Well... duh!

All the great empires went bankrupt from war. Even when concerned citizens pointed out how stupid continual war was, they were ignored in favor of the rich men who grew rich from war profiteering.

I do not know one person in the last 5yrs. from either side of the political spectrum that thinks we should be in either War . I don't think regular people still buy into fight them there, instead of here, anymore. The only people left liking the war are our Leaders, that continue to make Mad Money, killing people. May they all suffer from some horrible illness that no money can fix, and their families too....that is all we can do, curse them ,unless we decide it is worth going to the streets and telling those assholes over, and over again to get out of the war business ! I just don't see it though, nobody wants to get in trouble ( so they say)they can't miss work... they don't have gas to go protest. You should hear the excuses people give why not to get involved.

We are funding 2 plus wars and 725 military bases around the world. YES drawing the connection between unemployment or home foreclosures or increased class sizes and military spending makes sense.

We are funding 2 plus wars and 725 military bases around the world. YES drawing the connection between unemployment or home foreclosures or increased class sizes and military spending makes sense.

I do not believe that a MoveOn member has any credibility on this issue as his organization has refused to come out in favor of immediate withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan and Iraq [as well as civilian contractors] and also the dismantling of all U.S. military bases in those countries.

Will this attempt at a movement ever grow legs and get any traction? What can we reasonably expect if it's to be directed in any way by MoveOn? Surely they're still convinced Obama is the great progressive savior we've been waiting for, and Democratic Party is vastly different from the fascist Republicans. How soon will this "movement" devolve into just another effort to keep Democrats in office and elect more of them?

So the Albany Times Union reports on the United National Peace Conference, but will we hear a word about it anywhere on corporate media, which totally dominates the media spotlight? Not bloody likely. They barely bothered reporting more than a few words about all the protesting leading up to the Iraq invasion/occupation and they'll treat this the same way. Tea Parties are big news, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin's daily idiocies receive constant coverage, as if they're the leaders they pretend to be, representing the views America wants and needs.

"It's the media, stupid" should be the slogan of this movement, if it ever does get anywhere, which it really can't because it's the fucking media that will prevent that from happening by rigorously ignoring it. We've been waiting for 12 years for the sacred Internet to be the medium triggering revolution, and it ain't happening. It's just been a place for messaging back and forth, leading to . . . more and more messaging.

We presently have about 700 military bases spread throughout the world and an annual defense budget of $895 billion.

Those statistics could wake-up the dead.

Five more troops "dead!" in this illegal and deadly Middle East war of aggression and hegemony. Just so dam sad!

I thought our troops were suppose to be coming home? Wasn’t that part of the campaign rhetoric? These five troops are, and not the way their grieving loved ones had planned.

"The military did not say precisely where the incidents occurred?"

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/07/24/afghanistan.us.troops.killed/index.html?section=cnn_latest

We're never leaving the Middle East unless "the people" decide they've had "ENOUGH!" The keyboard cowboys and girls decide to turn off their puters and assemble at least "five to ten million strong" for a "P E A C E F U L !" protest, and perhaps send a message to our so called leaders, that "we've had enough" of this deadly and costly empire building. It is time to begin rebuilding "AMERICA!" Does anyone remember that place? Or was it all just a dream.

While I appreciate that these people are trying to link the tailspin economy to the wars as a means of ending those wars I can only ask..

Will the time come when the sight of a Child in some foreign land born with no limbs or eyes due to the weapons used against her village, or the sight of a child with all limbs blown off, or a childs body cut in half by a "Precision Guided Munituion" be enough for the masses to rally to call an end to war and the war machine?

Why must it always be how does the war impact me?

Every dollar spent on foreign wars is a dollar that is not invested here at home. All through the Bush years there was no reinvestment in America. Our infrastructure was not maintained. No new infrastructure was built. Few tax dollars were invested in the American people.

We spend more than the rest of the world combined on defense. We spend this money annually and have been for years. We are living the greatest military buildup in world history. We call it defense spending. That is Orwellian doublespeak. Such large sums spent year after year can not honestly be called defensive. What we spend in relation to what all the other countries on the planet spend makes our spending offensive by definition.

It is offensive spending and not defense spending. Let's call a spade a spade. The Spanish Armada was built to be used. Why have we built the greatest war machine in world history? What is the endgame? Let's start calling the DOD the DOO - the Department of Offense.

