• Crosses on the Beach at Santa Barbara – ACLU Suit Against Military Crosses And Prayer in the Military?
• ACLU Sues to Prohibit Military Prayer, Crosses in Federal Cemeteries?
• ACLU and Cemetery Crosses
• Is the ACLU suing to have cross-shaped headstones removed from military cemeteries?
• Grave Concerns

Have seen this several times but am forwarding to keep this moving.

Fwd from a Brother Marine

Santa Barbara Beach

The first picture and the last picture are taken at the beach in Santa Barbara right next to the pier. There is a veterans group that started putting a cross and candle for every death in Iraq and Afghanistan . The amazing thing is that they only do it on the weekends. They put up this graveyard and take it down every weekend. Guys sleep in the sand next to it and keep watch over it at night so nobody messes with it. Every cross has the name, rank, DOB and DOD on it. Very moving, very powerful!!! So many young volunteers. So many 30 to 40 year olds as well.

Amazing!

Did you know that the ACLU has filed a lawsuit to have all military cross-shaped headstones removed?

and another suit to end prayer from the military completely. They’re making great progress. The Navy Chaplains can no longer mention Jesus’ name in prayer thanks to the ACLU.

I’m not breaking this one.

If I get it a 1000 times, I’ll forward it a 1000 times! Please,

let us pray…

Please send this on after a short prayer. Prayer for our soldiers Don’t break it! Prayer: ‘Heavenly Father, hold our troops in Your loving hands Protect them as they protect us. Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in this our time of need. These things I humbly ask in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, Amen.’

GOD BLESS YOU FOR PASSING IT ON!

God bless America

Wikipedia, of course, has a write-up on Arlington West, a presumptuous title for a phony cemetery.

Here is a local news article, Crossroad for the Crosses: Arlington West Faces Changes as Focus Shifts to Afghanistan.

I suppose Veterans For Peace is well-intentioned, but I find it strange that people would spend so much time and labor in a totally unproductive activity. Why not repeatedly dig a hole and fill it up again? What’s the difference? What is the point putting up and taking down a phony graveyard just to “show” the human cost of a war? Why do they refuse to consider the human cost of a phony peace? Do they fear war because it is so much easier to visualize a graveyard? Are they unafraid of tyranny because they simply cannot comprehend what it means? What lucky souls they must be?

We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. — Winston Churchill (from here)

President Obama is on the verge of breaking two key campaign promises in his troubled attempt to shut Guantánamo Bay — with plans to revive the military tribunal system set up by George Bush and to continue the indefinite detention of up to 100 inmates.

The moves, which have not yet been signed off by Mr Obama but look increasingly likely, are a result of his promise on his second day in office to shut the Guantánamo Bay prison within a year.  (continued here)

H/T to the right-wing liberal here.

The Cartoons

What was the situation at Guantánamo Bay?

Was it torture and evasion of civilized law?

Or something decidely more foolish?

This morning’s editorial in the Outlook section of the Washington Post, The Stories of Torture Sounded Made Up. They Weren’t., did little to help the discerning reader.  As usual, the reporter, in this case Carol D. Leonnig, provided more fuel for an active imagination than facts for a concerned citizen.  What is the one bit of substance in this emotional opinion piece?

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler was hearing detainee lawyers’ claims that a new feeding chair for prisoners on hunger strike was Guantanamo’s latest torture tactic. A prisoner who refused to eat would be strapped into the chair for up to two hours while nutrients were pumped into his nose through a tube as thick as a small broom handle. Kessler paused after Henry assured her that, according to Guantanamo’s medical director and the base commander, the feeding inflicted no significant pain.

Kessler said that she had read many sealed records about the evidence against detainees and about their treatment, and that she now had much less trust in the government.

“I know it’s a sad day when a federal judge has to ask a DOJ attorney this, but I’m asking you,” Kessler said. “Why should I believe them?”  (from here)

“Why should I believe them?”  That is the crux of the problem.  Truth with a capital “T” and humanity usually have too little commerce with one another.  We each have our agenda, and we tend to sacrifice everything to that agenda, the Truth with a capital “T” being our favored sacrifice.  So the wise look upon the words of their fellows with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Unfortunately, healthy skepticism is not a lesson that comes easily.  It is convenient and more comfortable to accept conventional wisdom.  What are the sources of conventional wisdom?  The most powerful voice, the most confident voice, the voice of the majority, the voices of those on “our” side — these  we find to be the most soothing sources of Truth.

Fortunately, experience instructs us in skepticism.   Even when our schools and our teachers have failed to teach us to think properly, to look for proven facts presented in logical argument, life provides us with brutal corrective lessons.

The terrorists and our government are not the only possible sources of villainy in this affair involving the possibility of torture at Guantanamo Bay.  The corporate news media can lie to us too.  The corporate news media has one overriding task, provide an audience for advertisers.  The “successful” reporter is one who gains the largest audience, and that word “torture” gains attention.   Hence we must regard Leonnig’s supposed reluctance to use the word “torture” with some incredulity.  As the Leonnig herself notes, she started using the “torture” in December 2004 (see here and here).  In the first article, for the Seattle Times, she used the term “torture” twice.  In her second, for the Washington Post, a paper with a larger circulation, she used the word eight times.

The Cartoons

What drives this issue?   There is politics, the hatred of President George W. Bush, and there is the abhorrence of torture.  Too often it is hard to separate the two.

Today, our Supreme Court decided to rewrite the rules.  See here and here.

Some people are more rightly upset with this nonsense than I.  See this post.