On the occasion of the 4000th U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, one of our news stations ran a photo. I may have misheard the backstory but it seemed they attempted to link the photo with one of the four soldiers killed. I found the photo on flickr and it’s actually almost a year old, from April 2007.

Son receives flag at funeral

Edit: This article has more information about the photo and a link to the original story which is now defunct.

Edit: A couple more links:
ABC News: The Boy Behind and Iconic Photo
Child of Fallen Marine Accepts American Flag

In light of the recent Blackwater atrocity, I remembered a video I saw awhile ago, purportedly of British security randomly shooting at civilian cars. You can read more about it here and see the video here (warning: while not bloody, the video is certainly graphic and disturbing).

Perhaps now that the Bush Administration was caught authorizing torture, the preponderance of evidence will begin to chink away at its up-until-now infallible armor. Unfortunately I fear it is years too late. [EDIT: the original NY Times article cited in the above link is located here.]

So I began to think of Eisenhower’s quote about the military-industrial complex and decided to look it up. Google pointed me to this site which has loads of great quotes by Eisenhower. Many are very appropriate to today’s times and I’d like to share some with you:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels – men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.

The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Thank you, Mr. Eisenhower, for showing us the standards that apply to the Office of the President. I pray for the day these standards are restored.

If you haven’t heard the news, go check it out and see why our government is failing.

The Bush Administration’s conditions that his advisers speak only without transcript and without taking an oath are an insult to democracy and Americans. The secrecy of his administration is appalling. Given that he has taken our country to an unjustified war in Iraq for 4 years by misleading the American public with both spin and downright false information, Americans should be demanding that his administration deliver the truth in all matters. And the only way we can be reasonably assured that we get the truth is by having his advisers speak publicly, under oath, with a transcript, answering the critical questions that have been lacking during the course of Bush’s presidency.

This affair brings to mind lyrics from Stevie Wonder’s song “You Haven’t Done Nothing”:

It’s not too cool to be ridiculed
But you brought this upon yourself
The world is tired of pacifiers
We want the truth and nothing else

And we are sick and tired of hearing your song
Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong
‘Cause if you really want to hear our views
“You haven’t done nothing!”

There is a well-known military truism floating around that states that no plan ever survives contact with the enemy*. Perhaps Bush is attempting to thwart that logic by having no plan at all.

In that vein, the video over there on that blog gets funnier to me each time I watch it. And every time I watch it, I realize it is true that George Bush is Leeroy Jenkins.

If you’re not into all those fancy online games**, I’ll summarize the video for you. A group of warriors, facing enormous odds against a vastly superior foe, devises a plan to retrieve something of value from the opposition. As the plan is finalized, one member of the group decides to storm the castle on his own, to the demise of the entire group. That overly zealous feller’s name is Leeroy Jenkins, and his inability to listen to reason is supremely analogous to Bush’s handling of foreign policy.

*if someone knows the source of this quote, please post in comments, I spent a few minutes and couldn’t find a definitive source. Seems like it would be from Sun-Tsu’s Art of War, but I dunno.
**MMORPG if you’re in the know, or at least that’s what they were 5 years ago. I have never participated in that tripe.

This article presents an extremely chilling analysis of the torture bill recently passed by Congress.

I have not actually read the bill and can’t confirm whether these assertions are true, but if the author of this article is correct then we have seen Congress effectively flush the Bill of Rights down the toilet.

The author argues that by simply disagreeing with the President, an American citizen can be classified a terrorist and stripped of all rights granted by the Bill of Rights, to be tried in a military tribunal without access to the prosecution’s evidence and allowing hearsay to be used as allowable evidence. Goodbye freedom, hello dictatorship.

I found this link on fark:

Ike was right.

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist…

                  -- Dwight Eisenhower