If you missed previous action alerts in re preventing America from fighting another war in Iraq, then USAction still helps you tell President Obama and Congress that you oppose any military action in Iraq, including airstrikes, which seems to be Mr. Obama's preferred option. Yes, it's perfectly awful that ISIS fighters have been terrorizing good Iraqi citizens, but Mr. Maliki's government was no model of statecraft either, and that's the whale we found ourselves lashed to back in the mid-2000s, when Our Personal Lord and Savior George W. Bush clearly gave no thought (not an unprecedented occurrence) to whether toppling Saddam Hussein for short-term political gain might actually strengthen the regime of an actual religious dictatorship, that of neighboring Iran. But Sen. Graham (R-SC) has lately told us we need to go attack Iraq again in order to prevent another 9.11. Why, it's almost like that was the idea all along -- to wage war on Iraq so aggressively awfully that we'd have to go back again, thus helping to create even more terrorists to avenge! Didn't Ron Paul warn us about blowback?
Meanwhile, Congress postponed voting on the agricultural appropriations bill last week, perhaps out of embarrassment that the bill would let our public schools opt out of the USDA's new nutrition standards for school lunches, standards that would help keep junk food out of school cafeterias by ensuring that cafeteria food had more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Congress says it wants to help struggling schools, but the USDA is actually already doing that, by providing grants and technical training to schools struggling with the standards. Hence the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell Congress to support the new nutrition standards for all schools. And though I don't know if the new nutrition standards really will save over 125,000 lives annually and save $17 billion in health care costs annually, I do know that my parents were right when they told me as a child that if I ate right, I might not enjoy it as much as I would if I ate Little Debbie snack cakes all the time, but I'd certainly enjoy the health benefits later -- health benefits like, you know, not being obese or having diabetes or heart problems.
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