The MSM has studiously avoided showing us pictures of American wounded during the occupation of Iraq. The L.A. Times, in a surprising departure from the rest of the MSM, has undertaken a series of three photo-essays depicting the arduous journey from the battlefield to home, and the suffering our kids, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands and wives, in the thousands, undergo in the struggle to further enrich the already wealthy through force of arms. View them here.

Thanks for sharing that with me, Zooks.

I think probably the most telling part was when one of the medics said that sometimes they realize they have an insurgent and a US soldier lying next to each other.

The piece was meant, I'm sure, to show us all how well our troops are cared for when they fall. What I consider most telling about this brief series is that it was undertaken at all, in surprising defiance of the white house/MSM's tacit ban on showing wounded American troops. And by a right-wing paper like the L.A. Times. That shows that something is changing.

I'm sitting here at my work desk in this warehouse.
Fortunately I generally lunch by myself,
because this put tears in my eyes.

I'm proud of those men and women,
but so terribly sad they have to hurt
in this War of Lies!

Don't most soldiers vote for Repubs?

I find it hard to feel sympathy for those who vote for this kind of thing, and then are injured as a result of their decisions.

Clinton was a "pussy" in the army's eyes, and they wanted this kind of action.

Now they got it.

Poverty draft. Most of the enlisted ranks join because there is nothing else. They are the children of the working class, and do not have the opportunity for higher education. Most enlisted personnel join for educational benefits. Upon seperation, the average educational level provided by the military is five semesters at a community college. These people are not told about the hoops they will have to jump through to get that promised $70,000 in educational benefits. The average enlisted man who does four years active duty and seperates as an E-4 isn't going to save enough to match (yes, it requires matching funds on the part of the veteran) that $70,000, because he/she isn't going to earn that much in four years. The idea that they ar getting what they asked for doesn't float. Remember that they are joining at the age when kids with monied parents are spending that testosterone on gearing up for battle in the corporate or professional world. And most soldiers vote for whoever promises them the equipment to survive their jobs, or give them a 2% pay raise. For the enlisted man, his personal decision making stops when he signs on the dotted line, and the next critical life decision he makes is whether or not to re-enlist. These young men and women are more often than not already institutionalized by poverty and lack of education and healthcare. I see no need to punish them further for having chosen the wrong parents. The men who want war fight it from desks, thousands of miles from peril.

I don't know zooks.

I grew up poor. I mean food bank poor.

I have never felt the urge to "join up" to escape the poverty.

Despite being dirt-poor (often going to bed hungry in university because I couldn't afford groceries) I still went to university (and placed myself in massive debt doing it) because I didn't want ot simply "join up."

The "they did it because they were poor" argument doesn't stack up.

Having grown up poor is not a guarantee you will join the military.
The military is simply one of the more convenient options available when other monied options are not.
When the military offers a huge bonus for enlisting,
it's much more enticing to the poor kid.



Interesting that something like 50 returning Iraqi vets are running for congress this year,
and only one of them is running as a Republican. (numbers according to Dean)

That is the problem Scorp, we are poor and therefore cant pay college loans, so they dont give them to us. I tried to join the Military to get them to pay for my education. They said no, so I got the DOE to pay for it, that required my soul aswell, I am learning.

Teaching in America is more about social engineering, instilling unquestioned obidence, the ability to read instructions, and then the ability the compute those instructions without ANY createive thought involved. Just a flesh based machine.

I am finding more and more teachers that feel this way, but most teachers are conservative females who believe what they are doing goes along with much of their "Divine Right".

My view of course is of southern schools, so if those in the north are better, then forgive my assumptions.

Segregation of ALL types is alive and well in the north.
It's not so much racial, as economic segregation.
And in this way, not as easy to point out.
They can quite easly deny that X school gets less money because it's mostly black.
They can instead claim it's tax base.

