War with Iran augurs a global conflict
by Justin Raimondo
March 30, 2007
Our "free" media is so eager to accept the official British explanation of why their sailors/Marines wound up in Iranian custody that most Western "news" accounts are ignoring all evidence to the contrary, such as the trenchant observation of former British diplomat Craig Murray:
"The British Government has published a map showing the coordinates of the incident, well within an Iran/Iraq maritime border. The mainstream media and even the blogosphere has bought this hook, line and sinker. But there are two colossal problems.
"A) The Iran/Iraq maritime boundary shown on the British government map does not exist. It has been drawn up by the British Government. Only Iraq and Iran can agree their bilateral boundary, and they never have done this in the Gulf, only inside the Shatt because there it is the land border too. This published boundary is a fake with no legal force.
"B) Accepting the British coordinates for the position of both HMS Cornwall and the incident, both were closer to Iranian land than Iraqi land. Go on, print out the map and measure it. Which underlines the point that the British produced border is not a reliable one."
What Murray describes as the Brits' "fake map" is being reproduced in all the major Western media, as if it represents something other than a complete fantasy. Hardly surprising, in our Orwellian age: what's astonishing is that they expect there is anyone left who believes anything they say, no matter how many times it is filtered through the echo chamber of the "mainstream" outlets. Journalism is dead: long live stenography. The Western media reported Blair's certainty that the 15 Brits were in Iraqi waters as if it were gospel.
The blogosphere is on it, however, and Blair's lie had no sooner been uttered than it was in the process of being debunked here, here, here, and here, to start with, so that the BBC – which had already given former Ambassador Murray credibility by interviewing him on several occasions – had to include his viewpoint after a couple of days, albeit relegating his comments to the tail-end of news stories. The American media solved the problem the same way. Very few major papers are running the AP story by Robert H. Reid citing critics of the British position, including not only Murray but also Richard Schofield of King's College, the foremost Western expert on the waterway:
"If this happened south of where the river boundary ends, knowing the coordinates wouldn't necessarily help us. We have to accept the British claim with as much salt as the Iranian claim."
That is something our "free" media won't do: treat the competing claims equally, i.e. with equal skepticism. The Iranians, you see, are the "bad" guys, and the Brits are the "good" guys (and one highly visible gal), and that's the way it's going to be played in the run-up to the second phase of the Great Middle East War.
The real significance of the showdown in the Gulf is that the Iraqi phase of the war is over, and one way we know this is the sudden attention being paid to the Iraq issue by the congressional leadership of the Democratic party. The moment House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed to strip out a provision in her omnibus "antiwar" bill that would have required the President to come to Congress before attacking Iran, the Iranian chapter of this long and bloody saga was semi-officially opened. Having been given the green light to go ahead – by none other than the top leadership of the "opposition" party – "coalition" forces in the Gulf are moving with dispatch. The Russians report a U.S. military build-up on the Iraq-Iran border, and no less than two carriers, with their attendant flotillas, are hovering in or very near the Gulf.
The British incursion into a highly problematic area is but the latest in a series of provocations, including Western-sponsored terrorist attacks inside Iran. U.S. aid to pro-al Qaeda elements operating inside Lebanon, as a counterbalance to Hezbollah's growing influence, is inexplicable except as part of a new strategy to neutralize Iranian assets in the region. The battle is being extended into the heart of the mullahs' realm by inciting national and religious minorities within the country: Azeris, Sunnis (including groups associated with Osama bin Laden), and, of course, the ever-useful Kurds, America's Middle Eastern Janissaries.
Iranian behavior in this matter seems predicated on the assumption that the decision to attack them has already been made. Why else would they parade the 15 captives in front of the cameras, and release two letters of one of them, including a call for the Western withdrawal from Iraq? Since the bombs will fall in any event, why not make propaganda while the sun shines?
All those rumors about war by the beginning of April – the 6th is often mentioned as The Day – which once seemed a bit far-fetched look very credible at this particular moment. If it is the sixth, its significance as the date the U.S. entered World War I will not be overlooked. The consequences of an American attack on Iran will signal the beginning of a new and terrible world war, one that will not only embroil the Middle East, from the shores of Lebanon to the wilds of Waziristan, but also spill over into Russia and reverberate throughout Europe.
And for what? Or, rather, for whom?
There is only one country on earth that benefits in any way from a Western collision with the Persians, and its current rulers haven't been shy about openly calling for war. The Israelis have stated, loudly and often, that Iranian possession of nuclear technology represents an "existential threat" to the Jewish state, and they've threatened to take out Iran's nuclear facilities if we fail in our duty to do so. They way things are going, however, it looks like they won't have to …
The Lobby moved quickly to bend Western politicians to its will, including "antiwar" Democrats in the U.S. Congress. Having been given a green light to invade by Speaker Pelosi and her minions, is it any wonder that the War Party is crossing that nonexistent line in the Shatt al Arab – the Rubicon of our imperial ambitions?
If ever we needed that long-rumored but seemingly moribund resolution of Sen. James Webb, which was supposed to be the upper house's equivalent of the fallen "don't invade Iran" provision nixed by Pelosi, it is now. Senate bill 759 prohibits the use of funds for military operations against Iran, and yet remains bottled up in the Senate Foreign Relations committee – while the pork-laden emergency supplemental for Iraq, which is so full of loopholes it resembles a big slice of Swiss cheese, sucks up all the oxygen. Isn't that just like the Democrats: they come out against the Iraq war only when it's too late – even as they signal the adminstration to go ahead with the next war.
It's amazing that the War Party, after delivering a body blow to our military and American interests throughout the world by invading Iraq, can mobilize its forces to make yet another go of it – this time on a much larger scale. That they are doing it without much political opposition, is even more astounding – and that speaks volumes about the corruption and betrayal of our "democratic" system, which is no reflection of the popular will. In a sane world, anyone who so much as suggested the possibility of starting another war in the Middle East would be taken out and horsewhipped. In the Bizarro World universe we seem to have slipped into post-9/11, however, such madness is the norm.
Where are our intellectual, political, and religious leaders? Will no one arise to end our national nightmare and lead us to safety? Both political parties are equally complicit: not a single major declared presidential candidate has spoken out against this crazed course, which seems unalterable, and, at this point, inevitable. I throw my hands up in despair at the terrible power of the Lobby, and wonder, aloud, why no one of any stature dares stand up to them. It doesn't seem possible that we are being pushed into a bigger and far more destructive conflict, and yet it is all happening rather quickly.
The coming war with Iran will not end until the entire region is aflame – with the fire spreading to three continents, and beyond. Is this the price the world is willing to pay to put an end to the "existential threat" to Israel? Or will our rulers pause, before plunging into an abyss, to ask: what about the existential threat to the rest of the world?
source: Antiwar.com
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Friday, March 30, 2007
bush visits Walter Reed Hospital
Let’s see. It took the bush one day to get to Washington, D.C. after the Sep 11 attacks.
The slow-footed bush took three days to get to New Orleans after Katrina.
It’s taken little georgie SIX weeks to inspect Walter Reed after the publication of the conditions the wounded veterans were enduring.
How long you figure it’ll take him to get to the next disaster?
The slow-footed bush took three days to get to New Orleans after Katrina.
It’s taken little georgie SIX weeks to inspect Walter Reed after the publication of the conditions the wounded veterans were enduring.
How long you figure it’ll take him to get to the next disaster?
Thursday, March 29, 2007
The Racist War on Immigrants
by Stephen Lendman
3/29/07
Emma Lazarus' memorable words on Lady Liberty's pedestal once had meaning as a new nation grew. No longer in a country hostile to the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, the wretched refuse, the homeless and many others not making the grade in a white supremacist Judeo-Christian state worshiping wealth and privilege. No welcome sign is out for the unwanted poor and desperate. At best, they're ignored to subsist on their own. At worst, they're scorned and abused, exploited and discarded like trash or labeled "terrorists" in a post-9/11 world of mass witch-hunt roundups aimed at Muslims because of their faith or country of origin and Latinos coming north to survive the fallout from NAFTA's destructive effects on their lives.
Immigrants of color, the wrong faith or from the wrong parts of the world are never greeted warmly in "America the Beautiful" that's only for the privileged and no one else. They're not wanted except to harvest our crops or do the hard, low-pay, no-benefit labor few others will do. The ground rules to come were set straight away in our original Nationalization Act of 1790 establishing the first path to citizenship. It wasn't friendly to the wrong types as permanent status was limited to foreign-born "free white persons" of "good moral character," meaning people like most of us - our culture, countries of origin, religion and skin color.
