Soldiers are for fighting, not camp following. Back in the days of the draft and cannon fodder, we could afford to make involuntary soldiers do KP and crap details for $75 a month. You don't do that with professionals. How much would you charge to drive a truckload of gasoline from Frisco to San Diego if you knew people would be shooting at you along the way? My only time in hospital in Korea was when an incompetent mess sergeant made a bunch of us sick. I repeat - soldiers are for fighting.

Here's another link

Web Link

War profiteering is one of the reasons Bush and Cheney want to stay in Iraq forever. The onlt way to support our troops is to bring them home, right now. It's time to start the impeachment process. Once the facts come out, many Republicans will join the democrats and remove Bush/Cheney from office, straight to a criminal court and then straight to the war crimes court in the Hague.

Every time I turn around one of these guys is saying yet another ridiculous reason Bush and Cheney want to stay in Iraq "forever".

I never hear the real reason - to win a stable democracy for the Iraqis, which makes Iraq and the entire MidEast a safer place for them, and for us. What is so hard to understand about that?

When are you going to remember that this war is ALL VOLUNTEER? Nobody makes anyone sign up for the military OR the contracting jobs. When the volunteers dry up, the war will end, whether Iraq is stable or not.

We are not a socialist state, which has national control of and profits from businesses that deal with war.

Good grief.

There is ZERO chance of creating a stable democracy for Iraqi's. That's just marketing talk from "turd-blossom".

The reason for the Iraq war was to make a statement on American Power and our willingness to use it.

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Ha-Ha.Well written, Innocent. ( Not being sarcastic, I mean it).

You are right, I get frustrated. I can't stand to see silly statements stand alone, but I am going to have to get over it and more faith in my fellow humans to be smarter than to swallow everything whole.

That is what I am starting to learn. I am learning that no matter how much some people scream and shout lies and march and riot and strike..most people are smart enough to sort out it all out and are still there when it is all over. Since the smart ones aren't the ones with all the media time, I lose hope they are there..but then there comes a vote and the "silent majority" comes through.

DTL-you are correct. Most people wise up eventually. That's why The Buffoon-In-Chief is at 28 percent approval in the USA and sinking fast. His approval ratings in the rest of the world is ZERO and rightly so.

The Ronald Reagan library was the perfect location for the recent Republican presidential debates. The gruesome words of the Republican presidential candidates seemed to come from a séance communing with Reagan's departed spirit.

All the candidates believe in the manifest destiny of white men to do whatever the hell they want, namely keep brown people and women under control. Their ideology can be summed up in 50 words or less:

Americans have the right to kill.

Americans love God, married couples and pregnant women.

War is good.

Ronald Reagan was a saint.

Muslims, especially Iranians, must die.

Taxes are bad.

Fetuses are sacred.

Immigrants are bad.

Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton are evil.

There you have it, Republican ideology in a nutshell. If the Democrats are frightening because they are compromised and craven, the Republicans are frightening because they are true believers, the real McCoys. They openly indulge in their love of racism, violence and control.

Amazing the way non-white folk are busting their humps to submit to the agony of living among us beastly white folk when it is so much easier to stay in their non-white paradises. Must be those hypnotic Bush eyes. Yeah, that's it.

Typical comment about Bush's ratings..leaving out the rest of the story.

Do you have the guts to tell everyone the approval rating of the DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED Congress?

Think about what it all means. The more we move left, the more the approval ratings drop.

Hmmm

Funny. I don't remember Clinton being high in the approval ratings at this stage in his presidency either.

Really? at this point in his presidency, Clinton was at about 58 percent approval, and he left office at over 60 percent approval, one of the highest since they started measuring that stuff.

Late last year, when the Republicans controlled congress, it had extremely low approval ratings because of the Republican abysmal corruption. They are much higher now, and the Democrats get much higher approval ratings than the Republicans who will get wiped out in 08. Speaker pelosi is at 54 pecent approval which is very high for any speaker, in spite of the constant incitement against her by the right wing.

I didn't think presidents with that sort of rating had impeachment hearings.

Anonymous, I think you will be interested in this video, and maybe will want to forward it to people you know.

Web Link


Many who grew up waving the flag still believe in the Constitution behind it.

It is amusing to see a video that starts out with a warning of the FBI suppression of free speech, openly distributed on the internet. It then trots out a mess of truther conspiracies, all which fall dead as soon as you realize that war is among the least profitable investments. Since most of the "Merchants of Death" are publicly held companies, their records are there for all to see, and untopuchable by any government agency. Yes, the Rosie O'Donald metalurgy is front and center.

Well said Walter!

Sarlat, keep telling us what you believe to be true. I am laughing as I read that you actually believe congress's rating is higher now than it was in the fall.

Albert: You are HILARIOUS!! PLEASE find my a site saying that Clinton's approval ratings were 58% in his last 1 1/2 years in office!!

