Al Franken, Mike Barnicle and Tony Blankhead errrrr Blankley on Hardball.

I have read several theories on what really happened. And I wonder if we’ll ever hear the truth. I don’t believe this woman was kidnapped. But that’s just me……

MANAS AIR FORCE BASE, Kyrgyzstan - Before the major went missing, airmen posted in this former Soviet republic had the best of both worlds. They went hiking and horseback riding in the mountains and were driven to town for shopping and dining. All while getting “imminent fire” pay and performing a mission in support of the Afghanistan campaign.

But since the mysterious three-day disappearance of Maj. Jill Metzger, the horses are riderless, the shops unvisited - and the troops disgruntled.

Read full article at Stars and Stripes

The NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT has a military recruitment provision. I knew military recruiters were free to wander the halls of high schools, because I’ve witnessed it. I did not know part of the NCLB Act provisioned for military recruitment. Learn something new every day!

I do know that in the past, military recruiters have gone over the border into Mexico to recruit withe promise of citizenship. (If they live through it!) Recruiting requires salesmanship. They do have “sales tools.” By 2002, more than 500,000 copies of a computer game “America’s Army, aimed at recruiting computer savvy teenagers, had been downloaded at americasarmy.com and recruiters had a 2CD set of the game to give away. In the game, bullet hits would appear as little red puffs instead of blood gushing and body parts flying off…..because the army wanted to avoid any suggestion that combat is unpleasant. The government, as of 2002, had spent $7.6 million to develop the game. Updates were budgeted at 2.5 million a year and another 1.5 million per year to maintain a multiplayer infrastructure. The military has sponsored drag racing. It owns a 6,000 horsepower dragster called “The Sarge.” “GO ARMY” is emblazened on it’s side. They would then set up recruitment tables at the race track, and have helicopters and assault vehichles for the boys to climb on. It cost the army approximately $5.5 million to participate in 23 races in 2002.

Then there’s the National Guard’s offer of 3…..YES! 3…… free ITune downloads if you sign up to be contacted by a recruiter!!!

The list of recruitment techniques goes on and on. If you are a parent, you should KNOW about them, and know who’s talking to your kids. A couple great sites for parents of recruitment age kids is Working For Change and Leave My Child Alone.

And then, there’s this…….

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
- Ecclesiastes 1:9 (NIV)

At times, it seems as if there are no mysteries left in life, or that the mysteries are just too slight.

For instance, to any sane, well-informed adult reading the AP headline Rice challenges statements by Clinton on terror: Secretary says administration aggressively pursued al-Qaida before 9/11″ it’s obvious Condoleezza Rice is lying.

And when one reads the AP headline “Intel report: Iraq a A-cause célèbre- for extremists: President says NIE leak was political, denies war has worsened terrorism” President Bush is clearly either lying or delusional.

The only real mysteries are how the media will cover it, how the Bush cheerleaders will spin it, and how blatantly and aggressively Bush and Rice will insist that black is white and that they-re not lying through their teeth.

Rice’s lies were prompted by the now (in)famous interview of Bill Clinton by Chris Wallace at Fox News. The AP reports that the YouTube version has been downloaded over 800,000 times and earned “the show its best ratings in nearly three years.” (The video can be seen here and a previous post is here.) In addition to Rice calling Clinton’s charges that the Bush administration did little to stop al-Qaeda before 9/11 “flatly false,”

Rice also took exception to Clinton’s statement that he “left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy” for incoming officials when he left office.

“We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida,” she told the newspaper, which is owned by News Corp., the same company that owns Fox News Channel.

Ah. those Bushies. They-re good at lying from plenty of practice, but at times they get sloppy and move from technically true if delusional assertions such as “I firmly believe we-re winning the war on terror” to demonstratively false statements. The Raw Story very rapidly exposed Rice’s lie:
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