Tuesday Pic

Dear Home Despot,

As long as you're advertising on Bill O'Reilly, I'm going to Lowes.

Just Sayin'

;)

SBGypsy

Home Depot email

Our Good Planet

From Yankee Transfer:

I call this photo "Dinner For Four". These flowers were the centerpiece on the lovely outdoor dinner table at the house of a dear friend when we were on vacation in Massachusetts recently.

From Liza Lee Miller:

This picture is of a Flame Skimmer dragonfly on a sculpture of a salmon (or is it a steelhead trout???).

Dragonflies are creatures that let you see how people can believe in fairies!

A matched set from Portly Dyke:

These photos were taken on the same very magical day at the Washington Coast of the Olympic Peninsula (my beloved corner of paradise).

I'm generally a crappy photographer, but the planet was being so stunning that day that I just snapped these off -- no re-touching, nothing -- and found them breath-taking.

Two from Georgette deFriesse:

Both photos are of wild animals acclimated to humans. The first is a fox who will sit and watch my dogs and me, scratching at her many itches (it's not easy being a wild animal!) while pointedly ignoring my dog's barking, then get up and wander off slowly. She really is not worried that we'll harm her.

The second critter is an immature red-tailed hawk who lives on campus. A small crowd was gathered around this bird as he ate a squirrel on the ground. He was completely unfazed, even when I got to within six feet to snap this shot.

From Divajood at Journeys with Jood

This is from Alaska - outside Sitka

From Robin of the Dharma Bums:

I finally had a chance to get out and take a few pics. This swallowtail was sipping nectar from our blooming white dahlia.

Brian from Incertus sent this gem:

The picture I've attached is one I caught of a butterfly emerging from the bower on our patio. It's made of sky vine and red passion flower. The butterfly itself is a common variety--couldn't tell you the name of it--but I was pleased I caught it at just the moment of coming out of the cocoon. Hope you enjoy it.

From Wanderin' Weeta: Life in an alley :

Here are two photos I took in a Vancouver alley last week. Just weeds; or life determined to find its way, whatever the conditions. Depends on how you look at things. :)

And from my best friend Meg, who lives in Oregon,



Otters holding hands!


And finally, from my recent trip to the swamp,


I shot this swamp last winter, from desolate to lush, what a difference the season makes!


The sky was overcast - it was spritzing a little, and when I heard thunder I decided to pack it up.


** remember, to see the photo full sized, click on the pic.

That's all for the Good Planet this weekend, if you'd like to host the biweekly post, contact me or Robin Andrea at the Dharma Bums. I think someone signed on for August, but cannot for the life of me remember who. If not, I will be glad to do it next month too!

Open letter to Senators Clinton and Obama

Dear Senators Clinton and Obama,

I was heartened that the democrats were refraining, at least in the runup to the primaries, from attacking each other.

Right now the Democratic party is fighting something more important than some silly policy question. We are fighting to remove facism - in the form of the Bush/Cheney administration - from our government. Solidarity is nessessary and may not even be sufficient for the purpose.

Please stop fighting amongst yourselves, children, there's more important fish to fry.

Thank You
SB Gypsy

Gonzales chooses to stay

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said yesterday: "We are confident that the men and women of the department are working distraction-free, protecting our neighborhoods from violent gangs, preventing acts of terrorism and protecting our children from predators."

The point is, We The People are NOT confident that the employees of We The People in our Justice Dept are actually DOING the work of the People rather than serving as hacks and flunkies for Codpiece and Darth Cheney.

WE DON'T CARE how much you have learned, the Attorney General of the United States is NOT an internship position.

I say to you Mr Gonzales, YOU are the problem, and until you are replaced, the problem cannot be addressed.

RETIRE

It's the right thing to do.



*click here for the original article.

Two Fer

Dear Senator Reid,

I am a voter. I have voted in every election since 1970. I remember Dick Nixon well, since I lived in DC at the time. The two that are in our White House now are much worse than Nixon, and I think that it is imperative for our republic that you:

IMPEACH BUSH/CHENEY NOW.

Sorry for shouting, but I have had all the lies I can stomach, I'm mad as hell, and I'm not taking it any more!

Mr Bush should be impeached for gross incompetence and felonious behavior.

Dick Cheney should be dragged in chains before the world court for crimes against humanity. (the Iraq War)

Impeach them both, or our republic is lost. The venal and self serving laws that this administration demanded from a compliant republican congress are dangerous to our freedom and liberty, and the freedom and liberty of honest and innocent people everywhere on the planet.

