I just used it to replace a generic Microsoft Wallpaper. It stretches quite well.

If Bush and Cheney are impeached, who will become the President?

It is absolutely crucial for Bush and Cheney, who are now cowering in a corner somewhere in fear of the truth coming out, to make the alternative to their rule as unappealing as possible.

Thus, as time continues, we can confidently expect the attacks on Pelosi to become ever more vicious and vituperative.

Anybody know why Ted Stevens is stuttering self-promoting garbage on the senate floor right now?

Because his vocal cords are in use?

Yet – due to their civilian leaders – US forces in Iraq and Afganistan have committed thousands – if not tens of thousands – of acts of violence against innocent civilians.

Bombing hospitals and water treatment facilities is simply a war crime against the civilian population: tens of thousands of deaths from water-borne diseases.

Our military were and are complicit in horrific human rights crimes crimes – and the senior unifromed leadership, command structure, and senior officers in the field deliberately planned and executed the violence against civilians which brought about these cimes.

When the Soviets or their client states did this, we called it human rights abuse – and human rights crimes.

Those blinded by nationalism will have their metaphorical apoplexies – and come out with all sorts of bluster which merely obsucres the fact the human rights are universal, and war crimes by someone in an American uniform are evil. And war crimes perpetrated by the Soviets, Chinese, North Koreans, and Israelis are evil.

And my whole life the US military and US “security services” have run about the globe wreaking atrocities on civilians in nations where people talked adopting rules for owning stuff – inanimate objects – and dared to propose rules for owning property which aren’t the rules the megacorps have forced upon America.

So – as USMC General Smedley Butler observed – the US military are sent out as “enforcers” for US corporate balance sheets. US troops killed civilians in Nicaragua to put the Somoza dictatorship in power – US planes mined that nation’s harbors when they threw off our dictator. In Angola, US “security services” fed weapons in to a civil war than killed thousands – US megacorps didn’t like the Angolan goverments property laws. In the Phillipines, US forces brutally slaughtered the indigenous people, who foolishly thought Americans had arrived to liberate them from the Spanish empire.

Nope – the US military arrived in the Phillipiines as our first formal act of empire. In the age of steam ships, thatpower needed fueling stations, and the steam ships carried the trade. So US economic forces needed those foreign fuelling stations – and our war with Spain obtained them.

The US military was well suited to the task of near genocidial violence against indigenous peoples – the US military pursued and executed genocidal violence against the indigenous peoples of North America.

And the US military has been mst effective in destroying the indigenous peoples of Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Iraq. Nice to see they’re keeping their core competencies intact.

So while I respect the peole in uniform, and believe most of them sincerely think they are protecting out nation, the post-WWII actions of the US military have brought death to millions, (and misery to hundereds of millions) of people who never threatened us.

Until our troops (or the weapons our troops gave to local surrogates) came to kill them and their families.

These outcomes were neccessary for US megacorps to remove resources from other nations without paying the locals full price.

I don’t understand why Americans – or anyone else – should die so Chiquita/United Brands can keep the quarterly earnings high.

The rest of the world doesn’t seem to understand, either – and since the Berlin Wall fell, the rest of the world has grown to fear us.

So I wish the Iraq war and the destruction and death it has brought to Iraqis never happened. And I wish the US troops injured and killed in Iraq had never been sent there, and never been harmed.

But I can’t shed a tear about the professional officer corps leaving the US military in droves. Save for direct retaliation against Al-Queda, inmy lifetime the US military has been an instrument of state violence used on behalf of private economic power.

50,000 Americans died in Vietnam because – why – other people might have different laws about how people own stuff?

Guess what Pentagon – how other people in other lands write property laws is not a threat to our domestic security. Other nation’s property laws are only a threat to Amercians so insanely wealthy that they have fortunes they have chosen invest abroad.

Since 1948, the Pentagon has been unable to recognize the difference between our nation’s physical security and the very narrow interests of the megacorps’ owners.

So our schools, roads, rails, hospitals, elders, communities have been systematically exploited and defunded…in order for Standard Brands to take whatever they want from Central America. And so Big Energy can take the Iraqi’s national treasure – their oil.

Bush’s oedipal death-grip on his father’s world has destroyed the Atlantic alliance and may well hobble the US military’s capacity to send ground troops into other nations.

For the rest of the planet, freedom from the US military’s violence would be a welcome change.

