Wednesday, August 8, 2007

The Military: Money for College and a Religious Education

Too sickened to write too much about this right now. Suffice to say, the DOD (Department of Defense) is planning to actively proselytize our soldiers using a video game based on the Left Behind Series (an often criticized series of books loosely based on the book of "Revelation" from The Bible). Among other fun features, players of the game are encouraged to kill those characters in the game that they can not "save" by converting.

You can read about it here on David Neiwert's Orcinus.




To read more on the Left Behind series, Fred Clark of Slacktivist has an excellent series of posts going back the last few years (when you hit the link, scroll to the bottom and then go up to reach the more recent posts) that deconstruct the novels from both a literary and theological perspective.

The Surge Is Working?

August is a very important month in terms of how the war in Iraq will be viewed by the American public. With just a few weeks remaining before General Petraeus gives his report to Congress on the progress of the war, specifically the effects of the "surge" in US forces, information from Iraq is already being spun in order to create a receptive attitude here at home.

Already, according to recent polls, there is a ten percent uptick ; however, as Juan Cole reports in this article at Salon, there might not really be that much to celebrate. In fact, the surge might be having little or no positive effect at all.

As Congress prepared to go on its August recess, Pentagon officials and White House backers were desperately spinning as a success this year's escalation of U.S. troop levels in Iraq. A recent poll shows that there has been a 10 percent uptick in the proportion of Americans who think the so-called surge, first announced by President George W. Bush in January, is having a beneficial effect. But how accurate are the sunny pronouncements coming out of Washington? What would constitute a success for the surge, and how likely is it to be achieved?


Even worse, according to Joe Conason, the surge may be contributing to a destabilization of the situation!

Leaving aside [recent] boasts of success, which have been heard from assorted advocates of the war both within and outside the Bush administration, the most recent developments in Baghdad undermine the foundation of the policy enunciated by Mullen. There is in fact no evidence whatsoever that the escalation of troops has encouraged reconciliation among the Iraqi factions. It is indeed obvious that the "long-term commitment" of U.S. troops -- regardless of how the Iraqi government and parties behave -- is leading rapidly toward the political disintegration of that country.

Friday, June 15, 2007

Military Intelligence

Oxymoron

-Definition: A paradox reduced to two words, usually in an adjective-noun ("eloquent silence") or adverb-adjective ("inertly strong") relationship, and is used for effect, to emphasize contrasts, incongruities, hypocrisy, or simply the complex nature of reality. Examples: wise fool, ignorantly learned, laughing sadness, pious hate.

Military Intelligence (via: Crooks and Liars)


Thursday, June 14, 2007

Education State

J Goodrich over at the American Prospect has posted about a recent op/ed by Jonah Goldberg of the Los Angeles Times on whether or not American schools should be run by the government. I thought this would be a good start to our new blog.



Give it a read.