Oasis of the Seas

Fixer, this one's FYI. Also here and here. Oh what the hell...

Marijuana growers upend hard-luck California town

Go read about growing pot in Hayfork in the LATimes.

This hardscrabble Northern California town has become a hotbed for medical marijuana farming. Kids stroll much of the year past pungent plants flourishing in gardens and alleys. The red-and-black clad Timberjacks football team moved its halftime huddle on a recent Friday night to avoid the odor of marijuana smoke wafting over the gridiron from nearby houses. Some students talk openly of farming pot after graduation, about the only opportunity in this depressed timber town.

How Trinity County, a sprawling, lightly populated area twice the size of Rhode Island, came to be dubbed "Northern California's pot paradise" by High Times magazine is a story of law, lawlessness and geography.

Just a little more than 14,000 residents are spread across its 3,000 square miles. People live as they like in its mountains thick with trees, separated from civilization by windy roads and "No Trespassing" signs. For decades, that's made it easy for some residents to grow marijuana without much interference.

That's no shit. I went to visit a friend of mine in Hayfork forty years ago. He had moved up there from pretty affluent circumstances in SoCal to live with his grandparents in a cabin 'out on the Hyampom road'. Those were hippie days and he helped the old folks out and grew dope.

Hayfork is so far out in the sticks that its zip code is eieio. I got there from the west via CA SR36 which wasn't paved at that time for the last twenty miles into town. It was uphill and winding, and my biggest memory is driving with my left ear out the window listening for the jake brakes of loaded logging trucks coming downhill in the opposite direction right at me!. The upside was that after the first big rig appeared outta nowhere around a blind turn, they couldn't scare the shit outta me. If I'da known then what I know now about the sometimes lackadaisical maintenance on backwoods big rigs...ah, the innocence of youth, ignorance really is bliss, fools rush in and all that. But I digress.

The parking space for the cabin was on the opposite side of the road. Walk across the road, then across a suspension foot bridge high enough over Hayfork Creek (a tributary of the South Fork Trinity River and pronounced 'crick') so as to be passable during the occasional high water, and then uphill a little ways to the cabin.

By modern standards, my buddy's grow was pretty modest, maybe twenty or so plants in amongst his grandparents' vegetable garden which he also took care of, but growing weed was a major felony back then, so he kept it quiet. Nobody up there gave a shit, and nobody came looking for it. The local culture was all about logging*, and my pal was enough of an oddity that he was 'that thar hippie grandson of the _________s'. They're pretty friendly folks up there and so was he and he got along fine.

*Q: Why do loggers have foreskins?
A: So they got a place to stash their chew at lunchtime.

He'd been up there a coupla years and had something I had never seen at that time: 2lb. coffee cans full of manicured weed. Many of them. I was there for three days and never drew a straight breath, and no reason to. Pretty laid back bucolic lifestyle. Heh. 'Lifestyle' wasn't even a word then.

He wasn't in it for the money and only needed enough of that to get by, and as far as I know his only cash customer was his brother in SoCal.

Those were simpler times. My friend was pretty pure at heart about growing weed as the answer to society's ills and not much interested in money.

These days, like almost everything else, it's all about the money. I can see growing weed to make a living in these post-logging depression days, but greed has gone way beyond that as usual and has fucked up even little out-of-the-way Hayfork. Seems like you can't get far enough out in the sticks these days to avoid it.

Such is progress sometimes, not always for the good. Sigh.

Quote of the Day

Mikhail Gorbachev

By the way, in 1987, after my first visit to the United States, Vice President Bush accompanied me to the airport, and told me: “Reagan is a conservative. An extreme conservative. All the blockheads and dummies are for him, and when he says that something is necessary, they trust him. But if some Democrat had proposed what Reagan did, with you, they might not have trusted him.”

Jesus fuckin' Christ, 41, why didn't you tell us that? Coulda saved this country a lotta grief, most especially from your idiot spawn.

G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York

Daddy Frank's column today is about the congressional race in N(orthern)Y(okels)-23 and is 'do not miss', links at site.

