This is a recording of Pope John Paul II singing Schubert"s Ave Maria in 1976.  Life on the Rock from EWTN has added the pictures in this video.  I did not realize he had such a powerful voice.

Pope John Paul II singing Ave Maria (1976)

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou3o7oE2vyc

"JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM.  JUST THE FACTS" 
Herewith, personal positions without the usual supporting evidence.  But it's out there, folks. 

• THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE MUSLIM WORLD.  To quote the cynical remark of Josef Stalin: "How many divisions does the Pope have?"  Of course, the Stalinists found out in 1990.  The Church must be careful here, in order to protect its members in Muslim countries.  But the Church should make it clear to moderate Muslims that neither it nor the Western World will tolerate attacks on its members and other manifestations of religious intolerance, or attempts to apply Sharia Law outside of its lands, or designs to establish a world Caliphate, or world-wide terrorism.  As I have said before, only moderate Muslims can address the cancer in its midst.
• THE CHILDRENS' ORCHESTRAS OF GUSTAV DUDAMEL should be reproduced throughout the world.  Music is the one universal language.  And it is a language that all children especially relate  to, regardless of the crises in their lives.
• THIS IS THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ONSET OF THE IRAQ WAR IN 2003.  Lest we forget, see the article in WSJ entitled "When Everyone Agreed About Iraq" (by Stephen Knott, Saturday - Sunday, March 16-17, 2013, Opinion, pA13.  The one thing in this regard that President George W. Bush should be faulted for is his reliance on the asinine conduct of the war by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.  From the outset, as chronicled in my many Rapid Responses beginning in the Summer of 2003 and continuing for several years afterward, this man epitomized my usual description of liberal Democrats: "Articulate, Arrogant, Asinine". 
• THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES TO BOTCH WORLD AFFAIRS.  Wrong to have left Iraq before insuring the establishment of a true and lasting coalition government including Shia, Sunni and Kurds.  Wrong to be repeating the earlier stupid cut and run policy in Afghganistan (see "The Untold Story Of Afghan Progress", by Saad Mohseni, WSJ Monday March 18, 2013, Opinion, pA13).  Wrong to be allowing a two year deadly civil war to continue in Syria without our effective intervention.  And terribly wrong to be enabling the failed U.N. in its efforts to trump national sovereignty with a utopian one-world government.  These people are articulate, arrogant, asinine...and un-educable. 
• When are the American people going to realize that THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS FAILING OUR VETERANS, OLD AND YOUNG, in the support that they need and have earned.  One needs to look only at the VA to see that.  Again quoting myself: "There are three kinds of liars: Liars, Damned Liars...and the Government.  We all have a personal obligation, folks.  Let's all do our part.
• LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION.  All abortion is the killing of a human life and should be outlawed except when unavoidable to save the physical Life of the mother.  This position does not automatically abandon efforts at in-vitro fertilization.  But it requires more care and less abandon. On this issue, the continued unnecessary stance of the Catholic Church regarding Contraception (except for abortifacients masquerading as contraceptives) continues to be highly damaging.
• THE DEBATE ABOUT GUN LAWS once again reveals the inherent cowardice of our "fearless leaders".  They refuse to deal with the strong mental health lobbies by addressing one of the most important issues in this debate: reporting mental illness as an integral part of background checks, and permitting health professionals to report cases of propensity to violence against others. 

Your description of a ‘string of lies’ from Washington and the military establishment in the 1960s was information often intentionally exaggerated by media that you noted as having not "distracted" you before and during WWII and Korea.

I think "unbiased journalists" like Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather would have reported as "lies" the litany of propaganda and misinformation purposely disseminated by the Roosevelt Administration prior to and during WWII, including and especially about "not sending American boys into another European war." You don't win a war by publicizing the specifics of your battle plan. The Constitutionally-mandated civilian status of the Commander-in-Chief does not bring with it an obligation to reveal everything to the American people. The media often behave identically in the judicial arena, filing petitions to publicize any information that they see fit, invoking "The Public’s right to know". The Public does not have the right to know compromising or prejudicial information certainly of an ongoing judicial, military, or national security nature, and it certainly doesn't have that right regarding such events (regardless of who defines such terms) at the moment they are occurring considering the high probability of irreparable contamination to the event in question. No reasonable person gives a blank check in this regard to the Government, but caving to media lawyers and charges of cover-ups is no reason to compromise the successful prosecution (or defense) of a legal case, or a war. While it was later determined that mistakes and cover-ups were committed during the Vietnam War, we'll never know for sure how detrimental they really were because the well was contaminated by the media with each "breaking" and "in-depth" report they provided America and our eagerly attentive enemies.

