Europe wants Peace

The rumors of discord between France and Germany are greatly exaggerated: See the leaders of both countries in this photo, and tell me with a straight face that they don't like each other! (Comments from Republican politicians excepted).

Europe has now become truly a sovereign entity, and even George Bush, with all of his sophisticated weapons and barely camouflaged bullshit has very little influence here. "Old" Europe is what George the adolescent imitator of truly great men, who have brought respect and even awe to the presidency, calls it. It may be old, though not quite as old as the Gospels, to which George pays lip service, while he violates all of the teachings of Jesus, whom he falsely claims to follow.

Time to drink a toast to peace with some fine "Moet White Star", produced entirely in "old" Europe, not the undeveloped shitholes which our boy George mistakenly calls "new" Europe.

U.S. Senate Crimes

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong, and 100,000 people paid with their lives. If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded ...., we would not be in the disaster that we are in today... You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth." Read the full story about the crimes of our government's leaders here.

Satan no match for God, says pope

Speaking at the third general ausience since his election, the pope also said that nations and leaders had to look for God's hand in past history and learn from it.

I am not a Catholic, but the current and present pope have spoken out repeatedly for peace, while many of the protestant clergy, and especially the money-grubbing televangelists have continued to agitate for perpetual war for perpetual peace.

David Hackworth, Warrior: 1930-2005

On May 5, 2005, Colonel David Hackworth died from the lingering effect of exposure to the many horrible chemicals we unleashed against our soldiers and the people of Vietnam. In Colonel Hackworth's case, death came from the lingering effects of "Agent Blue", named after the blue band on the 55-gallon barrels, which contained the deadly substance.

While "Agent Orange", marked with orange bands was used for the destruction of all foilage, including forests, grasses, bamboo and rice crops, Agent Blue, containing the arsenical herbicide cacodylic acid, was engineered to destroy rice plants by starving them of moisture. To paraphrase Tacitus: "We made a desert, and called it peace".

Did these deadly chemicals help our soldiers to survive the war in Vietnam? I led a lot of patrols at the southern edge of the "Iron Triangle", and can testify that they did not! After the trees were poisoned, the many grasses and vines which replaced them provided much better concealment for the many tunnel entrances of our elusive enemy.

Who gained? Check the income statement of the manufacturers of these deadly chemicals during the War in Vietnam.

Belgian Doctors Bill U.S. for Treating Iraqi Girl

Reuters, April 28, 2005: Belgian doctors sent a bill for the treatment of 15 year-old Hiba Kassim to the U.S. embassy because international law dictates that an occupying force is responsible for the well-being of that country's people.

Hiba Kassim was brought to Belgium last year to save her left ankle, which was seriously injured by a cluster bomb that also killed her brother in Baghdad in 2003. After five years and weeks of physiotherapy, Kassim is able to walk again, but with a slight limp.

Bert De Belder, coordinator of the humanitarian agency "Medical Aid for Third World" reported "We haven't heard from them yet".

Does boiling a suspect's body parts qualify as torture?

Just as we have outsourced much of our manufacturing to mainland China, our Central Intelligence Agency is utilizing the considerable talents of our friends in Uzbekistan in the art of torture. In a May 1 New York Times article titled :"U.S. Recruits a Rough Ally to Be a Jailer", Don Van Natta Jr. reports that international human rights groups have documented the monstrous torture methods, which are routinely used in Uzbeki jails. They include boiling of body parts, using electroshock on genitals and plucking fingernails and toenails with pliers. Two prisoners were boiled to death.

Uzbekistan has granted the United States the use of a military base. President Bush has welcomed Islam Karimov to the White House to thank him personally for the services he provides: Under our "rendition" program, also called "prisoner transfer program", our CIA sends terrorism suspects to Uzbekistan for special treatment. Other nations which perform similar services for us, and in our name, include Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.

With those friends, do we really need enemies to besmirch the good name of our great nation?

Combat Causes Personality Disorders:

September 1968: We had spent a restless night at the "Oasis", a brigade headquarters of the 4th Infantry Division, southwest of Pleiku, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. There was a relatively small "sapper" attack, consisting of a few enemy soldiers who were able to crawl through our multi-layered barbed wire, to throw satchel charges at our tanks and personnel carriers. There were perhaps a dozen to twenty casualties among us that day, and one of our guys had lost an arm during the enemy mortar fire which prepared the diversion for the sappers.

Since I was a visitor and had no assigned duties on that base, I volunteered to provide security for the stretcher bearers while they took him to the helicopter pad. One of the positive experiences during combat is the feeling of cameradery, and most of those who share a high risk event seem to feel compelled to do their part, in order to help their comrades to survive. People who have never met, and may never meet each other again, suddenly become part of an intimate family, and they do what they can for each other. Then there is the dark side of that experience:

On the following morning, I was finally able to go on the mission, which was the purpose of my visit to that barren "oasis". With three armored personell carriers, we were to find a Montagnard village twenty miles to the west of our base, where there had been some enemy action a few days earlier, have our medic push a few pills, and find out what we could about the enemy situation in the area.

Halfway there, a young Vietnamese girl, perhaps ten to twelve years old, appeared about two hundred meters on our right flank, her right hand holding a curved one or two foot knife, which was commonly used for harvesting rice. I suspected that she or her family was hungry, and she had been sent to another family's field to steal a little rice. When our APC's approached, she had jumped up suddenly from the concealment of the ricefield, and bounded like a frightened deer toward the protection of a row of trees only thirty feet to her front. Instinctively, one of the M-60 gunners on our vehicle opened up toward her.

Amid the roar of the engine and the chatter of the gun, voice communication seemed impossible, so I tapped on his helmet, and shook my head. He glanced at the captain bars on my helmet and nodded, while the girl safely reached the the treeline and disappeared. Fortunately, perhaps because our APC was bouncing over some potholes, he had not been able to hit her. The girl may have wanted the rice for some enemy soldiers, but she certainly presented no immediate threat to us at that time.

A few minutes later, when we had arrived at the Montagnard village, where the inhabitants were starving, one of the dying children moved that same gunner close to tears, and he worked very hard to find every scrap of food on our three APC's, which amounted to over four cases of C-rations, to give to the women of the village. Why the different reaction to the Vietnamese girl and to the children of the Montagnards? I suspect that in the girl's case, his reflex reaction was conditioned by his many experiences seeing enemy soldiers running during combat, and the fact that the girl was running away suggested that she was an enemy combatant. Perhaps she was, but in my opinion there was no proof of that, a reasonable respect for justice demanded that we give her the benefit of the doubt.

It seems that during war, civilians' chances of survival are enhanced if they have the presence of mind to avoid running in the presence of soldiers on a combat mission. Such is the reality of war, such are the dynamics of a soldier's thought pattern. For better or worse, "guilt" or "innocence", life or death, may depend on the speed of a civilian's movement, and that is what often seems to pass for justice at the cutting edge of combat related mission.

A tragic indication of the personality disorders caused by war is a story about rapes, as reported by the Associated Press Writer Roxana Hegeman in the "Daily Journal" at http://www.mydjconnection.com/articles/2004/10/09/missouri/state4.prt