The Information Super-Frog

The Smart Set: Battle Scars: Celebrating the Fourth with the Great Reunion of 1913.

The huge gathering of surviving Civil War veterans at the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Article doesn't mention that large groups of Boy Scouts were there, serving as aides to the aged veterans. A relative of mine was one of the young Scouts; he said he'd never seen so many old men missing arms and legs. A few years later, that memory was why he didn't join those rushing to enlist as soon as the US got into the Great War.

Ambassador opposes Afghan surge
Karl Eikenberry, the US ambassador in Kabul, has written to the White House to oppose sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan. Eikenberry said President Karzai's government should first prove it would tackle corruption.

Obama may be afraid of Blackwater
Blackwater continues to do brisk business in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and the Obama administration may be too afraid of the firm to do anything about it, says investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill.

Bribes to Iraqi officials kept Blackwater in Iraq despite the Iraqi government ordering Blackwater out of the country after the 2007 Nissour Square massacre.

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, The Great War was stopped, and it was declared that henceforth the 11th of November of each year should be called Armistice Day, to celebrate the end of war.

The war was so terrible that many hoped that leaders would no longer be so foolish as to start new wars, or if they did that the people would refuse to fight.

Armistice Day recalls the over 9 million soldiers killed in the war. As this site notes:

"World War I; 9,000,000 dead young men equal 1,350,000,000 pounds of bone and flesh, 27,900,000 pounds of brain matter, 11,250,000 gallons of blood, 414,000,000 years of life that will never be lived, and 22,500,000 children who will never be born. The dry if imposing figure "9,000,000 dead" seems a little less statistical when we view it from this perspective."

That 9,000,000 is merely the military casualties; 12,500,000 civilians killed as well. As is usual in war, innocent bystanders commonly become victims in greater numbers than the soldiers.

.....


In 2008, for the first time, France has no living veterans of the Great War. The few remaining of other countries are all aged near the limits of human life span.

One survivor, 112 year old veteran Henry Allingham recalls:

"I recall too many things I would like to forget.... arms, legs, everything, human flesh blown to pieces. "

"I hope there'll be no war. Pray that in the whole world there'll be no war. Nobody wins the next war. Nobody."

May there come an Armistice Day when only an aged few can recall the horrors of any war.

The words "levee break" and news footage of cities under water certainly has a dread familiarity for those of us greater New Orleans. Our hearts go out to our countrymen in the Mid-West.



Midwest Flood News

Red Cross.org

Just a "natural" disaster?

"Authorities knew the aging levee near Birdland, a working-class, racially diverse neighborhood, was the weakest link among the city's levees. A 2003 Corps report called for nearly $10 million in improvements across Des Moines, but there wasn't enough federal money to do all the work." Des Moines Levee Fails (hat tip to jdquintette)

But of course we can't afford 10 million here and 12 million there to defend America when we have a 2.4 Trillion dollar war to take care of. (And Bush wants another 178 billion, saying "our men and women in uniform and their families deserve better". Indeed, so do we all.)

Besides, it's cheaper (not for the country, of course, but for BushCo) to just let citizens die and start a PR campaign to blame the victims.

I'm not saying defending Americans isn't on BushCo's list of priorities at all. It's probably somewhere down their list as a subset of potential public relations problems. Right around the note to make sure Dear Leader doesn't start massaging female foreign leaders when there are media cameras around.

Edit:
Is 'Mother Nature' Really To Blame for the Midwest Floods? article by Georgianne Nienaber. More on levees, politics, and Army Corps of Engineers follies.

Former National Security Director during the Reagan administration, General William Odom, bashes the Democratic congress... for not standing up to BushCo. He advocates withdrawl from Iraq and impeaching Bush if he stands in the way.
'Supporting the troops' means withdrawing them


67% of USA voters realize that the Iraq war is creating more terrorism rather than diminishing it. 56% believe that the Iraq war is a distraction from the fight against terrorism.
poll

45% think Bush should be impeached. Might that number be higher if that wouldn't result in President Cheney? 54% want Cheney impeached.
ABC story
Polls on American Research Group

Ron Paul, the only anti-Iraq war Republican candidate, is now ahead in campaign contributions cash of John McCain, former front-runner and the most vehement support of the BushCo War Stategy.
ABC article

Fred Thompson's role in the Watergate hearings: A mole for Nixon.
Boston Globe article

BushCo War costing US $12 Billion a month, could top 1.4 Trillion

According to General Wesley Clark, within 10 days of "9/11", the Bush administration had a list of 7 countries they planned to take over, whether those countries had links to the terrorist attacks or not.

"He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” "

"We’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

(Note Afganistan was not on the original list?)