Obama is a bigger war criminal than Bush. Obama has escalated our use of evil robotic drone murder machines in Afghanistan and Pakistan. These same drones are soon going to be flying along the Texas/Mexico border and the Arizona/Mexico border. Armed? Soon to be hovering around your house. Drone America marches on... Welcome to Obamadroneland...

And Obama made a "surprise" video appearance at the Netroots convention in Las Vegas and activists to ask for support of his escalating robotic drone murder wars on Afghanis and Pakistanis. Two corporatist imperialist Royalist War Parties to choose from in the 21st century after we sat by dumbfounded as five Supreme fascists staged their coup on 12-12-00 and gave us the very sore loser Bush in the White House for eight years...

Governments and nations act like fearful crowds in panic while the sane individual would not make war on rivals.

Let's Enjoy our short time in the universe, its later than you think.

Doesn't look like the Internets are as fast as we originally had hoped they'd be...

All that money this country has pissed away on making and sustaining war since 9/11 could've created quite a Utopia (such as our ancestors had hoped for when they first came to this country) for its' 300,000,000+ inhabitants.

The U.S. Military Industrial Complex has proven itself to be nothing but a Make Work Program for those desperate, uneducated and a-moral enough to depend on perpetual government welfare to feed and cloth their families!

I'm sure many fine things were done at this gathering, but as long as these folks continue to exclude and marginalize the 9/11 truth movement they are going to keep missing the picture. They think they're aware of how deep government deception runs, but, alas, they're not.

There are some who would argue that it are only the wars - and the paranoid "security" scam - which are keeping the economy going.
They would be wrong.

Prosperity has been curtailed to lure the unemployed (and unemployable) into the recruiting offices.

For "Homeland", read "Fodderland".

Let's give special thanks to the US mainstream media for this disinformation about how this gang used to be so "pwogressive."

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Let's give special thanks to the US mainstream media for this disinformation about how this gang used to be so "pwogressive."

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Thank You Rick for the review of the meeting.And Cindy congratulations on a new grandchild wow
War =endless profits /peace priceless
peace kg

All wars fail at the end.

Anti-war folks like me are very bright but it doesn't take a rock scientist to figure this out.

Both Iraq and Afghanistan were fought so 0,001% or less of the American population could become even more insanely wealthier than they were before 911.

It had nothing to do with War on Terror, but War of Terrah. Borat was right after all :)

It’s a beginning, a good attempt, but breaking the Obama spell, the hallucinogen in the White House, will not be easy if future attendances remain at 600, most of the nation is still asleep while the busy bees are gathering more power and momentum, the visibility of this movement remains low, whether they tell the truth or not. Noam Chomsky made pre-recorded comments for the United National Peace Conference and what he said doesn’t make me feel hopeful -- any real change for America would mean blood on the streets; a velvet revolution seems unlikely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcIVNzcMucU&feature=player_embedded

Someone here at CD said we have 700 military bases spread around the world but it’s actually more than 1000. I live near the site of a new war garrison being built in Europe (with a mission to support the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon Iran) you can tell by the construction (I have been documenting this with photographs), the renovations at the older base nearby, its soldiers quarters built with stone and marble, an entire micro-America community costing hundreds of millions; the Americans are here to stay for a generation. Soldiers and their families keep to themselves, do all their shopping inside their Little America because they know the sight of an “ugly” American causes anger in the local population. They know they are hated. Not far, in the hills, the U.S. army stores munitions, along with toxic chemicals that have been leaking into the water supply for the last twenty years and causing abnormal amounts of cancer in young and old.

The link between war and the economy is evident even here in this corner of Europe. The local economy benefits little since most of the money goes into the deep pockets of contractors and politicians. The protests of one hundred thousand here did little to change the course of events. I hope the United National Peace Conference movement has better luck.

President Obama wants to cut all federal agencies across the board by 5%. Why? It's because there's no more money to be borrowed, children.

All 50 states have crushing deficits except maybe possibly North Dakota. Why? It's because the federal government has shifted its debt problems on someone else, so you'll blame the states, not the feds. The states in turn are usually shifting the deficits onto the backs of the townships, counties and cities. A shocking number of towns have no library anymore, or they have no police or fire department in a few cases. If you need help call the county police or the state police.