BARACK OBAMA’S most devilish political move since the 2008 campaign was to appoint a Republican congressman from upstate New York as secretary of the Army. This week’s election to fill that vacant seat has set off nothing less than a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war. No matter what the results in that race on Tuesday, the Republicans are the sure losers. This could be a gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats through 2010, and perhaps beyond.

The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The movement’s undisputed leaders, Palin and Beck, neither of whom has what Palin once called the “actual responsibilities” of public office, would gladly see the Republican Party die on the cross of right-wing ideological purity. Over the short term, at least, their wish could come true.

Careful, Pop! That 'die on the cross' shit has implications. But...at least they'd be dead. I'll settle for that.

The right’s embrace of Hoffman is a double-barreled suicide for the G.O.P. [...]

Ah, the visual - toe on the trigger, their empty head on the Moon!

Only in the alternative universe of the far right is Obama a pariah and Palin the great white hope. It’s become a Beltway truism that the White House’s (mild) spat with Fox News is counterproductive because it drives up the network’s numbers. But if curious moderate and independent voters are now tempted to surf there and encounter Beck’s histrionics for the first time, the president’s numbers will benefit as well. To the uninitiated, the tea party crowd comes across like the barflies in “Star Wars.”

Ahhhhh.....and then:

There is only one political opponent whom Obama really has to worry about at this moment: Hamid Karzai. It’s Afghanistan and joblessness, not the Stalinists of the right, that have the power to bring this president down.

Ya sure know how ta harsh a mellow, Pops.

Tonight We Ride!

This is a delightful song about cowboys "going rogue" and yes, I said that on purpose! Did I mention that choices have consequences? Heh.

A great song by Tom Russell!

Indeed it is! How could it be otherwise with lyrics like this?

When I'm too damn old to sit a horse, I'll steal the warden's car
Break my ass out of this prison, leave my teeth there in a jar
You don't need no teeth for kissin' gals or smokin' cheap cigars
I'll sleep with one eye open, 'neath God's celestial stars

Tonight we rock, Tonight we roll
We'll rob the Juarez liquor store for the Reposado Gold
And if we drink ourselves to death, ain't that the cowboy way to go?

Listen and enjoy.

Tom Russell ~ Tonight We Ride

Thanks to Wegg09, Norway.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou cuts loose a little toward the end of this one. Be still my heart!

Hello Stranger by Emmylou Harris w/ Nash Ramblers

Thanks to sanjosepal.

The White Man's Burden

Pretty good post on the parallels between Afghanistan and Vietnam by Ray McGovern. He starts off with a little Kipling. I'm surprised it's taken so long for the big writers to invoke him.

It is not wise for the Christian white
To hustle the Asian brown;
For the Christian riles
And the Asian smiles
And weareth the Christian down.

At the end of the fight
Lies a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased;

And the epitaph drear,
A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East.

Whether we're trying to conquer them or help them, it will end the same.

By the way, I caught part of Dr. Brzezinski's address on C-Span that Mr. McGovern refers to. I thought it was common sense and realpolitik, but then I respect him and agree with him a lot. Mr. McGovern does not.

Go figure ...

Whoda thought it?

So it may turn out that Harry Reid was the hero in the public option after all.

"We'd rather fight than stand around. Tell yer friends."

Thanks to DrStranglove.

Jane on Miss Connecticut

Back before the flood when I was one horny young Jarhead amongst many, we were given to hyperbole concerning the for all practical purposes non-existent opposite sex, and we used phrases like this to describe our feelings about attractive sexy women:

"I'd low-crawl a mile through ground glass to sniff the tire tracks of the truck that carries her skivvies to the laundry."

We would have too if the opportunity had presented itself, which of course it didn't.

The drop-dead gorgeous Jane Hamsher (wiki) of Firedoglake was in about first grade then, but she is the perfect example of what we were talking about. Her wit, brains, and the committed Liberal activism that have launched her to Blogtopian superstardom were not what we had in mind, but are definitely part of the package now.

That said, fast forward this video to 6:00 and watch her give you arguably the most disturbing visual of Joe Lieberman you will ever have! Oh, the horror...

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Healthcare Hoax from Hell

This is the first I've heard of this.

AfterDowningStreet

Lies, damn lies, and promises from Democrats. An amendment allowing states to create state-level single-payer healthcare has been stripped out of the House healthcare bill, after having passed in committee back in July by a vote of 27 to 19. And rumor has it that a vote on national single-payer that was promised in July in exchange for skipping a committee vote on it will now be denied.

