US Generals and Admirals Against Torture !

More evidence that our Generals, Admirals, and Colonels, as I have found from personal experience, deserve this nation's admiration and respect, though they only seem to be free to express their honest opinion after retirement: General Joseph Hoar, USMC (Ret.), see photo, Lieutenant General Robert G. Gard, Jr., USA (Ret.), Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn, USN (Ret.), Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, USA (Ret.), Vice Admiral Al Konetzni, USN (Ret.), Lieutenant General Charles Otstott, USA (Ret.), Major General John Batiste, USA (Ret.), Major General John L. Fugh, USA (Ret.), Rear Admiral Donald J. Guter, USN (Ret.), Major General Fred E. Haynes, USMC (Ret.), Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, USN (Ret.), Major General Melvyn Montano, ANG (Ret.), Brigadier General David M. Brahms, USMC (Ret.), Brigadier General James Cullen, USA (Ret.), Brigadier General Evelyn P. Foote, USA, (Ret.), Brigadier General David R. Irvine, USA (Ret.), Brigadier General Murray G. Sagsveen, USA (Ret.), Brigadier General Stephen n. Xenakis, USA (Ret.), Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson, USA (Ret.), Ambassador - Former Vietnam POW Douglas "Pete" Peterson, USAF (Ret.) have sent the following letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning the nomination of William J. Haynes to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourht Circuit:

"We send this letter reluctantly, and after much reflection; none of us has publicly expressed concern over any other nominee to the federal bench.

What compels us to take this unusual step is our profound concern about the role Mr. Haynes played in establishing -over the objections of uniformed military lawyers - detention and interrogation policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanemo which led not only to the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody but to a dangerous abrogation of the military's long-standing commitment to the rule of law."

Please read the full letter, which explored Mr. Haynes' recommendations to permit the use of attack dogs, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees, forced nudity, etc.
Please read the full letter by clicking on this link!

You Can't Handle the Truth!

Lt. Colonel Dan Marvin, a former Green Beret, recently won a court battle against the US Government, over the release of his book: "Expendable Elite". Please click HERE to read sample pages. Apparently, the Johnson administration had been funneling weapons to our "enemy", the Vietcong, and was providing safe havens for them in Cambodia.

He further accused the Pentagon and President Johnson of leading our soldiers to the slaughter, in order to keep the war going at any cost, with the intent of losing, not winning the war. Why? Wolfgang P. May, Advisory Team Leader in the Iron Triangle, says: "Two Thumbs up - Check it out!"

The Roots of Haditha

Few of us are rational creatures, though we always like to pretend that we are. Did you really buy that car you are now driving based strictly on its appearance, horsepower, and fuel consumption? Chances are that the advertising agency, which knows how to pull your emotional strings, was able to bypass these rational considerations,and appealed directly to your "feelings", your unconcious mind.

I can tell you from my personal experiences in Vietnam, that combat pulls a lot of very complex strings in your psyche, which is at least the sum total of everything that you have ever experienced in your lifetime: Your joys and sorrows, your fears and hopes, your irrational prejudices. Get the picture?

In many cases, you survive because your adrenalin helps to facilitate those split-second decisions, which your conscious mind would weigh in the balance just long enough to get you killed. Unfortunately, that same "unconscious" mind which has just saved your life, also has a dark side: It will sometimes encourage you to make decisions to make judgments, that Abe Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature" would soundly condemn.

I believe that, which caused the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, is the same disease, which overpowered the rational judgment of those Marines in Iraq. You can certainly blame the commander. Our Armed Forces doctrine states that he is responsible for "everything his unit does or fails to do", BUT:

Having met my own dark side in Vietnam, I know how hard this is to make a rational and compassionate judgment, when you have just been through a firefight. Therefore, I prefer to transfer the required accountability to the President, who sent these men into harms way. After all, as President Truman acknowledged: "The Buck Stops Here!"

The Thoughts are Free (MP3 - sing along with George)

If you will click HERE:(MP3-sing along with George, you will be able to download this very well done satyrical song, which is based on an old German protest song, which has its roots in past centuries. The song was forbidden during the Nazi days. This recording is courtesy of the RajaDefNet Singers, from Louisville, Kentucky:

Oh, the thoughts they are free, but that's not true for oil
so the things we must do, will make your blood boil
you might think it's wacky to kill an Iraqui
for my new SUV, but the thoughts they are free.