The best way to finance police departments is more traffic tickets. Have you noticed that the main purpose of the police is more and more to collect money from half of us?

If I were a Tea Party protester I would kick and scream and hold my breath until the government acted right. Hey, good luck with that.

The rest of us need to face the reality that the Iraq/Afghanistan war has easily set us back 5 or 6 trillion, and 5% interest on 5 trillion is an extra quarter trillion a year that our government doesn't have. We have collectively been robbed of our life savings in order to protect the profits of some internationally owned corporations. Now the money's gone. If we're lucky we can find a profiteering Bernie Madoff to put into jail and sell his assets, but those assets will not be anywhere near one penny on the dollar.

Other trillions have been spent so that we can give many, many millions of civilians and their grandchildren cancer someday with our H-bomb collection and with our delivery systems. Now doesn't this nuclear war killing capability make you feel all Godly and moral, all warm and fuzzy about what you've accomplished with your money, rather than providing for your own kids, or providing a real life for all those Haitian civilians?

I thought the Cold War ended around 1990. What have we defended ourselves against for 20 years? The Martians?

I think that a few wealthy Republican crooks are deathly afraid that when the rest of us don't have any money for international debt service, we're going to come to them and drill, baby, drill. Well, they might have a point. Where else in the USA are we going to find any more oil?

Progressive movements can get things done, but they have to recognize they may have to go about it in an unconventional way here. Let's allow that we may have to posthaste get moving to supporting a progressives and peaceniks for Powell. We have to recognize that now that the GOP national chairman has called out the current president on war in Afghanistan a black Dwight D Eisenhower in the form of Colin Powell might well be just what the doctor ordered to bring sanity back to both domestic and foreign policy. It worked in 1952 with Ike when the McCarthy era was in full stride, thus how dare we not allow for such an unorthodox strategy today. Let's remember that I F Stone in the 1950s once came out with the slogan "Vote Ike for Peace" and definitely meant it. Who could more easily tell the war mongers to stick it than Powell or tell the gang on Wall Street to bring their green under control or else? Who could more easily put through a national income policy which Gerald Ford advocated in his day as president but likely failed to get it by being tainted with the Watergate brush cutting down so drastically on his popularity?

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John Lennon - Power To The People ... one more time!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wos-dDxpJlQ

This would help too ...
Give Peace A Chance - John Lennon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-NRriHlLUk&feature=related

This Sunday's New York Times has a fairly well written piece describing the huge costs that the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq which have cost Americans a startling $1 trillion. The Times notes that this breaks down to $1.1 million a year per soldier who is stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq while $67,000 per year was spent on soldiers during World War II and $132,000 in Vietnam.

The Times closed out its piece by stating that the United States has been "at war for 47 of its 230 years, or 20 percent of its history." But by putting forth this claim the Times totally ignores the fact that since 1947 to the present the CIA has been involved in many covert wars against many Third World countries in order to prop up the authoritarian governments of those countries. Someone should send the editors of that paper a copy of William Blum's Killing Hope which methodically breaks down these many covert and illicit actions that were undertaken by the CIA.

My former HS students had the perfect solution for unemployment: "Join the military." Why create jobs, and especially work towards developing universal health care (not profit-based, employment-based) when such things will make military service less attractive?

Very interesting article and very interesting comments. However if I might add a couple of things; The first casualty of war is truth, that said it may be years before we know the real figures if then. Enough prominate figures in Europian government have exposed the lies that were used to get the US and UK into war with Iraq. This is not new news, with a little searching on the net you can easily find references. But so far no accountability to Americans (the US has made no assertions), or the people of Iraq. These wars stopped being the right thing to do before they began. We Americans are wallowing in corruption, and most definately not serving our best interests. We should pull the plug and bring our troops home.

More positive news on the Hinzman case in Canada where an appeals court ruled in favor of Hinzman sending the refugee claim back to the Immigration board for another review.

The Court has ruled the Immigration board MUST consider "Concientous objector Status" which is did not do in its initial ruling. These means are current deportation orders on hold until the case reviewed.

With that the Conservative party has introduced a bill that would severely limit the number of appeals that could be filed by war resitors that have fled to Canada.

The NDP has introduced another bill which calls for all deportation orders against war resistors to hbe halted.

http://rabble.ca/news/2010/07/american-war-resister-win-another-victory-federal-court

Connecting the dots--it's about time!