The shifting purpose of the military occupation of iraq

Today, Arianna Huffington reviewed the long history of shifting rationalizations for having a huge U.S. military occupation of Iraq:

The White House served up a blast from the past this week with word that it was planning to rebrand the Iraq war -- something the Bushies did quite often. Come Sept. 1, it will be good-bye "Operation Iraqi Freedom," hello "Operation New Dawn"! This New Dawn will, incidentally, still see 50,000 U.S. troops left in Iraq. So we started with 2001's "Gathering Threat" and 2002's "Axis of Evil," moved to 2003's "Shock and Awe" and "Mission Accomplished," then pinballed from "Fight 'em There, Not Here" ('04) to "Last Throes" ('05) to "Stay the Course" ('05) to "The New Way Forward" ('06). "Operation New Dawn" sounds like "A New Way of Forgetting This Ever Happened." It's time to brand the war what it always was -- "A Huge, Tragic Mistake" -- and get the hell out.
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Why is non-belief flourishing?

A recent Pew study shows that non-belief is growing among Americans. Freelance researcher Gregory S. Paul has proposed a mechanism for this growth of non-belief. For instance, in 2009, he published on this topic in Evolutionary Psychology. More recently, in the February, 2010 edition of Science (available online only to subscribers), Paul gives a succinct summary of this proposed mechanism to explain declining popularity of religion in prosperous countries:

In modern nations, non-religion and the acceptance of evolution become popular when the middle-class majority feels sufficiently secure and safe, thanks to low income inequality, universal health care, job and retirement security, and lower rates of legal crime; this has occurred to greater and lesser degrees in most first-world countries, from Japan to Scandinavia. Religion thrives when the majority seek the aid and protection of supernatural powers because they are impoverished, is in third- and second-world countries or, in the case of the United States (the most religious and creationist first-world country), because a majority of Americans fear losing their middle-class status as a result of limited government support, high levels of social pathology, and intense economic come petition and income disparity. Prosperous modernity is proving to be the nemesis of religion.

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Elizabeth Warren: The banks have lobbyists in Washington in numbers that I’ve never before seen . . .

Elizabeth Warren is still fighting a good fight, but Congress continues to side with the big banks, not with consumers. Our representatives, who are inundated with propaganda and money from bank lobbyists, continue to consider the banks to be their clients, not consumers. Warren gives the sad details in this interview with Bill Maher.

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Breath-holding record holder: 19 minutes, 20 seconds

How long can you hold your breath? I once did it for 2 minutes and I thought I was doing something impressive. It turns out that people who train hard and use exotic techniques can hold their breath for extremely long periods of time. Beware, though, that it is a dangerous hobby. Discovery News reports on the most recent record-breaker:

A Swiss freediver held his breath underwater for 19 minutes and 21 seconds, according to news reports this week. The gasp-inducing feat beat the previous world record by 19 seconds, and blew away the record of 17 minutes and four seconds that magician David Blaine set on Oprah Winfrey's talk show in 2008.

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