(Click on any image to enlarge)
QUOTE / UNQUOTE
If the American people really come to a settled belief that
Bush lied us into war, his presidency will be over. He won't have
the basic level of trust needed to govern. [The Prince of the Neo-Cons, Bill Kristol, in the Weekly Standard ]
"I'm embarrassed the United
States has a vice president for torture. He condones torture, what else is
he?" [Former CIA Director, Admiral Stansfield Turner]
OUCH!
"I like guys who've never been there
that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got
five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then
don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done." [Rep. John Murtha, former Marine, decorated Vietnam veteran and influential Democratic hawk, to The Dick Cheney]
Iraq Gun Porn: Which Guns Suck, Which Guns
Rock
No matter where we stand on this war, we all expect the troops to have what they need to do the job, right? My Pet Jawa has an Iraq war vet's assessment of commonly used weapons in Iraq -
by our guys and the guys who shoot at them.
Revealing
on several levels! Be sure to check the "Bad Guy Weapons":
1) Mostly AK47's The entire country is an arsenal. Works better in the desert than the M16 and the .308 Russian round kills reliably. PKM belt fed light machine guns are also common and effective. Luckily, the enemy mostly shoots like shit. Undisciplined "spray and pray" type fire. However, they are seeing more and more precision weapons, especially sniper rifles. (Iran,
again)...
HOW COULD YOU, NPR?
Professor PZ Myers blogs @ PHARYNGULA :
... I missed an... errm... interesting interview on NPR, on the Sternberg affair. One of the interesting aspects was the reporter who did it: Barbara Bradly Hagerty. She's NPR's religion reporter. In general, assigning a religion reporter to these stories is a bad, bad idea - creationism stories are about attempts to insert religious thinking into the secular business of science and education, and they don't understand why we would find that objectionable. It's like sending a known neocon sympathizer to investigate the administration's rationale for war, and we just know that no responsible news organization would ever be insane enough to do that. (dig, dig, PZ)
Digging a little deeper into Hagerty's background, one also discovers something interesting: connections to Howard Ahmanson. More troubling still is her association with Howard Ahmanson's Fieldstead and Co. and Fieldstead Foundation. Ahmanson is a California millionaire who uses his trust fund to finance right-wing Christian, anti-gay, anti-evolution groups and politicians. He was previously associated with Christian Reconstructionism, which advocates a Biblically-based government for the U.S. Among Ahmanson's favored charities is, of course, the Discovery Institute.
This flares Da Rev's nostrils just as the "ombudsman" for NPR quit under fire last week for trying to insert wing-nut propaganda into newscasts. NPR needs to do a more complete house cleaning - dump the "biased" religion reporter AND try to push the president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting toward the door. Set fire to his desk while he's off schmoozing with Inhofe or Brownback or Santorum!
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN MURTHA SAYS U.S. TROOPS
ARE THE CATALYST FOR THE INSURGENCY IN IRAQ!
And Oliver Willis asks:
Wouldn't a U.S. withdrawal embolden the insurgency?
No. If the occupation were to end, so, too, would the insurgency. After all, what the resistance movement has been resisting is the occupation. ASK the Sunni Arab fighters and the clerics who support them why they are fighting...
It's a really yucky day outside - but as we stroll through the Last Chance Garage, we spot a vintage MOPAR Batteries sign - and just beneath:
this Pink and Creamy 1955 DODGE Hardtop!
Good fortune. COMMENT! Please spread the meme. Don't smoke in bed...
