posted May 10, 2004 10:02 AM            

Humiliation Hullabaloo
Joan Swirsky
Monday, May. 10, 2004

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Six or 10 bad apples – out of five-football-field’s worth of barrels jam-packed with about 200,000 shining apples – went bad, the proof in a number of graphic photos showing them teeming with worms and rotten to the core.
Poll 10 people or a million people about this kind of aberration in an amazingly vital crop of apples and I bet their response would be: “A fluke!”

Which was exactly what the actions of those few bad apples in the American military turned out to be when their rottenness was exposed as they “guarded” their captives in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Frankly, this so-called scandal leaves me the opposite of outraged but rather quite awed by the actions of the 200,000 U.S. armed forces that have waged and are waging valiant battles – and adhering to impossibly high ethical standards – to delouse the tyrannical regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq and keep the terrorists dedicated to destroying us far from our shores.

But poll the anti-American leftists among us and it’s another story. For them, nothing short of an orgiastic apologia and some figurative beheadings of those in power will do.

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton was among the first to turn her jaundiced eye away from those 200,000 good apples in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

"The bottom line,” she said in her typically condescending way, “is that leadership has to be responsible and held accountable … that goes all the way up the chain of command.” Forget about her own bountiful “forgiveness” and the “understanding” she expected of the American people when her husband lied repeatedly for over a year to her, the Congress and the entire international community.

When Blitzer reminded her that extreme practices have been used throughout history to extract information and confessions from our enemies, she said that the U.S. had to be careful not to treat Iraqi terrorist suspects “too harshly.” In other words, let’s not treat our enemies as enemies!

Then we heard from Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry, who, as usual, hedged his bets when it came to saying anything that normal people can interpret as a stance.

But Kerry, who recently reaffirmed to Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” that he engaged in war crimes far more vicious and deadly than the “humiliation” at Abu Ghraib – “…yes, yes… I took part in shootings in free-fire zones…conducted harassment and interdiction fire…used 50-caliber machine guns against people…took part in the burning of villages… all of this is contrary to the laws of warfare…[and] the Geneva Conventions....” – had the chutzpah to call for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Today, Afghanistan is free of the Taliban and most of Al Qaeda’s leadership and Iraq is free of its murderous leader and his murderous sons, of mass graves and rape rooms, of fear in the hearts of most of its citizens, save those in the areas where terrorists are making their last stand. And the country is up and running – electricity, food, schools, hospitals, an interim government, etc.

But Kerry wants the man responsible for all this progress to resign over the excesses of a few military cretins and the yet-to-be-identified superiors who gave them their orders!

Then there is the leftist American media, blaring provocative headlines loaded with inflammatory adjectives, and, from the networks and CNN, blanket coverage complete with finger-wagging preachments in which both anchors and talking heads can barely conceal their glee at having arrived at what they hope is the ultimate “Gotcha” in a get-Bush season.

What the media have studiously ignored, however, is that they have known since mid-January of these charges, that Sec. Rumsfeld immediately briefed the president, and that court marshals were issued and investigations begun. And they knew that the photos he withheld were to avoid compromising the investigations already being conducted.

Hypocrites all!

Where was the media outrage when, last week, Palestinian terrorists murdered a pregnant woman and her four young daughters in cold blood, or when 20 Marines were murdered in Iraq along with four American support workers who were incinerated in their car and others strung up over a bridge by the same people they are now warning us not to be too harsh against?

Where were their photos of those grotesque events? And where were the voices in the Arab world expressing revulsion and regret and vowing to bring the perpetrators to justice?

They were nowhere because the media and the leftists they carry water for don’t give a damn about defending America! To my mind, they hate America!

They remind me of the scorpion that convinces an eagle carrying her baby to fly him across a river. He promises not to harm the eaglet, but promptly upon landing devours the young bird. “How could you do that?” the eagle screams in horror. “That’s what scorpions do!” the rapacious beast responds.

And what leftists do – routinely, reflexively, blindly and to their everlasting shame – is take every opportunity to blame America first and, of course, to hate the administration under which those few bad apples exercised their own brand of anti-Americanism.

