WASHINGTON — Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights. Still, the intercepts could give America’s enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under U.S. surveillance. (Source)

To sum up this article:  Insurgents are using Pringles cans and cheap software to bypass our million dollar equipment.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is a prime example of the fuckery that goes into politics.  This is not shocking to anyone with any knowledge of how our government procures and maintains its equipment.  Equipment is bought and sold from the lowest bidder, not what actually works the best.  Then functionality is stripped out to cut even more costs to make it more attractive for Congress to sign off on.  And when it comes to upgrades?  That can take years…or in this case…decades.  The fuckery of this process is common knowledge. The article says that military officials have known about this issue since 1998.  The claim is that they just didn’t think the lowly insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan would be knowledgeable enough to exploit it.  That’s bullshit for several reasons.  First off, even your most computer illiterate person these days knows that an unsecured wireless link is a huge security risk.  There’s a reason why just about everyone uses a WEP key (or better) to protect their wireless home networks.  You want me to believe that no one, NO ONE, thought it wise to secure an unencrypted link on a military network?  Then, to say that you thought the insurgents wouldn’t be technologically advanced enough to figure it out when we spent the last 8 years listening about how the terrorists are using cyberspace is just bullshit.  The article hints at the real problem:

Officials stepped up efforts to prevent insurgents from intercepting video feeds after the July incident. The difficulty, officials said, is that adding encryption to a network that is more than a decade old involves more than placing a new piece of equipment on individual drones. Instead, many components of the network linking the drones to their operators in the U.S., Afghanistan or Pakistan have to be upgraded to handle the changes. Additional concerns remain about the vulnerability of the communications signals to electronic jamming, though there’s no evidence that has occurred, said people familiar with reports on the matter.

For those that don’t understand what that means, let me explain.  You know those defense appropriation bills that Liberals love to rail against and say are unnecessary?  Yup…this goes to that.  That “pork” that old ass John “I barely know what a computer is” McCain likes to say needs to be taken out?  Yup, this is “pork”.  See, you have a bunch of old folks in Congress that don’t understand this shit.  So when you tell them you need $10 million to upgrade the decades old network equipment and software, they put it off.  Instead money goes to funding F-22 we don’t need because the parts for the plane are built in different states and the senators for that state don’t want to support losing those jobs.  And so money is diverted from what we do need to something we don’t and we end up with security breaches like this.  Now that its in the Wall Street Journal, expect to see money for this attached to some bill in the near future but only because it makes people look bad.

This sadly, is how shit works in our government.  This is why I chuckle at progressives being upset at the Health Care Reform bill.  The problem is the system.  To be honest an “easy” fix is to putting a limit on the number of consecutive terms people in Congress can have.  But that would then require a vote in the Congress…….and Congressmen/women aren’t going to vote on limiting their own power.  So the cycle continues.  Welcome to politics people.

First things first, we’re back on iTunes. To subscribe all you have to do is search for “Insanity Check” in the iTunes store or click this link to subscribe.
Topics for this show:
Vodka in Pill form?
Submachine gun attack at a birthday party in Baltimore
Tila Tequila whores herself out for attention again
Why are women so catty and anti-Rihanna?
Tiger Woods might be a professional golfer but he’s an amateur cheater
Obama’s decision to send troops to Afghanistan
Black people and some of their unreasonable expectations of Obama

We’re looking for writers for TheInsanityReport.com and guests for the Insanity Check Podcast. If you are interested, email us at InsanityCheck@theInsanityReport.com. Also hit us up if you’re good with graphic designs or music production (we’re looking for a new opening for the podcast). Join the Facebook Group for weekly updates on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

If you went to college then you know the best part of college is the frat party.  Beer. Women. Tomfoolery. Beer.  It’s a fun time for all.  Unless you’re the roommate of the guy who hosted the party and wake up the next morning in a sea of solo red cups, party string and overflowing trashcans.  See, while parties are fun, what typically happens is, people come in, make a complete mess then leave without even attempting to clean up after themselves.  Your roommate who hosted the party will be passed out for the next 8 hours on the sofa in the living room.  Now you’re left holding the trashbag and your parents are on their way up to visit.  This typical college situation is exactly what President Obama is facing with Afghanistan, except much much worse.

