I first read this not long after it was
written in 1940. I've remembered parts of it, including the last verse, ever
since. I'm not sure why I am putting it here except that I found it again
and it ought not be lost.
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They are now burning American Soldiers in effigy. So far have we come.
Joanne Dow's Daily
Diatribe has a different view. And see
mail
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We hear that there are tumults and riots in Rome, and that voices are raised
concerning the army and the quality of our soldiers. Make haste to reassure us
that you love and support us as we love and support you, for if we find that we
have left our bones to bleach in these sands in vain, then beware the fury of
the legions.
ALSO SEE MAIL
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Subj: John Backus, Father of FORTRAN and BNF, R.I.P.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/03/20/obit.backus.ap/index.html
Rod
Montgomery==monty@sprintmail.com
============
Circulating the Internet:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/GlobWarmTest/start.html
I got all of them "correct" but some of the questions are badly framed and I
had to figure out the biases of the testers.
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A Dialogue with Colonel Couvillon, USMC
The subject was, "Is The 'Surge' Doomed To Final Failure"
My remarks are in plain text. Col. Couvillon's are
in trebuchet.
If there's a single individual responsible for debacle it was Bremer. Reading
his book is painful. I cannot imagine someone that naïve taking the job in the
first place. I also can't figure out why they chose him. Anyone would know he
didn't know what he was doing. He didn't even have his own team.
-The Iraqis (in the street) thought Bremer was a
joke (while I was there). The man rarely left the Green Zone and when he did it
was carefully orchestrated - ergo, no insight on what was going on with the
people. Shoot, the man wore suites with desert combat boots! The Iraqis laughed
tremendously at this (shoes have status), where even the poorest Iraqi will try
to wear leather shoes if he can obtain/afford a pair no matter what the status
of the rest of his clothes.
If they'd given me the job I would have insisted on enough money to pay the
generals who would then pay the Iraqi Army to mostly stay in barracks, but BE
there. (Dock the generals for each trooper who vanishes and for any incidents in
their sectors. Here, general, is the pay for your troops. If you steal it all
they'll desert and then we won't pay you any more. If they riot we'll stop the
pay. But here's the money for this week....)
But that's another story. I still don't see how to keep Sunni and Shiite from
each others throats. Not now.
-It's possible, but we have to engage the Imams and
Sheiks and provide THEM with incentives to tolerate the others. My inclination
is that the 'people in the street' will readily accept their Muslim brothers
were they not vilified by their religious leaders. Our support for a moderate
religious leader is radically tempered by our abhorance to church/state issues.
Allah be praised, Barak Obama can go from state legislator to viable
presidential candidate based on media adulation only - couldn't the great
country of Madison Avenue do the same for some amenable Ummah?
But we could still recruit sepoys. Auxiliaries. Keep the Legions for linear
war. But will we do anything like that?
I get discouraged.
-Understood.
Which means this: we are agreed that if we recruit a long-term
auxiliary army of occupation; and get the US PR machine behind the
concept of peace and a republic in Iraq; the mission is possible.
