Madame Jane predicts stuff about Iraq: Get two fabulous predictions for the price of one!

Madame Jane has been very busy lately, predicting all kinds of stuff about Iraq. Yeah, well. If she's all that good about making predictions then how come she didn't predict that I was going to have a flat tire on the way home from work this afternoon? It would have saved me a hecka lot of trouble and gotten me home safely too. Humph. And now I gotta explain to the highway patrol why I swerved and hit that post....

Prediction # 1: Madame Jane predicts that Bush's chaos theory will win in Iraq -- and here too...

Nobody ever listens to Madame Jane. "A prophet is without honor in [her] own country." But even though I know that nobody is gonna listen, I'm still going to warn everybody about the dangerous times ahead. Then a few years down the road, I'll be able to say, " See. I told you so!" But will that make me happy? No.

Last night I had a dream that the "war" in Iraq had spread. Chaos is like whooping cough or the flu -- it easily spreads from one person to another. And the chaos that Bush created in Iraq is spreading our way. And in my dream last night, it had even spread to my own home town.

Suddenly there were National Guard troops and Marine sharpshooters ranging up and down University Avenue. Military chaos. And my neighbor was beating his wife. Moral chaos. And there was no food in the stores. Financial chaos -- right here in my own home town.

Wherever there is chaos, it spreads. Bush and Cheney have created a festering sore in the Middle East and Madame Jane predicts that gangrene will soon be setting in. But we can still save the rest of the body if we act fast.

Will anybody listen to me? No. The disease of chaos and war is already eating away at the flesh of Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Somalia, Darfur and half of Africa. And that sky-rocketing body-count is heading our way.

And there IS a vaccination against all this infection and disease. It is administered in a series of three shots. But will we use it? No. Not until it is too late -- and the patient has died.

Vaccination # 1: Close down every arms and munitions factory in the world -- let the bad guys fight it out with sticks, knives and clubs. Then spend all the money that we will have saved on education, music and ART.

Vaccination # 2: Practice the Golden Rule. Practice Hindu tolerance, Buddhist patience, Christian mercy, Jewish wisdom, Muslim generosity and the agnostic's love of freedom.

Vaccination # 3: Be an idealist. Dream of a better world. Then follow your dream. We don't HAVE to live in a world that panders to our worst impulses. The human race CAN evolve. And if it can't, then we freaking deserve the sorry-arse end of our species that is rapidly heading our way. And it ain't gonna be no sweet little delusional Armageddon where all you cult followers ascend into Heaven with a smile on your face and contempt for the rest of us mere mortals in your hearts. There will be NO rapture involved.

Madame Jane sees all. Madame Jane has spoken. "Bush's chaos theory is going to be playing at a home town near you soon...unless...."

PS: My friend Stewart Nusbaumer, an embedded reporter in Iraq who was at the scene of a ghastly car-bomb explosion moments after it happened a few weeks ago, witnessed a whole market square covered with body parts and raw human flesh. Stewart has this to say about Iraq: "Jane, I agree with you. The war has to stop. And it will. But before how many are dead? Horrible. I think this all the time, that Americans here in Iraq live in their own little worlds. The professional army is particularly bad in this aspect. I want the draft. I want to see the young soldiers raising hell because they know they shouldn't be here. I want their parents in the States raising hell. I want all parents terrified that THEIR kid will be sent to Iraq, so they are stopping the war now -- I want people screaming at the elected representatives to stop the war." It doesn't take a crystal ball to see that happening.

"Wars can be stopped by re-instituting the draft. Overnight the college campuses would explode. I want that, rather than the explosions I saw here. Peace marches? No one is really listening, are they? The draft is the only answer."

Pundits predict that there will be a bloodbath in Iraq if our troops pull out. Well, Madame Jane doesn't even have to use tarot cards to see that there is already a bloodbath there NOW.

