9/11 Ring a bell Simone, or did I forget to take my meds?  Unless my mind is playing tricks on me there were 19 Islamo facists that slaughtered 3,000 civilians that day.  If you actually have something of substance to contribute I welcome your comments.

Are you writing about those 19 SAUDI ARABIANS that attacked the US? The House of Saud? Why didn't we attack Saudi Arabia? It's so confusing to be so ignorant.

Hi "Jeremy" or "Bela",

      I know you are both the same person.  You are clearly a fraud since you feel the need to log in and issue comments under different aliases.  This just proves how weak your arguments are that you feel the need to give the false impression that there are multiple people that feel as you do.   I wonder how many other aliases you have on this site and others.  "Bela", "Jeremy" or whatever you wish to call yourself, you already made the irrelevant point that the 19 suicide bombers were Saudi.  Whether they were born in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, or the United States for that matter, they are Muslim extremists and this is who we are fighting. We are fighting them because they declared war on us.  Osama Bin Laden was also from Saudi Arabia and he declared war on the US.  He is also responsible for assaults on Saudi Arabia!  That's right, this crazy Muslim extremists are a threat not just to the "West" but to their own people if they do not subscribe to their radical ideology. 

 

We will defeat terrorism,
Jeff

Oh poor Jeff. . . fighting terrorism from your armchair with your 007 handle. I wonder why you are so busy writing to people on a tarot card site instead of defending your beloved battles where it really counts. Much better to have other people do the real fighting for you, isn't it? Too heavy for the army? Attacking writers on the I Ching or Runes site is so much safer, isn't it? Better somebody else run the risk while you run on and on. Sort of like the rest of the armchair chicken hawks, Rush, Bush, Cheney, Bumsfeld, O'Reilly, why it never ends that list. Amazing how many people in this administration have been convicted of crimes, isn't it? That's why Thomas Jefferson said, "Every generation needs a new revolution." And, "Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories." 

You think you'll defeat terrorism? The warriors may, but not the armchair types -- but you'd probably like the credit anyway. Tsk tsk.

More propaganda from you Jeff. Here are the facts:

Debunking the Military Debunkers

SAN DIEGO--"The typical recruit in the all-volunteer force is wealthier, more educated and more rural than the average 18- to 24-year-old citizen is," claimed the authors of an oft-cited 2005 "comprehensive study" of the U.S. military commissioned by the Heritage Foundation.

"A pillar of conventional wisdom about the U.S. military is that the quality of volunteers has been degraded after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq," said the conservative think tank. "Some insist that minorities and the underprivileged are over-represented in the military. Others accuse the U.S. Army of accepting unqualified enlistees in a futile attempt to meet its recruiting goals in the midst of an unpopular war." These myths, insisted Heritage and its media allies, were propagated by antiwar liberals out to demoralize the country by attacking its troops.

Two years later, right-wingers trot out the Heritage troop survey as evidence that America is sending its best and brightest, rather than its down and out, to win Afghan and Iraqi hearts and minds. The GOP blog Newsbusters used it to rebut Rosie O'Donnell's statement that most recruits enlist in the army to get an education: "Of course, facts don't matter to Rosie O'Donnell." But are these "facts" true?

The claim that U.S. combat troops come from richer families and enjoy higher levels of educational attainment than the average American defies both conventional wisdom and everyday observation. Active-duty soldiers earn less than their civilian counterparts. In a capitalist society low-paying jobs seldom attract people with higher educational credentials. A disproportionate share of blogs by soldiers serving on the frontlines are poorly written. High-ranking officers, even generals, come off as hick bureaucrats on television. Many troops believe they're in Iraq to fight those responsible for 9/11 or to prevent them from invading the U.S. And a majority of soldiers are conservative Republicans, voting for Bush over Kerry by a 4-to-1 margin in 2004. (The most educated group of voters are liberal Democrats, 50 percent of whom have bachelor's degrees or higher. Republicans tend to be less educated.)

Curious about anything that challenges my assumptions, I looked into the Heritage Foundation study. As it turns out, military personnel are poorer and less educated than the average American civilian. Moreover, they're also a lot more likely to be African-American. (State-controlled media continues to repeat Heritage's claim that the military reflects American racial demographics.)

There are lies, damned lies, and Republican statistics. The Heritage study relies on apples-to-oranges comparisons and factual omissions.

Poorer

No one tracks how much soldiers earned the year before they enlist. The Department of Defense estimates that its employees take a $20,000-per-year pay-and-benefits hit relative to civilians the same age throughout their careers. There is, however, a nifty study by the non-partisan National Priorities Project that compares home ZIP codes of new recruits to tax return data for those areas. "Neighborhoods with low- to middle-median household incomes are over-represented," finds the NPP. "Neighborhoods with high-median household incomes are under-represented.

