April 11, 2006:

Hoo, boy! -I got lots of response from that last one, most of which reminds me of a Bertrand Russell quote. "Men fear thought," Russell observed, "more than they fear anything else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages ..."

Kevin G. and several others, on the other hand (perhaps) remarked that they thought it all a matter of opinion. That reminded me (everything reminds me of something else; it comes with vast experience - old age, too) of something Uncle Cy told us about the battle for St. Lo, France during the European Theatre of World War Two. "We thought there was probably no one over there in those buildings - they'd been pulverized by artillery; even if there were anyone there, the distance was too far for him to do anything. When the guy with the rifle started killing us at more than a thousand yards, we had to change our opinion."

That's the thing about "opinion." Sometimes, you're right, or you're dead. When you're a nation, or its president, it may be a whole, helluva lot of people are dead. I guess - what with Iraq having become what it is - we can see that now.

Kevin also remarked that he thought most people in the U.S. weren't really interested in the global effects of our actions. He's right about that, and that's what Ward Churchill was saying. His choice of language, moreover, is just that, his choice; its also immaterial, beside the point he otherwise made eminently well.

My "beached whale" remark drew stuff indicative of downright fury. Like I also said, the truth hurts.

And for those people, those who seek to throw word bombs (remember what I said about answering opposing arguments with facts, rather than invective?): you forget that I am the sworn enemy of this government. And I didn't draw first blood - they did. If I watch with satisfaction, or relief, the death of my enemy, how un-natural, or immoral, is that? That the United States is a beached whale cannot be gainsaid by anyone with the facts and a rationally functioning brain. That's the reason - for John and the several Hannity wannabees who gloated that I didn't have the power to overthrow the government - that I don't bother any more with plans for counterattacking the enemy trying to ruin me. I don't have to. All I have to do is watch.

The world, from pole to pole, seethes with rage against the U.S. The chickens are, indeed, coming home to roost. The fat man who is less than four percent of the people at the dinner table that is the planet consumes thirty five percent of what's on the table, and he wants more. He is walking around the planetary banquet table with his fourteen nuclear aircraft carriers, prowling around relentlessly under it with his sixty-four nuclear submarines, and he has stationed seven hundred fifty of his sentries in the form of military bases all around the table, all threatening to smash anyone who opposes his gluttonous appetite.

But now, someone has noticed that the fat man is on life support. He has a tube attached to him, one that supplies him with what in my analogy is life blood - oil. Without the thirty-three percent of the world's oil that he has to have to stay fat, he will cease to be the threat he has made of himself. The snarling grizzly will become a teddy bear. What do you think the other diners at the table will do?

Oh, I know what you're thinking. The whole world knows what you're thinking. What you are, what you've been, thunders so loudly that nothing you can say in your traditionally obfuscatory manner will be heard. You think all that high-tech, Buck Rogers military muscle you have means you'll just go take what you want. You think the rest of the people at the table will simply kowtow, fearful. Think again. Among the many things that have resulted from your relentless colonialism and exploitation of the planet has been a realization that you're not so mucking futch after all. After literally overwhelming your enemies in World War Two, burying them in men and materiel, you were barely able to get a stalemate in Korea. In Vietnam, your young men, armed with every high-tech super weapon known to man, could not defeat raggedly little peasant army enemy armed largely with B-40 (RPGs) rocket launchers, SKSs, and AK-47s.

The fact is that since World War Two, we've done one military pratfall after another, not to mention way our "security" forces here at home covered themselves with glory on 9-11, and Iraq is only the latest in a long string.

If you don't see a connection between that and the fact that our World Baseball Classic Team, made up of our millions of dollar a years "stars," got their asses kicked by teams like Nicaragua and Cuba, you're a nitwit or not paying attention.

Iraq, as I predicted long before we committed this latest Brobdingnagian blunder, is not only kicking our asses militarily, having killed 2,400 of our soldiers and wounded 15,000 more, the place we supposedly set out to liberate is about to sink into chaos. The cold, hard truth is that our "one parent family" reared, hothouse flower push-button military (yeah, sure - that's why we have twenty million Mexicans here to do the work our young men won't do) doesn't fight worth a shit. The world isn't afraid of us any more, not even a little.

