The most important election yada yada..

Empires die slowly. Gibbon dated Rome's official demise a thousand years after the date given by fundamentalist apocalyptacism, the same "prophecy" cited by their current incarnations. This is comforting given the causes cited by Gibbon, religeon and corrupt beaurocracy, threaten us today.

Is there a more apt image than a refugee from "communism", Mr. Swhartzenagger, fronting for a gang that makes the Politburo blush for their in your face ignorance and corruption? Did the commies sodomize children and then posture as macho warriors?

The election is no more than a meaningless choice between aggressive mismanagement and rapacious greed on the one hand, and timid, passive, beaurocratic dissembling on the other.

Recent Letters to the editor, LA Times

While our nation is being driven off a cliff by right wing ideologues, you have been twiddling your thumbs in rudderless lanquor. While the fate of the nation hangs in the balance, you have no message but special interest pandering. It is time to do the honorable thing and step down for the good of the country, Senator Kerry.

As the shocking images are flashed across the Arab world, our hearts break with shame. Prison abuses at Abu Girab? No, John Kerry swearing allegiance to the Israel hard liners.

It is amusing to hear Congress prattling about being left out of the loop. These are the same folks who railed that the CIA needed to be unleashed after the Riechstag Fire/errr 911. Can the muzzled, docile American media exposed by this international self immolation of our 250 year culture give us a clue to the equivalence between the SS, the KNVD, and CACI contractors running a private international and domestic security apparatus free of accountability? You couldn't get into my local AA meeting with the ammount of denial of the average citizen, and we accept everyone.

With the revelations of Saudi Arabia crucial logistical support for the war, it is clear that the bombing of their security office is an ominous echo of the coming consequences. In the runup to the war, students of international relations and other educated observers could see what went unreported here: the omen implicit in Turkey's refusal to participate, even with the American strongarm diplomacy and the temptation to exploit geostrategic advantage. The gasps of relief must be audible in Ankara these days. Was it luck that kept nations long immersed in historical experience of their own empires, Germany, Russia, France , and Turkey, out of this fiasco, or is there wisdom involved?

Watching Bush wrap himself in the Israeli flag today I kept thinking, these Iraqis and Americans are dieing for Florida's electoral votes!? What's really sick is I hear he can win Florida and still lose if Ohio goes blue. Of all the tableaus Washington has staged to enhance Arab radicalism and Al Qaida recruitment, today's act of blatant obiesance to Ariel Sharon is the topper. How many more innocent people will die specifically as a result of the images staged today for Dade County retirees?

It is almost too excruciating to have the 911 hearings justaposed on the same military industrial network, NBC, with "The Apprentice". On one show, deserving but less competent people are told "You're fired!". On the other, the incompetent are told "You're promoted, and your budgets increased."

Iraq is no Vietnam

Casualty rates of troops garrisoned and protected by armored vehicles in no way equate to exposed troops actually engaging the enemy in combat. Let us take an arbitrary factor of 3 to express this difference. Now take the total number deployed 120,000 versus 500,000, a factor of 4. In the week just passed, 60 American soldiers perished, perhaps 300 were injured. So 60 x 3 x 4 = 720 dead, 3600 injured this week in Vietnam equivalent numbers. An average week at the height of the Vietnam War may have been 150 dead and 500 injured.

Iraq is no Vietnam

Take a hypothetical case. Your enemy succeeds in a spectacular act of destruction. The analogy is: you teach somebody to rape and kill your enemy's wife and daughters; they turn around and rape and kill your wife and daughters. You then:

a) Borrow one quarter trillion dollars, lie to the world, and abuse your friends to attack and capture someone unconnected to the crime.

b) While holding no one accountable, turn your neighborhood into a police state, acting to harm yourself beyond the wildest hopes of your enemy.

c) Are unable to capture the perpetrator, a feeble old man, who continues to mock you with impunity, in two agonizing years, yet you continue to claim the mantel of protector of the neighborhood, and demand re-election to that position.

d) Hold someone accountable, take responsibility, and capture the most visible criminal in the history of mankind with the largest police force in the history of mankind.

Well, that was a tough one!