You take the moral high ground and watch video

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I agree 100%. When it's all said and done, there won't only be more of them, but they will have gained a lot of training and experience due to the extensive "practice" they've had in Iraq. I'm just afraid they will take all that and bring it here to the US. I'm also afraid this is going to continue for years and years. I thought this whole thing was described as being swift when Bush declared war.

I also wonder which life was better for Iraqis: Saddam Hussein's regime or George W. Bush's regime.

The videos that gt posted really hit me hard. One of them gave a glimpse of what life was like before we got there and what it was like once we invaded and occupied their country.

I would feel much more secure if steps were taken in this country to protect us, but I feel that another terror attack is inevitable, and I'm afraid the next one is going to be much worse than 9/11. I really fear for my daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren. Even if a miracle occurs and we aren't all obliterated under Bush's regime, my grandchildren will be paying for his war for decades to come.

This whole thing was just wrong, wrong, wrong, and I, too, wish we would just get it over with, kick some serious *s* and get out of there.

President Theodore Roosevelt, 1918: To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Senator Robert A. Taft (also known as Mr. Republican), 1941 (after Pearl Harbor): I believe that there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government..... Too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think it will give some comfort to the enemy.... If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country more good than it will do the enemy, and it will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur.

Keith Olbermann's Special Comments on Bush: Who has left this hold in the ground? We have not forgotten, Mr. President. You have. May this country forgive you.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/11/keith-olbermanns-special-commnet-on-bush-who-has-left-this-hole-in-the-ground-we-have-not-forgotten-mr-president-you-have-may-this-country-forgive-you/

reflection of whether or not she has a child out of wedlock. My 18-year-old niece was raised in church, had good Christian parents and got pregnant before marriage. You can only teach a child. You can't force him or her to live by your own convictions.

Notice the number of civilian casualties already. I guess the US is going to ignore that as well.

Subject: Fwd: Fw: ISRAELI'S ASSESMENT OF OUR SECURITY

Juval Aviv was the Israeli Agent upon whom the movie ' Munich ' was based. He was Golda Meir's bodyguard -- she appointed him to track down and bring to justice the Palestinian terrorists who took the Israeli athletes hostage and killed them during the Munich Olympic Games.

In a lecture in New York City a few weeks ago, he shared information that EVERY American needs to know -- but that our government has not yet shared with us.

He predicted the London subway bombing on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News stating publicly that it would happen within a week. At the time, O'Reilly laughed and mocked him saying that in a week he wanted him back on the show. But, unfortunately, within a week the terrorist attack had occurred.

Juval Aviv gave intelligence (via what he had gathered in Israel and the Middle East ) to the Bush Administration about 9/11 a month before it occurred. His report specifically said they would use planes as bombs and target high profile buildings and monuments. Congress has since hired him as a security consultant.

Now for his future predictions. He predicts the next terrorist attack on the U.S. will occur within the next few months.

Forget hijacking airplanes, because he says terrorists will NEVER try and hijack a plane again as they know the people onboard will never go down quietly again. Aviv believes our airport security is a joke -- that we have been reactionary rather than proactive in developing strategies that are truly effective.

For example:

1) Our airport technology is outdated. We look for metal, and the new explosives are made of plastic.

2) He talked about how some idjit tried to light his shoe on fire. Because of that, now everyone has to take off their shoes. A group of idiots tried to bring aboard liquid explosives. Now we can't bring liquids on board. He says he's waiting for some suicidal maniac to pour liquid explosive on his underwear; at which point, security wil l have us all traveling naked! Every strategy we have is 'reactionary.'

3) We only focus on security when people are heading to the gates.

Aviv says that if a terrorist attack targets airports in the future, they will target busy times on the front end of the airport when/where people are checking in. It would be easy for someone to take two suitcases of explosives, walk up to a busy check-in line, ask a person next to them to watch their bags for a minute while they run to the restroom or get a drink, and then detonate the bags BEFORE security even gets involved. In Israel , security checks bags BEFORE people can even ENTER the airport.