As I read people’s reactions to the president’s speech on Afghanistan I found myself getting frustrated.  I was called an ‘ObamaStan’ because apparently, if Bush had made this same speech, I would have condemned it.  Truthfully, I found that mildly offensive.  Bush would never have made this speech.  Bush clumsily tried to tell us that Saddam helped plot the 9/11 attacks when most people with knowledge of the region knew that Osama Bin Laden hated Saddam.  So whenever Bush tried to link Iraq to the War on Terror, it just didn’t make any sense. Then there’s the fact that Obama’s speech was on Afghanistan and Bush spent the majority of his 8 years in office ignoring the first war he started.  Instead of developing a legitimate strategy in Afghanistan, Bush, Cheney and the rest of the Administration turned their sights to Iraq, for no apparent reason.  It is completely unfair and asinine to compare Bush’s speeches on Iraq to Obama’s speech on Afghanistan.  See, I remember when we went into Afghanistan.  The majority of this country supported this war.  The American citizens are only tired of this war because they believes we’ve been fighting it for 8 years.  Truth is, for the majority of the last 8 years we’ve diverted life saving equipment, money, troops and support away from Afghanistan and into Iraq.  When Bush pushed for the surge in Iraq, he took troops from Afghanistan and surprise surprise that was around the same time causalities in Afghanistan started to increase.  The ONLY time we were focused on Afghanistan was the first year and a half we were there. That was it.

President Obama is facing heat on from both sides of the aisle on this issue and as I’ve written before, I don’t envy the President with having to make this decision.  Some conservatives want an open ended commitment like they got from Bush in Iraq.  That’s just crazy.  I’m not about to support an open ended, no strategy commitment.  Let’s not kid ourselves with revisionist history.  Bush went into Iraq with no strategy or even a real reason for going in.  First it was WMDs, then it was Al Qaeda & 9/11 then it was to promote democracy. Some even say oil was the real reason. Any time a “time line” or exit strategy was mention the response as “as long as it takes.”  An open ended commitment in Iraq really got us nothing.  Iraq isn’t stable and it won’t last and its only a matter of time before the next dictator emerges in that country.

Then there are liberals (as well as some conservatives) who think Obama should just pull out of the region, immediately.  Let me ignore the historical and strategic reasons this is unwise for now and just talk logistics.  Have we forgotten what happened on October 3 of this year?  The ambush of the outpost in Kamdesh where 200 Taliban solders attacked inadequately supported troops.  Those troops were set to leave that outpost as well.  See, in order to safely pull troops out…you have to secure the area first, else you’re setting our troops up to be attacked like sitting ducks.  Right now we don’t have the troops to even secure a safe withdraw from Afghanistan.  Not only that but you have to approve funds for the troop withdrawal (Kinda like you need funds to close Gitmo).  Even if we were to pull troops out, in order to do it safely, it would take until….2011.  So even if we were going to withdraw we’d have to send more troops to Afghanistan anyway in order to protect our troops enough to get them out of there.  I know that seems contradictory but again, you have to remember that our troop levels in Afghanistan right now are so low they are at the point of putting our troops there in danger.

Now let’s think about this historically.  I think people seem to forget the history of Afghanistan.  The reason we have Al Qaeda  now is because we basically left Afghan freedom fighters to fend for themselves last time we were playing our human game of Risk back in the 70’s.  If we were to just pull troops out now, as much as I would love for the troops to come home, ten years from now we’d be facing some new America-hating radical group and pundits on TV would be debating where they came from.  Those Afghan soldiers, tribal leaders and police that we’ve been promising we would help are about to be abandoned…again.  Its like a repeat of what we’ve already done.  Will Obama’s strategy lead to a stable democracy in Kabul?  Of course not.  But I don’t think that’s what his strategy is.  Its to make one last attempt at giving the Afghan people a solid footing to stand on before we walk away.  You can’t say we’ve ever done that because almost as soon as we went into Afghanistan, Bush and his cronies were eying Saddam in Iraq.

Strategically, we also have to worry about Pakistan.  Again, Bush made a mess out of Pakistan by giving then President Musharraf billions of dollars to “fight terrorism” which he instead used to fuel an arms race with Pakistan’s also nuclear armed rival, India.  In order to get Pakistan to focus on the terrorist in its own country and on its border with the extremely unstable Afghanistan, Obama has to at least try to reach out to them.  Leaving an unstable Afghanistan on Pakistan’s doorstep isn’t going to really encourage Pakistan to care about helping us.

