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One year, 3 months & 28 days in -- meet Bob Koehler

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Good morning to all:

This message comes more quickly than most, but there are several reasons for that. The first is to bring you some (all good) news. The second is to introduce you to a good friend who has important things to say, whether you agree with him or not.

First the good news:

1) Duke (my younger dog) is back home. One of my neighbors went down to check on my home, as several of my neighbors do regularly. And there was old three legged Duke, barking his head off, doing his job. Thanks, Chicken, for checking on the house and for bringing me the good news.

2) This Monday (March 12), I will take my second 12 hour pass to go home and continue the spring cleaning that will ease my transition back to my real world. This time, I will tackle the kitchen and the bedroom, the deck and the sunroom. I will also keep planting the spring garden (this time with carrots, spinach, another leaf lettuce and a mesclum mix of spring herbs -- I will probably also plant a few beds of spring wheat for a cover crop and for wheatgrass juice). As always, I will crank up the sauna early and keep it hot all day. So if any of you want to join me on what is predicted to be a beautiful spring day, I should be home from around 8:30 am to 5:30 pm. If you don't know how to get there, email me and I'll send you directions.

3) The April 25 benefit continues to move forward. It is shaping up to be a fantastic show. I am going to work to schedule a medical marijuana seminar at Vanderbilt Medical School and a presentation before the Tennessee legislature (which is considering re-establishing our state's medical marijuana program) on the same day to take advantage of the national spokesmen and spokeswomen who may be coming to Nashville for the benefit. As soon as you can order tickets, I will let all y'all know.

4) The feedback and ripples from my cowboy poem have been most heartening. I've heard from an older married couple whose reading of the poem reminded them of their lifelong love for each other, and a widow whose feelings for her husband mirror Sister's in their intensity and longevity. I've heard from "little Nana" and from my little sister Dana (who's "my friend Zach"'s mother) and my littler sister Terri (living in Puerto Rico with her two beautiful and athletic daughters), both of whom really enjoyed the poem. I've also heard from a Wind River Reservation friend who has incorporated the poem (or, as one reader called it, the short story) into a women's substance abuse treatment program for use by those women in thinking about relationships. And I've also heard from the subject of my attraction (who says the poem is a "masterpiece",
to which the only proper cowboy response is "Aw shucks, pretty little woman, it twirn't nuthin'"), saying that at least one person has spoken to her in our favorite coffee house about the poem and about the young history behind it. It is true that "... love is one of the most wondrous things ..."; but affection, attraction, admiration and friendly affiliation rank right up there too. Thanks again, Nashville's favorite cutie, for everything.

Well, enough good news from this, a favorite felon for some of you. (If the feds are reading these diary entries, they must be wondering just where all the suffering in my "house" sentence went). The other thing I want to do with this diary entry is to introduce you to a friend of mine. Robert (Bob) Koehler is a syndicated columnist for the (Chicago) Tribune Media Services who is one of the most patriotic and laser-clear writers about our current situation that you will find. Bob was one of the very few members of the corporate media to
recognize that the 2004 election was outright stolen and he has written (and spoken) eloquently on this treason. He also had the honor and privilege of being Art Buchwald's editor for many years and some of Art's wry humor definitely rubbed off on Bob.

Each week, Bob sends out his column to a number of us who have requested to receive it. (You can do that too.) What follows is Bob's latest column, which says so clearly what I feel about the sad shape that our country is in with unelected faux-leader frat boys at the helm. At the bottom of the article, you will find Bob's email address. If you agree with him, let him know. If you don't, let him know that too. Bob is a big man who can definitely take it and besides, we ought to keep practicing our free speech while we still have it. I hope you are motivated by the column to do SOMETHING to help save our democracy. In any case, I wanted you folks (who mean so much to me) to meet a great American, who also means very much to me. Until the next time, don't suffer for my sins -- enjoy your own.

