Hmm. This sounds as close to a parliamentary vote of no confidence as our Constitution allows. It is, of course, completely unprecedented in our history on contrary to all our unspoken traditions. IOW, dirty, but not illegal.
 

I thought that George Tenet was a moderate Democrat. Haven't we had enough of those at CIA?

I think Bush would be plenty happy to have Lieberman in the cabinet. Could Lieberman--the 2000 vice presidential nominee for the Democrats--get confirmed by a Democratic senate in 2007? I doubt it.
 

So... two Republicans, one unspecified "moderate Democrat" and one Democrat, who ran as an Independent and functions as a Republican. This would not be a moderate group.
 

Professor Graber:

FDR apparently had Republicans whom he could rely upon to wage a total war to win unconditionally.

Can you identify any Dems for Mr.Bush whom he could rely upon to wage a total war to win unconditionally?

Bipartisanism during war might be more possible today if both parties were willing to wage war.
 

Bipartisanism during war might be more possible today if both parties were willing to wage war.

# posted by Bart DePalma : 10:48 PM

You mean Bushit's illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq is not a war?

I'll bet were you on the ground in Iraq, instead of being a keyboard kommmando chickenhawk, you'd call the reality in which involved war.

Or are you insisting that you know more about how to wage war than those who have actually experienced war?

What is it about Republican bullshitters that their actual bible is comic book pap as the schematic for heroism -- so long as the deaths are someone else's?

Obviously, right-wing ideology, as publicly pronounced sociopathy, has no use for conscience.
 

Bipartisanship seems to me to require (a) an existential threat to the country, such that (b) there is consensus among the citizens about the need to follow the President's direction. Neither of those is true with respect to Iraq. It was, and probably still is with respect to Afghanistan.
 

Hey look. I know this is a site that somehow considers itself to be high minded and above reproach deigning to provide some of the technical background and legal details for current events America to the common folk. So I'll not post the four letter word response this post very much deserves. Really. Lieberman as a bipartisan leader to solve America's problems?

But, "Bush administration malfeasance is fun for liberal democrats?"

This is political hack bullshit. Quality blog you profs have here. Above the rif-raf 'n all. "Bipartisan."

Your blue dress cleaning bills must be going up.
 

I am all for compromise. Which Republicans, exactly are willing to compromise? Just name one.

But of course the one person that needs to compromise for anything to work is George W. Bush.

I think it behooves us to keep in mind that things are polarized because Democrats and Republicans can't get along. Its because the Bush Administration doesn't believe in compromising on anything and for the past six years they haven't.
 

Good governance won't happen until Democrats control both Congress and the Presidency. Your prescription would make that much less likely. It would give the GOP cover and permit them to escape responsibility for this disaster. It would make Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan a shared responsibility. That's unjust, first, because it just is a GOP disaster. Second, the best hope of America is the total destruction of the Republican brand. That's what's driving Lugar, Domenici, et al to break ranks. As it is now, even Hilary could take the White House. The one thing that could prevent consolidation of Democratic control is your recommendation that we give the GOP a pass on their incompetence by making it appear that Democrats are equally responsible. Your recommendation that Lieberman be given a cabinet post is very telling. He's a champion of bipartisanship, but he's also the most tone-deaf politician in the world. He and you are among the few that don't see the absurdity of bipartisanship and centrism when one party has moved steadily toward the most extreme right end of the political spectrum. Meeting them half-way at this point means taking a position well to the right of Nixon and Goldwater. Please, please, please don't set yourself up as a Democratic consultant. Your party most definitely does not need you now.
 

let's be clear, the reason we're in this state of "polarization politics" is because Bush explicitly ran on that platform from the beginning. now you just wish we could all get along and fight this war the way a bunch of (let's face it) semi-sane republicans wish it could be fought when no one else in the country believes in their approach. quite the coalition your advocating.
 

Bipartisanism during war might be more possible today if both parties were willing to wage war.

# posted by Bart DePalma : 10:48 PM

Yes, bipartisanism would definitely be more possible if everyone just does what you want.

Ironically, the refusal of your kind to listen to people who opposed the war will soon leave you without a voice in how we end that war.
 

JNagarya said...

I'll bet were you on the ground in Iraq, instead of being a keyboard kommmando chickenhawk, you'd call the reality in which involved war.

Or are you insisting that you know more about how to wage war than those who have actually experienced war?

