Forty years of this?......... Not Saigon Likely.
British public opinion will not tolerate decades of paying the price in blood and treasure of a meaningless war. The Vietnam War ended in defeat because American public opinion was sickened by the increasing numbers of their soldiers returning in bodybags.
The 200th UK death will concentrate public attention on the futility of our cause. Brave professional soldiers are ordered to die in a cause that is already lost. The lies will be exposed.
Are Karzai's human rights worth the sacrifice?
Afghanistan passes 'barbaric' law diminishing women's rights
Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands' sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.
The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.
"It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying 'blood money' to a girl who was injured when he raped her," the US charity Human Rights Watch said.
America shamed in LA
It's the same questions.
How could a country that nobly sacrificed more lives of their soldiers than any other country in defence of the freedom of others nation now be comparing their president to Adolf Hitler? How could the country that nurtured George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy and Barack Obama have produce Johnson, Reagan and the Bushes? How could a country of great writers and scientists produce a moronic regiment of birthers and religious bigots?
My rightly angry blog yesterday stirred a hornets nest. Two comments were received from the States. . They illustrated my point with a fine display of angry hysteria. One mysteriously called me a 'shill'. It is someone who poses as a satisfied customer or an enthusiastic gambler to dupe bystanders into participating in a swindle. That a new insult. The Americans were brilliantly squashed by Newport correspondents
The USA is not the only country with an abundant crop of crackpots and conspiracy theorists. Many African Americans believe crack cocaine and AIDS were whipped up in government laboratories to kill black people.
Right now, however, the most active and vocal fruitcakes are self-styled "conservatives" who concoct a new scary fantasy every week to prove that Barack Obama is the greatest threat to America since the Red Menace.
Now, a serious percentage of Americans express genuine horror that their country is being stolen from them. They have been told Obama and the Democrats are going to take away their health care and euthanise their grannies. They attend tea-bagger rallies where participants hold aloft pictures of Obama morphed into Adolph Hitler. They click onto web sites that suggest Jesus Christ, himself, used thinly coded language to send a message across the centuries that someone with a name that, in Hebrew, sounds very much like Barack Obama would be Satan incarnate.
The Birthers tortured souls are consumed with the fairy tale that Obama was not born in the United States and is, therefore, not eligible to hold the highest office in the land. Despite assurances from state officials in Hawaii, despite newspaper notices of Obama's birth in Honolulu, despite the fact Obama has travelled on a U.S. passport for many years, despite pleas by reputable conservatives to just let the issue go, the Birthers will not relent. Some believe that Jesus Christ, himself, used thinly coded language to send a message across the centuries that someone with a name that, in Hebrew, sounds very much like Barack Obama would be Satan incarnate.".
Obama is America's and the world's best hope for sane policies. He is an original thinker and, in my view, a great writer. A bit of a contrast to Bush who blundered into two wars. So many Americans are blind to the reality of the US Health (lack of ) Service as reported today. This is the country where they are rubbishing our NHS
They came in their thousands, queuing through the night to secure one of the coveted wristbands offering entry into a strange parallel universe where medical care is a free and basic right and not an expensive luxury. Some of these Americans had walked miles simply to have their blood pressure checked, some had slept in their cars in the hope of getting an eye-test or a mammogram, others had brought their children for immunisations that could end up saving their life.
In the week that Britain's National Health Service was held aloft by Republicans as an "evil and Orwellian" example of everything that is wrong with free healthcare, these extraordinary scenes in Inglewood, California yesterday provided a sobering reminder of exactly why President Barack Obama is trying to reform the US system.
The LA Forum, the arena that once hosted sell-out Madonna concerts, has been transformed – for eight days only – into a vast field hospital. In America, the offer of free healthcare is so rare, that news of the magical medical kingdom spread rapidly and long lines of prospective patients snaked around the venue for the chance of getting everyday treatments that many British people take for granted.
Americans should hang their heads in shame.
Total of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan = 201
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