Newer neighborhoods tend to be mostly white,
and they get the new schools, and equipment.

rcorporon, you may have grown up poor, but you grew up poor in Canada, not the US. We are a far less compassionate culture, here. And Sky, you are about my age. The right had not yet ravaged the American economy as it has managed to in the new American century. The jobs were there, and higher education was available to far more young people than it is today. Demographics have shifted greatly in the US in 30 years. The middle class is being decimated, while the working class is being filled from the bottom by new generations who no longer have the opportunity for upward mobility, the top by members of the lower middle class who have become redundant, as rcorporon says, immigration from the middle, and crushed by the offshoring of jobs in the production sector. Talk to some US public high school students, and you'll find out what kind of economic and life choices they feel they have.

Yeah and southerners are the rasicst. We dont have racial seperation really at all here in the south, at least not on my economic level. Its really just rich people and their henchmen that are rasicst and people up north know this, so why the general ignorance and bigotry to southeners?

I'll have to respectfully disagree with you on this one MM. In MS, poor and rich alike segregate. MS has a huge black population which, of course, means that the majority at most public schools is going to be black. Big deal, right? Well, it is a big deal. The way it is dealt with around here is that the whites in a town get together, find a building and create a "private school", usually this school pays its teachers very poorly, has no better curriculum than the public, but they have this awesome advantage of being able to exclude whomever they wish because they don't get federal monies. The tuiton is not much, but usually enough that it keeps out the undeserables. Especially considering that the black parents know good and well why the private school exists. Who on earth is going to send their children to a school that basically was created to keep from having their to intermingle with blacks? Its everywhere here. In the town I live in, population of 23,000 people, there are two private schools. The public school is about 76% black students, the privates have a percentage of like 3-4% black students. Go to my neighboring county. The population of the county is majority black, so there is a private school for the white kids and the public schools are about 99.9% black...in fact, right now there are NO white kids that attend. IF that's not blatant racism, I don't know what is.

Granted, in the north they may have a less obvious form, but the socio-economic segregation happens here too. In the 7th grade I moved to an area here that is pretty "high class". Mostly white, mostly rich students. There is a public school that is about 89% white, because black people cannot afford to live there, unless, like me, they lived in an older part of the community where development hadn't skyrocketed the land values. So now, as more of the city's schools are filled with black people, more people move to this community, creating a "black" school in the city and a "white" school in the county. Not state sanctioned segregation, but segregation nonetheless.

The fact that the south appears to be more racist than the north is simply a matter of demographics. Pull up the census data on any norther/mid-western/northeastern state, you will clearly see that the demographics are far more in "favor" of whites. The concentration of the black population is in the south, so bigotry and segregation are more rampant. Doesn't mean these things don't exist in the north, simply means that they are less prevalent because the black population hasn't reached the proportions it is here.

Also, on a side note, there are many pacific islanders living in the great northwest, and you will often hear and observe blantant racism towards the samoans and others. Racism comes in all colors and flavors.

Maybe conditions in the South are purposefully made to create a continual stream of soldiers? Then there's just kids doing what they watched their parents or other role models do.

I agree wholeheartedly Ping. I think that it is an environment ripe for soldier creation. If social stratification can be seen anywhere at all, it is so obvious here. I'm sure you know it yourself by the environment around you.

I am curious how many people up north (well, really anyone not in the south) see the flag and all of the frenzied patriotism that is so prevalent down here?

I read an article a year or so back from a person that traveled through the south who was so surprised by all of the patriotism here. It said somethign about how directly after the 9/11 thing tons of people "up north" went through a period of intense patriotism, but it died out quickly, while it seems to be still going so strong here. Anyway, I am just rambling at this point.

But you have given me a great idea for a little research.

Michigan is full of flag-waving Neo-cons too. I can see three from my window as I type.

There's tons of militia-types too....we have 2 huge paintball/ war games complexes here....with tanks out front and everything. And this is a farily rural community.

Even when we travel "Up North" (which in MI is anywhere above the Lansing area) all the small towns are just full of fatigue wearing soldiers, and wannabe soldiers.

The Detroit/Ann Arbor area is not so frenzied, and way more liberal.