Minor Thoughts from me to you

It's not just the wheels that are coming off of the Administration's story about the Benghazi attacks. The whole bus is disintegrating.

The Atlantic Wire: State Department Disowns Susan Rice's Libya Narrative

In an unusual display of disunity, State Department officials have disowned remarks by one of their top officials, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, regarding her explanation of the deadly terrorist assault on U.S. diplomats in Libya in September. Not only did they say Rice's characterization of those attacks as "spontaneous" was wrong, but also, they said that assessment was never the conclusion of the State Department at any point in time.

In a conference call to reporters on Tuesday, senior State Department officials said they couldn't explain why Rice went on a Sunday talk show blitz last month describing the Benhazi attacks as a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Islam film in the U.S. "That was not our conclusion," the officials said. "That is the question you'd have to ask others."

In the Rice version of events, the attacks that led to the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans began as an anti-film demonstration and devolved into a deadly assault. But State Department officials say there was no anti-film demonstration. "Everything is calm at 8:30 p.m., there is nothing unusual. There had been nothing unusual during the day outside," officials told reporters Tuesday. "Then at 9:40 they saw on the security cameras that there were armed men invading the compound."

Reuters: U.S. officer got no reply to requests for more security in Benghazi

A U.S. security officer twice asked his State Department superiors for more security agents for the American mission in Benghazi months before an attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, but he got no response.

The officer, Eric Nordstrom, who was based in Tripoli until about two months before the September attack, said a State Department official, Charlene Lamb, wanted to keep the number of U.S. security personnel in Benghazi "artificially low," according to a memo summarizing his comments to a congressional committee that was obtained by Reuters.

Nordstrom also argued for more U.S. security in Libya by citing a chronology of over 200 security incidents there from militia gunfights to bomb attacks between June 2011 and July 2012. Forty-eight of the incidents were in Benghazi.

BBC News: US security 'cut' before Benghazi consulate attack

Lt Col Wood told Wednesday's hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform that when he arrived in Libya in February there had been three US diplomatic special security teams in the country, but by August they had been withdrawn.

He also said that the security situation in Libya had worsened before the 11 September attack, in which four Americans died, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

He said he had visited Benghazi twice and was there in June when the British ambassador's convoy was attacked, one of a dozen incidents before the assault on the consulate.

Mr Nordstrom testified that he had been criticised for seeking more security.

"There was no plan and it was hoped it would get better," he said.

`He told the committee that conversations he had with people in Washington had led him to believe that it was "abundantly clear we were not going to get resources until the aftermath of an incident".

Michael Totten again, quoting Paul Berman. It's dangerous to criticize Islam.

When I met Hirsi Ali at a conference in Sweden last year, she was protected by no less than five bodyguards. Even in the United States she is protected by bodyguards. But this is no longer unusual. Buruma himself mentions in Murder in Amsterdam that the Dutch Social Democratic politician Ahmed Aboutaleb requires full-time bodyguards. At that same Swedish conference I happened to meet the British writer of immigrant background who has been obliged to adopt the pseudonym Ibn Warraq, out of fear that, in his case because of his Bertrand Russell influenced philosophical convictions, he might be singled out for assassination. I happened to attend a different conference in Italy a few days earlier and met the very brave Egyptian-Italian journalist Magdi Allam, who writes scathing criticisms of the new totalitarian wave in Il Corriere della Sera–and I discovered that Allam, too, was traveling with a full complement of five bodyguards. The Italian journalist Fiamma Nierenstein, because of her well-known sympathies for Israel, was accompanied by her own bodyguards. Caroline Fourest, the author of the most important extended criticism of [Tariq] Ramadan, had to go under police protection for a while. The French philosophy professor Robert Redeker has had to go into hiding. I have no idea what security precautions have been taken by Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which published the Muhammad cartoons. And van Gogh…

Salman Rushdie has metastasized into an entire social class, a subset of the European intelligentsia–its Muslim wing especially–who survive only because of their bodyguards and their own precautions. This is unprecedented in Western Europe during the last sixty years. And yet if someone like Pascal Bruckner mumbles a few words about the need for courage under these circumstances, the sneers begin–"Now where have we heard that kind of thing before?"–and onward to the litany about fascism. In the Times magazine, Buruma held back even from hinting obliquely about the fascist influences on Ramadan’s grandfather, the founder of the modern cult of artistic death. Yet Bruckner, the liberal–here is somebody on the brink of fascism!

