The Way I Figure It
 

I've changed my mind on the draft question. I thought that reinstituting the draft was a non-starter, but I've been listening to Kerry and the bottom line is he will have to have a draft to do Iraq his way. Bush is playing things closer to his vest, pretending we can win Iraq with our present committment. So now I'm thinking that Kerry=LBJ and Bush=nutball. Every election I question whether I should vote at all because it lends credibility to government to have folks show up. The last thing these two guys need is credibility.

On the other hand, Kerry is explicitly saying that he will not reinstitute the draft, and Bush is not.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040907-6.html

Yea right when the NG troops all bail out. Then what?

I metioned in TW's thread, the Marine I've been writing to in Fallujah, came home. After a two day convoy to Kuwait and 22 air hours to Camp Pendleton, they were told where to bed down. You've got brand new beds, men!
The trouble is the new beds were still unassembled in boxes. Gives a whole new meaning to "make your bed". :rolleyes:

I doubt the draft is coming back,.......until they need it.

At this point, unless you count forced enlistment extensions, we don't need a draft. That's all he said, and then went into a memorized tangential point.

*shrug* If you want to put it that way, Kerry has failed to address future Bible restrictions in West Virginia. It's just semantics.

Is a draft needed for Iraq? With a loss of "only" 1,000 troops over the course of the war, no. This is no where near as bad a vietnam.

Throw in Iran/Syria/North Korea, however, and it will be a completely different story.

That's 1,000 dead, don't forget the wounded and even more, disgusted. But, we've still got a ton of soldiers in Europe, don't we? :confused:

BTW, housing sucks - ever lived in a barracks? Medical care for dependents has gone down the shithole, the comissary prices on food are now equivalent to what you'd pay at Walmart, and the PX prices stateside are no special bargain, either. Cigarettes were still prety cheap last time I checked, so I guess you can always smoke yourself to death if the enemy doesn't get you first. Base pay for E1's and E2's, regular military on active duty (the guys who get to be cannon fodder) ranges from aprox $14,000 to $16,000/year. As usual, Bush didn't have the faintest idea of what he was talking about in the citation listed above. Will we need a draft if things continue to heat up? You tell me. :eyebrow:

Perhaps. But Kerry hasn't been asked "Will you ban the Bible?" and answered "We don't need to. I've supported churches before."

Come on, it's just semantics, HM. And it's a flat-out loser, because the actual proposal for a draft was presented and supported by the house Democrats. Rangel blew it for the party and I bet he is unrepentant.

Credibility? We don't need no stinking credibitity! We got the authority. We got the police & military. We got God. We got your money.
Screw credibility, we only worry about votes for the other guy, but Diabold is working on that. :o

Political speech is semantics. If a politician doesn't say yes or no to a yes or no question, then you have to parse it to figure out exactly what they said.

Yes, but some yes or no questions are a trap and require further clarification. :)

Ahh, political jargon and the Language of the Law.

Agreed. In which case, the answer should be carefully parsed to find out precisely what was said.

marichiko- turn off gomer pyle and see if you can look at a modern military base.
the norms will be different based on the branch of service, but at most bases, the majority of junior enlisted have better living conditions than junior officers did 20 years ago. at most AF bases and many army posts, having a roommate is an unusual annoyance. having 2 is unheard of. yes, there are exceptions, but that is the reality. family housing is being massively overhauled again. (there were a lot of upgrades in the early '90's). enlisted and officer clubs are onbase for cheap entertainment. the messhalls are still open for at least 3 squares/day and it isn't the food they were eating 20 years ago, which is part of why the prices at AAFES locations don't seem as cheap to you anymore. dining halls and the shopping centers are lumped together in a single "0 gain/loss budget" the slightly higher shopping prices pay for better food, better buildings, better R&R opportunities for the troops.

and the biggest benefit of the commisary and BX/PX system are still in place - NO TAX, including liquor, tobacco, and gasoline.

this ain't yer daddy's military.

No, it sure ain't. I'm talking about the barracks in 2004 that Army enlisted men stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado live in. It's the norm to have two guys to a room. The barracks have flimsy walls and you can hear everything through them. The only R&R facilities available on post are the NCO club and a bowling alley. There is a base library which I actually once worked in. Its seriously under-funded and most of the books are 10 years old or more. Mess hall food is still mess hall food. It actually wasn't half bad back in my Dad's time, but the quality seems to have gone down, although you're right, there's plenty of it. I mentioned that cigarettes are cheaper and, yes, so is booze. Drinking is a regular pass time - there's not much else to do on base.