First, the state single-payer amendment.

Back in July, the House Committee on Education and Labor did something right, something that could have made all the difference in the world to millions of Americans. Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced in the committee an amendment that would have effectively allowed states to improve on our healthcare system if they chose to, allowed them to create state-level single-payer healthcare. There are bills to do this in several state legislatures already. Such a bill has passed and been vetoed in California twice, where a change in governor is imminent.

President Obama told the committee chairman, George Miller, to oppose Kucinich's amendment, and he did so, leading off the voting with a resounding "No." But the Democrats voted 14 to 14 with one member passing and two failing to vote. And the Republicans voted 13 to 5 with one member failing to vote. That added up to 27 yes votes and 19 no votes. Some Republicans may have voted yes simply because the chairman voted no, but they said they were voting yes for states' rights. And that would be a sensible, decent, and constitutional position. Why shouldn't states be permitted to do better, as well as worse, than Washington, even if the insurance companies bring in less blood money?

Canada got its healthcare system in one province first. If California or Pennsylvania joins the civilized world and treats healthcare as a right, and eliminates the waste and bureaucracy of the health insurance companies, our whole nation may just be forced to come along, or watch half the population migrate to California and Pennsylvania.

I've already watched what seems like half the population migrate to California, thank you very much. It was and continues to be damned ugly and I'm not sure single-payer here would be worth more of it.

My opinion on more overpopulation of my state has nothing to do with the point of Mr. Swanson's post. Please go read the rest.

Obama's Declaration Of Swine Flu Emergency Prompts Pro-Swine-Flu Republican Response

The World's Best News Source

Claiming that the president was preying on the public's fear of contracting a fatal disease last week when he declared the H1N1 virus a national emergency, Republican leaders announced Wednesday that they were officially endorsing the swine flu. "Thousands of Americans—hardworking ordinary Americans like you and me—already have H1N1," Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said during a press conference. "Now Obama wants to take that away from us. Ask yourself: Do you want the federal government making these kinds of health care decisions for you and your family?" Other prominent Republicans opposing Obama's declaration of emergency include Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who urged residents of his state to continue not washing their hands, and radio host Rush Limbaugh, who made a point of dying of the virus during his show on Wednesday.

Hmmmmm. Might be worth a little collateral damage such as a few million dead wingtards to get rid of Rushole.

Al-Qaeda Outwitted Bush, Neocons

Duh. It wasn't very hard for them to do, either, given that Bush/Cheney played right into their hands.

Robert Parry

As security worsens in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is clear that al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies outwitted President George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisers by tying down U.S. forces in Iraq for five years while the Islamic militants rebuilt their forces for the war on their “central front.”

What might have been possible eight years ago – in rebuilding Afghanistan and winning the hearts and minds of many Afghans – has become almost impossible because of Bush’s “muddling through” strategy regarding what became “the forgotten war.”

Too bad Afghanistan doesn't have any oil. Then he'da had a 'strategy'. Yeesh.

Parry goes on to quote Captain Hoh at some length, whom I am sure we're all familiar as the first and hopefully not the last Foreign Service Officer to resign in order to publicly question the whole AfPak flusterpluck.

Yet while Capt. Hoh may have struggled to reach a painful personal decision, it is far from clear that senior U.S. officials and American opinion-makers have come to grips with an even more troubling realization: that President Bush and his neocon advisers committed the United States to two wars whose chances for success were crippled by ill-defined goals and ill-considered strategies.

Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects of life in Washington today is how the neocons remain exceptionally influential. They keep their well-paid jobs at prestigious think tanks, write books for major publishing houses, and control key opinion columns in the Washington Post and, to a lesser degree, the New York Times.

Even now, as President Obama ponders what to do with the botched war in Afghanistan, the neocons bait him about alleged weakness and defeatism. Their allies in Congress, the likes of Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman, seem determined to undermine the Obama administration at every turn if the President doesn’t take the neocons' advice and escalate the war.

It seems that Official Washington can’t face up to its disastrous misjudgments over the past eight years.

