What I'm talking about

I'm glad they are showing that in the video. A combat tour is like Groundhog Day - you lose track of what day of the week it is when there are no weekends, no days off, and little respite from the state of hyperalert. A couple of times, I'd get just forty-five minutes of sleep, before being woken back up and called in for another 8 or 12 hours, due to a new mission. There were months on end where I had only six hours off at night and another hour or two mid-afternoon, for total downtime. I never left the FOB, so I'm not going to claim PTSD or flashbacks to gun battles or anything like that. But I still dealt with mortars, RPGs, and small arms fire attacks on the camp on a near-daily basis, living and working as we did on the perimeter. I wore noise-isolating earplugs to drown out the constant din of generators, Blackhawk helicopters, and incoming. "Quit shooting, I'm trying to sleep," passed through my mind on a regular basis. Believe it or not, I smile at that particular memory.

I'm not sure how I'm going to go fifteen months. But I guess a lot of folks have already done it. It isn't fair to ask the same people to go back again and again, long past the end of their contract date, when no one else is asked to give anything. A few of us have medical and mental conditions, but a doc signs off on our paperwork and we are rated ready to go regardless, because we are short of personnel. We have fewer than we did last go, and this time they want us to man two sites. You do the math, as far as downtime goes...

1. What possible reason should I care that this bothers you now since the same thing has been happening for five years?

Richard, I don't care what you think of me. Seriously, I don't. We are strangers to each other. But you should ask yourself if it matters more to tell conservatives who have turned against the war, "I told you so, but you wouldn't listen, so go to hell" -- or is it more important to end this war? Because you're not going to end it without bringing a significant number of Republicans along.

2. What are you telling Jonah Goldberg and Rich Lowery over at NRO about their continued support for Bush's strategy.

Nothing. We don't e-mail much at all. Nothing personal there -- well, Jonah and I had a tiff, but that didn't amount to much of anything. The vast right-wing conspiracy isn't very conspiratorial. If they want to know what I think, though I can't imagine why they would, they can do what I do when I want to know what they think: read the blog.

Hrm has display for comments changed again, with most recent appearing first? I liked it before.

>On what planet did these people march?

This one. In cities all over the world leading up to the war. Here is just one day of protest, February 15th 2003:

The biggest demonstration of the global day of protest took place in Italy in Rome. Thirty trains were specially chartered to bring people to the demonstration, which was organised under the slogan "Stop the war; no ifs or buts". The organisers were shocked at the size of the turn out and the unexpected number of people forced the demonstration to set off two hours early.[11] 650,000 people (police estimate) took place in a final rally at which there were many international speakers including Kurds, Iraqi dissidents, Palestinians, a representative of the American Council of Christian Churches and an Israeli conscientious objector who addressed the crowd from a stage hung with Pablo Picasso's Guernica. The size of the demonstration meant that the majority of demonstrators did not make it into the final rally and in total three million people (organisers' estimate, supported by the Guinness Book of World Records) were on the streets. This was listed in the 2004 Guinness Book of World Records as the largest anti-war rally in history.[3] According to the Green Left Weekly (GLW), the demonstration contained people from across Italian society; "Catholic nuns and priests marched alongside young people with dreadlocks, nose rings and Palestinian scarves. Christians, anarchists and communists mingled".

...

Spain saw demonstrations in around 55 cities and towns across the country;[35] the largest was probably in the capital city Madrid, where between 660,000 (Government source’s estimate) and 2,000,000 (GLW estimate) took part in what was probably the biggest demonstration since the death of the fascist dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.[35] Barcelona also had a large, with estimates of 350,000 (Delegación de Gobierno), 1,300,000 (Barcelona city hall and Police) or 1,500,000 (GLW) people[39] joining a demonstration which moved from the Passeig de Gràcia to the Plaça de Tetuan. Spain also had demonstrations of approximately 500,000 in Valencia (GLW estimate), 250,000 in Seville (GLW estimate) (200,000 Government sources estimate), 100,000 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (GLW estimate) and 100,000 in Cadiz' (GLW estimate) as well as over fifty other towns and cities across the country (WSWS estimate).[36] Particularly remarkable was the turnout in the small Asturian city of Oviedo which had a turnout of 100,000 even though its total population was only 180,000.[40]

Organisers of the New York City protest had hoped to march past the United Nations Building. However, a week before the march, police claimed that they would not be able to ensure order and District Court Judge Barbara Jones ruled against allowing the route. Instead, protesters were only permitted to hold a stationary rally.[44]

According to Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York City Civil Liberties Union, judicial denial of a permit for a protest march was an unprecedented restriction of civil liberties, as marching and parading through New York's public streets to express various points-of-view is "a time-honoured tradition in our country that lies at the core of the First Amendment".[45]

On the day, over 300 buses and four special trains brought protesters in from across the country. 100,000 protesters (BBC estimate) took part in a rally near the UN building. Among those taking part in the demonstration was the 9/11 Families For Peaceful Tomorrows, a group made up of some relatives of victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Speakers included politicians, church leaders and entertainers, such as actress Susan Sarandon and South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu.[46]

As people tried to reach the rally area they ended up constituting an unplanned march, stretching twenty blocks down First Avenue and overflowing onto Second and Third Avenue.[37] In total there may have been 300,000 to 400,000 protesters (WSWS estimate).[36]

The protests were largely peaceful though a small group of protesters who were reported to have broken off from the main rally, caused damage to property in the Union Square district, and threw stones at police officers, which resulted in forty arrests.[1] There were numerous complaints that the police were too heavy handed. Many streets were blocked off and protesters reported feeling hemmed in and scared. By the end of the day, police reported that there had been roughly 275 arrests; organisers dispute this number, claiming that there were 348 arrests. The local Independent Media Center produced a short video claiming to show inappropriate and violent police behaviour, including backing horses into demonstrators, shoving people into the metal barricades, spraying a toxic substance at penned-in demonstrators, using abusive language, and raising nightsticks against some who couldn't move. However, NYPD spokesman Michael O'Looney denied the charges claiming that the tape was "filled with special effects" and that it did not prove the police had not been provoked.[45]

...