I know all this because I still have friends who are active duty military, and one friend was confined to base for a while, so I'd go up there now and then to offer him a little support (he was a Gulf War vet who was getting massively screwed over by the Army legal system).

Your experiences in the Air Force Reserve cannot be extrapolated for the military as a whole.

i wasn't always in the reserves and i have worked on installations from all the different services all across the country.

like i said - at most bases the conditions are much better than what you are describing. Ft Carson may very well be the armpit of the US military, i haven't been stationed there - but i can tell you that even on the worst posts i've been to, it still isn't that bad of a life, except for people who only focus on the downside of everything.

Just had a thought here...........


Why don't we dismantle the military entirely? There seems to be absolutely no productive use for them and we could use that money wasted on the whole dumb thing to re-distribute within the US. Then everyone everywhere could all join hands, have a Coke and a smile and live happily every after.

Jesus Christ.......I'm a freakin' genius.

as long as we get to keep our own weaponry for use in the upcoming chaos, count me in.

Ehh, Ft. Carson is about the average for an Army base from what my active duty friends tell me. Sure, there's positives to military life, although for the life of me, I can't see where Bush gets off extolling them when he did his best to avoid it all.

By the way, it's easy to be all sunny about everything when you have the resources of 6 planets at your command! :D

Lookout has the resources of six planets? He's clearly been holding out! Do you mean "resources of 6 planets" as in real commodities or are you talking hippie-jive/Age of Aquarius lingo? Like, the dude has awesome planet alignment right now? :ivy:

No points for originality but I completely fucking agree.

Any votes for Kerry or Bush are wasted votes. Actually any vote for Bush is a vote for treason, violations of civil rights, irresponsible decisions with the economy and environment, violations of the Constitution and international law, tyrrany, injustice, spying on Americans, lies, and a vote for the destruction of everything that is great about America....and a vote for Kerry is a wasted vote because it says you want more of the same crap that brought us to the brink of destruction.

Kerry and Bush are two heads on the same monster.

its from the ecological footprint link. i am single handedly destroying the world... although it looks like troubleshooter is doing his part too.

Well, I knew some one was. :earth:

I agree to an extent, but it seems that voting for Kerry is the only way we're going to get Bush out of office. I'm not a huge Kerry fan and I know voting for him is basically a sell out, but isn't it better to vote for Kerry and get someone in office who is at least a little better than Bush?

Define "a little better" please. I want to know what side dishes come with my order. :)

"A little better" basically means "not Bush."

I am going (against all better, higher-functioning, judgment) to play stick-poke with all-you-all ("all you all" is a Southern expression--ask anyone)---Look. I recall the march of the Nazi's only through my boyfriend, I've no first hand experience, but doesn't evil need to be confronted? No matter what? Hitler himself was amazed that he was not challenged when he took over the Rhineland. What to do?

Sure, but the catch is if you try to confront this evil, you're corraled in a Free Speech Zone far enough away from the evil so it won't notice you, or in more extreme cases, you get teargassed, nightsticked or shot at with non-lethal-but-still-capable-of-inflicting-serious-injury bullets.

One does try.

Well, try harder! I noticed the world was still here when I woke up this morning, and I can't tell you how deeply disappointed I was! ;)

How about next Monday I start driving around the campus a half dozen times, roughly three miles each lap, before I go looking for a parking space. That should up my fuel waste ratio.

Oh, and I could rent the property next to me and just not live in it and that should double my local land waste ratio.

And the clincher; meat with every meal, Hobbit style.

The Ds have resurrected the draft point and hard, when W clearly and pointedly answered the question in the second debate... even semantically to your liking, HM.

No excuse for this kind of behavior but we notice it on both sides

First, the idea of 'good' and 'evil' exists in fictions such as Star Wars and with those who are the victor (therefore rewrite history for 3rd grade children). Who was good and evil during the Crusades? Who was the good and evil in Vietnam?

Was a pre-WWII Hitler evil? Perspective must be from that time; what was known then and not from what is preached today.

In reality, there are many opinions. Some are so extremist as to not be logically acceptable. But there is no evil. There are those who would pervert the fundamentals on which we live - ie they advocate that religious principles must be imposed on all others and that government should provide financial assistance to religious programs. If evil exists, then this religious extremism (ie Israel's Likud or Muslim Brotherhood) is classic evil in god's eye. If evil exists, it most often exists in perverted religions - the most common reason for the most deadly wars.

