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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: coug who wrote (75300)	8/8/2006 5:32:48 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 362002

16:24 CSCO Cisco Systems beats by $0.02 (17.29 -0.11) Reports Q4 (Jul) earnings of $0.30 per share, excluding S.B.C, $0.02 better than the Reuters Estimates consensus of $0.28; revenues rose 21.3% year/year to $7.98 bln vs the $7.92 bln consensus. Co reported Q4 gross margins of 64.4%vs 65.2% street expectations.

To: coug who wrote (75300)	8/8/2006 6:56:11 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 362002

Selling the Illusion of Victory huffingtonpost.com By Deepak Chopra* 08.07.2006 America leads the world in advertising techniques, and now we'll need every ounce of Madison Avenue's skill to sell a difficult product. That product is victory. From the beginning we were told that victory was the only acceptable outcome in Iraq, and now selling that message has become twice as difficult in Lebanon. Insurgents and terrorists aren't giving up. The Islamic world celebrates their existence. At this moment the most popular figure among Muslims everywhere is Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the defiant Hezbollah leader who stands as tall as Osama bin Laden and has proved just as indestructible. The reality of victory isn't even the point anymore. President Bush, in his surprise visit to Baghdad six weeks ago, announced a new plan to secure people's safety in Baghdad. He showed his total support for the al-Maliki government, which pledged to end the terror of Shi'ite militias on the street. A program of amnesty and national unification made headlines. None of it has happened. But instead of saying so, which would be realistic, the image has to shift. The sales job needs tweaking. It's sad when image can't match reality. But isn't that the point in all wars? The home front must be sold the inevitability of victory and the impossibility of defeat. War-makers are frighteningly willing to sacrifice civilian lives while fiercely defending their own posturing. Thus Israel, with our backing, proclaimed that its Lebanon campaign could only end in the total destruction and disarming of Hezbollah. From the beginning some voices said this goal was impossible, and so it is proving. The image of victory was duly modified to lesser goals as things began to go contrary to plan. Israel next wanted a 15-mile safe zone in southern Lebanon, then a one-mile zone, then an international peacekeeping force. The reality is that there's nothing left to sell but the illusion that they will win. Wars are places where illusions go to die. A great many died after the fall of Saigon in the Vietnam fiasco, but after thirty years a new crop sprouted again. Installing democracy by force in Iraq is an illusion; deep sectarian hatred is the reality. A government of national unity is an illusion; the U.S. putting a Shi'ite sectarian president in power is the reality. Iraqi security forces are an illusion; armed thugs dressed in police uniforms to make it easier to kidnap and slaughter innocent people is a reality. These days I think I'm like most people, exhausted from criticizing the Bush war policy. All I really want now is an honest admission, first to all Americans and then to the world, that we've stirred up far more than we can handle. Let's stop fighting over WMDs and distorted evidence and yellow cake uranium. A real crisis faces the world on an order of magnitude no one ever anticipated. Every demon has flown out of Pandora's box, and trying to market the illusion that we're winning feels like a page from George Orwell. The citizens in "1984" were trapped in a world where war never ended, yet they woke up every morning to the cheerful news of impending victory that was just around the corner. Click: intentblog.com *Deepak Chopra came to the U.S. in 1970 from his native India to practice medicine, a career that evolved into the field of mind-body medicine. His breakthrough book, "Quantum Healing," brought him public recognition in 1989. Since then he has written more than 42 books and travels worldwide as a spiritual speaker who fuses Western science with Eastern wisdom. He lives in La Jolla with his wife, Rita, and has two grown children and two grandchildren. Dr. Chopra heads the Chopra Center in Carlsbad, California, which specializes in many alternative treatment modalities including Ayurveda.