It's time to sting like a bee, and keep stinging them where it hurts until they collapse into the real world. The place where the rest of us live and breathe and have beautiful children who should not ever witness the meatgrinder that this administration has loosed upon the world.

Bush and Cheney must stand and answer to Lady Justice, or they will have the world in chains.

Thank you for your steadfast courage, in standing up to them.

SB Gypsy


...and I believe that fulfills the Meme, too. ;)

Generals Admit: Surge Not Working (Yet)

WASHINGTON - For months September has been cast as a pivotal time for determining the course of the war in Iraq, yet a top general now says a solid judgment on the U.S. troop buildup there may not come until November.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno told reporters after a Senate hearing Thursday that he would need beyond September to tell if improvements in Iraq represent long-term trends.

"In order to do a good assessment I need at least until November," said Odierno, a deputy to Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq.

Petraeus and other officials testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and briefed reporters on Thursday. Making strides toward security and political goals could take more time than first thought, they warned.

A stark assessment came via video link from the Iraqi capital when Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador, told the committee that Iraq is gripped by fear and struggling to meet security and political goals by September.

The goalposts are being moved again. Instead of admitting that the clusterf**k that is Iraq got that way because of the insistance of a venal, incompetent, imoral, lying, Cowboy - they keep it going in order to squeeze the last drops of gold out of our treasury to the benefit of Halliburton. The same Halliburton who recently moved to Dubai. (Oh yeah, that's their main just another office)

It's long long past time to get our people out of the meatgrinder.

The heart and soul of America is the rule of law, and the principle that those laws apply to all of us equally. By taking into our heart and soul the terrorists' values and strategies, by spreading fear and violence and helplessness, we destroy ourselves, and encourage chaos in the world.

This is a time in history when we need the goodwill and the cooperation of everyone - the whole world - to turn global warming around and save our grandchildren. Instead, we are running around throwing bombs, killing innocents, and trying to steal their oil.

This. is. immoral.

*For the complete article, go here

The New Face Of War

For every Soldier, there are one or two contractors in Iraq to care for them

Silent surge in contractor 'armies'

By Brad Knickerbocker
Wed Jul 18, 4:00 AM ET
* emphasis mine
* My thoughts

There are two coalition armies in Iraq: the official one, which fights the war, and the private one, which supports it.This latter group of civilians drives dangerous truck convoys, cooks soldiers' meals, and guards facilities and important officials. They rival in size the US military force there, and thousands have become casualties of the conflict. If this experience is any indication, they may change the makeup of US military forces in future wars.

To recap, HALF of the people we have in the war zone are civilians, and the civilians servicing our military have had thousands of casualties.

Having civilians working in war zones is as old as war itself. But starting with US military action in the Balkans and Colombia in the mid-1990s and accelerating rapidly in Afghanistan and Iraq, the number and activity of contractors has greatly increased. Coming from dozens of countries, hired by hundreds of companies, contractors have seen their numbers rise faster than the Pentagon's ability to track them.

Now, the challenges of this privatization strategy are becoming clear.

Everything from who controls their activities to who cares for them when wounded remains unresolved, say experts in and out of the military. This has led to protests from families in the United States as well as concerns in military ranks about how contractors fit into the chain of command.

"This is a very murky legal space, and simply put we haven't dealt with the fundamental issues," says Peter Singer, a foreign policy specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "What is their specific role, what is their specific status, and what is the system of accountability? We've sort of dodged these questions."

As the inevitable drawdown of US military forces in Iraq occurs, the importance of civilian workers there is likely to grow.

"In my view, the role of contractors is just going to continue to escalate, probably at an ever-increasing rate," says Deborah Avant, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, whose research has focused on civil-military relations.

For example, the new US Embassy now being completed in Baghdad – 21 buildings on 104 acres, an area six times larger than the United Nations complex in New York – is likely to be a permanent fixture needing hundreds if not thousands of civilian contractors to maintain it and provide services.

In Iraq, up to 180,000 contractors
Estimates of the number of private security personnel and other civilian contractors in Iraq today range from 126,000 to 180,000 – nearly as many, if not more than, the number of Americans in uniform there. Most are not Americans. They come from Fiji, Brazil, Scotland, Croatia, Hungary, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Australia, and other countries.

