“Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me." ~Immanuel Kant
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." ~John Quincy Adams
“To do something, however small, to make others happier and better, is the highest ambition, the most elevating hope, which can inspire a human being." ~John Lubbock
"Pictures of dollar bills, fantasies of wealth and even wads of Monopoly money arouse feelings of self-sufficiency that result in selfish and often anti-social behavior, according to a study published in the journal Science
"The mere presence of money changes people," said Kathleen Vohs, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota and lead author of the study
Money makes it possible for people to achieve their goals without asking for help. Therefore, Vohs and her colleagues theorized, even subtle reminders of money would inspire people to be self-reliant -- and to expect such behavior from others
A series of nine experiments confirmed their hypothesis. For example, students who played Monopoly and then were asked to envision a future with great wealth picked up fewer dropped pencils for a fellow student than those asked to contemplate a hand-to-mouth existence"
i for one am shocked to learn that money has an effect on people
"The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, corrupt charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded"
It is a shame — and it is embarrassing to us all — when President Bush travels 8,000 miles, only to wind up avoiding reality, again
And it is pathetic to listen to the leader of the free world, talk so unrealistically about Vietnam, when it was he who permitted the "Swift-Boating" of not one but two American heroes of that war, in consecutive Presidential campaigns
But most importantly — important, beyond measure — his avoidance of reality is going to wind up killing more Americans
And that is indefensible — and fatal
Asked if there were lessons about Iraq to be found in our experience in Vietnam, Mr. Bush said that there were — and he immediately proved he had no clue what they were
"One lesson is," he said, "that we tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a while."
"We'll succeed," the President concluded, "unless we quit."
If that's the lesson about Iraq that Mr. Bush sees in Vietnam, then he needs a tutor. Or we need somebody else making the decisions about Iraq
Mr. Bush, there are a dozen central lessons to be derived from our nightmare in Vietnam, but "we'll succeed unless we quit" is not one of them
The primary one — which should be as obvious to you as the latest opinion poll showing that only 31 percent of this country agrees with your tragic Iraq policy– is that if you try to pursue a war for which the nation has lost its stomach, you and it are finished. Ask Lyndon Johnson
The second most important lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush: if you don't have a stable local government to work with, you can keep sending in Americans until hell freezes over and it will not matter. Ask South Vietnam's President Diem, or President Thieu
The third vital lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush: don't pretend it's something it's not. For decades we were warned that if we didn't stop "communist aggression" in Vietnam, communist agitators would infiltrate and devour the small nations of the world, and make their insidious way, stealthily, to our doorstep
The war machine of 1968 had this "Domino Theory."
Your war machine of 2006 has this nonsense about Iraq as "the central front in the war on terror."
The fourth pivotal lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush: if the same idiots who told Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to stay there for the sake of "Peace With Honor," are now telling you to stay in Iraq, they're probably just as wrong now, as they were then… Dr. Kissinger
And the fifth crucial lesson of Vietnam, Mr. Bush, which somebody should've told you about, long before you plunged this country into Iraq — is that, if you lie us into a war — your war, and your presidency, will be consigned to the scrapheap of history
Finally, in Vietnam, we learned the lesson. We stopped endlessly squandering lives and treasure and the focus of a nation on an impossible and irrelevant dream
But you are still doing exactly that, tonight, in Iraq
And these lessons from Vietnam, Mr. Bush, these priceless, transparent lessons, writ large as if across the very sky, are still a mystery to you
"We'll succeed unless we quit."?
No, sir. We will succeed — against terrorism, for our country's needs, towards binding up the nation's wounds — when you quit — quit the monumental lie, that is our presence in Iraq
And in the interim, Mr. Bush, an American kid will be killed there, probably tonight — or, if we're lucky, not until tomorrow
"Regardless of how you feel about the war, you must concede that it is going to cost us all dearly.
The Iraq war is consuming over $1.4 billion a week - or $200 million a day. In the time it takes you to read this article, the American government will have spent $700,000 on the war. The war has cost $200 billion already.
Economists have estimated the war's ultimate bill will be $1-2 trillion, which includes costs such as the hospitalization and long-term care of tens of thousands of wounded veterans, interest payments on the wartime debt and replacement of worn-out equipment.
In the case of Iraq, instead of raising taxes to pay for the war, the current Bush administration is cutting them, adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal deficit. The Bush administration has raised the ceiling on the national debt from $5.95 trillion in 2001 to $9.62 trillion in 2006, an increase of over 60 percent in five years.
All this debt must eventually be repaid by taxing us, our children and our grandchildren."
born and raised in Halifax NS, Canada, by Turkish parents.
high school at Phillips Academy (Andover MA).
college at McGill U. in Montreal PQ, Canada (Bsc. Physiology).
grad school at Vanderbilt U. in Nashville TN (Phd. Cancer Biology)
currently enjoying life :)
PEACE AND LOVE