A closer look shows that the socioeconomic distance between America at home and American troops abroad is a gaping chasm. Young men and women from affluent neighborhoods--those with average household incomes of $100,000 or more--are three to four times less likely as those from poor and lower middle class areas (under $50,000) to serve in the military. This ratio is increasing.

Heritage obtained different results by "comparing these wartime recruits (2003�2005) to the resident population ages 18�24" in each ZIP code (as opposed to the overall population, all ages included). Many recruits are college dropouts who list their last address--their college dorm--when they sign up. College ZIP codes, populated by disproportionately high numbers of 18-to-24-year-olds who are full-time students and/or work low-paying and part-time jobs. Though imperfect, NPP gets much closer to comparing apples to apples by looking at the overall income picture of recruits' hometowns or communities surrounding a college, not just college-aid kids who earn a pittance.

Nothing says that poor people can't make good soldiers. But let's not kid ourselves. There's a reason so many of the dead come from high-unemployment, low-wage states like West Virginia. They're desperate. And desperate people are more tempted to accept a job that could cost them their lives.

Poorly Educated

"Many enlisted personnel are drawn to the benefits offered by the armed forces that allow them to obtain funding for college," the Heritage study's authors allows. (Hi, Rosie.) On the broader point of education levels among U.S. troops, however, they again resort to pomegranate-to-rutabaga comparisons.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office's "1999 Survey of Active Duty Personnel" (the last year for which such data is available) found that "about 60 percent of enlisted personnel surveyed...reported having no more than a high school-level education when they began their military service." (Heritage jacks up the total to 83 percent by including GEDs.) 90 percent of employed Americans over age 25 have a high school diploma.

As they age, military personnel eventually obtain additional educational credentials during their years in the service. Even so, the March 2003 U.S. Census finds that 32 percent of employed Americans have a bachelors or advanced degree. Just seven percent of soldiers do.

You don't need a Ph.D. in Middle East Studies to fire a rifle. But higher education generally leads to greater worldliness--which would come in handy in the post-9/11 era.

Blacker Grunts, Whiter Officers

"Allegations that recruiters are disproportionately targeting blacks also don't hold water," says the Heritage Foundation. "First, whites make up 77.4% of the nation's population and 75.8% of its military volunteers, according to our analysis of Department of Defense data."

Which is "true"--but not True.

The key word here is "volunteers," which here means "new recruits." A new CBO study released this July states: "Because black personnel have been a larger share of recruits in the past and because they have relatively high retention rates, however, they account for a larger share of the active enlisted force as a whole: 19 percent, compared with 14 percent of the civilian population of 17- to 49- year-olds. Black service members make up a smaller percentage of the active officer corps: 9 percent."

You're more than 35 percent more likely to be in the military if you're black than if you're white. But you're 35 percent less likely to become an officer. Ignore the propaganda--the military is a reflection of, rather than a cure for, racism.

Hard Times for Recruiters

With Afghanistan joining Iraq as a war considered an unwinnable mistake in the minds of the public, military recruiters are being forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

In 2005 the Army promoted 97 percent of all eligible captains to major, an increase from the prewar norm of 70-to-80 percent. A Department official told The Los Angeles Times: "Basically, if you haven't been court-martialed, you're going to be promoted to major."

It may be too much to assert that, as Asia Times did recently, that "U.S. ground forces are increasingly made up of a motley mix of under-age teens, old-timers, foreign fighters, gang-bangers, neo-***, ex-cons, inferior officers and a host of near-mercenary troops, lured in or kept in uniform through big payouts and promises." Or is it?

"Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-*** and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members," Scott Barfield, a Defense Department investigator told the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Citing the "toughest recruiting climate ever faced by the all-volunteer army," Major General Michael Rochelle, head of army recruitment promises: "If you have excessively prominent and vulgar tattoos they will not take you right now, but that is about to change."

"824 felons were allowed to sign up in 2004 as opposed to 1,605 in 2006 under the moral waivers scheme," reports the UK Guardian. "Almost 59,000 drug abusers entered the military in the same period."

There are, of course, intelligent, well-educated children of wealthy parents serving in the military. But they are the exception, not the rule. If Afghanistan and Iraq are, as the Bush Administration argues, central fronts in the war on terror, which is a war for hearts and minds, we ought to be sending our best-prepared, most presentable representatives of American society abroad as personal ambassadors. Our decision not to pay the higher salaries and benefits that would lure those men and women out of the civilian workforce belies those claims.

Ted Rall, the liberal opinion writer where you plagiarized the above text is an outspoken anti-war and anti-American Bush basher.  You like to cut and paste other people's opinions and post links to left wing websites but you fail every time to address any of the issues using your own words.  If I were to chose between studies made by the Heritage Foundation and opinions posted by far left anti-war columnists the choice is obvious.