To his immense credit, the head of that administration, President Bush, went on Arab TV to say that the acts of those few bad apples were not what America is all about. In plain-spoken language and with persuasive sincerity, he expressed the feelings and beliefs of most Americans who revere our military and are embarrassed by the actions of what amounts to the aggression of a few schoolyard bullies or hazing by some pot-addled frat boys.

But the scorpions on the left, determined to undermine the president at every turn, were not through. Sen. Ted Kennedy and other screeching partisans went so far as to suggest that we raze the prison, a “symbol” they said of Saddam Hussein’s torture chambers, which in their overreaction and melodrama they now shamefully and erroneously equate with a “symbol” of American malevolence and barbarity. As if dismantling the bridge at Chappaquidick would erase the memory of a drowning Mary Jo Kopechne!

Kennedy and the rest of the anti-humiliation crowd have shown a striking lack of historical perspective in blaming the president and his cabinet for the sins of a few out-of-control soldiers. But that’s because history for them began four years ago in Florida when those so-called disenfranchised voters who ordinarily pride themselves on intelligence and literacy.

Isn’t it interesting that the day in modern history that angered conservatives the most was September 11, 2001, but the day that continues to anger liberals the most is November 7, 2000!

Since then, Democrats have been on a protracted and hysterical mission to discredit every initiative, every appointment, every breath the president takes, only grudgingly breaking from their “this’ll get him” plan for a few weeks after September 11. Even then, however, they were trying to figure out how best to undermine him.

They launched several presidential candidates that resulted in the presumptive nominee, an uninspiring Kerry who, to this day, has offered not one original program or policy but adheres slavishly to the only monotonous lyrics he seems to know: “Call in the U.N.!”

"The President of the United States needs to offer the world an explanation and needs to take appropriate responsibility," Kerry said, for the “horrifying abuse of Iraqi prisoners…”

But wait a minute! Only last week, two dozen Vietnam veterans – 19 of 23 who served with or commanded Kerry, and who he subsequently humiliated by accusing them of “war crimes” – publicly questioned the candidate’s self-glorifying but, they said, deeply dishonest account of his war record, also casting grave doubt on his fitness to become the next Commander in Chief.

Now there’s a story worth pursuing, but not to the leftwing media! Did you read it or hear it? I didn’t.

Rather, the Democrats and their ideological cheerleaders in the media continue to hope that the Abu Ghraib “scandal” will be the big gotcha that will topple the Bush presidency.

But, in spite of their nostalgia for the good old days of Vietnam – when they vilified the military and cast the good guys as bad and the bad guys as good – they haven’t succeeded in turning the American public against the president’s noble and heroic mission to democratize the middle east and rid the world forever of the Islamic terrorists who have wreaked havoc in that region for thousands of years, and today are targeting the entire western world.

They carried on for months about the “failing” economy until employment zoomed upward, the latest numbers showing its largest rise in 20 years. That didn’t work.

They salivated in anticipation of the president’s undoing as author after author published anti-Bush books and were rewarded by a blitz of media exposure. That also didn’t work.

Then they waited for the ax to fall on the president during the 9/11 Commission hearings, when a panel stocked with undisguised partisans tried to convince the public that eight years of the Clinton administration’s slashed military and intelligence budgets had nothing to do with September 11 but that less-than-eight-months of Bush’s leadership was the real culprit. That failed as well.

Now we have the humiliation hullabaloo in which the frantic left is trying to perpetrate a huge deception on the public by pretending that the unfortunate incidents at Abu Ghraib alienated “our friends” in the Arab world. The same friends by the way, who danced in the streets when 3,000 Americans died and, to this day, have never ever issued even a semblance of an apology for the implication of their countries in the September 11 disaster.

With friends like this…

The latest pretext to depose the president won’t work either. Under his leadership, the perpetrators are being investigated and will be brought to justice.