But if that weren't enough, you've deteriorated so mentally that you won't face the truth (that, of course, is what anyone smart enough to pour piss out of his boot would expect of anyone as soft and decadent as the typical "American"). You won't face the truth about anything. The nation of liars ruled by liars (again, what would you expect?) lives in the past, repeating its chauvinist (look it up - it has nothing to do with being male) mantra, "greatest nation on the earth." That was then, you know - this is now. You also go right on bloviating and bellering bellicose bullshit, threatening all and sundry with invasion and annihilation, blissfully unaware that Communist China - that nation who practices the system that you keep chanting doesn't work - has you by the throat economically.

A recent essay William Rivers Pitt on the Truthout website's Perspective feature discusses that situation in detail. Pitt quotes Paul Craig Roberts, writing for The American Conservative. "As a result of many years of persistent trade surpluses with the United States, the Japanese government holds dollar reserves of approximately $1 trillion. China's accumulation of dollars is approximately $600 billion. South Korea holds about $200 billion. These sums give these countries enormous leverage over the United States. By dumping some portion of their reserves, these countries could put the dollar under intense pressure and send U.S. interest rates skyrocketing. Washington would really have to anger Japan and Korea to provoke such action, but in a showdown with China - over Taiwan, for example - China holds the cards. China and Japan, and the world at large, have more dollar reserves than they require. They would have no problem teaching a hegemonic superpower a lesson if the need arose."

"The hardest blow on Americans," concluded Roberts, "will fall when China does revalue its currency. When China's currency ceases to be undervalued, American shoppers in Wal-Mart, where 70 percent of the goods on the shelves are made in China, will think they are in Neiman Marcus. Price increases will cause a dramatic reduction in American real incomes. If this coincides with rising interest rates and a setback in the housing market, American consumers will experience the hardest times since the Great Depression."

"In short," Pitt says, "China has the American economy by the throat. Should they decide to squeeze, we will all feel it. China's strong hand in this even extends to the diplomatic realm; China is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and could veto any actions against Iran proposed by the United States."

Pitt goes on to point out correctly that "the American military is stretched to the breaking point." Like I say, the world isn't afraid of you any more. You're a beached whale. The Truthout article goes on to report that two "vaunted economists - one a Nobel Prize winner and the other a renowned budget expert - have analyzed the data at hand and put a price tag on the Iraq occupation. According to Linda Bilmes of Harvard and Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University, the final cost of the Iraq occupation will run between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, surpassing by orders of magnitude the estimates put forth by the Bush administration. If an engagement with Iran envelops our forces in Iraq, and comes to involve Syria, our economy will likely shatter under the strain of fighting so many countries simultaneously. Add to this the economic threat posed by China, and the economic threat implicit in any substantial disruption of the distribution of Mid-East petroleum to the globe.

The article continues, "If Iran and Syria - with their significant armaments," missile technologies and suspected chemical weapons capabilities - decide to engage with the relatively undersized US force in Iraq, our troops there will be fish in a barrel. Iran's position over the Gulf would make re-supply by ship and air support from carriers a dangerous affair. In the worst-case scenario, the newly-minted American order of battle requiring the use of nuclear weapons to rescue a surrounded and imperiled force could come into play, hurling the entire planet into military and diplomatic bedlam."

No, my friends, I have no reason to attack my enemy. He's doing himself far worse than I could. The streets have filled up for the last few days with another of the incontrovertible signs of your impending demise, millions of illegal alien Mexicans and their supporters, at first carrying the flag of Mexico, then ("oops!") the stars and stripes, all demanding that "los estados unidos" be made comfortable for them. "Liberty, they cry, and they mean license." When they have accomplished their stated objective, to overwhelm the citizenry with the political power of numbers and take control, they will make of the nation another like the one they left. Add that cancer to the ones I've already mentioned. You're a beached whale.

And, parenthetically - for the morons wearing the signs say "You're an immigrant, too" - I am NOT an immigrant. I was born here. That my great grandparents came from another nation has nothing to do with my status as a citizen. As a matter of fact, the people who were here when the first Europeans landed at Plymouth Rock (or, for that matter,Vineland, centuries before) were also "immigrants." None were ILLEGAL immigrants.