We can debate all day whether Afghanistan was the “good war” to go in.  That’s a moot point now.  We’re in there.  As much of an opponent of the Iraq war as I was, I also realized that as much as I hated the fact that our douchebag president at the time got us into an idiotic war, I knew that we couldn’t just pull troops out immediately.  Consequences have actions.  Yeah, Bush should never have brought a bull into the china store, but once he did, it was our responsibility to clean up the mess.  You break it, you buy it.  Unfortunately we broke Iraq and Afghanistan.  We can argue all day and night about how legitimate those wars were.  It doesn’t matter.  The fact remains that as Obama used to say, as careless as we were getting into those wars, we have to be careful getting out.  Now in 2011, if there has been no progress made, then I’m willing to start the “Bring them home” chants.  But we’ve never, NEVER given Afghanistan the attention it should have gotten and I’m willing to give President Obama a chance to try this strategy since it’s the first one we’ve ever used in that country.

Oh and one more thing to the liberals stupidly saying “This isn’t change we can believe in.”  Well, its definitely the ‘Change you voted for’.  As a candidate (Hell, even as an Iraq War opponent), President Obama never hid the fact that he believed Afghanistan was the right war to go into and that he believed in sending more troops and more resources into that country.  He said this blatantly.  So if you somehow feel betrayed by Obama, what that really means is that you didn’t pay attention to his policies before you voted for him.

I do not envy the President on his Afghanistan decision.  I have said this before.  When President Obama first came into office, I said that I did not agree with his stance of just blindly sending in more troops.  Well, turns out that I fell into the trap of underestimating the President.  President Obama’s stance is to not just add troops all willy nilly but to take his time to view all options and also to see if there will be a willing political partner in Afghanistan.  Unfortunately for the President, the Afghan elections were wrought with fraud and it seems as though President Karzai will still be in charge at the end of the day.  Which leads me back to what I said before; I am not envying the President on this decision.  He faces a corrupt Afghan government that has pretty much lost the confidence of at least half the country (if not more).  He faces increased violence that made October the deadliest month for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.  He faces generals in the military whose only real concern (And rightly so) is that they do not have enough troops and therefore they are losing more American lives. He faces Al Qaeda and other insurgents who are launching attacks and killing civilians in Pakistan (Which shares a border with Al Qaeda’s previous base of operation, Afghanistan).  And then here domestically, he faces two sides that do not seem to realize that their positions on the war are completely ridiculous.  Yes, both liberals and conservatives have in essence lost themselves to the Fog of Idiocy in thinking somehow that this decision is as simple as pulling out or sending more troops.  Like Healthcare, you have to consider the moral obligations.

I expect conservatives to be moronically following the “We need more troops, send more troops” mantra without thinking.  Remember after all, these are the same idiots who tried to change French Fries to Freedom Fries.  But I’m absolutely shocked that liberals are all of the sudden screaming “We need to leave now!!!”  Maybe I was in an alternate universe during the 2008 campaign but I’m pretty sure President Obama, then Senator Obama, repeatedly stated that he planned on staying in Afghanistan and fighting the “Good War”.  He said he would remove troops from Iraq and put his focus and American resources into Afghanistan.  Well, in 2011 all U.S. troops will be out of Iraq and right now the President is focusing on Afghanistan…but now everyone is talking about he should just pull out?  Are you kidding me?  It is not that simple people

On the one hand we can do like conservatives want and treat Afghanistan like Iraq.  We can add more U.S. troops, cut deals with people who for the last 7 years have been fighting against and killing Americans all while supporting a fledgling government that is using us a crutch.  Of course, Afghanistan is ten times worse than Iraq.  Iraq, for all its problems, at least had a somewhat solid political structure already in place.  Afghanistan doesn’t have that.   They haven’t had that since the 70’s.  The Afghan government is not just new and in its infancy but it is also corrupt and gimpy, requiring us to prop it up.  So this means we’ll be there for at least another 10 – 15 years while we wait for a strong government foundation to be built.  Of course 10 – 15 years is an eternity and the American people, who are already fed up with this war, will demand it end, putting political pressure on whoever the U.S. President is.  That pressure will cause the President to declare “Mission Accomplished”.  Five years after that, Afghanistan will fall apart again and we’ll be right back where we started.

