Please Read This

First of all...I am NOT an arm-waving podium-pounding in-your-face anti-war activitist. I am a natural-born American citizen. I love my country and what it stands for. I get tears in my eyes whenever the Star Spangled Banner is sung. I am a patriot. I am proud to be an American and I hope that my daughter Haley feels the same way when she grows up.

But I am also disheartened by the arrogance, ineptness and apparent naivete of our leaders.

I may be proud to be an American...but I am also becoming more and more ashamed to admit it.

I have begun this blog in the hope that others out there will read it and think about the sincerity with which I have written it. And maybe be bold enough to raise their hands and be counted among the increasing number of Americans who have had enough.
I am passionate about my country and what it stands for, the fact that we are free to be whatever we chose to be, that we welcome people of all races and cultures and that we have the resources to give to the less fortunate, no matter what their persuasion.
We are free to express our opinions, just as I am doing here, without fear of retribution.
The United States of America has always been admired, even envied, for our principles, our freedoms, our democratic method of government. Until now.
Because our leadership has become naive and arrogant, culturally ignorant and convinced that we have the right to impose our democratic beliefs on any culture foreign to our Christian-based one we have become the most hated and despised country in the world.
Free, fat, wealthy and abhored.
Rather than lead by example, a slow but safer path to be sure (and one that played a significant role in the fall of communism), our leaders have decided to cram our way of life down the throats of ancient cultures that they don't take the time to understand. And as a result we are mired in another hopeless Vietnam-type conflict which will cost America and all Americans dearly for many years after we have finally thrown in the towel.

Read my personal stance on current US involvment below. Also see bumper sticker offer below!

If you have read this far please do the following: Send the link to this blog to just two persons in your address book. More is better of course, but two is all I ask of you. And order my bumper sticker!

Note: This is a work-in-progress and the comments herein are my personal opinions. As such there may be incomplete postings. I welcome your comments and any input germain to the general topic, which I might consider for inclusion.


A little about me:

I am a retired engineer. Actually semi-retired which means that I am busier now than I ever was when I was gainfully employed, but I don't make any money. So that means I am at an advanced age, which can be interpreted several ways. It could mean that I have acquired 'wisdom', or that I'm 'out-of-touch' with reality. Whatever, I'll settle for 'old-fart' and just let it go at that.

I am what is commonly referred to as a 'grandparent-raising-grandchild'. I was blessed with the opportunity to raise my grandaughter, Haley, from birth, which I did. Three years ago I finally adopted her. She is ten going on twenty, if you know what I mean. She and I have become our own family unit, two-thirds of a normal family unit. Not what I had in mind but it seems that the most common conditions of the 'missing third' component is that a relationship must be both baggage-free and a good travel funder. Don't misunderstand....I'm not bitter, just realistic. Sometimes I call a spade a spade.

Haley and I are very active, or at least as active as our schedules will allow. She plays soccer, basketball, golf and skis. She has been an ice-skater and spent a couple of years on a swim team. But mostly, during the summer, we spend quality time on our bicycles. She and I have done the Elephant Rock ride in Castle Rock, CO twice. For the uninitiated that's a 50-miler. This summer we also did three rides of over 20 miles each and the Moonlight Madness ride in Denver, a 15-miler. We also do moutain biking and enjoy white-water rafting. Next year I hope to purchase a small sailboat and indulge ourselves in that activity.

Haley and I are "best buds". I enjoy the distinction but of course for her there's not much choice. Haley also has a very best friend who lives right behind us, and communicates frequently with her cousins in Michigan.


My personal stance on US involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and the middle east in general.

I am a patriotic American citizen and, like all Americans, I was deeply angered by the events of 9/11. No amount of displeasure, or even hatred, against any peoples justifies the mass killing of innocent persons.

I am not a pacifist....at least not in this instance. I agree wholeheartedly that the perpetrators should be brought to justice, and in this case justice can mean tracking them down and killing them. An eye for an eye as it were. I said "in this instance" because there was no doubt that if we didn't kill them first they had every intent of killing more of us. More innocent lives lost. Killing them is as justified as having to kill a rabid animal. And so I am in agreement that al Queda and Osama bin Laden must be eliminated. At any cost.

And that of course meant putting the oppressive government that protected them out of business. The Taliban. Two consecutive strikes against terrorism and oppression and suddenly the world would be a better place. In a sad sense a tribute to the nearly three thousand innocent lives that were lost at the Trade Center. There is no country, no government, no logical person in the world that wouldn't agree that the United States of America was justified in doing that, even if we had to cross the borders of Pakistan to do it. And we started on that course. And we would have been completely successful if it hadn't been for some really bad decisions at the highest levels of our government. In my opinion you can put the blame squarely on the shoulders of three persons: George Tenent, ex-Director of the CIA, Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush.

Regardless, we had identified the individuals responsible, we knew where they were, we knew they were protected by the Taliban, and we were pro-active in pursuing them. But militarily we screwed up. No balls. And, dare I say it, the three aforementioned individuals were literally the blind leading the blind. Keystone Kops revisited. Instead of commiting sufficient troops and placing them strategically within Afghanistan (remember, we had that capability) and going after al Queda, Rummy decided we could accomplish this difficult task with unproven and completely innefective technology. How hard could it be to fly in some drones and fire some missiles? Let's leave the troops out of this. Just forget that we have zero intelligence concerning al Queda and the Taliban. Zero as in none, nada, thanks to our $10billion CIA headed up by Little George. And of course we should leave the command of the military to a civilian. Boy, that made great sense! And who's the real decision maker here? Big George.