But the Democrats – stuck in the past and incapable of acknowledging that we live in a new world with new threats and a president who has had the foresight and boldness to innovate the only new strategies to combat terrorism in the last 50 years – will be forced to look under yet another rock to find the worms they have been infesting our country with for the last almost-four years. That won’t work either.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/5/10/91824.shtml

posted May 10, 2004 04:01 PM            

Yes, I was trying desperately to obscure the fact that article appeared on News Max. I guess you caught me!

I'm really sorry you don't want to talk about the article. There must be something in there you disagree with, something worth complaining of---other than the exclamation mark key getting stuck on the Swirsky keyboard.

Laying aside all the other issues raised in her article, this is the crux what she's saying---as I see it.

What the media have studiously ignored, however, is that they have known since mid-January of these charges, that Sec. Rumsfeld immediately briefed the president, and that court marshals were issued and investigations begun. And they knew that the photos he withheld were to avoid compromising the investigations already being conducted.

That and the sheer hypocrisy of the press and the Democrats.
More on members of congress! The uncle of one of those charged in activities seen as violations of the Geneva Conventions, contacted upwards of 20 members of Congress and well before this story ever broke. He was concerned his nephew was going to be one of those used by higher ups in the military as a scapegoat. The Congressional members he contacted blew him off or didn't respond at all. Yet, here is the Senate pretending they knew nothing of the incident before the story with pictures broke in the press. There is going to be much more about that before it's all over.

Within 72 hours of the incident(s) becoming known to the military chain of command, they took action by conducting investigations which lead to those who were identified being arrested and further relieved some of the officers in their chain of command. That's pretty fast action, doesn't smell of a coverup but indicates resolve to find, arrest and court marshal those who don't follow the rules we've established for the treatment of captured prisoners. At least that's the timeline I've heard repeated and also read somewhere.

posted May 10, 2004 04:17 PM            

Since you expressed a preference for Limbaugh, here's what he has to say on the subject.

posted May 10, 2004 07:03 PM              

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0510-03.htm

newsmax...news written by ultra-right apologist losers, nothing more, nothing less.

oh, and glad to see you back after you were away...getting the feeling back in your fingers, I imagine...?

"but let's not lose our heads over it" ???

Apologist, whitewashing, robot losers strike again! Unfortunately, dittoheads have no real heads to actually lose...just the ditto marks that they so preciously guard with their lives and have tattooed on their arses (where they usually tuck their heads to keep them safe from the more foul scent of Birkenstock-wearing liberals lol)

and just putting two in the temple of the "few bad apples" excuse...

posted May 10, 2004 07:44 PM              

might the fox be guarding the coop again?

and by the way, why isn't every american as outraged as i was this morning to read the following piece? i was crying and shaking not so much at the tip of the proverbial iceberg in what is going on in the name of america, but that so few people really object

absolute power corrupts absolutely, and might our own hearts and minds have become so corrupted that ANY of this is in ANY way even REMOTELY excusable or justifiable?

it is not a political issue--it is a human issue, and we need to peel back the blinders and look at what we are doing:
*************

quote:

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The Crimes at Abu Ghraib Are Not the Worst by Robert Higgs

"...Although the government had known about these disgusting, sadistic, and idiotic amusements for a long time, Rumsfeld kept a close hold on the information, the better to brush it under the official rug. (We know that the government knew, because the International Committee for the Red Cross, which made several inspections of the prisons in Iraq, confirms that long ago it "told the Americans that what was going on at Abu Ghraib is reprehensible.") Once the photos got out, of course, more than one kind of hell broke loose, and now the government's top dogs all have their tails tucked shamefully between their legs. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham warned reporters after Rumsfeld's Senate interrogation on May 7 that "there's more to come" and "we're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges" against U.S. soldiers and civilian employees in Iraq.

Although Bush says that he is sorry for "the terrible and horrible acts," and Rumsfeld says that he takes "full responsibility," the president continues to express confidence in his defense secretary, and the secretary says that he has no intention to step down. Which is to say, neither of these men foresees bearing any real personal cost whatsoever, aside from the momentary embarrassment, the political discomposure, and the time expended in spinning the issue for Congress and the public. Meanwhile the administration is working overtime to pin the blame on some low-level patsies so that everybody can get on with campaigning for Bush's reelection.