But the "American" waving the flag of Mexico are right. They'll bury you. They'll bury you because you won't do the work they will do - the very same work I did as a kid, and young men like me always did. They'll take over your country, to make the ruin of it their own nation is, because you're too lazy and fat, too corrupt, decadent, and effete to do anything about it. A beached whale.

Like Professor Churchill's essay, the essays by William Rivers Pitt and Paul Craig Roberts tell it like it is. But White House parrots like those on FoxNews,"Talk Radio," people like the exhibitionistic Anne Coulter, would (or will) do the same with those essays as they have done with that of Ward Churchill. Teach a parrot to yell "Traitor!", it will yell "Traitor!" Parrots have bird brains. They fly away when things get tough and loud, to come right back with their "traitor!" calls as soon as things get quiet again.

So, I'll just watch the beached whale die. Death rattle of a dying beast that it is, the bird-brained babble of the whale's Anne Coulters is music to my ears. My enemy will soon be dead, I'll still be standing.

On a recent Hannity and Colmes, Sean Hannity pontificated - the man seldom does anything else - that the federal government should stifle free speech by cutting off any federal funding received by the individual or those who employee him. Hannity, who is four or five clicks to the political right of Attila the Hun (not, of course, to imply that he, himself, would actually physically fight for anything much less go to war), so argued a couple of nights ago. In demagogue's fashion only he could duplicate, Hannity had been engaged earlier in a verbal exchange also typical of intellectual wannabees like himself, pretending to debate while interrupting and shouting down the "guest," Professor Ward Churchill. From the safety of very long distance, he was as insulting verbally as his limited wits could muster.

Churchill, the reader will recall, is the Colorado professor, writer, and civil activist who skewered the United States and its government in an essay entitled, "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens." The essay, while questioning the innocence of many people killed in the World Trade Center attacks and labeling them "technocrats" and "little Eichmanns," also quotes - as I have here - U.S. Marine Major General Smedley Butler, who in a 1935 speech likewise skewered the U.S. and its already smugly contrite public with the a lance made of historically incontrovertible facts. Churchill fires his own machinegun burst historical facts, a list too long to reprise here, but General Butler made Churchill's point quite well enough, thank you.

"I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country’s most agile military force – the Marine Corps... And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect money in. I helped in the raping of a half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street... I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped get Honduras “right” for American fruit companies in 1903. I helped get Honduras “right” for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents."

It would be a lot of fun - wouldn't it? - to hear the bloviating Hannity - a war hawk who "did not serve" - hurl his middle finger salute from a car passing at high speed verbal thunderbolts at a two-time Medal of Honor winner like General Butler. The trouble with Butler's speech, and with Ward Churchill's essay, is not language like "technocrats" and "little Eichmanns." The trouble is that the point the professor was making is the truth. Now, confronted with incontrovertible and ineluctable truth, the alligator mouth with a robin's ass type like Hannity always repairs to the same smoke-and-mirrors devices. Foremost among these is the tactic whereby the moral coward finds anything in the context of what his adversary has said to criticize, thusly ignoring, and diverting attention from, the rest. He will then seek to blow - that's what I meant by "bloviating" - the words he's chosen as far out of proportion as he can. Anyone who listened to FoxNews and the rest of the White House and federal apologists in the aftermath of Churchill's essay heard the classic example. The same can be heard repeatedly on almost any issue of that particular organ of the White House.

Ward Churchill is a fifty-eight year old professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, and author of more than twenty books. He has, in short, been researching and discussing his topic and point of view for a long time. His point is that U.S. foreign policy, economic and otherwise, provoked the attacks of September 11, 2001. There isn't any way around that. It's as true as it is obvious - to the rest of the world, anyway. The world knows that the United States engages in brutal colonialism. That's on the record of history.

The United States engages in murder. Murder? Don't bother with the knee-jerk indignation - I'm one of those whom the "Nation of Laws" trained to do it.

The United States engages in torture. We've not only been caught at it again and again, we are now debating the morality of what we've done, and, obviously, intend to do publicly.