Neither the pols nor the journos have a very good track record about admitting their colossal mistakes. Without that, nothing is going to change very quickly. When pigs fly.

I think we could make a good start by taking a few machine gun belts' worth of neocons out and shooting them. I volunteer to throttle the smarmy grin off Kristol's face myself to kick things off.

Is This Tom Friedman's 'Walter Cronkite Moment' on Afghanistan?

Harvey Wasserman

The Iraq war's chief New York Times cheerleader has reversed field on Afghanistan. Does it mean there will be no escalation?

In early 1968, after the devastating Tet Offense, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite pronounced the Vietnam War unwinnable. Lyndon Johnson knew he had "lost middle America" and soon declined to run for a second term. The war dragged on for seven more hellish years. But the hearts and minds of the American public had been lost.

Tom Friedman is no Walter Cronkite. [...]

Thomas Friedman is nothing if not a megaphone for the corporate elite. He supports atomic power and consistently pumps global trade agreements, US military adventurism and top-down decision-making in ways that can draw howls of outrage with a single smarmy sentence.

It's impossible to assign tangible value to Friedman's loss of faith in escalation. But those of us hoping to avoid a catastrophic dive off the Afghani abyss have expected nothing but grief from this mainstay of the Iraqi catastrophe.

That a key cheerleader for that war is now waving his editorial pompoms for de-escalation can only be good. Let's make sure the White House gets the message.

Hear, hear.

For F** Sake!

If you missed this last night, DO NOT miss it now!

Fox News defends itself against an attack by the Obama administration by explaining that most of their shows aren't real news.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
For Fox Sake!
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Quote of the Day

The Rude One on Obama's visit to Dover AFB:

...

Or, to put it simply, the images of Obama at Dover show a young president nutting up to all responsibilities he has been given. That's called, you know, leadership.

...

All their blood is on his hands and he knows it. It's a refreshing to have a President who understands and gives a damn about it, unlike the sociopath we had in the office for the better part of the last decade.

Die quickly ...

Kudos to President Obama for attempting to kill this policy. This was a bone thrown to the 'god people' by Bush and his Rethug Congress and all it's done is help to ruin young lives. "Just say no to sex" was just as effective as Nancy Reagan's "Just say no to drugs".

President Obama will be cutting funding for ineffective abstinence-only education ...

Good on him. Make the schools teach the children about their bodies honestly instead of preaching to them. I don't know about you but when I was at an "impressionable age", the more people told me not to do something, the more I wanted to do it. Education is always better than denial.

Update:

Somewhat related (god people and sex) and funny. Brad:

...

God loves us into being – we are begotten. Our creation is no accident, but the Love of God made manifest, and the "tools" or "materials" that He uses for that creation – committed love and the mysterious and miraculous products of that love – do, simply by their designation as "tools of God" demand a certain respect and recognition, because they are a great deal more than the equivalent of nasal mucous or earwax.

Which is funny, because to me semen is no less or more appealing than nasal mucous. You would think that if God had intended to make semen a Divine Excretion that He would have done more to hype it up. Say, by making it more sparkly and rainbow colored. Or if every time someone gets off, they hear the sound of a righteous trumpet blasting from their nether-regions.

...

Quote of the Day

Athenae on the Republicans' attempt to mess with AARP:

...

I have traveled with seniors, I have traveled near seniors, and I have known and loved many, many seniors and what I am saying is that while some people greet advancing age with fear and distrust many, many others greet it with joy because they are finally getting the perks they've earned. Ten percent off on parking at the airport, people. I am not snarking: Never underestimate the power of small conveniences.

...

Indeed, sweetheart. Never, ever, get in the way of a senior in a buffet line on a cruise ship.

On Public Option, MSM Gets It Wrong

Robert Parry

The American mainstream media is in another snit, having misjudged the prospects for the public option on health care almost as completely as big-time journalists bungled the reporting on the Iraq War and a host of other important stories during George W. Bush’s presidency.

Indeed, if you had listened to all the supposedly knowledgeable journalists covering the health-care debate on Capitol Hill, you might have been shocked to learn Monday that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was putting a version of the public option in the bill that he is bringing to the Senate floor.