I hope whatever is rebuilt from the post-Iraq US military will have the capacity to defend our nation’s security, yet lack the the capacity to invade other nations.

America and the US Military invaded Iraq in violation of International law – and America and the US Military are responsible for the war crimes and human rights crimes our soldiers have been ordered to commit there.

For the sake of the rest of the planet – as well as our own sakes – I hope this illegal war so breaks America’s civilian and military capacity to wage aggressive war that America never regains the capacity for Imperial war.

May what began with the slaughter of Native Americans and metastasized after our genocidal campaigns in the Phillipines finally end amidst the futility and gore in Iraq.

US military (and spooks) are no more or less worthy of life than are the civilians they have deliberately murdered in the megacorps’ service.

The very heroic role of the US Military in defeating the Japanese and German Empires, in defeating the cancer of the Confederacy, and in defeating the British does not insulate, exculpate, or immunize them from responsibility for their war crimes and human rights crimes in other theatres.

With the US military’s civilian leadership in thrall to the megacorps, collapse of America’s capacity to wage aggressive war is the only apparent route for ridding the planet of America’s invasions and wars.

The world collapsed Britain’s capacity for wars of aggression with the post-Suez Sterling crisis.

Since 2002, the Euro has apppreciated by 50% against the dollar. Reagan and the Rethugs have only maintained their voodoo economics trick because the world chose to denominate oil purchases in dollars.

With the Iraq invasion/occupation, the rest of the planet is no longer willing to finance our wars. Energy suppliers are now selling energy in Euros. China is “diversifying” foreign currency reserves (selling dollars).

And America’s military/megacorp sector is about to experience what the British learned after Suez.

Too bad thousands of US troops died, tens of thousands maimed, hundreds of thousands or Iraqis died, and millions of Iraqis were made refugees before the palnet found a way to cripple America’s capacity for wars of aggression.

And too bad we’ve pissed our nation’s wealth down the rathole of the military-industrial complex for almost sixty years.

Today our national treasure is squandered, our citizens are “passed” through crumbling educational systems, and our health care resources wither away…

all so a bunch of people in suits could fight proxy wars with a bunch of other people in suits (somewhere else) over what property laws were written in yet other nations.

Sixty years of Imperial War have nearly broken our nation. Breaking America’s capacity for Imperial War may yet allow us to restore our ravaged people, communities and infrastructure.

Or – our ambitious military leaders and the officer corps can further the destruction of our national wealth and resources by an illegal war with Iran.

Perhaps they will remember they swore an Oath to defend the Constitution – not Rove and the GOP – before it is too late for them to save what remains of our military.

Given the US military’s complicity in and advocacy for illegal wars of aggression over the last fifty years, I’m not optimistic.

LJ/Aquaria @ 69

Minnesotachuck @
8

Jason Sigger (The Armchair Generalist) points to this piece in today’s Boston Globe about the exodus of young West Point graduates from the Army. The rate is higher than it’s been since before 1977.

According to statistics compiled by West Point, of the 903 Army officers commissioned upon graduation in 2001, nearly 46 percent left the service last year — 35 percent at the conclusion of their five years of required service, and another 11 percent over the next six months. And more than 54 percent of the 935 graduates in the class of 2000 had left active duty by this January, the statistics show.

I’ve seen reports on military-related websites that the exodus rates for non-USMA junior officers and senior non-coms with 10-15 years of service are similarly high. When people bail when within sight of the 20 year retirement threshold it’s an ominous sign. These folks would have been the core of the future Army, folks.

That’s no lie.

54%? :::Gulp:::

Used to, the retention rates for the Academy grads, all branches, was way up there. You didn’t fight for admittance and endure four years of West Point (or USAFA or Annapolis) to bail the first chance available. The people who wanted to be there wanted to be there more than anything. They could have gone to their pick of the best universities–they chose the Academy.

I never thought I’d see the day when the retention rate for West Pointers dropped so low. Of course, this could be an Army problem. Anyone know the stats for USAFA or Annapolis? If it’s showing up for them, too, then the military is in serious trouble, especially 10 years from now, when these people would be moving into much bigger positions. I’m not saying that only Academy grads can fill those positions…but I’m worried that most of what remains of the top officer corps after this will be the wingnuttiest Bush cultists.

Not good. Not good, at all.