August 24, 2005 - There will come a day, whether in four more years or a decade, when the troops come home. There will come a day on which some will declare again a mission accomplished and the drip of blood to nourish desert flowers will cease to flow. On that day Iraq and Afghanistan will commence to recede into the mists of memory and in a generation old men will sit nodding at the holograph projector and tell their grandsons of the way it was back then. Casey Sheehan will be just as dead. Jessica Lynch, an old woman now, will lean on her cane and speak of the time when she was America’s heroine in a work of fiction wrought because the President needed someone to cheer for and the Army would give it to him.

Old men will then remember when the President abjured them to “finish the mission” without ever telling them just what the mission was. They will speak of alley ways and lonely desert paths suddenly blossoming in flame as new recruits in ones and twos fell in to join the ranks of the regiment of the slain. They will tell of phantom weapons and terrible threats that never were and brag that they disarmed a tyrant of arms he never had. They will speak of vengeance exacted for another’s crime and describe how they changed a regime and made a nescient democracy into a theocratic hub of a revived axis of evil renewed in its determination to resist an American hegemony. They will tell how they were there at the creation of the new Persian Empire astride the Persian Gulf.....click here for entire article

August 21, 2005 - You remember the chant. We heard it at the Republican Convention and at well orchestrated rallies across the television landscape of the United States. “Four more years!” it ran. That refrain interrupted speeches and drowned out the band as “Ruffles and Flourishes” gave way to “Hail to the Chief” as the President strode to the rostrum. Well, folks, the U.S. Army has taken up the refrain. It is planning for its continued engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan and the planning is for four more years’ commitment; four more years of low level combat tying up America’s combat ready forces in a seemingly endless war with shadows.

August 2005 has been the bloodiest month of the continuing conflict for National Guard and Reserve units and there is a third of the month to go. Our forgotten war in Afghanistan is heating up. The Taliban – you remember them – has claimed the lives of six soldiers last week. The President told us yesterday that our sons and daughters are dying a half a world away so that 19 men won’t fly airliners into buildings here while the Army plans for four more years....click here for entire article

August 14, 2005 - On May Day 2003 our President told us that the mission in Iraq had been accomplished. Even he now admits that the declaration of an end to major combat was a trifle premature. Is it significant that the announcement that major combat was over came on May Day – that international radio declaration of urgent distress and a need for emergency aid.

Let us look at what we have accomplished in that benighted country. We have invaded; utterly defeated the country’s military; destroyed the country’s economic and political infrastructure; deposed a one-party Ba`athist regime and imprisoned its dictator. We have disarmed Iraq of weapons that it did not have. We have spent billions while failing to rebuild the oil industry that we devastated, first by imposing an embargo on repair parts and then by the destruction of war. We have imposed one regime and have been foster parent to another. Both have had more resemblance to the regime we deposed than to any classical democracy. We have sacrificed 1850 American lives; 200 more of our allies and those of uncounted thousands of Iraqis and still see no end to the course that the President vows to stay to the bitter end....click here for entire article

August 13, 2005 - The President came to Illinois to put his signature on the $286 Billion highway spending bill. He picked a Caterpillar plant as a back drop. Jobs, he said, was the objective of this massive spending program in time of war. Every Congressman and Senator got something for his constituency. Illinois made out quite well, but then it does have Speaker Dennis Hastert. It was a grand celebration of bi-partisan pork but nobody saw the Elephant standing behind the President. At least nobody admitted seeing the beast.

No one denies that the spending will mean jobs and profits for the highway industry. No one denies that the spending will stimulate an economy that needs stimulation. No one denies that America’s transportation infrastructure is in dire need of maintenance and modernization. Those benefits of the elephantine spending measure are right out in the open as is amount of federal dollars that will have to be borrowed to pay for it. None of that is hidden....click here for entire article

August 10, 2005 - From where Cindy Sheehan sits along the dusty road outside of Crawford, Texas nature has left a swath that stretches north-northeast to Crandon, Wisconsin. It is the world’s most productive agricultural land. It is no exaggeration to say that the farms along that path feed the world. Wheat and barley and corn and soybeans flow in a steady stream from America’s heartland to the markets of the world. Yesterday Oklahoma was added to the roll call of states designated drought disaster areas. Nature has kept its rains away. Less than half of the normal rains have fallen on the area since March. The crops are suffering proportionally. Farmers are facing disastrous harvests where the crops sell for less than the cost of bringing in the crop.

From the beginning of human experience farmers have depended on life giving rains. Modern agriculture still is but it is also dependent on another resource and that resource is petroleum. It is not just the source of fuels to run the tractors and the combines to harvest the crops. It is not just the fuels to run the trucks and trains and towboats that carry the crops to market. It is the source of fertilizers to feed the crops, herbicides to control the weeds and pesticides to keep the insect world at bay. Agriculture in the 21st Century depends on nature for the rain and mankind for the oil in equal measure....click here for entire article

The United States is threatening to haul Teheran before the U.N Security Council. The US and its European allies are threatening sanctions including, of course, an embargo on Iranian oil. That threat has to be put in perspective. Crude oil set record highs yesterday. Regular unleaded gasoline that sold for $1.99.9 a gallon two weeks ago hit $2.499 at the pump yesterday. Those prices don’t reflect the reduction in supply resulting from pushing Iranian production off the world energy map. Will an oil embargo bring Iran to heel? The real question is whether the American public will stand for another half-buck a gallon....click here for entire article

"The NCAA objects to institutions using racial/ethnic/national origin references in their intercollegiate athletics programs," said NCAA President Myles Brand in announcing the new rule. "Several institutions have made changes that adhere to the core values of the NCAA Constitution pertaining to cultural diversity, ethical sportsmanship and nondiscrimination. We applaud that, and we will continue to monitor these institutions and others. All institutions are encouraged to promote these core values and take proactive steps at every NCAA event through institutional event management to enhance the integrity of intercollegiate athletics related to these issues." http://www2.ncaa.org/media_and_events/press_room/2005/august/20050805_exec_comm_rls.html
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August 3, 2005 - The President has thrown his political weight into the balance of scientific truth along with that of his base on the religious right. If he and his base have their way scientific truth will henceforth be decided not by rigorous scientific observation and experimentation but rather by religious orthodoxy imposed for political points. The President suggests that our schools must teach as equal alternatives the scientific proposition of natural selection and the religious conception of “intelligent design”.

This is, of course not a new approach to scientific thought. As recently as 500 years ago scientific theory was subjected to rigorous religious review. If the Church taught that the earth was the center around which the sun, moon, stars and planets revolved then any observation to the contrary was heretical. Just as Mr. Scopes was prosecuted for teaching Darwinian Theory so too was Galileo prosecuted for teaching Copernicus’ observations. In that regard Mr. Bush’s position is an advance. He would not ban the teaching of science – just give irrational belief equal footing....click here for entire article