You really ought to check your facts before you make assumptions.

I come from a military family where all the males in my immediate family served or are serving right now.

I served two tours with the Army, one in the 82d as a paratrooper sergeant and the other with the 3d Infantry as an infantry then intelligence officer.

Of the two of us, I would hazard a guess that I am the only one who has actually fought in Iraq, killed Iraqis, been shot at by tanks and small arms, and been under artillery barrages (Persian Gulf War - 3d Platoon, A Co., 1/7 Infantry, 3d BDE, 3 ID serving as 1st BDE in the 1 Armored).

What you ignorantly slander as a sociopathy is in reality how wars are fought and won.

It profoundly disturbs me that such a large swath of the population, both blue and red, have such a substantial cultural disconnect with their warriors. This is not at all healthy for our nation.
 

It profoundly disturbs me that such a large swath of the population, both blue and red, have such a substantial cultural disconnect with their warriors. This is not at all healthy for our nation.

# posted by Bart DePalma : 9:18 A

It's not nearly as disturbing as your disconnect with reality.
 

Bart trots out an old favorite, "Dammit, I'm a soldier!!"

...a large swath of the population, both blue and red, have such a substantial cultural disconnect with their warriors.

I fell for this a time or two, back before a year of lying with this dog got me all covered with fleas. See, there's a huge difference between blindly carrying a gun because some oil baron tells you to and being a "warrior." But Bart's hero worship of his partisans and, presumably, his kin leave him in the precarious position of needing to bypass all critical thinking, lest he end up questioning the wisdom and morality of his own acts or the acts of his heroes.

It's partly a class thing. Officers are expected to think once in a while, but the guys in the mud need to do what they're told, when they're told. You don't want critical thinking from such. But what do you do when, having browbeaten the critical faculties out of a grunt, the grunt leaves the service and enters civilian life possessed of an inflated esteem for his reasoning abilities matched only by his actual lack of intellectual capacity?

Bart's job was to shut up and soldier. Our job was is to try to see to it that this country is run in such a fashion that the honor of our warriors is never besmirched by having been sent to an unjust or unwise war. Iraq is both. (Afghanistan might arguably be a "just" war, but it was still always unwise.) Bart is just fighting for honor the only way he knows how. And he's just barely almost articulate enough to sometimes pass for a legitimate player here. But in truth he's just trying to justify being a warrior when the C-in-C is a puppet for oil barons who send his comrades to kill and die for black gold and cynical realpolitik.

Pity him. But don't for a second let the wants-it-both-ways troll get away with these cynical and purely tactical invocations of his "service." The honor of our warriors and all patriots deserve better than the likes of him.
 

Just a fast observation....

Clinton also engaged ina bit of bi-partisanship when he nominated Republican Bill Cohen to be secretary of defense.

How fast we forget....
 

Mark:

You're a mensch but your analysis is lacking. The problem we face right now is Republican extremism. Putting a couple of token Republicans in a Democratic Administration isn't going to change the extremism that is rampant in the Republican party.

Good governing won't really happen until Roosevelt's practice is followed and Democrats destroy the Republicans at the ballot box.
 

Oops, I meant putting a couple of token Democrats in a Republican administration (or vice versa for that matter).
 

Robert Link said...

Bart trots out an old favorite, "Dammit, I'm a soldier!!"

JNagarya brought up my service, I merely corrected his gross error about that service.

Folks like Mr. Murtha (ab)use their past military service in a vain attempt to convince people that a plan to retreat our Army to Okinawa and surrender Iraq to the enemy is really a military experience based "redeployment plan" to better fight al Qaeda...in Japan.

Because I have the facts on my side, there is no need to parade my military service around to back up my arguments.
 

Because I have the facts on my side, there is no need to parade my military service around to back up my arguments.

# posted by Bart DePalma : 11:50 AM

Thanks for the best laugh I've had in awhile.

The facts have been kicking the crap out of you for the last 4 years. No WMD. No Al Qaeda connection. Ongoing carnage, with no end in sight. Those are the facts, and they directly contradict the constant bullshit that spews out of you on a daily basis.
 

Bart: Because I have the facts on my side, there is no need to parade my military service around to back up my arguments.

Which I suppose explains this. Fact is, you give mendacious sophistry a bad name. As for "facts on your side," I suppose you mean the facts about the text of the MCA, you cowardly, lying cheat? Fact is, you really aren't very good at the substantive part of intellectual life. But you're a great troll.
 