The United States engages in terrorism. Terrorism? Well, you tell me what dropping bombs and firing missiles armed with 2,000-pound warheads into little Pakistani villages, on the off chance of killing a single enemy - however declared and deserving he might be - is.

The United States engages in oppression and economic slavery. Slavery. The U.S. has long, by means of self-serving and vicious monetary and economic policy, exploited and enslaved for capital gain vast numbers of the human race. That the public of a nation who engages in this kind of foreign "policy" is responsible has long been held by civilization, a fact argued, agreed, and promulgated again and again at Nuremburg. If the public bears no responsibility for the actions of its government, how do you explain Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The fire-bombing of Dresden? How about Wounded Knee, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?

I've spoken of Nuremburg. Remember "the German excuse?" When the concentration camps had been found, there could nevertheless be found no one in Germany who know anything about them. The Nazi party seemed to have had no members. "Ich habe nichts davon gewusst," was the litany. "I didn't know anything about it." At Nuremburg, the world turned a deaf ear. A public IS responsible for the actions of its government, and "On the Justice or Roosting Chickens" tells it like it is.

Yeah, you bet your sweet life it's infuriating. It's the truth, and Ward Churchill is right. Until we take responsibility for murder, for terrorism, and for economic slavery perpetrated in our name, and until we stop it, we can’t escape responsibility for the terrorism returned to us. We ARE little Eichmanns. Indeed, those people who live in “the seething, bleeding psychic wastelands spawned by the unspeakable arrogance of US imperial pretension” will continue to feel the need to push back to the extent that Americans -- all of us -- continue to wallow in delusions of 'innocence' and exceptionalism. Standing as 'moral witnesses' to these crimes, so long as they continue, is not enough."

That's truth into the teeth of brutal power, by the way. I've been there, done that, and I know the price the government can exact with the certainty of one who has paid it. It takes cojones, balls as big as cannonballs, to defy a vicious monster like the government of the United States of America, and to hear a sycophant moral coward like Sean Hannity hurl verbal abuse at a kindred spirit makes me wish I could get him on the mat. This will have to do, I suppose.

One further point, one I've tried to make again and again. Men and women of honor answer their opposition with facts, not insult, invective, and back-stabbing like FoxNews efforts to use economic and political pressure to cost their adversary his job or livelihood. Nations with honor, moreover, do not silence their opposition by depriving that opposition of federal subsidy. That's tax money, you know, some of which was paid by the people who would be deprived of it.

Oh, that's federal tactics, all right. As I say, I've been there, done that. IRS first seizes everything, then invites you to sue for its return. Of course, that requires the money just taken from you. Cute. And dishonorable, like attacking someone with his hands tied, or stabbing him in his sleep. The Justice of Roosting Chickens may also be that of domestic chickens, something I warned of repeatedly all these years ago. One day, the domestic version of U.S. terrorism - things like Ruby Ridge, Waco, and a hundred more - will bring retribution. The man who fights a monster will become a monster. It's time for more Ward Churchills - and, if I may, Hal Luebberts. Otherwise, you will continue to get what you're begging for, what you so sanctimoniously call "terror."

A few days ago, a writer typical in his nation and society's oblivious arrogance replied to my blog remarks with the comment that it was fortunate that I didn't have the power to overthrow the government. He means that government and majorities have always had the brute force power to crush their victims. But that was then, sir, this is now.

Your nation is a whale, beached on its own gluttonous need for oil. Any day now, the world will shut down the pumps - and make you eat what you've been handing out. And then there's the cavalier way you treat your own, like Randy Weaver, like the Branch Davidians, and a hundred more. Like New Orleans and the other victims of Katrina and Rita. Like you treated me. You're pretty sure I can't do anything about that.

Are you that certain? Your government isn't.

April 7, 2006:

Well, now, let's see . . . When I was a kid back in Iowa, and the union at the local Oliver Farm Equipment factory wanted to stage a illegal work stoppage, it was arranged for somebody to see a black panther kill a cow (or something). That precipitated the Great Panther Hunt. In Iowa. Everybody had a day off, beer distributors were ecstatic, and the birth rate for the area jumped a few notches. Great fun.

