Three trillion. That’s unimaginable as numbers go, but what’s the importance of it? According to a Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, that is how much the Iraq war has cost the United States. Stiglitz is a former member of President Clinton’s COuncil of Economic Advisors and a critic of globalization. According to the Guardian newspaper:

Some time in 2005, Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, who also served as an economic adviser under Clinton, noted that the official Congressional Budget Office estimate for the cost of the war so far was of the order of $500bn. The figure was so low, they didn’t believe it, and decided to investigate. The paper they wrote together, and published in January 2006, revised the figure sharply upwards, to between $1 and $2 trillion. Even that, Stiglitz says now, was deliberately conservative: “We didn’t want to sound outlandish.”

Stiglitz and Bilmes dug deeper, and what they have discovered, after months of chasing often deliberately obscured accounts, is that in fact Bush’s Iraqi adventure will cost America - just America - a conservatively estimated $3 trillion. The rest of the world, including Britain, will probably account for about the same amount again. And in doing so they have achieved something much greater than arriving at an unimaginable figure: by describing the process, by detailing individual costs, by soberly listing the consequences of short-sighted budget decisions, they have produced a picture of comprehensive obfuscation and bad faith whose power comes from its roots in bald fact.

Three trillion dollars could have fixed Social Security for the next five hundred years (that would be important to our children’s great-great-great grandchildren’s great-great-great-great grandchildren) or hired 45 million public school teachers. By 2017, we Americans will have paid $1 trillion in interest payments on the debt required just to fight this war. Since we as a people aren’t doing all that much saving, we’re paying this debt to countries like China and Dubai.

Their book, which also details how the true costs were hidden by the administration, is called The Three Trillion Dollar War, authors Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, and it is published by Allen Lane.

Lindsey writes this:

“Unwitting suicide bombers” — that’s the phrase that keeps popping up in all the reports. It may seem completely stupid for me to quibble with semantics in the face of such a horrific act as strapping explosives to mentally disabled women and blowing them up in crowded markets to murder as many people as possible, but I don’t ever think that accuracy is a bad thing. And I happen to feel like it underscores just how horrific the extremist mindset is when we have to think of completely new phrases and concepts to describe the type of violence they are employing.

I know “unwitting suicide bomber” was chosen by reporters or editors because it so closely describes the scenario in as few words as possible. You take a familiar template — the suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his/her chest — and inject “unwitting” in there in the hopes that people understand that it means that the people getting blown up weren’t hip to the plan.

Except that when you don’t know you’re doing to die, you’re not doing it intentionally, it’s not technically suicide. You take the intent out of it and we’ve got something altogether different.

We are in a time when reporters and editors are trying to come up with the right way in journalism to describe things we have never had to deal with before. Lindsey explains it very well.

Remember the story a few weeks ago about wounded Iraq War veterans being asked to repay their enlistment bonuses? Well, it turns out there really isn’t a story there.

Lawmakers condemned the practice, and more than 250 signed on to sponsor legislation designed to right the wrong. They promised to rein in the heartless government bureaucrats who dared to implement a policy that could snatch soldiers’ money away like this.

Problem is, there doesn’t appear to be much of a problem.

Only a handful of cases have been found in which a wounded soldier was asked to repay a bonus, and those turned out to be clerical mistakes.

I am at a loss as to why our government would not see the benefit in treating its veterans who are suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder the same as it does those suffering physical injuries. Nathan Ketsdever at Compassion in Politics discusses an article in the Washington Post that states mental health care of vets is haphazard at best:

Years later and our treatment of our troops is still deplorable. Its an ethical outrage for a double standard of that sort to allow our mentally wounded troops to slip through the cracks. Whether you support the war or don’t [honestly I’m not a big fan and never have been] this feels like a grave crime against our armed forces and soldiers who have sacrificed their lives in service of our freedom. And its no hyperbole to say that soldiers with mental illness have a pattern of showing up as poverty and homeless statistics. How American is that? How can we abandon them like that? How compassionate is that? How human is that? (h/t to the Washington Post. It requires a free login, which is a bit of a pain)

It’s time for the whole stigma of having mental and emotional illnesses to be done away with. Just as a diabetic deals with chemical changes in their body if they are exposed to that which is toxic to it, medical science proves there are physical changes that occur in the brain when a person is exposed to prolonged trauma.

I dated a guy who suffered from PTSD after having been in the Special Forces in Iraq — a wonderful guy who will never be the same after that experience. His suffering isn’t visible if you just look at him. He isn’t in a wheelchair or walking with a cane. However, his wounds run deep, and it affects every relationship, every job, every aspect of his life for the rest of his life. Our government OWES it to the veterans — and their families and loved ones — to do everything possible to help these people.

Surely, we can do better than this.

As a Classical Liberal and contemporary Conservative I always marvel at people who understand things at a level beyond labels. As is often said, words have meaning.

