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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 17 of 17. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by fayeroe on July 17, 2008, at 19:55:52
Posted by Sigismund on July 17, 2008, at 23:06:40
In reply to News from the Armed Forces.., posted by fayeroe on July 17, 2008, at 19:55:52
Modafinil might be a better bet than Dex for those who have their finger on the trigger.
Sometime back there was a colonel(?) from the USAF talking about Dex and training.
He resigned because the use of Dex was essentially mandatory.
This was after the invasion of Iraq when those Canadians were shot up by mistake by someone who looked as if he had taken too much of it.
Posted by fayeroe on July 18, 2008, at 8:59:46
In reply to Re: News from the Armed Forces.., posted by Sigismund on July 17, 2008, at 23:06:40
> Modafinil might be a better bet than Dex for those who have their finger on the trigger.
>
> Sometime back there was a colonel(?) from the USAF talking about Dex and training.
>
> He resigned because the use of Dex was essentially mandatory.
>
> This was after the invasion of Iraq when those Canadians were shot up by mistake by someone who looked as if he had taken too much of it.I am going to ask my SIL about this matter. He still has to go stand for 24 hours (with the hip injury AND the PTSD) doing sentry duty. Why in the hell does it only take one soldier to do that? Why can't four soldiers do it? Or 6?
I just don't like the idea of our soldiers being doped up to fight this stupid-*ss*d war. It isn't even a war, pardon me, it's a lie.
Whew.. I didn't see that one coming! Must be due to my minimal intake of caffeine.
pat
p.s. I do not think that you are a thread killer here. I always come to see if you've posted anything. So there!
Posted by caraher on July 18, 2008, at 23:03:12
In reply to Re: News from the Armed Forces.. » Sigismund, posted by fayeroe on July 18, 2008, at 8:59:46
Once upon a time Americans pretended that we valued the individual. We had "citizen soldiers" who were less efficient because we respected their right to hang on to their humanity even as they were asked to do inhumane things in the name of necessity.
Now "they volunteered" and "we" (no longer "we the people" but the imperial president and his men) now have the right to destroy their minds and turn them into single-purpose machines, then leave them to fend for themselves when we've wrung everything from their minds and bodies. "Supporting" them means slapping a cheap magnet on your car and playing songs about sticking a boot in someone's *ss, and dismissing concerns about the care of returning veterans as political posturing.
If in the 1950s someone had written a description of the contemporary American military, their methods and the ways young men and women are used, expunging the national identity, surely an American reader of that day would consider it a vignette of how the "bad guys" act in a science-fiction dystopia.
Posted by Sigismund on July 19, 2008, at 2:47:37
In reply to Re: News from the Armed Forces.., posted by caraher on July 18, 2008, at 23:03:12
Well then, how come we have the leaders we do?
What you said. Oh my goodness.
Faith that choice will make us free and happy?
I was watching a John Wayne war movie in a Japanese hotel room; so it's the fifities. The values have changed.....they wouldn't have been speaking about values then, that's one very big change. I mean, things weren't that great with the CIA and South America, but I prefer crackpot realism to moral clarity.
Posted by fayeroe on July 19, 2008, at 8:02:29
In reply to Re: News from the Armed Forces.. » caraher, posted by Sigismund on July 19, 2008, at 2:47:37
wow! crackpot realism, i like that.
i remember back in the 50s and 60s that i had an undying faith in the United States. if i had been needed, i would have gone to fight for our country.
but it isn't that way now....these soldiers are fighting for oil for this administration.instead of raising the flag on the field that we gained, it would be fitting now to set up a gas pump.
it tears me apart to see another unit stand in formation and tell their families and friends goodby. i watch their faces on the television and i know that someone won't return or will return maimed. i read that we have something like 60,000 injured and maimed now?
when i was talking about my SIL standing sentry, i forgot to say that he is at Ft. Hood now.
by the way, our president gave up golf because "the soldiers are fighting our war" and he is playing again. did everyone come home?
Posted by caraher on July 19, 2008, at 10:16:30
In reply to Re: News from the Armed Forces.. » Sigismund, posted by fayeroe on July 19, 2008, at 8:02:29
> by the way, our president gave up golf because "the soldiers are fighting our war" and he is playing again. did everyone come home?
Well, he said that but he was actually having knee problems when he gave it up. So his knee is all better? Glad to hear it...
Seriously.
I hope his conscience works as well as his knee. (Say, it's almost brush-clearing season, isn't it? Isn't that how he spends August? Imagine the pickle we'd be in if he weren't also breaking presidential vacation records...)
Posted by fayeroe on July 19, 2008, at 10:26:20
In reply to Re: News from the Armed Forces.., posted by caraher on July 19, 2008, at 10:16:30
> > by the way, our president gave up golf because "the soldiers are fighting our war" and he is playing again. did everyone come home?