Wesley Clark interviewed by Amy Goodman with transcript, mp3 audio, and video stream availible

Driving back to New Orleans from Florida, we listened to some old radio shows mshollie downloaded from the internet. One of the more striking to me was an episode of "The Shadow" -- a 1930s law & order series. There seemed to be an honesty about the effects of war that now seems quite rare in mainstream media. Back in town, a local story had a tragic reenforcement of the point.

The Shadow episode dealt with a serial killer who became mentally unbalanced from "shell shock" (an old term for post-traumatic stress syndrome) in the Great War (WWI). The murder says things like "Is he dead? Like all my buddies in the war? The ones that talk to me in the dark?"

Here's a sample of the script:

CRANSTON: I looked up his record. He was shell-shocked during the war in France. He's an expert marksman, a sniper. Society trained him to kill men. It told him they were enemies, that he should kill them off. Now, the shell-shocked mind is remembering what society taught him - to kill.

MARGO: Yes.

CRANSTON: And another thing . . . for people who have been through that experience, life is cheap.

MARGO: Yes, but these poor people he shot and killed, the jurors and the judge, they were only doing their duty, they're innocent.

CRANSTON: Yes, individually they're innocent, Margo. Individually we're all innocent, and yet, all guilty, because this Danny, Joe Bricker's brother, is a product of our own folly. Teaching men to kill in time of war, yet expecting them to respect life in time of peace.

Then at the end of the show after the killer is killed:

"He was a victim, a human instrument of destruction, fashioned by mankind, that teaches men to kill their enemies in time of war, yet expects them to forget their murderous art in time of peace. Danny Bricker was an enemy of society - a killer. But only because you and I and countless thousands made him one. No, Commissioner, there is no glory in this for you or the Shadow or for any man."

Hm, can you picture such lines in mainstream prime-time network shows today?

Back in New Orleans, the lurid headlines were of a murder-suicide: Boyfriend Cut Up Corpse, Cooked It

An article asked wondered if it was the result of post-Katrina trauma?

Then Times-Picayune article with more detail about the murderer came out:

Bowen often talked to DeVellas about his military experience and that "he was made to do horrible things that he couldn't reconcile in his civil life."

"There was that part of him that he couldn't bring back into normal life," DeVellas said. "There was division in him, and in that crack something evil began to fester."

The Shadow knew.

For comparison, post-Katrina PSD looks like this: Chris Rose of the Times-Picayune; depression-- not treating people like meat.

Graffitti on the garage of a home a couple blocks from the London Avenue Canal breech.

Note high water lines 3/4 of the way up to the roof.

90 years ago, during the Great War, on Christmas, 1914, troops on both sides disobeyed orders from their superiors. They stopped killing eachother. They sang songs, came out of the trenches on to no-man's land and helped eachother bury the corpses that had been lying there for months. They exchanged small gifts, and shared their food, drink, and smokes. At one place along the lines, someone had a soccer ball and the men played a game until the ball was ruined when it snagged some barbed-wire.

"It was a day of peace in war," commented a German participant, "It is only a pity that it was not decisive peace."

BBC article

About.com article

First world war.com article

And 90 years later, one man still remembers... first hand.
Last survivor of 'Christmas truce' tells of his sorrow (from The Observer) "'I'll give Christmas Day 1914 a brief thought, as I do every year. And I'll think about all my friends who never made it home. But it's too sad to think too much about it. Far too sad,' he said, his head bowed and his eyes filled with tears."

He said things like "The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without." While I certainly can't agree with all of his polticial decisions-- some I would rank very negatively in fact -- he seemed to have a element of common sense and compassion lacking in more recent leaders of his party.

I am talking, of course, about Dwight David Eisenhower, who 60 years ago led the Allied assault against the Fascist forces on D-Day.

On the 20th anniversary of D-Day, in an interview with Walter Cronkite on Omaha Beach, Normandy, Eisenhower remarked:

"These young boys were cut off in their prime. I devoutly hope that we will never again have to see such scenes as these. I think and hope, and pray, that humanity will have learned. We must find some way to gain an eternal peace for this world." - 6 June 1964

Imagine that. The USA had a President who served in war himself, and was wary of sending other people to die in wars.

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity." - January 10, 1946

Can you picture any of "Ike"'s quotes here comming from the mouths of this country's current "leadership"?

"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it." - August 31, 1959

"We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

"Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose." - Farewell Address, January 17, 1961

"We have arrived at that point, my friends, when war does not present the possibility of victory or defeat. War would present to us only the alternative in degrees of destruction." - 1954

"There is no way in which a country can satisfy the craving for absolute security, but it can bankrupt itself morally and economically in attempting to reach that illusory goal through arms alone."

"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads"- 1949

"The only way to win World War III is to prevent it." - Radio and TV Address, September 19, 1956

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." - April 16, 1953

"May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."

"A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility. I don't believe there is such a thing, and frankly I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing." - Press conference in 1954