GRATITUDE

Gratitude for their service apparently does not apply to dozens if not hundreds of seriously wounded Iraq war veterans whose life-threatening and disabling wounds effectively ended their tour of duty before they could fulfill the entire time requirement stated in their enlistment contract-- Now being strictly and magnanimously enforced by pentagon desk-jockey-warriors a world away from the heat and dust and the whir of zinging lead sizzling with the intense internecine murder, robbery and assault still so rampant in Iraq, wounded veterans are now required to pony-up pro-rata portions of their enlistment bonuses because their wounds prevent them from ongoing service-- Uncle Sam wants, in an unbelievably miserly manner, our crippled soldiers to pay .........way above and beyond--

A little story below the fold of the International Herald Tribune posits that the Bush boys are scrapping major political strategeries that once formed the basis of our post invasion rationale for staying in Iraq-- Curtailing hopes for passing and enacting the egalitarian oil bill ( where disparate Iraqi groups would divide 7% of the oil left after US oil firms co-opted 93% of the country's total oil reserves) that has meandered the quicksand corridors of the Green Zone Iraq Parliament for longer than anyone cares to total-- Gone also is the forlorn and faux hope of unifying or re-unifying, as the case may be, Iraq with its people-- Certainly, proceeds from the failed plan to secure oil resources under American ownership and command will not be used now to finance the long term debt incurred by this Neocon rush to the cakewalk of utter defeat nor will it honor its enlistment promises made to America's best and most idealistic, those crippled enlistees ....... it's heart and soul--

Megalomaniacal but inestimably shrewd Pakistani Prez Musharrif appears to be tamping down the more incendiary ramifications of his dictatorial emergency but the further potential for mega-unravelling in this most recalcitrant of regions stands as a paramount antidote to the more jaundiced but no less delusional piffle with which American punditry finds no lack of misplaced hubris or supine willingness to impregnate our faltering foreign policy-- Yeah, like we are in control of the world,.....dude!!-- One of our staunchest allies in the War on terror turns out to be an overt enemy of Freedom and Democracy but will feign support for the Neocon misadventure if the price is right-- Another deleterious side-effect of the falling dollar means various precariously empowered dictators can't be as readily nor as inexpensively purchased-- The world just keeps getting bigger while our influence like a locomotive losing its steam diminishes greatly--