Left out were indentured servants, slaves, free blacks, native Americans being exterminated, and later Asians and Latinos whose "appearance" wasn't as acceptable as the whiteness of English-speaking European Christian settlers and the mix of others from Western European countries like Holland, Germany and Scandinavia. The law scarcely changed for 162 years until the 1870 15th amendment loosened it enough to include blacks by 1875, no longer slaves but hardly free and in 1940 gave Latin Americans the same right. After the war in 1945 it extended it further to Filipinos and Asian Indians. Original native Americans, whose land this was for thousands of years, only were enfranchised and given the right of citizenship in their own land when Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924 after most of them were exterminated in a genocidal process still ongoing, never mentioned in the mainstream, and for which no redress was ever made or likely will be....
full article
3/29/07
Emma Lazarus' memorable words on Lady Liberty's pedestal once had meaning as a new nation grew. No longer in a country hostile to the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, the wretched refuse, the homeless and many others not making the grade in a white supremacist Judeo-Christian state worshiping wealth and privilege. No welcome sign is out for the unwanted poor and desperate. At best, they're ignored to subsist on their own. At worst, they're scorned and abused, exploited and discarded like trash or labeled "terrorists" in a post-9/11 world of mass witch-hunt roundups aimed at Muslims because of their faith or country of origin and Latinos coming north to survive the fallout from NAFTA's destructive effects on their lives.
Immigrants of color, the wrong faith or from the wrong parts of the world are never greeted warmly in "America the Beautiful" that's only for the privileged and no one else. They're not wanted except to harvest our crops or do the hard, low-pay, no-benefit labor few others will do. The ground rules to come were set straight away in our original Nationalization Act of 1790 establishing the first path to citizenship. It wasn't friendly to the wrong types as permanent status was limited to foreign-born "free white persons" of "good moral character," meaning people like most of us - our culture, countries of origin, religion and skin color.
Left out were indentured servants, slaves, free blacks, native Americans being exterminated, and later Asians and Latinos whose "appearance" wasn't as acceptable as the whiteness of English-speaking European Christian settlers and the mix of others from Western European countries like Holland, Germany and Scandinavia. The law scarcely changed for 162 years until the 1870 15th amendment loosened it enough to include blacks by 1875, no longer slaves but hardly free and in 1940 gave Latin Americans the same right. After the war in 1945 it extended it further to Filipinos and Asian Indians. Original native Americans, whose land this was for thousands of years, only were enfranchised and given the right of citizenship in their own land when Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act in 1924 after most of them were exterminated in a genocidal process still ongoing, never mentioned in the mainstream, and for which no redress was ever made or likely will be....
full article
snatching people
British Marines Captured by Iran: Fake Maritime Boundaries
By Craig Murray
Global Research, March 28, 2007
Craig Murray Web Site
I have been unpopular before, but the level of threats since I started blogging on the captured marines has got a bit scary. It is therefore with some trepidation that I feel obliged to point this out.
The British Government has published a map showing the coordinates of the incident, well within an Iran/Iraq maritime border. The mainstream media and even the blogosphere has bought this hook, line and sinker.
But there are two colossal problems.
A) The Iran/Iraq maritime boundary shown on the British government map does not exist. It has been drawn up by the British Government. Only Iraq and Iran can agree their bilateral boundary, and they never have done this in the Gulf, only inside the Shatt because there it is the land border too. This published boundary is a fake with no legal force.
B) Accepting the British coordinates for the position of both HMS Cornwall and the incident, both were closer to Iranian land than Iraqi land. Go on, print out the map and measure it. Which underlines the point that the British produced border is not a reliable one.
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=122753
For bush and blair to complain about Iran snatching a couple of handfuls of British sailors in contested waters, is ludicrous, and hypocritical in the extreme. The pair have been snatching hundreds of people willy-nilly from all over the world for the past 6 years or so, torturing them, and holding them incommunicado, and without access to legal counsel.
As for the sailors, I have sympathy for them, since they are only pawns in the governments' power games. But bush and blair, please spare us the bleating of pathetic little men.
Legal fog lingers over Guantanamo
by Dan De Luce
3/29/07
GUANTANAMO BAY (AFP) - The case for one Guantanamo inmate, Australian David Hicks, was settled in a plea deal this week, but nearly 400 detainees remain in legal limbo at the US-run prison with no end in sight.
It took years of legal defense work, public pressure and vigorous lobbying from a US ally to resolve the Hicks case, who entered a guilty plea to a watered-down charge of training with Al-Qaeda.
But hundreds of other prisoners face much longer odds in open-ended incarceration at the US naval base in southeast Cuba.
The US administration, which once stridently defended the camp, now says it wants to close the controversial prison eventually and try up to 80 inmates for war crimes.
[...]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070329/pl_afp/usattacksguantanamo_070329141405
By Craig Murray
Global Research, March 28, 2007
Craig Murray Web Site
I have been unpopular before, but the level of threats since I started blogging on the captured marines has got a bit scary. It is therefore with some trepidation that I feel obliged to point this out.
The British Government has published a map showing the coordinates of the incident, well within an Iran/Iraq maritime border. The mainstream media and even the blogosphere has bought this hook, line and sinker.
But there are two colossal problems.
A) The Iran/Iraq maritime boundary shown on the British government map does not exist. It has been drawn up by the British Government. Only Iraq and Iran can agree their bilateral boundary, and they never have done this in the Gulf, only inside the Shatt because there it is the land border too. This published boundary is a fake with no legal force.
B) Accepting the British coordinates for the position of both HMS Cornwall and the incident, both were closer to Iranian land than Iraqi land. Go on, print out the map and measure it. Which underlines the point that the British produced border is not a reliable one.
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=122753
For bush and blair to complain about Iran snatching a couple of handfuls of British sailors in contested waters, is ludicrous, and hypocritical in the extreme. The pair have been snatching hundreds of people willy-nilly from all over the world for the past 6 years or so, torturing them, and holding them incommunicado, and without access to legal counsel.
As for the sailors, I have sympathy for them, since they are only pawns in the governments' power games. But bush and blair, please spare us the bleating of pathetic little men.
Legal fog lingers over Guantanamo
by Dan De Luce
3/29/07
GUANTANAMO BAY (AFP) - The case for one Guantanamo inmate, Australian David Hicks, was settled in a plea deal this week, but nearly 400 detainees remain in legal limbo at the US-run prison with no end in sight.
It took years of legal defense work, public pressure and vigorous lobbying from a US ally to resolve the Hicks case, who entered a guilty plea to a watered-down charge of training with Al-Qaeda.
But hundreds of other prisoners face much longer odds in open-ended incarceration at the US naval base in southeast Cuba.
The US administration, which once stridently defended the camp, now says it wants to close the controversial prison eventually and try up to 80 inmates for war crimes.
[...]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070329/pl_afp/usattacksguantanamo_070329141405
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Greed. and punishment?
Pocket change, and don’t do it again. But, you send 5 bucks to a Muslim charity, you’re off to Guantanamo.
ITT fined $100 million for illegal exports
Manufacturer admits to exporting night vision materials to China, Singapore and Britain without U.S. authorization.
March 27 2007: 1:32 PM EDT
-- By CNN Producer Mike M. Ahlers
http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/27/news/international/itt_export/index.htm
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The leading manufacturer of night vision gear for the Defense Department has admitted sending classified materials overseas and will pay a $100 million penalty, according to federal prosecutors, who say the actions of ITT Corp. have jeopardized the security of U.S. soldiers.
ITT, based in Roanoke, Va., exported classified or sensitive technical data to China, Singapore and Britain without having obtained authorization from the United States, prosecutors said.
The conviction is the first involving a major defense contractor violating the Arms Export Control Act, prosecutors said.
Saying that American soldiers are "the principal victims of ITT's crimes," U.S. Attorney John Brownlee said he has structured the $100 million penalty so that half of the money is spent by ITT to develop a next-generation night vision system and "ensure that our soldiers have the best night vision equipment in the world."
ITT must invest the $50 million over five years to accelerate development of night vision technology, and the government will maintain rights to all technology that is developed under the agreement.
The arrangement will also allow the government to share any technology developed by ITT under the agreement with ITT's competitors, Brownlee said.
Prosecutors said the probe began Aug. 1, 2001, when Defense Department investigators discovered that ITT night vision employees sent a classified military document to Britain.
The company engaged in a "regular pattern of export violations and misrepresentation" to the U.S. government from 1980 to 2005, prosecutors said.
In some cases, information was transferred because the manufacture of laser gear could be done cheaper overseas.
ITT "went to significant lengths to set up an end run" around State Department licensing systems, prosecutors said, including enlisting a front company to export the systems.
The company also fought the government's investigation, Brownlee said, and attempted "to essentially run out the clock on the statute of limitations." He said the company's posture changed in 2005 with the hiring of a new CEO, Steven Loranger, who hired new outside corporate attorneys and instructed the company to cooperate with the investigation.
ITT Corp., whose competitors include Lockheed Martin and United Technologies, has agreed to plead guilty to a count of violating the Arms Export Control Act by illegally sending classified and/or export-controlled information relating to night vision materials to foreign countries. It also will plead guilty to a count of knowingly or willfully omitting material facts from required reports with intent to obstruct a State Department investigation.
As part of the $100 million penalty, ITT will pay a $2 million criminal fine and a $50 million deferred prosecution penalty - to be invested in night vision technology - and will forfeit $28 million to the U.S. government as the proceeds of its illegal actions. ITT will also pay a $20 million penalty to the State Department.
ITT fined $100 million for illegal exports
Manufacturer admits to exporting night vision materials to China, Singapore and Britain without U.S. authorization.
March 27 2007: 1:32 PM EDT
-- By CNN Producer Mike M. Ahlers
http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/27/news/international/itt_export/index.htm
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The leading manufacturer of night vision gear for the Defense Department has admitted sending classified materials overseas and will pay a $100 million penalty, according to federal prosecutors, who say the actions of ITT Corp. have jeopardized the security of U.S. soldiers.