A CNN journalist reported that the crowd was diverse, including "older men and women in fur coats, parents with young children, military veterans and veterans of the anti-war movement."[37]

Singer/songwriter Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) wrote a song about the day's events, called Old Soul Song (For the New World Order), which appeared on his 2005 album I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning. It included the lyrics "We walked the forty blocks to the middle/Of the place we heard that everything would be/And there were barricades to keep us off the street/But the crowd kept pushing forward/'til they swallowed the police/Yeah, they went wild/Yeah, they went wild..."
protest

>they would rather do it there than here

1. That little bit of fantastical thinking assumes that Al Queada doesn't have the where withall to put two or three followers into a car and drive across the Mexican or Canadian border because they are soooo busy in Iraq that mounting a mission in the US is beyond them. They haven't attacked us because what would be the point in uniting the country behind a dimwit president doing such a great job of losing the battle to them.

2. They are re-enlisting because of $40,000 reup bonuses which are sold with the knowledge that as long as troops have not yet passed their 8 year IRR+active service requirement they will be called back to active duty and not get a cent for their troubles.

>What do you want to do with that kind of evil, say to it,"let us sit >down and reason together"?

It's not about reasoning with evil. It's about not enough troops to do the job. If this is the all out war of civilized man against the hordes why hasn't El Jefe in Chief go on the telly and asked for a single person to go to the recruiting office and join the fight? Why hasn't he raised gas taxes a single dime to pay for the 25,000 wounded and dead of the misbegotten war?

>Don't try to understand the kind of sacrifice and valor our men >display, just thank God that it exists.

And the reason you aren't over there displaying some of that valor is? I am going to assume you are home on leave having just finished Basic or OCS? And on the off chance you are, like me a vet, how many of your friends or sons of your friends signed up this week?

>And don't try to tell me that the American people want to loose the >war, according to some poll. They want to win it, not loose it.

Which may explain why they have been waiting so patiently for this president to stop loosing TWO wars.

Here rather than there, eh?

Then why is our border practically wide open?

Why are Arab "students" still allowed into out country?

Why are Arabs and Muslims still allowed to emigrate here at all?

'You know very well that if we quit now it will mean nuclear war later.'

Cleveland, if Americans don't quit nuclear war will be even sooner.
If you believe in what is written in the Bible Armagedon is inevitable.

You described very picturesque satanism of Iraquis, but read here what american soldiers do: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6384781.stm
those were punished but how many of them would not complain about their comrades doing similar things?

Do you really believe that defending territories of Israel justifies an all out nuclear war? Maybe i understood it wrong being bad at english? Territory of Israel is not a reason to start throwing nuclear bombs all over the world, to my mind it is better to evacuate all Jews back to USA where the majority of them came from and to all other countries, i don't mind half of Israel moving to Russia (we have Jewish autonomous region on far east, where beautiful lotuses blossom in spring and far from muslims, why not move there?)

If the NRO won't publish the story, put out a one shot magazine with every Republican heavyweight who agrees with you blasting this war. Hell, I'd buy it.

Richard, The American Conservative was founded in 2002 in large part to express conservative opposition to the war. They don't just ignore liberals. What you're going to need is probably someone like John McCain to finally admit the war is lost, and I wouldn't hold my breath on that happening before 2009, I'm sorry to say.

Richard, The American Conservative was founded in 2002 in large part to express conservative opposition to the war.

My idea for a one shot magazine was to give it a special and noteworthy quality as a dramatic call by conservatives to end the war now.

Keep in mind, I find the politics of the men and women who will write this thing contemptible, but the audience for the piece are those who share their world view, not mine.

Any way, I am thinking of it in these terms:

On Halloween of 1517, Luther changed the course of human history when he nailed his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenberg, accusing the Roman Catholic church of heresy upon heresy. Many people cite this act as the primary starting point of the Protestant Reformation

Reformers

On this one issue you must reform your party, not for the sake of saving it, but for the sake of the lives even now being lost in this terrible war.

Throwing Israel off the sleigh to the wolves would only slow them for a little while.

The Israelis *are* the wolves. We keep propping their brutal regime up, and we keep paying the price.

How does that help our interests?

You think two or three thousand battle casualties are too many? Well, you will wish to God casualties were that low again later.

Cue ominous music and close-up of Bruce Willis' face.

"Yippie-kai-yay, M-F!"

Per John: "Cleveland - They fight because they are professionals and because they do what is asked of them. They aren't ideologically or politically motivated".

John, I know what you mean, but it would be even more correct to say our guys fight for each other once the fit hits the shan, not because some newly minted officer told them to fight. Yes, they follow orders because they are pros, but they are not mindless ideological or political eunuchs. As you probably know, there is fighting and there is fighting.

What keeps a man's spirits up is knowing he is fighting for a worthy cause, e.g., preventing more 9/11s and killing evil of the kind I mentioned in my post. I think the fighting in Vietnam, after it became clear the Democrats were not going to permit a military victory, was the professional fighting you have in mind.

"I'm not so sure that there isn't a consensus. According to a recent survey of all the money donated to GOP candidates by persons in the military, more than half of the donations went to the most anti-war candidate, Congressman Ron Paul." Kristen M.

I just peeked at your anti-war blog source. Paul ($25K) got just a hair under, not over, half, and the stats include "employees", whatever that means. The numbers also include the $20K Rod donated to Paul.

Just kidding, Rod