Return to the Rhineland (I assume you are talking about Czechoslovakia?). Who is suppose to confront 'evil'. The 'confronters must be defined before 'evil' can be defined. Therein lies the real problem. Those whose job it is to confront Hitler simply chose to pretend he did not do what he did. So where, back then, did evil exist? Those to confront evil did not exist, therefore evil did not exist. (Again you must use the prespective of those times to define evil).

WWII is a example of how powers are suppose to respond to aggression and fundamental violations of international order. First the local powers must do the job. If they fail, the region must take on responsibility. IOW many reasons for US wealth, power, scientific advancement, world leadership, etc is that we stayed out of the local problems until they became large enough to even involve us (we must wait for 'smoking gun' reasons). As a result, those problems costs America the least and left America with the most. It resulted in a more stable international community. It is a concept best described as 'containment'. A policy that works quite well all through history. The antynom of containment is pre-emption that creates things like a 30 Years War and a WWIII that started in Cuba).

So what does that mean we should be doing? Sticking our head into the sand like as ostrich? Obviously not. First we should do as we have been doing - ie. OAS (Organization of American States). It means we should be encouraging the world to do as Clinton was. Local powers must responsiblity for their own local problems. In Africa, we now have: When we are so mentally deficient as to declare the world in terms of good and evil, then we get a President that does not even read his own memos; who waits for others to tell him what to decide. There is not 'good' and 'evil'. That is for religious extremists where anything contrary to their religious beliefs is evil. We have a world more complex - that means one now worships better 'bibles' - such as the Fundamental Declaration of Human Rights.

You know what? There is such a thing as evil. Hitler's Germany was evil, what is going on in Darfur is evil--genocide is evil--I don't care what perspective you look at it from. The wholesale slaughter of human beings simply because they exsist and muck up your world view is evil. You are frightening.

TW's posts remind me of the conclusions in regard to the nature of evil made by Hannah Arendt:

"I mean that evil is not radical, going to the roots (radix), that is has no depth, and that for this very reason it is so terribly difficult to think about it, since thinking, by definition, wants to reach the roots. Evil is a surface phenomenon, and instead of being radical, it is merely extreme. We resist evil by not being swept away by the surface of things, by stopping ourselves and beginning to think, that is, by reaching another dimension than the horizon of everyday life. In other words, the more superficial someone is, the more likely will he be to yield to evil. An indication of such superficiality is the use of clichés, and Eichmann, ...was a perfect example."

Either one is good or is evil? There is no other condition? Everything is judged in 'black and white' - also called extremism. 'Black and white' is how we teach primary school children who do not yet have the mental capacity to understand an adult world. In a real world, only those with child mentalities still see everything in terms of 'black and white' - 'good and evil'. Even adult Boston fans don't view the Yankees in such extremes. Unfortunately, those extremists are the same people who would also invade other nations for no legal or logical reason. It was called the Crusades. It was called the 30 Years War. Those who react to the world with a 'black and white' simplicity would then meet the definition of evil.

When asked how to identify good Christians from the bad Christians, the general said, "Kill then all. God will know his own." What happens when everything is viewed only in terms of 'good and evil'? Those who view the world with such simplistic judgements are frightening. It was called the Spanish Inquisition. Nobody expected the Spanish Inquistion until everything was suddenly and only about 'good and evil'. Simplistic thinking is how George Jr will get relected: claiming everything only in the simplistic terms he understands - 'good and evil'.

Yes it is a rather serious problem. An easy mistake to make. Those who judge only in simple terms - 'good verse evil' - may be doomed to become evil. Explains why children make poor judges and leaders.

That would explain what's going on in Bush's head, I suppose.

tw--you are clearly not reading my words. I did not say that their were two choices, 'good' or 'evil'. I said evil does exsist. I did not say to the exclusion of one only other option, and that being 'good'. I believe YOUR ideas are black/white, it is YOU who divide people into 'good' or 'evil', not I. You need to take a step back and contemplate what someone posts before going off on a rant that doesn't even address the posted issue. If you cannot see where Hitler was evil, where the situation in Darfur is evil, if you think it is all a matter of perspective I disagree. You think I am a Bush fan? You hurt your own cause by being so very black and white in your own thinking.

I must say that Brianna is right when she states that nowhere did she say one is either good or evil. She said evil must be confronted. You take issue with this statement, TW, because of the atrocities which have occurred in the name of confronting a supposed "evil." Am I correct in this understanding?