Although no principle stands higher in military doctrine than that the commander bears full responsibility for the actions of his subordinates, neither of these two top military commanders has the decency to resign – not just on account of the prison disclosures, of course, but also on account of the plethora of actions by which they have abused their constitutional powers and brought everlasting shame upon the United States...And make no mistake: plenty of war crimes have been, and continue to be, committed for which these men, along with many other civilian and military agents of the government, bear full responsibility. After all, in violation of the rule the Allies enforced against the Nazis at the post-World War II Nuremburg Trials, they chose to launch an aggressive, unprovoked, and unnecessary war against the Iraqi people, and during the past year they have undertaken to impose U.S. domination on the conquered people by rampant military violence. That many Iraqis have fought back against their occupiers in no way justifies U.S. actions. Everyone has a right of self-defense. What would you do if your country had been occupied by murderous and sadistic foreign troops?

The worst U.S. crimes in Iraq have received far less press than the photos of U.S. soldiers having fun and games with the prisoners at Abu Ghraib – not that the prisoners were anything but terrified by these vile amusements – but the truly terrible crimes have not gone totally unreported, especially in the news media outside the United States.

Last May 11, one of the thousands of such stories somehow made its way into the New York Times. It told how on April 5, 2003, a home in Basra had been hit by a U.S. bomb that exploded and killed ten members of Abed Hassan Hamoodi's extended family. British military officials said they had received reports that General Ali Hassan al-Majid – the notorious "Chemical Ali" – was in the neighborhood. Of course, the attack, which demolished a number of houses and killed twenty-three of their occupants, failed to kill al-Majid. (In the phrase "military intelligence," emphasis should always be placed on the word "military.") But one of the bombs brought an end to most members of Hamoodi's family.

"Ammar Muhammad was not yet 2 when his grandfather pulled him from the rubble and tried to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but his mouth was full of dust and he died." Seventy-two-year-old Hamoodi declared that he considered the destruction of his home and the killings of his family members to constitute a war crime, and he asked rhetorically: "How would President Bush feel if he had to dig his daughters from out of the rubble?"

How indeed?

U.S. forces have expended thousands of cluster munitions in Iraq, often in heavily populated places. (In the Karbala-Hillah area alone, U.S. teams had destroyed by late August last year more than 31,000 unexploded bomblets "that landed on fields, homes, factories and roads . . . many were in populated areas on Karbala's outskirts.") The toll among children, whose natural curiosity draws them to the interesting-looking bomblets, has been heavy.

Khalid Tamimi and four other members of his family were walking on a footpath in Baghdad when his brother, seven-year-old Haithem, spotted something interesting, picked it up and examined it, then threw it down. The bomblet's explosion killed Haithem and his nine-year-old cousin, Nora, and seriously wounded Khalid, as well as the children's mothers, Amal and Mayasa.

Last year the whole world learned about Ali Ismail Abbas, the twelve-year-old boy who was sleeping in his home in Baghdad when a U.S. missile struck and the explosion tore off both his arms and killed his parents and his brother. His heartrending photo appeared in news media around the world, as did reports of his anguished cries for help in getting his arms back.

Recently, the ferocious U.S. attacks on Fallujah have yielded hundreds of additional casualties among the innocent. There, as in many other places in Iraq, U.S. troops have fired recklessly and without adequate regard for the thousands of civilians they thereby placed in mortal jeopardy. "I'm sitting at the funeral of my only son, who was killed because of the U.S. Marines' harsh manner in dealing with civilians," Abbas Abdullah told a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. "They shot him in the head, and he died instantly."

In the White House Rose Garden on April 30, President Bush, displaying his usual keen sensitivity, blustered as he often has on the campaign trail that because of the U.S. invasion "there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq." The president made this claim even as the whole world's press was featuring photos of the U.S. torture chambers at Abu Ghraib and reporting worse crimes against Iraqi detainees there and elsewhere, including rape and murder.