"A very large part of the total force is not in uniform," Scott Horton, who teaches the law of armed conflict at Columbia University School of Law, said in congressional testimony last month. In World War II and the Korean War, contractors amounted to 3 to 5 percent of the total force deployed. Through the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War, the percentage grew to roughly 10 percent, he notes. "But in the current conflict, the number appears to be climbing steadily closer to parity" with military personnel. "This represents an extremely radical transformation in the force configuration," he says.

Until recently, there has been little oversight of civilian contractors operating in Iraq. The Defense Department is not adequately keeping track of contractors – where they are or even how many there are, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report last December. This is especially true as military units rotate in and out of the war zone (as do contractors) and institutional memory is lost.

This lack of accountability has begun to change with a Democrat-controlled Congress. As part of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act passed last year, Congress now requires that civilian contractors who break the law – hurt or kill civilians, for example – come under the legal authority of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So far, however, the Pentagon has not issued guidance to field commanders on how to do this.

So, they don't know who's there, they don't know how many are there, they cannot keep track of these contractors because the military is transferring in and out for their tours of duty while the contractors stay or go as the corporations please. These contractors carry weapons, and can operate lawlessly if they want to, and some have been found, even in the clusterf**k that is Iraq, to have committed grave crimes against civilians with impunity.

Proposed bills in the House and Senate would require "transparency and accountability in military and security contracting." For example, companies would be required to provide information on the hiring and training of civilian workers, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would have to issue rules of engagement regarding the circumstances under which contractors could use force.

Senior commanders acknowledge the value of contractors, especially those that are armed and ready to fight if attacked.

At his Senate confirmation hearing in January, Army Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the multinational force in Iraq, said that the "surge" by US forces in Iraq might not include enough American troops. "However, there are tens of thousands of contract security forces and [Iraqi] ministerial security forces that do, in fact, guard facilities and secure institutions," he added. "That does give me the reason to believe that we can accomplish the mission in Baghdad."

Can anyone say mercenaries?? What does that say about the US? That we don't have the unity of purpose here to prosecute this war, so we go around the world, hiring the lowest bidder and paying them premium wages, just to do what we don't have the conviction to do ourselves. All the while we cut cut cut the funding for veterans' programs that serve our military families, throwing our own citizens who have risked all to the wolves and (literally) onto the streets to rot.

Nice. Job. Bushie.

Still, many senior military officers worry about the impact that relying on so many civilian contractors – especially armed private security forces – will have on the conduct of future conflicts. This past Christmas Eve, for example, a Blackwater USA contractor shot and killed an Iraqi security guard. The contractor was fired and returned to the US. The FBI and Justice Department are investigating.

The US military needs to take "a real hard look at security contractors on future battlefields and figure out a way to get a handle on them so that they can be better integrated – if we're going to allow them to be used in the first place," Col. Peter Mansoor, a deputy to General Petraeus, recently told Jane's Defence Weekly.

"I meet with a lot of O-5s and O-6s [lieutenant colonels and colonels] at the war colleges, and you hear a lot of that discomfort with how far it's gone," says Mr. Singer of Brookings.

Opinions differ over whether the trend in using more contractors is here to stay.

"Every war is unique, but the heavy use of private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan is likely to persist in future conflicts," says military analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. "Relying on market sources is intrinsically more flexible than using government workers, and nobody seriously believes that the market will fail to respond to multibillion dollar opportunities even when danger is involved."

God, when will we wake up and say "enough of war and destruction"? It's gotta be bad for business...

"In addition," says Dr. Thompson, "modern military technology often requires support that only the original makers can provide." Hello - why are we producing military technology that is too hard to teach someone to use?

A new military-industrial complex?
Other observers also foresee an increase in military contractors – for darker reasons.

The "military-industrial complex" that former President Eisenhower warned of has been overshadowed by the "war-service industry," says Dina Rasor, coauthor of the recent book "Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War." The complex relied on the cold war to keep its budgets high, knowing that the weapons it produced probably would never be used. The war-service industry, by contrast, "doesn't build weapons but has to have a hot war or an occupation going on in order to keep its budgets high," says Ms. Rasor. Constituencies will be built within the military and in Congress to promote this growing industry, she predicts.

Just like privatizing our prisons has led to a swelling prison population, so privatizing our "war service industry" will lead to more and more war.

Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of Defense, takes a different view. He predicts that the number of contractors providing military logistics support will shrink, in part because the US effort in Iraq will wind down at some point and in part because the US plans to increase the armed forces by 92,000 soldiers and marines over the next five years.

Looking ahead to the need for peacekeeping and stabilization in future conflicts, Dr. Korb says, "I can't imagine doing it again without thinking it through."

Uh, glad HE's so confident in our leaders.

After trials of war, a lone helping hand in the US
Contrary to popular perception, most contractors are not the beefy, grim guys wearing scary sunglasses and carrying guns. But in a war like Iraq, every one from mechanics to translators has become a target. At least 916 contractors have been killed in the four-year war and more than 12,000 wounded, according to official statistics and Labor Department figures provided to the New York Times and Reuters. An unknown number experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

But unless they have previous military service, contractors are not eligible for help from the US Department of Veterans Affairs. Many have been denied treatment by insurance companies. In some cases, the companies they worked for have successfully fought legal efforts to declare the firms liable for physical or mental injury resulting from work in Iraq.

Enter Jana Crowder, a "stay-at-home mom with four kids" who started a website for moral support during the seven months her husband was an engineering contractor in Iraq.

"I had no idea what I was getting into," says Mrs. Crowder, who lives in Knoxville, Tenn. "I found a whole different war zone out there – contractors coming home physically and mentally damaged. I didn't even know what PTSD was, but I had guys calling me up saying they had nightmares, that they couldn't sleep, that they were hallucinating and crying."

If we ever do get out of Iraq, we will have this time bomb in the bosom of our society: not only ex-military with horrific maiming and mental problems who cannot get adequate care, but also hundreds of contractors with untreated PTSD.

And the nightmare that I cannot get out of the back of my mind: if the withdrawl ends with 'copters airlifting people out of the embassy grounds, how are all the 150,000 contractors going to get themselves out of there safely? Seems like the contractors as a whole are getting browner and browner, and are being drawn less and less from america. Is the ultimate plan to just abandon them there?

When 12 Nepali workers were killed in an unprotected convoy in route to jobs in Iraq, Chicago Tribune reporter Cam Simpson covered the story. What he discovered was shocking. These men had left their country for work in Jordan, not Iraq. He also discovered that a contractor called First Kuwaiti was holding other workers against their will and forcing them to work. They wanted to leave but were told they couldn’t. article here

We're not only abusing Iraqi civilians, but enslaving workers from other countries not involved with the conflict. Throughout this war the agressors (that would be US) have shown a total disregard for anyone caught in the meatgrinder, military OR civilian.

The administration that billed itself as returning morality to the White House has done anything but. It is not only the most imoral and hypocritical band of felons* ever to hold power in the United States, they are the most incompetent bunch of cronies I personally have ever seen.

MMmmmmm - Peach Mint!



*fel·on¹ (fĕl'ən)
n.

1. Law. One who has committed a felony.
2. Archaic. An evil person.

adj. Archaic.

Evil; cruel.

[Middle English feloun, from Old French felon, wicked, a wicked person, from Medieval Latin fellō, fellōn-, possibly of Germanic origin.]

fel·on² (fĕl'ən)
n. A painful purulent infection at the end of a finger or toe in the area surrounding the nail.

Time to kick them out if our White House!

Update: Bill Clinton speaks out on teh war

"There is no evidence that, whether we have a good day in a particular community or region in Iraq, that we have either the political reconciliation process within the country working or any diplomatic process that's got a chance to help with the neighbors," the former Democratic president said.

"I believe that Gen. Petraeus is a very able man and I don't have any doubts that they'll win some battles," Clinton said. "I hope this works. I think every American hopes this works. But it can't work beyond winning a few battles. It has to be accompanied by ... progress on the political front."

The Next Move

Ratcheting up the stakes in the wake of the GOP’s successful blocking of a vote on Iraq withdrawal just moments ago, Harry Reid just announced on the Senate floor that he won’t allow a vote on the entire Defense Authorization bill until the Senate GOP drops its filibustering of votes on Iraq.

It comes only moments after the Republican filibuster succeeded in preventing a vote on the Reed-Levin amendment, which would have mandated withdrawal by April 2008.

Majority Leader Reid:

I have temporarily laid aside the Defense Authorization bill and have entered a motion to reconsider.

