Too Much Happiness can be Unhealthy

The story is here.

Feds to Discipline Those Who Retaliated Against Dover Whistleblowers

Great to see the Feds protect whistleblowers. Meanwhile Bradley Manning, pursued by Obama, faces the possibility of a death sentence if convicted.

The Cost of Iraq War

What the Marines were Urinating On

Troops' Remains Dumped in a Landfill

The Washington Post broke the story of this scandal, and then added more reporting to it this week.

Tomorrow is Veterans' Day

Music for Remembrance and Veterans Day: Dixie Chicks, Travellin' Soldier

Music for Remembrance and Veterans Day; Johnny Cash

Obama and his Wars

US Kills Anwar al-Awlaki, a US Citizen

The True Legacy of 9/11

Bin Laden Killed; one more gag

Osama Bin Laden Killed; the Impact?

Photojournalists Killed in Libya

Story here in the Guardian. There's a link there to a collection of Chris's photos - clearly neither of these men lived boring lives, and both of them died doing what they loved to do.

Baseball Season Opening Day 2011

Comparing Obama to Bush

Pretending to be Fiscal Conservatives

Veterans' Day 2010

Wikileaks Afghan War Documents

How Much do we Think about our War Dead?

Aftermath

Have you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked a while at the crossing of city ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same—and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz—
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench—
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack—
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads—those ashen-gray
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the slain of the war that you'll never forget!

March 1919.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

See also the excellent poem here.