Moreover, mass graves have been filling up for weeks at Fallujah, for the most part with noncombatants. According to Dahr Jamail's report in The Nation, "two soccer fields in Fallujah have been converted to graveyards." Jamail also reported that "the Americans have bombed one hospital, and, numerous sources told us, were sniping at people who attempted to enter and exit the other major medical facility." Snipers also shot ambulances braving the dangerous streets to bring the wounded to makeshift places of medical assistance.

Along a quiet residential street in Fallujah, nine-year-old Rahad Septi and other children were playing hide-and-seek when the pilot of a U.S. A-10 aircraft dropped a bomb there. Rahad, "little flower" to her father Juma Septi, was killed along with ten other children, and twelve other children were wounded. Three adults also were killed. Jamal Abbas was driving his taxi when the bomb fell. He found his eleven-year-old niece Arij Haki with "the top half of her head . . . blown off." After half an hour of searching amid the devastation, Abbas found his daughter, eleven-year-old Miad Jamal Abbas, "her body bloody and ripped." She died later at the hospital. "There was no military activity in this area," said Saad Ibrahim, whose father Hussein was killed in his nearby shop by the same bomb blast. "There was no shooting. This is not a military camp. These are houses with children playing in the street."

When Daham Kassim, his wife Gufran Ibed Kassim, and their four children tried to escape the hell of U.S. bombing in their neighborhood in Nasiriyah, they stopped on the outskirts of the city at a military checkpoint, where, without warning, U.S. tank crews blasted their car with machine-gun fire, killing three of the children and wounding all the other occupants of the car. U.S. troops, humanitarian as ever, then took the three survivors of the attack to a field hospital, treated their wounds, and let them rest in beds. On the third night, however, the troops expelled them from the hospital to make room for wounded U.S. soldiers. As Kassim relates the story: "They carried us like dogs, out into the cold, without shelter, or a blanket. It was the days of the sandstorms and freezing at night. And I heard [five-year-old] Zainab crying: 'Papa, Papa, I am cold, I am cold.' Then she went silent. Completely silent. . . . My arms were broken. I could not lift or hold her. . . . We had to sit there, and listen to her die."

In Nasiriyah, only Kadem Hashem and his youngest daughter survived when a U.S. missile struck their house. His wife Salima, five of their children, and six other family members who happened to be in the house at the time were killed. Finding a photograph in the debris of his house, Hashem told reporter Ed Vulliamy of The Observer: "This was my middle daughter, Hamadi. I found her burnt to death by that doorway, she had shrunk to about a metre tall." His one surviving daughter, Bedour, described now as "what remains of a beautiful girl," lies on the floor of a relative's house. "She is shrivelled and petrified like a dead cat. Her skin is like scorched parchment folded over her bones. Unable to move, she appears as if in some troubled coma, but opens her eyes, with difficulty, to issue an indecipherable cry like a wounded animal." Hashem dug a mass grave for his family in a nearby holy city. "I collected them all and put them in a single grave at Najaf; my money was burnt, too, and I couldn't afford to bury them separately."

To my knowledge, neither President Bush, nor Vice President Dick Cheney, nor Secretary of State Colin Powell, nor Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, nor Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, nor Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, nor Richard Perle (who has worked for decades at the highest levels both inside and outside the government to bring about the present horrors in Iraq) – not a single one of them has apologized to any of the victims identified in the foregoing accounts.

What the U.S. government did at Abu Ghraib was bad, but what it did to Ammar Muhammad, to Haithem Tamimi, to Ali Ismail Abbas, to Abbas Abdullah's son, to Rahad Septi, to Arij Haki, to Miad Jamal Abbas, to Zainab Kassim, and to Bedour Hashem was far far worse.