ITT, based in Roanoke, Va., exported classified or sensitive technical data to China, Singapore and Britain without having obtained authorization from the United States, prosecutors said.
The conviction is the first involving a major defense contractor violating the Arms Export Control Act, prosecutors said.
Saying that American soldiers are "the principal victims of ITT's crimes," U.S. Attorney John Brownlee said he has structured the $100 million penalty so that half of the money is spent by ITT to develop a next-generation night vision system and "ensure that our soldiers have the best night vision equipment in the world."
ITT must invest the $50 million over five years to accelerate development of night vision technology, and the government will maintain rights to all technology that is developed under the agreement.
The arrangement will also allow the government to share any technology developed by ITT under the agreement with ITT's competitors, Brownlee said.
Prosecutors said the probe began Aug. 1, 2001, when Defense Department investigators discovered that ITT night vision employees sent a classified military document to Britain.
The company engaged in a "regular pattern of export violations and misrepresentation" to the U.S. government from 1980 to 2005, prosecutors said.
In some cases, information was transferred because the manufacture of laser gear could be done cheaper overseas.
ITT "went to significant lengths to set up an end run" around State Department licensing systems, prosecutors said, including enlisting a front company to export the systems.
The company also fought the government's investigation, Brownlee said, and attempted "to essentially run out the clock on the statute of limitations." He said the company's posture changed in 2005 with the hiring of a new CEO, Steven Loranger, who hired new outside corporate attorneys and instructed the company to cooperate with the investigation.
ITT Corp., whose competitors include Lockheed Martin and United Technologies, has agreed to plead guilty to a count of violating the Arms Export Control Act by illegally sending classified and/or export-controlled information relating to night vision materials to foreign countries. It also will plead guilty to a count of knowingly or willfully omitting material facts from required reports with intent to obstruct a State Department investigation.
As part of the $100 million penalty, ITT will pay a $2 million criminal fine and a $50 million deferred prosecution penalty - to be invested in night vision technology - and will forfeit $28 million to the U.S. government as the proceeds of its illegal actions. ITT will also pay a $20 million penalty to the State Department.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Surviving At The Pleasure Of The President
By Sheila Samples
3/26/07
"You is feeling like you was lost in the bush, boy? You says: It is a puling sample jungle of woods.
You most shouts out: Bethicket me for a stump of beech if I have the poultriest notions what the farest he all means."
- James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)
My friend Bernie says ever since the Bush gang stormed the White House in 2000, then stormed the World Trade Center in 2001, we've done nothing but run in circles like a bunch of terrified chickens with our heads chopped off. "We have no sense of direction," Bernie said, "we're staggering around in a jungle of lies, deceit, and scandal with no way out -- and that's the way they planned it."
"You're kidding!" I exclaimed, astonished. "You mean they planned this mess? It's nothing but bloody chaos out there --"
Bernie nodded. "You got that right. Bloody chaos is the best -- the only -- way to get what they're after. Don't be fooled by those little American flags stuck in the lapels of this bunch," Bernie continued. "The people in this nation, the hungry and homeless, the ill, the elderly, displaced Katrina victims, and especially those returning from war's inferno either in body bags or maimed physically, psychologically, and spiritually aren't even blips on their New World Order radar screen. They suffer at the pleasure of the president."
Bernie reminded me that shortly before the 2000 presidential campaign, when Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, he made a speech to the Institute of Petroleum in London where he complained that oil producers "had to deal with the pesky problem that once you find oil and pump it out of the ground you've got to turn around and find more or go out of business."
Cheney went on to say, "That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business...the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies..."
Bernie grinned. "If that didn't set off alarms, especially in Iraq, you gotta know they started going off when, a year later, with his eyes on the prize, Cheney appointed himself vice president, put himself in charge of the nation's energy policy, based that policy on the location of oil fields -- not only in Iraq and Iran but throughout the Persian Gulf -- then mounted up and headed out to solve big oil's 'pesky' problem."
I have to agree with Bernie. Cheney and his bumbling bunch of neo-conservative henchmen are obsessed with this really crazy "vision" that they can control the world. Flip through their chilling masterpiece and you'll see that they believe the world is theirs -- everything, including space and cyberspace -- all theirs. And, it'll hit you right between the eyes that every one of these suckers is a flaming psycho. If it takes lies, they'll lie. If it takes imprisonment, torture, mass murder, either at home or abroad -- they'll do that too.
Bernie says folks in this country have no idea what they're up against. In spite of the draconian USA Patriot Act, they still hang onto the illusion that their freedoms are protected by the US Constitution; yet they emerge from each succeeding crisis with fewer and fewer freedoms. "If Americans were willing -- or capable -- of reading and thinking," Bernie said, "they'd know that the war being waged throughout the world began here at home, and the US Constitution and Bill of Rights were its first victims."
Can't argue with that. The truth's been out there for years. In December 2002, before the Washington Post drank the Stepford Kool-Aid, it published a riveting piece, "In Terror War, 2nd Track for Suspects," in which writer Charles Lane exposed Bush's executive power grab to strip courts of all oversight or authority. Lane sounded the alarm on the "parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system."
Lane went on to say the administration, with approval of the "special" Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, could "order a clandestine search of a U.S. citizen's home and, based on the information gathered, secretly declare the citizen an enemy combatant, to be held indefinitely at a U.S. military base." If the courts were aware of this activity at all, they would have "very limited authority to second-guess the detention." .
Lane's article is no longer available on the WaPo site (surprise!), but can be found on Common Dreams.org, as can Jonathan Turley's August 2002 article,"Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision," originally published in the LA Times, but alas, is also no longer there.
Turley, a straight-talking professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, exposed then Attorney General John Ashcroft's "hellish vision" to incarcerate citizens he decided were "enemy combatants," i.e., all who were disloyal to Bush or dared to resist his "smoke-em-out" war on terror. According to Turley, in Ashcroft's America, "security precedes liberty." Liberty is nothing more than a "rhetorical justification for increased security," and citizens have a choice -- accept autocratic rule and surrender their rights peacefully, or be labeled enemy combatants and be held indefinitely by the government, without charges, a hearing, or access to a lawyer.
The camps are there, fully staffed and ready. In the absence of the US Constitution, Bush's Executive Orders are in place. Everything needed to keep this country running has been contracted out. Halliburton has left the building. Those in our society still having bragging rights to civil liberties are illegal aliens, whose growing numbers give new meaning to the word, "surge." One swipe of Bush's pen will inflict martial law and we will discover, too late, that we live in a police state patrolled by jackbooted Blackwater USA mercenaries who will, indeed, serve at the pleasure of the president..
Blackwater is in place to become this nation's shadow police force and is its current shadow army. Go back to the "dry run" of Katrina and take a look at the heavily armed force that laid seige to New Orleans, that sped through the streets rounding up hurricane victims, packing them into a "detention" arena where they were forced to stay for days without food or water or assistance. Go back even further -- the bodies hanging from the bridge in Fallujah were not US soldiers, but Blackwater mercenaries -- death squad troops 100,000 strong who roam the Iraqi streets at will and stir up violence and hatred against the uniformed US military.
We are, indeed, awakening to find ourselves in a dark evil tangle, a "puling sample jungle of woods." Reminds me of the helplessness I felt on that bright, sunshiny day when I pulled over at a roadside park near Atlanta to take a short nap. When I awoke two hours later, it was pitch dark -- and it was only noon! Then, I realized with horror that I was covered with Kudzu -- I could hear it relentlessly growing, munching, crunching around me!
I was faced with a choice. I could hunker down in fear and hope someone else would save me, or I could at least make the effort to get out of the mess I had gotten myself into. Armed with only a dull pocket knife, I managed to slice my way out of the jungle by cutting frantically for a few minutes and then "inching" the car forward. Finally, after a three-hour battle with the stuff, I was free! I sped toward the state line with the carniverous vines hot on my tail. I have never been back to Georgia. Only the Devil goes down there...
It doesn't matter if that actually happened. The important thing is that we are now faced with a choice. We can hunker down and hope for the best, or we can rise up and take our country back. Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul says we must act before it is too late and we find ourselves being herded into camps. Paul says we must contact every single member of congress and demand "a repeal of freedom-crushing legislation such as the Patriot act and the Military Commissions Act and the Defense Authorization Act which essentially wipes out Habeas Corpus."
They must be forcibly stopped. We must impeach this unholy gang of war criminals because they have no intention of leaving office in 2008, or ever, if they are left unchecked. We must not allow ourselves and our children to be forced to live in a Kudzu World -- to survive only at the pleasure of the president.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@sirinet.net
3/26/07
"You is feeling like you was lost in the bush, boy? You says: It is a puling sample jungle of woods.
You most shouts out: Bethicket me for a stump of beech if I have the poultriest notions what the farest he all means."
- James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)
My friend Bernie says ever since the Bush gang stormed the White House in 2000, then stormed the World Trade Center in 2001, we've done nothing but run in circles like a bunch of terrified chickens with our heads chopped off. "We have no sense of direction," Bernie said, "we're staggering around in a jungle of lies, deceit, and scandal with no way out -- and that's the way they planned it."