Bernie
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COUNT THE QUAGMIRES

By Robert C. Koehler, Tribune Media Services

Anybody who thought this was going to be an "easy war," please raise your hand.

By now, the horror and scandal have exceeded the expectations of even the harshest critics of the invasion - mine, for instance - and I numbly play Count the Quagmires along with the rest of the media and general public. The latest one has burst into national awareness with a piercing "what's next, for God's sake?"

Afghanistan, Iraq, New Orleans. All of them bear the mark of W. And now, incredibly, we learn of a gulag of wounded and emotionally shattered returning veterans, as forgotten and abandoned as nursing home residents in the Crescent City. Support our troops!

But what we're witnessing under George Bush is not what I would call incompetent leadership, any more than we witnessed, in an earlier, happier phase of his administration - the mission-accomplished phase - "leadership." What we have instead is the guileless void of an administration that has not even tried to lead, but rather, from the get-go has concentrated on manipulating national symbols and traditions to give the American public the appearance of leadership.

The real Bush Doctrine was summed up a few years ago by an administration official, who told a reporter: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." Yeah, OK. Some members of the media were skeptical, but I think a lot more of them were intimidated and felt the official scorn of being
"reality-based," so they continued to give obvious lies the same weight as the truth, no longer certain which mattered most.

Behind the illusion of leadership were a bunch of frat boys on spring break, doing whatever, liberated in their own minds from the consequences of their actions. They mainly played two games. One was called War, which resulted, of course, in two countries torn apart by unleashed genocidal hatreds. The other was called Government Doesn't Matter, which most spectacularly gave us poor people trapped in a drowning city.

The current scandal at Walter Reed and beyond - and "scandal" is just a voyeur's word for reality - is, I think, a combination of both games. The game of War results inescapably in death, injury and post-traumatic stress disorder for the participants, none of which is ever pretty. The game of Government Doesn't Matter results in dysfunctional bureaucracy, which is what the injured vets came home to.

Since Team Bush never thought through even the most obvious consequences of what it was doing, and therefore made no plans to hide those consequences, we have, I think, a rare opportunity to look at the flaws in what we believe our interests are. How, for instance, could we have been manipulated so easily into
a needless war? The "debate" beforehand took place in an eye blink, and no public institution felt compelled or empowered to counter the Bush administration's reckless intentions. What happened to the reality-based
community? How did it get suckered?

What we're now reaping in almost daily headlines of this disaster are not Bush administration incompetencies but collective, systemic flaws in war itself - in this strategy of short-term advantage that causes so much long-term, needless suffering. The shabby medical care for vets, which is not new - which
certainly predates the Bush administration - is suddenly so appalling to behold because we know the war that's robbing our children of their limbs, their immune systems, their minds and sometimes their souls was unnecessary in the first place.

Let us remember this for next time. Let us remember that to be constantly prepared for war - to be a superpower - means that no cost is too great for the latest weapons system, but almost any cost is too great for the care of the wounded.

Let us also remember that the cost of war is incalculable. A year ago, economist Joseph Stiglitz, factoring in many of the hidden costs, estimated the Iraq war could end up depleting the national treasury of as much as $2 trillion. The revelations at Walter Reed and throughout the Veterans Administration tell us part of the reason why. Quality, lifelong care for brain-injured and psychologically maimed vets is enormously expensive. Because such care is never part of the original mandate to go to war, it will always be done
on the cheap, leaving us, whenever we care to look, with the spectacle of sick and disabled vets fighting a losing battle for a pittance of respect and care from the VA.

We also have the tawdry spectacle of high-level buck-passing. War equals carte blanche for moral relativism, so whenever the generals or politicians are held morally responsible for the consequences of war, they are caught unprepared and give us the shrug, the blank stare, the evasive harrumph: "We had some NCOs who weren't doing their job, period," former Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey said of the Walter Reed fiasco before he was canned last week.

Raise your hand if you think Bush's presidency has been tainted by incompetent NCOs.
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Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.

© 2007 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

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