So, when the MSM's smug certainty went up in smoke on Monday, as Reid announced that he would include a version of the public option with an opt-out provision for states when he takes the legislation to the full Senate, the journalists were in a foul mood.

A new consensus quickly formed that it wasn’t that their reporting had been lousy, or that the public option made a lot of sense, or that the people’s will was finally being respected. It was that Reid had betrayed them by caving in to the left-wing base of the Democratic Party.

Reid’s announcement, declared the Washington Post’s snide columnist Dana Milbank, “was an admission of the formidable power of liberal interest groups. He had been the target of a petition drive and other forms of pressure to bring the public option to the floor.”

A petition drive, no less. Citizens signing a petition urging their elected representatives to take a position favored by a large majority of the American people. How nefarious!

Yeah, since when does the citizenry count for anything? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

As Reid’s news conference was ending, CNN’s Bash was still miffed. “How much of this is about making liberals happy?” she called out as Reid was leaving the podium.

You could read through all of George W. Bush’s press conferences to look for a similarly insulting remark from a mainstream journalist, demanding to know, for instance, whether Bush was invading Iraq to “make the neocons happy.” But you surely wouldn’t find it.

Over the past three decades, the Washington mainstream news media has increasingly tilted right either out of fear of career retribution from right-wing, anti-journalism attack groups or out of shared conservative and neocon ideology. Generally speaking, those journalists, who have played ball with the Right and the neocons, have done well, and those who went against the grain have lost jobs.

Washington's relatively small journalistic community remembers well the fates of honest journalists who produced stories that upset the Republicans and especially the Bush family.

Remember that The Bush Family, high in The Ruling Elite, considers everybody besides themselves to be 'the help', barely tolerated only insofar as they advance their agenda. Like cattle except they're not allowed to eat them after they get them killed.

For months now, the MSM has treated the public option as some loony left-wing idea, when actually the concept had a lot going for it, including the Congressional Budget Office’s conclusion that it was the only approach that achieved substantial savings. It also tested well in most opinion polls.

However, later in the column, Hiatt went after the public option because it may use “government power to demand lower prices from hospitals and drug companies” and thus “those providers may lower quality or seek to make up the difference from private payers,” leading to a situation where “we could end up with only the public option.”

Gee, he says that like it's a bad thing...oh, that's right, that's single payer aka 'socialism', i.e. 'no obscene profit off the sick whose money we can take with false promises and then fuck them out of', aka 'free market capitalism' and 'campaign contributions' that get legislation in favor of the Masters Of The Universe at the expense of the great unwashed. A civilized health care system is of no use to them at all and is therefore a 'bad thing' by definition..

The mainstream media’s opposition to the public option – as reflected in the reporting from CNN and other major networks as well as the Washington Post’s columns – is another reminder why honest Americans must do whatever they can to build a truly independent media that will resist pressure from the Right and other powerful vested interests.

The problem with an 'honest media' is that an awful lot of people would much rather believe sugar-coated spin than the bitter truth which has an adverse effect on ad revenues aka 'free market capitalism'. Lie to the fools, maybe they'll buy the shit. Tell them the truth, it'll make them uncomfortable and maybe they'll go buy someone else's shit.

It's much easier to con them into believing made-up 'conventional wisdom' which is neither conventional nor wise. If you wish to express an opinion, they will tell you what it is. That's the job of the corporate media.

Matthew Hoh answers questions

I present this with a minimum of comment. There's plenty more.

WaPo

Matthew Hoh, a former Foreign Service officer and former Marine Corps captain who last month became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, was online Wednesday, Oct. 28, at 1 p.m. ET to discuss the reasons why he thought the war "wasn't worth the fight."

Washington, D.C.: Not worth the fight? Have you forgotten about 9/11 and the failed state that existed before we entered Afghanistan? Do you want to give all we have accomplished, removing the Taliban from power, taking away al-Qaeda's safe haven, making it possible for women to get an education, etc., back to the Muslim extremists? Isn't that letting them win?

