Yes, I'm well aware of that. I am, after all, a Navy veteran who was in the Philippines for the fall of the Marcos regime (where the US provided assistance to Marcos to escape the country) and who was in the Gulf War.

No doubt!

Two words: cannon fodder.

Charlie Rangel (Democrat congresscritter from New York City) wants to bring back the draft.

Of course, maybe the United States needs to take a closer look at how it uses its military. There is no "national interest" in interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. We should follow the wisdom of the founding fathers and not send our troops all over the world to fight battles that really have nothing to do with us (Bosnia and Rwanda come to mind, as well as the first Gulf War, Viet Nam, Korea...). As it is, 9/11 happened as a consequence of our interfering in the internal affiars of the Middle East since the 1950s (the consequence being retaliation).

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

I know a doc who works for the VA - and her sacrifice of huge wages and prestige is only matched by her intense care and appresication for her patients. Once again, it's not the folks in the field - it's the politicians and career beuracrats who muck up the system. It is underfunded, and overburdened.

Personally, I think unless you've been in a war, you have no call to judge the reactions of others.

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Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
- Robertson Davies

Actually, that show you did not go to the link and read the rest of the article - you might want to try it. I posted less than half.

__________________
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
- Robertson Davies

Well, if we keep going the way we have in the last seven years - okay I agree on the interference charge so it's a lot more than 7 years - we are going to need a draft. The real issue there is that this time women will be eligible for the draft - and that is gonna cause some huge changes.

__________________
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
- Robertson Davies

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it - Desiderius Erasmus

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The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish! - Frederick Bastiat

So you are okay with someone calling your service cannon fodder?

I am sure the folks who died defending this country, and saving Europe from the likes of Hitler appreciate being remembered as cannon fodder.

My grandfather always used to tell me about how the infantry are always used as cannon fodder. I'm sure that most, like him, don't care particularly one way or the other.

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"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."



~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Did your grandfather serve? If so, it probably meant that their CO's treated them like cannon fodder and the grunts on the ground did not appreciate it.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!

THE CANONIZATION OF ST. RONALD RAY-GUN

Can SOMEBODY please tell me: What is it with this rightwing worship of Ronald Ray-Gun? Why does it appear that, given half a chance, they're fully prepared to elevate the old fraud to sainthood?? You'll notice, however, it takes that certain sort of selective, serial amnesia which only a true fanatic can muster. I can well understand their crying need for a conservative success story...but it's not MY fault that their toxic ideology doesn't coincide with the Real World! The ignorance and superstition of the Dark Ages--to which these inflexible ideologues long mightily to return--passed us by, oh, about 230 years ago with the founding of the United States. The genie is out of the bottle now, gang; enlightenment has been inculcated into our history by Mr. Thomas Jefferson and, as hard as conservatives try, as badly as they might want to, there's NO going back. Their reactionary fervor, no matter the intensity, cannot make Ronnie into something he NEVER was.

Which, apparently, isn't sufficient to keep them from trying.

Dwight David Eisenhower, a good and principled man--and a decent Republican when that phrase wasn't an oxymoron--apparently must have been too moderate, too normal for the revisionist neocon nutbars. Richard Milhous Nixon was a psychotic monster and even Karl Rove can't turn THAT sow's ear into a silk purse. But RONNIE?!? Sweet suffering succotash!
He was our only divorced president--on the grounds of mental cruelty, no less!--and was forced to marry a pregnant Nancy. I believe they still call that a shotgun wedding. J. Edgar Hoover investigated him for "Communist leanings" in 1947, before the McCarthy Era got up its full head of steam. Ronnie maintained a stubborn belief in astrology throughout his life and he'd descended into full-blown senility near the end of his first term. Like most Republicans, he was pathetically unfit to govern and his administration was fraught with corruption, incompetence and disconnection from reality. (Sound familiar?) He was found guilty of "failing to meet presidential obligations."