Speaking of Mr. Murtha, he has been awful quiet recently after grossly slandering the Marines at Haditha as cold blooded murderers without any evidence.

To date, two of the Marines charged in the Haditha battle have been cleared in preliminary Article 32 hearings and it looks like more will follow as the politically motivated prosecution is falling apart for lack of evidence.

I will not hold my breath waiting for apologies from Mr. Murtha or Time Magazine for their slanders or for Pelosi's House to discipline Mr. Murtha for these slanders.
 

Baghdad, have you seen the latest story about the Haditha Marines? This was not their first massacre. One of their own has admitted to killing prisoners at Fallujah.
 

Of the two of us, I would hazard a guess that I am the only one who has actually fought in Iraq, killed Iraqis, been shot at by tanks and small arms, and been under artillery barrages (Persian Gulf War - 3d Platoon, A Co., 1/7 Infantry, 3d BDE, 3 ID serving as 1st BDE in the 1 Armored).

What you ignorantly slander as a sociopathy is in reality how wars are fought and won.

I think you were quite right to lay the smack down on someone for making erroneous assumptions about your experience. If you've served your country, you don't need some "keyboard kommando" telling you that you didn't, or that you don't understand what's involved.

That said, I disagree with the idea that right-wing ideology is the only way to fight and win a war, and it certainly isn't the way you engage in successful nation building. As others have said (including you!), if we were merely in this to win a war, then we're done, and we should go home.

Back to the partisanship problem, I think there is common ground that could be found in the Iraq situation, if we could ditch the idea that we're still fighting a war and that therefore, we must be victorious (and anything that isn't a military solution equals surrender). We fought the war. We won. Hooray! That part's over.

Now, we're dealing with the mess we made, and we have a responsibility to clean it up. It's all good and well to point fingers and assign blame--don't get me wrong, the people who are being pointed at deserve it, along with multiple impeachments and years in Gitmo--but after all, Iraq is in a shambles, it's our fault, and anyone with a conscience agrees we have an obligation to alleviate the situation.

The ways open to alleviate the situation should not be limited by the rhetoric of "fight or surrender." We've done the military solution thing. It hasn't worked. Four years later, we're hearing one old saw ("if the troops leave, Iraq will plunge into civil war") right along with another ("Prosperity is just around the corner!") Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

To be fair, a recent well-balanced study of the situation came to a similar conclusion as you have, stating that "rushing Iraqi forces in, and American forces
out, is a strategy where "exit" is given far higher priority than success."

Where they differ from your take on things is that they also say that the administration has been dishonest about the true conditions in Iraq, especially in respect to the readiness of the Iraqi security forces:

To put it bluntly, this means that US government and Department of Defense must stop exaggerating about the true nature of Iraqi readiness and the Iraqi force development. As this report describes in detail, there are many very real successes in ISF development.

The nearly meaningless metrics of success the US has adopted, however, can easily lead
the US to choose the wrong options in Iraq, continue to fail to provide adequate resources, and encourage US and allied withdrawals because of political decisions made
for the wrong reasons. Like all elements of strategy, Iraqi force development needs to be based on honesty and realism, not "spin," false claims, and political expediency.

But the solutions proposed in this study extend beyond "stay the course," they suggest that:

the most important developments in making Iraqi forces effective have nothing to do with the forces themselves, or the nature of the US support and advisory effort. They are rather the ability to create levels of political compromise and conciliation that deprive the insurgency and Iraq’s civil conflicts of their popular base.

In short, success is dependent upon being honest with the American people, creating an environment conducive to civility, and engaging in political compromise.

These three modes of behavior aren't exactly the bread-and-butter of American politics right now, and certainly aren't those normally associated with right-wing ideology, and may actually cause physical pain to members of the current administration.

The question is: given the opportunity to engage in these behaviors, but simultaneously given the polarized nature of current politics, would Democrats do any better? Why is bipartisanship such a dirty word, and when will it ever regain any currency? Or, for the cynics, why shouldn't it?
 

Bart writes ....
Bipartisanism during war might be more possible today if both parties were willing to wage war.

If a significant portion of the citizenry opposes the war, isn't the legislation in any way duty bound to at least try to represent that opposition to the government?
 

Bartbuster said...

Baghdad, have you seen the latest story about the Haditha Marines? This was not their first massacre. One of their own has admitted to killing prisoners at Fallujah.