>
> Well, he said that but he was actually having knee problems when he gave it up. So his knee is all better? Glad to hear it...
>
> Seriously.
>
> I hope his conscience works as well as his knee. (Say, it's almost brush-clearing season, isn't it? Isn't that how he spends August? Imagine the pickle we'd be in if he weren't also breaking presidential vacation records...)God healed his knee.
Five weeks......about 140 miles from me. I will never forget the horror that I felt when I was driving in one day and saw the sign to Crawford. I had no idea it is that close!!!!!
PBC is coming for us!
Posted by Sigismund on July 19, 2008, at 15:13:31
In reply to Re: News from the Armed Forces.., posted by fayeroe on July 19, 2008, at 10:26:20
He won't have any problems with his conscience and neither will Tony 'I only know what I believe is right' Blair.
I don't really know how they do it, but a (quite possibly small) part of it must be that they don't feel the normal rules apply to them because they have a superior insight into the nature of things.
Posted by fayeroe on July 19, 2008, at 15:33:27
In reply to Re: News from the Armed Forces.., posted by Sigismund on July 19, 2008, at 15:13:31
Does "entitlement" sound close?
I wonder if that is bred into you or do you pick it up along the way?
If it is breeding, it probably comes from money, name, screwing up in school and being rescued by poppy and joining the an arm of the military to fly planes and party and play golf.
Let's say that you beat the crap out of a schoolmate and suddenly you feel entitled to beat it out of others.Before long, you feel entitled to send innocents off to your oil war to be killed and maimed.
I feel entitled when it comes to choosing the food for my pets, but that is about it.
Posted by Sigismund on July 19, 2008, at 15:40:59
In reply to Re: News from the Armed Forces.. » Sigismund, posted by fayeroe on July 19, 2008, at 15:33:27
Well, you know what I think, I guess.
It's some version of 'we are the greatest'.
It is possible (since they make a big thing of it) that their faith is important; that it permits them to see things denied to many of us.
The thing with LBJ was........ he didn't start the bloody thing.
Never in the history of human kind has so much self love been lavished by so few on themselves?
I don't know. Like God, it is a mystery.
Posted by Sigismund on July 19, 2008, at 15:53:07
In reply to Re: News from the Armed Forces.., posted by caraher on July 18, 2008, at 23:03:12
I have been struck by how deeply many Americans feel about this.
People do here too, but it's not so intense.
Although......I was speaking to a Greens MP ages back and he said
'This place is fascist.'
'Where's the mass movement?', I asked.
He said something I forget.
I suggested he read some books.
He suggested I choose my words carefully.
I went off to have another drink.
Posted by fayeroe on July 19, 2008, at 16:45:28
In reply to Re: News from the Armed Forces.., posted by Sigismund on July 19, 2008, at 15:53:07
Maybe it is the people that I tend to gravitate to but wherever I go, they tell me how they are fed up with our economics, the war, the energy crisis, etc.
I have had some real surprises though. People that I didn't think would be so invested in our situation are coming out of the woodwork. My town is blue.
Makes me hopeful that we'll have the big change this fall.
Posted by Sigismund on July 19, 2008, at 17:31:23
In reply to Re: News from the Armed Forces.. » Sigismund, posted by fayeroe on July 19, 2008, at 16:45:28
It's interesting that old fashioned conservatives are often now on the left, whereas many ex-trotskyites (or people influenced by Trotsky) are now on the right.
We have them here. It's very strange.
The best commentary on the last 10 years has come from old fashioned conservatives, perhaps because it is an ethical criticism.
Posted by fayeroe on July 19, 2008, at 17:37:35
In reply to Re: News from the Armed Forces.., posted by Sigismund on July 19, 2008, at 17:31:23
One of these days when I find the platform for the Republicans in 1944, I'll send it to you.
Posted by Sigismund on July 19, 2008, at 19:35:16
In reply to Re: News from the Armed Forces.. » Sigismund, posted by fayeroe on July 19, 2008, at 17:37:35
I dunno if Gore Vidal qualifies as a Republican?
"Palimpsest" made me aware of how little I knew of the subtleties of US system.
My father visited the US when Goldwater was campaigning; it must have been against LBJ. He brought back a couple of bottles of Goldwater which lived on the bar for a decade or so. This was the time of "None Dare Call It Treason", which lived around the house too. Yet Barry Goldwater was just the beginning of the beginning of this. No?
Posted by fayeroe on July 19, 2008, at 21:02:28
In reply to Republicans, posted by Sigismund on July 19, 2008, at 19:35:16
I was married to a Republican then. I remember, clearly, the LBJ years. And Goldwater, of course.
I do believe that Goldwater was the beginning of alot of things and some of them would serve us well today. At least he had restraint at times.
This is the end of the thread.
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