I could be there now

     On the evening of May 5th, 1997 I was called by my recruiter after 10 at night to show up at the Boston center at 5AM the next morning, ready to go, two weeks before schedule.  The "pick-ups" right before high school and college let out are usually among the very slowest, and going early meant a switch from 2nd Battalion to 1st Battalion, an improvement.  I was not, however, cleared at that time for my military job, Signals Intelligence.  I'd done better on the DLAB than my recruiters had ever seen, and it was expected that I would report to the Defense Language Institute, likely to learn Arabic, Chinese, Korean or Spanish.

     My lack of a contract (a state shared by only three of the forty-plus members of my platoon) was of little interest to the Drill Instructors.  The Series NCO, SSgt Pena, openly chuckled, telling me I'd likely end up as a cook or as a truck-driver when he found out I didn't have it in writing.

     With one week to go, in the company of other recruits who had more than a month to go, and none of the people from my pick-up, I went to Naval Intelligence Services(NIS) to fill out some forms.  I was asked out into the hall after filling out the very first form, a credit history form.  I had filled it out noting every debt that might possibly be on my credit report, some of which did not.  I was quickly told that I was not what NIS was looking for, was sent back to my platoon, and spent the rest of the day dumbstruck.  It was at that moment, standing in the hall after near three months of Marine Corps boot camp, being dealt with abruptly by a Naval Officer, that I was suppose to have remembered the name of an E-9 down that the Senior NCO at the recruitment office in Boston had given me many months earlier.  I don't know if it would have helped, I don't know if I would have remembered if I had gone to NIS on time (a month previously) it would have helped.  I do know that my Senior Drill Instructor, SSgt Snider, was actually shocked, and supposedly drove over to Manpower to see what he could do.  By the way, I had been writing my recruiter, SSgt Vinson, about the predicament.  He was never helpful or quick with his replies.

     While on the 10-day leave between boot camp and Marine Combat Training at Camp LeJeune, I asked for infantry, knowing that it was the fastest way for an enlisted guy to become an Officer.  I was denied.  The logic was that people without contracts had often been forced into the infantry, so they banned that, and I couldn't even volunteer.

     If either my first or second choice had worked out, maybe I would have stayed in the Marine Corps longer.  Maybe I would have been killed by my own platoon, I'll never know.  But in either case, I might be in Iraq or Afghanistan now.

     My stint in the Individual Ready Reserve ends in one week.

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UPDATE:  One week ago was my two year blog annivesary.

Weird But True, How Viet Nam Advanced Soviet Aims

     Johnson and the Soviets had an arms deal.  They would keep their overall arms expenditures rising or falling in tandem. 

     Expenses in Viet Nam kept US expenditures rising, without any concommitant increase in US defense preparedness.  This really irked Johnson.

     How do I know?  I listen to the Johnson White House Tapes on C-SPAN 3 on Sunday mornings.

Stephen Hadley Gives the Daily Brief

     "We have had resolutions on Darfur." 

1. Congo is worse than Darfur, why does no one give a shit?  What's so special about Sudan?  Oil?  That Arabs rule over Christians?  Both?
2. The US brought resolutions before the Security Council, on two separate occasions(although they pulled back the second time when they realized they didn't have the votes (2nd draft resolution on Iraq)) in an attempt to bring the forces able to mustered by the UN Security Council to bear on Iraq.  No such resolution has been brought by the US re:Sudan.
3. I'm not up on UN rules.  I don't (generally) approve of US action into the internal security matters of foreign countries, as I wouldn't approve of foreign countries meddling inside the United States of America.  The smartest ways around this self-imposed restriction seem obvious to me, and need not even be as overt as funding political groups.

Russ Feingold, Bullshit Stopper

     Countering Bush's rhetoric, Senator R Feingold recently said that the refusal to discuss an exit strategy is "playing into the terrorists' hands."

     The whole Iraq war was, but that's still pretty good.

     CNN is the only newswire in all of Google News to carry that quote.

Pride and Embarassment

     I should delete this post.

     http://alt.org/nethack/dumplog/bad.lastgame.txt

Myers to be replaced by Pace as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs

     I'm not expecting any improvements in anything, but then again, I wouldn't want the best generals taken out of the field.

     Which reminds me, yesterday, the establishment press had this little article, the worst I've seen in a while.

Command Responsibility
By Andrew J. Bacevich

Tuesday, June 28, 2005; Page A15

Who "lost" Iraq? With blame for the unhappy course of events since U.S. forces occupied Baghdad in April 2003 routinely heaped on civilian officials, the military itself has gotten a pass. In fact, senior U.S. commanders have botched the war. Acknowledging that fact is an essential first step toward improving the quality of U.S. generalship.

     The article then goes on to damn General Sanchez's heavy-handed approach to the Iraqis.  I can just picture Bush saying "Sanchez, you deal with things just like you'd want.  It was simply fortune that put you in the position you are now in, and we trust your instincts implicitly.  Go ahead, takes chances or play it by the book, we [the Bush administration] simply don't care."

     The blame game begins(continues?), and this time the game is to blame the Generals.

BookTV Response: Ravi Batra, Author of Greenspan's Fraud

     His solution to the trade deficit is dumb.  The simple proof follows.  His solution to the trade deficit is a "dual exchange rate."  Unilaterally, the Fed would provide an alternative exchange rate for US exporters and foreign importers.  Using China as an example, simplifying the numbers somewhat, we have a current exchange rate of 8 yuan to the dollar.  The proposed alternative would be for the Fed to supply yuan at a rate of 6 to the dollar. The argument says US importers would not buy yuan from the Fed, since they could go to China to get 8 for each dollar.  This, Batra says, satisfies Wal-Mart and Target stores.  An exporter to China would sell their goods in China, and, in effect, trade in the yuan they received to the Federal Reserve for 6 yuan per dollar.