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Here's a quick rundown of the various links I've been saving, related to Libya and Benghazi.

Michael Totten was one of the first to notice that the attacks weren't related to the anti-Muslim video.

Meanwhile, a London think tank with strong ties to Libya speculated Wednesday that Stevens was actually the victim of a targeted al Qaeda revenge attack. The assault "came to avenge the death of Abu Yaya al-Libi, al Qaeda's second in command killed a few months ago," the think tank Quilliam said Wednesday.

Michael Totten also noticed that the Libyan President was being more honest about the attacks than the American President.

Libya’s President Mohammed el-Megarif begs to differ.

“The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous,” he said.

I wasn’t there and I don’t know what happened, exactly, but I have to say the Libyan government’s account is more credible than what the U.S. government is saying right now. I never thought I’d type that particular sentence—and I certainly would not have when Qaddafi was running the place—but this has been a hell of a week.

Billy Birdzell, writing at Michael Yon's place, about the strategic context of embassy security.

The events of Sept. 11, 2012 and Ambassador Stevens' death do not mean the Department of State needs to change its procedures or decision making framework. U.S. embassies have been evacuated at least 20 times since 1979, the last year in which a U.S. ambassador was killed in the line of duty. Deploying hundreds of policemen, riot-control agents and various means of crowd control can be a significant burden on developing nations, yet they carry out the duties to which they have agreed via the Vienna Conventions and are successfully defending U.S. personnel in over two dozen countries currently experiencing civil unrest. The United States should never compromise on the safety of its personnel or material of national security, yet we must also understand that it is a dangerous world in which our enemies have a say. Overreacting to recent events and implementing unnecessary security measures may have worse consequences than not doing enough.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the timeline of the Benghazi attack

The deadly assault on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya on Sept. 11 was preceded by a succession of security lapses and misjudgments, compounded by fog-of-battle decisions, that raise questions about whether the scope of the tragedy could have been contained.

U.S. officials issued alerts and ordered security precautions in neighboring Egypt ahead of protests and violence on Sept. 11, but largely overlooked the possibility of trouble at other diplomatic postings in the region.

The State Department chose to maintain only limited security in Benghazi, Libya, despite months of sporadic attacks there on U.S. and other Western missions. And while the U.S. said it would ask Libya to boost security there, it did so just once, for a one-week period in June, according to Libyan officials.

Gateway Pundit: Bombshell: Obama Administration Withdrew 16 Member Special Forces Team From Libya One Month Before Attack

The Obama State Department withdrew a 16 member special forces team from Benghazi one month before the deadly attacks on 9-11. Lt. Col. Andy Wood was the leader of the 16 member special forces team whose job it was to protect US personnel in Libya. His team’s mission ended in August a month before the deadly Al-Qaeda attack on 9-11. A six member mobile security team was also withdrawn around the same time. This was despite the fact that there were over a dozen attacks in the country this year. Lt. Col. Wood was subpoenaed to appear at a House committee hearing this coming week. Wood told CBS News it was unbelievable to him that the State Department withdrew security when they did because of the 13 security incidents before 9-11.

House investigators warned Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to expect a hearing into their finding that that American staff at the U.S. Embassy in Libya had their request for additional security denied by Washington officials.

“In addition, multiple U.S. federal government officials have confirmed to the Committee that, prior to the September 11 attack, the U.S. mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security in Benghazi,” Issa and Chaffetz added (my emphasis). “The mission in Libya, however, was denied these resources by officials in Washington.”

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Israel may have an ally, for a strike against Iran, in Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan, the oil-rich ex-Soviet republic on Iran's far northern border, has, say local sources with knowledge of its military policy, explored with Israel how Azeri air bases and spy drones might help Israeli jets pull off a long-range attack.

That is a far cry from the massive firepower and diplomatic cover that Netanyahu wants from Washington. But, by addressing key weaknesses in any Israeli war plan - notably on refueling, reconnaissance and rescuing crews - such an alliance might tilt Israeli thinking on the feasibility of acting without U.S. help.