On the other hand, we could follow the liberal choice and just pull all our combat troops out immediately.  However, this means that the local warlords will immediately start back up their drug trade, further securing Afghanistan’s place as the number 1 supplier of the world’s opium.  Or, we could get “lucky”, and the Taliban could take back over and they could eradicate the drug problem for us.  Of course this also means the eradication of women’s rights along with several other civil liberties that are already sparse.  Also, I’m not sure how the Northern Alliance folks would feel about us abandoning them to fend for themselves.  Let’s hope they don’t react the same way “Osama & ‘Em” did when we ran out of the country after the Soviet-Afghan war else we’ll really come full circle.  I guess we could just pull out all major combat troops and just use unmanned Predator drones and “surgical strikes” by Special Forces units.  But then we would be endangering not only Afghan civilians by using drones for attacks but also our own Special Forces troops by having them fight in a country with in essence, zero support.  It would be like a reverse Vietnam, where we go from having a large contingent of troops to only having “advisors” and small units.  Of course this doesn’t address the issue of a corrupt and incompetent government, but hey, those Afghan kids really don’t need those schools anyway.

So those are the basic choices.  We could continue to pour troops into Afghanistan and hope for a miracle that somehow the government becomes legitimate OR we could just turn a blind eye and pretend that the clusterfuck that is Afghanistan doesn’t exist (Kinda like we do with Darfur now).  Now there are some liberals (and conservatives) who will say “We don’t need to worry about Afghanistan and its people, we have our own problems.”  I can respect that…as long as the person saying it isn’t also one of those green avatar people.  You know, one of those people that were very vocal in their support for the Iran election protesters.  So vocal in fact that they shouted out “We are One with Tehran” as they gave the ultimate sacrifice of turning their avatar an ungodly green tint. Honestly, what kind of game do you think this is?   Your little green avatar, while it warmed your heart and made you feel better, did not do squat for the protesters in Iran.  Nada.  Zip.  Zilch.  Conservatives who actually advocated military action in Iran, but now want to leave Afghanistan are even worse.  Let me get this straight.  We went into Afghanistan, a war 90% of the people in this country supported back in 2001/2002, made a complete mess of it and now we’re just going to act like we don’t have any responsibilities to ensure it is fixed?  We’re not talking about Iraq, which most of us knew was a bad idea and those of use who “didn’t know” were lied to or given “faulty Intelligence” about.  No, we’re talking about Afghanistan where just about every single one of us, liberal or conservative, was screaming “Get the fuck in there and take care of that problem”.  In essence what people have done is the equivalent of the police busting into a house to arrest an abusive parent and upon seeing that the kids are living in filth and are starving say “Well, we only were here to arrest the father.  These kids will have to figure out how to survive on their own”.

Again, I don’t envy the President.  I don’t envy the President because we the American people plan on second guessing whatever he does even though it is more our fault that we’re in Afghanistan than his.  Either choice he makes is politically damaging but even more importantly, it will cost the lives of humans.  Right now we’re selfishly thinking about American lives but the moment we remove our troops and women in Afghanistan go back to being treated as second class human beings and the drug trade explodes and Civil War breaks out, we’ll be back to wondering why he doesn’t do anything about it.  If he commits the troops and even 1 soldier dies, the “Bring the home clock” will start.  Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.  I really don’t envy the President.

You have to excuse me if I see nothing wrong with these pictures.  I know Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin and all the other right-wing nut cases will try to paint this picture of President Obama only doing this as a publicity stunt but I find that accusation not only ridiculous but insulting.  I believe its a great message to send to have a sitting President take time to pay tribute to our fallen soldiers like this, particularly with October being the deadliest month in Afghanistan and with the President’s decision on what to do in Afghanistan approaching.  I find it not only humane but sobering and a great reminder that there are real people fighting and dying in these wars.  They aren’t just names in a report.  Maybe if the previous Administration, those currently serving in Congress or those Monday Morning Quarterbacks in the media that promote the case for more troops and more war spent some time recognizing the real faces of war, they wouldn’t be so quick to rush into something.  I don’t envy the President and the decision he has to make nor do I believe that everyone is going to be happy with what he decides to do.  That said, I for one am happy that he’s willing to not only honor those that gave the ultimate sacrifice for this country in this manner but also by making sure he has time to consider all options on the table before putting more people’s lives at risk.

