More Shots from the Beautiful Amee

As usual, the best photos on our digital camera are the ones Amee took. Enjoy!

Finally, More Photos

Here are some new photos I shot over the holiday.

Our Intelligence Services at Work...

From "Burn Before Reading: Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence" by Admiral Stansfield Turner, former Director of Central Intelligence, writing about a government official's take on the CIA's assembling of intelligence pertaining to a hostile nation's atomic program:

"[He] found that the process "rather chills one's blood." [He] saw a complete "lack of integrity" as the "meager stuff" was written up in a way that covered up their uncertainty and lack of information. The reader, he claimed, "is given the impression, and deliberately, that behind the estimates lies specific knowledge, knowledge so important and delicate that its nature and sources cannot be disclosed or hinted at." But in fact, they had little or nothing to show.
What haunted [him] was that someday a president would have to consider serious actions, including "anticapatory retaliation," as a result of CIA reports and estimates that were based on little or no reliable information. Unless intelligence was improved or at least made more honest, then this president or future presidents might start a preventive war "that may have been utterly needless.""

This passage refers to something that happened in 1947, during Truman's administration, and the Soviet search for atomic weapons. It could just as easily refer to more recent events, when intelligence agencies had no "on the ground" intel from Iraq, and came out with estimates telling of "stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons" and an active and imminent nuclear program, which did lead to a "preventive war" that was needless.

Back Again

I've been slacking; no real excuses.

Tiki Heads!

I love tiki heads!

Goodbye and Good Riddance

Goodbye, Donald. I hope retirement suits you. Although your bold vision to shake the Pentagon out of Cold War tactics was admirable, your single-minded determination to oust Sadam Hussein blinded you to the threat of Al-Qaida, led you to twist intelligence to suit your goal, and took us into an unnecessary war under false pretenses which did NOT make us safer. Ignoring the advice of all your Generals that you deploy overwhelming force, you sent in enough troops to topple a petty dictator but not enough troops to secure the people of Iraq from the chaos that followed. You had no real plan for what to do after you got Saddam. The boys on the ground in Iraq have been poorly served by your grandiose ideas to re-shape the middle east. Money that could have been used to improve homeland security is now being pumped into your war. History will not be kind to you, and I, for one, will not miss you. You've made a cock-up of it. I hope it can be fixed, although I'm not sure it can.

Do Your Duty!

Please get off your butt and vote. It's your turn to put in your two cents worth. If you don't vote because you believe your vote doesn't matter, it doesn't. If you vote, it does matter, whether you believe it matters or not. (That sounds like some convoluted Rumsfeld-ism.)
If you don't vote because you're too lazy to research the issues, maybe it's for the best...

"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost." John Quincy Adams, 'Old Man Eloquent'

A Letter

"bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. education & free discussion are the antidotes of both." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams

Stone Face

This is the stern countenance of the lawn jockey that stands by my house.