Why would they help?

The country, home to nine million people whose language is close to Turkish and who mostly share the Shi'ite Muslim faith of Iran, has four ex-Soviet air bases that could be suitable for Israeli jets, the Azeri sources said.

Relations have long been strained between the former Soviet state and Iran, which is home to twice as many ethnic Azeris as Azerbaijan itself. Tehran beams an Azeri-language television channel over the border which portrays Aliyev as a puppet of Israel and the West, as well as highlighting corruption in Baku.

Azerbaijan sees Iranian hands behind its Islamist opposition and both countries have arrested alleged spies and agitators.

Faced with an uneven balance of force, Aliyev's government makes no bones about Israel being an ally. As one presidential aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, explained: "We live in a dangerous neighborhood; that is what is the most powerful driving force for our relationship with Israel."

But, of course. Iran is being their normal belligerent, export aggression selves and Azerbaijan wants some backup. If not for Hezbollah, I think Lebanon would be in the exact same boat. Azerbaijan wants to avoid Lebanon's fate, by making sure Iran never gets a foothold inside their borders.

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It was just a few weeks ago at the Democratic national convention that Obama confidently declared that “al Qaeda is on the path to defeat and Osama bin Laden is dead.” And yet, on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda struck again against our lightly guarded consulate in Benghazi, where ambassador Chris Stevens was murdered — an attack, it now turns out, the United States had ample reason to suspect was coming.

I think that foreign policy has gone from being an Obama strength to something that has to be considered an Obama weakness. Right?

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Michael Totten on foreign aid and the Arab world. I endorse this message wholeheartedly.

Egypt has nothing Americans need, not even oil.

Libya, on the other hand, doesn't only deserve American help. It needs American help.

The country is on a knife's edge. The central government doesn't control all of its territory, nor does it have a monopoly on the use of force, as a healthy and stable government should. Patches of Libya are under the thumbs of ideological and tribal militias.

Libya is in a transition phase. The country will cohere under a strong central government or come apart. If it comes apart, al Qaeda could break off a piece, as it did in Mali in April. The last thing the West needs right now is an oil-rich terrorist nest a short boat ride from Italy.

Popular sentiment in Libya toward the U.S. and the West in general is the opposite of sentiment in Egypt and pretty much everywhere else in the Arab world. That shouldn't surprise us. Gadhafi fed his cowering subjects a steady diet of anti-Americanism for decades, but most Libyans hated him. They hated him so much they hardly even bothered to protest once the Arab Spring started. They just picked up their rifles and aimed to shoot him out of his palace. They knew Americans hated him, too. He was a common enemy. It matters, and it matters a lot. Libya's relative pro-Americanism is similar at least in that way to Eastern Europe's.

It may not last. Libyans could end up joining the Arab world's anti-American mainstream. For now, though, they're standing apart from all that. They need American help against the militias, and they're worth the risk. The alternative is worse by far than anything we're seeing in Cairo.

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Meanwhile, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are raising questions about security at the compound in Benghazi. All members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wrote to the State Department on Thursday asking for additional details about security at U.S. diplomatic posts and for a fuller explanation of the attacks on U.S. compounds in Libya, Egypt and Yemen.

An intelligence source on the ground in Libya told Fox News on Friday that no threat assessment was conducted before U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team began "taking up residence" at the Benghazi compound -- describing the security lapses as a "total failure."

The source told Fox News that there was no real security equipment installed in the villas on the compound except for a few video cameras.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst, the intelligence source said the security lapses were a 10 -- a "total failure" because Benghazi was known to be a major area for extremist activity.

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None of the initial explanations offered by the White House and State Department since the assault on the Benghazi consulate has held up. ... Administration officials also maintained that the diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt, the site of the first attacks this September 11, were properly defended and that the U.S. had no reason to prepare for any attack. ... As it turned out, the assault was well-coordinated, with fighters armed with guns, RPGs and diesel canisters, which were used to set the buildings on fire. Ambassador Chris Stevens died of smoke inhalation.

Why isn't this a foreign policy scandal? Is the media protecting their candidate or is there another legitimate reason that the press isn't hammering the President and State Department about this?

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Michael Totten talks about the U.S. alliance with Morocco, one of the few bright spots in the Muslim world.