Kriss & Nola Darling discuss several topics:
Kriss contemplates getting the Modern Warfare 2 Prestige edition because who doesn’t want a pair of Night Vision Goggles
Tila Tequila acts a fool again
Why do we allow functional retards onto the Internet?
Has anyone seen Puffy since Shyne’s been getting close to getting out of jail?
Max Baucus’s Bill gets scored by the CBO but of course Republicans don’t care
Kriss & Nola debate whether Charlie Rangle should step down from his chairman of the Ways & Means Committee
A really disturbing story is behind Al Franken’s first amendment and its shocking that 30 Republicans voted against it
The Conservative Bible Project…because Jesus has become too liberal

There’s a problem with getting the show on iTunes for new subscribers. If you already get the show on iTunes you’re fine but if you’re looking to find us in the iTunes store it’ll probably be a couple of weeks until we’re back up and running. You can manually add us to iTunes by going to Advanced->Subscribe to Podcast and then add this url. We’re looking for writers for TheInsanityReport.com and guests for the Insanity Check Podcast. If you are interested, email us at InsanityCheck@theInsanityReport.com. Also hit us up if you’re good with graphic designs or music production (we’re looking for a new opening for the podcast). Join the Facebook Group for weekly updates on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

Dr. Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor, former Secretary of State and one of the most powerful black women in America not named Michelle Obama or Oprah, recently made some comments about U.S. foreign policy while being interviewed at Fortune’s Most powerful Women Summit.   Dr. Rice jumped into the current debate about the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

“The last time we left Afghanistan, and we abandoned Pakistan,” she said, “that territory became the very territory on which Al Qaeda trained and attacked us on September 11th. So our national security interests are very much tied up in not letting Afghanistan fail again and become a safe haven for terrorists.

“It’s that simple,” she declared, “if you want another terrorist attack in the U.S., abandon Afghanistan.”

Point of order Madam Secretary but didn’t we get involved in Afghanistan the first time due to our obsessive need to meddle in other people’s business?  It’s irresponsible to say that us leaving Afghanistan in the 70’s and 80’s lead to the creation of Al Qaeda without giving the whole story.  Former Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski said the reason for getting involved in the Afghanistan War wasn’t for the noble cause of liberating the Afghan people from Russian oppression.  No, it was understood that helping the Afghan rebels would draw the Soviet Union into it’s own Vietnam.  Yes, see while the re-written history tells us that the fight with the rebels was a righteous cause, the reality is, our involvement in the Afghan-Soviet conflict was some sick retribution for the Soviets getting us involved in Vietnam.  Al Qaeda was formed from those former mujahedeen fighters who not only felt slighted when we left them to fend for themselves but also because they recognized that the U.S.’s concern in the Middle East was for its own gain. Shorter: When you use people, it comes back to bite you in the ass.

Now I’m not defending Al Qaeda at all.  Al Qaeda killed 3,000 Americans on  September 11, 2001 and countless other Americans, Europeans, Afghans and others since then.   Al Qaeda has done and aims to do, some pretty reprehensible things.  But lets not play coy Madam Secretary, the U.S. is far from pure in this situation.  Its also pretty ridiculous to hear from Dr. Rice about this when Rice and the rest of Bush’s Administration allowed the situation in Afghanistan to turn total FUBAR while they were playing build-a-nation over in Iraq.  How can you say that we can’t leave Afghanistan now when you worked in an administration that all but abandoned that area and allowed the Taliban and Al Qaeda to regain roots?

The President has some serious decisions to make on Afghanistan.  I personally am not a fan of what he proposed as his strategy earlier this year (More troops, deals with the moderate Taliban, etc.) and it seems like the Obama Administration is rethinking that now.  Personally, I believe whatever he does will end up in Afghanistan turning into a shit storm.  However, I don’t want to hear former Bush Administration officials say a word.  They had a chance to try to fix Afghanistan and all they did was make it worse.

KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghans loyal to President Hamid Karzai set up hundreds of fictitious polling sites where no one voted but where hundreds of thousands of ballots were still recorded toward the president’s re-election, according to senior Western and Afghan officials here.

The fake sites, as many as 800, existed only on paper, said a senior Western diplomat in Afghanistan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the vote. Local workers reported that hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of votes for Mr. Karzai in the election last month came from each of those places. That pattern was confirmed by another Western official based in Afghanistan.

“We think that about 15 percent of the polling sites never opened on Election Day,” the senior Western diplomat said. “But they still managed to report thousands of ballots for Karzai.”

Besides creating the fake sites, Mr. Karzai’s supporters also took over approximately 800 legitimate polling centers and used them to fraudulently report tens of thousands of additional ballots for Mr. Karzai, the officials said.

The result, the officials said, is that in some provinces, the pro-Karzai ballots may exceed the people who actually voted by a factor of 10. “We are talking about orders of magnitude,” the senior Western diplomat said. (Source)

Looks like I owe George W. Bush an apology.  Turns out he was right about spreading democracy to the Middle East.  Afghanistan is moving in the right direction if they are already dealing with voter fraud.  Hell, here in the U.S. we deal with it almost every election.  There was the infamous election in 2000 with the hanging chads in Florida.  Then there was Diebold, Ken Blackwell and Ohio in the 2004 election.  Even in 2008, there was accusations on both the left AND the right.  So it seems that Karzai and his supporters are just following in the footsteps of “The World’s Greatest Democracy”.

KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghanistan’s opium production fell 10 percent last year and prices are at their lowest in a decade, meaning “the bottom is starting to fall out” of the world’s largest opium market, the U.N. said Wednesday.

A key finding of the 2009 Afghan Opium Survey, released Wednesday, was that cultivation in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold where U.S. and British troops have launched major operations this summer, dropped by about a third from 2007 to 2008. Helmand produces almost 70 percent of Afghanistan’s opium.

“At a time of pessimism about the situation in Afghanistan, these results are a welcome piece of good news and demonstrate that progress is possible,” Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N.’s office on drugs and crime, said in a statement.

Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world’s supply of opium, the raw ingredient used to make heroin, and the multibillion-dollar crop has helped finance insurgents and criminal groups, fueled official corruption and weakened the country’s central government.(Source)

As I left the gym this morning I saw a story on CNN saying that the Opium drug trade in Afghanistan is significantly lower this year.  Now, while I wouldn’t call 10% “significant”, I can’t say I’m surprised by the drop.  Why you ask?  Because I saw these pictures this morning:

Apparently these are pictures taken by a watchdog group of a few contractors hired to guard the embassy in Afghanistan.  All I can say is:  Who didn’t see this coming? Let’s think about this.  Americans are probably the biggest consumers of illegal drugs and you put a group of contractors (who are probably getting paid obscene amounts of money) in a country that supplies 90% of the world’s supply of opium?  It’s like putting Lindsey Lohan to work in a coca field.  Its not that Afghan production is lower, its that you’ve given a bunch of American Adults their “Golden Ticket” to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory…and by “chocolate” I mean, opium.

So now “Mom”, aka Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, has come out and condemned these pictures, acting as though she didn’t know her little boys like to get rowdy.  All this while the ratio of contractors to U.S. troops is the highest in U.S. history.  Well isn’t that something you can put in your pipe and smoke.  It’s like War, Inc. is happening in real life now.  Woo-hoo.

Stories like this really burn me up.  All these members of Congress, republicans AND democrats, talk about how much they care for our troops and blah blah blah, but then they’re all quiet on something like this.  It was bad enough when we found out the atrocities at Walter Reed but this is just taking it a step further.  The story says that the Pentagon knows that a 1/3…A THIRD…of our troops have traumatic brain injuries but they are still sent back out into the theaters of war.  That is just unacceptable.  Our soldiers aren’t just tools of war, they are people.  At some point, someone with common sense needs to be put in charge.  You don’t send a solider, who’s been in multiple bomb attacks back to Iraq/Afghanistan, especially when you know those attacks have deteriorated his brain.  Even more disturbing is how long it took them to get him a case worker and a therapist when he was finally sent home.  Just ridiculous.