http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfidftLe5Z0

Hillary Clinton 2008= George Wallace 1968! George Wallace must be smiling from whatever place he ended up now that Hillary has Played the race card. What difference Hillary Clinton 2008 and George Wallace 1968? Both campaigns spilt the Democratic vote and let in the Republican. The only difference Between 1968 and 2008 would be the lack of a third party. However if Hillary wins the nomination a third party will not be required to guarantee a Republican victory.

"There are, of course, intelligent, well-educated children of wealthy parents serving in the military. But they are the exception, not the rule. If Afghanistan and Iraq are, as the Bush Administration argues, central fronts in the war on terror, which is a war for hearts and minds, we ought to be sending our best-prepared, most presentable representatives of American society abroad as personal ambassadors. Our decision not to pay the higher salaries and benefits that would lure those men and women out of the civilian workforce belies those claims."

The above comments are from Ted Rall's article dated 25 July 2007. The title? "Poor and Uneducated like We Thought." In both this article and his latest offering, "Hey Soldiers - Quit Whining!" Mr Rall shows a blatant contempt for serving soldiers and their families. A member of the upper-class liberal establishment, he makes it his business to heap scorn upon the lower-middle classes and those he would probably call "the Great Unwashed". Those who live in urban slums or small cities and towns in the hinterlands; those who have lost their industries to "globalization", and cannot afford college or the $12K a year required to pay for health insurance; in short, those young men and women (such as Jessica Lynch) who have little opportunity for employment outside jobs paying minimum wage with no medical benefits.

For those who believe that President Putin's recent activities are not a serious threat to the US, I draw their attention to the following editorial printed in the Sunday Telegraph (UK).

I wouldn't normally point Chimp readers towards this right-wing rag, but this piece outlines in detail Putin's recent aggressive acts and provocations against the US. The latest of these is an invitation to President Ahmadinejad of Iran to joint military exercises with the Russian and Chinese forces, and an invitation to him to join the Shanghai Group (which is the equal of NATO).

The significance of this invitation is that if Iran was to join the Shanghai Group, a mutual defence organization, it would put Iran under the Russian and Chinese nuclear umbrella! This would truly start a new Cold War, between two blocks of world nations with thousands of nuclear warheads on both sides.

President Putin has recently attempted to counter the plans of the US to place components of its anti-missile systems in the Czech Republic and Poland, by announcing both the planned upgrading of its own anti-missile systems, and threats to place nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad (a Russian enclave located between Poland and the Baltic states). The State Department is protesting that the US’s only motive is to protect Western Europe from attacks by Iran and North Korea. However, the Russians have stated their concern that the missile system is directed against them - and, more damagingly, they have also implied that the real purpose of the ten missiles is to mop up any Russian nuclear missiles that would survive an US attempt in a first strike to destroy 100% of the Russian nuclear forces.

The "official story" put out by the Pentagon regarding the Iraqi occupation has always been that the Iraqis will eventually be able to operate independently of American forces. Remember the President's stirring words of 11 August 2005, "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down"?

The sad fact is that the Iraqis are looking less and less likely to be able to "stand up" independently. Recently, articles have been published which state that not only are equipment deliveries to the Iraq armed forces late, but even if they are delivered, the logistics system is non-existent and therefore there can be no fully-accurate accounting of the items after being received by the Iraqi armed forces.

On 18 July 2006, President Bush made history, by a few ill-chosen words (see the transcript of Bush and Blair's unguarded chat, BBC 18 July 2006). These words pretty much guaranteed that Tony Blair would have to leave office much earlier than he wished, sow the seeds for the destruction of his Secretary of State, and permit Israel to pursue a war that ended with the reputations of the Israeli Government and its Defence Force in tatters.

The "Yo Blair" conversation has been taken as a simple lack of respect by Bush to Blair: however, it has much deeper ramifications. Blair's offer to go to the Middle East (in an effort to bring the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict to an early end) was rejected out of hand by Bush. The key Blair words were:

On 27 June 2007, the newly-appointed UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown made two Foreign Office appointments. Both of them mark a turning-away from the blind support given by the Blair government to the US occupation of Iraq and Middle East policy.

The first is the appointment of David Miliband to head the Foreign Office; the second is that of Lord Mark Malloch Brown to the freshly-created position of Minister for Africa, Asia and the UN.

David Miliband is a rising star in British politics, and many look to him eventually becoming Prime Minister. The most important aspect of this appointment is that he has in private made his doubts known about the wisdom of the Iraq invasion. Also, he has questioned the wisdom of Blair's policy in regard to the Israeli-Hezbollah crisis of July-August 2006.

Mr Putin being difficult at the G-8 conference could be the start of serious problems for the US. No-one can seriously believe that the stationing of segments of the US missile defense system in Eastern Europe is a threat to Russia. It is only a threat to the US defence budget! Nothing else.

So why has Putin threatened to point his missiles at Western Europe, get out of the conventional forces treaty and signal the start of a new Cold War with the US and NATO? Perhaps there is an secret agenda.

He could be looking at the forthcoming crisis concerning the Iranian nuclear program, which will soon be coming to a head in the Security Council of the United Nations. Russia has economic interests in Iran that would be seriously damaged by the imposition of trade sanctions against Iran similar to those imposed against Saddam Hussein in the 1990s. Russia, after all, has the contract for work on Iran's nuclear facilities! So it would not be in their economic interests to allow similar sanctions against Iran. Perhaps Putin also has a strategic plan which would, by little effort on Russia's part, weaken America as the world's superpower.

Those who advocate an air campaign to destroy the Iranian nuclear faciltiies appear to believe the objectives of this campaign can be achieved by a conventional air war alone. In fact both the US and Israel have only a limited capacity to achieve these goals by the use of conventional weapons.

The Iranian nuclear facilities are buried under scores of feet of packed earth and concrete.The actual depth is known only to the Iranians. But it is safe to believe that the depth is sufficient to be safe from the weapons available to the Naval Task forces in the Persian Gulf,neither aircraft bombs or cruise missles would be effective against these sites. The Task Forces are not a threat to Iran, but are merely targets for the various state of the art anti-ship missiles currently operational by the Iranian armed forces.