Compare and contrast Washington’s poisoned relationship with Cairo to the one at the opposite end of North Africa. The United States just upgraded its relationship with Morocco to the level of what’s called a Strategic Dialogue, bringing the two almost as close as possible without bringing Morocco into NATO. Americans have fewer than two dozen alliances like this in the world.

... That part of the world also needs a stable rock somewhere—not the stultifying stability provided by the House of al-Saud in Arabia, and certainly not the tyrannical sort that Moammar Qaddafi managed for a few decades in Libya. No, what the Middle East and North Africa need right now is progressive stability, the kind that slowly advances human and political development without triggering the kinds of violent reactions and shocks we’re seeing in so many places right now. Morocco is one of the few countries that's pulling it off.

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The Wall Street Journal editorial board on Israel and Iran.

Note that word—"eliminated." When Iranians talk about Israel, this intention of a final solution keeps coming up. In October 2005, Mr. Ahmadinejad, quoting the Ayatollah Khomeini, said Israel "must be wiped off the map." Lest anyone miss the point, the Iranian President said in June 2008 that Israel "has reached the end of its function and will soon disappear off the geographical domain."

This pledge of erasing an entire state goes back to the earliest days of the Iranian revolution. "One of our major points is that Israel must be destroyed," Ayatollah Khomeini said in the 1980s.

Former Iranian President Akbar Rafsanjani—often described as a moderate in Western media accounts—had this to say in 2001: "If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists' strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality."

So for Iran it is "not irrational" to contemplate the deaths of millions of Muslims in exchange for the end of Israel because millions of other Muslims will survive, but the Jewish state will not.

The world's civilized nations typically denounce such statements, as the U.S. State Department denounced Mr. Ahamadinejad's on Monday. But denouncing them is not the same as taking them seriously. Sometimes the greatest challenge for a civilized society is comprehending that not everyone behaves in civilized or rational fashion, that barbarians can still appear at the gate.

The tragic lesson of history is that sometimes barbarians mean what they say. Sometimes regimes do want to eliminate entire nations or races, and they will do so if they have the means and opportunity and face a timorous or disbelieving world.

As much as I like Ron Paul's foreign policy positions, this worries me. A lot. Getting Iran wrong is deadly. If it is "just rhetoric", I feel like it would be appropriate for the rest of the world to send a strong signal that there's no such thing as "just words". Rhetoric matters and deadly rhetoric may need to be responded to with deadly force.

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CNN reported on the personal journal of slain American ambassador Christopher Stevens over objections from his family, a State Department spokesman said Saturday.

... In its online story, CNN said it found the journal on the "floor of the largely unsecured consulate compound where he was fatally wounded."

Uhm. Why was the Ambassador's diary still laying on the floor for CNN to find and pick up? Shouldn't the State Department or CIA or somebody from the government have been through that place before CNN got there? Is the State Department more upset that CNN broadcast the diary or that CNN broadcast the fact that the Ambassador was concerned about security threats—threats that the State Department did nothing to defend against?

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I knew things were getting better, but this is unexpected.

The United States' rapidly declining crude oil supply has made a stunning about-face, shredding federal oil projections and putting energy independence in sight of some analyst forecasts.

After declining to levels not seen since the 1940s, U.S. crude production began rising again in 2009. Drilling rigs have rushed into the nation's oil fields, suggesting a surge in domestic crude is on the horizon.

... By the EIA's forecast, the United States will challenge Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil producer when crude and other forms of liquid petroleum are included. But the U.S. is also the world's top oil consumer, demanding nearly 20 million barrels a day. So even with an oil boom, the nation still falls far short of its energy demands.

I'd love to challenge Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil producer. I'd love to weaken the power of those terrorist sponsoring, women abusing cowards.

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Jerry Pournelle, on foreign policy.

Iraq is another story. We’re pulling out. We have spent $Trillions, we have left chaos, we have removed a major threat to the stability of Iran, and I am not sure what we got out of it. And Iraq certainly does have stuff we want. Oil, to begin with. A fair amount of Yellowcake – uranium ore. Lots of other stuff. And we’re running out because the Iraqis insist on applying Iraqi “law and order” to the US forces in Iraq.

