Jul. 14th, 2006

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Geez, the Big Dig disaster has already become a major political football. Why am i surprised? I should not be. Romney is running for president in 2008, so he's concerned that this not be a stain on his record, and if possible is going to turn it into something he can campaign on.

OTOH, i think i trust him more than the Turnpike Authority chair.

Gov. Mitt Romney put plans in place to seize control of inspections in the Big Dig tunnel system where falling ceiling panels fatally crushed a woman, saying an independent assessment was necessary to restore public trust.

Romney was expected to sign an emergency bill Friday morning, passed overwhelmingly by the Legislature late Thursday, that would also give him ultimate say on when the tunnels reopen, instead of the Turnpike Authority chairman.

from Gov. Romney seeks control of Big Dig probe
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Cindy Sheehan: "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Soldiers"

In war correspondent Christopher Hedges' book, War Is the Force That Gives Us Meaning, he writes:

The disillusionment comes later. Each generation again responds to war as innocents. Each generation discovers its own disillusionment - often at a terrible price.
The terrible price is that, once again, we forget that the war machine loves to greedily consume our children for the terrible profits that they so willingly and cheerfully reap. Hence the phrase: "Laughing all the way to the bank." How does it feel that the vultures are laughing at how gullible we are to so naively cough up our young? Previous generations of mothers have watched presidents and other cheerleaders for war and mayhem drag us into war after war and we mothers are unwilling and unknowing accomplices in our children's murders. War will finally have to stop when we mothers (and fathers and spouses, etc.) stop allowing our leaders to march our children off to wars that are to feed the ravenous war monster: This hideous war monster counts on us families forgetting that the last war for revenue was fought against phantom enemies that can't be confined within borders. Whether the wars are covert or overt they are always being waged with our babies' blood.

Tragically, I don't know anyone, war supporter or not, who raised his or her children to be a war criminal. I would hope that there are few people in our country who have hoped against hope that one day that their son would grow up to rape Iraqi girls and kill innocent Iraqis in cold blood. The Mahmoudiya and Haditha incidents are horrible atrocities but, unfortunately, are not isolated incidents in the Iraq war crime. War breeds atrocities. I wish to God, and everything that anybody holds holy, that Mahmoudiya and Haditha were isolated incidents, but we know that they are not. When the neo-cons despicably spit out the blather that we need to "stay the course," I wonder what that means? Rape and murder? That is a horrible course. I think we should change it now.


Ruth Rosen and Tom Engelhardt: "Sexual Terrorism in Iraq" (i've only gotten halfway through this so far, in places it is graphic and triggery)

This specific rape of one Iraqi girl, however, is now becoming symbolic of the way the Bush administration has violated Iraq's honor.... In a fierce condemnation, the Muslim Scholars Association in Iraq denounced the crime: "This act, committed by the occupying soldiers, from raping the girl to mutilating her body and killing her family, should make all humanity feel ashamed."

Shame, yes, but that is hardly sufficient. After all, rape is now considered a war crime by the International Criminal Court.

.... [T]he invasion and occupation of Iraq has had the effect of humiliating, endangering, and repressing Iraqi women in ways that have not been widely publicized in the mainstream media: As detainees in prisons run by Americans, they have been sexually abused and raped; as civilians, they have been kidnapped, raped, and then sometimes sold for prostitution; and as women – and, in particular, as among the more liberated women in the Arab world – they have increasingly disappeared from public life, many becoming shut-ins in their own homes.


the late Smedley Darlington Butler: "War is a Racket" (written between WWI and WWII, linked in Sheehan's piece above)

In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

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