By DOLPH HONICKER
To you SUV owners sporting “Support Our Troops” ribbons and “God Bless America” posters plastered on the rear of your vehicles, close your cell phone and detour to the nearest newsstand to get the April 2 special issue of Newsweek.
Read “The War in the Words of the Dead.”
There are photographs of them as well -- while they were alive. Warning: It’s not easy going. Read it and weep. I did.
The families granted Newsweek permission to run these e-mails and letters. My focus is on two officers and two enlisted Marines because their stories seem to sum up the surreal nature of the Iraqi War.
Here are two excerpts from Army Col. Theodore Westhusing, the first dated April14, 2005, from Baghdad:
“It is really an eye-opener how the real person comes out over here in battle, the heroics by so many ... At times things appear suspicious with a few {Iraqis} we are dealing with, and we don’t know how they are going to act. Remember, some were Saddam’s elite army special forces and guards, who never liked us and now we work/fight side by side. There is a chance the enemy could be right beside you.”
Finally, there’s this brief note, dated May 10, less than a month later, that Westhusing wrote from Baghdad:
“Life is worthless over here to so many. Killing everywhere and always ongoing. So many people don’t care and appear to have given up. But I won’t, I need to be here to help them ...”
Westhusing, 44, died , an apparent suicide, on June 5. He was less than a month from going home.
Among the most moving letters are those hand-written that begin, “If you are reading this ...”
One of those was that of Lance Cpl. Lance Graham, 26, of San Antonio, 6-foot-5 and 240 pounds. His father says, “He made other people feel safe -- even other Marines.” He died May 7, 2005, near Haditha Dam when a pair of suicide bombers hit his convoy. Here are excerpts from the hand-printed letter (his spellings):
“Well if your reading this, I guess this deployment was a one way trip. I just have one thing to ask. Please don’t be mad at the Marine Corps. It was my choice to join & come here. I honestily belive this what I was meant to do. I don’t care what the media says we are making a difference here. Know that I did not die in vain or for some worthless cause. ... Not all the people here are bad. Don’t fill your hearts with anger & hate. ... Just know that I have God in my life & Im in a better Place & Marines guard the streets in Heaven. Who else would God trust? ...
“Semper Fi
Love Lance”
This excerpt is from Army Maj. Michael Mundell, Sept. 1, 2006, from Fallujah:
“The question has been asked ... what this place is like. Try to imagine this: if you go out in your front yard, take a weapon with you and stare REAL careful at all the neighbors’ houses. One of them may be on the roof, trying to snipe you. Also, don’t stay out too long -- someone down the road may just try to lob a few mortars at you, or drive by and fire some machine guns, or perhaps shoot an RPG rocket. ... If you get in your car to go to the grocery, you can never ever go by yourself -- you gotta have at least two cars and at least three people in each one. And make sure that at least one of your passengers is a medic. ...
“Is that a trash bag? An empty box? Or a command-detonated bomb? ... Never let any other car get close to you -- EVER. ... If they get too close ... wave a flag ... shoot a flare ... honk the horn and blink your lights. If they don’t move, or keep driving at you kill them. Period ... That is what it’s like here.”
Thirteen days later Mundell writes, “Audrey once asked me what the attitude of the troops is over here, about the war, about the President and so on. ... You can’t see what we see every day (like today, dead kids {killed by an IED} and not get a little cynical ... High-minded political phrases sound pretty hollow out here ... things look a lot different down here at the point of ‘W’’s spear. The ones at home rattling the loudest saber aren’t here helping load dead kids into and ambulance. WE are. And that just sucks.”
Lance Cpl. Anthony Butterfield, 19, enlisted straight out of high school. He and three other Marines were killed when a suicide bomber set off a propane truck in Rawah (cq) on July 29, 2006.
Here are excerpts from his unsealed “if you read this ...” letter:
“Hi Mom, Dad, Britney, Jeremy, and Bartley.
“If your getting his letter then I’m sure you’ve already heard. I’m so sorry. But I know that I’m safe now. I’m with God watching over you. I wanna tell you all some special memories I’ll always hold on too. Staying up late with you Mom watching the food channel while you rub my back, or when I was little you’d always get me a glass of chocolate milk with a lid and a straw . With you Dad going out on the sidecar and driving to volleyball tournaments. ... Brit, trying to hold my hand crossing the streets. ... Jeremy, you and me always building cool ass stuff. ... Bartley remember all those late nights when you’d come into my room and we’d just talk. ... Just know that I made it to heaven before you and we’ll see you all again.
“Your loving son, brother,
“Anthony Edward Butterfield”
And this from Maj. Mudell, Nov. 8, 2006, from Fallujah:
“... I hope that no one is making decisions about the war based on what I’m saying. I don’t know what’s going on in Baghdad or Ramadi or Mosul or anywhere else. ... I can only tell you what I see, hear, think or experience. I don’t have the vaguest idea as to who is winning this war, and I don’t care. My job is to bring home my boys and I will do whatever I have to in order to accomplish that. Lance Corporal Danny Catron, all of 19, his wife (18) and their new baby are counting on me not to screw it up here. I could care less what is going on in Baghdad. Or anywhere else.
Mundell, 47, was killed by an IED in Fallujah Jan. 5, 2007. (Corporal Catron is still in Iraq, due to return home soon).
Copyright 2007, Dolph Honicker
Friday, March 30, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Red tape clogs 'terps'way out
By DOLPH HONICKER
Poker has two inviolate axioms: (1) know when to hold and when to fold and (2) never send good money after bad.
In Iraq, President George W. Bush and the president of vice, Dick Cheney, have run roughshod over both rules.
The time for folding has long since past. In fact, it was a hand that never should have been dealt. That brings us to No. 2. In Iraq, we’re not only spending like it was Monopoly money, we’re spending our most valuable assets, boots on the ground -- some 30,000 pairs of them.
They’re volunteers. But if you polled them, most probably would prefer going to Afghanistan, where the 9/11 terrorists trained, so they could make a dent against a surging Taliban and al-Qaeda force .