Walter, please actually listen to the questions asked and analyzed in the video. The intro is sarcastic, yeah, but the questions are valid and have not been answered publicly. Why? There are so many questions surrounding 9/11 that have not been answered publicly. Why?

Just the idea that our foundations might not be trustworthy is totally shocking, overwhelming. Don't think that isn't true for everyone who asks the questions. We may have fathers with purple hearts in Veteran's homes and brothers who fought in Vietnam and uncles who died in Korea.

On December 20, 1998, In the wake of the House of Representatives' approval of two articles of impeachment, Bill Clinton's approval rating has jumped 10 points to 73 percent, the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows. Between that time and the day he left office, his approval ratings stayed consistently above 60 percent. Clinton left office with an above 60 percent approval rating, the highest ever of any president since those ratings have begun to be measured. His presidency was also the last time we had a real president.

Clinton left office with polls revealing that many questioned his morals and ethics; however, he also retained a 65% approval rating, the highest end-of-presidency rating among all the Presidents that came into office after World War II.

I'm looking at clippings i have kept from january 2001 from the following publications:wall street journal, ny times, la times, dalas morning news, sf chronicle and national journal. they all refer to the major polls conducted when clinton left office. his approval ratings are all in the 65-67 percent range, astonishingly high for a 2 term president.on the othe hand, bush is now at 28 and sinking fast. when he leaves office or is removed, he will probably be at under 20 and is already widely considered as the worst president in our history.

Caroline, I watched as much of your video as I could, and the issues raised have all been examined to the limit of what can be known, and it is outside the realm of possibility that any substantive issues have not been resolved beyond the possibility of political influence. There are no questions of the physical behavior of buildings and aircraft left unresolved.
"Just the idea that our foundations might not be trustworthy is totally shocking, overwhelming."
Be assured that it is entirely possible that some people lied about some things. As I revere our foundations I also realize they are not perfect because people are not perfect, but they are all we have. What those liars cannot have done is make materials behave differently than the known engineering properties of those materials. If there is any cover up it is likely the complicity of engironmental activism in these building failures, kinda like the two shuttle failures sttributable to the abandonment of proved materials for "green" materials with fatal consequences and the failure of the replacement for asbestos in structural fireproofing. Incidentally, if the East bay ramp structural steel had been sprayed with asbestos it likely would not have collapse. The main argument against conspiracy is that peace is more conducive to making money than war is, and it allows that money to be enjoyed much more.

Web Link

No, he left with 54% job approval ratings, and 24% trust.

Then again, I was astonished when the American people trusted him with the most important job in the nation, after his story about "not inhaling" and denying Jennifer Flowers and ..well, no need to repeat it all. I recognized him for what he was.

Still, I have to admit, much better than the 40s I thought. I can't help but think it is a testament to the power of his adoring media and "charm". Anyone paying attention to the demolition of our military, intelligence community, business inducing tax rates, and "moral standing" had noticed that all were in decline ( everyone forgets we were well into the recession by the time he left office) by the end of his presidency and were NOT in approval. But, I have learned that it is a minority of us who pay attention to cause and effect.

I think it is also a powerful testament to the power of the media of the time. His "legacy" continues to unfold, though, much to my satisfaction.

Check out "Deriliction of Duty" by Robert Patterson, the Air Force officer in charge of the nuclear suitcase for years under Clinton.

Web Link

"Because he could" by Dick Morris

"Rewriting History" by Dick Morris

Good stuff.

Thankfully, I don't think there will be another presidency that gets away with as much as Clinton's did. We now have a fully open and free news system.

You can't argue with facts. Even the Wall Stret Journal poll found him Clinton to enjoy a 65 percent approval rate when he left office, this is all documented and an indisputable fact, unlike the WMD in Iraq. Ican cite about a 100 books for evry anti-Clinton book, books that point out how estonishingly disasterous, corrupt and incompetent regime the Bush reegime has been. However, we don't need any books about it, we all know it very well. Even If our nation survives another 1000 years, it's unlikely we will have an adoministration as corrupt, inept and incompetent as the Bush/Cheney regime. And there's no doubt whatsoever that Bill Clinton has been the greatest US president of the 20th century, along with FDR.

I rechecked my Constitution - we still have not handed rule over to polling organizations. Especially pleasing since many of the cited polls are push polls.

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Back to the posted topic: KBR is mentioned several times by the soldiers in Iraq in the posted video as the supplier of goods and personnel. Look it up, read the history and then decide please. I'm going outside now. It's a beautiful day.

Sarlat: Wow! Greatest president since FDR?

Did you know that we now know FDRs policies EXTENDED and WORSENED the great depression? Not knocking his policies: given what we knew and believed at the time I would have agreed with him. But, the point it that what people think in the moment is irrelevant to the test of time. By the way, you might want to actually study who FDR was, what he thought of WW2, the Atomic Bomb, the treatment of illegal aliens found on American soil during WW2, the treatment of the Japanese Americans, ..uhh. Well, study it up a bit, and then compare his policies to everything you diss now about our policies. I actually admire what he tried to do, and how he led WW2. I suspect you would hate him more than you hate Bush if he were in charge now.

