The strange suicide of Col. Westhusing

Bush the Younger scores another triumph.

From the article:
[A]bout 1 p.m., a USIS manager went looking for Westhusing because he was scheduled for a ride back to the Green Zone. After getting no answer, the manager returned about 15 minutes later. Another USIS employee peeked through a window. He saw Westhusing lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

The manager rushed into the trailer and tried to revive Westhusing. The manager told investigators that he picked up the pistol at Westhusing's feet and tossed it onto the bed.

"I knew people would show up," that manager said later in attempting to explain why he had handled the weapon. "With 30 years from [sic] military and law enforcement training, I did not want the weapon to get bumped and go off."

30 years military and law enforcement training? Anyone with enough law enforcement training to have graduated from police academy knows you don't tamper with a possible crime scene. Anyone with enough knowledge to handle a weapon profesionally knows that a modern pitol is not going to "go off" if "bumped." And, if that truly was his concern, why did he risk "bumping" the pistol by "tossing it onto the bed?"

Glock 17

I bought my first Glock yesterday. Glock 17, factory night sights.

I caught the Glock bug mostly for professional reasons. As a LEFI and armorer, I really need to know the Glock system. 9mm practice ammo is cheap, and modern defensive ammo renders the Great Caliber Controversy moot. The G17 seems the best, all-around choice for teaching, practice and self-defense.

The armorer in me really appreciates the simplicity of the Glock mechanism. Unfortunately, off-white contact paper applied to the grip area seems as close as one can get to ivory stocks for the Glocks.

I tried the 10mm Glock 20 and really liked it. I'm glad to see the 10mm Auto round making a comeback (Glock never abandoned it). That may be my next purchase. Hey, CA law says "one gun a month." Who am I to argue?

Dog Bites Man!
NRA sells out again

Oops, they did it again!

This year's annual meeting of the National Rifle Association turned out to be more of a meeting of the Neocon Rifle Association, or perhaps the National Republican Association. Either way, lovers of freedom will find little to cheer in the events of this year's meeting.

As statist propaganda, the "Salute To The Heroes," a videotaped production which aired as part of the opening ceremony, falls somewhat short of the standard set by Leni Riefenstahl's 1934 masterpiece, Triumph Of The Will. Similarly, the presentation of this year's "Man of the Year" custom flintlock rifle to gun-grabber Dick Cheney, unlike Winston Churchill's presentation of a Crusader's sword to Joe Stalin at the Teheran Conference in 1943, couldn't actually be deemed sacrilegious. Both events mark the extent to which "mainstream" conservatism now conserves only the gains made by a liberalism grown increasingly illiberal, illogical, and inhumane.

Before the hate mail pours in, I'll mention that I am a Life Member of NRA and, as a law enforcement officer, am one of the "heroes" of the opening ceremony. Neither fact eases my qualms about the direction of NRA.

In its "Salute to the Heroes," NRA informs us that true heroes "put strangers before family." Funny, the Left have been telling us this for years, and trying, through taxes, welfare, and family dissolution, to make "heroes" of us all. We are told that the hero's "highest honor" is to have the Yankee battle standard draped over his coffin. Heroes "are willing to perish for that flag," an item that can be ordered online and which probably was made in China.

Over and over, NRA's "Salute" extolls the supposed virtues of servility to the government though of course they conflate the government with the country.

Only the winners decide what were war crimes.
? Gary Wills

Idiot

"The Governor's budget will hurt the economy and those who need assistance the most. Now is the time for those who are wealthy and fortunate to give back to society through paying their fair share so programs that are being cut can continue to serve our communities." -- Lydia Torres, Rehab Counselor, Drug and Alcohol, Santa Clara County

Let's see, now. The last time I checked, it was Ms. Torres' clients who were choking the jails, the courts, and the emergency rooms. Ms. Torres clients are the ones who get paid for being irresponsible, in the form of SSI, Food Stamps, AFDC, WIC, Section 8, etc. Tell me again: who needs to "give back to society?"

Doesn't He Know There's A War On?

Marine Corps Lawyer Slams Terrorist Tribunals

Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice.
– Spinoza

"The continuing U.S. casualties are lamentable, but the losses so far are low by the standards of guerrilla wars ? far fewer than the 500 soldiers the British lost in putting down a previous Iraq insurgency in 1920." -- Max Boot, Foreign Policy, January/February 2004

CHICAGO, Jan. 21, 2004 ? More than 500 pairs of empty Army boots were placed side-by-side in downtown Chicago Wednesday to serve as a reminder of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq.
The black boots, some dusty and dirty from use, were placed on Federal Plaza in front of a posterboard display that listed the names, ages and states of all soldiers killed in the war.

Lamentable Losses

Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.
? General Douglas MacArthur

The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.
– Walter Lippmann

Quotable
It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.
– General Douglas MacArthur

Land of the Free

Buy A Flight Simulator, Go To Jail

Tell A Joke, Go To Jail

TREASON!

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1918

Ann Coulter, call your office.

"Don't ask f'r rights. Take thim. An don't let anny wan give thim to ye. A right that is handed to ye fer nawthin has somthin the mather with it. It's more thin likely it's only a wrrong turned inside out." -- Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley

No unpatriotic, peacenik pansy, he!

"War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it."
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), Italian dictator. “The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,” publ. In Enciclopedia Italiana (1932).

Smedley Butler on Interventionism
-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

IMPEACH NOW!

Bring Bush to Justice...or bring Justice to Bush!

MARSUPIAL LAW

U.S. bars lawyers from tribunal cases

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -
The United States has barred U.S. lawyers from representing war crimes suspects at the U.N. tribunal for Yugoslavia, a court document said Wednesday.

An executive order is aimed at cutting off support to about 200 people and organizations in the former Yugoslavia that are blacklisted by the U.S. government. It outlaws providing goods, services and funds to those people.

In Washington, Treasury Department spokesman Taylor Griffin said that the list of banned activities includes providing legal services to people on the blacklist.

-- Chronicle News Services, 6/19/2003

"War is among the most plausible means used to delude a nation into the errour of anticipation. Yet it cannot bring up from futurity a gun, a soldier, a ration, or a cartridge. The present generation suffers every hardship and cost of war, although anticipation pretends that it is covered by future generations. And this delusion is used to involve nations in wars, which they would never commence, if they knew that all the expense would fall upon themselves. It is twice suffered; by the living, who supply all the expenses of war; by the unborn, who supply an equivalent sum, to take up certificates of the expenses paid by the living."
-- John Taylor of Caroline, An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States (1814)

"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists."
-- Ernest Hemingway