Report: Marines Banned from Farting in Afghanistan

Marines in Afghanistan have reportedly been told not to pass gas around Afghans to avoid offending the indigenous population.

That’s right, now any leatherneck who lets one rip on patrol with Afghans nearby could receive a a talk from his superior officer.

The new flatulence restriction was first picked up by the Military Times, and has since become fodder for online discussion ranging from the curious to the ridiculous.

A few military bloggers have taken it seriously and found the ban to be indicative of a trend among military brass of bending over backwards to avoid offending the locals.

Others have pointed out that a culture that has allowed stoning, various forms of execution, and amputations as penalties for criminal offenses should be able to withstand a little passed gas.

The new regulation is not covered in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and the military has not even confirmed it exists.

For now, the “fart ban” appears to be simply a guideline for good manners while Marines are out on patrol.

We’ll let you know if the Blaze catches wind of any developments


I for one fart in their direction!

MSNBC Parent Company Comcast Among Most Generous Donors to Obama Victory Fund

The Col: Or maybe the jokes are above your pay grade?

Iamon lyme: use google and find out!!

(V): "So many types of socialism and you feel safe in such a broad statement?"

They were questions, so should I assume you are making a broad statement when you ask your question to answer mine? Okay, if there are many types of socialism, then what do they have in common that they can all be called socialism? What broad statement do you offer to answer this?

Artful Dodger: Now I know why there are so few popular conservative comics

The left exposed: http://www.laughatliberals.com/

THREE THINGS TO PONDER

1. Cows
2. The Constitution
3. The Ten Commandments

COWS

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that during the mad cow epidemic our government could track a single cow, born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she slept in the state of Washington? And, they tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of them a cow.



THE CONSTITUTION

They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq Why don’t we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we’re not using it anymore.

THE 10 COMMANDMENTS

The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this: You cannot post “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,” and “Thou Shall Not Lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.

"....But many suspect that it was outsiders who inspired this bill in the first place. In March, Bahati met several prominent anti-gay US Christian activists who attended a conference in Uganda where they pledged to "wipe out" homosexuality. The conference featured Scott Lively, president of California's anti-gay Abiding Truth Ministries and co-author of The Pink Swastika, a book claiming that leading Nazis were gay. Also there was Don Schmierer, on the board of Exodus International, which promotes the "ex-gay" movement, believing people can change their sexuality and be redeemed. The third extremist evangelical to attend was Caleb Lee Brundidge, who is linked to Richard Cohen who believes that psychotherapy can "cure" homosexuality....."

If it wasn't so crazy and sick.. I'd be

(V):

on a brighter note, Al Gore equates being a global warming denier as the moral equivalent of a Bull Connor racist.

... Thanks to Christians, 37 African countries have now made being gay illegal and a crime.....

........not to mention the modern day African Christians that were converted by Evangelicals... So many innocents being killed, abused and tortured in the name of God.

(V): Here we go again.....

The Col: Ahhh the Christians... So many South Americans suffered and died by their desire to convert in the name of God....

... and to take the gold.

The Col: That's a quote by that moron Grayson. He's an idiot. He probably had that group in mind too.

Artful Dodger: You forgot mentioning them being ruled by fundamentalist Christians

(V): ""The Republican Party of Angry White Millionaires will Rule America After the November elections along with their Nazi/Tea Party Storm Troopers. The Republicans will Repeal Healthcare Reform. The Republicans will allow Insurance Companies to Decide who Lives and who Dies. The Insurance Companies will decide how much increase Premiums and Profits Every Year. The Republican have a Healthcare Plan for All Americans who are not Rich.The Republican Plan is: Do Not Get Sick. If you get Sick Die Fast or the Health Insurance Companies will Bankrupt you Hard Working Americans and then will let you Die.""


That guy is a moron and he was voted out of office. He's a pathetic intellectual midget. Interesting that you think him worthy of a quote.