Some of us, even though we were not military experts, saw the error of pulling troops from Afghanistan as we were zeroing in on Osama bin Laden and sending them to invade Iraq. It was stupid since allied forces controlled the air over Iraq and Saddam Hussein wasn’t going anywhere.
The world knows we cherry-picked faulty evidence from the likes of “Curveball,” Amad Chalibi and, my favorite, this from the archives of Newsweek, which said information about links between Iraq and al-Qaeda came from Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. “I been a shaky alibi (?)”
Imagine the immediate days post-9/11. The world was with us. We could have had half a million U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. With that show of force, Pakistan would have thrown in her lot wholeheartedly. Saddam could have been held off with our left hand. How could he hit New York with Scuds that had a range of 100 miles?
But today Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf sits on a powder keg, his will weakened. Time quotes a senior military official in Afghanistan as saying: “The bottom line is that the Taliban can do what they want in the tribal areas because the {Pakistani} army is not going after them.”
Taliban and al-Qaeda forces are settled in small groups in a heavily forested band of mountains that has virtually been conceded to them. It’s called Talibanistan. Digging them out will be like plucking fire ants one at a time.
Iraq presents a sorry tale of betrayal on our part as detailed in a lengthy New Yorker piece by George Packer. Hundreds of Iraqi translators and intelligence agents that served America, facing daily risks of having their heads chopped off, have been shafted. Many have died.
For instance, Ali spent his childhood in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma while his father completed graduate studies. Unfortunately, they returned home to Baghdad when he was 11 so his father could get his green card. The Iranian war prevented them from leaving.
Packer says Ali had to learn Arabic from scratch and “considered his American childhood a paradise lost.“ In 2003 he became an interpreter with the 82nd Airborne Division. He could not tell his family.
“Ali found that, although many soldiers were friendly, they often ignored information and advice from their Iraqi employees,” Packer writes. “Interpreters would give them names of insurgents, and nothing would happen. When Ali suggested that soldiers buy up locals’ rocket-propelled grenade launchers so they wouldn’t fall into the hands of insurgents, he was disregarded. ...“
Consider this vignette of Othman, a Sunni doctor, 29, and Laith, a Shia engineer, a few years younger, who shared a strong friendship based on a desire for the Americans to arrive and change their lives.
“Most of the people Othman and Laith knew had left Iraq,” says Packer. “House by house, Baghdad had been abandoned. Othman was considering his options: move his parents from their house (in an insurgent stronghold) to his sister’s house (in the midst of civil war); move his parents and brothers to Syria (where there was no work) and live with his friend in Jordan (going crazy with boredom while watching his savings dwindle); go to London and ask for asylum (and probably be sent back); stay in Baghdad for six more months until he could begin a scholarship that he had won to study journalism in America (or get killed waiting). Beneath his calm good humor, Othman was paralyzed -- he didn’t want to leave Baghdad and his family, but staying had become impossible. Every day, he changed his mind.”
As for Laith: “Sometimes I feel like we’re standing in line for a ticket, waiting to die.”
Many of the young Iraqis who signed up with the U.S. military to become translators, or “terps” as the soldiers called them, “had learned English,” says Packer, “from American movies and music, and from listening secretly to the BBC.”
Otherwise, under Saddam, as one said, it “was a one-way road leading to nothing.”
Ironically, that’s where it stands today. Red tape and indifference clog their every step. Try to teach a soldier cultural dos and don’ts, he won’t listen. You’re an Iraqi and untrustworthy. Just translate for me, mother.
Iraqi “terps” received inferior or no body army, leading Baathists to make a persuasive case that Americans treat all Iraqis badly, even those who work for them.
L. Paul Bremer III, as the virtual dictator in Iraq for 14 months, ditched the entire Iraqi army, threw hundreds of thousands out of work and lit the fuse that has led to today’s chaos. He spoke no Arabic and knew nothing about the Middle East. By the time he was forced to fold his hand, it was too late.
As the banner across the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln the summer of 2003 so blithely put it: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
Sooner or later -- a year, four years, twenty years -- we’ll be out. What happens then to all the Iraqi “terps” who served us at great risk but have been fingered by both Sunni and Shia insurgents as collaborators?
Many of them now seek safe flight ahead of the eventual exodus, before heads roll. They’re snarled in red tape.
It’s Catch-22. We can’t tell you when we’re leaving. It would tip off the enemy. Anyway, American personnel will leave first. You’re on your own. Catch a chopper out, if you can.
With friends like us, who needs enemies?
Copyright 2007, Dolph Honicker
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Get ready for the long, long haul
By DOLPH HONICKER
What would happen in Iraq if American troops suddenly withdrew tomorrow and the Green Zone became a giant Motel 6 to house displaced Iraqis?
Chaos would erupt. But not necessarily in Iraq. That country already has its own brand of chaos which its own people must end, just as a minority of Americans overthrew the first King George in the 1700s.
If Sunnis and Shi’ites wake up tomorrow to find their streets free of roadblocks, troops kicking in doors, Humvees, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, tanks, jet fighters roaring overhead, and helicopters chopping up the desert air, the tribes might actually shout, “Praise Allah for delivering us from the infidels!” They’d probably exchange high-fives and move back into their formerly mixed neighborhoods.
The real chaos would break out in America.
Stocks in Halliburton, Lockheed, General Dynamics, Boeing, Raytheon and other defense firms would plummet, with layoffs in the millions.
Silicon Valley would panic.
China, Japan and other foreign nations would demand payment of trillions of dollars in loans that the U.S. under Bush/Cheney has used to finance wars and deficits and prop up the economy.
The GOP accused the Democratic Party of being the one of “tax and spend.“ Is it worse than being a party that chews ever so lightly on the upper crust to borrow and spend?
If an Iraqi pullout occurred tomorrow, you’d have to dodge CEOs leaping off tall buildings.
Tiger Woods might have to sell his yacht and play tournaments with second-hand driving range balls.
Paris Hilton might shave her head and sell her hair to cancer victims.
THINK.
Think back to 1929 and the Great Depression. Millions in bread lines. Massive runs on banks.