"You're kidding!" I exclaimed, astonished. "You mean they planned this mess? It's nothing but bloody chaos out there --"
Bernie nodded. "You got that right. Bloody chaos is the best -- the only -- way to get what they're after. Don't be fooled by those little American flags stuck in the lapels of this bunch," Bernie continued. "The people in this nation, the hungry and homeless, the ill, the elderly, displaced Katrina victims, and especially those returning from war's inferno either in body bags or maimed physically, psychologically, and spiritually aren't even blips on their New World Order radar screen. They suffer at the pleasure of the president."
Bernie reminded me that shortly before the 2000 presidential campaign, when Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, he made a speech to the Institute of Petroleum in London where he complained that oil producers "had to deal with the pesky problem that once you find oil and pump it out of the ground you've got to turn around and find more or go out of business."
Cheney went on to say, "That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business...the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies..."
Bernie grinned. "If that didn't set off alarms, especially in Iraq, you gotta know they started going off when, a year later, with his eyes on the prize, Cheney appointed himself vice president, put himself in charge of the nation's energy policy, based that policy on the location of oil fields -- not only in Iraq and Iran but throughout the Persian Gulf -- then mounted up and headed out to solve big oil's 'pesky' problem."
I have to agree with Bernie. Cheney and his bumbling bunch of neo-conservative henchmen are obsessed with this really crazy "vision" that they can control the world. Flip through their chilling masterpiece and you'll see that they believe the world is theirs -- everything, including space and cyberspace -- all theirs. And, it'll hit you right between the eyes that every one of these suckers is a flaming psycho. If it takes lies, they'll lie. If it takes imprisonment, torture, mass murder, either at home or abroad -- they'll do that too.
Bernie says folks in this country have no idea what they're up against. In spite of the draconian USA Patriot Act, they still hang onto the illusion that their freedoms are protected by the US Constitution; yet they emerge from each succeeding crisis with fewer and fewer freedoms. "If Americans were willing -- or capable -- of reading and thinking," Bernie said, "they'd know that the war being waged throughout the world began here at home, and the US Constitution and Bill of Rights were its first victims."
Can't argue with that. The truth's been out there for years. In December 2002, before the Washington Post drank the Stepford Kool-Aid, it published a riveting piece, "In Terror War, 2nd Track for Suspects," in which writer Charles Lane exposed Bush's executive power grab to strip courts of all oversight or authority. Lane sounded the alarm on the "parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system."
Lane went on to say the administration, with approval of the "special" Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, could "order a clandestine search of a U.S. citizen's home and, based on the information gathered, secretly declare the citizen an enemy combatant, to be held indefinitely at a U.S. military base." If the courts were aware of this activity at all, they would have "very limited authority to second-guess the detention." .
Lane's article is no longer available on the WaPo site (surprise!), but can be found on Common Dreams.org, as can Jonathan Turley's August 2002 article,"Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision," originally published in the LA Times, but alas, is also no longer there.
Turley, a straight-talking professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, exposed then Attorney General John Ashcroft's "hellish vision" to incarcerate citizens he decided were "enemy combatants," i.e., all who were disloyal to Bush or dared to resist his "smoke-em-out" war on terror. According to Turley, in Ashcroft's America, "security precedes liberty." Liberty is nothing more than a "rhetorical justification for increased security," and citizens have a choice -- accept autocratic rule and surrender their rights peacefully, or be labeled enemy combatants and be held indefinitely by the government, without charges, a hearing, or access to a lawyer.
The camps are there, fully staffed and ready. In the absence of the US Constitution, Bush's Executive Orders are in place. Everything needed to keep this country running has been contracted out. Halliburton has left the building. Those in our society still having bragging rights to civil liberties are illegal aliens, whose growing numbers give new meaning to the word, "surge." One swipe of Bush's pen will inflict martial law and we will discover, too late, that we live in a police state patrolled by jackbooted Blackwater USA mercenaries who will, indeed, serve at the pleasure of the president..
Blackwater is in place to become this nation's shadow police force and is its current shadow army. Go back to the "dry run" of Katrina and take a look at the heavily armed force that laid seige to New Orleans, that sped through the streets rounding up hurricane victims, packing them into a "detention" arena where they were forced to stay for days without food or water or assistance. Go back even further -- the bodies hanging from the bridge in Fallujah were not US soldiers, but Blackwater mercenaries -- death squad troops 100,000 strong who roam the Iraqi streets at will and stir up violence and hatred against the uniformed US military.
We are, indeed, awakening to find ourselves in a dark evil tangle, a "puling sample jungle of woods." Reminds me of the helplessness I felt on that bright, sunshiny day when I pulled over at a roadside park near Atlanta to take a short nap. When I awoke two hours later, it was pitch dark -- and it was only noon! Then, I realized with horror that I was covered with Kudzu -- I could hear it relentlessly growing, munching, crunching around me!
I was faced with a choice. I could hunker down in fear and hope someone else would save me, or I could at least make the effort to get out of the mess I had gotten myself into. Armed with only a dull pocket knife, I managed to slice my way out of the jungle by cutting frantically for a few minutes and then "inching" the car forward. Finally, after a three-hour battle with the stuff, I was free! I sped toward the state line with the carniverous vines hot on my tail. I have never been back to Georgia. Only the Devil goes down there...
It doesn't matter if that actually happened. The important thing is that we are now faced with a choice. We can hunker down and hope for the best, or we can rise up and take our country back. Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul says we must act before it is too late and we find ourselves being herded into camps. Paul says we must contact every single member of congress and demand "a repeal of freedom-crushing legislation such as the Patriot act and the Military Commissions Act and the Defense Authorization Act which essentially wipes out Habeas Corpus."
They must be forcibly stopped. We must impeach this unholy gang of war criminals because they have no intention of leaving office in 2008, or ever, if they are left unchecked. We must not allow ourselves and our children to be forced to live in a Kudzu World -- to survive only at the pleasure of the president.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@sirinet.net
Operation Bite
By Webster G. Tarpley on: 26.03.2007
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=122371
WASHINGTON DC — The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 AM on April 6, the Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly "Argumenty Nedeli." Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.
The attack is slated to last for twelve hours, according to Uglanov, lasting from 4 AM until 4 PM local time. Friday is a holiday in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories.
The first reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, where Russian engineers are working, is supposed to be spared from destruction. The US attack plan reportedly calls for the Iranian air defense system to be degraded, for numerous Iranian warships to be sunk in the Persian Gulf, and the for the most important headquarters of the Iranian armed forces to be wiped out.
The attacks will be mounted from a number of bases, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia is currently home to B-52 bombers equipped with standoff missiles. Also participating in the air strikes will be US naval aviation from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, as well as from those of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Additional cruise missiles will be fired from submarines in the Indian Ocean and off the coast of the Arabian peninsula. The goal is allegedly to set back Iran's nuclear program by several years, writes Uglanov, whose article was re-issued by RIA-Novosti in various languages, but apparently not English, several days ago. The story is the top item on numerous Italian and German blogs, but so far appears to have been ignored by US websites.
Observers comment that this dispatch represents a high-level orchestrated leak from the Kremlin, in effect a war warning, which draws on the formidable resources of the Russian intelligence services, and which deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness by pro-peace forces around the world.
Asked by RIA-Novosti to comment on the Uglanov report, retired Colonel General Leonid Ivashov confirmed its essential features in a March 21 interview: "I have no doubt that there will be an operation, or more precisely a violent action against Iran." Ivashov, who has reportedly served at various times as an informal advisor to Putin, is currently the Vice President of the Moscow Academy for Geopolitical Sciences.
Ivashov attributed decisive importance to the decision of the Democratic leadership of the US House of Representatives to remove language from the just-passed Iraq supplemental military appropriations bill which would have demanded that Bush come to Congress before launching an attack on Iran. Ivashov pointed out that the language was eliminated under pressure from AIPAC, the lobbing group representing the Israeli extreme right, and of Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni.
"We have drawn the unmistakable conclusion that this operation will take place," said Ivashov. In his opinion, the US planning does not include a land operation: " Most probably there will be no ground attack, but rather massive air attacks with the goal of annihilating Iran's capacity for military resistance, the centers of administration, the key economic assets, and quite possibly the Iranian political leadership, or at least part of it," he continued.
Ivashov noted that it was not to be excluded that the Pentagon would use smaller tactical nuclear weapons against targets of the Iranian nuclear industry. These attacks could paralyze everyday life, create panic in the population, and generally produce an atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty all over Iran, Ivashov told RIA-Novosti. "This will unleash a struggle for power inside Iran, and then there will be a peace delegation sent in to install a pro-American government in Teheran," Ivashov continued. One of the US goals was, in his estimation, to burnish the image of the current Republican administration, who would now be able to boast that they had wiped out the Iranian nuclear program.
Among the other outcomes, General Ivashov pointed to a partition of Iran along the same lines as Iraq, and a subsequent carving up of the Near and Middle East into smaller regions. "This concept worked well for them in the Balkans and will now be applied to the greater Middle East," he commented.
