US Military Death Toll Hits 2000 in Iraq

Of course the official death toll doesn't include:

* Mercenaries (who are recently ex-SEAL/DELTA/Special Forces/Rangers/etc. and doing most of the wet work anyway)
* Deaths that occur "out-of-theatre" I.E. you get you leg blow off by IED and you bleed to death on the medivac to West Germany congrats...you weren't killed in Iraq...you died "Out-of-Theatre"
* Die years later from depleted uranium, US chemical weapons exposure, etc.
* US Soldiers permanently crippled and disfigured
* 30,000 - 100,000+ dead iraqi civilians

From an article on Senator Frank Lautenberg's analysis on the value of Dick Cheney's Haliburton stock options and continued payments of deferred compensation:

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) asserts that Cheney's options -- worth $241,498 a year ago -- are now valued at more than $8 million....

“Halliburton has already raked in more than $10 billion from the Bush-Cheney Administration for work in Iraq, and they were awarded some of the first Katrina contracts," Lautenberg said in a statement. "It is unseemly for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time his Administration funnels billions of dollars to it. The Vice President should sever his financial ties to Halliburton once and for all.”

Cheney continues to hold 433,333 Halliburton stock options. The company has been criticized by auditors for its handling of a no-bid contact in Iraq. Auditors found the firm marked up meal prices for troops and inflated gas prices in a deal with a Kuwaiti supplier. The company built the American prison at Guantanamo Bay...

...Cheney told "Meet the Press" in 2003 that he didn't have any financial ties to the firm.

“Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest," the Vice President said. "I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years.”

Cheney continues to received a deferred salary from the company. According to financial disclosure forms, he was paid $205,298 in 2001; $162,392 in 2002; $178,437 in 2003; and $194,852 in 2004.

"Cui Bono" - Etienne

Cato on the Evils of War and Standing Armies

From the Essay Cato on the Evils of War and Standing Armies by Laurence M. Vance:

Cato’s Letters is a collection of 144 essays by Trenchard and Gordon that appeared in the London Journal and the British Journal between 1720 and 1723. They were published together beginning in 1724 as Cato’s Letters: Or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects. The essays were signed with the pseudonym Cato, after Cato the Younger, the foe of Julius Caesar and champion of liberty and republican principles. Cato the Younger was the great-grandson of Cato the Elder. His daughter married Brutus, one of the assassins of Julius Caesar. Cato’s life was immortalized in the 1713 play, Cato: A Tragedy, by the English playwright and essayist Joseph Addison (1672–1719).

...In Cato’s Letters No. 17, as an example of "what measures have been taken by corrupt ministers, in some of our neighbouring countries, to ruin and enslave the people over whom they presided," we read something strangely reminiscent of our own "leaders":

They will engage their country in ridiculous, expensive, fantastical wars, to keep the minds of men in continual hurry and agitation, and under constant fears and alarms; and, by such means, deprive them both of leisure and inclination to look into publick miscarriages. Men, on the contrary, will, instead of such inspection, be disposed to fall into all measures offered, seemingly, for their defence, and will agree to every wild demand made by those who are betraying them.

When they have served their ends by such wars, or have other motives to make peace, they will have no view to the publick interest; but will often, to procure such peace, deliver up the strong-holds of their country, or its colonies for trade, to open enemies, suspected friends, or dangerous neighbours, that they may not be interrupted in their domestick designs.

This theme is continued in Cato’s Letters No. 87:

I have often wondered at the folly and weakness of those princes, who will sacrifice hundreds of thousand of their own faithful subjects, to gain a precarious and slavish submission from bordering provinces, who will seek all opportunities to revolt; which cannot be prevented but by keeping them poor, wretched, and miserable, and consequently unable to pay the charges of their own vassalage; when, if the same number of men and the sums of money were usefully employed at home, which are necessary to make and support the conquest, they would add vastly more to their power and empire.

The Arabs Hate Us Because We Love Freedom...

BOEING, BELL HELICOPTER ASKED TO PULL ‘MOSQUE ATTACK’ AD
Magazine ad shows U.S. special forces rappelling onto mosque roof

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 9/30/2005) - The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called on aerospace giants Boeing Co. and Bell Helicopter Textron to pull a print advertisement depicting U.S. troops attacking a mosque.

The ad for the CV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, published in the September 24 issue of National Journal magazine, depicts soldiers rappelling onto the roof of a building, labeled “Muhammad Mosque” in Arabic. The building has a dome, crescent moon and minaret, all common features of a mosque.

To view the ad, go to: http://www.cair.com/mosqueattackad.pdf

Headlines on the ad read: “It descends from the heavens. Ironically it unleashes hell.” Ad copy states: “The CV-22 delivers Special Forces to insertion points never thought possible.”

In a letter to Textron Chairman Lewis B. Campbell, Boeing Company President James A. Bell and Bell Helicopter Chief Executive Officer Michael A. Redenbaugh, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad wrote:

“[The ad] clearly portrays special forces assaulting a mosque, a structure dedicated to civilian worship purposes. This gives the impression that ‘the insertion points never thought possible’ are Islamic places of worship. . .This advertisement reflects poorly on Bell Helicopter, Textron and Boeing, and offers a questionable picture of your companies’ collective opinion of Islam and Muslims.”

Awad asked the companies to withdraw the advertisement and conduct an investigation into how it was approved for publication.

Robert Tilton - The Farting Preacher

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