By 1933, 26.6 percent of Americans were unemployed. Those still working were paid less. Factory workers were forced to work twice as hard for the same wages.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made noble efforts to bring the country to its feet with such alphabet agencies as the WPA (Works Progress Administration), the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), and the NRA (National Recovery Agency).
He declared a bank holiday to prevent devastating withdrawals.
FDR’s efforts made a dent in the Depression, but it took World War II with the U.S. serving as the Arsenal for Democracy to bring about full employment.
And we’ve been on a wartime economy ever since -- from the Cold War with the Soviet Union, to the Korean Conflict, to the Vietnam War, to our mighty victory in Grenada over a fifth-rate police force and a bunch of Cuban workers building a runway, to Bosnia, Somalia, Panama, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and now the quagmire in Iraq.
Did I leave out any?
Sadly, we’re a nation made up of intelligent people who can be fooled some of the time but seem to catch on only when it’s almost too late to play catch-up.
Barack Obama and John McCain spoke the truth -- before they tripped over themselves apologizing -- terming the loss of troops in Iraq a waste. True. Those in uniforms didn’t give up their lives for mom, the flag and apple pie. Their lives were ripped from them by IEDs, sniper bullets, RPGs and stress-induced suicides. Wasted!
If is the biggest little word in the English language.
If Adolf Hitler had sent his Panzer divisions into Russia a month earlier, we’d be speaking German today. If Japan had followed up after its Pearl Harbor attack, we’d likely be bilingual -- speaking German and Japanese.
And if George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Pearle and the other neocons had not been so fixated on invading Iraq even before 9/11 and concentrated on taming the Taliban and capturing Osma bin Laden THINK of all the lives and money that would have been saved.
Should we leave Iraq tomorrow? Official numbers answer in the affirmative.
President Bush is sending 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. But, wait! He’s supplementing that with 4,700 support troops for a total of 26,200 troops, and maybe more. According to Pentagon assessments, Iraqi security forces now number 357,400.
That adds up to 383,600. That should be enough to start easing our forces out, if not tomorrow, then by mid-summer.
All this is a dream, of course. Truth is, we’ll probably have boots on the ground there for 30 more years, long after my bones have turned to dust. How else would our economy survive?
And then there’s the oil, you know.
Copyright 2007, Dolph Honicker
What would happen in Iraq if American troops suddenly withdrew tomorrow and the Green Zone became a giant Motel 6 to house displaced Iraqis?
Chaos would erupt. But not necessarily in Iraq. That country already has its own brand of chaos which its own people must end, just as a minority of Americans overthrew the first King George in the 1700s.
If Sunnis and Shi’ites wake up tomorrow to find their streets free of roadblocks, troops kicking in doors, Humvees, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, tanks, jet fighters roaring overhead, and helicopters chopping up the desert air, the tribes might actually shout, “Praise Allah for delivering us from the infidels!” They’d probably exchange high-fives and move back into their formerly mixed neighborhoods.
The real chaos would break out in America.
Stocks in Halliburton, Lockheed, General Dynamics, Boeing, Raytheon and other defense firms would plummet, with layoffs in the millions.
Silicon Valley would panic.
China, Japan and other foreign nations would demand payment of trillions of dollars in loans that the U.S. under Bush/Cheney has used to finance wars and deficits and prop up the economy.
The GOP accused the Democratic Party of being the one of “tax and spend.“ Is it worse than being a party that chews ever so lightly on the upper crust to borrow and spend?
If an Iraqi pullout occurred tomorrow, you’d have to dodge CEOs leaping off tall buildings.
Tiger Woods might have to sell his yacht and play tournaments with second-hand driving range balls.
Paris Hilton might shave her head and sell her hair to cancer victims.
THINK.
Think back to 1929 and the Great Depression. Millions in bread lines. Massive runs on banks.
By 1933, 26.6 percent of Americans were unemployed. Those still working were paid less. Factory workers were forced to work twice as hard for the same wages.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made noble efforts to bring the country to its feet with such alphabet agencies as the WPA (Works Progress Administration), the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), and the NRA (National Recovery Agency).
He declared a bank holiday to prevent devastating withdrawals.
FDR’s efforts made a dent in the Depression, but it took World War II with the U.S. serving as the Arsenal for Democracy to bring about full employment.
And we’ve been on a wartime economy ever since -- from the Cold War with the Soviet Union, to the Korean Conflict, to the Vietnam War, to our mighty victory in Grenada over a fifth-rate police force and a bunch of Cuban workers building a runway, to Bosnia, Somalia, Panama, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and now the quagmire in Iraq.
Did I leave out any?
Sadly, we’re a nation made up of intelligent people who can be fooled some of the time but seem to catch on only when it’s almost too late to play catch-up.
Barack Obama and John McCain spoke the truth -- before they tripped over themselves apologizing -- terming the loss of troops in Iraq a waste. True. Those in uniforms didn’t give up their lives for mom, the flag and apple pie. Their lives were ripped from them by IEDs, sniper bullets, RPGs and stress-induced suicides. Wasted!
If is the biggest little word in the English language.
If Adolf Hitler had sent his Panzer divisions into Russia a month earlier, we’d be speaking German today. If Japan had followed up after its Pearl Harbor attack, we’d likely be bilingual -- speaking German and Japanese.
And if George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Pearle and the other neocons had not been so fixated on invading Iraq even before 9/11 and concentrated on taming the Taliban and capturing Osma bin Laden THINK of all the lives and money that would have been saved.
Should we leave Iraq tomorrow? Official numbers answer in the affirmative.
President Bush is sending 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. But, wait! He’s supplementing that with 4,700 support troops for a total of 26,200 troops, and maybe more. According to Pentagon assessments, Iraqi security forces now number 357,400.
That adds up to 383,600. That should be enough to start easing our forces out, if not tomorrow, then by mid-summer.
All this is a dream, of course. Truth is, we’ll probably have boots on the ground there for 30 more years, long after my bones have turned to dust. How else would our economy survive?
And then there’s the oil, you know.
Copyright 2007, Dolph Honicker
Wanted: Rehire gay Arabic linguists
By DOLPH HONICKER
By shooting from the lip, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, put his foot squarely in his mouth before clumsily trying to extricate it.