"Moscow must expert Russia's influence by demanding an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to deal with the current preparations for an illegal use of force against Iran and the destruction of the basis of the United Nations Charter," said General Ivashov. "In this context Russia could cooperate with China, France and the non-permanent members of the Security Council. We need this kind of preventive action to ward off the use of force," he concluded.
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=122371
WASHINGTON DC — The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 AM on April 6, the Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly "Argumenty Nedeli." Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.
The attack is slated to last for twelve hours, according to Uglanov, lasting from 4 AM until 4 PM local time. Friday is a holiday in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories.
The first reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, where Russian engineers are working, is supposed to be spared from destruction. The US attack plan reportedly calls for the Iranian air defense system to be degraded, for numerous Iranian warships to be sunk in the Persian Gulf, and the for the most important headquarters of the Iranian armed forces to be wiped out.
The attacks will be mounted from a number of bases, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia is currently home to B-52 bombers equipped with standoff missiles. Also participating in the air strikes will be US naval aviation from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, as well as from those of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Additional cruise missiles will be fired from submarines in the Indian Ocean and off the coast of the Arabian peninsula. The goal is allegedly to set back Iran's nuclear program by several years, writes Uglanov, whose article was re-issued by RIA-Novosti in various languages, but apparently not English, several days ago. The story is the top item on numerous Italian and German blogs, but so far appears to have been ignored by US websites.
Observers comment that this dispatch represents a high-level orchestrated leak from the Kremlin, in effect a war warning, which draws on the formidable resources of the Russian intelligence services, and which deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness by pro-peace forces around the world.
Asked by RIA-Novosti to comment on the Uglanov report, retired Colonel General Leonid Ivashov confirmed its essential features in a March 21 interview: "I have no doubt that there will be an operation, or more precisely a violent action against Iran." Ivashov, who has reportedly served at various times as an informal advisor to Putin, is currently the Vice President of the Moscow Academy for Geopolitical Sciences.
Ivashov attributed decisive importance to the decision of the Democratic leadership of the US House of Representatives to remove language from the just-passed Iraq supplemental military appropriations bill which would have demanded that Bush come to Congress before launching an attack on Iran. Ivashov pointed out that the language was eliminated under pressure from AIPAC, the lobbing group representing the Israeli extreme right, and of Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni.
"We have drawn the unmistakable conclusion that this operation will take place," said Ivashov. In his opinion, the US planning does not include a land operation: " Most probably there will be no ground attack, but rather massive air attacks with the goal of annihilating Iran's capacity for military resistance, the centers of administration, the key economic assets, and quite possibly the Iranian political leadership, or at least part of it," he continued.
Ivashov noted that it was not to be excluded that the Pentagon would use smaller tactical nuclear weapons against targets of the Iranian nuclear industry. These attacks could paralyze everyday life, create panic in the population, and generally produce an atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty all over Iran, Ivashov told RIA-Novosti. "This will unleash a struggle for power inside Iran, and then there will be a peace delegation sent in to install a pro-American government in Teheran," Ivashov continued. One of the US goals was, in his estimation, to burnish the image of the current Republican administration, who would now be able to boast that they had wiped out the Iranian nuclear program.
Among the other outcomes, General Ivashov pointed to a partition of Iran along the same lines as Iraq, and a subsequent carving up of the Near and Middle East into smaller regions. "This concept worked well for them in the Balkans and will now be applied to the greater Middle East," he commented.
"Moscow must expert Russia's influence by demanding an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to deal with the current preparations for an illegal use of force against Iran and the destruction of the basis of the United Nations Charter," said General Ivashov. "In this context Russia could cooperate with China, France and the non-permanent members of the Security Council. We need this kind of preventive action to ward off the use of force," he concluded.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
It was not supposed to be like this
M Taqi
March 24, 2007
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_24184.shtml
It was not supposed to be like this. Iraq was not supposed to end up like this four years from the start of the invasion. By now, Iraq was supposed to be the most peaceful, most stable and most prosperous state in the region, if not the whole world. That is what US President Bush and the coalition of the blind followers prophesied to their respective tax-paying people as they sought their support for what can now only be called the stupid war. The picture is very different now of course from that prophecy; Iraq is drenched in blood as the occupation baby-sits a sectarian civil war to say the least. Death, grotesque public execution, criminal torture, hideous terror, immoral ethnic cleansing extreme poverty and hunger, and strange diseases have all swept the land of Iraq. The future is very grim, and the picture very depressing. Four years on, and US President Bush is still saying Baghdad security will take months. He must be the only one who believes he can achieve in months what he could not achieve in years!
For years, the US has been working tirelessly within the realms of power in Washington and with international criminals masquerading as 'opponents of the Saddam regime’ for a convincing pretext for what remains be an illegal invasion of sovereign Iraq. For the tax-paying western public, it was weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and terrorism as part of the process of warmongering through scaremongering. For the people of Iraq, it was food and medicine; and liberty, justice, democracy and human rights. They call it horses for courses, or more precisely in this case, any course to make the horses march on behind the dogs of war! The so-called Iraqi opponent of the Iraq regime were used as instruments by the invaders-turned-occupiers prior to the invasion and primarily to pull wool over the eyes of their respective people and the people of Iraq as they sought their support for the stupid war and deranged plans.
It took only a few weeks after the invasion to expose the deceitful illusion of WMD; links with terrorism through AlQaeda was proven to be false even before the invasion had started! The conviction against a former Whitehouse official for the serious crime in US law, some say amounting to treason, of leaking to the press the names of CIA operatives whose investigation were proving the falsehood of the nuclear case against Iraq, shows clearly how desperate the US administration was to go to war irrespective of the consequences.
Whether pretext for the western tax-payer or the local Iraqis, events that followed the invasion which had turned into a vicious occupation, have proven all the war pretexts to be false: damn lies. It is no surprise that in the west, anger against the warmongers is constantly rising; paralleled by the free-fall in the war leaders reputation/popularity. Whilst suffering daily killing, public execution, torture, terror, ethnic cleansing, poverty, disease and hunger, it is no surprise the ordinary people hate their occupiers for turning their lives into a living hell. They also blame their misery on those who helped the occupation with the invasion, arrived in Baghdad on US tanks and have subsequently been installed to power in Baghdad; they call them the lap poodles of the invasion-turned-occupation.
Four years of occupation has resulted in 665,000 Iraqis innocent deaths, other reports put the figure to over a million; over 3,000,000 injured; and more than 4,000,000 refugees now living in make-shift shelters and tents as they seek refuge in unwelcoming neighbouring countries from the life of hell and terror under occupation and the sectarian civil war raging in Iraq. This war alone is now claiming the lives of hundreds of ordinary Iraqis on a daily basis. One recent survey in Iraq shows that at least one in four Iraqis has lost a family member to the terror that has swept the land under the gazing eyes of the occupation, one in five Iraqis has had a relative kidnapped, and one in three Iraqis has had a sibling escape Iraq because of fear and to the relative safety of the unwelcoming neighbouring countries.
There is no Saddam now to use by the warmongers to blame all this on, or for their delusional plans; for a dead dictator cannot be used as an escape goat from their failed policies. To do so now, is to self-admit bankruptcy. Nor can the lap poodles of the occupation, the war opportunist, explain and justify themselves relative to a dead dictator.
This is the new Iraq; conceived illegitimately in Washington by the false marriage between the US rulers and their lap poodles, to be a beacon for democracy, human rights, justice and equality, all of which were never asked for by the people of Iraq, not from the Americans anyway!
Fuel rationing, lack of electricity, drinking water; and food and medicine in Iraq have all now become a sickening joke in the face of the billions of Dollars worth of Iraqi oil being stolen by the new ruling class in Iraq, the fat cats of Baghdad, who were installed to a pseudo-power in Iraq as a puppet regime; and are defended and sustained in that pseudo-power by the occupation. From the promise of being a beacon for democracy, human rights, justice and equality to being the worst corrupt country in modern history. The despicable current Iraqi regime now, according to the Organisation for International Transparency, is the most corrupt regime in the world. This organisation is a western organisation; it has no links with AlQaeda, the Ba’ath Party, Islamic fundamentalism and/or other political or non-political groups for that matter. What a transformation!
It is no wonder why the people of Iraq never asked the Americans for 'liberation’. During the four years of occupation of Iraq, more Iraqis have been killed, maimed, disappeared, tortured, ethnically cleansed, injured, widowed, orphaned and made homeless than under 30 years of Saddam’s dictatorship. You may think that is unbelievable? In a recent BBC documentary shot in the Shia-dominated Sadr City in Baghdad, it was more unbelievable to see Iraqi Shias wishing for the return of Saddam’s dictatorship than live under freedom from the American occupation (!). But seeing was indeed believing. The BBC choice to broadcast the show after 11pm is an epitome of what is being done now to brush under the carpet the true thoughts and feelings of the people of Iraq.
Just as alarming for the people of Iraq is the prospect for their oil which has always been used in the past for their benefit through the building of civil infrastructure, hospitals, schools, and universities; and the provisioning of other social services. Iraq was not a beacon for democracy, nor is any other country in the region for that matter. But Iraq was most definitely a beacon for social services. Now Iraqis’ wealth has been pawned for the next 10 years in accordance with a new law being passed by the current Iraqi pseudo-government under the gazing eyes and grinning teeth of the occupation. Someone has to pay for the liberation of the people of Iraq, and it was always going to be the people of Iraq. These people find themselves paying for Bush’s stupid war with their own lives, and their own money for services not rendered and were never asked for in any case!