Yes, yes, I know. It's more complicated than that. And at that point I don't put a lot of blame on Big George's shoulders. He did pussy-foot around Pakistan, Iran and Russia but, hey, under the circumstances at least he approved a military action. Unfortunately he was listening to the two worst "experts" in his cabinet. As they say in the computer industry 'garbage in, garbage out'. As for my "Balls" rating, I give Big George a 6 (on a scale of 10).

Because of the lack of intelligence from the CIA and a wanna-be techie (Rummy) we were destined to fight a protracted battle against a cunning, creative and elusive enemy when we should have wiped them out in a matter of months. It was like trying to wipe out a swampful of mosquitos with a flyswatter when you had a million gallons of insecticide available. Today we're still swatting. Why? Because Big George couldn't wait to go after his nemesis who was "alleged" to have Weopons of Mass Destruction.

And this is where Big George goes terribly wrong. What was this guy thinking? Or rather, to whom? I'm convinced that Big George can't think for himself because if he could he'd have seen through all the smoke and mirrors that Tenent and Rummy were dazzling him with.

So now we commit the troops that should have been committed to destroying al Queda to invading another country and toppling it's dictator based on a) a personal vendetta, b) unsubstantiated evidence of WMD's and c) Rummy's persuasive and naive argument that we can conquer and convert a hostile, foreign culture to Christian democracy overnight using far too few troops cruising the desert with unarmored Humvees and overwhelming them with our superior technology. This is exactly what you get when you have a civilian calling the military's shots. Flyswatters and Humvees.

And worst of all, an administration that was completely and arrogantly blind to the cultural differences between Islam and Christianity.

The cost of war

The Cost of War

An interesting comparison:

* Cost is for EACH american e.g. a family of four has incurred an out-of-pocket loss of almost $5000. Another way to look at it is to consider just what $350 billion dollars would buy in terms of medical research, schools, environmental programs, tax reduction (now there's a concept!), health care and so many other beneficial programs. What would your state be able to do if the government had dumped $6.7 billion into their coffers? Think about it!

There are a number of studies that have analyzed the cost of "our" war against al Queda, the Taliban in Afghanistan and in Iraq. The numbers may vary but the bottom line is that, for America, the cost in dollars is huge and the cost in lives, both deaths and injuries, for both America and Iraq and Afghanistan, is unacceptable. Here are some sobering figures:

US war expense greater than $340 billion dollars
US combatant deaths - 2800 Iraq + 300 Afghanistan
US combatant injured - 42,000 Iraq + 800 Afghanistan
Iraqi/Afghanistan troops killed - 30,000 + 8500
Iraqi/Afghanistan civilians killed - 655,000 + 3500
Note: Only 50,000 civilian deaths in Iraq are acknowleged by US military but see results of Lancet report below!

What is hidden behind those figures is the damage we've done to the economies and infrastructure of both countries as well as the civilians who have been forced into a life of poverty because they have been forced to flee their homes.




A recent report published by the Lancet, one of the most respected medical journals in the world, put the calculated number of Iraqi deaths at 655,000 since the US invaded. Sounds almost unbelievably huge doesn't it? That's what I thought. Another blown-out-of-proportion study done by a bunch of amateurs. But the Lancet doesn't publish studies of this nature without first checking their factuality. Consider the following excerpt from a recent article by Gwynne Dyer:

....Then the Johns Hopkins team of epidemiologists tabulated the statistics and drew their conclusions.
The most striking thing in the study, in terms of credibility, is that the pre-war death rate in Iraq for the period January 2002 to March 2003, as calculated from their evidence, was 5.5 per thousand per year.
That is virtually identical to the U.S. government estimate of the death rate in Iraq for the same period.
Then, from the same evidence, they calculate that the death rate since the invasion has been 13.3 per thousand per year.
The difference between the pre-war and post-war death rates over a period of 40 months is 655,000 deaths.
More precisely, the deaths reported by the 12,801 people surveyed, when extrapolated to the entire country, indicates a range of between 426,369 and 793,663 excess deaths - but the sample is big enough that there is a 95 per cent certainty that the true figure is within that range.
The study.... has been reviewed by four independent experts. [and determined to be within reason] (Highlights are mine)

For more information concerning "body counts": http://www.unknownnews.net/casualties.html

President Bush has admitted he secretly ordered the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without ever seeking court approval. Famed constitutional attorney Martin Garbus and former intelligence officer Christopher Pyle both say it is an impeachable offense. Yet Bush continues to bull his way down a path with no regard to the rightness of his decisions. He operates above the law because that's where he sits...he's the President of the United States. He operates with arrogance and impunity and all 300,000,000 Americans below him are paying the price...and will continue to do so for many years to come!

Bumper Sticker

Below is a bumper sticker that says it all....Dump Rumsfeld and Impeach Bush. (Note that the numbers may change but the impact remains the same!)

If you would like to order one or more the price is as follows; 1 @ $2.50 postpaid, 2-5 $2.25 each postpaid, 6 or more $2.00 each postpaid. Send your order with check to: Robert Doty, 1636 S. Holland Ct., Lakewood, CO 80232. Make check out to Robert Doty.