The general said he erred and should not have voiced his personal view that homosexuality was immoral. Instead, he said he shold have stuck with the military’s policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
But the toothpaste was out of the tube, too late to cram back in.
It’s almost understandable. Among old-time warriors, personal views are deeply ingrained and sometimes slip out, which is one reason why the war in Iraq has faltered so miserably.
Another general began preaching the evangelical gospel before he was reined in.
What’s so wrong about the country’s top general raising the gay spectacle? For starters, consider this: Arabic linguists are sorely needed by an occupying force (us) in Iraq, yet 757 or 8 percent of gays discharged “held critical occupations,” meaning the kinds of jobs the Pentagon offers selective reenlistment bonuses. This included, says an ABC News report, 322 gays with “skills in an important language such as Arabic, Farsi or Korean.”
Among those given the boot were 55 fluent in Arabic.
In all, some 9,500 gays and lesbians have been discharged. That’s roughly a division of troops, almost half the “surge” that President George W. Bush is introducing into the maelstrom.
In February of this year, Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) broached the idea to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to rehire the gay linguists and form them into a platoon.
Cathleen Glover might be among the first to re-up and join that platoon. She learned Arabic at the prestigious Army Language Institute (ALI) in Monterey, Calif. She graduated in 2002 when the Army was suffering from a critical shortage of linguists.
But two years later, after voluntarily signing a statement that she was a lesbian, Miss Glover, 26, was dismissed from the Army and wound up at an $11-an-hour job with a pool-maintenance company at the Sri Lankan ambassador’s residence.
Bleu Copas, who grew up in Johnson City, Tenn., listened to his daddy’s military stories. After 9/11, he was inspired to join the Army. He also was sent to ALI and soon began working in military intelligence.
He told ABC: “It is indisputable that the work that my specific job does is one of the most important in military. It is very difficult to keep tabs on all the different enemies.”
But someone -- he never learned who -- outed him, which led to his discharge.
Back to Gen. Pace, whose rows of ribbons prove that he has never shied from defending his country from foreign enemies, even ones that never posed a threat to us. It appears to be a bogyman of a domestic variety that shifts his eyes off the target.
For the record, my wife and I have been married for more than 50 years, have four adult kids who don’t smoke or do drugs, and six above average grandkids. We've had a number of homosexual and lesbian friends. I have worked with them on newspapers. Not once did they prove threatening.
So, Gen. Pace, get over your phobia. Give Congressman Ackerman his platoon.
Copyright 2007, Dolph Honicker
Let’s Create a Manhattan Energy Project
By DOLPH HONICKER
Democrats seek to slap a tax on the obscene windfall profits of U.S. oil oligarchs. Republicans brag that gasoline prices have fallen.
Where are the courageous Congressional voices who call for an increase in gasoline taxes of $2 to even $3 a gallon over, say, a 4-year period?
This would force Detroit to get serious about playing catch-up with the Japanese in producing energy efficient cars instead of going for “curb appeal“ and horsepower.
Considering that Scandinavians pay some $7.50 a gallon and Brits pay a shade less, Americans could learn to car-pool and use mass transit until Detroit gets the message.
Each political party professes a love for alternative forms of energy, ways to end what President George W. Bush labels our “addiction to oil.” But neither seems willing to take giant steps to end that addiction.
Rather than engaging in symbolic measures such as raising the minimum raise and cutting the interest rates on college tuition loans, Newsweek writer Robert J. Samuelson recommends more restrictive measures. For instance, he would have Congress enact an energy tax equivalent of $2 a gallon on gasoline enacted over a 6-year period.
He also proposes upping federal fuel-efficiency standards for cars from the present 27.5 miles per gallon to 40 mpg by 2020.
That’s too little and too late.
Toyota has a proven Prius hybrid on the road that gets 50 mpg and a Camry hybrid for those who prefer a larger model. Our 2003 Honda 4-door hybrid gets 42 to 48 mpg. Al Gore drives a Lexus hybrid.
General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Will American motorists wait 13 years for Detroit to get its act together while Japan continues to improve on its hybrid and other non-guzzling models?
Samuelson also proposes that Congress open the Arctic National Wildlife Refugee to oil production.
“This,” he says, “would help offset declining U.S. output elsewhere.”
Besides taking years to develop while endangering wildlife in the area, many experts say the oil produced would pan out in about a year. Republicans want to build more refineries.
Neither plan takes us off the oil standard. Paired, they make as much sense as running our vehicles on ethanol, which cost more to produce than regular gas, raises corn prices and takes food out of the mouths of babes.
Until scientists can distill alcohol from kudzu and straw, ethanol is a long-term losing proposition.
Well-paying jobs, not the minimum wage variety, are needed to pull American middle class workers out of the doldrums. They can be found in a Manhattan Project on alternative forms of energy.
Trim the National Aeronautics Space Agency into little more than a holding pattern. Use those brains to develop more efficient photovoltaic cells that turn sunbeams into electricity. It’s possible that nanotechnology could develop photovoltaic cells so tiny they could be embedded in paint, applied to a roof and provide a family’s entire electric needs.
Meanwhile, more efficient solar panels are in the offing.
Driving around Hilo in Hawaii last year, we spotted no more than three solar panels on the roofs of houses in a land where the sun shines almost the year round..
What a waste of solar power!
A Manhattan Energy Project (MEP) could find means to produce portable hydrogen units for clean hydrogen-powered vehicles now stymied by high costs and the large storage space required for hydrogen.
Put windmill farms where the wind is steady.
Britain has found marine turbines placed offshore a reliable source of electricity. The tide comes in and the tide goes out and the turbines turn. So far, there have been no adverse effects.
One of the greatest energy-saving methods is low-tech -- proper insulation and roofing.
Kick our oil addiction and we would not need a giant military to go into Iraq to “protect our oil lines” or into Iran or Nigeria, two of the most recent mentioned target possibilities. Saudi Arabia would be reduced to exporting dates to the U.S. instead of oil.
