This 'Letter of Apology' was written by Lieutenant General Chuck Pitman, US
 Marine Corps, Retired:
 
For good and ill, the Iraqi prisoner abuse mess will remain an issue. On the
 one hand, right thinking Americans will abhor the stupidity of the actions
 while on the other hand, political glee will take control and fashion this
 minor event into some modern day massacre.
 
I humbly offer my opinion here:
 
I am sorry that the last seven times we Americans took up arms and
 sacrificed the blood of our youth; it was in the defense of Muslims ( Bosnia,
 Kosovo, Gulf War 1, Kuwait , etc.)

I am sorry that no such call for an apology upon the extremists came after
 9/11.

 I am sorry that all of the murderers on 9/11 were Islamic Arabs.
 I am sorry that most Arabs and Muslims have to live in squalor under savage
 dictatorships.
 
I am sorry that their leaders squander their wealth.
 I am sorry that their governments breed hate for the US in their religious
 schools, mosques, and government-controlled media.
 
I am sorry that Yasser Arafat was kicked out of every Arab country and
 high-jacked the Palestinian 'cause.'
 
I am sorry that no other Arab country will take in or offer more than a
 token amount of financial help to those same Palestinians.
 I am sorry that the U. S. A. has to step in and be the biggest financial
 supporter of poverty stricken Arabs while the insanely wealthy Arabs blame
 the USA for all their problems.
 
I am sorry that our own left wing, our media, and our own brainwashed masses
 do not understand any of this (from the misleading vocal elements of our
 society like radical professors, CNN and the NY TIMES).
 I am sorry the United Nations scammed the poor people of Iraq out of the
 'food for oil' money so they could get rich while the common folk suffered.
 
I am sorry that some Arab governments pay the families of homicide bombers
 upon their death
 
I am sorry that those same bombers are brainwashed thinking they will
 receive 72 virgins in 'paradise.'

 I am sorry that the homicide bombers think pregnant women, babies, children,
 the elderly and other noncombatant civilians are legitimate targets.
 
I am sorry that our troops die to free more Arabs from the gang rape rooms
 and the filling of mass graves of dissidents of their own making.
 I am sorry that Muslim extremists have killed more Arabs than any other
 group.

 I am sorry that foreign trained terrorists are trying to seize control of
Iraq and return it to a terrorist state.

 I am sorry we don't drop a few dozen Daisy cutters on Fallujah.

 I am sorry every time terrorists hide they find a convenient 'Holy Site.'
I am sorry they didn't apologize for driving a jet into the World Trade
 Center that collapsed and severely damaged Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox
 Church - one of our Holy Sites.
 
I am sorry they didn't apologize for flight 93 and 175, the USS Cole, the
 embassy bombings, the murders and beheadings of Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl,
 etc....etc!
 
I am sorry Michael Moore is American; he could feed a medium sized village
 in Africa .

 America will get past this latest absurdity. We will punish those
responsible because that is what we do.

 I am sorry the Barack Hussein Obama may be elected president of the United
 States when he doesn't have a clue on how to be a strong Commander-in-chief
 in a world filled with Muslim extremists who will do whatever it needs to do
 to destroy the lives of civilized people while killing innocent men, women
 and children in order to bring a change that is beneficial to all Islamic
 terrorists worldwide. 
I am sorry that voters on the left don't understand the frightening changes
 that are taking place
 
in the Muslim world and what these changes will do to this world in which we
 live. 
 
I am sorry that the Democratic Party has been high jacked by Socialists and
Communists right  under the very noses of those who take pride in calling themselves
 democrats.
 We hang out our dirty laundry for the entire world to see. We move on.
That's one of the reasons we are hated so much. We don't hide this stuff
 like all those Arab countries that are now demanding an apology.
 
