But You May Feel A Little Sick

Sadly, this didn't make the main Not News page at Fark, and was instead relegated to the Politics Tab.

War is hell. Let there be no two ways around it: Even this Atheist will conceed that, if there were such a thing as hell at all, the closest possible real-life incarnation of that concept is War. War changes you. War fucks with you. War takes you, breaks you, and sometimes, it takes a hell of alot to piece you back together.

Sometimes, though, cracks emerge, and soldiers slip through them.

A generation ago, a few years before I was born, there was a conflict in Vietnam. We were there, trying like hell to route the spread of the "scourge" of Communism (a scourge that became all but dormant two decades later). It was an unpopular war. It was protested like no other war before or since.

That time, the soldiers coming home were treated unfairly, like a backsurge from the septic tank. Despite these men only having done the job they were ordered to do, right or wrong, and nothing more, they were treated as though they were ultimately responsible. They were shunned, spat on, some even had baggies of vomit thrown on them. In a nutshell, they were blackballed.

And they got the shit end of the stick, while the ones who deserved that treatment got off relatively scott free.

Since, America would like to think it has learned its lesson. Vietnam was a hard lesson to learn, and there are still veterans of that war who have never really managed to reintergrate into society. But apparently, only a few lessons were learned in the 30 years since the end of America's first big loss, because those homeless Vietnam Vets are being joined by a new generation, fueled by another unpopular war, another seemingly untouchable puppet master at the controls, and a new era of strategy from an ancient enemy.

Yahoo News is running this article (Fark Thread), which goes more in-depth into this sadly growing phenomenon, profiling one homeless Iraq Vet and finding out what exactly led him down the path to where he is now. Even as the American people have learned to not place blame on the sodliers fighting the war (a generation too late, sadly) while they disapprove of it, we've still managed to allow our men and women to slip through cracks we were supposed to have patched in the last 20 years.

While everyone who reads this knows that I'm not a big fan of either the war or our inept leader, at no time during this conflict have I ever NOT supported our men and women in uniform. They are literally my family and my friends. My own grandfather was part of the "Greatest Generation," and fought in World War II. Whether the wars they fought had good causes or shady underpinnings, they fought so that we can be free to do what we do. They should be thanked at every possible chance, and shown the love and support they deserve.

It's a problem that we can try to start fixing, but America still has yet to get its head all the way out of its collective ass...

If You've A Date In Constantinople

This won't end well.

Turkish troops have crossed into Iraq, and they're going after Kurdish Rebels (Fark Thread). As if the quagmire (giggity) in Iraq weren't bad enough, this brings a whole new level of suck to the mix.

The Kurdish problem is a double-edged sword. They're an ethnic minority that exists in about the area where the Iraqi, Turkish and Iranian borders come together. They're making a case for their own sovereign state, and some of them have decided to make it a militant cause.

During the years following Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the northern no-fly zone over Iraq pretty much nullified any influence Saddam Hussein had over the people living there, including the Kurds. Without that influence, Kurdish Iraq basically became it's own self-governed autonomous collective, developing a fairly modern society complete with Internet, cell phone networks, and a bustling market economy.

Prior to the '91 Gulf Conflict, someone (probably Saddam) gassed the fuck out of these people in an attempted genocide, killing somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 Iraqi Kurds. One can see where their cranky side would come from.

Because their national claims include parts of Turkey as well as Iraq, the Turks are targets of a good chunk of Kurdish Militant activity. This, of course, doesn't make the Turks too terribly pleased, and they want this crap stopped. Within their own borders, how they handle the situation is on them. But now that they've crossed the border, they've entered a whole new ball game.

The problem is, if every tribal and ethnic entity in the Middle-east started clamoring for their own chunk of the map, it'd start to look like Europe during the feudal era: Shattered Glass. The infighting over territory and tribal/ethnic hatred dating back thousands of years would boil over, and all-out holy war would most likely result.

The sad part is, it'd all be in the name of pretty much the same god. Funny how religion works like that, isn't it...

