Bob Herbert: Losing Our Will (“How is the war in Iraq helping me?”)

[Faygo Kid]

I wonder what the answers would be if each American asked himself or herself the question: “How is the war in Iraq helping me?”

While the U.S. government continues to pour precious human treasure and vast financial resources into this ugly war without end, it is all but ignoring deeply entrenched problems that are weakening the country here at home. . .

. . .The war in Iraq stands like a boulder in the road, blocking progress on so many other important issues that are crucial to our viability as a society. We’ve seen this before. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which included the war on poverty, was crippled by the war in Vietnam.

On the evening of April 4, 1967, one year to the day before he was assassinated, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went into Riverside Church in Manhattan and said of the war in Vietnam: “This madness must cease.”

Forty-one years later, we can still hear the echo of Dr. King’s call. The only sane response is: “Amen.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/12/opinion/12herbert.html?ref=opinion

[Birthmark]

1. There's a war in Iraq?

Again?

Last I knew, we won the war with Iraq and were occupying it. I know the occupation hasn't gone well. But great news: The WAR is over!

[stillcool]

2. "in a time of war"

seems to work the $$$ on so many levels.

[acmavm]

3. We haven't lost our will (whatever that may mean), we have lost any

semblance of honest representation in this country, we have been shut out of our government. Those that we elected to represent us are working for themselves, they are against us. They are ensuring that this madness last for the 100 years that McCain babbles about. And why? I saw this here yesterday (and I would suggest to Barack Obama that THIS is why we are bitter):

FINANCE: U.S. Lawmakers Invested in Iraq, Afghanistan Wars

U.S. lawmakers have a financial interest in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a review of their accounts has revealed.

Members of Congress invested nearly 196 million dollars of their own money in companies that receive hundreds of millions of dollars a day from Pentagon contracts to provide goods and services to U.S. armed forces, say nonpartisan watchdog groups.

-snip-

Senator John Kerry, the Democrat from Massachusetts who staked his 2004 presidential bid in part on his opposition to the war, tops the list of investors. His holdings in firms with Pentagon contracts of at least five million dollars stood at between 28.9 million dollars and 38.2 million dollars as of Dec. 31, 2006. Kerry sits on the Senate foreign relations panel.

-snip-

Other top investors include Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican with holdings of 12.1 million - 49.1 million dollars; Rep. Robin Hayes, a North Carolina Republican (9.2 million - 37.1 million dollars); Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin (5.2 million - 7.6 million dollars); and Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat (2.7 million - 6.3 million dollars).

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Democrat and former governor of West Virginia who chairs the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, invested some 2.0 million dollars in Pentagon contractors, CRP says.

Other panel chiefs who invested in defence firms include Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut Independent who presides over the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Rep. Howard Berman, the California Democrat who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

In all, 151 current members of Congress -- more than one-fourth of the total -- have invested between 78.7 million dollars and 195.5 million dollars in companies that received defence contracts of at least 5.0 million dollars, according to CRP.

-snip-

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3144217

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41893