Their stories are but a very few of the tens of thousands that might be told if more complete information were available to provide the details associated with the gruesome statistics on deaths and injuries among the Iraqi population. Relatively few of the people slain were "terrorists," Baathists, or even insurgents. Most were noncombatants; thousands were women, children, and elderly people. The military euphemism for these deaths is "collateral damage," but they are actually murders. After all, they did not happen by accident; in the circumstances, they were as predictable as the sun's rising in the east. By choosing to engage in the kinds of military actions that made these deaths inevitable, the U.S. government thereby chose to cause these deaths. The claim that they were not intended has no substance whatsoever.

Bush and Rumsfeld have been busy with apologies this past week, to be sure, and the prison hijinks at Abu Ghraib certainly cry out for apologies, as well as for a great deal of additional effort to restrain the sadists and sexual psychopaths among the U.S. troops in Iraq and to bring some measure of justice to those who have been wronged. Yet this whole mess, its powerful symbolism notwithstanding, has constituted a gigantic distraction from the truly monstrous crimes committed, and still being committed daily, by U.S. forces in Iraq.

Saddam Hussein now languishes in U.S. custody; his government has been overthrown; no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq, and therefore "disarming" the Iraqis of such weapons proved unnecessary. In short, the declared U.S. mission has long since been accomplished fully. Why then does the U.S. government persist in slaughtering the Iraqi people?

May 10, 2004

Robert Higgs [send him mail] is senior fellow in political economy at the Independent Institute and editor of The Independent Review. His most recent book is Against Leviathan."

---

ask yourself, am i willing to sacrifice my humanity any further in order to "support the president right or wrong?"

please pause before you launch an attack on how bad the liberals are ** yes, right here, right now--p*a*u*s*e--

before attempting the impossible task of justifying this -- ask how wrong does it have to get before our voices are vehemently heard?

may God have mercy upon our souls

posted May 10, 2004 07:52 PM            

So, are you giving me the green light to address you again Carlo? I wouldn't want to bruise your sensibilities again but it seems you've broken the agreement.

Reading with comprehension is so important Carlo. Pity you didn't understand it was David Limbaugh Xelena Ben and I were discussing and David doesn't have any dittoheads, only readers.

The only thing that can be said about "Common Dreams" is that they have their heads where they don't belong Carlo. From there, they'll never see the light or smell the coffee. Do let me know if you've fallen into the same pit and get an idea you want to pull your head out.

BTW, it's better to be a "dittohead" than a "deadhead". Just a general statement of fact Carlo and not one for you to take to heart personally.

Nice cartoon. I don't generally get my news from cartoons or comic books but to each his own.

posted May 10, 2004 08:16 PM              

clearly people are not this antagonistic unless there is a painful paw of some kind. i love you and i am praying for you

and please read my post. you probably were writing while i was, and haven't seen it yet

posted May 10, 2004 09:12 PM              

yes, that's the Limbaugh article i preferred to swirsky's tirade. i thought it was much more rational, even if i don't agree with much of his take on things. of course each "side" will see it differently - that's what partisanship is all about. but swirsky makes the same kind of emotional, opinion-driven blanket statements (touted as truth) that make my eyes glaze over and my brain shut down no matter which side it comes from. i can almost hear her voice when i read her words - and it sure ain't pretty!

i don't usually agree with Ruddy - but he tackles this difficult issue with a reasonable and respectful tone that i can relate to. and he brings up points that i think both sides can agree on - one being that as Americans we really should "hold ourselves to a higher standard." i also agree that an apology won't much help our cause in the Middle East, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have given one. i can imagine how sick Bush feels about these abuses. (and i mean besides the PR debacle this is causing). i have my opinions about our "fearless" leader, but sadism isn't one of them.

quote:

---

Accountability means that we accept responsibility, mete out swift and sure justice to the perpetrators and take corrective measures to prevent this kind of thing from occurring again. It does not mean that we beat ourselves up to the point of questioning the righteousness or justice of our cause.

---

as for "Where's the outrage for the actions against us? Where are the condemnations? Where are the apologies?" - there WAS outrage after 9-11 and condemnations from Americans and most of the rest of the world, too. there was also outrage after the brutal killings in Fallujah (i'll dig up the thread for you from this site if you really want me to). that US soldiers are dying every day is regrettable, but it's also what they volunteered for - to fight for their country when need be. and yet when "liberals" try to call attention to the number of soldiers being killed we're called opportunists and whatnot. either way we're damned.