Actor and activist Ron Silver has an interesting read on how people in his industry have type cast him after his choice to become a Conservative. But Ron Silver says maybe he is a Revolutionary Liberal and that George Bush may be also.

The President is challenging the world with a new order. There is always passionate opposition to change. Have grievous mistakes been made? Yes. But just as Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and Reagan laid the foundations for fighting and prevailing in the Cold War, Bush has responded to 9/11 with a foreign policy revolution of similar magnitude: a reorganization of government institutions and appropriate legislation to meet the emerging threats.

Containment and deterrence are ineffective in this brave new world. There is no containment if you can’t see the enemy; there is no deterrence if the enemy desires death.

I believe the President’s critics are profoundly mistaken. I believe they misunderstand how he’s trying to protect us. I believe they misunderstand the nature of the threat. I believe they misunderstand history. If they succeed in dismantling what President Bush has set in motion, the results may well be catastrophic and history will never forgive them.

George W. Bush: a revolutionary liberal internationalist? History may so decree. Let’s wait and see.

The Foreign Policy blog has a rather extensive drubbing of Ron Paul which claims that his policies are “fraught with danger”.

While Paul claims “noninterventionism” is not isolationism, it sure sounds like it is. For instance, he even seeks to dismantle the Bretton Woods system of international cooperation born from the ashes of the Second World War (more on that below). Isolationism by any name, friends, is still isolationism.

They also question his positions on Iraq.

Let’s assume Paul is right that foreign-policymaking powers are vested in the Congress. Why, then, does he keep promising that as president he will “immediately” pull U.S. troops out of Iraq? Presumably he intends to govern as he says the Founders intended. But there’s a deep contradiction here. If as president he will have no authority to execute foreign policy except as Congress dictates, how can he promise on the campaign trail to get American troops out of Iraq? I don’t get it.

I personally still like Paul, and hope is 15 minutes continue. I also don’t see a problem with noninterventionism.

(Hat tip:BCM)

Short & Fat may not be desert-bound after all…

After a whole lotta effort clearing up cases, briefing co-workers on open files, and otherwise preparing to leave work for an extended period of time, Uncle Sam tells me my services may not be required, they’ll let me know soon. I’ve always been able to count on the military to jerk my chain.

Ron Coleman–my favourite lawyer who isn’t related to me–is rather pleased with Bill Clinton today.

I am deeply touched every time I watch this clip, and proud of his reaction.

It is a good clip. Very good.

I can handle a lot of stuff, but any insinuation from anyone that 9/11 was an “inside job” will fly all over me.

(And before you all jump all over that, I still support Ron Paul despite the allegations from Michelle Malkin and others about his “Truther connections.” I also had a crush on Don Johnson when I was 13…even though Melanie Griffith did too. And I find Melanie Griffith nearly as irritating as any Truther.)

Sometimes it’s good to read bloggers who are close to the Canadian Border. bridgett has some little-discussed news that is really pissing her off.

The Bush administration (more particularly, the FBI) has begun to use national and international criminal databases to regulate the international movement of peace activists by listing their misdemeanor arrests as “criminal activity.” (The databases are usually used for eight categories of offenses — felony sex offenders, violent repeat offenders, foreign fugitives, gang members, and so forth). The civil disobedience offenses (peaceful minor misdemeanors) are not sufficiently serious to merit suspension of a passport, so the federal government is attempting to use these digital resources to harrass and forbid exit in other ways. It’s a nuisance. It’s illegal and it won’t stand up in court. But it is meant to drain the resources and sap the resolve of women (yep, the targets are overwhelmingly Code Pink members) who denounce the war in public.

The most recent example happened on October 3. At the Canadian border (ironically, at the Peace Bridge), Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin and Colonel Ann Wright (former diplomat with the State Department) were refused entry into Canada because of their appearance on the National Crime Information Center Computerized Index.

This kind of thing really makes me mad. It seems like bullying.

Knitaddict is a personal friend of mine. She has told me the story of her dad’s treatment at the Tennessee Veterans Home and it took my breath away. Her father is a couple of years older than my own dad. Her dad has been through some horrors in the Tennessee Veterans Home. But there may be some good news:

Several of my regular readers have expressed interest and CONCERN for my father and ALL of Tennessee’s Veterans who have and STILL reside at the Tennessee State Veterans Home in Murfreesboro, TN. Well, here’s an update…….

We’ve recently been involved in the providing of testimony and EVIDENCE in an investigation by the United States Department of Justice. This investigation has taken place over several months…starting this past spring. Recently, Nashville’s Channel 5 investigative reporter, Jennifer Kraus, unearthed some juicy tidbits that I’m going to link to.

Justice Department ENEMA for Tennessee State Veterans Home

I’ll finish this little post w/this……GOVERNOR BREDESEN, SHAME ON YOU!