These are different Marines from the same platoon. However, this is an interesting story worth taking a look at:

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) says it cannot disclose details of the inquiry - the US Marines' third war crimes probe at California's Camp Pendleton - but none of the marines under investigation are being held in detention.

But a Vietnam veteran who has written a book about the battle for Fallujah, Nat Helms, has provided an account of the deaths on his website, defendourmarines.com.

Mr Helms says marines held eight unarmed Iraqi men in a house during the battle and executed them after receiving orders to move to a new location.

He says the investigation began after a marine admitted during a polygraph test for a job with the US Secret Service that he participated in a wrongful death.

The veteran says Corporal Ryan Weemer told him the marines received a radio order to move out after they captured the eight Iraqis.

When asked what to do with the prisoners, a radio operator allegedly asked, "Are they still alive?"

Mr Helms says the marines took that as an order to execute the Iraqis and shot them to death.

He says insurgents in Fallujah would run from fire fights without weapons and rearm themselves at new locations because they knew marines were barred from shooting the unarmed.

This is a classic situation which the laws of war do not cover very well.

In the Persian Gulf War, we overran hundreds of Iraqis as we were driving deep into Iraq. We could not leave them free and armed to open fire on our following logistics units and we could not take them with us. Our solution was similar to that used by the Germans overrunning the French in 1940, run over and destroy the captures' weapons so they could not rejoin the fight and then leave them behind for others to collect.

However, the Marines in Fallujah did not have that option. They were faced with the choice of killing the captures or allowing them to rearm and rejoin the battle to kill other Marines.

The official by the book response is that the Marines are supposed to release the captures and allow them to rejoin the battle to kill other Marines. However, your average grunt doing the dying in the battle rarely sees it that way with his life and the lives of his buddies in the balance.

Be brutally honest with yourself and tell me what you would do.

I will be honest. I would have killed them. They were not playing by the rules, so I will be damned if I will get any of my guys killed by allowing the enemy to game the rules. If the shit comes down later, I will take responsibility, say I gave the orders and take my chances with a jury of my peers.

On the battlefield, not everything goes by the book. I owe my men more of a duty than I owe captured terrorists.
 

Bart gives another false choice:

However, the Marines in Fallujah did not have that option. They were faced with the choice of killing the captures or allowing them to rearm and rejoin the battle to kill other Marines.

The official by the book response is that the Marines are supposed to release the captures and allow them to rejoin the battle to kill other Marines. However, your average grunt doing the dying in the battle rarely sees it that way with his life and the lives of his buddies in the balance.

Be brutally honest with yourself and tell me what you would do.

I will be honest. I would have killed them. They were not playing by the rules, so I will be damned if I will get any of my guys killed by allowing the enemy to game the rules. If the shit comes down later, I will take responsibility, say I gave the orders and take my chances with a jury of my peers.

Were those the only two choices? Could they have retained the captives for detention? Would that have been possible if the administration had followed the request for sufficient forces?

If you feel the law is only an expedient to obtain your wishes, whether in court or on the battlefield, you will avoid, ignore, or skirt it when you are presented with a choice to obtain your objective or obey the law. If you are committed to obeying the law, you will find a way to work within the law to obtain your objectives. It (unfortunately) is that simple, Bart.

You are obviously a proponent, despite being an attorney, of obeying the law so long as it is expedient, or when it coincides with your objectives. Otherwise it is to be discarded as useless, irregardless of written law, court decisions, or Constitution. Saying that there are exigent circumstances, or a Great War on Terror, or other reasons to break the law, and you would proudly do so and support it is a violation of your profession's ethical code and duties.

Lynch mobs feel it expedient to disregard the law, also, as do criminals, as well as terrorists. By your statements here you clearly show that you hold yourself as an equal to these people, not better than them, as well as proud of it.
 

Fraud Guy said...

Bart gives another false choice: However, the Marines in Fallujah did not have that option. They were faced with the choice of killing the captures or allowing them to rearm and rejoin the battle to kill other Marines.

Were those the only two choices? Could they have retained the captives for detention?

No. The unit was ordered back into combat and could not have brought the prisoners with them as the cleared another building. To keep the prisoners would have rendered the platoon combat ineffective.

Would that have been possible if the administration had followed the request for sufficient forces?

