Rick Raw: Girls Go Into Puberty at Shockingly Early Ages in Today’s World

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

In today’s world, you see many little girls who look like miniature women. Girls are reaching sexual maturity at earlier ages. Just twenty years ago, pediatric specialists would find this phenomenon shocking. At this accelerating rate, girls will be sexually mature at birth, demanding the keys to daddy’s car and power of attorney.

On the last episode of "Mad Men," Don Draper’s 10 year old daughter was going into puberty and her nanny saw her masturbating. The series is set in the early 1960s, so her mom was mortified and sent her to a child psychiatrist.

Of course, today, girls who go into puberty early masturbate, and most parents think nothing of it. Likewise, it’s acceptable for teenage boys to masturbate in most American households. All coming of age films allude to youthful self gratification. The "Mad Men" episode was an interesting parallel with today’s world when girls go into puberty at accelerated earlier ages such as 6 and 7 years old.

The evidence compiled by the journal "Pediatrics" is shocking. The study found that "23% of African-American girls have already started develop breasts at 6 or 7 years old, as have 15% of Latinos and 10% of whites. Obesity may play a role, as body fat can lead to the production of higher levels estrogen, which triggers breast development and menstruation."

Since there is an epidemic of obesity among American pubescents, their sexual development is effected by being grossly overweight. Other factors contribute such as toxic chemicals getting into the food chain, including pesticides and the plastic additive bisphenol-A. These chemicals mimic estrogen in the body telling the body to go into sexual maturity.

All this early development contributes to teenage pregnancy with little girls pushing baby carriages. It’s a nightmare for parents who now have to worry about their little 7 year old getting pregnant or having sex. Kids having kids is a scary reality.

Clearly, this has become a pervasive societal problem. Little tarts acting like women at 7 years old is now a reality. I’m thankful my daughter is 48 years old. I thought she was an early developer when she had her first period at 11 years old.

Pediatric physicians are warning that early-onset puberty could pose an increased risk of breast cancer due to the longer exposure to estrogen. Early-onset puberty has also been linked to low self esteem, eating disorders, and depression.

The girls with early-onset puberty are vulnerable to bullying and sexual harassment. When a third-grade girl looks like a sixth-grade girl, adults expect them to act older. However, their bodies may be at an advanced stage of maturity, but their minds are still childlike. It’s a paradox that can drive these girls crazy.

These child women can become bossy to their male counterparts who are clueless. Of course, boys mature much slower physically and intellectually than girls–at least five years behind the girls. So the boys are faced with their worst nightmare–little girls who act like their moms.

This problem has child psychiatrists studying ways to counsel these girls to accept their bodies, but also accept the fact that they are still children. More importantly, they have much to learn about the adult world and to respect their elders’ life experience as wisdom.

Rick Raw: Taliban Stone Couple for Adultery in Afghanistan–Primitive Punishment Underscores Taliban’s Sadistic Cruelty

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

When I became aware of this story, I was literally sick to my stomach. The Taliban again demonstrated they are crazed fanatics who want to return the world back to the dark ages. In northern Afghanistan, these ignorant Jihadists stoned a young couple to death for adultery after numerous human rights groups tried to stop it.

This is the same hardline Islamic regime that the U.S. ousted in 2001. However, they have regrouped in the mountainous border land between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now they are a serious threat to Afghanistan.

In this shadow land, the Taliban and al Qaeda are untouchable. The U.S. is not allowed to attack them on their turf. Worse yet, the Pakistani government is reluctant to mount an assault with their Army because of the collusion between factions of the Pakistani government and the Taliban.

International rights groups worry that the Afghan government will negotiate with the Taliban and give them a voice in their government. Just before the U.S. attacked the Taliban in 2001, they had ruled all of Afghanistan with an iron fist.

During this dark time, women were not allowed to leave their houses without a male guardian. Girls could not attend school and women could not work. Women were required to wear full burkas in public Men were required to wear beards and other restrictions were imposed on the citizens of Afghanistan based on the Taliban’s strict interpretation of the Quran.

The stoning was imposed on a couple having an affair. The man was married but the woman was single. The woman, Sadiqa was 20 years old and engaged to another man. Her lover was 28 year old Qayum, who left his wife to run away with her. The two had been hiding in a friend’s house for five days.