Client Amount Spent Percentage of Total[30]
1 Finance, Insurance & Real Estate $4,274,060,331 14.53%
2 Health $4,222,427,808 14.53%
3 Misc Business $4,149,842,571 14.11%
4 Communications/Electronics $3,497,881,399 11.89%
5 Energy & Natural Resources $3,104,104,518 10.55%
6 Transportation $2,245,118,222 7.63%
7 Other $2,207,772,363 7.50%
8 Ideological/Single-Issue $1,477,294,241 5.02%
9 Agribusiness $1,280,824,983 4.12%
10 Defense $1,216,469,173 4.13%
11 Construction $480,363,108 1.63%
12 Labor $427,355,408 1.45%
13 Lawyers & Lobbyists $336,170,306 1.14%

"The Republican Party of Angry White Millionaires will Rule America After the November elections along with their Nazi/Tea Party Storm Troopers. The Republicans will Repeal Healthcare Reform. The Republicans will allow Insurance Companies to Decide who Lives and who Dies. The Insurance Companies will decide how much increase Premiums and Profits Every Year. The Republican have a Healthcare Plan for All Americans who are not Rich.The Republican Plan is: Do Not Get Sick. If you get Sick Die Fast or the Health Insurance Companies will Bankrupt you Hard Working Americans and then will let you Die."

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lph7llUyDH1qeetvto1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1314476393&Signature=KK5UjMCSyNG8slIEGpOixfcJJws%3D



SO TRUE!!!

Love this cartoon

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqiaetsjqk1qeetvto1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1314476245&Signature=NqWAkISLWfiqoiC%2FxhsLH4Nb%2B4Y%3D

(V): Yeah! You googled it finally!

....According to a August 1st 2011 poll, 11% of American voters identify themselves as "very conservative", 30% as "conservative", 36% as "moderate", 15% as "liberal", and 6% as "very liberal".[20] These percentages have been fairly constant since 1990.[21]

The meaning of "conservatism" in America has little in common with the way the word is used elsewhere. As Ribuffo (2011) notes, "what Americans now call conservatism much of the world calls liberalism or neoliberalism."[22] Since the 1950s conservatism in the United States has been chiefly associated with the Republican Party. However, during the era of segregation many Southern Democrats were conservatives, and they played a key role in the Conservative Coalition that controlled Congress from 1937 to 1963.....

In defining conservatism, Reagan said: "If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals—if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is."[136] Reagan's views on government were influenced by Thomas Jefferson, especially his hostility to strong central governments.[137] "We're still Jefferson's children," he declared in 1987. "Freedom is not created by Government, nor is it a gift from those in political power. It is, in fact, secured, more than anything else, by limitations placed on those in Government".[138][139] Likewise he greatly admired and often quoted Abraham Lincoln[140]

It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S's: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism.

It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950s and 1960s.

You Might Be A Liberal If You Believe...

. that women who stay at home to raise their children are repressed by a male-dominated society, but that women who wear hijabs are expressing freedom of religion -

.If you're an "advocate" for the poor who uses "trailer trash" as an insult

•IQ tests should be used to stop the death penalty, but not to determine admission to AP classes.

•The Ten Commandments in schools will hurt the children, but “Heather Has Two Mommies” won’t.

•Spending 4 years - make that 5 years - repeating your professor’s liberal slogans is a solid education, but demanding that colleges present all view-points and actually teach the subject is “anti-intellectualism.”

•McCarthyism was wrong, but black-listing “right-wingers” from ever teaching in college is just plain old common sense. A right-winger is anyone who doesn’t toe the line on all issues.

•AIDS is caused by poverty. So is crime. And membership in the Republican party.

•Global Cooling for 10 years proves that there is global warming.

•You fly on private jets, but feel free to tell others to use only one square of toilet paper to save the environment.

•Career welfare recipients are fat because they can’t afford food.

•You preach to everyone that diversity is our greatest strength, but you paid half a million dollars more for a house in an all-white suburb than you could’ve for the same house in a black neighborhood.

•You see racist code-words in all media except in hip-hop singles such as “Kill The White People”.

•US wants to build a wall on the Mexican and not Canadian border because of racism, not because 20 million Mexicans and almost no Canadians cross into the U.S. illegally.

•There is no correlation between Islamic immigration to Europe and increased anti-Semitic attacks against European Jews.

•You bought your son a doll and your daughter a toy truck just to prove that gender is a social construct.