I’d be tempted give them a $3 Trillion bill on the way out, and leave an occupation force in one of their major oil fields where we’d be pumping oil and selling it until most of the bill was paid, but that option was apparently never considered. Incidentally, we could defend our occupied oil fields with Sudanese and for that matter Libyan mercenaries, which we pay for out of the oil proceeds.We wouldn’t need a large US force in Iraq; they could be in Kuwait . Pumping lots of Iraqi oil would drop the world price of crude, and be a great jobs program for the United States.

... I don’t much like Empire as a policy, but if we are going to play Empire, can’t we find someone who knows how to do it competently?

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Michael Totten is one of the most intrepid reporters that you've never heard of. He (mostly) travels alone, he stays independent, he talks to the people on the street and he reports exactly what he sees and hears. He's seemingly unafraid of Islamic radicals or anyone else.

The Road to Fatima Gate is his first book.

The Road to Fatima Gate is a first-person narrative account of revolution, terrorism, and war during history's violent return to Lebanon after fifteen years of quiet. Michael J. Totten's version of events in one of the most volatile countries in the world's most volatile region is one part war correspondence, one part memoir, and one part road movie.

He sets up camp in a tent city built in downtown Beirut by anti-Syrian dissidents, is bullied and menaced by Hezbollah's supposedly friendly "media relations" department, crouches under fire on the Lebanese-Israeli border during the six-week war in 2006, witnesses an Israeli ground invasion from behind a line of Merkava tanks, sneaks into Hezbollah's post-war rubblescape without authorization, and is attacked in Beirut by militiamen who enforce obedience to the "resistance" at the point of a gun.

The Near East Report interviewed Michael Totten about his book and about Fatima Gate.

Sol Stern wrote a review for the City Journal.

And Peter Robinson, from the Hoover Institute, did a video interview with Michael Totten about the book.

I think the book is worth a read.

This is a great profile of the SEALs by a former SEAL. I have an absolutely incredible respect for these men.

What kind of man makes it through Hell Week? That's hard to say. But I do know — generally — who won't make it. There are a dozen types that fail: the weight-lifting meatheads who think that the size of their biceps is an indication of their strength, the kids covered in tattoos announcing to the world how tough they are, the preening leaders who don't want to get dirty, and the look-at-me former athletes who have always been told they are stars but have never have been pushed beyond the envelope of their talent to the core of their character. In short, those who fail are the ones who focus on show. The vicious beauty of Hell Week is that you either survive or fail, you endure or you quit, you do—or you do not.

Some men who seemed impossibly weak at the beginning of SEAL training—men who puked on runs and had trouble with pull-ups—made it. Some men who were skinny and short and whose teeth chattered just looking at the ocean also made it. Some men who were visibly afraid, sometimes to the point of shaking, made it too.

Almost all the men who survived possessed one common quality. Even in great pain, faced with the test of their lives, they had the ability to step outside of their own pain, put aside their own fear and ask: How can I help the guy next to me? They had more than the "fist" of courage and physical strength. They also had a heart large enough to think about others, to dedicate themselves to a higher purpose.

SEALs are capable of great violence, but that's not what makes them truly special. Given two weeks of training and a bunch of rifles, any reasonably fit group of 16 athletes (the size of a SEAL platoon) can be trained to do harm. What distinguishes SEALs is that they can be thoughtful, disciplined and proportional in the use of force.

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A few days ago, tens of thousands of Mexicans in scores of Mexican cities participated in public protests against the War on Drugs and the use of the Mexican army as anti-drug warriors. The violence that has accompanied the Mexican government’s attempts to defeat the drug dealers during the past several years has claimed perhaps as many as 40,000 lives. Some cities, especially Ciudad Juarez, across the river from El Paso, Texas, have become virtual battlefields.

All of this would be sufficiently dreadful if it had accompanied legitimate efforts to suppress real criminals. But although the drug dealers have committed murders, robberies, and other genuine crimes, to be sure, the foundation of this entire “war” is the U.S. government’s attempts to suppress actions — possessing, buying, and selling certain substances — that violate no one’s natural rights. Not to mince words, the War on Drugs is completely evil, from alpha to omega. No one who believes in human liberty can coherently support it. That its prosecution should have resulted in death and human suffering on such a vast scale constitutes an indictment of every person who has conducted or supported this wicked undertaking from its outset.