I know that evil DOES exist. I also realize that each side believes that it is on the side of the angels even as its members go about commiting unspeakable acts. Arendt called this this the "banality of evil." She came to her conclusions when she witnessed the trial of Eichman in Neurenberg. Eichman appeared as a person of small intellect, given to answering his questioners with cliche's and party propaganda. Arendt felt that people who think deeply about issues, who do not accept the party line - whether it be religous dogma or political idealogy - will not commit evil acts. Her belief was that any intelligent person will realize that by harming others, one ultimately harms oneself.

I think our current world situation is a beautiful example of the banality of evil in action. George Jr. is hardly an intellectual giant, in case no one has noticed. He buys into the dogma of the religous right and mouths its cliche's at every turn. Thus, we have the current conflict in Iraq. Were Junior to brought up before the judges at Nuremberg, I suspect that he would come off much as Eichman did. The same would be true of Saddam, of Bin Laden, of Pol Pot - the list goes on and on.

I agree with Brianna that evil must be confronted. It is the MANNER in which it is confronted that is crucial. There lies the crux of the problem.

Exactly what I meant, Mari. Thanks for putting it so eloquently.

Okay Mar... and similarly, while some people think of you as "brain damaged", I prefer to think of you as "having an increased capacity for evil".

That's funny, UT! And probably more true than I would like to think. Everything that I have been through combined with my odd little brain "blanks" have conspired to make me far more fearful and distrusting than I once was. It is out of fear that I think people do the most harm.

Brianna's post says evil exists - from the perspective of a god or from history - long after the fact. Therefore, she says evil must be confronted. But that is a completely different perspective. It assumes that evil can quickly be identified today and now. Not possible. Please tell me that an early 1930s Hitler was obviously evil in the early 1930s? You cannot. In fact, an early 1930s Hitler did good things for Germany - making him wildly popular among most all Germans and only suspected by his future victims. Even his victims did not see an "evil" Hitler. How does Brianna expect to see 'evil' during a time when Germans - people who lived with it - did not even see the evil?

We have a same example today. No one ever thought the US would attack another sovereign nation for no good reason. That would be 'evil'. That literally violates everythng the US stands for. And yet now we have a president who does just that. IOW according to Brianna's reasoning, we should have confronted evil - George Jr - even before the FL fiasco. Please show me anywhere that George Jr meets the critieria of evil in 1999? Or George Jr was right to confront evil in Iraq. Today we have a president that now meets the critieria of evil - having killed 200 iraqis per week - only because George Jr wanted to liberate a people who did not want to be liberated. He rationalized the axis of evil - which is sufficient to justify an invasion? By viewing everything in 'black and white', then George Jr became evil. He literally invaded Iraq for same reasons why Tojo attacked Pearl Harbor. Why is George Jr not evil and Tojo is evil?

We don't declare George Jr or Tojo as evil. Misguided. Ill informed. Stupid. Power crazed. All these can explain those gross mistakes. But that is not sufficient to define 'evil'.

Did Hitler liberate the Germans trapped in a racist Checkoslovakia? Did he annex Austria? Tell me in 1938, we should have been confronting evil when so many locally did not even regard the annexation of Austria as evil. How do we confront evil when it is not possible to identify pure evil?

Perspective. To confront evil, first Brianna must first say "one is either good or evil". Unfortunately many things that appear evil - Saddam's weapons of mass destruction - do not even exist. Show me all the evil held in Abu Ghraid? The greater evil appears to be the guards (actually their bosses) - not the prisioners. Having arbitrarily declared them as evil, then instead America became evil.

That is the problem with confronting evil as if everything is clearly 'black and white'. To confront evil means evil must first be identified - now and without question. Not possible. Again we have this problem with perspective. By the time evil is properly identified, evil has long since gone. How do you confront something that no longer exists?

When we made knee-jerk reactions to perceived evil, then we had the Spanish Inquisition. Nobody expected the Spanish Inquistion because nobody thought we would murder and torture innocent people. That happened because we arbitrarily defined everythng now - this minute - in 'good and evil' terms.

Perspective. To confront evil, Brianna must first decide immediately that "one is either good or evil". There are people with many different perspectives and opinions. In the south, blacks were evil because their skin was the color of evil - black.

Only after those perspectives and opinions so violate the norms (ie massacres), do we then confront the offenders. We call them wrong, or misguided, or illegal. But we don't call them 'evil'. The concept of 'evil' is something decided long after everything becomes historical. Far too late to *confront* the 'evil'. How do you confront evil if you cannot immediately see it? Again, a question of perspective.