•You then gave your son a “time-out” for pretending that the doll is an enemy soldier. Such violence will not be accepted.

•When your 2-year-old daughter turned the truck into a “tea party” table, your immediate thought was, “I got to her too late and she was already brainwashed by society to think she’s a little woman”.

•There’s never a reason to hit a woman, unless she’s Ann Coulter or another conservative, in which case, she had it coming for having a mind of her own and disagreeing with you.

•When a Western woman travels to the Middle East, she should respect their traditions and cover up. When Moslems illegally infiltrate Europe, they have the right to expect the Westerners to adjust to them. If the Europeans don’t, Moslems have every right to riot.

•Christianity is a threat. Islam is a religion of peace.

•The Constitution allows desecration of the flag, but makes it strictly illegal to desecrate the Koran.

•You found where the right to an abortion is written in the Constitution, but cannot find where the Constitution provides for a right to bear arms.

•None of the Constitutional Rights you believe in are actually written in the U.S. Constitution.

•The First Amendment’s Freedom of Speech must take a back seat to sensitivity.

•America and Israel are the only problems in the Middle East.

•Four year old babies should be frisked at the airport because focusing on nervous young Arabs would be discriminatory.

•Hezbollah is a legitimate political party, but Republicans are just a bunch of racist haters who should never be exposed to kids or college students.

•It is wrong to kill terror leaders without a trial, but blowing up buses and airplanes is legitimate resistance.

•You aren’t unpatriotic, but you just can’t remember the last time you sided with the United States … on anything… against any country.

•Truth matters less than feelings.

•You tell anyone who’ll listen that our elections are fraudulent and then you fight tooth and nail to prevent states from requiring a photo ID to vote.

•You are more proud of Obama’s race than of John McCain’s refusal to leave his buddies behind in Vietnamese prison.

•Dan Quayle is the dumbest Vice-President ever because he believed a flash card that misspelled “potato,” but Obama is a genius despite the fact that he believes that we have more than 57 states.

•You laugh at Dan Quayle, but you still can’t figure out the difference between “your” and “you’re”.

•All recounts must continue until the Democrat takes the lead, and not a second longer.

•You announce that you will move to Canada every time a Republican wins an election.

•95% of blacks voting for a black guy is normal, but 55% of whites voting for the white candidate is a sign of how flawed our racist voting system is.

•You call yourself ‘progressive’ but oppose all progress because somebody might get fired and replaced by a cheap and more efficient computer program.

•Capitalism is the cause of poverty.

•People aren’t successful, they are privileged.

•People don’t earn. They deserve.

•The Christian Right shouldn’t impose their morality on you, but you want to impose big government on everyone else because otherwise they won’t do the right thing.

•You think that consenting adults can engage freely in every activity except capitalism.

•You think the case for global warming is proven without a shadow of a doubt, but that we need another century or two worth of evidence to figure out if capitalism and free markets work better than socialism.

•It’s obscene that oil companies are allowed to make 8.3 cents per gallon in profit with gas prices this high, but it’s ok for the government to make several times more than that in taxes.

•You are steeped in compassion, but never gave money to charity or donated blood.

•Fox News is biased, but Al Jazeerah isn’t. In fact, Fox News invented media bias.

•Rush Limbaugh and Michael Reagan are mean-spirited racists and promote hate crime, but Maxine Waters, John Conyers and Louis Farrakhan aren’t and don’t.

•Rush Limbaugh’s listeners are mindless “dittoheads,” but you have never doubted anything that you heard from Michael Moore.

•Freedom of speech means the right to scream when a conservative tries to speak in order to prevent anyone from hearing his views.

•Freedom of speech applies to terrorists, not conservative radio talk show hosts.

(V): That means you blinked.

rod03801: She's such a fake. I can't stand her. That quote is classic Pelosi. And the libs love her. They are amazingly shallow in their thinking.

Artful Dodger: I STILL LOVE Pelosi's quote " We have to pass the bill to know what's in the bill"

How ignorant is that? Which idiots voted for HER?

(V): And Jules, we're still waiting for your explanation as to why you posted a three year old video on the KKK. What was the purpose of that? Or were you just bored?

