As some of you will remember from my earlier Katrina rants, I don't tollerate fools lightly. As I spend my second day evicted from my office because of the efforts proceeding adjacent to the 35W bridge, my irritation at some members of our government slowly increases.

A quick search on Flickr shows a great number of rusted steel bridges in the US. This is obviously not a scientific method of determining a replacement schedule; we've done that already. The BBC reports "Experts have estimated the cost of repairing all the nation's bridges at between $55bn (£27.5bn) and $188bn". (more from the BBC) I'd say that's not too bad considering the loss of life, property and moralle that could result from not repairing the nation's bridges. Heck, it's less than we've spet in Iraq by far. I'll throw $627 in to the pot happily.

I know I can't directly blame Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota Taxpayers League, and the other republicans who pledged not to increase taxes during their terms. It's likely that the decision to replace this bridge in 2020 wasn't decided by the fact that we have no new money coming into the state budget. (In the interests of full disclosure, our state budget also pays my salary.) But I can't help notice that the bridge collapsed on their watch and that they didn't spend the money to fix up a "structurally deficient" part of our state.

On the other hand, maybe we're supposed to get a great sense of community from working together and overcoming adversity. Maybe the government wants the occasional tragedy to show that, if we work together, we can prevail.

I'll take a neighborhood bake sale, thanks.

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This is a copy of an email and it's response that I received a few days ago. I felt that this information needed to be redily accessible to others who were searching for it.

Sorry it took me so long to get a reply together on this. I'd like to point out that the only part of this that can actually be attributed to John Glen is the paragraph at the bottom from a debate in 1974 that is an excellent rant about the military being a real job. No complaints there. I think that John Glenn is a great man and that it is unforgivable for the original author of this piece to attribute statements to him that he didn't make.

On Aug 9, 2005, at 7:39 AM, you wrote:

SENATOR JOHN GLENN SAID: Things that make you think a little.......

1. There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq during the month of January.....In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January. That's just one American City, about as deadly as the entire war torn country of Iraq.

First: This refers to January of 2004, one of the highest murder rate months in Detroit and one of the lowest casualty months in Iraq. January 2005 had 107 US military deaths in Iraq and there have been 1842 so far (5/03 through 8/8/05) including accidental deaths related to combat, patrols and combat support operations.

Second: The population of Detroit is 951,270 as of the 2000 census and we currently have about 140,000 soldiers in Iraq. That means that 3.6 per 100,000 Detroit residents were murdered during January of 2004 and 27.8 per 100,000 US soldiers in Iraq were KIA during that same time. Not to mention that 76.4 per 100,000 were killed during January of 2005. The average death rate among US troops in Iraq is about 62 per month, that's about 44 per 100,000.

Third: It's cost us over $186,000,000,000 to get those 1,842 sevicemen and women killed, if we'd spent that money here at home, we could have significantly reduced our murder rate. Bush said that some of that money was an "emergency expenditure" to send armor, ammo and parts, but shouldn't they have been sent with armor, ammo and parts in the first place? I can just see it: "Get moving, troopers! ... What? ... No, you'll only need two clips."

References:
US Census data at AreaConnect for Detroit
http://detroit.areaconnect.com/statistics.htm

US DoD Press Resources (click on the OIF/OEF Casualty Update for a PDF)
http://icasualties.org/oif/USChart.aspx

2. When some claim President Bush shouldn't have started this war, state the following ..

FDR...led us into World War II. Germany never attacked us: Japan did. From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost, an average of 112,500 per year.

You've heard of the whole "Allies and Axis" thing? We were already on the verge of going to war to help out England, France and Russia, who were (and still are) our allies, when Pearl Harbor happened. That's why Japan considered us a target. We also nuked Japan twice, not Germany. As far as I know no American who wasn't a radical isolationist has ever suggested that helping defeat Hitler was not a good idea.

Truman...finished that war and started one in Korea, North Korea never attacked us. From 1950-1953,55,000 lives were lost, an average of 18,334 per year.

John F. Kennedy....started the Vietnam conflict in 1962. Vietnam never attacked us.

Johnson...turned Vietnam into a quagmire. From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost, an average of 5,800 per year.

Nixon was president from 1969 - 1974. I think he deserves some of the credit here. Otherwise these three can be taken together. Is the author trying to establish that starting bad wars is a good idea? Or maybe that, since we have a history of starting bad wars, Bush shouldn't be blamed for continuing in that great US tradition?

Clinton...went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent, Bosnia never attacked us. He was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three times by Sudan and did nothing. Osama has attacked us on multiple occasions.

Bosnia was already at war when we went there to stop it. This was peacekeeping, not regime overthrowing. I also note the distinct lack of US casualty statistics here. Could that be because they were embarrassingly low because the Clinton Administration's planning actually worked? Clinton was never offered "bin Laden's head on a platter." He was offered some indeterminate help in exchange for unspecified aid--hardly the clear-cut situation the author would like you to believe. Clinton did send cruise missiles into Afghanistan to target bin Laden, who has indeed attacked us at least twice on our shores. He doesn't live in Iraq though. This is about Iraq. I supported the invasion of Afghanistan and think we should stop taking troops from the rebuilding of Afghanistan and sending them to Iraq. Of course, Osama has moved on to some other country all together by now because Bush has changed his mind on why we started wars after 9/11:

"I don�t know where he is. Nor � you know, I just don�t spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you. I....I truly am not that concerned about him." -- Bush on Osama bin Laden in 2002

References:
Former US Secretary of State Marshall Freeman Harris on Bosnia
http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/bosnia/clindeb.html

CNN.com has a Bush Transcript from March 13, 2002 (my quote is about 2/5 of the way down
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/03/13/bush.transcript/

3. In the two years since terrorists attacked us President Bush has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran and North Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of his own people. The Democrats are complaining about how long the war is taking, but...It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation. We've been looking for evidence of chemical weapons in Iraq for less time than it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose Law Firm billing records. It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard than it took Ted Kennedy to call the police after his Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick killing a woman.