It had its downside, though. Maybe I'm the only one who noticed, but it seemed after that that tacticians of several colors, from loafers and opportunists to politicians and high government officials - but I repeat myself - soon availed themselves of what I came to call the "Bugaboo Diversion." Abominable Snowman, Chupacabra, and One-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater, all have served. Of course, as one might expect, the federal government version of Bugaboo Diversion is colossal, often having downright Brobdingnagian proportions. More, the old tactic of diversion acquired so many versions that one could fill a library with them. You could reach about Bachelors Degree level, though, just by watching U.S. media like FoxNews when the White House has done - or is about to do - one kind of pratfall or the other. Take the case of the What-His-Name basketball player who let himself get suckered by the babe in the hotel, or the Natalee Holloway matter. Consider the lurid way the disappearance of one or other women pops onto the boob-tube screen, just in time to cover something like disclosure that the White House is reading your mail, torturing prisoners, or planning something like an attack on Iran. Et cetera.

One could cite historical examples like that for hours, but a recent and object example will perhaps do. Let's take illegal Mexican immigration and the "border" (it may be a border for Mexico, but anyone who calls our obvious view of the place a border must be hallucinatory). My tertulia at the Half-Price Bookstore Calypso Cafe considers me to be something of a tactician - my appraisal and prediction having to do with invasion of Iraq, for instance, hasn't missed a whisker - and the other day, the question was "What do we do about the border and illegal immigration?" Piece of cake.

But first, what we really need to find out is what's REALLY up? I can hear the hoots. Come on, people - when the wind starts to blow rain in, you close the damned window. If you want to prevent anybody sneaking into the chicken house, you let the dog out. If it scratches, you itch it. Ye Gods! This isn't rocket science. The question is what the hell is Animal House on the Potomac up to NOW.

There's New Orleans and what Hurricanes Katrina and Rita did to it, of course. SEVEN AND A HALF MONTHS AGO. Sure as hell, the Bush League's feckless plenipotentiaries want that to get as little press as possible. There are homeless and helpless people still everywhere - AND THAT INCLUDES TENS OF THOUSANDS OF KIDS - things are still in one hell of a mess, and we're still throwing away money and lives in Iraq like it was a parlor board game. No, for that to be it, there were have to be billions stolen . . . well, now that I think of it, maybe that IS it.

There's . . . Oh, for crissakes, all right! How do we stop the avalanche of Mexicans? That's about the rich exploiting the poor - capitalism. When has it ever been different? The capitalist always sings the same litany: "It's the only thing that works." By "works," he means that three-quarters of the planet's population damned near starves, but lives on the hope of getting lucky - in order to keep the other quarter of his species living like maharajahs. It's about money, so you deal with the damned problem by fining anyone, individual and/or corporation who hires an illegal alien twenty percent of his gross income and a sentence of five years in prison - no chance of parole. That's each offense. Anyone who commits misprision of the felony - that's knows about it an doesn't report it - is fined ten percent of his income and does two years in the slammer. No exceptions. Anyone who knows of an illegal alien being here and fails to report is fined five percent of his income and does a year. The media must - under pain of possible tax audit - promulgate the new law daily for two months. That will do it. End of problem.

Now, where was I - oh, yeah; what are they really up to?

Well, the government may be fearful that the e-mail reading, wiretapping thing will lead to the public finding out about everything else they're doing. The Smoke and Mirrors Tactic may also involve things like IRS selling taxpayer information to the smut peddlers and anyone else who can profit by knowing everything about your finances (of course, that's damned near anybody in the hyper-capitalist system we've got), or the staggering number of females who have to "come across" for IRS officials rather than be deported to wherever they came from (I'm still wondering how "Antonio" could run a business with a number of employees without IRS knowing it), and so on. Not that illegal alien females are the only ones who have to put out for the taxmen. I should think that would be obvious that a bureaucrat with that kind of power would be scratching his horny itch whenever he has one, even to a public a brain-dead as this one.

Then there's the energy crisis - where's the price of gasoline now . . . Two-sixty for regular unleaded? What, seventy dollars a barrel for crude? There's always been one of these big diversions right before a big jump in gas prices . . . N-a-a-a-h, they'd just go ahead and DO it - the public is to fat-headed and addicted to driving the old SUV ninety miles an hour, for there to be any problem there. Gotta be something else.