I believe this contamination was the microscope through which you viewed the war as unwinnable and wrong to prosecute. This is understandable considering the difference in media portrayal of external threats in WWII and Korea versus their portrayal of internal threats in the form of American imperialism and political dominance by the “military/industrial complex”; a ‘complex’ that existed long before Dwight Eisenhower coined that term.  While many in the media claim to be reactive to Society, no reasonable person can deny the de facto manipulative nature of the media, especially to an increasing degree with each advance in telecommunication technology.

The American media is responsible for far more casualties (on both sides) in Vietnam than the so-called lying and incompetent military and political leaders in Washington who allegedly and needlessly sent hundreds of thousands of young boys into harm's way. And, if you believe those media, these leaders also sent vastly disproportionate numbers of black soldiers to their deaths as part of some master plan to keep minorities at bay. I believe Vietnam was where the notion was crystallized of cigar-chomping generals moving chess pieces around a table, caring nothing for their troops. Forgoing the notion that these men are human beings, any military leader at any level must exhibit a high degree of care and protection for those in their charge, if for no other reason than to save their own hide.  But, you couldn't say that about the portrayal of the Vietnam-era military, especially by Hollywood.

I think the only reason why Vietnam continues to be what you describe as a "metastatic disease" affecting the American body is because a proven-biased media continues to behave like a cancer patient who enables their addiction to smoking in spite of being in the presence of pure oxygen and chemo. ‘Hey, the damage is done, right? What's a little more fuel going to do to this fire?’

ANOTHER LITTLE TRIP...TO MY GRANDSONS, ANOTHER POT POURRI.

• THE MUSLIM WORLD.  What is our specific self-interest in places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon?  Yes, I know most touted answers to those questions.  But is that really why we're there, squandering our national treasure and blood for the likes of Hamid Karzai?  Why can't we use surrogates like Israel, probably Turkey, maybe Egypt, and of course the CIA?  And what's up with Saudie Arabia and their sponsoring the murderous Salafi form of Islam?  Let's become nationally energy independent asap.  For ultimately, Muslims will have to solve their own family problems in a civil war...or we're looking at another Crusade, this one in self-defense. 
• The other day Paul Krugman, the wild-eyed Liberal economist of the NYTimes, tried to articulate his argument against the "deficit crisis": "DON'T WORRY.  BE HAPPY".  I forced myself to read it, hoping that I might be enlightened.  No chance.  All conclusory statements and glowing support for the discredited philosophy of John Maynard Keynes.  Some people are just not educable. 
• HEALTH POLICY...MORE SHOES FALLING.  Gail Wilenski, PhD, former Administrator of CMS, and her colleagues recently opined that the only thing that will "solve" the problem of physicians' pay will have to be eliminating fee-for-service and replacing it with one or another of the several schemes being pushed that make the physician the  insurer and risk-taker of his patient's health and illness.  HELLO: that's unethical, putting the physician in a direct conflict of interest with his patient.  But who cares, right?      Another thing.  An article in USA Today (Friday March 15, 2013, Sec. 4B) reports that more and more small business that are deciding to self-insure instead of paying exorbitant premiums to government or private insurers for their mainly healthy workers.  Just the kind of insurance premiums for healthy people that ObamaCare is depending on to support its Christmas tree of wants instead of legitimate reform needs.   PREDICTION; ObamaCare will fall of its own weight within four-five years, although the Obituary will not be posted for a decade.  After the next four or five years, supply (ie. physician availability) and demand (massive numbers of increasingly aging and sickly patients) will take over.  But first Health Care and its "providers" must survive.  Prognosis: Guarded.