Bring our soldiers home!

Poll: 1 in 3 vets sees Iraq, Afghan wars as wastes

By ROBERT BURNS – AP National Security Writer | AP – 20 mins ago

• WASHINGTON (AP) — One in three U.S. veterans of the post-9/11 military believes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting, and most think that after 10 years of combat America should be focusing less on foreign affairs and more on its own problems, according to an opinion survey released Wednesday.

The findings highlight a dilemma for the Obama administration and Congress as they struggle to shrink the government’s huge budget deficits and reconsider defense priorities while trying to keep public support for remaining involved in Iraq and Afghanistan for the longer term.

Nearly 4,500 U.S. troops have died in Iraq and about 1,700 in Afghanistan. Combined war costs since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have topped $1 trillion.

The poll results presented by the Pew Research Center portray post-9/11 veterans as proud of their work, scarred by warfare and convinced that the American public has little understanding of the problems that wartime service has created for military members and their families.

The survey also showed that post-9/11 veterans are more likely than Americans to call themselves Republicans and to disapprove of President Barack Obama’s performance as commander-in-chief. They also are more likely than earlier generations of veterans to have no religious affiliation.

The Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan organization that studies attitudes and trends, called the study the first of its kind. The results were based on two surveys conducted between late July and mid-September. One polled 1,853 veterans, including 712 who had served in the military after 9/11 but are no longer on active duty. Of the 712 post-9/11 veterans, 336 served in Iraq or Afghanistan. The other polled 2,003 adults who had not served in the military.

Nearly half of post-9/11 veterans said deployments strained their relationship with their spouses, and a similar share reported problems with their children. On the other hand, 60 percent said they and their families benefited financially from having served abroad in a combat zone. Asked for a single word to describe their experiences, the war veterans offered a mixed picture: “rewarding,” ”nightmare,” ”eye opening,” ”lousy.”

There are about 98,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, where the conflict began with a U.S.-led invasion on Oct. 7, 2001. Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008 on getting out of Iraq and ramping up the military campaign in Afghanistan. He is on track to have all U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of this year, and in July he announced that he would pull 10,000 troops out of Afghanistan this year and 23,000 more by next September.

The Pew survey found that veterans are ambivalent about the net value of the wars, although they generally were more positive about Afghanistan, which has been a more protracted but less deadly conflict for U.S. forces. One-third of post-9/11 veterans said neither war was worth the sacrifices; that was the view of 45 percent in the separate poll of members of the general public.

Fifty percent of veterans said Afghanistan was worth it, whereas the poll of civilians put it at 41 percent.

Among veterans, 44 percent said Iraq was worth it. That compares with 36 percent in the poll of civilians.

Of the surveyed former service members who were seriously wounded or knew someone who was killed or seriously wounded, 48 percent said the war in Iraq was worth fighting, compared with 36 percent of those veterans who had no personal exposure to casualties.

Exposure to casualties had an even larger impact on attitudes toward the war in Afghanistan. Fifty-five percent of those exposed to casualties said Afghanistan has been worth the cost to the U.S., whereas 40 percent of those who were not exposed to casualties held that same view.

Pew said its survey results found “isolationist inclinations” among post-9/11 war veterans. About 6-in-10 said the United States should pay less attention to problems overseas and instead concentrate on problems at home. In a Pew survey conducted earlier this year, a similar share of the general public agreed.

The survey also reflected what many view as a troublesome cultural gap between the military and the general public. Although numerous polls have shown that Americans hold the military in high regard, the respondents in the Pew research acknowledged a lack of understanding of what military life entails.

Only 27 percent of adult civilians said the public understands the problems facing those in uniform, and the share of veterans who said so is even lower — 21 percent.

___

Robert Burns can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/robertburnsAP

My take exactly.

Favorite Facebook Statuses

I like this one…

‘I am passing this on to you because it definitely worked for me today, and we all could probably use more calm in our lives.
I looked around my house to see things I’d started & hadn’t finished, so I have managed to finish off a bottle of Sambuca, a bottle of vodka, a few bodle of budweeser, a butle of wum, tha mainder of Valiuminun scriptins, an a box a chocletz. Yu haf no idr how bludy fablus I feel rite now….’

and this one…

‘Amish Computer Virus
You have just received the Amish Virus. Since we do not have electricity nor computers, you are on the honor system. Please delete all of your files.

Thank thee’

Grin and ‘bare’ it?