Here’s the backstory on the post linked above. All I have to say is, is this how we treat our veterans?

The above double-take inducing quote came from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in a recent story about Bush’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, when the discussion turned to comparison of Iraq war costs vs. health insurance for children.

Graham went on to say:

“This is not an accounting exercise. How did we pay for World War II? Everybody rolled up their sleeves and did the best they could.”

Well, technically, figuring out how to pay for war is a kind of accounting/budgeting exercise, and the White House has asked for nearly $200 billion in war funding. That money has to come from somewhere, and Graham serves on the Senate Committee on the Budget, so what are the assumptions behind Graham’s war budgeting notions?

1) There is still some definable endpoint at which the Iraq war could be considered “won.” Reasonable people can certainly disagree about what that definition would be, and whether it is to be expected.

2) “Winning” the war somehow makes money appear to take care of the costs. There are a couple of possibilities here, one being that the Publisher’s Clearinghouse people are going to show up with a giant fake check to celebrate our win with a balloon bouquet and camera crew. Another is that there is some kind of sacrifice going on among the American people akin to the rationing during WWII that somehow frees up resources to pay for war, although that wouldn’t necessarily depend on a victory. Anybody noticed that happening? Turned in any ration stamps or grown anything in your victory garden lately?

Or is the magic money that appears upon winning the war expected to come in the form of, oh, I don’t know, oil revenues? In a Washington Post piece published on September 16th of this year, Graham referred to “three big issues” that must be resolved in Iraq within the next 90 days to avoid a failed state. Those three major issues? Oil revenues, de-Baathification, and provincial elections.

I hope you all realise that it is killing me to do this roundup without even one tiny quote of the Doobie Brothers. I cannot get them out of my head. Which is unfortunate, because I hate the Doobie Brothers. Almost as much as I hate talking about this whole Blackwater military thing.

Anyway, a lot of you like talking about it, so let’s all talk about Blackwater. Here’s what’s being said so far….

S-Town Mike I

What stands out to me beyond the stonewalling and excuse-making of Assistant Sec’y of State Richard Griffin is the fact that he justifies the hiring of Blackwater based on the concept that we would be out of Iraq in 2 years in contrast to using military personnel who would be enlisted for 20 years.

Southern Beale

• The Misplaced Career Award goes to Blackwater USA CEO Erik Prince, who said he was honored to “speak on behalf of the brave men and women who volunteered to serve their country […] they answered the call to support our country ….”

Er, no, that would be those brave men and women serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. You’re speaking on behalf of employees who are paid a generous salary to be in your service. They may be brave and they may feel they are answering some call to service, but you can’t gloss over the fact that a large number of them are there because of financial reasons.

Hutchmo cracks me up with his “Right-wing guide to honoring the military”. Check it:

First, ascertain if said person was or is indeed part of the military.

Second, ascertain if said person supports our President’s effort to go after Bin Laden, find weapons of mass destruction, bring democracy to Iraq, at least achieve most of the benchmarks we set in Iraq belittle the benchmarks as not realistic safeguard markets when politicians and generals visit said markets to ensure their safety bring some semblance of safety and normality to some part of Iraq.

Head on over to his place for the rest, it’s greatly amusing.

I’ve been watching PBS Burns’ documentary–“The War,” this evening (and have watched a couple other episodes). It is a fascinating work, and I hate to admit that if the Sunday Night Football game had been a better contest, I might have opted for football.

In any event, I’m curious to know how many “music city bloggers” have posted or are posting about this documentary. Please give a link to your post(s) in the comment section. I think we all would benefit from hearing others’ impressions–knee-jerk or otherwise, of the series . . .

Let’s hit a few hot spots on this fine, Saturday night:

• Ginger writes about a moment in real life, real time, where her daughter witnessed a moment that had to be explained. Not a good moment for mother or child.

• Larry Elvis takes on consumerism.

• Sharon Cobb hosts a video of Candidate Rudy, and …. Bo Derek? Wait for Mike Huckabee.

• It’s a great movie, but it is very, very depressing.

• Fractions Suck.

• Rest in Peace, Mr. Otto. A friend of our dear Rachel. A sad day indeed.

• Fraud in Iraq.

• TV Round Up by BOM

Make yourself crazy and have a good night.

Seems a lot of people are upset by things that are dramatised depictions of actual events.

First, Southern Beale has a bit of info about this picture.

This photo turns up all over the right-wing media, but the ’stoning’ actually takes place in a 1994 Dutch indie film called De Steen, directed by Mahnaz Tamizi. The ‘teenage girl’ is actress Smadar Monsinos.

She has gotten her information from Sadly, No.

However, the story deepens somewhat from here. Several commenters at her place assert that

This is NO actress… This was a woman in her 20’s in the city of Arok in Iran and the photo was taken in 1992 and the photographer GAVE IT to Tamizi.