NASA scientists and engineers are a boon. Let’s tap their brains to solve earthly problems while we still have a planet. The moon and Mars won’t go away.
Copyright 2007, Dolph Honicker
Democrats seek to slap a tax on the obscene windfall profits of U.S. oil oligarchs. Republicans brag that gasoline prices have fallen.
Where are the courageous Congressional voices who call for an increase in gasoline taxes of $2 to even $3 a gallon over, say, a 4-year period?
This would force Detroit to get serious about playing catch-up with the Japanese in producing energy efficient cars instead of going for “curb appeal“ and horsepower.
Considering that Scandinavians pay some $7.50 a gallon and Brits pay a shade less, Americans could learn to car-pool and use mass transit until Detroit gets the message.
Each political party professes a love for alternative forms of energy, ways to end what President George W. Bush labels our “addiction to oil.” But neither seems willing to take giant steps to end that addiction.
Rather than engaging in symbolic measures such as raising the minimum raise and cutting the interest rates on college tuition loans, Newsweek writer Robert J. Samuelson recommends more restrictive measures. For instance, he would have Congress enact an energy tax equivalent of $2 a gallon on gasoline enacted over a 6-year period.
He also proposes upping federal fuel-efficiency standards for cars from the present 27.5 miles per gallon to 40 mpg by 2020.
That’s too little and too late.
Toyota has a proven Prius hybrid on the road that gets 50 mpg and a Camry hybrid for those who prefer a larger model. Our 2003 Honda 4-door hybrid gets 42 to 48 mpg. Al Gore drives a Lexus hybrid.
General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Will American motorists wait 13 years for Detroit to get its act together while Japan continues to improve on its hybrid and other non-guzzling models?
Samuelson also proposes that Congress open the Arctic National Wildlife Refugee to oil production.
“This,” he says, “would help offset declining U.S. output elsewhere.”
Besides taking years to develop while endangering wildlife in the area, many experts say the oil produced would pan out in about a year. Republicans want to build more refineries.
Neither plan takes us off the oil standard. Paired, they make as much sense as running our vehicles on ethanol, which cost more to produce than regular gas, raises corn prices and takes food out of the mouths of babes.
Until scientists can distill alcohol from kudzu and straw, ethanol is a long-term losing proposition.
Well-paying jobs, not the minimum wage variety, are needed to pull American middle class workers out of the doldrums. They can be found in a Manhattan Project on alternative forms of energy.
Trim the National Aeronautics Space Agency into little more than a holding pattern. Use those brains to develop more efficient photovoltaic cells that turn sunbeams into electricity. It’s possible that nanotechnology could develop photovoltaic cells so tiny they could be embedded in paint, applied to a roof and provide a family’s entire electric needs.
Meanwhile, more efficient solar panels are in the offing.
Driving around Hilo in Hawaii last year, we spotted no more than three solar panels on the roofs of houses in a land where the sun shines almost the year round..
What a waste of solar power!
A Manhattan Energy Project (MEP) could find means to produce portable hydrogen units for clean hydrogen-powered vehicles now stymied by high costs and the large storage space required for hydrogen.
Put windmill farms where the wind is steady.
Britain has found marine turbines placed offshore a reliable source of electricity. The tide comes in and the tide goes out and the turbines turn. So far, there have been no adverse effects.
One of the greatest energy-saving methods is low-tech -- proper insulation and roofing.
Kick our oil addiction and we would not need a giant military to go into Iraq to “protect our oil lines” or into Iran or Nigeria, two of the most recent mentioned target possibilities. Saudi Arabia would be reduced to exporting dates to the U.S. instead of oil.
NASA scientists and engineers are a boon. Let’s tap their brains to solve earthly problems while we still have a planet. The moon and Mars won’t go away.
Copyright 2007, Dolph Honicker
Would Thomas Jefferson want a nuclear plant?
By DOLPH HONICKER
People are so tired of dealing with two-foot midgets, you give them someone two foot four and they start proclaiming him a giant.
--StudsTerkel
After 43 years in the newspaper trade, I’ve seen any number of shooting stars burst across the sky only to fizzle into swampland. Former Secretary of State Colin Powel, a decent man, a warrior, shot himself in the foot carrying water for President George W. Bush in leaky aluminum tubes before the UN. Security Council.
George McGovern, a kind, decent soul, a former B-17 Flying Fortress pilot during World War II, was shot down by Richard Milhous Nixon, a Navy supply officer and poker player who returned home with a $10,000 kitty that he’d won off combat pilots to launch his race for Congress, painting his opponent as the “Pink Lady.”
“I won‘t say that my opponent is a Communist, but ...”
And then there‘s U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the latest rising star who, after a brilliant and progressive career in the Illinois State Legislature, now in the race for president. Meanwhile, there’s been talk of drafting Condoleezza Rice and Ophra to run for the White House.
We should draft the daughters of George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and send them to Iraq before even thinking of draft movements for Oprah and Condi.
Ken Silverstein, writing in the November 2006 issue of Harper’s, says: “After a quarter century when the Democratic Party to which he belongs has moved steadily to the right, and the political system in general has become roughly dominated by the corporate perspective, the first requirement of electoral success is now the ability to raise staggering sums of money. “
For Obama it was like pulling that first olive out of the bottle -- the rest popped out easily.
“The first $250,000 I raised was like pulling teeth,” Obama tells Silverstein. “No Democratic donors knew me ... then we sort of clicked into the public consciousness.”
There are questions whether Obama’s idealism trailed him from the Illinois Legislature to the Beltway.
Silverstein quotes the senator: “Since the founding, the American political tradition has been reformist, not revolutionary. What that means is that for a political leader to get things done, he or she ideally should be ahead of the curve, but not too far ahead. I want to push the envelope but make sure I have enough folks with me that I’m not rendered impotent.”
If this sounds like Jim Hightower’s axiom that the only thing in the middle of the road is a yellow line and dead armadillos, then so be it.
Obama’s list of donors would be the envy of GOP heavy hitters: corporate law and lobbying firms ... Wall Streeters such as JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. Most disturbing is his fourth largest patron, the Illinois-based Exelon Corp., the nation’s leading nuclear operator.