Ladies: Rocco Grimaldi requests you cover up for God

By Greg Wyshynski

I respect Rocco Grimaldi, the California kid that the Florida Panthers selected in the second round of the 2011 draft and is going to play for North Dakota this season. (Where he could be rookie of the year in the WCHA.)

I respect that he’s a role model for young players, who see a 5-foot-6 forward on a path to the NHL. I respect that he’s a devout Christian who uses social media to preach what he believes, even if his candor may have scared off some teams at the draft.

I respect that, in the end, Grimaldi views faith as a way to affect positive change in someone’s life and in society, which is a view I imagine places him in the majority in the United States.

What I don’t respect, however, are Twitter rants that espouse Puritanical nonsense about how women need to cover themselves lest their feminine curves tempt men.

Rocco wants to know, ladies: Are you honoring God with those jeans that make your butt look great?

Here are Rocco’s observations about the female form from his Twitter feed (@RGrimaldi23):

There’s a thin line between “ladies are too scantily clad these days” and “God wants you in a potato sack because your brothers can’t help themselves,” and Rocco ran through it. I mean, to each his own, but in my eyes this entire request veers uncomfortably close to the asinine “she was asking for it/look how she was dressed” denouncement women have had to battle for decades.

Rocco moved on to the fellas after that:

“Guys, when did sleeping with every girl u can make u a man? Anyone can lay with a woman. And don’t blame the women for how they dress. Don’t say it’s because they want attention. Don’t blame ur “curiosity” or that u just wanted a little taste of what it would be like. Women are not an object for playing with. Sex is a gift from God. We have made it idolatry by how we use it. We blame the women for what they’re wearing, we blame the media for what they’re producing, but we never blame OURSELVES for how WE’VE twisted God’s gift to only glorify ourselves. WE are the men and WE are to blame. God put US in charge of this earth so WE are the ones who need to man up and lay down our lust. Don’t fall into that temptation. If you don’t do this, you may be a boy for the rest of ur life #ManUp“

So, in summary: Women should cover their boobs and ask if God approves of their outfit in case it unfairly tempts men, but men only have themselves to blame if they’re tempted sexually.

Huh, weird … you usually never see contradictions in religious dogma …

Like I said: I respect Grimaldi, immensely, for having this level of candor and using his modicum of fame for what he believes is his mission on this rock. I follow him on Twitter, and 98 percent of what he writes reads like an inspiration poster in a Christian greeting card store. Please don’t misconstrue this as some attempt to silence him.

But his comments about women are the kind of sexist, archaic thoughts that cloud the positive impact of faith. As a (lapsed) Roman Catholic myself, it’s a constant struggle: You believe there are aspects of religion that are undoubtedly beneficial, but they’re constantly overshadowed by clunky views on sex and gender that repel people and open up the entire community to ridicule.

I hate to make this into Dan Ellis Part Deux, but it’s the same principle: The messages Rocco Grimaldi shares have value, if not to me or you than to someone else. His heart’s in the right place with the comments about men; his comments about women drown them out.

His best argument against the objectification of women was to objectify them. We can’t give an “amen” to that.

s/t to Minnesota Slim for the tip.

Related: Florida Panthers, Hockey Fans

Let’s cut straight to the chase.  Do I think women objectify themselves? A resounding YES!  Women are, for some reason,  seeing an increasing need to bare skin in order to get noticed.  I am not saying that all women who wear a nice mini dress/skirt are begging for attention but do you really have to let it all hang out to look good?  If you are out at a function and spend every minute trying to pull your dress down to cover your undies, then it is too short.  If your breasts are falling out of your bra and posing a risk of eye injury to the person you are talking to, then your bra is too small.  Come on, it’s common sense. When you go to a restaurant, you don’t know what the food looks like until it is served.  There are no hints or displays in the window, so why do you feel the need to preview your body to the world?

Women, I agree wholeheartedly with Rocco’s sentiments.  Cover up, it leaves more to the imagination and gets you the respect you deserve.  No woman should be objectified or taken advantage of due to their clothing or lack of clothing but women, for the sick preys out there, why give them that fuel?  Just my take.