Aviv says the next terrorist attack here in America is imminent and will involve suicide bombers and non-suicide bombers in places where large groups of people congregate. (i. e., Disneyland, Las Vegas casinos, big cities (New York, San Francisco, Chicago, etc.) and that it will also include shopping malls, subways i n rush hour, train stations, etc., as well as rural America this time (Wyoming, Montana, etc.).

The attack will be characterized by simultaneous detonations around the country (terrorists like big impact), involving at least 5-8 cities, including rural areas.

Aviv says terrorists won't need to use suicide bombers in many of the larger cities, because at places like the MGM Grand in Las Vegas , they can simply valet park a car loaded with explosives and walk away.

Aviv says all of the above is well known in intelligence circles, but that our U. S. government does not want to 'alarm American citizens' with the facts.

The world is quickly going to become 'a different place', and issues like 'global warming' and political correctness will become totally irrelevant.

On an encouraging note, he says that Americans don't have to be concerned about being nuked. Aviv says the terrorists who want to destroy America will not use sophisticated weapons. They like to use suicide as a front-line approach. It's cheap, it's easy, it's effective; and they have an infinite abundance of young militants more than willing to 'meet their destiny'.

He also says the next level of terrorists, over which America should be most concerned, will not be coming from abroad. But will be, instead, 'homegrown' -- having attended and been educated in our own schools and universities right here in the U. S. He says to look for 'students' who frequently travel back and forth to the Middle East . These young terrorists will be most dangerous because they will know our language and will fully understand the habits of Americans; but that we Americans won't know/understand a thing about them.

Aviv says that, as a people, Americans are unaware and uneducated about the terroristic threats we w ill, inevitably, face. America still has only have a handful of Arabic and Farsi speaking people in our intelligence networks, and Aviv says it is critical that we change that fact SOON.

So, what can America do to protect itself?

From an intelligence perspective, Aviv says the U.S. needs to stop relying on satellites and technology for intelligence. We need to, instead, follow Israel 's, Ireland 's and England 's hands-on examples of human intelligence, both from an infiltration perspective as well as to trust 'aware' citizens to help. We need to engage and educate ourselves as citizens; however, our U. S. government continues to treat us, its citizens, 'like babies'. Our government thinks we 'can't handle the truth' and are concerned that we'll panic if we understand the realities of terrorism. Aviv says this is a deadly mistake.& nbsp;

Aviv recently created/executed a security test for our Congress, by placing an empty briefcase in five well-traveled spots in five major cities. The results? Not one person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out. In fact, in Chicago , someone tried to steal the briefcase!

In comparison, Aviv says that citizens of Israel are so well 'trained' that an unattended bag or package would be reported in seconds by citizen(s) who know to publicly shout, 'Unattended Bag!' The area would be quickly & calmly cleared by the citizens themselves. But, unfortunately, America hasn't been yet 'hurt enough' by terrorism for their government to fully understand the need to educate its citizens or for the government to understand that it's their citizens who are, inevitably, the best first-line of defense against terrorism.

Aviv also was concerned about the high number of children here in America who were in preschool and kindergarten after 9/11, who were 'lost' without parents being able to pick them up, and about ours schools that had no plan in place to best care for the students until parents could get there. (In New York City , this was days, in some cases!)

He stresses the importance of having a plan, that's agreed upon within your family, to respond to in the event of a terroristic emergency. He urges parents to contact their children's schools and demand that the schools, too, develop plans of actions, as they do in Israel .

Does your family know what to do if you can't contact one another by phone? Where would you gather in an emergency? He says we should all have a plan that is easy enough for even our youngest children to remember and follow.
  & nbsp;
Aviv says that the U. S. government has in force a plan that, in the event of another terrorist attack, will immediately cut-off EVERYONE's ability to use cell phones, blackberries, etc., as this is the preferred communication source used by terrorists and is often the WA y that their bombs are detonated.

