Happy Thanksgiving, Steve!

Happy Thanksgiving, Steve.

Three car bombs today in Sadr City thus far, over one hundred dead. Mortar rounds being lobbed into the surrounding Sunni neighborhoods. The Health Ministry in Bagdad attacked. "Civil war" by any logical honest interpretation of the term.

Bush will sit down with his kids for Thanksgiving dinner, and some poor slob will get waterboarded in America's name.

Pelosi will posture, and Harman will count her AIPAC chips. Reid will mewl ineffectually, and McCain will rehearse tomorrow's script.

And a few more Muslim kids will learn to hate America.

Happy Dog Day! And Happy Thanksgiving, too. Be well.

As a citizen abroad I can share with you a story about a dear old friend of my Mother.
When she was over 85, one Thanksgiving she suddenly turned to me, smiled and asked, "When do you have your Thanksgiving over there?"
She had never envisioned life without Thanksgiving!
Happy Holidays.

Have a good Thanksgiving, Steve.

As POA reminds us correctly--not that it's ever far from our minds --the world is a mess. The worst it's been in my memory. The US is contributing mightily to the mess. Lots of people are suffering and being killed as a result.

It's important to remember this as we sit down to eat.

It's also important to conjure all the joy and thanksgiving we can... and keep working for a better day.

We won't finish work. We can't give up trying.

A FORMER Guantanamo Bay inmate says he spoke to Australian David Hicks every night for months and compared notes with him on how they were tortured.

Sometimes Hicks returned to his cell crying after being interrogated, Ruhal Ahmed said.

A British Muslim, Mr Ahmed had planned to visit Australia to promote the film The Road to Guantanamo but has been banned from entering the country because of an adverse security ruling by ASIO.

The ban comes despite the fact that he has been given visas for France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Turkey, Spain, South Africa, Denmark and Kosovo.

Mr Ahmed says it is particularly frustrating because he will not be able to meet Hicks' family or other former Australian Guantanamo inmate Mamdouh Habib.

Mr Ahmed's story of his time in the US military prison in Cuba is told in the film by British director Michael Winterbottom. The distributor had planned to bring him to Australia for the launch.

Mr Ahmed told ABC radio in London yesterday that for about seven months in Guantanamo he spent most nights speaking with Hicks.

He could not see the Australian but could hear him in a nearby cell.

"He would tell me about his life in Australia, I would tell him about mine," Mr Ahmed said.

"I was subjected to the same treatment that he was going through … everyone went through severe physical abuse."

As shown in the film, three Britons — Mr Ahmed, Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal — attended a wedding in Pakistan before travelling to Afghanistan in 2001.

They were seized by the Northern Alliance and taken to Guantanamo Bay and held for two years without charge before being allowed to return to Britain.

AAP

Happy Thanksgiving Day, 2006:

"And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of mutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind?

Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity.

She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights.
She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.
She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.

She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.
She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....

She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....

[ America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice."

Monsters to Destroy
John Quincy Adams 1821

Happy Thanksgiving, Steve.

I love the puppies. Are they for sale?

Let me know!! I live in DC! :)