[TAG] TAG blogroll

[Kat Tanaka]

On Sat, Sep 03, 2005 at 10:31:18AM -0400, Benjamin A. Okopnik wrote:
> 
> Have you heard the latest estimate of how much it'll take to rebuild New
> Orleans? About *three weeks* of the Iraq war budget, that's how much.

Three *months*, actually, but it's still a huge indicator of how much 
this war is bleeding out the U.S. with no actual benefit.

> > We really need to take the gag off the troops so they can speak freely 
> > for or against the policy, as the rest of the citizenry does.  People 
> > say without loyalty you don't have an army, and that's true to an 
> > extent, but in this case loyalty to commander-in-chief is working 
> > against loyalty to society, a society which desperately needs to know 
> > what's really going on in Iraq and what their ideas are to fix it.   
> > That's been the missing factor in this debate, the people with the best 
> > knowledge aren't allowed to speak, except when their opinion happens to 
> > coincide with the policy.   So the public is left to guess what would 
> > have been said, and how many would say it.  At least, the portion of the 
> > public that notices that something's missing.  (Note that this portion 
> > is larger than just the "anti-war liberals".)
> > 
> > But the current gag situation is so convenient for those in power that 
> > it's a difficult change.
> 
> Oh, man. *So* right. That shit just left me shaking with rage; to gag
> the very people who are putting their lives on the line because they
> believe - rightly or wrongly - that they're defending their country...
> it's a certain reipe to make sure that people stop defending it.

Livejournal at one point had lots of milblogs -- many of them are 
"friendslocked" now to comply with the gag order, but those who knew where 
to look got an eyeful of the ground troops' stories. You might try using 
LJ's search function to troll around. The archive of the lj community 
'ljdemocrats' might be a good place to start looking, as well.  I don't 
know if the photos are still around that were being uploaded from digital 
cameras in Iraq.  While I was looking for that website, I also dug up some 
URLs for "stories from those who were there" that you might find of 
interest: http://www.optruth.org http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org 
http://www.sftt.org/main.cfm?actionId=globalShowStaticContent&screenKey=cmpAbout 
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/8/17/2065/93459

News --
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,371411,00.html
http://crisispictures.org/?cat=10 [warning, this one is *graphic*]
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-iraqvets27.html


 -- 
kamisono at sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org