How will you communicate with your loved ones in the event you cannot speak? You need to have a plan.

Lying and the Culture of Life

What Moral Values?

Strong moral values, decency, propriety, and honesty: conservatives long ago declared these ideals essential to their belief system, achieving political ascendancy with promises of restoring honor to a government they view as tainted by liberal immorality and excess.

Barely a year into Bush's second term, the American political landscape is brimming with blatant examples of conservative deceit, dishonesty, cronyism, and hypocrisy.

Foremost among these examples is Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's right-hand man, who has been indicted on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements before a grand jury. Not that this is cause for embarrassment among conservatives--indeed, many are relieved, pointing out that Libby is in trouble only for lying. It seems conservative standards on morality have slipped a bit.

Of course, the Libby indictment is but the tip of the beast's horn. The larger case is about a vengeful administration that was bent on destroying an undercover CIA agent's career by leaking her name because her husband, Joseph Wilson, also a CIA agent, challenged shoddy evidence buttressing the case for war in Iraq.

Let us forget for a moment the value of simple honesty. Let us forget also the importance of not undermining the nation's intelligence services when one's entire platform is national security.

What does this event tell us about the oft-invoked conservative call to respect the culture of life, so often invoked in abortion debates? Let us not pander to fools: this war was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, based on manifest lies and exaggerations. Therefore, can anyone seriously claim that this administration showed even the slightest respect for the lives of the 2,000 American soldiers, or the lives countless Iraqi civilians now lost to the war's horrors? Most intriguing, then, is this culture of life--a culture which champions life when it does not yet exist, and abandons it when it does.

Surely, however, could the Republican Party not redeem itself through its philosophy of Christian compassion? Apparently not. Congressional testimony two weeks ago revealed that when FEMA's sole representative in New Orleans--who was there only accidentally--found thousands of Americans stranded without food or shelter during the hurricane, he issued a desperate call for help to FEMA chief Michael Brown. Brown's aide replied--several hours later--with the following instructive example of compassionate conservatism in action: It is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner. The locale of choice? Baton Rouge. Marie Antoinette would have been impressed.

Equally impressive is the Republican Party's idea of taking responsibility and not blaming others--a key conservative tenet--in the case of Tom Delay, the House majority leader indicted for pouring corporate money into Texas' 2002 state elections, which saw the reconfiguration of the state's congressional districts along even more pro-Republican lines. Censured three times in 2004 alone by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee, Delay nonetheless views the indictment as a kind of vast left-wing conspiracy, calling the prosecutor an unabashed partisan zealot. Heaven forbid.

It goes without saying that Republican contrition for any of the outrages outlined above is unlikely: the arsonists are running the firehouse, and they take great pride in fanning the flames.

We would be sorely remiss, however, if we ignored the role of the Democrats in this affair. They have sat on their firehoses and idled their fire engines on key issues, enabling Republican misbehavior to go unchecked. Most Democrats, it must be remembered, voted in favor of granting Bush unprecedented war powers. And it was the liberal New York Times, with its neo-con pseudo-journalist Judith Miller at the helm, who led the drumbeat procession to invade Iraq based on the thinnest of lies.

Na�ve liberal Democrats were also quite pleased to see conservatives break ranks during the Harriet Miers debacle, taking it as a sign of some kind of impending right-wing implosion. They apparently forgot the basic fact that it was the far right--not what passes for the left--that tore apart Miers' chances for judicial confirmation. Now, a staunch conservative, Alito, has been nominated and the implosion has disappeared into thin air. As usual, we can soon count on the usual centrist Democrats--those Klan-minus-costume-crats and heirs to the Dixiecrat legacy--to help vote Alito onto the bench.

Thus, while conservative wrongdoing is obvious, liberals must take a long, hard look at their own party's role in producing the present state of affairs. Americans are told, after all, that there are two major parties, and that one is supposed to act in opposition to the other.