I of course believe it is entirely possible that the movie was based on a photograph given to Tamizi, so that both groups are partially right. I’ve been trying to find Tamizi’s story about the creation of the film, but I’ve not yet been able to find it.

UPDATE:

The picture in question is shown in a FrontPage Magazine article dated 27 January 2005 with the caption “(This picture, smuggled out of Iran, was taken in 1992 in the town of Arak)”

It appears in more than 22 (I stopped counting at that point) different websites accompanying articles (including one in The Daily Mail) about the practice of stoning. In the 22 articles it accompanies, there are at least four different sources given for the photo–if a source is given at all.

The photo most often appears in anti-death penalty advocacy sites, as well as various “Stop Stoning” sites. Only one Anti-death penalty site that I could find actually credited the photo to Tamizi.

I desperately want to know the whole story behind this picture. If it is a still from a move, as I believe it is, then what inspired the director to make that movie? Was it a picture like this one? Was it a narrative of an actual stoning? Trust me, there’s a story there.

What I do find interesting is that the use of the photo is being maligned by prominent left-wing sites (including Daily Kos) when it appears in a FrontPage Magazine (right wing) article, but has been unquestioned by those same left-wing sites for years when used in anti-capital punishment sites.

Update #2:  Comments Closed ON This Post  10/2/07 11:53am

Mike Byrd at his Enclave blog is applauding Bill Clinton’s statements about a purported “bait and switch” by Republicans in slamming moveon.org and the NYTimes about the “Gen. Betray us” ad.

Mike’s contribution to the discussion is mainly the post’s title, but he obviously thinks Clinton masterfully did something and that the something was pointing out hypocrisy of Republicans (oh, “and a few spooked Dems” . . . hmmm, I missed Clinton’s reference to them). Uh, I disagree.

John Kerry wasn’t leading our troops during time of war when his heroic myth was rebutted . . . Max Cleland wasn’t leading our troops in theatre when taken to task for his wrong vote on airport security . . . and, sorry, but the fact that Max Cleland was injured while in the service doesn’t make him “off limits” for criticism, on war or anything else.

In a war with an all-volunteer military, troop morale is particularly important for success. And calling the commander of our troops in Iraq a traitor is music to Jihadist ears. Perhaps Clinton is projecting, but I think it is ludicrous to say that criticizing this outrageous “traitor” ad was an effort to distract from the “real issues.” Bombing aspirin factories after embarrassing depositions comes to mind. There was nothing to hide from in that report, and fear of Bill Clinton calling me a hypocrite isn’t sufficient reason to give moveon.org (and its accomplice, the New York Times) a pass.

Ken Burns has a new documentary about World War II.

Nathan at Compassion in Politics is watching it, and has several opinions about it.
First, the criticism

Perhaps only five percent or coverage dealt with women, while they are half of the equation. From “Rosie the riveter” to the Waves in that served in the Navy, women played an important and vital role. That role should be front and center in an ongoing part of the war documentary narrative.

Then the praise.

Ultimately, Burns Reminds us we all have stories. Stories of passion. Stories of pain. And stories of victory.

I noticed a report today that bridges on State Route 840 will be named for members of the Tennessee Army National Guard who have been killed in Iraq. On September 28, Governor Phil Bredesen and Maj. Gen. Gus L. Hargett, Tennessee Adjutant General, will attend a reception for the families at the Lebanon National Guard Armory at 1010 Leeville Road in Lebanon beginning at 11 a.m. to herald the dedications.

The road crosses through Dickson, Hickman, Rutherford, Williamson and Wilson counties and the state legislature previously designated State Route 840 the “Tennessee National Guard Parkway” to honor Tennessee National Guard soldiers and airmen “for their contributions in preserving America’s freedoms in the war on terrorism.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Thunder Jones is booming mad.

An amendment in the Senate that would have granted habeas corpus rights to those who have been detained in the War on Terror was defeated 56-43. I still don’t understand why granting detainees the right to know what they are accused of is dangerous. We are seizing people overseas and imprisoning them for years without ever presenting evidence of their guilt. I hope the jackasses that voted against it get their habeas rights stripped from them.

Ned Williams wants to know about some hotly-debated erections.

I am curious to hear what others think about what should be built at “Ground Zero.” (as an aside, I think their current logo is cool–see above)

I really haven’t kept up with the debate about this, and it appears to be pretty heated in the NYC area. The website reports that NY Gov. Spitzer has called the current plan (or the process of selecting the current plan?)–not to (essentially) rebuild the Towers, “an Enron-style debacle.” …
I personally think that we ought to rebuild the towers, more or less as they were before 9/11, with modern adaptations.

I personally was not a fan of the architecture of the Twin Towers before they were destroyed. They looked stagnant. I do want to see some sort of working building there, though.