Still, Fox is STILL hammering away nightly on the Natalee Holloway thing, discovering new "evidence" every day. It reminds you of the tabloids and the JonBenet Ramsey Affair years ago. Damn - maybe we're going to invade Venezuela? Or Cuba? Hmmmmm!

Oh shit! -you don't suppose they're covering a big jump in casualties in Iraq or Afghanistan? Another Abu Ghraib prison "scandal" (when you call torture by the U.S. Army "scandal," you've pretty much shown your colors, haven't you - huh?)?
Maybe global warming is worse than we thought - there'll be seventy-five more hurricanes like Katrina . . .the New Ice Age is close?

Uh-uh. Got to be about money and power. Nothing else matters in Washington - or anywhere else, for that matter - anymore. Hey, maybe it has to do the staggering implications of the ever-growing gap between rich and poor. With corporation after corporation announcing their intention to bail out of employee retirement plans - that while corporation CEOS typically have five or six million dollars a year retirement "packages" - there's going to have to be some really colossal blizzards of bullshit blown by the media, education, and the rest in order to distract the lumpen proletariat. Maybe that's it. If so, watch for more Bread and Circuses. Remember Commodus the Roman Emperor? Well, hell - that's what this is all about anyway, isn't it?

Tell you what - let me think about it awhile. It's damned certain Animal House on the Potomac is covering some kind of skullduggery, but they've gotten so good at it, it takes some effort to figure out what.

I'll get back to you. 'Kay?

“Liberals just ignore inconvenient facts.” That’s columnist Thomas Sowell, and he’s one of the lot I read as often as I can. He writes well, his research is impeccable, and he deals in facts. As far as they go. I also read Leonard Pitts religiously, same reasons. There are others – reasons for reading them the same. There’s just that one trouble with them all, and the “trouble” is the further fact that while truthful, the “facts” omit anything that doesn’t tend to support them.

Sowell, for instance, does not mention the thunderously obvious fact that “conservative” (I always use quotes with the word – check its dictionary definition) columnists and news media do exactly the same thing. On last night’s Hannity and Colmes segment, for instance, Hannity and Iran-Contra conspirator Oliver North conducted another of their patented propaganda campaigns for the Bush Administration concerning Iraq.

John Kerry, the dead horse Hannity and FoxNews somehow can’t stop beating, was again the target. Obviously – both from the fact of his political affiliation and the news from Iraq – the former presidential candidate had criticized “conduct” (just as obviously, and inasmuch as the prefix “con” means “together,” there ought to be a better choice of terms) of the war there.

Now, parenthetically, I don’t know if it’s still a “war” or not. One salient tactic of “disinformation” propaganda is euphemistic torture of terms. In a discussion where “precision munition” is a bomb that obliterates everything in a five hundred foot circle and destroys things out to two thousand yards, dozens, even hundreds, of human being are “collateral damage,” and all of it means the “target” has been “serviced,” just about anything is possible – and I mean literally.

Have the war in Iraq become a “conflict” yet?

Does the continual killing of persons in the Iraq “government” – there’s a government there? – constitute a rebellion, or is it still an “insurgency?” Or do I have to cite whose being attacked before you decide?

Has hundreds of Sunni Moslems being killed by Shiites, and vice versa, become a civil war yet?

This is being conducted?!

Oliver North (I can still see all those pictures of him in his Marine uniform, with all the ribbons, hand raised and solemnly swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and – well, you know) tells us for the how-manieth time that the troops morale is high as can be.

Well, now, you see, that’s the truth – as far as it goes. Morale is “as high as can be.” The morale of guys like my friend Richard, who has just been notified that he’s going back to Hell for the third time – that’s “redeployed,” you’ll note, and my choice of “back to Hell” is unpatriotic – IS “as high as can be.” It’s always been so that men and women raised and living in the arduous and trying conditions of a society like this one are ecstatic at the prospect of “deployment” to a paradise like Iraq. Being shot at and attacked by “improvised explosive devices” (need I point out that we are not talking about homemade fertilizer bombs?), and that by enemy and the people you’re “liberating” alike, is something they’ve always dreamed of enjoying.