Much too often, the innocent are murdered only because we then thought they were 'evil' - and immediately confronted them. It is the danger that religion can bring onto the world. This kneejerk reaction to evil is but another reason why religion does not belong in due process, the rule of law, and international relations. Nobody wants another Spanish Inquition - created because decisions were based upon 'good verses evil'. Confronting 'pure evil' results more often with intolerance - a greater evil.

I have read your posts for about two days...most of them, quite frankly, bore me with their Unibomber Manifesto-type going on and on and on...ad nauseam. You bore me, tw. You can't sum up. I'm a child of Mtv--grab my attention or get lost. If you find this offensive go fight for a candidate within your realm. Like Bush. Oh, do I offend you? Did I break your concentration? Get over yourself. I have defined evil for myself. You seem to think I endorse another Inquisition--it's people like you who are truly alarming. I stand by my post---Hitler's Germany was evil... you obviously think it was all a matter of perspective. For you it was a cakewalk.

PS---when someone posts ten paragraphs, I tend to skim.

That's how much you bore me

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

There are important differences between the two candidates that I see.

Bush is resolute, isolated, aggressive and non reflective. He goes on instinct. Bush is feeling and praying. He exudes confidence and power. He believes with all his heart he is doing right, doing god's will. He's the big gesture. He is also a radial rightwing conservative with plans that will impact domestic affairs for years to come.

Kerry is an analytical, diplomat who is also resolute and at the same time looking to build consensus. Kerry is thinking and debating. He's the detail. He believes with all his heart that the best tactic for national security is not to be isolated. He seeks out information. He sees that there is more to the solution that just bringing the hammer. He is also a liberal with plans that will impact domestic affairs for years to come.

Many people at the time saw the evil in Hitler, yet were powerless to do much about it. A brief review of the events of 1932/1933:

In 1932 Hitler was extremely concerned that he might not be able to consolidate his power via popular vote. One week before the election was due to take place, the Reichstag building burned down. Hitler played on the fear of Communism to gain emergency powers for himself and his Nazi party by claiming that the act of arson was an attempt by the communists to take over Germany by force.

A known communist - Marianus van der Lubbe - was caught near the Reichstag building immediately after the fire had started. Those that arrested him - Nazi officials - claimed that Lubbe confessed to them that the fire was a signal to other communists to start the revolution to overthrow democracy in the country. Matches were allegedly found on van der Lubbe and those who arrested him claimed that he smelt of gasoline.

Hitler asked the President of Germany to grant him emergency powers in view of the 'communist takeover'. Using the constitution, Germany's president agreed to pass the Law for the Protection of the People and the State.

This law gave Hitler what he wanted - a ban on the Communists and Socialists taking part in an election campaign. The leaders from both parties were arrested and their newspapers were shut down. To 'keep the peace' and maintain law and order, the SA (the Brown Shirts) roamed the streets beating up those who openly opposed Hitler.

The election took place in March. Hitler did not get the number of votes he wanted but he did get enough to get over a 50% majority in the Reichstag.

Still, 12 million people had voted for what were effectively two outlawed parties (communist and socialist). This is remarkable when the intimidation of voters is taken into account. All in all, a total of 22 million Germans voted AGAINST Hitler. The Nazi party got a minority vote of 17.5 million.

On March 23rd, elected officials were due to meet to discuss and vote on Hitler's Enabling Law. As politicians neared the building where they were to meet, they found it surrounded by SS and SA thugs who tried to ensure that only Nazi or Nationalist politicians got in. The vote for this law was crucial as it gave Hitler a vast amount of power. The law basically stated that any bill only needed Hitler's signature and within 24 hours that bill would become law in Germany. With only Nazis and other right wing politicians able to vote, the bill was quickly passed into law.

On 7th April 1933, Nazi officials were put in charge of all local government in the provinces.

On May 2nd 1933, trades unions were abolished, their funds taken and their leaders put in prison. The workers were given a May Day holiday in return.

On July 14th 1933, a law was passed making it illegal to form a new political party. It also made the Nazi Party the only legal political party in Germany.

People were employed in each street, in each building complex etc. with the sole purpose of keeping an eye on others in their 'area' and reporting them to the authorities if they believed that something was amiss. The reputation of the Nazi police and the secret police lead by Himmler was such that no-one wished to cause offence. People kept their thoughts to themselves unless they wished to invite trouble.

Many Germans realized at the time that Hitler was very bad news. They didn't need the perspective of history to tell them this. Unfortunately, they were co-erced into silence. The rest of the world just hoped the whole thing would go away. It didn't.