(V): Such rubbish. The "likes of Dan?" Is that a flame?

If you don't know what a liberal is, google it.

If you don't know what conservatism means, google it.

Or do we have to do all your thinking?

Iamon lyme: Is it so? Like with your analysis of socialism. So many types of socialism and you feel safe in such a broad statement?

So many outside Beck's fan club think he is a middle class red neck, or has found the pay (Murdoch says jump Beck says 'how high') better being one. And we are not just talking about ''liberals'' .. but seeing as views vary from country to country on what is a liberal and what is a conservative.. with the overuse (like the boy who cried wolf)... the word 'liberal' as you and the likes of Dan use seems pointless and too vague to have any meaning in the real world.

... I'd still like a definition of what is a conservative in America, as most involved in politics say it's a different kettle of fish to conservatism elsewhere in modern society......except maybe on the African continent.

Myth: The deficit was caused by Bush’s tax cuts.

Fact: For over four decades, 1960 through 2000, federal revenues averaged 18.2% of Gross Domestic Product and the trend was virtually flat. The final Bush tax rates became effective in 2003. In 2006 and 2007, well after the new tax rates were in effect, federal revenues were 18.2% and 18.5% of GDP, above historical levels. The federal government collected over half a trillion dollars more in 2007 than it did in 2000.

Myth: Republicans spent like drunken sailors.

Fact: Federal spending from 1960 through 2000 averaged 20.3% of GDP, with a slightly upward trend. The average over all Bush years, 2001 through 2008, was 19.6% of GDP – below the historical average. The 2001-2008 average deficit was also below the 1960-2000 average.

Myth: Republicans exploded the federal debt.

Fact: Per the US Constitution, "all bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives." Democrats controlled the House from 1955 through 1994, leaving the federal debt held by the public at 49.2% of GDP. Republicans then controlled the House from 1995 through 2006 and left it at 36.5% of GDP — below the level left by Democrat Congresses.

At the end of Bush’s presidency the debt was 40.2% of GDP. Now, two years post-Bush and four years of a Democrat Congress, the debt is 64% of GDP, the highest it’s been since Harry Truman was paying off World War II.

Myth: The deficit is due to the Iraq War.

Fact: The Congressional Budget Office calculated that the Iraq War cost $709 billion from 2003 through 2010. Total federal deficits over those eight years added up to $4.944 trillion, with the bulk of that ($2.968 trillion) added in just the last two years, after Bush was out of office.

By contrast, federal spending on education over 2003-2010 was $792 billion, and Obama’s stimulus will cost $814 billion. How often do you hear that our deficit problem was caused by education spending?

Myth: The Reagan and Bush tax cuts only benefited the rich.

Fact: According to the CBO, "The lowest three income quintiles have seen declines in their average tax rates since the early 1980s .¤.¤. The average tax rate on the top quintile has fluctuated more, with periods of increases and decreases, and was somewhat lower in 2007 than in 1979."

In fact, the top quintile (top 20% of taxpayers) paid about 25% of its income in federal taxes in 2007, about the same as it did in 1982. By contrast, the middle and bottom quintiles paid less than 15% and 5%, respectively, both lower than at any time since 1979. The bottom two quintiles had negative average income taxes – they received more in tax credits than they paid in income taxes. Per the CBO, "In 2007, about 35 percent of households did not owe any federal income taxes."

Myth: The deficit is due to military spending.

Fact: If federal military spending had been eliminated in its entirety in 2009, the deficit would still have been $776 billion, a historical high. Defense spending is less than one fifth of the federal budget and less than 5% of GDP. When the economy was doing quite well in the 1960s, defense spending was twice as high in those terms. In fact, President Bush presided over smaller defense budgets (as a fraction of GDP) than all presidents from 1941 through 1993.

Myth: "The last eight years," "the last ten years," "the last decade," "the lost decade."

Fact: From 2000 through 2007 real GDP grew 2.4% annually and real disposable personal income grew 2.8% annually. The economy added 5.5 million net new jobs in those years. The unemployment rate stood at 4.4% in May 2007, just before the newly elected, Democrat-controlled Congress raised the minimum wage.