You never have enough troops to do everything. We had approximately 600,000 troops when we invaded Iraq the first time in 1991 and we could not deal with all the prisoners the first time around.

If you feel the law is only an expedient to obtain your wishes, whether in court or on the battlefield, you will avoid, ignore, or skirt it when you are presented with a choice to obtain your objective or obey the law. If you are committed to obeying the law, you will find a way to work within the law to obtain your objectives. It (unfortunately) is that simple, Bart...

Lynch mobs feel it expedient to disregard the law, also, as do criminals, as well as terrorists. By your statements here you clearly show that you hold yourself as an equal to these people, not better than them, as well as proud of it.

No it is not that simple and there is very little that goes on in a battlefield of which any ethical human being is proud.

Here is another real life anecdote for you to consider.

We are in the third day of continuous combat during the Persian Gulf War. After destroying the Medina Republican Guard Division in a running battle the previous day (some books called this the Battle of Medina Ridge), division is rotating our brigade back to the reserve position during the night. Our entire armor battalion has its back to the enemy with my infantry platoon screening between them and the enemy positions.

All the sudden, about 150 humanoid images emerge from what were probably enemy foxholes and appear on my platoon's thermal imaging screens about 1000 meters from our position. My platoon with its 4 Bradley IFVs and 33 men is outnumbered 5-1.

Now, hundreds of Iraqis have surrendered to our division over the past three days, but hundreds of more have fought and died trying to stop our advance. There was no real way to tell what the intent of this enemy force was.

We hoped that the order to pull out would come down before the enemy got within range of their weapons. However, no such luck.

I decided to try to discourage their advance and had my gunner fire a stream of machine gun fire in front of the enemy when they got about 600 meters out. The enemy could see the tracers and knew we were close. I moved my track to another position so they could not open fire on me based on the tracers and waited to see what would happen. The enemy paused for 5 minutes and then got up and started moving towards us again. They had not returned fire on us but appeared to be carrying weapons.

I consulted with my company commander and we decided that we could not endanger the battalion by allowing them to get any closer. I ordered my platoon to start pouring 25mm high explosive rounds (think dozens of small grenades) into those 150 enemy images and we killed them all in less than a minute.

Were they trying to surrender? Although I still wonder, I will never know. But I will be damned if I would let them get close enough to endanger my platoon and the battalion of 700 men.

You do the best you can making life and death decisions in the most stressful situations possible and pray to God you make the right decisions when sometimes there are no right decisions.

Killing is not fun unless you are a psychopath. However, killing is often necessary no matter what the rule book says. That is why wars are fought by soldiers and not attorneys. Or they were...
 

Be brutally honest with yourself and tell me what you would do.

I wouldn't have killed them. You don't have the right to kill someone just because you don't have the resources to properly detain them.

I'm not surprised at all that you'd kill them. Like I've said many times, you would have made a fine Nazi.

Oh, and the fact that these clowns are from the same unit as the Haditha clowns says everything you need to know about what happened at Haditha. The only one slurring honorable people here is you. Murtha didn't slur anyone.
 

Baghdad, in case you are wondering why I'm not outraged at the sight of the photographs of dead Al Qaeda prisoners that you linked to? It's because I know you're no better than the Al Qaeda guys who killed those people. You've admitted as much.
 

@Bartbuster,

Since I'm often one of the first to slam Bart I feel a duty to weigh in here. Without knowing more facts I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt on the particular combat call he relates. Arguably if there was anything that could be made of it he'd not be so brash about sharing it...and war _is_ hell. That's why we have to be so vigilant to make sure we only put our soldiers in these ethically conflicted situations for good purpose.

Equally arguably our stake in Iraq I was clear. SH was an imminent and legitimate threat not just to our interests but the entire global world oil economy. That Bart has swallowed the poison of his Party's leaders and believes the so-called "war" on terror similarly qualifies is nothing short of a pity, because it puts an otherwise good man on the wrong side of things.

All of the traits that make Bart a thorn in the side of anyone interested in legitimate intellectual pursuits probably made him a good soldier. I suspect I would have been glad to have him in my command were I ever called to lead in such a situation, and likewise to have him as my comrade if ever I was in the trenches. That doesn't let him off the hook for a single jot of the thuggery he commits here daily, but the honesty we're trying to teach him requires honoring his service. Even where one could disagree with his choices I think it fair to assume he strove to serve with honor.

From my heart...
 

Robert Link said...