Sorry that I question things so extensively as to discover boring underlying concepts. There are very good summaries in that post that will never be comprehended by skimming. Reality was never that simple - except in bad fiction.

'Good verses evil' is nice for simplicities of biblical parables and for children's stories. But where is 'good and evil' in Rod Serling stories (ie The Twilight Zone). Do you remember the Twilight Zone? Everytime the obvious decision was based upon 'good vs evil', then the decision was wrong. Why? In the real world, there is no black and white. The real world is complicated by many perspectives - the many shades of gray. 'Good verses evil' is how we simplify the world for children and for the under- educated. 'Good verses evil' resulted in the Spanish Inquistion, empowered Hitler's Nazi party, and caused the unjustified invasion of Iraq. Ironically if we really believed in 'good verses evil', then American divisions would be in Afghanistan looking for Osama bin Laden. IOW the 'good verses evil' mentality even has us decieved into invading the wrong country.

Only the simple minded - ie. those who became Hitler's Brown Shirts - view the world in terms of 'good and evil'. Hitler's Brown Shirts rooted out and intimidated what to them was obviously 'evil'. Reality: 'good' people are centrists - far more tolerant - view the world in its many complex perspectives. Thank your god that both Kennedy and Krushchev did not view the world in 'good verses evil'. We still exist because Kennedy instead saw the world in perspectives - and therefore avoided WWIII. 'Good verses evil' thinking makes extremists so dangerous. Those who view everything in such black and white are ideal recruits for extremists. That is the MTV bottom line. 'Good verses evil' thinking unfortunately results in evil.

It was not many who opposed Hitler. Posted is history. Back in 1932/33, those events and laws were considered good for Germany - by most Germans. Crowds were robust and enthusiastic in parades for Hitler even in Austria. Those events we view from an historical perspective - that undermined democracy in Germany - were considered by most Germans then as good for Germany. Nazi party got more votes than all other poltical parties combined.

Hilter's book Mein Kampf really demonstrates why he could do these things and become popular. His supporters were easily bored by things too complex. Hitler attacks and undermines the bourgeois and intellectuals using simplistic reasoning and intimidation. His book was written so that those who need everything in an MTV format would never see his fallicies and errors. Having neutralized those who read and understand long posts, he then could recruit on sound byte reasoning. IOW he recruits those who think in 'good verses evil' terms. He undermines the bourgeois and intellectuals who view the world from reality - by blaming them for all Germany's problems. No wonder Hitler was so popular. Those who should have seen the danger never bothered to read Mein Kampf. It was too difficult for them to read even though most every German who got married was required to buy the book.

Most interesting is how Hitler writes. Long, sometimes confusing sentences so that those who are easily bored will zone out. Readers instead will believe what they are told in MTV sound bytes because they skimmed or only thought they had read Hitler's book. Having not read the details, the lesser intelligent people were empowered to become Hitler's Brown Shirts.

Those who cannot follow long, complex details of reality are easily recruited to the 'dark side' of extremism. This provided Hitler with so much power that even Kaiser Wilheim supported Hitler. The devil is indeed in the details. In Hitler's case, the details were (probably) intentionally made unreadable so that his power base would only hear an MTV type of summary. We call it propaganda. It uses simplistic concepts such as 'good verses evil'. Hilter in early 1930 Germany could gain over 50% of the votes - more votes than all other political parties combined. He was that popular that he could even eliminate democracy - and the poeple wanted it. Back then, those events were considered good by most Germans. Today we view the same events as evil. It is called perspective. What was once considered good is now called evil.

Which should we confront - what was considered good then or what is considered evil today?

deny the problem
 

U.S.: Soldiers Failed to Report for Duty

ROBERT BURNS

Associated Press


WASHINGTON - More than 800 former soldiers have failed to comply with Army orders to get back in uniform and report for duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Army said Friday. That is more than one-third of the total who were told to report to a mobilization station by Oct. 17.

This does not surprise me. I had a conversation with a senior NCO freshly returned from Iraq. He was extremely angry about the entire thing and said he would never go back there.

By the way, TW, Hitler did NOT win a majority of the vote. 22 million Germans voted for other parties, 17.5 million voted for the Nazi's. The Nazi party got more votes than any other single party, but not more than all combined. One must also take into account that Hitler managed to have two of the parties against him outlawed just before the election was to take place.

It is certainly true that Hitler managed to get a great deal of popular support, especially among the younger crowd, but there was a sizable number of Germans who did NOT support him, but were cowed into silence.