His last comment, though, I thought was a bit disingenuous: "This is war. Let's quit pretending it's some kind of pristine chess match." do you think he's directing this comment at liberals or to his fellow conservatives? again, if liberals decry the war in iraq because of its cost in lives (never mind dollars) we're "anti-American" - but now we're in the dark as to the real brutality of war? i dunno...

the most dangerous question, i think, was not addressed in either of these editorials - how do we as Americans recover from this international stripping down of our moral superiority, our classiness as warriors, if you will. we have visual proof that some among our soldiers are no better than Saddam's thugs. where is the answer for people asking "how can this be?" even if it is a small group of people, others saw and didn't tell, higher-ups knew and didn't stop it. what sort of culture allows this? whether or not these men "deserved what they got and are lucky to be alive" (paraphrasing there) - it does not justify the kind of mental and physical brutality administered in our name. there ARE rules to war - and those are the standards we're supposed to live up to. i guess we're learning it's harder than it sounds.

say, what's your take on the President's allegation that he learned about this scandal by watching TV? (contrary to your post...)

posted May 10, 2004 09:54 PM              

(and any chump with the last name Limbaugh is a dittohead like you, whether they want to be or not, it comes with that indelible mark-of-the-beast name lol)

posted May 11, 2004 12:28 AM            

Considering the main topic of the site is Astrology and Linda Goodman, not a good direction to be going in IMO.

posted May 11, 2004 12:45 AM              

That way yet another board can discuss the negative way we all communicate with each other.

In the interest of what Linda Goodman really wanted us - all of us - to see in the Great Cosmic Design of the Universe is to use the tools of astrology to better LOVE and CONNECT with others, breaking beyond negativity.

Our thoughts are energy, right?

Why does every discussion boil down- not to issues- but to petty personal squabbles.

Just a reflection..

posted May 11, 2004 02:11 AM            

Let me know if you ever manage to pass the Bar so I can chart the decline of American jurisprudence.

Now why would my conservative buddies want to gang up on you Carlo. Any one of those ladies could surround you all by themselves.

jwhop

Isis

It's well known here that I'm a Leo. That isn't the problem with Carlo's comments. That's just a stereotype of Leo some people believe. The problem with Carlo's comments is that not a word of is true.

I can understand your comment about members not wanting to reveal too much of their own chart information if it's going to be used against them. You're Scorpio, so I'm pretty sure a lot of people have stereotyped you too.

MK

The GU forum is more wide open than the other forums on this site. I expect a certain amount of give and take and contention to manifest with hot button issues. However, I do agree it would be best to discuss issues without getting personal. But on the other hand, with every post someone makes a piece of the mosaic is filled in until a better understanding of who the members really are emerges. We only know each other by what we say and how we say it. It's all dialogue and in as much as it's what members really think and feel, it's important to know and contributes to better understanding. I think Linda Goodman would have enjoyed the GU forum. I think she would have expressed her views and defended them with Aries vigor

Some of what goes on here is bantering, it's harmless and lets off some steam. Maybe it's a guy thing and not easily understood by women There are certain concepts and ideas, even ideals people hold that I don't personally appreciate. That doesn't mean I reject the person behind those ideas, concepts and ideals.

I don't know if any of that makes any sense to you or not but the day the Lion will lay down with the Lamb is not yet---no matter how many Aries ladies I've tried to lead to the truth that today is that day

jwhop

posted May 11, 2004 09:54 AM              

Speaking of the topic, what does everyone think about the current crop of excuses from out finest? "But mom, the non-govermental agency made me do it" I suppose it was just a matter of time before the spooks entered the story.
Regarding Ms Swirsky's cute little apple analogy, I would submit that we have only FOUND 6 or ten bad apples. Does anyone really believe that is all there is? And where is she getting 6 or ten from? I think that shows a pitiful lack of understanding of human nature.