BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

While I am pro-ending the illegal war in Iraq... ( no George, it has ZERO to do with 9/11 - and why is Osama bin-Laden still alive in Pakistan? Stop invoking 9/11 and admit that your PNAC buddies used the 9/11 tragedy to push their own agenda! ) I am not for "cut and run." Despite being a progressive I understand we can't just leave. I make my children tidy up their messes too. (And why don't you guys at the White House tell the American public about the billion dollar PERMANENT BASES you are building in Iraq while you count your Exxon and Halliburton shares?) Now here's another mess - on our doorstep. Those returning from 3 and 4 deployments with serious mental health issues. PTSD is a not a crime and NO, you can't just get over i t or suck it up . Just because you can't see pain doesn't mean its not there. That includes mental pain. The brain is an organ and it gets sick, too. Why aren't we helping our soldiers that went over to Iraq and...

IT'S TIME TO TAKE A STAND ON IRAQ from Iddybud Journal : The borrowed time on the Washington D.C. clock on the Iraq war will have run down by September 11th. When the much-hyped White House-written 'Petraeus report' is given to the public, it will be on the sixth anniversary of an attack on American targets perpetrated by those who had absolutely nothing to do with the 2001-government of Iraq. Like the cherry-picked intelligence reports of 2002, bits and pieces of General Petraeus' thoughts will be carefully selected to suit the White House's political needs to cover for their five-year mistake. It's time to take a stand. SOURCE Republican Meltdown on Iraq Continues WASHINGTON – With just days left before the “Iraq Summer” Campaign’s national Take a Stand Day a new White House front group, led by former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, launched attack ads to shore up support among Republicans whose constituents want an end to the war. Some may ask why this ...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY IRAQ WAR Four years ago I was sitting in a hospital in Utica, New York talking with doctors and nurses about my father, of blessed memory. He'd flipped his SUV on black ice while running an errand from the assisted living facility where he'd moved just months before. Dad was doing well. Making new friends and being the gregarious, compassionate and wonderful man I knew he was. He was still depressed over the death of our mother just a few years prior; she was his whole world. But he was starting to move on with his life. He was a doting grandfather and the kind of friend you meet once in a lifetime. Dad didn't tell anyone what had really happened to the car. My brother found out later when he went to the shop where it had been towed. Dad walked away from the accident with what he thought was a 'bump on the head.' It was profound brain injury. A couple days later he didn't show up for dinner at the facility and was found on the floor of hi...