If you haven't read Stan Goff's piece in Truthout, do yourself a favor...

[lindashaw]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121904F.shtml

This is the best thing I have read in...maybe forever. These vets deserve everything that we can give them.

on edit: spelling

[bobbieinok]

1. incredible....should be required reading for all members of congress

and all hi school and college students and their parents

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. I began the process of learning that the comfort of those suburbs

comes at a price often paid by those we never see and whose hardship we cannot comprehend.<<

Finally.... a single line... a single spark of truth to define what we are fighting for... what they are fighting for. What the fighting has always been about.... what it will always be about.

Us and Them..

Us and them
and after all we're only ordinary men
me and you
God only knows it's not what we would choose to do
forward he cried from the rear
and the front rank died
and the General sat, and the lines on the map
moved from side to side

Black and blue
and who knows which is which and who is who
up and down
and in the end it's only round and round and round
haven't you heard it's a battle of words
the poster bearer cried
listen, son, said the man with the gun
there's room for you inside

Down and out
it can't be helped but there's a lot of it about
with, without
and who'll deny it's what the fighting's all about
out of the way, it's a busy day
I've got things on my mind
for want of the price of tea and a slice
the old man died

[demnan]

3. Thanks for that

I sent it to some friends, and especially my brother, who is a Vietnam vet. I know he will relate to it.

[NMDemDist2]

4. kick n/t

[Kolesar]

5. from the author who described JK's campaign as a dick-measuring contest

I don't have much respect for Goff and this reads like another one of his rambling rants of malaise. I gave up on trying to find a thesis in this version of his lugubrious malaise somewhere after the mountain lion analogy. As for dick-length measuring contests, who is the author who pumps up his Special Forces credentials on his book jacket?

Google Stan Goff "dick measuring"
"--Heinzes and Soros and so on--are trying to correct here for a political establishment that has, in some regards, gone out of control. Johnny Kerry to the rescue!

The political significance of religion in Iraq, in Southwest Asia, and in the United States, where Christian Zionists constitute a significant fraction of the ruling party's base, cannot be overstated. Nor can the Bush Doctrine politics of macho-narcissism.

Kerry can't even go after that. His campaign has partially turned into a military-dick-measuring contest with GWB about service records, as if the war in Iraq would be just okey-dokey if the Commander-in-Chief were only a veteran with a pile of fruit salad ribbons on his mildewed uniform. "

edit: google dick-measuring, not dick-length

[mia]

6. Lugubrious malaise? Quite the opposite.

This reads more like defiant vitality to me. I came away from reading it energized and ready for the offensive. Hail to the mountain lion!

Kerry's anti-war stance is what won my heart back in the 70's. If only he had been able to use his military credentials as Goff has here. So what if Kerry voted for the war. He was misled, like the rest of us, and it's about time that someone has the guts and passion to speak out against it.

[IrateCitizen]

7. Thanks for the article -- I was supposed to attend that speak-out...

... but ended up not being able to make it.

As a former Army Reserve officer and conscientious objector from the Iraq invasion, I have come to greatly value the water-carrying that Stan Goff does on behalf of the veterans' and anti-war movements. He is able to bring his extensive combat experience to bear in a way that gives him a great deal of authority in speaking out on these issues, but he doesn't do it in a way that glorifies militarism or violence. I may not agree with everything he says in every piece he writes, but I sure as hell find him invaluable to the cause.