Knowing that you are going back for “as long as it takes to accomplish the mission” – when the people saying that are as positive and definitive as they are – is a big morale booster. Kind of makes you wonder how many “redeployments” that translates to, doesn’t it? And doesn’t “stay the course” sound a hell of a lot like “keep going back until you’re killed?”

And then, there’s that “support our troops” thing. “Support” means sending them back again and again and again until they get dismembered or killed? Can we please stop discussing this in English? German, maybe? Spanish? Anything that won’t let you say things like “collateral damage.” Or “redeployment.”

Sean Hannity is a piece of work, isn’t he? It’s downright eerie to hear him immediately turn each mention of John Kerry to an excoriation of the latter for his revelations concerning atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. That’s as if it just didn’t happen. Last night, Oliver North - a Vietnam veteran, it must be mentioned - joined him in the surreal performance. Hannity and North, reminiscent of columnist Sowell’s “just ignore inconvenient facts, not only simply ignored the facts, but gave every indication that no such thing – not one instance – had ever occurred.

That despite the fact that atrocities by U.S. soldiers during the war in Vietnam have long since been admitted, compiled, and portrayed in movies like Winter Soldier, wherein more than a hundred soldiers testified incontrovertibly to having committed war crimes. Talk about an Irishman’s “Blarney!” The SOB looks you right in the eye, and tells you something like “you’re dead,” and expects – no demands – that you believe it. There were no U.S. atrocities in Vietnam?!

THE MORALE OF TROOPS IN IRAQ IS GOOD?! Well, hell, YES – everybody in the military is behind their fearless leader four-square. That’s why there are such long lines at all the recruiting stations.

Sorry, Mr. Sowell – torture or the truth isn’t limited to the liberal side of this looney-bin. Maybe in your next column you can tell me why it is that most of the people against this “conflict” (“Disagreement with weapons?” “Exchange of ‘target servicing’?”) – are veterans of actual combat, while all the guys beating the drums – heroes like Hannity and the rest of the right wing – are all in the “did not serve” column of my recent compilation having to do with such matters www.judoknighterrant.com/opinion

That should be a real morale booster, shouldn’t it?

Nope, liberals aren’t the only ones who ignore the inconvenient facts, and I’ve dedicated my website opinion page, ‘The Mongoose Trick,’ to the massive disinformation campaign being waged by the military industrial complex that rules here in the Nation of Laws, Land of the Free, against the public. That’s far too voluminous for this venue, but I’ve provided the URL where the reader can find the conclusive proof of what I say.

“All war is deception,” said Sun Tzu, and that’s what the “free press” is all about in an nation ruled by the agency also known as the House of Mirrors. It’s something any reasonable person might expect.

“Deception is a state of mind,” a director of counter-intelligence for the CIA once observed, “and deception is the mind of the state.”

“Who would argue that Cindy Sheehan’s son is not a hero? I mean, come on,” he said, chalking the exchange up to election-year politics.

That’s Georgia Congressman Republican Jack Kingston, talking to (arguing with, actually) Pennsylvania Congressman Democrat Jack Murtha during a closed hearing of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee recently. Murtha, a retired Marine colonel and combat veteran, favors doing whatever we can, including leave Iraq, to rescue our military from the asinine situation and circumstances in which their Commander In Chief has gotten them enmeshed. Kingston, who in his own words, “had no service,” favors “staying the course,” and all that – everything one might expect from a guy who’s never so much as heard a shot fired.

If you’ve read any of my essays here, you saw my compilation of the “service” “had” by our nation’s Congressional hawks. Our fearless leader’s record of sterling service is, of course, well known. The wonder there is that, somehow, the record of decorated service in combat of one presidential candidate was somehow turned against him while the hide-behind-momma’s-skirt record of another made him a hero. Now that, folks, is what is called an informed public. The magic of Television.

But we speak here not of heroes, but of statements made by heroes (well, a guy who got himself elected to Congress must be a hero to a least some). Despite his protestations to the contrary, Representative – I always kind of resent that, where a politician is concerned; it suggests some kind of similarity – Kingston obviously DID say that Casey Sheehan was something less than a hero. He was taking it back, saying that he’d never get caught saying something as politically incorrect as that publicly. Congressmen, after all, never say what they really think publicly.