Their would-be conservative saint had something like 200 of his appointees, staff and associated hangers-on who found themselves forced to quit, were fired, were arrested, indicted and/or convicted for legal infractions or violations of the ethics code. Attorney General Edwin Meese alone, the highest legal officer in the land, faced FOUR different special prosecutors before retiring ignominiously. The defining irony here is that these were supposed to be the "Law and Order" guys; it had been an actual plank in their platform. Yeah, they wanted to make it tough on street crime...as long as that street didn't happen to be Wall Street! Remember the savings & loan collapse...involving one greedy, young Neil Bush and for which American taxpayers were required to foot the bill? Remember the junk bonds and insider trading scandals? Just GOP business as usual; those hoodlums were stealing full time with both hands. Can't take it with you? They sure tried...and sent plenty ahead.

Ol' Ronnie was a cartoon of a president who could stand up, read his TelePrompTer and play the part--he WAS an actor, after all--but he had only a few vague notions as to what was actually going on in America and, more importantly, in his own administration. If I had to make a guess, I'd say that Daddybush was likely doing the actual driving. The regressive right likes to claim he 'defeated' Communism...but that statement contains about as much truth as anything they EVER say: None to speak of. Russia succumbed to severe economic upheaval and it was more an accident of history that this event took place on Bad Actor's watch. In fact, his ridiculous saber-rattling PROLONGED the Soviet Union's last throes rather than hastening them. Star Wars? Ha! His irresponsible hike in military spending provoked ZERO response from behind the Iron Curtain. At Reykjavik, Iceland, in October of 1986, he proposed a blanket elimination of US and Soviet nukes...then rescinded the deal when it looked like Gorbachev might seriously go for it.

His foreign policy in Central America was even more ham-handed. In 1981, he launched a covert war against Nicaragua whose democratic, popularly-elected government he ignorantly termed "Marxist." He financed, armed and trained a mercenary band of terrorists known as the Contras. US government documents have since come to light detailing that these Contras--who utilized classic terrorism tactics--targeted schools, health clinics, public utilities and public transportation. Over 900 government officials and 8000 citizens died at their hands. A congressional intelligence report established the inconvenient truth that "groups of civilians including women and children were "burned, dismembered, blinded, and beheaded" by the brutal Contra barbarians whom clueless Ronnie referred to as "freedom-fighters."

We mined their harbors and blew up several of their largest fuel depots. Fact. Congress was so disgusted by the goings-on that it cut off all funding for these "freedom-fighters," but the administration covertly raised funds by selling weapons to Iran...officially our enemy then, just as they are now...and aiding the Contras in disbursing illicit shipments of cocaine in massive amounts to US-based dealers and distributors. All of this was uncovered and outlined by a fearless investigative reporter, the late, great Gary Webb in his series of expose articles for the Mercury News. This fiasco was the "Iran/Contra Affair" and it left Nicaragua's economy and infrastructure in shambles...a state which continues to this day. And I won't even go into the repugnant details of the death squads in El Salvador that killed 70,000 people and engaged in the rape and murder of nuns...

Do I need to remind everyone that his administration funded and trained Usama Bin Laden and sent an autographed Bible to Ayatollah Khomeini..?

His domestic policies were only a little less awful as he made a concerted effort to institute the entirety of the cheap-labor agenda. He put social progress on hold while he widened the poverty gap with an all-out assault on the Middle Class. His "Trickle-Down" economics didn't; while average folks were scrounging, the number of billionaires quadrupled by 1987. Ronnie & Co. made sure everybody--except their corporate masters, of course!--was working harder...for less money. His draconian upward redistribution of wealth took place even as he gutted jobs, health and housing initiatives. (When he slashed the school lunch program, he declared that ketchup would suffice as a vegetable. Remember THAT one?) I believe the term 'discouraged workers' originated during Bad Actor's presidency...and the working poor and homeless citizens began to be tracked by federal agencies. They slashed social programs to the bone, choked the life out of public education, ignored our eroding infrastructure and initiated the insidious encroachment upon our civil liberties under the bogus War on Drugs. Now, 26 years later, we can see what a flim-flam THAT was; we have more and worse drugs on the street than ever before.

The current Nincompoop-In-Chief is simply continuing all the atrocities that were begun by Ronald Ray-Gun, both at home and abroad. Perhaps, after HIS death, they'll think he's worthy of the same sort of adulation...

THERE'S a terrifying thought.

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Yep, he was shipped in during the Ardenne offensive and was there until Germany surrendered.

It's just a simple fact that the infantry in every war is cannon fodder...

__________________
"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."



~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.