It has donated $74,350 to his campaigns. A quid per quo?
“During debate on the 2005 energy bill,” says Silverstein, “Obama helped to vote down an amendment that would have killed vast loan guarantees for power-plant operators to develop new energy projects” (read nuclear). “The loan guarantees were called ‘one of the worst provisions in this massive piece of legislation’ by Taxpayers for Common Sense and Citizens Against Government Waste; the public will not only pay millions of dollars in loan costs but will risk losing billions of dollars if the companies default.”
It’s not a question of what would Jesus do. But would Thomas Jefferson, who said the roots of democracy needed to be fed by the blood of revolution every now and then, want a nuclear plant built next door to Monticello?
Copyright 2007, Dolph Honicker
Monday, March 5, 2007
Not Interested in the Hereafter
By DOLPH HONICKER
If you can’t annoy someone, there’s little point in writing.
-- Kingsley Amis
Frankly, I don’t care if Hillary Clinton is a Muslim or Mitt Romney a Hindu. So what if Barrack Obama is Roman Catholic and Rudy Giuliami a Mormon. It matters not if John Edwards is a Shinto and John McCain a Buddhist.
I’m not interested in their piety or their views on the hereafter. I want to know specifically what they plan to do about the here and now.
In fact, if one of them could present a viable plan to end the Iraq War within three months after his/her inauguration, that person could announce that he/she was a devout atheist and win my vote.
For what hath religion wrought besides one Islamic tribe, the Sunnis, engaged in a bloodletting with another, the Shiites?
I offer one other example of what religion has wrought and unwrought. Ava Lowery is a 16-year-old Alabama girl who protests the Iraq War through her web site. On it she offers short films which she calls “animations.”
Created in March 2005, her web site was getting more than 80,000 hits a month by July 2005 and a high of more than 2 million hits in July 2006.
Ava is home-schooled, has family serving in Iraq, leans Democratic and has been interviewed on CNN. The New York Times and Rolling Stone have written articles about her.
When she turned 16, she organized a peace rally in the state capitol building in Montgomery, the Cradle of the Confederacy.
Her raw films are called “someones” -- a string of bloodied U.S. soldiers interspersed with those of bloodied Iraqi citizens and soldiers with stark black-and-white block captions “SOMEONE’S CHILD,” “SOMEONE’S PARENT,” “SOMEONE’S BEST FRIEND.”
Of course there are other issues my candidate would have to zero in on: global warming, health care, education, restoring our vanishing industrial base, the inequity of the tax burden, disappearing pensions, Social Security, ensuring that our veterans don’t get the Walter Reed shaft, giving unions a level playing field, mending our tattered Constitution and, yes, soaking the rich (why can’t a billionaire learn to be comfortable on half his wealth?).
But back to Ava Lowery.
Along with snapshots, her web site runs quotes from our leaders.
“I don’t know of anybody that I can think of who has contended that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons.” Dick Cheney, June 24, 2003.
“Bring ‘em on.” George W. Bush, July 2, 2003.
While Ava’s most ardent backers have been soldiers and their families, this girl, this devout Christian girl, has received death threats such as, “It’s people like you who need to {expletive deleted} die and get raped while your corpse rots in the sun.”
And:
“Are you a muslem {sic} terrorist?”
Sadly, her most vitriolic attackers proclaim to be Christians.
Before Bush decides to invade Iran, perhaps using remnants from the Mississippi Boy Scouts, he should let that country bleed a little bit. I gleaned this item from a recent issue of The Week magazine, via The Wall Street Journal:
“Iran, one of the world’s largest oil producers, had to import more than $7 billion of gasoline over the past year and may soon begin rationing gas. The country’s aging refineries cannot keep up with the demands of the booming consumer economy.
Getting back to our theme were these poll numbers from The Week:
24 percent of Americans say they would not vote for a Mormon (such as Romney) if their party nominated one for president.
30 percent say they would not vote for someone who’s been married three times (Giuliani).
42 percent wouldn’t vote for someone who is 72 years old (which McCain will be in 2008).
43 percent say they wouldn’t vote for a homosexual.
53 percent wouldn’t vote for an atheist.
There goes my vote.
Copyright 2007, Dolph Honicker
Impeachment evidence is laid out, but ...
By DOLPH HONICKER
“F*** Saddam. We’re taking him out .“
--March 2002, President George W. Bush poking his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
A foundation for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney has been laid with a strong structure in place. All that’s needed is for courageous congressional carpenters to hammer in the final nails.
An over abundance of impeachable evidence can be found in George W. Bush versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying.
But this 198-page book with 8 and a half pages of endnotes, compiled by the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff with an introduction by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson and a foreword by Rep. John Conyers Jr., will go nowhere.
In a moment, I’ll tell you why.
Let’s go back to Jan. 26, 1998 when the neo-conservative group Project for the New American Century called on President Clinton for “the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.” The neocons, urged the U.S. to go to war alone, denigrating the United Nations. It was signed by 18 people -- ten of them, including Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, became members of the Bush administration.
If you suspected that oil lay at the bottom of it all, you guessed correctly.
In February 2001, White House officials consulted with outsiders on possible replacements for Saddam and means to exploit his oil fields. In a memo titled “Plan for post-Saddam Iraq,” troop requirements, war crimes tribunals and “apportioning Iraq’s oil wealth” are discussed.”
A month later, the Pentagon circulated a document titled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,” listing 30 countries with interests in Iraq’s oil fields.
Moving on, we come to Bush’s first overt violation of the Constitution.
“By the end of July (2002), Bush had approved some 30 projects that would eventually cost $700 million,” documents show, while “. . . Congress, which is supposed to control the purse strings, had no real knowledge or involvement, had not even been notified that the Pentagon wanted to reprogram money” to Iraq that had been appropriated for Afghanistan.
The Downing Street Minutes prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair show that while Bush was gung-ho for war, “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin.”
And there was no morning after pill. Or, as British National Security Adviser David Manning put it: “what happens on the morning after?”
Since there was no legal reason for a preemptive invasion of Iraq, Wolfowitz said, “For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction.”