PPS: Here's a video of poor MJ being called a "ranting" Cassandra. I TOLD you that nobody listens: http://youtube.com/watch?v=eUD6szocTik

Prediction # 2: Extra! Madame Jane goes to war! (again)

"There's something rotten in the State of Denmark," said Hamlet.

"There's something rotten in the State of Iraq," Madame Jane replied, "and I predict that I, the great Madame Jane, foreseer of the Future, predictor of Things to Come...."

Oh shut up and get to the point.

"Disbeliever," Madame Jane muttered darkly. But then she peered into her crystal ball and hit me with her best shot. And it was a bulls-eye. "I just got a clairvoyant message from a doctor stationed in Diyala province," she said. Yeah right. A clairvoyant message that was delivered by Yahoo I'll bet. "Here's the message. Listen up."

"Madame Jane," wrote the doctor, "the Combat Support Hospitals in Iraq are excellent, absolutely top-of-the-line. They are the reason that there are so many fewer fatalities in Iraq than there were during the Vietnam war." Aside from not counting deaths of contractors and mercenaries? "We have an excellent med-evac system here that allows us to get injured soldiers to a hospital really fast."

So. There is better medical care. I was really glad to hear that. "But does better medical care truly effect the death count THAT much," I asked Madame Jane. "My friend Helen just e-mailed me that only one in ten soldiers' deaths are being reported. Could that be the real reason that death counts in Iraq are so much lower than they were in Vietnam? Are these soldiers being med-evaced to Germany ASAP so that if they die outside of Iraq, they can't be counted as a statistic, a bona fide death in Iraq? What really is the truth? Get out the tarot cards! What do you SEE?"

Madame Jane bent down, turned around and gave me a wink. "Are you or are you not an investigative journalist?" she asked. I do try to be.... "Well if you are then you need to investigate this here: Are our heroic soldiers being accorded a hero's death -- one where they 'either come home with their shields or on them'? Or are they just being forced to experience a sordid little death all alone as they are being dragged onto and off of helicopters and C-130s in order to down-play the statistics?"

You're kidding. Do you think that the Bush war machine would actually stoop that low? To try to keep its "numbers" down at the expense of the brave men and women who are making the ultimate sacrifice for their country? To actually make it a POLICY to push these soldiers across international boundary lines while they are in their last moments of dying just so that Bush would look good? To leave our brave soldiers alone to close their own eyes while they face their Maker -- in order to put a more benevolent spin on an unjustifiable "war"?

That's just sick.

And how will the spouses and parents of dying soldiers feel when they hear about this? That their sons and daughters and husbands and wives were hurried along at their last moments for convenience's sake? And what will our troops think when they hear that THIS is the way they will be manhandled in their dying moments? Like meat on an assembly line? So much for "Rest in Peace".

That's just ghoulish. But is this sort of thing really actually happening? Or has Madame Jane just sprouted yet another crack in her, er, crystal ball.... And would our wonderful military doctors and nurses allow such a thing to happen? What do THEY say about this?

"There's only one way to answer that question," stated Madame Jane. "You, my little ducking, need to strap back on your Kevlar, click on http://www.bargaintravel.com/, get your arse back over to Iraq and RESEARCH all this. ASAP. If Americans are being duped (again), then Americans needs to know about it!"

"Oh no you don't," said me. "You've got the wrong little white duck! I can't go back over there! I've been over there once. Once is enough! I gots post-traumatic stress."

"Madame Jane has spoken." Oh okay. Pass me the Kevlar.

"Think about all those dashingly handsome soldiers in their cute little Humvees. Think about the DFAC pumpkin pie!" War is hell.

PS: Madame Jane also wanted me to go to Washington DC and report on the demise of America's traditional "Citizen Soldier" in favor of Bush's new cold-hearted "Area 51" mercenary armies. "I predict that unless we do something about this now," stated MJ, "we're gonna have Brown Shirts overrunning our country pretty soon." But I put my foot down on the idea of going to DC. It may be okay for Madame Jane to live in a world of her own that doesn't involve holding down a job and paying the rent. But I still have a landlord and a boss.