Still find it amazing that one mid-level guy can steal so much highly classified information.

[RainDog]

86. But it is morally wrong, imo, to reduce war to a career path only

Americans should have something at stake when they agree to attack another nation.

Actually, I think that Gen. Smedley Butler had the right idea - the way to stop wars based upon the greed of corporate entities is to take the profit out of war.

Let people earn government salaries, not private contractor salaries.

Let people pay taxes to fund the wars they claim they want - it's unfreaking believable that Jr. waged two war and reduced taxes on the wealthy at the same time.

Since Republicans have so little fiscal responsibility, someone needs to impose the real costs in other ways - and a draft would do that. Of course, we'd still have Cheneys who avoid all threat of danger and then send others to their deaths with impunity - but his generation stopped an unnecessary war because of the draft (which is, ultimately, why we no longer have one.)

Just as Republicans and Democrats have switched sides on issues since Lincoln, I'm one of those liberals who thinks the U.S. should mind its own business more than it does or has. I think a lot of the current problems would not be problems if not for the old, aggressive domino theory, which, imo, was turbo cranked and based upon false intel from WWII immigrants. Not that Russia wasn't aggressive in its own way - but, until someone says... let's be sane about this... things just escalate.

I think "The War on Terror," for instance, was a horrible propaganda ploy. We cannot be at war with something that's not a nation. We can deal with terrorism and terrorists - and that's where intel is so important these days.

And, even better, we can decide not to prop up regimes that create conditions for terrorists.