All of the traits that make Bart a thorn in the side of anyone interested in legitimate intellectual pursuits probably made him a good soldier.

I think we would disagree as to what "legitimate intellectual pursuits" might be, but it might surprise you that I think you are largely correct about my personality traits.

I freely admit that I have a black and white philosophy of life. The Meyers Briggs test places me as an extreme ENTJ personality type, making me the type of person which gravitates toward the military and, yes, the law.

I agree that I am not very introspective, which is a trait you probably believe to be a prerequisite "legitimate intellectual pursuits." Naturally, I would disagree. We simply have different approaches to intellectual analysis.

Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. Introspective types often arrive at insights which we decisive types miss. However, we decisive types have an easier time separating the wheat from the chaff among insights without wasting time running down rabbit holes. One of the reasons I enjoy coming to blogs like this is to learn of the insights found by folks with different personalities than my own and then identifying and adopting the stronger insights for myself.

viva la difference!
 

because it puts an otherwise good man on the wrong side of things.

I've been listening to this scumbag for 4 years. He's not an "otherwise good man". He's a racist. He's a liar. And if he's not a war criminal, he admits that if he were in a position to be a war criminal, he'd kill unarmed prisoners without hesitating. In short, he's a despicable piece of shit.

BTW, I'm not even talking about the incident where he killed Iraqis who were trying to surrender. He has cover there, although I suspect he knew exactly what was going on. I'm talking about his admission that he would kill unarmed prisoners.
 

Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages

People like you make excellent cannon fodder. But since you won't get your cowardly ass into Iraq, there is no advantage to your approach.
 

identifying and adopting the stronger insights for myself.

# posted by Bart DePalma : 11:20 PM

This is really comical. Every year you insist that we'll be withdrawing troops from Iraq "early next year". Every year you are wrong. I have no doubt that you'd go on insisting that we'll be removing our troops "early year year" for the next 20 year. You haven't learned one damned thing in the last 4 years. I bet you STILL think our troops are safer in Iraq than they would be in New York City.
 

Bart,

Interesting attempt. However, you forget a few things:

Soldiers are supposed to follow the lawful orders of their superiors. Killing unarmed prisoners is not lawful under US and international law, even if it is suggested by the superior ("will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest"). Or do you have a statute that you can cite that allows murder?

In addition, your "real life" scenario isn't the same situation, and you know it. You should instead give the situation where you had unarmed prisoners, or people where you knew they were attempting to surrender, and you still killed them. Please describe how you handled that situation? Or describe the bodies of those you killed--were they armed? Unarmed? Women and children? You apparently feel that you had reason to question your decision, but nothing in your narrative gives a reason that you should have.

In a situation I've described before, I was advised of an MP at personal risk disarmed a prisoner who had taken a gun. You apparently would just have shot the prisoner, because you accept very little risk before abandoning your ethics. Nor have you given any indication that you would pull a gun on a general to prevent him from sending troops into an active minefield to recover a casualty of that minefield, before doing the recovery yourself, to recite another situation described to me.
 

Bartbuster:

Is that you BAF? Oh goody, another stalker from another blog.
 

@Bart: Serious question, Bart, do you understand the concept of "cognitive dissonance"?
 

Bartbuster: I've been listening to this scumbag for 4 years.

I hear ya, bro. But I also think it's important to separate respect for service from criticism in other arenas.

When you say he'd be good cannon fodder you're acknowledging the same thing. But whether we like it or not many times the values we believe in have relied on such. One man's cannon fodder is another man's mulch for the tree of liberty.

I think you are right that Bart is the kind of guy who could run the ovens or showers. But the point to be made is how easily it can happen here. You used to hear about "good Germans," but the ugly reality is the divide between you and me and the folks doing the things we despise is not so wide nor deep as we like. That, in turn, is the reason we must take every threat to civil liberties and open democratic dialog seriously.

Bart wants to be a good man. Bart thinks he is a good man. Bart thinks he served his country well and is trying to continue that service as best fits his current circumstances. So did the guys who flew their planes into those buildings in New York. The main difference, truly, is that Bart's world view doesn't include such ideas as "There but for the grace of God go I."
 

Don't feed the troll.

Just.

Don't.

Thanks,

A
 

Thanks for the

Click here

Click here

Click here


Click here

Click here

Click here



سعودي انحراف

شات عسلي

سعودي كول

شات صوتي