For years, the lap poodles of Iraq’s invaders had been crying over the wasting of the national wealth by Iraq’s former ruling dictatorship, always describing in intricate details how Saddam had all those bank accounts abroad. The accounts so it seems were figments of their imagination; just like WMD were figments of the imagination of the warmongering invaders. Instead, those who cared for Saddam’s non-existent bank accounts have handed 62% of Iraq’s oil to western investors from the invaders’ countries of origin, presumably to pay for the ride to Baghdad on top of the US tanks. Nothing comes for free under this occupation where the vicious strong savages the small and weak. 62% to the occupation’s 'foreign investors’, whilst the share of the 'liberated’ people will be 18%. Tight lips are being kept on the remaining 20%; this is a war where nothing adds up and no one is asking the question.
In addition to the loss of 82% of their oil to the invaders-turned-occupiers and other mysterious 'investors’, the people of Iraq do get bonuses. They receive morgues over-filled with dead bodies to the point where corpses fill hospitals car parks; insecurity; sectarian civil war; government death-squads militias and terror groups which kidnap, kill, execute, maim and torture in broad-day light and under the gazing eyes of the occupation; ethnic cleansing; poverty; malnutrition; zero public services; but to name a few. Washington’s bonus is security and oil.
Nationalisation of the oil industry was one of the greatest achievements in this Middle Eastern country, and now that achievement is being eroded by the occupation’s very own lap poodles. Four years ago, the occupation began with the destruction of Iraq’s heritage and the looting of its museums. Four years on, and the looting continues; and is soon to be law and institutionalised.
Members of the former regime stand accused of looting millions of Dollars out of the country. The reality is different. Whilst the former ruling class live off charity from Iraq’s neighbouring countries, the new Iraqi ruling class live abroad along with their families. Not long ago, they were living off western state benefits in western countries. Now they travel in private jets. One recent story tells of an Iraqi government official who had allegedly escaped from the Saddam’s evil regime; and was living in a house provided by the UK government and paid for by the British tax-payer before the war. He recently purchased a £37million hotel business in the centre of the London.
Four years on from the invasion of Iraq by the US with the help of its lap poodles, and the pre-invasion lap poodles are now the fat cats of Baghdad sustained in pseudo-power by the occupation. The fat cats of Baghdad get fatter, whilst the poor people of Iraq suffer death, terror, and torture at the hands of Iraqi government own death squads in the Iraqi government own buildings.
The new Iraq is supposed to be based on justice and equality. What’s been consistently witnessed is exactly the opposite. Iraq’s former dictator was hanged for the death of 148 people in old Iraq’s Dujail village. One wonders who is going to prosecute those responsible for giving the order that caused the death hundreds of thousands, possibly a million, of Iraqis in the course of the past 4 years? Who is going to prosecute those who have kill, maim and/or rape the ordinary women and/or the children of Iraq? Who is going to bring to justice those who torture the ordinary people of Iraq in the dark dungeons of terror in the New Iraq’s interior ministry, or Abu Ghraib? Who is going to prosecute those responsible for giving the orders to massacre some 500 Iraqis in New Iraq’s Najaf city because their beliefs happen to be different to that of the ruling fat cats and their militias? Is the death of 148 dead Shias in Old Iraq greater than 500 dead Shias in the New Iraq?
The Iraqi lap poodles of the invasion had spent their pre-invasion years in exile crying for the lack of democracy and human rights in Iraq; and wrote books on the art of killing and torture practiced by Iraq’s previous dictator. "Those bombs are music to my ears" said one such lap poodle during the 2003 bombing campaign of Baghdad. "They are like bells tolling for liberation in a country that has been turned into a gigantic concentration camp" he went on to say. No one hears his voice now. No one has read as single book about the new art of killing, execution and torture being practiced by the despicable menace of a regime of New Iraq.
As US President Bush prophesises new visions of future prosperous Iraq to be delivered by current new military campaign in months, Iraqi dead bodies continue to surface everywhere in Iraq, all with unquestionable evidence of torture prior to death by a single bullet to the head. Car bombings are on the increase. Death, torture, terror and kidnap remain the only certainty in Iraq.
False prophets speak only of false prophecies, and false prophecies are believed by fools.
M Taqi is an independent freelance writer and may be contacted
on m.taqi@hotmail.co.uk
March 24, 2007
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_24184.shtml
It was not supposed to be like this. Iraq was not supposed to end up like this four years from the start of the invasion. By now, Iraq was supposed to be the most peaceful, most stable and most prosperous state in the region, if not the whole world. That is what US President Bush and the coalition of the blind followers prophesied to their respective tax-paying people as they sought their support for what can now only be called the stupid war. The picture is very different now of course from that prophecy; Iraq is drenched in blood as the occupation baby-sits a sectarian civil war to say the least. Death, grotesque public execution, criminal torture, hideous terror, immoral ethnic cleansing extreme poverty and hunger, and strange diseases have all swept the land of Iraq. The future is very grim, and the picture very depressing. Four years on, and US President Bush is still saying Baghdad security will take months. He must be the only one who believes he can achieve in months what he could not achieve in years!
For years, the US has been working tirelessly within the realms of power in Washington and with international criminals masquerading as 'opponents of the Saddam regime’ for a convincing pretext for what remains be an illegal invasion of sovereign Iraq. For the tax-paying western public, it was weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and terrorism as part of the process of warmongering through scaremongering. For the people of Iraq, it was food and medicine; and liberty, justice, democracy and human rights. They call it horses for courses, or more precisely in this case, any course to make the horses march on behind the dogs of war! The so-called Iraqi opponent of the Iraq regime were used as instruments by the invaders-turned-occupiers prior to the invasion and primarily to pull wool over the eyes of their respective people and the people of Iraq as they sought their support for the stupid war and deranged plans.
It took only a few weeks after the invasion to expose the deceitful illusion of WMD; links with terrorism through AlQaeda was proven to be false even before the invasion had started! The conviction against a former Whitehouse official for the serious crime in US law, some say amounting to treason, of leaking to the press the names of CIA operatives whose investigation were proving the falsehood of the nuclear case against Iraq, shows clearly how desperate the US administration was to go to war irrespective of the consequences.
Whether pretext for the western tax-payer or the local Iraqis, events that followed the invasion which had turned into a vicious occupation, have proven all the war pretexts to be false: damn lies. It is no surprise that in the west, anger against the warmongers is constantly rising; paralleled by the free-fall in the war leaders reputation/popularity. Whilst suffering daily killing, public execution, torture, terror, ethnic cleansing, poverty, disease and hunger, it is no surprise the ordinary people hate their occupiers for turning their lives into a living hell. They also blame their misery on those who helped the occupation with the invasion, arrived in Baghdad on US tanks and have subsequently been installed to power in Baghdad; they call them the lap poodles of the invasion-turned-occupation.
Four years of occupation has resulted in 665,000 Iraqis innocent deaths, other reports put the figure to over a million; over 3,000,000 injured; and more than 4,000,000 refugees now living in make-shift shelters and tents as they seek refuge in unwelcoming neighbouring countries from the life of hell and terror under occupation and the sectarian civil war raging in Iraq. This war alone is now claiming the lives of hundreds of ordinary Iraqis on a daily basis. One recent survey in Iraq shows that at least one in four Iraqis has lost a family member to the terror that has swept the land under the gazing eyes of the occupation, one in five Iraqis has had a relative kidnapped, and one in three Iraqis has had a sibling escape Iraq because of fear and to the relative safety of the unwelcoming neighbouring countries.
There is no Saddam now to use by the warmongers to blame all this on, or for their delusional plans; for a dead dictator cannot be used as an escape goat from their failed policies. To do so now, is to self-admit bankruptcy. Nor can the lap poodles of the occupation, the war opportunist, explain and justify themselves relative to a dead dictator.
This is the new Iraq; conceived illegitimately in Washington by the false marriage between the US rulers and their lap poodles, to be a beacon for democracy, human rights, justice and equality, all of which were never asked for by the people of Iraq, not from the Americans anyway!
Fuel rationing, lack of electricity, drinking water; and food and medicine in Iraq have all now become a sickening joke in the face of the billions of Dollars worth of Iraqi oil being stolen by the new ruling class in Iraq, the fat cats of Baghdad, who were installed to a pseudo-power in Iraq as a puppet regime; and are defended and sustained in that pseudo-power by the occupation. From the promise of being a beacon for democracy, human rights, justice and equality to being the worst corrupt country in modern history. The despicable current Iraqi regime now, according to the Organisation for International Transparency, is the most corrupt regime in the world. This organisation is a western organisation; it has no links with AlQaeda, the Ba’ath Party, Islamic fundamentalism and/or other political or non-political groups for that matter. What a transformation!