From August 2003 through December 2007, over eight million net new jobs were created.

Fiscal year 2007 was the last one under a federal budget written by a Republican-controlled Congress, and marked the peak in real GDP, jobs, and the stock market. The bad economy of the "last ten years" was all in the last three years – under federal budgets written by a Democrat-controlled Congress.

Myth: Bush deregulated banks, causing the financial crisis. Fact: President Bush did not deregulate banks, or much of anything else. He increased staffing and spending on economic regulation more than President Clinton did. The number of pages in the Federal Register averaged more in Bush’s first term than at any prior time in US history. He signed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the most sweeping regulation of business since the New Deal.

The New York Times, no cheerleader for President Bush, said in 2003, "The Bush administration is rightly pushing for the Treasury Department to regulate the two giants [Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae], along with the network of federal home loan banks." It was Barney Frank and other Democrats who helped kill such regulation. Frank said, "These two entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not facing any kind of financial crisis."

Not a Myth: The above facts are matters of historical record. The sources of many myths are computer models rather than results from the real world. Remember the economic model that said the unemployment rate would not go above 8% if Obama’s stimulus was passed? The stimulus was passed, yet the unemployment rate went above 10% and has been above 9% for the last 19 months.

The models that say extending today’s tax rates would add to the deficit assume that tax rates have no effect on taxpayer behavior. That is an assumption virtually all economists, and most non-economists, know is false. Yet Congress requires the CBO to base its predictions on that bogus assumption.

The reality is that government spending is the problem. It is absurdly above historical levels right now and is unsustainable. It is driven by payments for individuals (64% of 2010 federal outlays) and entitlements, especially health care spending. ObamaCare did not bend the health-care cost curve down, either; it bent it up.

Bernice: good point!

Artful Dodger: It's like posting that camels fart. Yes they do. But it's not significant. ...but...but...it would be significant if you was standing "behind" them.

Iamon lyme: You're right. And for any public figure, you can always find an article or two that is critical of them. So it comes as no surprise that there are some Jews that are critical of Beck. But more appreciate him than those that do not. So it's really a minor point that Jules brings up. It's like posting that camels fart. Yes they do. But it's not significant.

(V): It's well known that many liberal American Jews will side with whatever liberal cause is before them, even if it concerns Israel. It's because of their liberal bent that many of them have little regard for the safety and status of Israel itself, so it should come as no surprise that most of that criticism of Beck would would come from them. However, your point is well taken by anyone ignorant of this.

U.S. Jews warn Israel not to get too cozy with Glenn Beck
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, says Beck is very extreme and controversial even among right-wing groups in the United States.


NEW YORK – The warm welcome extreme right-wing media personality Glenn Beck has receiving in Israel has led to criticism of the American pundit by Jewish leaders in New York.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, told Haaretz he believed that Beck was very extreme and controversial even among right-wing groups in the United States. Yoffie pointed to the Fox News television network, which had canceled Beck’s show and distanced itself from him.

Yoffie said that Beck had mocked the distress of hundreds of thousands of protesters in Israel, referring to the right-wing pundit’s comments about the tent protests in Israel earlier this month when he compared protesters’ calls for increased social benefits to those of the former Soviet Union.

According to Yoffie, Beck’s comments on the protest in Israel are a slap in the face to hundreds of thousands of protesters, and expressed dismay that such a man is holding events in Israel with the participation of cheering masses. Yoffie, who said he prefered not to speak about Beck and lend him undue prominence, said the pundit had expressed himself hatefully and rudely against President Obama, who is Israel’s important and faithful ally.

Seymour Reich, former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and a leading New York attorney, said Tuesday that he believed Beck was taking rude advantage of Israel in order to rehabilitate his television career and reputation.

Reich said he believed Israeli and Jews everywhere should be careful about embracing an extreme right-winger like Beck, who shows sympathy for Israel in order to hide his extreme-right ideology.

