Making Baby Jesus Cry

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Not Bob
First, where do you find these pictures? Is there some sort of VRWC clipping service?

On to the substance. When my brother's reserve unit was sent to Iraq 2 years ago, my mother said some of the same things that Cindy Sheehan is now saying -- specifically, that it's easy for people who don't have their military service age children serving in harm's way to talk about "honor" and "duty" and "sacrifice." She specifically asked my brother why he should go if Jenna and Barbara and George P. weren't there. (Then my grandmother mentioned how all of FDR's kids enlisted, and one of them was killed, and my mother said that the dead one was actully Teddy Roosevelt's son, and then my grandmother said that she thought one of the FDR kids died. But I digress.)

You may think that she's crazy, but here in the red state where I live and work, I've heard quite a few mothers of kids in the military agree with her, and get pissed off at the commentary from Fox et al dismissing her as a dupe.

FDRs kids served but I don't think any of them were killed. TR sons was a general who served in North African and in the Normandy invasion. I am pretty sure he was not killed. I think some of TRs sons dies in WWI.

But during that war everyone went to war. LBJs son in law served in Vietnam but that is about it since WWII.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Ok, there is someone crazier than Spanky. That has to be the stupidest infotainment "article" ever created.

I think I posted an early rendition of this story a few days ago.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
But you live in a blue part of a red state, or at least bluish, don't you? The moms I know feel for her lose, and can appreciate her grief. Uniformly they disagree with her action.

Does a man killed in Iraq deserve less respect than one killed in Afghanistan? Do you disagree with having troops in Afghanistan? The Bush girls are also not in Afghanistan.

Does the mother of a fallen soldier who feels her son's life was lost in vain deserve less respect than the well-fed Bubbas stopping by to drop off contribution checks?

If this is really such a horrible case of media manipulations, all Bush has to do is take ten minutes out his day to talk to the lady, show some respect for her grief and her dead son, and the issue goes away.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
No. Those are Clinton's. Relief pitcher doesn't take blame for runners the starter put on base.

So then, you're giving Clinton credit for the War on Terror? How uncharacteristic.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Clinton's fuck ups went well beyond 9/11. I'm not sure how old you are, but were you following the news in '95-98? Saddam kicked the inspectors out after refusing to let them look at much. Now 6 years later Bush has to confront a situation that should have been defused. You can curse me all you want but the fact remains that Bill Clinton's weakness in Iraq was the root cause for us being there now.

I'm pretty sure the Bush administration's fuck-up in failing to get Bin Laden and the corresponding need to play "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" is the root cause for us being there now.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by taxwonk
So then, you're giving Clinton credit for the War on Terror? How uncharacteristic.

sure. Ty told us he spent 8 years drafting the plan.

[SlaveNoMore]

ltl/fb
The origin of the trip is a side issue to the investigation of treasonous behavior, and the treasonous behavior is a side issue to the trip and its origin. It's contextual, you ass.

Back to crying "treason" are we?

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Naw, sorry. The dead are all Herbert Walker's, and until Iraq becomes a shining beacon of light for democracy, freedom and unencumbered capital markets from Damascus to Islamabad, every other death become a shaming by Bush the younger of his dad.

This analysis also pushes all of the Vietnam dead onto Johnson, of course, which I recognize provides only slight solace to your loss of lumping them on Carter. Sorry.

I could build a good argument for laying the dead of Vietnam on Eisenhower's gravestone.

[SlaveNoMore]

Hank Chinaski
Ty told us he spent 8 years drafting a plan.

And he would have been successful too, if it wasn't for Ken Starr and those meddling kids.....

[SlaveNoMore]

taxwonk
Does the mother of a fallen soldier who feels her son's life was lost in vain deserve less respect than the well-fed Bubbas stopping by to drop off contribution checks?

If this is really such a horrible case of media manipulations, all Bush has to do is take ten minutes out his day to talk to the lady, show some respect for her grief and her dead son, and the issue goes away.

Memo to Wonk - He already did.

[SlaveNoMore]

Not Bob
Right, because in WWII we actually did the stuff that is too hard to do in Iraq. Thank goodness Don Rumsfeld wasn't Secretary of War then, and that we built a new military after December 7, 1941 instead of going to war with the one we had.

So you are in favor of conscripted armed forces instead of purely voluntary service.

Duly noted.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
W has made hard decisions in our national defence. We had a referundum on his performance.

He makes easy decisions and pretends their hard. Posing tough helps win elections, as does hiking government spending and going to war without raising taxes or asking anyone -- except those in the military -- to make a sacrifice. It's the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too presidency. W learned from Reagan that if you spend money and leave paying for it to be someone else's problem, you can be politically popular. So he's a good student.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
This is a lose, lose, lose.

I agree, and it's not like pulling out of Iraq is going to make it into a democracy, either.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Bill Clinton's weakness in Iraq was the root cause for us being there now.

Clinton ordered air strikes which finished off Iraq's WMD. His kind of "weakness" ensured that Iraq did not threaten us, and did it without wasting Cindy Sheehan's son. Compared to the clusterfuck that is Bush's Iraq policy, that kind of weakness is looking pretty good about now.

[SlaveNoMore]

I'm not a commodities expert like Hillary or anything, so can anyone tell me how I can short oil at $80 per?