They were discovered by the Taliban’s secret police on Sunday. They were stoned to death in front of a crowd of about 150 men. First Sadiqa was stoned and took many minutes to die of her injuries. Then Qayum was stoned a half an hour later. He took even longer to die.

Clearly, stoning is a slow, painful way to die. Sometimes the victim is knocked unconscious but bleeds to death as rocks make gaping wounds on the body. Most any other way of execution is faster and more humane.

This primitive execution underscores the Taliban’s degenerate culture of sadistic men who have no regard for women. They hide behind the Quran, but in reality, they are no better than the Nazi SS.

It’s customary for the Taliban’s secret police to torture their victims to confess, even if they’re innocent. In this case their friend gave the couple up to the Taliban. There was no trial or judge.
Amnesty International said it was the first confirmed stoning in Afghanistan since the fall of Taliban rule in 2001 when U.S. special forces and a major bombing campaign drove the Taliban out of the country.

Since the Taliban regrouped, they are stronger than ever and the U.S. forces efforts to drive them out of the country have killed many Taliban warriors, but they don’t mind dying and have plenty of young Jihadists pledging their death by suicide bombing to stop the American assault.

The U.S. and human rights groups are adamant about no reconciliation with the Taliban to make peace. This is a well organized army that have deadly weapons from Iran such as powerful IEDs made from artillery shells. They also have a cache of heat seeking hand held missiles that can take down helicopters with one shot.

The recent revelations from the WikiLeaks documents showing that American soldiers have no regard for the lives of Afghani civilians has helped the Taliban to recruit more holy warriors ready to die for the cause.

The Afghan government must not give the Taliban any voice in the government. The U.S. and Afghan Army must attack their hideout with shock and awe, killing all of them and their kin or they’ll continue to be a threat.

Rick Raw: WikiLeaks Documents Expose U.S. War Crimes in Afghanistan

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

Among the shocking revelations revealed in the tens of thousands of WikiLeaks.com documents from the Afghan war reveals that U.S. and coalition troops adopted a scorched earth strategy. This means kill every living thing and burn houses and hutches to the ground.

Remember the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War? Since the VC hid out in the villages, the unit that committed the massacre had just lost a popular Sargent and another soldier was blinded in a firefight with the VC. They tracked the VC to the My Lai village and the unit was hell bent on revenge.

So Lt. Calley ordered his men to kill every living thing, including the babies. Then an elaborate coverup ensued. Ultimately, Calley was convicted of murder and sentenced to life. However, President Nixon ordered Calley held under house arrest, and he was paroled. It was tantamount to a pardon.

In WWII, Hitler adopted a scorched earth policy when his troops invaded Russia. He ordered his troops to kill everyone in the villages and burn them to the ground as his blitzkrieg rolled into the vast Russian hinterlands.

The WikiLeaks documents show egregious human-rights abuses "every day, every hour, and in every location." This strategy was sanctioned by high ranking generals who never reported the atrocities.

Specific incidents are chronicled in the WikiLeaks papers, such as, how U.S. soldiers fleeing a suicide bombing opened fire indiscriminately, killing 19 innocent civilians. The soldiers pointed their weapons at the journalists present, forcing them to delete their photos of the massacre. The incident was never mentioned in the official report.

Even worse atrocities were committed by U.S. special forces death squads in Afghanistan. These elite units were tasked with the assassination of targeted Taliban leaders. During the mission, as the squad made entrance into a house of a suspected Taliban leader, the hit-team went in shooting on full auto, killing anyone in the house, including the target’s family.

The squads operated with complete immunity, killing dozens of innocent civilians for every one Taliban official they killed. The U.S. soldiers had no respect for the civilian population, and if they got in the way, too bad, they were collateral damage. This mind-set was the unofficial order of the day.

As the U.S. forces took casualties and deaths from unseen suicide bombers and IEDs, the troops took out their revenge on the civilian population if they couldn’t find the enemy, that had already melted into the general population.

This raises an important question: Now that the WikiLeaks papers have exposed war crimes, will the individuals responsible be prosecuted as war criminals. Not a chance. First the U.S. did not sign the treaty that established the International Criminal Court–the forum for trying war criminals. Second, there is no moral imperative to bring these soldiers up on war crimes since they were operating with official immunity.