Deep down inside, when most Americans saw this reported in the news, we were
 like - so what? We lost hundreds and made fun of a few prisoners. Sure, it
 was wrong, sure, it dramatically hurts our cause, but until captured we were
 trying to kill these same prisoners. Now we're supposed to wring our hands
 because a few were humiliated?
 Our compassion is tempered with the vivid memories of our own people killed,
 mutilated and burnt amongst a joyous crowd of celebrating Fallujahans.
 
If you want an apology from this American, you're going to have a long wait!
 You have a better chance of finding those seventy-two virgins.
 
Chuck Pitman

"In the truest sense freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved."

To all of you who have served in America's military, THANK YOU!!

MEMORIAL DAY, MAY 26

"I have never been able to think of the day as one of mourning; I have never quite been able to feel that half-masted flags were appropriate on Decoration Day. I have rather felt that the flag should be at the peak, because those whose dying we commemorate rejoiced in seeing it where their valor placed it. We honor them in a joyous, thankful, triumphant commemoration of what they did."   Benjamin Harrison

Everyone who supported slavery was free.

Everyone who supports abortion was born, and that, my friends, is how oppression works.

Author unknown

A Living Lie

An e-mail from a reader said that, while Hillary Clinton tells lies, Barack Obama is himself a lie. That is becoming painfully apparent with each new revelation of how drastically his carefully crafted image this election year contrasts with what he has actually been saying and doing for many years.

Senator Obama's election year image is that of a man who can bring the country together, overcoming differences of party or race, as well as solving our international problems by talking with Iran and other countries with which we are at odds, and performing other miscellaneous miracles as needed.There is, of course, not a speck of evidence that Obama has ever transcended party differences in the United States Senate. Voting records analyzed by the National Journal show him to be the farthest left of anyone in the Senate. Nor has he sponsored any significant bipartisan legislation -- nor any other significant legislation, for that matter.

Senator Obama is all talk -- glib talk, exciting talk, confident talk, but still just talk.

Some of his recent talk in San Francisco has stirred up controversy because it revealed yet another blatant contradiction between Barack Obama's public image and his reality.

Speaking privately to supporters in heavily left-liberal San Francisco, Obama let down his hair and described working class people in Pennsylvania as so "bitter" that they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."

Like so much that Obama has said and done over the years, this is standard stuff on the far left, where guns and religion are regarded as signs of psychological dysfunction -- and where opinions different from those of the left are ascribed to emotions ("bitter" in this case), rather than to arguments that need to be answered.

Like so many others on the left, Obama rejects "stereotypes" when they are stereotypes he doesn't like but blithely throws around his own stereotypes about "a typical white person" or "bitter" gun-toting, religious and racist working class people.

In politics, the clearer a statement is, the more certain it is to be followed by a "clarification," when people react adversely to what was plainly said.

Obama and his supporters were still busy "clarifying" Jeremiah Wright's very plain statements when it suddenly became necessary to "clarify" Senator Obama's own statements in San Francisco.

People who have been cheering whistle-blowers for years have suddenly denounced the person who blew the whistle on what Obama said in private that is so contradictory to what he has been saying in public.

However inconsistent Obama's words, his behavior has been remarkably consistent over the years. He has sought out and joined with the radical, anti-Western left, whether Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers of the terrorist Weatherman underground or pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli Rashid Khalidi.

Obama is also part of a long tradition on the left of being for the working class in the abstract, or as people potentially useful for the purposes of the left, but having disdain or contempt for them as human beings.

Karl Marx said, "The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing." In other words, they mattered only in so far as they were willing to carry out the Marxist agenda.

Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw included the working class among the "detestable" people who "have no right to live." He added: "I should despair if I did not know that they will all die presently, and that there is no need on earth why they should be replaced by people like themselves."

Similar statements on the left go back as far as Rousseau in the 18th century and come forward into our own times.

It is understandable that young people are so strongly attracted to Obama. Youth is another name for inexperience -- and experience is what is most needed when dealing with skillful and charismatic demagogues.

Those of us old enough to have seen the type again and again over the years can no longer find them exciting. Instead, they are as tedious as they are dangerous.