And there is the state of our “democracy.” Every day since the United States invaded Iraq – and I want you to know that I spoke against it from day one and long before, predicting just about exactly the appalling pratfall we’ve done – we’ve heard our troops referred to as heroes. Each time one dies, or is wounded, the media is THUNDEROUSLY careful to call the soldier a hero. “Support Our Troops” yellow ribbons are everywhere.

As was the case with flags immediately after 9-11, they litter the gutters and ditches everywhere, too much trouble to show the respect of collecting once blown off the car or whatever they once festooned. When I had rescued dozens of the flags from the gutters and fences, from the dust and mud, I cleaned some, properly burned the rest. During my routine bicycle rides, I still see rotted remnants of Old Glory where they were left by the same people who publicly purport willingness to fight over the flag’s “desecration” by others. I find the counterpoint is interesting.

The ribbons and flags are much like soldiers like Casey Sheehan. Useful, that’s in public and in order to justify their owners, they are heroes; otherwise, nobody really cares. The news of the war, after all is on about page six in most newspapers, and you have to read the flow strip on the bottom of the TV screen, or watch Galavisión, the Mexican station, to learn what has happened to the troops we support so firmly.

In fact, to show real concern for the troops, a la Cindy Sheehan, makes you a “nutcase,” or a traitor. Actual support, you see, is bad for their morale. Anyone who notes, as I have, that firing missiles whose warhead has a 2,000 yard bursting radius into a little Pakistani village is a war crime is, indeed and absolutely, a traitor. “Support” means that we must do nothing to hurt morale, and to realize that what you are doing constitutes war crimes is likely to do that, big time. “Support” means you invent expressions like “collateral damage.” And the enemy is at fault for that – he started it . . . except you know he didn’t, and well . . . SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!

The war itself is like the “hero” rhetoric, isn’t it? Publicly, it’s “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Privately, nobody in his right mind says, or believes, anything so obviously faux. It’s all the kid’s game we used to play. Remember “Cowboys and Indians (yeah, I know – but there WAS no “politically correct” then)?” The rules? When the big, heroic cowboy or any of his compañeros pointed his toy pistol and yelled “Bang, you’re dead,” you fell dutifully dead, or you were banished. Ostracized. Traitor!

Well, the game is back. Cowboy heroes like Congressman Kingston have mounted their broom horses, and are killing bad guys. Having no idea of a real gun fight, it’s all just “Bang, you’re dead” to them. And shame on you, Cindy Sheehan, if you point out to the Congressman Kingston heroes that their horses are just brooms, their six-shooters just their index fingers, and that’s not really how it is in a war. You can’t play with us any more.

And, by the way, your son is only a hero if WE say he is. That’s the rules of the game. You can’t play.

Mrs. Sheehan seems to be a really gutsy lady, though, and this is what her answer was: http://www.truthout.org/

“Broken-hearted mother,” the lady said. That’s real, or course. But to the following list of heroes, it’s “desecrating the memory of her son.” The quote, as I recall, is from one of their number; and, if I’m wrong in some degree, it is a fair representation of the jist of their remarks concerning Mrs. Sheehan.

Here are the heroes of the Far, “Did Not Serve,” Right:

George Will, did not serve

Chris Matthews, did not serve.

Bill O'Reilly, did not serve

Paul Gigot, did not serve.

Bill Bennett, did not serve

Pat Buchanan, did not serve

Rush Limbaugh, did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst')

Michael Savage (aka Michael Alan Weiner), did not serve.

Pat Robertson - claimed during 1986 campaign to be a "combat veteran." In reality, was a "Liquor Officer."

Bill Kristol, did not serve

Sean Hannity, did not serve.

Ralph Reed, did not serve

Michael Medved, did not serve

Charlie Daniels, did not serve

Ted Nugent, did not serve

Radio Host Phil Hendrie, did not serve.

You’ll notice that Michael “Savage” is really “Weiner.” Notice also that it’s A. Weiner. Couldn’t have said it better myself.