     It's dumb because the Fed has now purchased a lot of Yuan, at below market rates, which it has to dump.

     In effect, the US taxpayer begins to subsidize trade with China indirectly, through this exchange rate mechanism (since taxpayers end up paying Fed shortfalls), rather than the anarchic system (known as screwing ourselves by purchasing products from totalitarian states).

Edward Klein Wants Hillary to Run

     Is it just because he wants more book sales, or is this part of a larger right-wing desire to have Clinton run?  He was on the Jim Bohannon (right wing) radio talk show on June 23rd.  He said Hillary has impressed Republicans and Democrats.  Has Hillary been impressing Republicans, or has she had them seething in pools of sweat and hate?&nsbp; If only Kitty Kelley got as much press as this sleaze.

A Couple Nice Blogs

     The humorous News5000.  And a link I found from there, the cuts-out-the-spin WhymRhymer101.

The Greatest Debate of the Bush Presidency

     The question is, "Is Bush simply a cock-sure nincompoop, blindly and pettily striking out where whim or insanity leads him, or is he a scared nincompoop, blindly striking out where mendacious Secretaries lead him?"

     On the one side, there is the fact that Bush has a very personal relationship with God.  He allegedly told PM Abbas of Palestine that God told him to invade Iraq.  There is the smirking.  There is Saddam as someone who tried to kill his father.  There is my personal theory that he say 9/11 not as a failure, not a Plieku, but in fact a sign from heaven. 

     On the other hand, there is PNAC and the Neo-Cons and the Oil people for Iraq.  There is the Club for Growth Anti-Social Security plan.  There are the corporate plans for freeing, and liberating money.  There is the corporate drafted Presiscription Drug Plans. 

     Is there a third choice?  Is Bush the unthinking tool of the people who voted for him?  Can we lay the blame on the electorate?  One word: abortion.  No moves to outlaw it at all.

What is Songun-Blog?

     First, what is Songun?  Songun is the banner of the People's Republic of North Korea.  Songun-Blog is a very witty attempt to make leftists look stupid.  Far less funny is Arms Control Wonk, but he has a far better run-down of US-DPRK relations than the hyper-ventilating Songun Blog.  Let this comment speak for the blog's whole ouevre.

This blog is totaly stick it to the Buschenerovesfeldian neocon colonialist junta in a way that few other blogs are capable of doing so. I aplaud your efforts to bring real down to earth news from the worker's paradise that is northern Korea!

     Comment by Dean04Prez.  The mispelings are part of it, of course.  In the exact same spirit, but not as funny to me, is Stop the Neocon Death Machine, also an attempt to make the left look silly through bad spelling and slippery slope arguments.

     I highly recommend you join with Songun Blog and find a way to support His Excellency, President and Commander-in-Chief George Walker Bush in his an attempt to "spread freedom" throughout the world.

I Assume You Know

     Massive funder of the right wing, and publisher of prominent right-wing loony rag Washington Times, is helping North Korea.

     Meanwhile, much less known, is that prominent left-wing funder George Soros is funding student groups that have been part of the "succesful" overthrow the governments of Serbian Milosevic, Ukraine's Yanukovych, and is working on Lukashenko in Belarus, Shevardnadze in Georgia, and is funding students groups in Uzbekistan, too.  Ironic, ain't it?

Take It Easy, But be rich and smart

     A summary of Freakonomics, a book based on a study of 20,000 children... it doesn't matter what parents do (spank, read to kid every day, stay together) but it matters who you are (rich, smart, older moms).

     Of course, the study also says PTA membership (a "do") and owning a library (something one can "do") are positively correlated.

     Thanks to 3QuarksDaily for the link to the Times Online piece.

President Bush's War, What He Wants You To Believe (Short Version)

     We are freedom spreaders.  They are trying to be will shakers. 

     (Short Version, translated): If you are against me, you are against freedom.  If you are against me, it is because the Iraqi insurgents have shaken your will.

     To me it sounds a bit like a cocktail party, with freedom-spreaders (a red, white and blue processed cheese-like product on a cracker) and will-shakers (some sort of alcoholic beverage, with fruit).

Dear Corporate Media,

     Before the War in Iraq, leftist and Democrat voices against the War were basically ignored.  The number of pro-war guests on the major television stations out numbered the anti-war guests 100 to 1.  This, despite the fact that a majority of House Democrats, and over 40% of Senate Democrats voted against HJR 114.

     In fact, the biggest publicity was given to those anti-war voices from the right.  One might be forgiven for thing that most of the argument against the war came from retired Republicans; Brent Scowcroft, Norman Schwartzkopf, and Dick Armey got more press for their anti-war comments than all House and Senate Democrats combined.

     I'd like to shove your collective noses in a pool of sewage, mixed with blood, in downtown Baghdad, then leave you to your own devices as far as getting home.  However, I can point out that your collective "patriotism" was, in fact, misplaced.  You were wrong to trust the Bush administration, you were wrong not to dig deeper. Many Democrats, ignored then, and ignored now, were right.

     Please consider giving some of these Democrats, proved right by: the passage of time, the lack of WMD, released memos, the Herskowitz comments, some valuable airtime.

     Profit is not the only stake in this matter.

     Free Idea : Have a debate between conflicting anti-war voices.
Free Idea 2: Go within your own massive organizations and find people who were against the war before it started.  They will likely know more of the anti-war voices, and their relative strengths and weaknesses, than yourselves.

   Sincerely,
Josh Narins