The contracts are gone, they went to Halliburton
They'll do the job best, George Bush says he's certain
Dick Chaney's a'cheerin', he loves war profiteering
I'll tell you no lie, he's a very rich guy.

So why did we go? George says cause of terror
and the weapons we'll find, but of course he's in error.
And if you ask old bin Laden, his Freude is Schaden
there were no al-Quaeda ties, so we killed the wrong guys.

Die Gedanken sind frei, but don't start to talkin'
If you disagree, John Ashcroft is watchin'
and if you'll sit for a spell, I'll go on and on about Orwell
and 1984, 'cause we ain't free no more.

Ten Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State

1. The Internet Clampdown: Attempts to regulate and filter internet content are intensifying lately. The Pentagon, which issued an "Information Operations Roadmap in 2003, outlines tactics such as network attacks.

2. "The Long War": Please click on :Alternet, where I found this excellent expose, indicates that the "War on Terror" will never end, since we are continuously "pissing off people who have access to explosives". This "War" will eternally justify suspensions of civil liberties, military expansion, domestic spying, massive deficit spending which will destroy the buying power of those on fixed incomes. Our government's message: "Get used to it!"

3. The "Patriot Act" will be with us forever. It gives the government the right to sneak into your house, look through all your stuff, and not tell you about it for weeks, all based on a "rubber stamp" warrant.

Please read the rest at this link to: ALTERNET

The Face of Moral Courage: Natalie Maines and the Dixie Chicks

The Dixie Chicks were on top of the "country" music world in 2003, when George Bush decided to invade Iraq. We know that he did so by lying to the citizens who elected him, by fabricating evidence that Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction, and by FALSELY linking him to Osama Bin Laden. As everyone who read the foreign press knew, the two were bitter enemies, and would have tried to kill each other, had they been placed into the same room. In the process, his people outed Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA operative who was tracking nuclear bomb technology in Iran. Thanks to our Bush government, we now have no "humint", or human intelligence, keeping an eye on the progress of nuclear weapons technology in Iran.

Natalie Maines said what most of us who knew the facts of the situation did say in our blogs, though our subservient press did not have the courage to report the truth. Because of her patriotic and courageous act FOR AMERICA, "country" music stations banned the Dixie Chicks, in an act that was not only cowardly, but also anti-American.

Now we are in a mess in Iraq, and the so-called "patriotic" country disk jockeys are partly responsible for it. How can they sleep at night, after helping to betray America, which they claim to love?

Why do we have a outrageously high gas prices?

A May 1 article in Germany's largest News Magazine - "Der Spiegel", indicates that since our invasion, the Iraqi oil industry is on the verge of collapse, leading to more world shortages. When Saddam was in power, he tried to sell as much oil as possible to whoever wanted to buy, whether friend or potential foe.

Because its northern pipeline into Turkey has been out of commission for months as a result of continuing insurgent attacks, Iraq now processes all of its oil exports through its two terminals on the Gulf, which are in deplorable shape, and have not been properly repaired. This means less oil, higher prices at the pump, dismal approval ratings for the Bush regime which lied us into our invasion of Iraq. During this deception, President Bush's regime succeded in "outing" the CIA's agent handler for Iran. I will take many years to replace the agents in Iran who reported to him, and meanwhile, we may lack "human" intel (vs electronic, etc.), which is now severly needed, if an ill-advised invasion is in the planning process.

If we now commit the additional folly of attacking Iran, the two Gulf terminals, pathetic as they are, will be at risk, and Iran is likely to quit selling oil on the world market, and our crisis will then become a catastrophy, from which we are unlikely to recover in the foreseeable future. Many of us may be walking many miles to work, if our workplace survives the inevitable world-wide economic depression, which is certain to follow a severe oil shortage. It will take years to replace oil with other fuel sources in sufficient quantities to avert this catastrophe.

Even the many citizens of the United States, who are unable to find Iran or Iraq on a world map, will soon understand the impact of our misadventure into the Middle East. It has been, and will continue to be a massive tragedy for the Iraqi as well as the American people