We may have officially taken Iraq in less than 51 days, but some would argue that we still haven't really taken Iraq, since more of our troops have been killed after Bush declared an end to "major combat operations" than on the way in. We've given up looking for chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq so that's kind of irrelevant now, although it's worth pointing out that we have been looking for WMDs in Iraq since 1991.

References:
CNN.com: US calls off search for chemical weapons
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/01/12/wmd.search/

Hillary Clinton never found all the Rose Law Firm billing records, but are your records from 15 years ago complete? Just because someone called it a possible scandal when they started investigating Whitewater is no reason to keep calling it a scandal 10 years after everyone involved was cleared.

In 1969 Kennedy didn't have a cell phone. He walked for help, tried to get Mary Jo Kopechne out of the car and never did call the police; they called him the next morning.

 

Wait, there's more...................... Some people still don't understand why military personnel do what they do for a living. This exchange between Senators John Glenn and Senator Howard Metzenbaum is worth reading. Not only is it a pretty impressive impromptu speech, but it's also agood example of one man's explanation of why men and women in the armed services do what they do for aliving. This is a typical, though sad, example of what some who have never served think of our military.

JOHN GLENN ON THE SENATE FLOOR Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 11:13

Oh. My. God. I can't believe they go the date that wrong. This whole exchange happened in May 1974 for Pete's sake.

Senator Howard Metzenbaum to Senator Glenn: "How can you run for Senate when you've never held a real job?"

And Metzenbaum was misquoted here. What he said was that Glenn had never "met a payroll", suggesting that Glenn had never owned a business and, therefore, was not qualified to be a Senator. He wasn't speaking directly to Glenn at the time, he was stumping. The following paragraph comes out of a debate between the two candidates 3 days later on May 3rd 1974. Metzenbaum didn't raise the issue during the debate, but Glenn took the opportunity to reply to Metzenbaum's previous campaign statements in a prepared speech:

Senator Glenn: "I served 23 years in the United States Marine Corps. I served through two wars. I flew 149 missions. My plane was hit by antiaircraft fire on 12 different occasions.I was in the space program. It wasn't my checkbook, Howard; it was my life on the line. It was not a nine-to-five job, where I took time off to take the daily cash receipts to the bank. I ask you to go with me ... as I went the other day... to a veteran's hospital and look those men - with their mangled bodies - in the eye, and tell THEM they didn't hold a job! You go with me to the Space Program at NASA and go, as I have gone, to the widows and orphans of Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee... and you look those kids in the eye and tell them that their Dads didn't hold a job. You go with me on Memorial Day and you stand in Arlington National Cemetery, where I have more friends buried than I'dlike to remember, and you watch those waving flags. You stand there, and you think about this nation, and you tell ME that those people didn't have a job? I'll tell you, Howard Metzenbaum; you should be on your knees every day of your life thanking God that there were some men - SOME MEN -who held REAL jobs. And they required a dedication to a purpose - and a love of country and a dedication to duty that was more important than life itself. And their self-sacrificeis what made this country possible. I HAVE held a job, Howard! What about you?"

As I stated earlier, I agree almost entirely with that paragraph.

However, this is the most recent thing I've been able to find about Glenn's opinion of the war in Iraq:

BLITZER: "Senator Glenn, while I have you, I remember interviewing you many times where you were in the U.S. Senate, a member of the Armed Services Committee, a member of the Intelligence Committee. In terms of the war on terrorism, is the American public safer today now that Saddam Hussein has been captured?"

GLENN: "The American public? Well, I'd be hard pressed to say that, that the American public. I didn't see Saddam Hussein as being quite the danger that some other people did.

His neighbors were not really afraid of what he was doing over there. We haven't found any weapons of mass destruction yet. I'm glad we have him. He was a bad man, there's no doubt about that.

But as far as, do I feel safer because he's been captured? Well, I'm glad he was captured. But do I feel safer? No, I guess I don't feel that much safer.

I want to see us cooperating with our allies and getting all of our intelligence information, the best intelligence information we have available from all over the world. Work together with our allies all over the world. That's the way we'd prevent these things.

It's one thing to say we're going to bring people to justice. But these are people who have committed their lives to being suicidal and doing what they want to do anyway. And so, to me, the main thing is trying to prevent those things.

You only do that through better and improved intelligence. Not only our own, with our own CIA and FBI and all of that, but with cooperating with what the intelligence knows from other nations around the world, our European Alice and people in the Mideast. These all should be put together so we can prevent these things, not just try and catch people after it's happened."

Interestingly, it's from the month before this e-mail purports to be about.

For those who don't remember - During W.W.II, Howard Metzenbaum was an attorney representing the Communist Party in the USA

This isn't part of the quote anymore, and it's really not relevant, since he was suggesting that Glenn didn't have the capitalist experience to be a US senator. Metzenbaum retired from the Senate in 1995 after serving alongside Glenn since 1977, both as Democrats from Ohio.

If you can read this, thank a teacher.... If you are reading it in English thank a Veteran. Please keep this circulating.

Yes, veterans kept us from speaking German and possibly Russian. And yes, please feel free to pass these corrections back to the people who sent you this poorly thought out e-mail. Maybe next time, they'll do some fact checking before clicking "Forward".

Ben Zvan

<><>
I called them mad...
They called me mad...
And damn them,
they outvoted me.

--Nathaniel Lee.

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