Matthew Hoh: I disagree and I think it is emotional arguments like this that keep us tied to Afghanistan and to a policy that fuels the insurgency as well as adds credence to calls for global Islamic jihad. 9/11 was a tragedy for this country and we cannot let another event like that happen, particularly as we have still not recovered from the emotional shock of the event 8 years later. Additionally, events like 9/11 cause tremendous shock to world financial markets, something we cannot allow to occur, especially at this point in time. However, since 9/11 al-Qaeda has evolved and no longer will tie itself to a political state or geographical boundaries. They have turned into an ideological cloud that exists on the internet and recruits worldwide. Look at the makeup of the attackers for the 9/11, London and Madrid attacks and additionally looked at where they planned and trained for their operations. Heck, the 9/11 attackers trained here in the US! The people we are fighting, for the most part, in Afghanistan are fighting us because they do not want to be occupied by either a foreign army or a central government force. Simply put, al-Qaeda does not exist in Afghanistan and 60,000 troops with the hope of stabilizing the Afghan central government which may or may not succeed in 5-10 years time will not defeat al-Qaeda.

Austin, Tex.: Do you have a sense of what will be the plight of the women in Afghanistan if the U.S. and U.N. forces were to pull out?

I don't see much coverage in the media of the women in Afghanistan.

Matthew Hoh: The plight of the Afghan women, particularly those who live in the Pashtun belt of the country is tragic and horrific. Girls are locked away for life as early as the age of 11 or 12 (and under the Taliban it may have been as early as age 7), only to leave the house escorted and completely covered. In the province I was in literacy was less than 1% for women and the only employment opportunity I was aware of was done by the US military in partnership with USAID and USDA--this was for roughly 20 widows to clean raisins. It is a terrible plight and it is anguishing to see, as I have a mother, sister, niece, girlfriend...However, we cannot justify the deaths of our young men and women for the goal of changing a society's internal cultural and familial norms. This is a goal best left to NGOs and IOs or through the US government's strategic communications. But this is a process that will take generations/decades.

Karzai's brother, the CIA and opium: What are the implications to our ongoing presence in Afghanistan of the NYT disclosure that Karzai's brother has been on the CIA payroll the last 8 years and that he is also likely involved in the Afghan drug trade?

Matthew Hoh: I think it is a blight on us and is a smack in the face to those who have participated in counternarcotics efforts. It is also shows the duplicity or maybe the opposite the lack of coherence in our policies and goals in Afghanistan. We've known for a long time that Wali Karzai has been involved in the drug trade. Why are we sacrificing our young men and women to support such a regime? There are also many other undesirables at all levels of Afghan government.

Cumberland, Md.: Don't think that our over-emphasis on collateral damage and nation building is harming our effort to wage war effectively as we did in WW II?

Matthew Hoh: This isn't WWII and there shouldn't be a comparison. No one can kill better in this world than the US military, however, if killing was the means to victory we would have "won" this years ago. This is primarily a political fight.

Morristown, N.J.: Mr. Hoh, I very much appreciate and respect the position you have taken. As an Afghan-born American I have been doing development work in Afghanistan, I agree with your position. I believe that many in our government and in the military agree with you as well but are not speaking out. The best way for us to get effectiveness out of the Afghan government is to announce our timeline to exit Afghanistan. What is your thought on this?

Matthew Hoh: Yes, I agree and thank you for your work. When I would ask the provincial leadership in Zabul province how long the US should remain in Afghanistan, there answer was 20-30 years. My counterparts in other parts of the South reported similar conversations. When I would ask them why we should remain that long, they would say it was because only 10% of the people supported the government.

Just one comment here - when the wingnuts say they want less or weaker government, ask them if Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, or any of a hundred other places is what they want the U.S. to become.

Washington, D.C.: Would a little more thought go into the why of going to war, if the Congress actually had to declare war and that upon a declaration of war, the military draft was reinstated for the duration of said war?

Matthew Hoh: Absolutely. As a former professional military officer I am against the draft because I don't believe it leads to an effective military. However, as a private citizen I feel that a draft would engage our population in the debate. I don't believe we would have invaded Iraq if we had a draft and I don't believe we would still be in Afghanistan if we had a draft.

This is the reason the draft was dropped in the first place - so the U.S. could do what its rulers wanted to on the world stage without any pesky unwanted input from its citizens who may have objected to their sons and daughters being dragooned into an imperialistic effort. It may be the one thing we learned from Vietnam.

Semper Fi, Captain Hoh.