It's funny how when you do voice your own opinion rather than regurgitate other people's text, you resort to calling me names like Chicken Hawk, accuse me of forgetting to take my meds, and other inflammatory statements rather than debate my points respectfully.  I was told by the site administrator that we need to be more respectful in our exchanges. Since you are the only one here who resorts to insults to make up for your lack of debating skills, I'm quite sure this was meant for you.  Regardless, lets agree to disagree since neither of us will sway the other given our deep rooted opinions.  Best.

Jeff

I think it is so EASY to see the IDEOLOGICAL objective of the NeoCons Iraq policies, especially for someone like myself who was born in Iran. The whole purpose of this war is to try & 'export' our own "democracy" & our way of life to the region, so that it would eventually make the Iranian regime unstable & weak, and ultimately to force a new revolution with new "democratic" forces running that country.

But the thing that we have failed so miserably in understanding the point is, that if we really want to change the world, we need to 1st & foremost change ourselves---NOT others!

This is almost like having a sick mental patient who obviously has MANY inner issues that need to be taken care of, mainly by the patiente himself, yet the patient keeps insisting that it would make him feel better when he "helps others improve their own lives"...

In other words, it is called 'escapism'!

As someone coming from that country, i'd sure LOVE to see the country opening its doors to the rest of the world, and becoming more friendly with the West, but i certainly don't support this kind of aggressive export of democracy that the current American Admin is pursuing, because it is ONLY weakening ourselves, and making ourselves more vulnerable.

The rest of this "fight against terrorism" is NOTHING but a nonsense pretense that only those with a linear way of thinking(e.g. Jeff) would buy into.

Best Regards,

/sp

 

http://www.josephsoninstitute.org/movie_whatwillmatter.html

Thank you Aimee! A wonderful and touching reminder of what is important and how to live our lives. Thank you again!

Agreed. Be careful, Jeffie told on me and they kept me off the site for 12 hours. Evidently my children aren't allowed to post. He would like this forum just for himself. Too bad. Keep thinking!

Jeff,

You tried to get me kicked off the site. You would like this forum just for yourself to regurgitate Fox News. You complain that I quote "left wing liberals", but you only repeat the Fox non-News that anybody anywhere can listen to if they wish. "Liberal" is a legal and moral stance. Neither do you address my points. I think the site administrator might have been referring to you when you called me a terrorist supporter. ??? The site administrator didn't say this to me.  If I don't agree with you it's propaganda (which other site readers agreed with me about) and you call me a terrorist supporter. You can have this site to spout all the misconceptions all you wish. Have fun, tattle you head off, blather on repeating war propaganda, as you like to call it. I'm still a peacenik and will remain one. You avatar of a very smooth guy holding some kind of gun -- machine gun? rifle? -- I'm ignorant to guns I'm afraid -- speaks a thousand words. Enjoy
 

This really cracks me up... you don't know who 007 James Bond is?  You really must be from a far corner of the world.  If you have a problem with James Bond and guns maybe you should contact Columbia Pictures and complain to them.

Peace out,

Golly jee Jeff, I guess I'm just not as hip, suave and cool and Hollywoodized as you. You folk from the big city just have it over on me I guess. What a wonderful hero you have, that Mr. James Bond.

Tim,

You wrote, These 'Terrorists' do no have the same love of the physical world as most do. To them, The rewards of afterlife, outweigh the rewards of life. This may be partially true and perhaps because they have so little to lose in this world it is true. In many revolutions one sees the same attitude, when there is nothing to lose, seeing no future for their children, including food and shelter, people become emboldened to risk more. But I can assure you (and I reckon you know well) that all people hurt, love, love their families, want to be loved and to love the same as the rest of the world. They feel hunger the same, grief, sadness, loss and reverence too.

I saw somebody on an interview show -- a representative of "Palestine", and he was asked what it would take to stop the suicide bombers. His answer was, "Five B-6 bombers". What I understood is that if your enemies have guns and you don't, you use rocks. You'll probably lose. It might be dumb. It is most likely a losing proposition, but that's where people are at. It's a sad state of affairs. I see no easy answers. But I do know that I'm not killing more people as a solution to our problems. I think it's much too easy to blame the a people's religion, although most of them are dreadfully violent -- think Crusades, Inquisition, the splitting of India, bombing of clinics etc. I've heard it said that the only time there wasn't violence when two religions met was when Boddhisattva took Buddhism to China, which practiced Tao. It was absorbed peacefully. Of course, it's a religion of non-violence. But I digress.

The planet's evolution depends on every individual's evolution. We each have to find peace and harmony inside and reflect it outside. Hopefully someday the scales will balance towards peace. I hold every hope they will. Anyway, that's the way I see it