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Recognizing Those Who Served
It is interesting to note who is willing to put his life on the line for what he believes in...and who is not. It's worth noting who really served among the heavyweights in each of the major political parties. Be sure to check out the bottom of the list where the people who spend their time jabbering about military service, (the TV pundits) have their military credentials exposed. Read it and weep...for your country.
Democrats
Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71.
David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72.
Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72.
Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent toVietnamJan. 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.
Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69;Medal of Honor,Vietnam.
Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-'47; Medal of Honor, WWII.
John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V Purple Hearts.
John Edwards: did not serve.
Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52;Bronze Star,Korea.
Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68;Silver Star&Bronze Star,Vietnam.
Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-1953.
Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74.
Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91.
Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII, receiving the Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons.
Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76;Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze Stars, and Soldier's Medal.
Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and Legion of Merit.
Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart.
Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine inVietnam; Bronze Star with Combat V.
Gray Davis: Army Captain inVietnam, Bronze Star.
Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57
Chuck Robb:Vietnam
Howell Heflin: Silver Star
George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII.
Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments. Entered draft but received 311.
Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy.
Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953
John Glenn: WWII andKorea; six DFCs and Air Medal with 18 Clusters.
Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII. Saved by Raoul Wallenberg.
Wesley Clark:U.S.Army, 1966-2000,West Point,Vietnam, Purple Heart, Silver Star. Retired 4-star general.
John Dingell: WWII vet
John Conyers: Army 1950-57,Korea
Republicans
Dennis Hastert: did not serve.
Tom Delay: did not serve.
House Whiip Roy Blunt: did not serve.
Bill Frist: did not serve.
Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
George Pataki: did not serve.
Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
Rick Santorum: did not serve.
Trent Lott: did not serve.
Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage.
John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business.
Jeb Bush: did not serve.
Karl Rove: did not serve.
Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked Max Cleland's patriotism.
Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.
Vin Weber: did not serve.
Richard Perle: did not serve.
Douglas Feith: did not serve.
Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
Richard Shelby: did not serve.
Jon Kyl: did not serve.
Tim Hutchison: did not serve.
Christopher Cox: did not serve.
Newt Gingrich: did not serve.
Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as aviator and flight instructor.
George W. Bush: six-year Nat'l Guard commitment (incomplete).
Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non-combat role making movies.
Gerald Ford: Navy, WWII
Phil Gramm: did not serve.
John McCain: Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
Bob Dole: an honorable veteran.
Chuck Hagel: two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star,Vietnam.
Jeff Sessions: Army Reserves, 1973-1986
JC Watts: did not serve.
Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer.
G.H.W. Bush: Pilot in WWII. Shot down by the Japanese.
TomRidge: Bronze Star for Valor inVietnam.
Antonin Scalia: did not serve.
Clarence Thomas: did not serve
Pundits and Preachers
Sean Hannity: did not serve.
Rush Limbaugh: did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst.')
Bill O'Reilly: did not serve.
Michael Savage: did not serve.
George Will: did not serve.
Chris Matthews: did not serve.
Paul Gigot: did not serve.
Bill Bennett: did not serve.
Pat Buchanan: did not serve.
Bill Kristol: did not serve.
Kenneth Starr: did not serve.
Michael Medved: did not serve.
Our World
If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.
The following is also something to ponder...
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness...you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.
If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation ...you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death...you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep...you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace ... you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.
If your parents are still alive and still married ... you are very rare, even in the United States and Canada.
If you can read this, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.
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Countries with Nuclear Weapons Capability
#1. U.S.
HISTORY Set off first nuclear blast in 1945. Has conducted 1,030 tests, more than the rest of the world combined.
ARSENAL 12,070 warheads.
MISSILE RANGE 8,100 mi. (13,000 km), able to reach anywhere in the world
2# BRITAIN
HISTORY First test in 1952; has performed 45 in all
ARSENAL 380 warheads.
RANGE 7,500 mi. (12,000 km)
#3. FRANCE
HISTORY Testing since 1961; 210 tests in all. Conducted six controversial tests in the Pacific Ocean as recently as 1995 and 1996.
ARSENAL 500 warheads.
RANGE 3,300 mi. (5,300 km)
#4. RUSSIA
HISTORY Second to conduct tests; 715 in all. Once a major player in arms race, its warhead count is now shrinking.
ARSENAL 22,500 warheads.
RANGE 6,800 mi. (11,000 km)
#5. CHINA
HISTORY Started testing in 1964; 45 tests in all. Known to be helping Pakistan with its nuclear efforts.
ARSENAL 450 warheads.
