Yahoo! News - Guantanamo Interrogators Were Sent to Iraq-NY Times

Yahoo! News - Guantanamo Interrogators Were Sent to Iraq-NY Times

Do you think we will find a correlation here? I have found the story very hard to believe so far. Based on the tortures that were used, it seemed apparent to me that the soldiers involved had some coaching. The fact that the methods used were completely degrading to the prisoners (eating pork, renouncing Islam - an offense punishable by death, submission to female guards) had to have been a clue that they were not acting on their own volition.

Abuses such as these are not a surprise to me. There are so many things wrong with this operation, I'm not even sure where to begin, but having served in the military myself, the biggest problem that I can see is the sheer amount of National Guard and Reservists on the ground in Iraq. Having trained and served with many part-timers, I can tell you that right or wrong, the two main reasons that people join the Guard and Reserve is for the extra $$ and the education benefits. While they are mostly aware that they can be summoned to active duty at the governments will, trust me, most of them do not think it will happen.

Consider this scenario. You are late teens or early twenties and you need a part time job to supplement your income, so you take one on. Once a month, you work on the weekend at a local store, and during the summer when it gets busy, you work a couple of weeks. One day you are called in to work and told that you will have to put your full-time job on hold indefinitely, because the boss from the part time job needs you full time. By the way, they need you to go work in the store that is in the middle of the desert half way around the world, and you will need to be there for a minimum of 18 months. Oh, and did I mention, most of the full time employees will be needed to man the homefront store, so most of the people you will be working with will be part-timers, too?

The first red flag that should go up: How effective do you think a unit of part-time employees will be? The second: To what degree do you think they will be affected by the fact that the employees don't want to be there?

I'm not trying to make excuses here, I'm just trying to point out the facts. While I'm sure that they at first feel it's a matter of patriotic duty to serve, I have to believe that wears pretty thin, pretty quickly. Not only is this not a "Coalition of the Willing", I not so sure that the US fighting force is of the willing...

What is the DNC doing? Part I

The Democratic National Committee has had 4 years to get prepared to counter the Republican Misinformation Machine, but apparently that has not been enough. It has become very apparent to me that the best way to fight this strategy is with the facts. Unfortunately, they are once again afraid that the truth will hurt them too much by making their candidate look like he supports or opposes the wrong issue. This was the downfall of the Gore campaign. By continually forcing Gore to the center on all issues, it opened him up to attacks that he had no convictions, that he never found an issue he wouldn't take both sides on (is this sounding familiar?).

It's high time that the Kerry campaign fights back against the constant misinformation that spews from the mouths of the neo conservatives. At what point did serving in the military in a combat situation become a liability? The RNC has successfully turned the tables with this issue (first against John McCain). Why is it acceptable for the president to use the excuse of youthful indescretion to explain his drinking and drug use, but not appropriate to use that excuse when a young combat veteran becomes disillusioned in the war he was just fighting?

Yahoo! News - Bush Says He Was Cure for Illegible Prescriptions

Yahoo! News - Bush Says He Was Cure for Illegible Prescriptions

This is the Bush Administrations idea of health care reform? Handing over $100 million in assistance to the health care industry for technology upgrades? Appointing a technology secretary for HHS? This is just another example of how out of touch this administration is with the average American. Most companies that require major technology initiatives privately fund them! At least the ones that I've worked for have... Maybe I wasn't working for the right companies!

Where to Start?

Having seen that this is a perfect medium to express opinions and debating for weeks on how to start, I have now decided to just dive in. I don't profess to be any type of political expert, I have no formal education on the subject. I simply have my own opinions, seemingly on a daily basis according to those who are tired of hearing me talk about them. I have been a political cynic for over a decade, essentially starting from the time when I was a Reagan supporter in the US military, and the Iran-Contra scandal broke. When the president testified and was so brazenly lying, I felt incredibly disillusioned.

With the opening of the Jerry Brown campaign in 1992, and his vocal opposition to the Washington establishment, I once again became involved. Ninety days later I was crushed when the Clinton campaign took off the gloves and smeered the Brown campaign into the ground with baseless claims of cocaine parties at the Governer's mansion in California. I can still see the shadow of a "policeman" who refused to be identified on the Phil Donahue Show sitting behind screen making outrageous accusations. This was a sad time for the Democratic Party.

The only redeeming quality that I found from the newly elected Clinton administration was the choice of Al Gore as the VP candidate. I had become familiar with his work in the Senate when I had become more active in the enviromental movement, and while he seemed to epitomize the stuffed shirt politicians in Washington, there was something about him that drew me to him.

I never forgave Clinton for the underhanded tactics he used against Jerry, but I was reasonably happy with the results that his administration produced. The Familt Leave Act served me well with the birth of my daughter, allowing me demand time off from my employer to care for her for several weeks. I was then further impressed later on down the line when I needed IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) because my daughter was diagnosed with Autism. For those of you who are not familiar with this, it empowers the parents of disabled children in the direction of their education (regular classroom inclusion, personal aides, speech and occupational therapy, individual classroom modifications, etc...)

My take on the Lewinsky scandal was somewhat different that what was played out in public. My intial impression was that there was little doubt what had happened, but how it came about. It seemed to me that it was a HUGE abuse of power, and based on the limited information that came out during the campaign (Jennifer Flowers and countless Arkansas State Policemen who described his womanizing behavior) I was not at all surprised. The surprising part was the vicious nature of the attacks that were leveled on him.

I of course was thrilled with the Gore nomination for the Democratic Party in 2000. I was however not impressed with the way he allowed himself to be "handled". I very rarely caught glimpses of the man I was so thrilled with just eight years prior. He seemed to be constantly evasive and lacking conviction. While I could certainly understand his disgust for the lack of intelligence for his opponent, it came off as boorish to the American public. Being a techy, one of the things that I came to like about him was his idea of how the Internet could be used. While it did technically exist, it was strictly used by the government and scientific organizations, and was not available to the general public. To this day, I still don't know why the Gore campaign and the DNC didn't turn the tables on the "I invented the internet" Republican smeer.

Needless to say, the outcome was just another in my many political disillusions. My distaste for the the 2nd Bush administration is immeasurable. My disdain for the Democratic National Commitee is nearly its equal. They continue to allow their nominees to be protrayed as privileged, silver spoon fed, no conviction, tax and spend until you bleed LIBERALS!

I am a liberal and proud of it. I will attempt to use this space to espouse the idea that being liberal is not the curse it is made out to be. I welcome any comments that are constructive and open minded.