Andrew Card, who was then White House chief of staff, commenting in August 2002 on the formation of the White House Iraq Group (WHG) to market the war, said: “From a marketing point of view . . . you don’t introduce new products in August. Blair went along, telling Parliament, “The optimal times to start action are in the spring.”
The war began March 30, 2003, the first day of spring.
Ah, those damned French!
Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, President Jacques top adviser, warned Rice in January 2003 that unrest would no doubt erupt among Iraq’s many ethnic group with increased terror. Rice pooh-poohed his every objection.
How low would the administration sink to launch a misguided war?
* It wiretapped phone calls and e-mails of U.N. Security Council members, threatening “unpleasant economic consequences of standing up to the U.S.”
* It exposed the identity of a CIA undercover agent, Valarie Plame, wife of former Ambassador Wilson (the I. Scooter Libby trial, an offshoot, is winding up at this writing).
* In April, 2002, the U.S, delegation to the U.N. put the squeeze on Jose Buistani, a Brazilian diplomat and former director of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, for pleading for the conference to decide whether genuine multilateralism “will be replaced by unilateralism in a multilateral disguise.” The U.S. strong-armed delegates by threatening to withhold its dues -- 22 percent of the budget -- and that body caved in. Bustani was let go.
* One of the most egregious acts occurred when Jacques Baute, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, determined that the Nigerian documents alluding to the sale of yellow cake uranium to Iraq were false and delivered his report to IAEA Director-General Mohammed ElBaradei who in turn presented the conclusions to the Security Council. Cheney blasted ElBaradei. The latter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
* Meanwhile, there have been three times as many terrorist attacks outside Iraq than in the three years before.
There’s more, much more. But ironclad evidence will go for naught. Why? Blame the 2008 election.
If Bush and Cheney were impeached, Nancy Polosi would become president. And that would screw up all the plans laid by mice and men and a woman.
Copyright 2007, Dolph Honicker
“F*** Saddam. We’re taking him out .“
--March 2002, President George W. Bush poking his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
A foundation for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney has been laid with a strong structure in place. All that’s needed is for courageous congressional carpenters to hammer in the final nails.
An over abundance of impeachable evidence can be found in George W. Bush versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying.
But this 198-page book with 8 and a half pages of endnotes, compiled by the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff with an introduction by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson and a foreword by Rep. John Conyers Jr., will go nowhere.
In a moment, I’ll tell you why.
Let’s go back to Jan. 26, 1998 when the neo-conservative group Project for the New American Century called on President Clinton for “the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.” The neocons, urged the U.S. to go to war alone, denigrating the United Nations. It was signed by 18 people -- ten of them, including Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, became members of the Bush administration.
If you suspected that oil lay at the bottom of it all, you guessed correctly.
In February 2001, White House officials consulted with outsiders on possible replacements for Saddam and means to exploit his oil fields. In a memo titled “Plan for post-Saddam Iraq,” troop requirements, war crimes tribunals and “apportioning Iraq’s oil wealth” are discussed.”
A month later, the Pentagon circulated a document titled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,” listing 30 countries with interests in Iraq’s oil fields.
Moving on, we come to Bush’s first overt violation of the Constitution.
“By the end of July (2002), Bush had approved some 30 projects that would eventually cost $700 million,” documents show, while “. . . Congress, which is supposed to control the purse strings, had no real knowledge or involvement, had not even been notified that the Pentagon wanted to reprogram money” to Iraq that had been appropriated for Afghanistan.
The Downing Street Minutes prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair show that while Bush was gung-ho for war, “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin.”
And there was no morning after pill. Or, as British National Security Adviser David Manning put it: “what happens on the morning after?”
Since there was no legal reason for a preemptive invasion of Iraq, Wolfowitz said, “For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction.”
Andrew Card, who was then White House chief of staff, commenting in August 2002 on the formation of the White House Iraq Group (WHG) to market the war, said: “From a marketing point of view . . . you don’t introduce new products in August. Blair went along, telling Parliament, “The optimal times to start action are in the spring.”
The war began March 30, 2003, the first day of spring.
Ah, those damned French!
Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, President Jacques top adviser, warned Rice in January 2003 that unrest would no doubt erupt among Iraq’s many ethnic group with increased terror. Rice pooh-poohed his every objection.
How low would the administration sink to launch a misguided war?
* It wiretapped phone calls and e-mails of U.N. Security Council members, threatening “unpleasant economic consequences of standing up to the U.S.”
* It exposed the identity of a CIA undercover agent, Valarie Plame, wife of former Ambassador Wilson (the I. Scooter Libby trial, an offshoot, is winding up at this writing).
* In April, 2002, the U.S, delegation to the U.N. put the squeeze on Jose Buistani, a Brazilian diplomat and former director of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, for pleading for the conference to decide whether genuine multilateralism “will be replaced by unilateralism in a multilateral disguise.” The U.S. strong-armed delegates by threatening to withhold its dues -- 22 percent of the budget -- and that body caved in. Bustani was let go.
* One of the most egregious acts occurred when Jacques Baute, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, determined that the Nigerian documents alluding to the sale of yellow cake uranium to Iraq were false and delivered his report to IAEA Director-General Mohammed ElBaradei who in turn presented the conclusions to the Security Council. Cheney blasted ElBaradei. The latter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
* Meanwhile, there have been three times as many terrorist attacks outside Iraq than in the three years before.
There’s more, much more. But ironclad evidence will go for naught. Why? Blame the 2008 election.
If Bush and Cheney were impeached, Nancy Polosi would become president. And that would screw up all the plans laid by mice and men and a woman.
Copyright 2007, Dolph Honicker
What's Under the Curtain?
By DOLPH HONICKER
God is always depicted as an Ancient Mariner sort of figure with a long flowing white robe, sitting on a throne. No wings. He doesn’t need them. He’s going nowhere. He’s already there.
Preachers, priests, rabbis and shamans say God simultaneously monitors the thoughts of the earth’s billions each nanosecond - from Osama bin Laden to George W. Bush to that cute jogger in an Auburn sweatshirt and tights who waved and smiled at Mr. Dickens, our adopted golden retriever, as she jogged past the other day.