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Victor Davis Hanson elucidates why conservatives oppose the "non-war" that President Obama is "not fighting" in Libya.

2) Approval: To start a third war in the Middle East, the president should have first gone to Congress, especially since he and Vice President Biden have compiled an entire corpus of past speeches, some quite incendiary, equating presidential military intervention without congressional approval with illegality to the point of an impeachable offense (cf. Biden’s warning to Bush over a possible Iran strike). And why boast of U.N. and Arab League approval but not seek the sanction of the U.S. Congress?

3) Consistency: Why is meddling okay in Libya but was not okay in Iran when dissidents there were likewise making headway? Is there any rationale that determines our response to unrest in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, or Libya? It seems we are making it up ad hoc, always in reaction to the perceived pulse of popular demonstrations — always a hit-and-miss, day-late-dollar-short proposition.

4) Aims and Objectives: Fact: We are now and then bombing Libyan ground targets in order to enhance the chances of rebel success in removing or killing Qaddafi. Fiction: We are not offering ground support but only establishing a no-fly zone, and have no desire to force by military means Qaddafi to leave. Questions: Is our aim, then, a reformed Qaddafi? A permanently revolutionary landscape? A partitioned, bisected nation? What is the model? Afghanistan? Mogadishu? The 12-year no-fly-zone in Iraq? A Mubarak-like forced exile? Who are the rebels? Westernized reformers? Muslim Brotherhood types? A mix? Who knows? Who cares?

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I believe this post finishes our site's libertarian conversion. We now occupy the same portion of the libertarian spectrum that LewRockwell.com occupies.

I don't like America's wars of aggression. The problem, as I see it, is that it can be hard to tell the difference between a war of aggression and a good preemptive defense. For instance, I'm still not convinced that going into Iraq was the right thing to do. I'm not sure what risk we were defending ourselves against.

On the other hand, Afghanistan was a necessary war. You give safe harbor to people who blow up part of a city, you die. It's just that simple. But I think that we should have left a while ago. I'm not sure that we're accomplishing anything worthwhile by propping up a corrupt Karzai government. I know about the fear that that terrorists will get Pakistani nukes and attack us with those. But I'm not sure how likely that scenario is or how fragile Pakistan's own government is. So I'm not sure if what we're doing is preemptive defense against a nuclear scenario or whether we're engaging in blatant imperialism for no good return.

But I am grateful for those who do decide to join the military and protect our borders. I respect their loyalty, their sense of honor, and their dedication. I don't always agree with their mission but I know that I'm not qualified to judge how necessary each mission is. As a result, I do sympathize with them and with their families. For this attack, especially.

The Army, for its own inscrutable reasons decided that stateside military bases should be gun-free zones. That strikes me as absolute lunacy. Had someone removed this nut months ago when it became apparent that he was a nut, soldiers would be alive today. Had someone decided to allow our soldiers to carry the guns that they were trained to carry, more of them would be alive today.

I have a lot of sympathy for people who are hamstrung and betrayed by their own leadership. Incidents like this raise a lot of questions about whether a bureaucratized military is the best way to protect a country. I'm not sure that it is. The institutional Army protects its turf quite fiercely, even when that turf isn't worth protecting. Instead, I'd like to see us get back to the old way of doing things: no standing army and a fully armed citizenry that stands ready to form an ad-hoc army as conditions warrant.

Michael Z. Williamson envisioned a heavily armed libertarian society in his book Freehold. I rather like it. And I can think a large portion of our current military would like it too. I don't think they're in the military because they're thugs. I think they're in the military because it's the only institution we have that will allow them to arm up and stand on the borders, protecting those within. Getting called upon to engage in dubious ventures is an unfortunate cost of being a protector. And that's why I sympathize with them.

And, just for the record, I think this LewRockwell.com post is more than a little nuts itself.

While I don't like it when anyone gets hurt, on the other hand I find it difficult to work up sympathy for a bunch of people who are dead now because they promised an organization that in return for a minimum of $350 a week (as an enlisted) or $664 per week (as an officer), they'd help kill anybody they were asked to.