But let me be clear to my Republican colleagues – I emphasize the word “temporarily”. We will do everything in our power to change course in Iraq. We will do everything in our power to complete consideration of a Defense Authorization bill. We must do both.

And just to remind my Republican colleagues – even if this bill had passed yesterday, its provisions would not take effect until October.

So we will come back to this bill as soon as it is clear we can make real progress. To that end, I have asked the Democratic Whip and Democratic Manager of the bill to sit down with their counterparts to work on a process to address all outstanding issues related to this bill so the Senate can return to it as soon as possible.

The adults have returned

*hattip to jeff, over at Shakesville

Poll: 92 percent want 'country of origin' labels

Time to shed some light on the industrial food chain!

WASHINGTON - U.S. consumers overwhelmingly support stricter food labeling laws, with 92 percent of Americans wanting to know which country produced the food they are buying, a consumer magazine said on Tuesday.

Consumer Reports said recent food scares, including worries about peanut butter and lettuce, have made Americans more interested in knowing not only how their food was produced but where it was made. [I'm more concerned about flour - which is much easier to adulterate]

“I was definitely shocked at how high these numbers were,” said the study’s coauthor Dr. Urvashi Rangan, a senior scientist and policy analyst at Consumers Union, the nonprofit organization that publishes Consumer Reports magazine.

“It’s much like a nutrition label or an ingredient label in that it needs to be part of the general information coming in about imported foods,” she added.

The poll was conducted with 1,004 telephone interviews between June 7 and June 10.

Last month, USDA said it would reopen public comment to its so-called “country-of-origin” labeling measure until August 20.

Congress enacted the meat-labeling requirement as part of a 2002 law but has twice delayed the start date, now set for September 30, 2008.

Will this be a campaign issue? Can we MAKE it one? With more and more of our food supply (along with every thing else) coming from overseas, and with more of it coming from places where we have no reason to assume the goodwill and proffessionalism of the exporters, it's high time that we expand testing. It's high time we give consumers enough information to make informed decisions.

If you want to let the marketplace decide, you must not hobble their process.

Large corporations need to understand - if they creat a paranoid public because of their secrecy and lax regulations, they cannot win when the next round of regulations seek to limit consumers' risk of sickness and death.

So, I say: If corporations want the "invisible hand of the market" to decide, they must open up ALL of their secrets to public scrutiny. EVERYTHING - including recepies and processes that might be patented or company secrets. All their financials, too.

Otherwise, they need to submit to some regulations, before more people die of tainted food and water - or loose their license to operate in this country.

Pictures of our Good Planet

To start us off, Skylar sent us 4 (four!) for me to choose from, and greedy me, I chose all of them(of course)

1. Lake Diablo in the North Cascades of Washington state....the aquamarine color of this lake along the N Cascade Loop Scenic Drive gives it a surreal look.

2. Near Newport, Oregon where the seagulls and a fishing boat add to the picturesque seascape along the central Oregon coast. We are always mesmerized by the various shades of blue and lavender we see on this coast.

3. Elephant Seals near San Simeon, California. These huge 2 ton males spar for love along the beach, and then rest in the sand exhausted from their efforts.

4. Golden Horn Granitic Batholiths in the North Cascades presents a different geological terrain of the Cascades which move from lush, green elevation to bare rock rising toward the sky. This reminded me of a sand castle with its intricate spires.

Two From Evan :

here's a mourning dove in winter

And a picture of a great purple anemone which I happened to came across in the northern area of the great barrier reef.

From C.Corax : Two Pics

The first is an immature red-tailed hawk sitting on a roof and studying me very carefully.

The second photo is a detail of a common green darner.

From Bev Wigney at the Burning Silo blog

Dogbane Beetle (Chrysochus auratus) on leaf of Spreading Dogbane (Apocynum androsaemifolium)

Unidentified Katydid on Black-eyed Susan flower
(Rudbeckia hirta)

Liza Lee Miller

Thought everyone could use the cooling influence of a redwood tree!

Wanderin' Weeta (With Waterfowl and Weeds) sends us two:

The pink flowers are a cultivar of dogwood, found growing in Bear Creek Park, Surrey. And the white flowers are tiny, tiny flowers on my boxwood hedge, so small I didn't even know they were there until I went looking for a crab spider I thought I had seen.

Dawn from Washington sent us:

this is a song sparrow soaking up the sun after a cloudy morning yesterday.