It is no wonder why the people of Iraq never asked the Americans for 'liberation’. During the four years of occupation of Iraq, more Iraqis have been killed, maimed, disappeared, tortured, ethnically cleansed, injured, widowed, orphaned and made homeless than under 30 years of Saddam’s dictatorship. You may think that is unbelievable? In a recent BBC documentary shot in the Shia-dominated Sadr City in Baghdad, it was more unbelievable to see Iraqi Shias wishing for the return of Saddam’s dictatorship than live under freedom from the American occupation (!). But seeing was indeed believing. The BBC choice to broadcast the show after 11pm is an epitome of what is being done now to brush under the carpet the true thoughts and feelings of the people of Iraq.
Just as alarming for the people of Iraq is the prospect for their oil which has always been used in the past for their benefit through the building of civil infrastructure, hospitals, schools, and universities; and the provisioning of other social services. Iraq was not a beacon for democracy, nor is any other country in the region for that matter. But Iraq was most definitely a beacon for social services. Now Iraqis’ wealth has been pawned for the next 10 years in accordance with a new law being passed by the current Iraqi pseudo-government under the gazing eyes and grinning teeth of the occupation. Someone has to pay for the liberation of the people of Iraq, and it was always going to be the people of Iraq. These people find themselves paying for Bush’s stupid war with their own lives, and their own money for services not rendered and were never asked for in any case!
For years, the lap poodles of Iraq’s invaders had been crying over the wasting of the national wealth by Iraq’s former ruling dictatorship, always describing in intricate details how Saddam had all those bank accounts abroad. The accounts so it seems were figments of their imagination; just like WMD were figments of the imagination of the warmongering invaders. Instead, those who cared for Saddam’s non-existent bank accounts have handed 62% of Iraq’s oil to western investors from the invaders’ countries of origin, presumably to pay for the ride to Baghdad on top of the US tanks. Nothing comes for free under this occupation where the vicious strong savages the small and weak. 62% to the occupation’s 'foreign investors’, whilst the share of the 'liberated’ people will be 18%. Tight lips are being kept on the remaining 20%; this is a war where nothing adds up and no one is asking the question.
In addition to the loss of 82% of their oil to the invaders-turned-occupiers and other mysterious 'investors’, the people of Iraq do get bonuses. They receive morgues over-filled with dead bodies to the point where corpses fill hospitals car parks; insecurity; sectarian civil war; government death-squads militias and terror groups which kidnap, kill, execute, maim and torture in broad-day light and under the gazing eyes of the occupation; ethnic cleansing; poverty; malnutrition; zero public services; but to name a few. Washington’s bonus is security and oil.
Nationalisation of the oil industry was one of the greatest achievements in this Middle Eastern country, and now that achievement is being eroded by the occupation’s very own lap poodles. Four years ago, the occupation began with the destruction of Iraq’s heritage and the looting of its museums. Four years on, and the looting continues; and is soon to be law and institutionalised.
Members of the former regime stand accused of looting millions of Dollars out of the country. The reality is different. Whilst the former ruling class live off charity from Iraq’s neighbouring countries, the new Iraqi ruling class live abroad along with their families. Not long ago, they were living off western state benefits in western countries. Now they travel in private jets. One recent story tells of an Iraqi government official who had allegedly escaped from the Saddam’s evil regime; and was living in a house provided by the UK government and paid for by the British tax-payer before the war. He recently purchased a £37million hotel business in the centre of the London.
Four years on from the invasion of Iraq by the US with the help of its lap poodles, and the pre-invasion lap poodles are now the fat cats of Baghdad sustained in pseudo-power by the occupation. The fat cats of Baghdad get fatter, whilst the poor people of Iraq suffer death, terror, and torture at the hands of Iraqi government own death squads in the Iraqi government own buildings.
The new Iraq is supposed to be based on justice and equality. What’s been consistently witnessed is exactly the opposite. Iraq’s former dictator was hanged for the death of 148 people in old Iraq’s Dujail village. One wonders who is going to prosecute those responsible for giving the order that caused the death hundreds of thousands, possibly a million, of Iraqis in the course of the past 4 years? Who is going to prosecute those who have kill, maim and/or rape the ordinary women and/or the children of Iraq? Who is going to bring to justice those who torture the ordinary people of Iraq in the dark dungeons of terror in the New Iraq’s interior ministry, or Abu Ghraib? Who is going to prosecute those responsible for giving the orders to massacre some 500 Iraqis in New Iraq’s Najaf city because their beliefs happen to be different to that of the ruling fat cats and their militias? Is the death of 148 dead Shias in Old Iraq greater than 500 dead Shias in the New Iraq?
The Iraqi lap poodles of the invasion had spent their pre-invasion years in exile crying for the lack of democracy and human rights in Iraq; and wrote books on the art of killing and torture practiced by Iraq’s previous dictator. "Those bombs are music to my ears" said one such lap poodle during the 2003 bombing campaign of Baghdad. "They are like bells tolling for liberation in a country that has been turned into a gigantic concentration camp" he went on to say. No one hears his voice now. No one has read as single book about the new art of killing, execution and torture being practiced by the despicable menace of a regime of New Iraq.
As US President Bush prophesises new visions of future prosperous Iraq to be delivered by current new military campaign in months, Iraqi dead bodies continue to surface everywhere in Iraq, all with unquestionable evidence of torture prior to death by a single bullet to the head. Car bombings are on the increase. Death, torture, terror and kidnap remain the only certainty in Iraq.
False prophets speak only of false prophecies, and false prophecies are believed by fools.
M Taqi is an independent freelance writer and may be contacted
on m.taqi@hotmail.co.uk
Thursday, March 22, 2007
A Review of John Ross' Zapatistas
by Stephen Lendman
3/22/07
John Ross is a Latin American correspondent and activist who's been living in and writing about Mexico for nearly four decades turning out some of the most important and incisive analysis of events there of anyone covering the country, its history, politics and people. Few writers anywhere make the country come alive like he can. He lives among the people and knows them well including Zapatista leader Subcommandante Marcos who may have given Ross his first ever interview.
Ross has written eight books of fiction and non-fiction and is one of the few surviving Beat poets with nine chapbooks of poetry in and out of print, the latest of which is due out soon called Bomba. He's also been called a new John Reed (who wrote the classic 10 Days that Shook the World on the Russian Revolution) covering a new Mexican revolution playing out around the country from its most indigenous, impoverished South in Chiapas and Oaxaca to the streets of its capital in Mexico City.
Ross' books include the Annexation of Mexico, From the Aztecs to the IMF and his eyewitness frontline trilogy on the Zapatista rebellion beginning with Rebellion From the Roots, Indian Uprising in Chiapas in 1995 for which he received the American Book award; The War Against Oblivion, The Zapatista Chronicles; and his latest work and subject of this review - Zapatistas, Making Another World Possible, Chronicles of Resistance 2000 - 2006 just published. It's subtitle is taken from the misnamed anti-globalization citizens' movement for global justice from Seattle to Doha, Genoa, Washington, Prague, Quebec, Miami, Cancun, Hong Kong and dozens of other locations everywhere where ordinary people are struggling for a better world against the dark neoliberal forces pitted against them.
full article
3/22/07
John Ross is a Latin American correspondent and activist who's been living in and writing about Mexico for nearly four decades turning out some of the most important and incisive analysis of events there of anyone covering the country, its history, politics and people. Few writers anywhere make the country come alive like he can. He lives among the people and knows them well including Zapatista leader Subcommandante Marcos who may have given Ross his first ever interview.
Ross has written eight books of fiction and non-fiction and is one of the few surviving Beat poets with nine chapbooks of poetry in and out of print, the latest of which is due out soon called Bomba. He's also been called a new John Reed (who wrote the classic 10 Days that Shook the World on the Russian Revolution) covering a new Mexican revolution playing out around the country from its most indigenous, impoverished South in Chiapas and Oaxaca to the streets of its capital in Mexico City.
Ross' books include the Annexation of Mexico, From the Aztecs to the IMF and his eyewitness frontline trilogy on the Zapatista rebellion beginning with Rebellion From the Roots, Indian Uprising in Chiapas in 1995 for which he received the American Book award; The War Against Oblivion, The Zapatista Chronicles; and his latest work and subject of this review - Zapatistas, Making Another World Possible, Chronicles of Resistance 2000 - 2006 just published. It's subtitle is taken from the misnamed anti-globalization citizens' movement for global justice from Seattle to Doha, Genoa, Washington, Prague, Quebec, Miami, Cancun, Hong Kong and dozens of other locations everywhere where ordinary people are struggling for a better world against the dark neoliberal forces pitted against them.
full article
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
bush nephew
Just heard on the news that a bush nephew (jeb's boy) has joined the naval reserve, and is going to be taking intelligence training.
Well.
That's going to take a long time.
Well.
That's going to take a long time.
Hubris and Obscenity
Imperial Ambitions on Naked Display
Written by Chris Floyd
Monday, 19 March 2007
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1078&Itemid=135
Rarely has the imperial hubris that lies at the basis of U.S. foreign policy – the unspoken, unquestioned assumption of America's right to global domination by force – been so nakedly revealed than in the recent Washington Post story decrying the degraded state of the Pentagon's military preparedness. ("Military is Ill-Prepared for Other Conflicts.") What makes the story so remarkable, and so valuable as a diagnostic tool for the health of the Republic (which could perhaps be most accurately described as "the sickness unto death") is that none of the generals or politicians quoted in the story – nor the writer herself – betray the slightest awareness of the moral obscenity upon which all their earnest concerns and diligent fact-finding are based.
