(*but my friends did , on Saturdays , they'd head to the store and buy some candy , ciggeretts , balsa wood gliders , or yoyo's , tops , comic books , kid stuff .
I didn't get that welfare handout from my parents . I had to report to my battle station for provision maneuvers .
For cigarettes I would need cash , because they were behind the counter , and the attendant had to hand them to us , no ID necessary , so I would resort to propaganda , and say they were for my mom .
I'd have to breach the border of the parents room , go behind enemy lines , execute a preemptive attack on the cash draw , and loot the enemy's treasury for the obligatory $.27cents , as they were priced under the nations horrifying days of socialism .
For all other items, in the red zone of the store's floor , I would resort to the covert operation of shoplifting , up , under the shirt , up the sleeve , in the pocket , of my ill fitted PI (*PARENTAL ISSUED) uniform , moving quickly to confuse , while constantly scanning the perimeter for the enemy , the store dick .
If these facts , as alleged , are true , I actually was a better Role Model , for America's Youth , from A More Principled Nation , I MEAN FAMILY , then the welfare mooching , allowance grabbers , my , lesser then myself , communist , nazi , socialist , childhood , and adolescent friends were .)
This is a link to this lady's CV: Fatou Bensouda, Judge at the International Criminal Court
So, IF everything we have been doing in Afghanistan was moral, stable, and the us military are not killing people indiscriminately, what the hell is Pompeo afraid of?!?
The reality on the ground here, must be pretty horrific, for him to deny this lady a visa.
When I was a kid growing up, I read about how the USA was the greatest country in the world; but when I got into Junior College, I had to revise what I thought about this country; I got ... awakened, at that point.
Many of my young friends wound up in Vietnam, as "cannon fodder" for this insane and immoral war, which allowed a lot of military equipment get "eaten up", so the military industrial complex could sell our military more stuff.
Many of those friends didn't make it back, or emotionally, didn't make it all the way back; one, in fact, committed suicide when he got back to the States.
Pompeo's refusal to grant this lady a visa, is pretty condemning evidence, that much of what she thought had happened in Afghanistan, but didn't quite have the evidence for, is damningly true.
And what else is damningly true, is that the United States of America, has devolved into "the land of the cowed... and the home of the surveilled."
The US has become "War Crimes R Us", as indicated by the US moves against Afghanistan; Iraq; Libya; Somalia, Yemen, and more recently, Venezuela.
All those who are now citizens of the Unhinged, Surveilled State of America, are citizens of a country which commits war crimes with impunity.
I don't know how that makes you feel, when this realization hits; but frankly, from my perspective, it really ... bites.
As a kid, I never believed that the US could create the amount of mayhem and destruction internationally that it has; now, I know better.
So, what do we do?!?
Violence is never the answer, and those in our military and beyond, will most probably obey their orders, when told to "exterminate American citizens with extreme prejudice."
We need to have a peaceful, honest conversation with each other, and those who allegedly represent us in Congress.
We tell them, logically, and rationally, how these wars are killing our economy, and preventing this country from improving its infrastructure, which is crumbling as I type this.
And we tell them, gently, that we will be looking, very analytically, at their voting records, when it comes to war-related issues, and if they are incapable of pulling away from the warmongers, the next time they are up for re-election, they will not win it.
At the end of the day, these are the only choices we have left right now; but we have to exercise them collectively, or the US government will just brush us off.