From Robin Andrea at the Dharma Bums


I've barely been out taking photographs, but I checked back a few days and found this one. The baby had been somewhere in our front yard, and the momma was off by the driveway. When I came out of the house they both ran up the driveway to the road, and I slowly went out there and snapped this pic.

Dave from Alaska sent in this cutie:

This is a baby Merlin that fell from it's nest and Ma & Pa were no where to be found. It was brought into the Bird Treatment and Learning Center in Anchorage, Alaska where it was fed, watered, weighed and checked over before it was sent home with a foster mom.

Dave Dorsey
Bird Treatment and Learning Center
6132 Nielson Way, Anchorage, AK 99518
Returning Birds to the Wild since 1988


From Tara, a slide show that's basically an ad. But still, they are good photos.

http://mybeautifulamerica.com/mybeautifulamerica.htm

this is a departure from the usual "Good Planets"
submission, but I think might be most appropriate.


And finally, two from my walk by the river yesterday:

Amazing difference between flood stage and the regular flow, most of this shoreline and back into the woods is under water in the spring. Yesterday I walked on a sandbar right out into the middle of the stream.

This snag washed up about 10 feet into the woods off of a bend in the stream.

That's all for the Good Planets this week, next submission date is 07/27 - send your pics of our good planet to me at sbgypsy @ hotmail.com.
So many thanks to Robin Andrea for starting this traveling picture show, I had a great time with all these beauties.

*as always, click on the pic for a larger view.

...And feel free to hang around for a few and enjoy the pics downthread...

Quote of the Day

“We are not greedy, we gave up on the hope of living like the rest of the world long ago ... all we want is the luxury of water and a good night sleep.” —Lamia Hasan, a Baghdad mother of three


hattip to The Alternate Brain

Dragon Blogging

It's been a long time since I've put up a pic of one of my pets...


Submit your Good Planets photos to me at SBGypsy @ Hotmail.com for the post tomorrow.

Teh Pictures

You can see the high water mark, the bunch of grass and stuff that's caught on something, right over the diagonal log in the center. On this bridge, there are two supports, so this is only half of the river in this pic. It boggles my mind - the amount of water that flows here in the spring. Further - this bridge is subject to flooding over the top, and usually I need to go an alternate way at least a couple of days a year.

A Baltimore Oriole, eating the spent blossoms on my tickseed. I noticed those plants when I got in this morning (this is my garden at work) and I was going to run out and deadhead them, but I'm glad I was distracted! When my brother called me over to look, there were 4 other orioles on the same plant. They must really like it!

A view of my garden, weedy and overgrown as it is...

I do love the lilies, can't wait for the pink and white ones.

*as always, click on the pic to enlarge it

Open Letter to Senator Olympia Snowe

Dear Senator Snowe,

I read in the news that Republican lawmakers are going to block the bill that was just proposed to bring the troops home. We have someone in the White House who has no clue how to end this war (simply “to win” is not a strategy). In fact, if I was inclined to believe that any president would work against the interests of the people of the United States of America, I would believe that of this president.

I would like the congress of the United States to put America’s citizens ahead of President Bush’s ego. I would expect the Congress of the United States to do the practical and pragmatic thing to protect the US economy, which is being drained for generations by this illegal and immoral war.

I would expect the Congress of the United States to put democratic principles and ideals to the forefront when they deal with the other countries of the world. This war violates the founding principles and ideals of the US. We don’t tell others how to live. We do not depose the leaders of other countries. We don’t start wars.

Now the news tells us that our President is saying the same darn things about Iran as he said about Iraq just before he busted in there like a big bully and trashed the place, killing many tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens and creating an unstable magnet for the anger and despair of a raped and assaulted culture. We cannot sustain another war.

Face it, he’s an idiot, and he’s cashing checks we cannot cover.

There are members of our National Guard who are being called upon to serve their FIFTH tour of duty in Iraq. *FIFTH*

FIFTH TOUR OF DUTY

Think about that for a minute. These are people who volunteered to protect the States, not dodge bullets halfway around the world.

If not now, Ms Snowe, exactly when?

Thank You

SB Gypsy
Office Manager

*faxed to (202)224-1946

update 07/11/07
Woo Hoo Sen Snowe and Hagel told the white house not to wait until Sept

Yucca Blooming

Judith Miller spent 12 weeks in jail to protect Big Tough Mr. Libby.
Waaahh Waaahh, Old Scooter don't got the brass ones to spend even a day.