RANGE 6,800 mi. (11,000 km)
#6. INDIA
HISTORY Set off five nuclear tests in May, 1998, surprising the world, conducted its first nuclear test was in 1974.
ARSENAL about 65 warheads.
RANGE 1,550 mi. (2,500 km)
#7. PAKISTAN
STATUS Began secret weapons program in 1972 to reach parity with India, but restricted by U.S. sanctions since 1990. Just tested a new medium-range missile
ARSENAL 15-25 warheads.
RANGE 930 mi. (1,500 km).
Countries with Undeclared Nuclear-Weapons Capability and Countries Believed to be Attempting to Develop Nuclear Weapons.
#8. ISRAEL
STATUS Known to have a bomb in the basement. Pledges not to introduce nukes to the Middle East.
ARSENAL 64-112 warheads.
MISSILE RANGE 930 mi. (1,500 km)
#9. IRAN
STATUS U.S. believes Iran, a member in good standing of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is developing weapons using its nuclear power program.
MISSILE RANGE 300 mi. (500 km)
#10. IRAQ
STATUS Subject to rigorous inspection since its defeat in the 1991 Gulf War. U.N. inspections seem to have halted progress in weapons development.
RANGE 90 mi. (150 km)
#11. NORTH KOREA
STATUS Threatening to suspend a 1994 agreement that froze nuclear activity. Perhaps enough material to build two warheads
RANGE 600-930 mi. (1,000-1,500 km)
#12. LIBYA
STATUS U.S. still thinks Gaddafi is interested in acquiring nuclear weapons, but a U.N. embargo has hampered his progress
RANGE 190 mi. (300 km)
Countries That Gave Up Their Nuclear-Weapons Programs
#13. ALGERIA
STATUS Discovered in 1991 to be building a reactor able to produce
weapons-grade material. Placed reactor under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and now party to the NPT.
#14. ARGENTINA, BRAZIL
STATUS Both countries pursued weapons programs in the 1980s, but new democratic governments stopped work by 1990. Both have signed a treaty for a nuclear-weapons-free zone in Latin America.
#15. BELARUS, KAZAKHSTAN, UKRAINE
STATUS When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, these former states
possessed numerous nuclear weapons. All have rid themselves of the
warheads and have acceded to the NPT.
#16. SOUTH AFRICA
STATUS The only country to develop nuclear weapons and then give them up of its own volition. De Klerk dismantled the arsenal in 1991 and joined the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state.
Sources: Arms Control Association; Center for Defense Information; Center for Nonproliferation Studies; National Resources Defense Council; SIPRI Yearbook 1997
Adapted from Time Magazine, May 25, 1998, Vol. 151, No. 20.
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 Why we fight.
Country Joe's Place has obtained top-secret information about the Pentagon's plan for control of the Middle East.
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Q U O T E S
"When the Iraqi volcano erupts, it won't burn Iraqis. Unlike what the Bush administration is trying to promote and claim, Iraqis never had a civil war, and they’ll never have one unless the occupation troops stay in Iraq. The US troops should leave Iraq as soon as possible so that Iraqis would have the time and space to heal their wounds and deal with their internal issues. The US army shouldn't be left in Iraq to face the ire of millions of Iraqis."
"The United States was not attacked because we are free. Bin Laden was not attacking the Bill of Rights. We were attacked because the U.S. military and political presence is massive over there. Bin Laden in his fatwah, his statement of declaration of war on the U.S, said the infidels were standing on sacred soil of Saudi Arabia. They want us out of the Middle East. They don't care whether we have separation of church and state."
-- Pat Buchanan, "Meet the Press," February 13, 2005
"...I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar of human life and that free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike for example – Sweden?"
-- Osama bin Laden, October 27, 2004
"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
-- George Orwell, "Notes on Nationalism," 1945
"The national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality. Today Christians stand at the head of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral
developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press-in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life
and culture as a result of liberal excess during recent years."
-- Adolf Hitler, 1933
"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster. Our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the willfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad but the responsibility, in this case, is not on the army which has acted only upon the request of the civil authorities."
-- T.E. Lawrence, August, 1920
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Hit the "play" button to hear Donald Rumsfeld explain it all. Hit "stop" when you're convinced.
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Seventeen years after the Gulf war, a congressionally mandated committee has concluded that “Gulf war syndrome” is a legitimate condition that continues to affect one quarter of the nearly 700,000 US soldiers deployed in that war. In a report presented last month to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses said, “Scientific evidence leaves no question that Gulf War illness is a real condition with real causes and serious consequences for affected veterans.”
