"Where's the Outrage?" See blog www.yomamaforobama.worldpress.com
This is my response:This is my response:Generally I agree with you. I wish the American public were interested in things gravitas too. Alas, they are not. Because of that, I am a political Machiavellian. Uphill I believe we must do what we must do to get elected. It is downhill after that.

It has been part of our illustrious history that even our ever-so-cerebral Founding Fathers concocted the damnable electoral college so that they might better ensure that the selection of the president reside with more intellectually able electors instead of by a popular vote of ruffians. Jefferson, of course, had to endure the scandalous writings of James Calendar, a muckraker and yellow journalist of his era, when he exposed Jefferson’s sexual liaison with Sally Hemmings, Jefferson’s black house slave and concubine.

Even de Tocqueville when he visited America of the 1830’s called much of American culture “a middling mediocrity.” During his inauguration, Andrew Jackson’s picturesque White House sported ducks, geese, chickens and other assorted barnyard fun. He invited gun toting, coonskin cap wearing, and whiskey drinking Tennesseans into the White House or, perhaps, they just barged in. Worse, Jackson had to endure the accusations about his beloved wife Rachel who was said to be a bigamist. Jackson never forgot it, was devastated by it and thought his wife’s death was because of it.

A century later H.L. Mencken uttered the truth of his famous phrase: “You will never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” This still rings true today.

Barak Obama should have known when he first had thoughts of running for the presidency that before any skeletons in his closet were opened for inspection he should have opened them first and rectified the problem. Now it is a bit late to eschew a Reverend Wright. Obama either looks politically expedient or unfaithful to his former good friend or both.

Had he done what I suggest, we would possibly be talking about the real issues of 4000 plus dead in Iraq, five dollar plus gallon of gasoline, eight dollar a gallon of milk and an economy tilting toward another Great Depression. Instead, we are talking about whether a candidate should wear a flag pin and why he belonged to the church he did for over twenty years. I agree it is utterly insane. Some things, though, never change. I’m sure Andrew Jackson would agree.

Nuclear Strike -- NO: I just read Steve Weisman's article in Truthout in which he thinks the US strike of Iran is imminent. There are others who have predicated the same such as Seymour Hersh in the April, 2006 edition of The New Yorker. It has not come to pass yet.

I do not on this earth know how the US could mount a strike against a country twice the size of Iraq, with a sophisticated army EVEN with the help of the Israelis given the fact that our military is stretched so thin. Striking Iran assumes that the Iranians would not strike back. I suspect that is fallacious and utterly ridiculous to assume. Furthermore, as has been said many times, the Iranian program IF they have a program is probably hidden deep within mountainous regions of that country. It's not that easy to get to, find and strike their targets. It would pose an infinitely greater problem than the precise strike of Israel on Sadam Hussein's Osirik nuclear facility in 1981 and the one recently bombed by the Israelis in Syria.

In addition, assuming the Iranians would strike back we would be fighting on three fronts -- Iraq, Afghanistan, and in Iran. This is an unlikely scenario without the imposition of a military draft. A military draft would encounter further a HUGE opposition probably unlike and bigger than the opposition to the Vietnam War. To begin a war with Iran I believe would need the approval of the Congress and given this administration's utterly insane prosecution of the War with Iraq, Congress sanctioning an additional war on a much larger scale, I believe, would be next to impossible. To use our inept commander in chief own gift for verbiage -- "Fool me once...you can't get fooled again."

There is no question Mr. Weisman is correct. There is much bluster and it is, indeed, unsettling. I think this bluster is rhetoric backed up with thin air. The Bush administration has put this country at great national security risk by its unnecessary and incompetent prosecution of Iraq and its disastrous failure to capture or kill Bin Laden allowing the reemergence of the Taliban and the increase of Al Queda's prestige in the Arab world. If the US is at risk then the State of Israel at great risk. I believe we at this moment in time have lost Iraq. Four soldiers were killed today in the sandstorms of Iraq which make them defenseless. Every day we are in Iraq more are at risk and more will die. I cannot personally watch the count of our dead. It hurts too much for a war which has been beyond ineffectually prosecuted. There is no doubt there are many things I do not know about US capability. I hope that is true because adding Iran to the mix, in my opinion, would be suicide. The US is not quite at the suicidal point yet. I hope I am right. Time will tell.