Did God actually take time from the furies of the day to read those fleeting thoughts of mine as I swiveled to admire the retreating picture of bouncing long-legged health? Will God reveal those thoughts to my beloved wife Jeannine of these many decades, and will I go straight to hell without passing Go even though I did not turn into a pillar of salt as I thought those thoughts?
At least I beheld real flesh. What loathsome thoughts must have crossed the twisted mind of former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft as he beheld the 60-plus-year-old bare aluminum bosom of the Spirit of Justice and a male figure symbolizing the Majesty of Justice?
Did God command Ashcroft to order $8,000 worth of blue drapes in lieu of a mammoth bra as cover to prevent him from becoming embarrassingly aroused at a press conference especially if Jeff Gannon of the gay web site was present?
Wouldn’t it have been more cost effective to have imported blue burqas shed by freed Afghan women?
I digress.
You’d think that even a divine hard drive would burn up keeping track of quadzillions of thoughts zinging through cyberspace monitoring the thoughts of billions every second, some good, some bad, some mean and downright nasty.
Why such divine curiosity?
Doesn’t God have enough to do picking the winners of high school football games, guiding tornadoes into trailer parks, unleashing 9.0
earthquakes followed by 12-nation tsunamis and other unholy practical jokes to be concerned with my occasional dirty thoughts?
I’m a man, too. I simply couldn’t hack it. What’s the point? My brain would implode. There’s other fish to fry: unread books to read plus twice-read classics that call for rereading, stories to write, inside straights to draw to, another royal flush to shoot for -- I’ve hit a couple. So you see, keeping up with 52 cards is the limit of my mathematical skills and curiosity.
But Eve? Women? Their minds are like sponges. Their curiosities know no bounds. They want to know it all. These dear, cat-like creatures are born curious.
When the Wizard of Oz thundered, the Tin Man rattled, the Scarecrow shook and the Lion cowed; it was little Dorothy who lifted the curtain and exposed the Wizard as a fraud. Women are like that.
And once they found their tongues, women loved to spread the Word - whether it was true or false. Men erroneously dismiss this as “gossip.”
We forget that before computers, the fastest form of communication was tellawomanasecret.
It goes without saying that women are more organized. We men can’t pick up our socks on a bet or ever find two that match.
Logic should convince us that the five major religions - Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism -- err grossly in the fallacy of male gods. Yes, there’s a man on the moon. Men have even left their footprints on its surface. But the moon is barren, as is Mars, named for the Roman god of war.
Think. Who nurtures us? Mother Nature.
Whose bosom gives us her final warm embrace? Mother Earth.
Porgy and Bess sums it up: “Th’ things you’re liable to read in th’ Bible, they ain’t necessarily so.”
Don’t look up. Look down. God is a woman.
Copyright 2007, Dolph Honicker
God is always depicted as an Ancient Mariner sort of figure with a long flowing white robe, sitting on a throne. No wings. He doesn’t need them. He’s going nowhere. He’s already there.
Preachers, priests, rabbis and shamans say God simultaneously monitors the thoughts of the earth’s billions each nanosecond - from Osama bin Laden to George W. Bush to that cute jogger in an Auburn sweatshirt and tights who waved and smiled at Mr. Dickens, our adopted golden retriever, as she jogged past the other day.
Did God actually take time from the furies of the day to read those fleeting thoughts of mine as I swiveled to admire the retreating picture of bouncing long-legged health? Will God reveal those thoughts to my beloved wife Jeannine of these many decades, and will I go straight to hell without passing Go even though I did not turn into a pillar of salt as I thought those thoughts?
At least I beheld real flesh. What loathsome thoughts must have crossed the twisted mind of former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft as he beheld the 60-plus-year-old bare aluminum bosom of the Spirit of Justice and a male figure symbolizing the Majesty of Justice?
Did God command Ashcroft to order $8,000 worth of blue drapes in lieu of a mammoth bra as cover to prevent him from becoming embarrassingly aroused at a press conference especially if Jeff Gannon of the gay web site was present?
Wouldn’t it have been more cost effective to have imported blue burqas shed by freed Afghan women?
I digress.
You’d think that even a divine hard drive would burn up keeping track of quadzillions of thoughts zinging through cyberspace monitoring the thoughts of billions every second, some good, some bad, some mean and downright nasty.
Why such divine curiosity?
Doesn’t God have enough to do picking the winners of high school football games, guiding tornadoes into trailer parks, unleashing 9.0
earthquakes followed by 12-nation tsunamis and other unholy practical jokes to be concerned with my occasional dirty thoughts?
I’m a man, too. I simply couldn’t hack it. What’s the point? My brain would implode. There’s other fish to fry: unread books to read plus twice-read classics that call for rereading, stories to write, inside straights to draw to, another royal flush to shoot for -- I’ve hit a couple. So you see, keeping up with 52 cards is the limit of my mathematical skills and curiosity.
But Eve? Women? Their minds are like sponges. Their curiosities know no bounds. They want to know it all. These dear, cat-like creatures are born curious.
When the Wizard of Oz thundered, the Tin Man rattled, the Scarecrow shook and the Lion cowed; it was little Dorothy who lifted the curtain and exposed the Wizard as a fraud. Women are like that.
And once they found their tongues, women loved to spread the Word - whether it was true or false. Men erroneously dismiss this as “gossip.”
We forget that before computers, the fastest form of communication was tellawomanasecret.
It goes without saying that women are more organized. We men can’t pick up our socks on a bet or ever find two that match.
Logic should convince us that the five major religions - Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism -- err grossly in the fallacy of male gods. Yes, there’s a man on the moon. Men have even left their footprints on its surface. But the moon is barren, as is Mars, named for the Roman god of war.
Think. Who nurtures us? Mother Nature.
Whose bosom gives us her final warm embrace? Mother Earth.
Porgy and Bess sums it up: “Th’ things you’re liable to read in th’ Bible, they ain’t necessarily so.”
Don’t look up. Look down. God is a woman.
Copyright 2007, Dolph Honicker
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