If the Kurds get their way, who's next, the Sunni's? The Shi'as? How much land do you think the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would be willing to give up? Not much, I'd wager. And have fun carving up Afghanistan, because those are the two largest nations in the Middle-east, so that's the best logical place to start.

Plus there's still that matter of Israel/Palestine, not to mention the fact that our government has managed to piss off quite a number of Islamic nations in it's quest to funnel taxpayer dollars into corporate pockets. And don't forget Iran, can't forget Iran.

Yeah, this is going to end really well. Have fun with that powder keg...

Bomb Iran, Bomb-Bomb, Bomb-Bomb Iran

With appologies due to Brian Wilson... Yeah, King George the Simple wants to bomb Iran. He's got his legion of brainwashed neo-cons drumming up any reason they can find to bomb Iran before we're finally rid of what is arguably the worst single president in US history. The Telegraph has the article Here, and the obligatory Fark thread is Here.

Yeah, great. Go and create yet another mess for us to clean up when you're gone. While you sit in Crawford and laugh (at least until you're brought to the Hague to answer for your crimes, Mr. Bush), we'll have to deal with the consequences of your rash, selfish, and stupid decision. It's bad enough that we have to clean up your mess in Iraq, the clusterfuck that is the "War on Terror" (how can you declare war on an adjective?), and your piss-poor economic decisions that doom our financial futures. You know what?

FUCK YOU, MR. PRESIDENT. DIAF.

Multitasking 101

Ever the human multitasker am I, and this post has three bits of news you all might enjoy, depending on your leanings on each matter. And awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay we go!

First up, more on the Corruption in Iraq: Witness some corruption? Blowing the whistle by telling the government? If you do, the government will imprison you and make your life a living hell. Very nice, eh? Fark Thread Here.

GONZO IS GONE-ZO! Yes, Dickhead General Alberto "Gonzo" Gonzalez, the assbag behind the crackdown on our beloved Porn and other such stupid agendas, has finally tended his letter of resignation to the White House. Sadly, he'll probably be replaced by another idiotic, unqualified pundit, but the point is, GONZO IS GONE. That's all that matters! Fark Thread Here (and a big one at that, too).

And finally, this isn't as important, but I figured I should say something about it. In case you might have noticed, I've revamped the blog a bit. Google has implemented some new features for Blogger, and I kinda like them! A quick rundown of improvements:

1. My individual article pages are fixed, the sidebar has returned! I don't know how I goofed that up before, but that good has since been rectified. Whew!
2. I've cleaned up the sidebar a bit, too. Blogger now has widgets that allow me to customize what's in what section, as well as what section goes where. The new WYSIWYG editor is pretty OK, I must say!
3. The introduction of Tags! I was going to try and put these in Rancho Relaxo, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to code them. The switch to Blogger didn't fix that right away, but now that Blogger has tags, I get a tag cloud! That's my shit right there! Now finding posts with certain topics is a breeze instead of digging through the archive. Only drawback: I should probably go back and tag my old entries. That'll take a hot minute...
   
4. There are spots to input graphical stuff, so I'll be bringing back my old page graphics from the first design. It'll all be back soon, hopefully, along with some new stuff in the footer and sidebar sections.
   

Well, that about covers it for today. So go out and raise your glass to the departure of Gonzo! I know I'll be doing something to that effect, minus the alcohol...

I Hate To Say I Told You So, But...

Oh yeah, guess who was right all along. Yep, we "crazy liberal pundits," who were "crying wolf and trying to discredit the War on Terror for personal gain," were right. It's not we who are gaining from slandering the war effort. It's we who are pointing out that the other side are the ones manipulating the threads of war for personal gain.

And at the cost of the lives of kids younger than me. Dirty pool, old man.

Read the Rolling Stone article. Join in the discussion in the Fark thread.

Know that the wool has been pulled over your eyes this whole entire time, and your tax dollars are now funding some crook's lavish lifestyle. Know that your kids are dying so some fat cats can line their pockets.

Yeah, it was about money the whole time.

To the 51% of you who just HAD to have Bush as President: Fuck you. Thanks a fucking lot, assholes.