Ogmin/iraq

"There is mounting evidence that veterans may be ill --" and some may have actually died -- as a result of exposure to dangerous toxins produced by the pits."

"the Iraq embezzlement is a ponzi scheme bigger than that of Madoff. But both gigantic swindles were made possible by the same philosophy, that the "private sector" needs no government oversight or auditing, since the Magic Hand will operate to ensure probity. As Alan Greenspan recently admitted, his conviction that bankers would not steal from us because it would be bad for the bank was naive; I guess that is what comes of never growing out of Ayn Rand when you move into your twenties and later."

"...the list of giant banks on life support runs to at least ten, with an unknown number of less giant banks that will be squashed when the big ones go down. The sound you hear in the background -- even beyond the sound of John McCain's carping, snotty campaign commercials -- is the whoosh of capital leaving the system. By capital I mean assumed accumulated wealth ready to be put-to-work by this society. We won't have any. The president-elect will wake up November 5th as leader of a poor nation, and all the grand plans laid out during the campaign will have to take a back seat to a severe revision of hopes and expectations."
*****
"...the carnage on the money scene will be so extreme this fall that the nation will seem to have been transformed from a superpower to a basketcase before November 4th, and that the blame for this state of affairs will be blindingly obvious: the people in charge for the past eight years looted the treasury, destroyed the currency, and left the machinery of capital a smoking wreckage."

CNN correspondent Michael Ware had been hunted, kidnapped, and told he was filming his own execution. But had no plans to leave Iraq. Now, it won't leave him. "I am not the same fucking person. I am not the same person. I don't know how to come home."

"According to the Iraq Study Group, at the end of 2006 there were still 55 US bases in the country and Pentagon requests for funding in the last year have included money for building giant mess halls capable of feeding 5000 people, new airfields, and other facilities that suggest the U.S. isn't planning to leave Iraq anytime soon."

Excerpt: The Way of the World, by Ron Suskind

It's a sad turn at a time of crisis -- as religious fanatics search tirelessly for history-ending weapons -- that the conduct of nations and of leaders, both duly elected and self-appointed, is so unimaginative and self-defensive. And that America has lost so much of the moral power that the world now desperately needs it to possess. That dispiriting truth is something the characters in this book, like so many others across the planet, have begun, at long last, to see as a starting point. It's a starting point for their journeys, each quite personal, to find a moral compass, and a way forward.

Thanks Dashiell. Dr. Kelly has joined those whose stories and deaths are quickly buried and forgotten for the sake of 'national security.'

"WTC 7 Emergency Head Was Building Collapse Specialist"