An Iraqi Mayor Thanks the 3rd ACR

I didn’t see this in the mainstream media. This is a letter from the mayor of Tall ‘Afar, Ninewa, Iraq, thanking the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment for liberating his town from the control of Abu Mousab Al Zarqawi. I got to know some of the guys from the 3rd ACR while I was in Kuwait. … Read more

Single Issue Politics

Everyone is getting all spun up over Rush Limbaugh’s response to the Michael J. Fox commercial supporting a Democratic candidate. To my mind, this is a little bit like getting spun up over something that Howard Stern says. Limbaugh has positioned himself as a conservative shock commentator. Making brash, rude comments is a fundamental part … Read more

yourmusic.com

Every once in a while, a direct mail campaign works on me. Which is, I suppose, why we have junk mail in all it’s nastiness. 1% of the direct mail actually works. yourmusic.com is pretty cool. There are probably other similar services out there but this is the first one I’ve become aware of. The … Read more

Iraqi Newsbot

There are three stories that I stumbled across today that I thought are very relevant given the coming election. —–—– This article illustrates one of the major issues today. We have seen all over the media this number of 665,000 Iraqi civilian casualties. Many of us only read the headline. If the headline agrees with … Read more

Concrete Criticism with a Plan

Phillip Carter, writing for Slate Magazine, provides candid criticism of current policy in Iraq based on his service there (click here for article). More significant is the fact that Mr. Carter also offers some real suggestions on how it might be done correctly. Real solutions in Iraq will require greater commitment of resources and increased … Read more

Review: The Company: A Novel of the CIA

“The Company” (Robert Littell) Some years ago my wife bought me a gift certificate at Audible.com. The certificate was good for three books. Interestingly enough, it literally meant, three books. I was able to buy books far beyond the cost of the gift certificate itself. The process has since changed at Audible.com. You can’t do … Read more

Nation Building?

Had an interesting conversation with a co-worker this afternoon. He told me that Donald Rumsfeld had said that “we are not in Iraq to engage in nation-building…” Ben’s use of the quote is slightly misleading. The complete statement was, “We are not in Iraq to engage in nation-building — our mission is to help Iraqis … Read more

Voting For, Voting Against?

The following is taken from the online Santa Cruz County, CA Ballot (as provided by SmartVoter.Org: US Representative United States Representative; District 17 Sam Farr, Democratic Anthony R. De Maio, Republican Please notice that the Republican candidate, Mr. De Maio, has no links. Mr. De Maio has submitted nothing to any of the online voting … Read more

Illegal War?

The second involves an AWOL soldier turning himself in to face the music. In the first part of the article the soldier, Specialist Darrell Anderson, claims that he fled to Canada rather than deploy with his unit because he felt the war was illegal. However, later in the article we found out that Anderson suffers … Read more