77% of Democrats (and Ron Paul) Voted Against Rules Of Engagement That Protect Our Troops
Andrew G. Bostom




Florida Republican Congressman John Mica offered the following morally clear Amendment (5/25/2011-H.AMDT.318 (A018) Amends H.R.1540):


Amendment requires that the rules of engagement [ROE] allow any military service personnel assigned to duty in a designated hostile fire area to have rules of engagement that fully protect their right to proactively defend themselves from hostile actions.

The results? (tallied here):

143 out of 185 Democrats present -- 77% -- voted against this amendment; 217 out of 235 Republicans present -- 92% -- voted for it.

As for the two Republicans in Congress running who are Presidential candidates, Michele Bachmann voted for the amendment; Ron Paul against it.

Übergeek 바둑이: ok....

"Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya". "

Personally, I would expect some al-Qaeda supporters to be involved. There is no strong indication at the moment that al-Qaeda is running the rebellion, just they are taking part.. which considering the region and politics is nothing strange.

Does that mean al-Qaeda will fill the power vacuum? I don't think so.

"Western governments are really naive if they think that Lybia will magically become a democracy."

I don't think they are that naive... And as it was the people doing the ground fighting rather than westerners it's going to be harder for al-Qaeda to 'recruit'. This is a popular revolution/civil war, not an invasion.

(V):

> Rebels have breached Col Muammar Gaddafi's compound in Tripoli,

There is nothing worse in this world than lies and propaganda. Looking at what has happened in Lybia makes me wonder whether our western governments are abject morons who act without thinking, or whether they are callous fascists who act only for wealth and power.

I say this because our mass media is incapable of digging at the truth of anything. I think everyone should read this article that was published as far back as March:

Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links

Some 5000 posta go I said that Al Qaeda had infiltrated the Lybian rebel movement and what our governments were doing was feeding Al Qaeda. Consider some snippets from the article:

"Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime. "

"Idriss Deby Itno, Chad's president, said al-Qaeda had managed to pillage military arsenals in the Libyan rebel zone and acquired arms, "including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries"."

"Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against "the foreign invasion" in Afghanistan, before being "captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan". He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008."

"Earlier this month, al-Qaeda issued a call for supporters to back the Libyan rebellion, which it said would lead to the imposition of "the stage of Islam" in the country."

Maybe I am really dim, but why are our governments providing money, weapons, training and air force support to a rebel movement that wants to bring Al Qaeda's values to Lybia? If al-Hasidi was captured in Afghanistan, the USA knew that he was an Al Qaeda operative. They also knew that his fighters were in Iraq fighting against and killing Coalition soldiers.

Western governments are really naive if they think that Lybia will magically become a democracy. Nato has planted the seeds of another sectarian violence quagmire by allowing Al Qaeda and its veterans from Iraq into Lybia.

"Mustafa Gheriani, a businessman and rebel spokesman, acknowledged the ragtag inefficiencies of the revolutionary councils but urged me not to believe Qaddafi’s charges of extremism. “The people here are looking to the West, not to some kind of socialist or other extreme system—that’s what we had here before,” he said. “But, if they become disappointed with the West, they may become easy prey for extremists.”
(From the New Yorker)

The West already destroyed Iraq for its oil. Now they are doing to Lybia too. Either our governments are absolute morons, or callous fascists. Either way, all I see is nothing but propaganda and lies.

First of all, isn't socialism just a nicer form of communism? The expressed ideals and proposed outcome seem pretty much the same. But, if at least in theory, it's supposed to be about even distribution of resources, wouldn't that necessarily imply a two class system? A working class and ruling class. And within those two classes there would be many levels (clases) of power and responsibility. So what's the difference between what would have to work out be some sort of corporate monarchy ruling over everyone else, to insure even distribution of resources, and any other kind of monarchy, dictatorship, etc. Aside from the high ideals I'm accustomed to hearing about, what real motivation is there to avoid despots and wanna be despots from taking over? I've never understood why anyone would believe a 'perfect' system of governing is even possible, or desirable. In a perfect universe, all matter and energy would be evenly distributed. Never mind that nothing could live in that kind of universe, only the fact that it would be perfect is relevant..

???

..But the bunny trail was cold, and unused for nearly three years. Undaunted, our hero soon re-emerged and scampered away in search of the clever and elusive Easter Bunny killer bunny.. boing?!