9 June 2014 An elephant never forgets

11 June 2014 Fear the fed

12 June 2014 Only the names have been changed

The Congress will hold “hearings” to determine why they were not notified of the imminent POW exchange arranged by the Obama Administration. The partly bi-partisan reaction to the release of five prisoners until recently held at Guantanamo Naval Base has Congress highly offended and feeling as if they were prevented from doing the job they were elected to perform. Of course, the Congress has spent the last 5.5 years doing as little as possible, while the House has done nothing unless it revolved around making it impossible for Obama to perform his job.

I’d have kept Congress in the dark until after the exchange. The ability of Congress to keep information secret is non-existant. We’d have most likely have captured bin Laden in 2001 but for the actions of one Senator who leaked the information entrusted to him for political advantage. There’s been no improvement in the nature of Congress since then

Now the GOP/teabaggers are displaying the high degree of concern they hold for the average members of our armed services by approving wars but refusing to provide care for the men and women who fight those wars and suffer the injuries and deaths inherent in all wars. The anger directed at Sgt Burgdahl and his family is a prime example of the makeup of the political base the GOP has chosen to play to in the 15^th year of the 21^st century.

The current war in Afghanistan will spin out of all control once we leave. The history of the region after the Soviet withdrawal, and the rapidly exploding wars in the Middle East are of sufficient predictive value to erase any doubts as to the future of the Arab states and the SW Asian tribal cultures. However, the international energy companies, arms manufacturers, and other profiteering conglomerates such as Halliburton will make every effort to keep us involved in Afghanistan, while pushing us back toward military intervention in the religious/cultural upheavals that are currently consuming the Arab states.

The video images of Iraqi “soldiers” throwing down their weapons, or even worse, handing them over to the advancing ISIS forces is highly reminiscent of the final months of the VietNam war. We need to remain outside that conflict. We can’t solve it and we can’t superimpose over a thousand years of Western Civilization onto the basic mental maps of 9^th century tribal cultures. The Islamic part of the world will have to decide if another Caliphate is what it wants to live with and under. The next Caliphate, if it comes into being, will most likely bring about the next dark ages.

Someone should tell the teabaggers that the Gadsden Flag was intended to be a symbol of unification, not of cultural destruction. The misappropriation of historically significant symbols by splinter groups of pretend soldiers who fantasize about attacking and destroying the U.S. government without realizing that they are being used to further enrich the upper 1% needs to be halted and reversed.

The comparison of the teabaggers to Afghani Taliban is entire accurate and bodes nothing good for the future United States.