Recently in Afghanistan, Marines were never court marshaled for using chemical weapons in the form of phosphorous bombs against Iraqi civilians in Fallujah in 2004. It’s a well known fact that U.S. soldiers consider Afghan civilians’ lives worthless. When the enemy looks like civilians after they blowup Americans, it’s easy to rationalize killing a random sampling of civilians, and maybe they got at least one or two Taliban perpetrators in the pile of dead bodies.

These documents will inflame the anti-American passions of the Afghans who have accused the U.S. of indiscriminately killing civilians since the start of the Afghanistan war. It will also inspire more young men to join the Taliban and al Qaeda ranks as Jihadists, who harbor deep hatred for Americans who have committed countless war crimes.

Rick Raw: Afghanistan War Drags On with Nothing to Show for It But More Casualties

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

President Obama says" the Afghanistan War drawdown will happen next summer as scheduled, but it will be much slower than expected." He went on to say, "What we’re looking to do is difficult–very difficult–but it’s a fairly modest goal, which is: Don’t allow terrorists to operate from this region. Don’t’ allow them to create big training camps and to plan attacks against the U.S. homeland with impunity," Obama said on CBS’ "Sunday Morning" in a "Time" piece.

But as the documents revealed by Wikileak.com, there is chaos and indecision in the officer ranks as the war drags on with nothing to show for it. The Taliban attack us at will with IEDs and ground assaults on our outposts.

American combat deaths are rising rapidly. Soldiers committing suicide back in the states is also on the rise, as troop morale and support at home wanes for this unwinnable war. Even Obama doesn’t think we’ll ever establish a democracy in the entire country.

This July was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in the nearly 9-year war with 66 troops killed. Officers predict that the death toll will rise as the U.S. troops penetrate deeper into Taliban held territory.

Yet, the Taliban and insurgency have unlimited man power and weapons resources as they conduct their guerilla war with fresh Jihadists flowing in from the border area’s enemy stronghold just inside the Pakistan border. They don’t mind dying. In fact,` they look forward to Paradise

Our military leadership has never fully adjusted to a guerilla styled war in which our enemy is engaged. They continue to blow up Humvees at will with powerful IEDs using wired together artillery shells from Iran.

Knowing this, why do our officers continue to send troops out in convoys of Humvees and other vehicles? It’s crazy. The convoys are sitting ducks. The Taliban use donkeys to carry their supplies and ammunition on hidden mountain trails.

They live in primitive conditions in caves and are hungry most of the time. Indeed, they are committed to Jihad for Centuries not years and will move into our positions when we leave, laughing at our stupidity.

Clearly, Pakistan has not done enough to drive the Taliban out of the border region. They thrive there, getting supplies from Iran and their Pakistani partisans. No one wants to say we can’t win in Afghanistan, but it’s the truth, unless we get full support from Pakistan.

In the "Time" piece, Admiral Mullen acknowledged that "time and patience are short, and that all the fighting so far has not neutralized the Taliban as a military force."

Hell, we are the biggest damn fighting force in the world with high tech weapons and surveillance and we can’t beat a bunch of nomads wearing skirts? Who’s running this war–a bunch of incompetent fools?

So go to where the Taliban are located and bomb them to the stone age. Part of the problem is: We don’t know exactly where the Taliban and insurgency is hold up. It’s mountainous terrain with caves everywhere.

Another problem is, we are not allowed to enter Pakistan’s borders. We know that certain factions of the Pakistan government are sympathetic to the Taliban cause.

Still, it’s tragic and disheartening to keep losing troops and not make any progress in wiping out the Taliban. We’ve got to fight their kind of war using small groups of special forces to find and destroy the Taliban’s headquarters.

Yet, time and time again, American troops go out in convoys that might as well have big targets painted on the side. One Army corporal said on a recent CNN documentary, "Well today, I’m going out to get blown up."

Establishing remote outposts near the border is asking to get attacked and over-run. We are big and clunky with noisy armored vehicles. It’s like we’re saying, "Hey, here we are, attack us."

U.S. troops wear uniforms with American flags on the lapel. Dress our troops in native garb and make our presence a smaller target. And, don’t go out in Humvees just begging to get blown up by an IED.

Of all my suggestions to the bonehead generals, getting the Pakistan government to let us invade the border region and cooperate with us is the most important factor in defeating the Taliban.

Otherwise, I fear we’re already mired in a no-win Vietnam styled war, taking casualties for no reason or objective.

When we leave, the Taliban will again take over the hinterlands..