Please name the precise accomplishments you attribute to Clinton that you think made him a great president.

And, when you say that you can't argue with facts, I gave you a web site for my source ( washington post) , where are your citations? Just repeating them doesn't make them true.

Reading through this thread I am reminded that all political leaders, no matter how big the majority when elected, seem to loose their popularity the longer they remain in office. When Tony Blair in Britain was first elected, it was with great furore and the hopes that New Labour would change the country and take away some of the stuffiness of the image of the Royal Family and the former Tory (Thatcherite) legacy. He is now pretty much suffering the same criticism as Bush. Reagan was continually criticised, yet he was elected for a second term and even his vp was elected. Now his legacy is mentioned as if could have done no wrong. Clinton is being viewed the same. With Bush jr going down in popularity almost daily, it will be very interesting to see how history views him in say ten years' time.

Web Link

A little site for you, Sarlat, about FDR. Did you know that many people believe to this day that FDR knew about, and allowed to happen, Pearl Harbor to convince the American people that we had to fight in WW2? Did you know that Japan attacked us..but we ALSO went after Germany who had never done anything against us? He understood the need to fight, everywhere, the ideology of fascism.

I think you should study your hero. You will be surprised at WHO he most resembles in beliefs about war, and when/who/where/how to fight it. In those days we SHOT ON SIGHT any illegal alien found coming onto our shores, CARPETBOMBED entire cities full of innocent people to win the war, and exploded ATOMIC BOMBS to break Japan's will. We hung, for treason, Tokyo Rose for undermining the morale of our troops, just for saying over the radio that the USA couldn't win! NO political leader said a peep against our country or against any belief that we would win. Who says treasonous things now?

The stakes were well known and well understood. The danger didn't seem, in the short term, against our country, after all Japan was just a little country and Europe was so far away. But people understood this was a struggle between the balance of power of freedom and dictatorship.

60 million people died in that war. How many fewer would have died if we had gone in sooner?

You really need to study your history to understand what is happening now, and to be careful not to adore someone that is exactly the opposite that you profess to want in a President.

Camp followers are a proud tradition of long standing. You don't train a warrior then waste his training on KP. My grandson spoke well of the contract purveyers during his two tours in Fallujah, making me wish there had been dedicated suttlers attending my needs in Korea instead of disaffected draftees. The work is hard and dangerous, so the pay is commenserate with that, but the books are open and examined frequently. Remember thou shall not muzzle the kine that tread the grain.

Many in the Republican party of the 1930's adored Hitler, including Senator Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the current imbecile-in chief. The Republican party of those days was united against entering the war and once it started threatened FDR with impeachment should he even consider entering WW2. FDR saved our society from total social and economic collapse, brought on us by the Republicans (sounds familiar). So did Clinton who inherited the largest deficit in our history and through implementing smart ideas and brilliant managing of our debt has created the largest and longest prosperity. It took the imbecile-in-chief no time at all to turn the Clinton surplus into the largest budget and trade deficit in history.

The Republians were not the only opponents of involvement in WWII. The people then were closer to the horrors of WWI than we are to Vietnam, and just as reluctant to get involved in another war. Roosevelt also condoned destroying food while people were hungry. Plowing under piglets and spilling milk comes to mind.

Dave, if you really believe what you write and aren't just flaming, I won't even try to get you on the same planet as the rest of us.

I know that even the most ardent admirer of Clinton knows better.

every one in a war zone should get the same pay be it troops truck drivers or cooks this is war what can i do for my country not how much i can make from it. all others are war profiters out to make a buck. for every dollar spent to fill a pocket means one less truck tank or gun. i ww2 unions managers owners all took pay cuts to get our boys the things they needed.stocks where frozen at pre war levels
to stop war profitering. the price was set on war goods to give a little profit that many companys spent on one more truck plane gun or tank today i wonder why no one cares. over chargeing for body armor waste fraud theft in money and equipment, and they say look im a patriot helping our troops as they line there pockets with the blood of our boys, road side bomb proof truck invented under clinton just now reaching the front. anti rpg lasers cojld be bought from Israel
not bought so a U.S.A company can sell it but is years away from doing so. yes i hate the profiter as they meake our toops less safe and are almost accountable to no one. democrat or republican should be outraged at this. war is war not to be bought or Sold. the stock holders of these companys should be screaming at the company officers about this and if this drags out much longer there will be a draft as our troops are mighty beat and need a break. most have been on 3&4 deployments some are due to leave the service but held in to make up for the lack of replacements. as for the camp followers that if over run they are not able to defend them selves putting more troops in danger. like the black water convoy attackt in Fallujah where they where hung from the bridge. mucking up the marines plans to isolate the city and choke it off from resupply causeing an early attack and the lives of our sons and daughters