Facebook Privacy

So apparently, Facebook is not as private as we would like and all our most intimate information is liable to be shared by a third party.  WOW!!  Some breaking news!  Who would have thunk it?  Someone better alert the authorities to this major breach of trust.  I for one never thought they would do such a think (prepare for sarcasm) and that’s why I had all my bedroom stories, complete with pictures, on Facebook for only my 600 plus friends to see.   (I am shy and a bit of an introvert).  My status updates regularly mirror my soul as I bare it to just my friends, well and maybe friends of my friends and their friends also but they are sort of my friends still as they are connected to my friends, right?   I would never share that kind of information with ANYONE else so Facebook doesn’t have the right to do this either.   When my status says, “Woohoo!! Carlos is leaving today for a month long vacation in Europe!!”,  I would hate to know that someone outside my 600  friends (and their friends) circle can also see it.  I heard that’s how people’s homes get burglarized but I trust my friends and their friends and their… never mind, you get the idea.

Now how about my other personal information like address etc?  Well I have filled out the form like they asked me and I wrote my name, age, address, phone number, etc. Heck, just so they don’t ask me later, I even tossed in my credit card and social insurance numbers.  ( In the box that says ‘sex’, I put ‘depends on the wife’s mood’   Who asks that anyways??).  I don’t think I left anything out.  Oh,  I also checked the box that says ‘share all with friends’.  I really don’t have a problem with my friends seeing anything on my page.  They are my friends and friends trust each other.

In regards to my photos.  I have to confess that I have uploaded some very questionable ones on Facebook BUT only my 600 plus friends are allowed to see them. NO ONE ELSE!  ( There was this one with me wearing my wife’s dress. Too funny.  Got a lot of comments on that one).  I don’t want to even THINK of other people I don’t know seeing these photos.   I can kiss my chance of ever running for public office goodbye.

My friend who considers herself ‘smart’, is not at all worried about Facebook’s breach.  She is not concerned about ‘other’ people seeing her personal stuff since according to her,  she does not put anything on Facebook or any other social network for that matter, that she would be worried about the wrong people seeing.  She says she views such sites as entertainment only and people like me, who takes it too seriously, have a problem.  I think SHE is the one with a problem if she cannot even trust her friends.  Why are they your friends if you can’t even trust them? No wonder she has only 135 friends on Facebook. (I would like to crack the thousand mark ).  My friend does not have even one photo album and barely updates her status.  Why even bother being a Facebook member?  What sort of entertainment is that??

Last week, the electricity went off in my part of town and I had to load the kids up in the van and drove for half an hour to my mom’s so I could get access to Facebook and keep abreast on how my friends were doing.  Now that’s proof right there that I’m being entertained and enjoying all the benefits of Facebook.

Or maybe my friend is really the smart one and I do have a problem…

Just my take.

Troy Davis 2

Killer spared from death hours before execution

Samuel David Crowe in an undated photo. The parole board in the state of Georgia spared a convicted killer from execution hours before he was due to die by lethal injection on Thursday and commuted his sentence to life in prison.

Credit: Reuters/Georgia Department of Corrections/Handout

Related Topics

• U.S. »

By Matthew Bigg

ATLANTA | Thu May 22, 2008 9:57pm EDT

ATLANTA (Reuters) – The parole board in the U.S. state of Georgia spared a convicted killer from execution hours before he was due to die by lethal injection on Thursday and commuted his sentence to life in prison.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles made its decision less than three hours before Samuel David Crowe, 47, was to be executed, according to a spokeswoman for the state’s prisons.

“After careful and exhaustive consideration of the requests, the board voted to grant clemency. The board voted to commute the sentence to life without parole,” the parole board said.

Crowe’s death would have marked the third execution since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted an unofficial moratorium on the death penalty last month.

Crowe was not present at the parole board hearing in Atlanta. He had already eaten his last meal and was preparing to enter the execution chamber at the prison in Jackson, Georgia, Mallie McCord of the Georgia Department of Corrections said.

In March 1988, Crowe killed store manager Joseph Pala during a robbery at the lumber company in Douglas County, west of Atlanta. Crowe, who had previously worked at the store, shot Pala three times with a pistol, beat him with a crowbar and a pot of paint.

Crowe pleaded guilty to armed robbery and murder and was sentenced to death the following year.

“David (Crowe) takes full responsibility for his crime and experiences profound remorse,” according to Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, an advocacy group, who welcomed the board’s decision.

The decision to grant clemency on the day of an execution was “extraordinarily rare,” said Stephen Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights.

In most cases, clemency decisions rested with a state governor frequently under political pressure to show firmness with death row inmates rather than with a clemency board independent of the state political process, he said.

At Thursday’s hearing, his lawyers presented a dossier of evidence attesting to his remorse and good behavior in jail, according to local media reports. The lawyers also said he was suffering from withdrawal symptoms from a cocaine addiction at the time of the crime.

