Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, the deputy undersecretary for intelligence who I quoted earlier today, is a real barrel of laughs. My favorite quote so far from him is when he was referring to a battle in Somalia againt a Muslim leader, and explaining why he'd come out the winner:

"I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."

Aren't you glad these are the dudes that are in control of the most heavily armed nation on Earth?

PS. Happy Birthday

The full article from which below quotes from a US military serviceman were taken can be read here:

I saw over 30 of the men I had to keep safe die, and over 100 get wounded and not come back. We were attacked at least 20 times [and] were losing at least five men a day to injuries and there was at least one of our unit killed every twenty four hours.

I had one guy tell me all he wanted was to see his little daughter; she was born three days after the war started. He died in the sand holding my hand and crying because his daughter would never know him. Tell me that's fucking right.

Where was George Bush when this kid was gasping for air and spitting his blood on foreign soil? That asshole went AWOL and never showed up for duty and then he has the nerve to take us into two different wars that will be going on for years.

That nice huge cut they made to Veterans Benefits ... now I cannot get PTSD counseling or many medical benefits I used to take for granted. I knew I would have the benefits because I was laying my life down for my country. What happens when someone like me has been through enormous battle stress and combat fatigue and then comes home to no counseling? I'll tell you what is going to happen, he will either kill himself or take a bunch of people with him.

I can tell you I will never forget the screams of the wounded or orphaned kids, or the wailing of the parents who lost their kids. The Iraqis and most Muslims have a very vocal way of mourning the dead by lamenting and wailing for the dead. There is no mistaking a mother or father crying out in pain for the loss of a child. Sometimes after a bombing raid or an artillery attack you could hear hundreds of people wiling and weeping.

Let me tell you about the cluster bomb raid we saw wipe out a whole bunch of little kids. It looked like they had already lost their parents and were trying to salvage food from a destroyed Iraqi convoy by the side of the road we were on. We could see the body parts flying up into the air after the bombs hit. It was terrible and we could not do a damn thing but watch it happen and scream into the radio at the dumb shit pilot that was dropping the bombs. All we found was bits and pieces of little kids and here and there an arm or leg you could still identify.

It's just like Nam was in the beginning. I was twelve when my dad got back and I'll never forget the pain and agony he lived with the rest of his life. If I could I would go back in the past a few months, I would go AWOL or turn conscientious objector on them, but it's too late for that now. Wake up America! Your sons and daughters are dying for nothing! This war is not about freedom or stopping terrorism. Bring us home now! We are dying for oil and corporate greed!

The recently proposed bi-partisan (by far left Democrat Dennis Kucinich, and libertarian Republican Ron Paul) “Benjamin Franklin True Patriot Act” — also supported by the ACLU, the NAACP, the American Muslim Voice, the Religious Action Center of Reformed Judaism, and others — which would serve to repeal parts of the Bush Cabal's repressive Patriot Act as well as some of the questionable DoJ action (more) got me thinking about the real nature of the Bush government and the forces currently in control of America.

I realized that America currently has a unique form of government that I think is best described as privatized communism (aka McCommie). Think about it — a huge and steadily increasing government and government contractor workforce (eventually everyone will either work for the government or for a megacorporation directly in control over the government), increasing conglomeration of power, repealing of rights, commercialized patriotism, and a power imbalance that puts the control into the hands of extra-national and often monopolistic megacorporations. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the Bush Cabal are not Republicans, and they're certainly not Americans.

So for Republicans reading this, perhaps consider that if you want to be a good Republican maybe you should be opposing Bush and his corporate power grab, rather than standing “proudly” behind him… But maybe you work for one of the hundred or so oil and finance companies that met in London on Monday to discuss their Iraqi “investment opportunities” (more)? What, you thought the war on terror didn't have spoils? All war has spoils, and they go to the victor! Now, some advice to those thinking about profiting from this war. The best investment you could make? DICK CHENEY (more)… that dude's a goldmine for his masters.

Moving on, some people say it's wrong to be mad at France. Now, personally I think that the reasons people are mad at France tend to be way off base, and the ways they express them are downright ludicrous, but it is important to understand that France really is America's enemy, and France and America really are at war (along with America versus most of Europe)… I've talked about this financial war regularly here, and as you watch international commerce shifting from the USD to the Euro (ie. the US losing critical control of strategically essential financial territory), you start wondering what must be going on behind the scenes — in the past two decades we've seen a dozen industrialized countries have their economies collapse and their currency devalue (the US dollar has plunged over the last two years). Please don't be so blind as to believe it can't happen to you.

Anyway, France, Russia, and Germany — three of the US's most powerful financial enemies — just backed off on demands that the UN take a central role in Iraq (more). Ask yourself why. None of these nations (nor rarely any other nation) has ever acted in anything but their own interest — and they have consistently and publicly taken actions over the past two years to damage the US economy. So why are they backing off of Iraq? Could it be that they have decided that the risk outweighs the benefits? That they know it could become a quagmire that could be the straw that finally drags the US out of its dominant position, and they'll gladly watch, cheering on in the sidelines as New York burns?

Take that seriously as you read the reports of soldier after soldier coming back dead or crippled (more). As the bloated corpses of US troops float down the Euphrates, think about what their flesh lost its life for (more), take it seriously. Take it seriously as US troops commit suicide rather than fight in this war (more). As prisoners disappear (more), take it seriously. As you watch America risk its future, realize that its your inheritance that's being stolen — remember, the megacorporations don't care who they're selling to… if it turns out to be profitable (and war is very profitable) to have America collapse, America will collapse.

I wrote some time ago that in order to maintain power the Bush Cabal would have to either launch more attacks on American soil a la the 9/11 attacks, or it would have to make this soon-to-be World War larger. So let's look at what's in the news today — upcoming war on Syria (more), and also against Iran (more). Now, America might be able to take on Syria, assuming it didn't cause more Arab nations to get involved, but Iran is a heavyweight target. They have a nuclear program, quite possibly including weapons, hundreds if not thousands of times the firepower of Iraq, to say nothing of the popular support from Muslims around the world if such a war is continued.

Ask yourself who is profiting from this. Are you?

Now is not the time to become numb to this. How many times have American lives — and lives around the world — been lost due to fraud perpetrated to put gold in coffers that already overflow (more)? America hasn't entered a war legally or truthfully in over a hundred years now. Enough is enough.