USA

Brainmaggot wrote a very interesting comment over on John Titor's Posts January 2001 called Interesting -- check it out:

The Benny Morris op-ed in the NYT last Friday should provide convincing evidence that Israel really really really wants an attack against Iran sooner rather than later.  Morris is close to the Israeli government and his case that Iran must be bombed soon and with maximum conventional weaponry to avoid using nukes later was clearly intended to push the United States to do the attacking.

Dear Friend, The White House has now admitted to directing the CIA to "waterboard" detainees during interrogations. In case you've lived in a box the past several months, waterboarding is the forced, non-fatal drowning of a prisoner. According to experts (special forces officers who train our soldiers to cope should they be captured by enemies and treated this way), it provokes such a helpless, desperate, terrifying reaction that the subject will say anything at all to stop it. Waterboarding has long been recognized as torture -- an exemplar of torture.

What's in a meme? Haven't we all seen poor Lauren Upton botch a simple question on Miss Teen USA? Talk about a pandemic meme? Tim has a great discussion on his blog about the the entire mind virus in his blog post, Meme progression.

On the Fourth of July, I heard our Declaration of Independence read aloud on the radio here in Washington DC. Disturbing.

I was deeply unsettled to note how many of our Founding Fathers' condemnations and complaints against the misgovernment of King George III in the late 1700's could be rightfully levied by Americans and other nations against the appalling misgovernment of the President George Bush II's administration in the early 2000's.

I'll probably add to this meme but here's the short version. Two days after New Orleans was hit by Katrina, it occurred to me that 72 hours was just about as long as the average person could survive without water. Elderly would begin to perish at 36 hours, infants would be at risk immediately unless they were breast feeding.

we're naive if we believe that combatants give a crap about flags or uniforms. Several years ago I memed about a Berkeley Company who was able to make computer cut uniforms to any military spec. They made and delivered 100,000 US Army uniforms to the Saudis, just before the US invaded Iraq.