The U.S. Supreme Court on April 16 rejected a challenge to the three-drug cocktail used in most U.S. executions, which opponents claimed inflicted unnecessary pain. Georgia then conducted an execution on May 5.

Georgia has executed 41 men since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1973 and this week it had 109 prisoners on death row.

There you have it folks!  I just found the above on the web.  Very interesting to say the least. So this guy commits a crime that he plead guilty of and he’s spared execution while another not only plead his innocence but had no evidence against him YET he was executed?? Come on, you cannot tell me nothing is afoot here. I am not even going to play the race card on this because I hate the ‘because I am black’ excuse but you judge for yourself.  If you can find nothing wrong with this scenario then it’s ok too because it is basically just My Take.

Remembering 9/11

This is a copy of a blog I made on another site on the anniversary of September 11.

Today commemorates the bombing of the World Trade Center and a dark day in not only American History but also World History. Many lives were lost in more ways than one. In the swift retribution that followed, more innocent lives were lost in bombing raids, torture etc. Ten years later, Bin Laden is dead, Saddam is dead, Sons and daughters are dead. Bombings are still a daily routine in Iraq. Soldiers continue their search in the desolate mountains of Afghanistan to eradicate a now mythical enemy. Muslims and Middle Eastern men also paid the ultimate price, their freedom. They were looked upon as suspects when they board a public transport, walk the streets or assemble. Imagine being on a plane and a bearded man in Muslim garb suddenly has an uncontrollable urge to go to the washroom. He gets up and hurries down the aisle. Would you just look up for a second then go back to reading your in-flight magazine? No. I wouldn’t either. As a matter of fact, I might pass out from fear. Unknown fear that have been sown in my heart since 9/11.

So in retrospect, I do not look back with sadness at a dark memory of the Twin Towers falling and taking many to a fiery demise. No, I look back pain at a turn in life where we lost a chunk of PEACE. Where lies and truth became blurred and many questions were left without answers. Let’s remember those who paid the price and who continue to pay the price for something they never bought. God Bless Us All!

And as always, that’s just MY TAKE.

Troy Davis

Yesterday, the state of Georgia may have executed an innocent man. May is the operative word here. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, Troy Davis is a black guy accused of killing a Policeman who had gone to assist someone being beaten.  Troy Turned himself in but claimed he did not do it.  It is a claim he took with him to his grave.  Seven of nine ‘Witnesses’ who initially gave statements implicating him, have since recanted their stories some claimed coercion by the cops. Despite all this and the lack of circumstantial evidence, he was still denied a new trial.  After numerous delays and letters from many VIPs including the Pope, the sentence was upheld and he was executed by lethal injection.

Now whatever happened to ‘Innocent until proven guilty?’.  OJ Simpson has taught me that if ‘it doesn’t fit, you must acquit’, so this means if Troy Davis cannot be linked to the crime by any evidence and statements saying he was were tainted, isn’t that a case for a mistrial even? Why go ahead with an execution on such doubtful grounds?  Two things come to mind here.  I do not like to go there but it begs to ask, would it have been different if Troy was a white man?  Would it have had a different outcome if it was just a normal Joe that was killed? In the very least, this man should have been given a life sentence so he could be around if and when it is found out that he was indeed an innocent man.

To touch on the DEATH PENALTY. I am anti death penalty for reasons including this.  It is a gruesome and barbaric act that we as an ever changing society, should have done away with a long time ago.  We could ban prayers in schools, change Christmas Tree to Holiday Tree, approve gay marriages and make other changes as we evolved but we drag along this savage practice that exposes our savagery and blood thirst.  If that is the system we rely on, it is failing us. Badly.

But that is just MY TAKE…

I Have No Clue

So yesterday, I was listening to the radio and they had a contest that listeners had to name the person who was the voice in a played clip.  To my surprise, the first three callers responses were “I have no clue”.  Now why would you call in to answer a question with no clue as to the answer or maybe even the question?  There are people with the correct answer who are trying to get through but can’t, thanks to your  ”I don’t know’ call.  I am not one of those callers as I very, very rarely call in to contests.  I like listening to them though as I am a trivia buff and like to hear the questions and subsequent answers.  Never know when I might come across it during a trivia game…Just couldn’t figure out why someone would dial in only to say ‘I have no clue’.   It would have been different if the station had called you and asked you the question on the spot then your response could have been a very acceptable ‘I HAVE NO CLUE’.   Just my take.