On its surface, at the level of meaning it intends to convey to readers, the story is disturbing enough. The upshot is that Bush's reckless and stupid war of aggression in Iraq has plunged American military stocks and manpower reserves into a "death spiral" of depletion that will take years – and untold billions of dollars – to replenish. This in turn has put the United States in a horribly exposed strategic position, with the Pentagon incapable of responding "quickly and decisively to potential foreign crises," as the Post puts it. For example, the Army no longer has even a single brigade "ready to deploy within hours to an overseas hot spot," we're told. The highest brass – Joint Chief Chairman Gen. Peter Pace, Army chief of staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, and his vice chief, Gen. Richard Cody – attest, under oath, to the woeful state of unreadiness. Anonymous "senior officers" interviewed by the reporter then make clear the implications of their bosses' plaintive but coded warnings: the Iraq War is bleeding us dry.
On the second level of meaning – which the reporter may or may not have consciously intended to put across – we find something equally disturbing. Note well what the nation's top military officer, General Pace, has to say about this state of unreadiness:
In earlier House testimony, Pace said the military, using the Navy, Air Force and reserves, could handle one of three major contingencies, involving North Korea or -- although he did not name them -- Iran or China. But, he said, "It will not be as precise as we would like, nor will it be on the timelines that we would prefer, because we would then, while engaged in one fight, have to reallocate resources and remobilize the Guard and reserves."
The true import here is not so much the casualness with which these Beltway players – the generals, the legislators and the reporters – regard the prospect of war with North Korea, Iran and China as an unavoidable natural fact, something that is bound to happen sooner or later, and for which we must be massively steeled. This attitude is troubling, of course, but it's hardly news. No, what gives cause for the greatest immediate concern in Pace's remarks is his observation that in a coming "major contingency" – such as the all-but-inevitable attack on Iran – the Pentagon's campaign "will not be as precise as we would like." What is this but a tacit admission that when push comes to shove with Tehran, the United States will have to go in with a sledgehammer, lashing out left and right – no "surgical strike" against alleged nuclear facilities, but a blunderbuss assault, with the attendant "collateral damage" and destruction of civilian infrastructure that we have seen in Iraq (twice), Kosovo, Panama, Vietnam and other "contingencies."
Again, all of this is bad enough in itself. But it is the third level of meaning – never expressed either directly or indirectly but embodied by the story as a whole -- that is the most profoundly disturbing. The present state of affairs leaves the nation at grave risk, we are told. Why? Because it leaves the United States somewhat hobbled in its ability to impose its will military on any nation or region it so chooses. Again, attend to General Pace as he tells Congress that he is "not comfortable" with the Army's readiness:
"You take a lap around the globe -- you could start any place: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Venezuela, Colombia, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, North Korea, back around to Pakistan, and I probably missed a few. There's no dearth of challenges out there for our armed forces," Pace warned in his testimony.
This is not the statement of a military officer serving in the armed forces of a democratic republic devoted to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of its citizens. This is the action list of a Roman general seeking more funds so that he might fulfill Caesar's commands for further conquests and punitive raids beyond the frontiers of the Empire. Nation after nation, in every corner of the globe, is laid out for possible military intervention – "and I probably missed a few." And the legislators – of both parties – who heard these dire warnings merely nodded their heads in solemn agreement: the United States must be ready at all times to strike with massive force at short notice anywhere and everywhere in the world.
Not a single Congressional official – or the reporter – ever asked the simple question: Why? Why must we be prepared to invade or intervene in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, Venezuela, Colombia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan at the drop of a hat, with at least an Army brigade's worth of troops backed up by air and naval power? In what way does the maintenance and expansion of a military establishment that has, as Chalmers Johnson notes, some "737 bases in more than 130 countries around the world" and the capacity for assaulting every other nation on earth advance the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of the American people? Because it "combats terrorism"? But the vast majority of the Pentagon's international empire was constructed long before this most elastic abstract noun became the bogeyman of America's night-mind. Most of it was built in the name of "fighting communism," that former all-devouring bogeyman who has now retired to shabby pensioner's digs in Havana.
But of course, these earlier outposts of empire were actually devoted to the same aim as the new imperial fortresses going up in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa: to assert American dominance of global political and economic affairs, to enrich politically connected American contractors (and the pols who grease them so diligently with public money), and to prevent the rise of any possible alternative systems in foreign countries that might adversely affect the power, privilege and profits of the American elite and their local collaborators. (And any such system, whether it was based on Marxism or – as was most often the case – not, was reflexively labeled "communism" and its adherents dehumanized, dispossessed, incarcerated or simply killed. The history of El Salvador during the Reagan-Bush administrations is but one example. And this demonization was the case even with the "liberation theology" advanced by anti-communist Catholic churchmen in Latin America – a movement so dangerous to the corrupt status quo that it is still being actively quashed today by the former head of the Inquisition, Pope Benedict.)
Here again, Chalmers Johnson is instructive. In a recent interview with Buzzflash.com, he notes:
…History tells us there’s no more unstable, critical configuration than the combination of domestic democracy and foreign empire. You can be one or the other. You can be a democratic country, as we have claimed in the past to be, based on our Constitution. Or you can be an empire. But you can’t be both.…The causative issue is militarism. Imperialism, by definition, requires military force. It requires huge standing armies. It requires a large military-industrial complex. It requires the willingness to use force regularly. Imperialism is a pure form of tyranny. It never rules through consent, any more than we do in Iraq today.
Imagine the uproar in Washington if the leading Chinese papers reported that the Red Army's top general had appeared before the Politburo and gave them a "trot around the globe," detailing, by name, the many nations that China must be able to attack at a moment's notice. Or asserted that China must be able to install and maintain hundreds of military bases all over the world to protect its interests. Or if Putin's top general told the Duma this. Or if Iran's military leaders declared that they too were going to place military bases in 130 countries and raise a military force capable of meeting "contingencies" in a range of specific countries – with the proviso, of course, that they "may have missed a few" potential targets for military action. And all of this, of course, cloaked in the rhetoric of justified defense, of helping others, of peace, prosperity and security for all humankind.
What an outcry we would hear from the White House, from Congress, from the media: "The arrogance of these foreign devils! The rank hypocrisy, gussying up their unbridled aggression, their naked greed, with flowery phrases! Why should they need such a vast military establishment – which goes far beyond the necessary requirements of defending their people – except to impose their will upon other nations? These ruthless military ambitions will destabilize the entire planet, set off frantic arms races, spark wars, sow mistrust, foment terrorism, drive millions into want and ruin. We won't stand for this kind of domination!"
Yet it was precisely this aggression, this greed, this ruthless ambition that was on full display in the generals' Congressional testimony, and the Washington Post article. And we wonder why the other nations of the world mistrust us. We wonder why they would even try – in their own small, pitiful ways – to arm themselves against us. We wonder why they denounce our policies, our benevolent interventions, our cruise missiles, our bombs, our checkpoints, our house raids, our renditions, our secret prisons, our unfortunate infliction of collateral damage – all of which are devoted solely to justified defense, to helping others, to the peace, prosperity and security of all humankind.
Gen. Pace is famously concerned with morality, as he demonstrated last week with his stern denunciation of homosexuality. The idea of two people of the same gender giving pleasure to one another outrages and sickens him. But the obscenity of visiting death and suffering on dozens of countries who have not attacked the United States; of killing, maiming and despoiling multitudes of innocent people who pose no threat to the United States; of bankrupting the people of the United States and utterly corrupting the Republic of the United States in the service of a rampant militarist empire – this doesn't trouble General Pace, or Congress, or the arbiters of our national discourse such as the Washington Post, in the least.
Written by Chris Floyd
Monday, 19 March 2007
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1078&Itemid=135
Rarely has the imperial hubris that lies at the basis of U.S. foreign policy – the unspoken, unquestioned assumption of America's right to global domination by force – been so nakedly revealed than in the recent Washington Post story decrying the degraded state of the Pentagon's military preparedness. ("Military is Ill-Prepared for Other Conflicts.") What makes the story so remarkable, and so valuable as a diagnostic tool for the health of the Republic (which could perhaps be most accurately described as "the sickness unto death") is that none of the generals or politicians quoted in the story – nor the writer herself – betray the slightest awareness of the moral obscenity upon which all their earnest concerns and diligent fact-finding are based.
On its surface, at the level of meaning it intends to convey to readers, the story is disturbing enough. The upshot is that Bush's reckless and stupid war of aggression in Iraq has plunged American military stocks and manpower reserves into a "death spiral" of depletion that will take years – and untold billions of dollars – to replenish. This in turn has put the United States in a horribly exposed strategic position, with the Pentagon incapable of responding "quickly and decisively to potential foreign crises," as the Post puts it. For example, the Army no longer has even a single brigade "ready to deploy within hours to an overseas hot spot," we're told. The highest brass – Joint Chief Chairman Gen. Peter Pace, Army chief of staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, and his vice chief, Gen. Richard Cody – attest, under oath, to the woeful state of unreadiness. Anonymous "senior officers" interviewed by the reporter then make clear the implications of their bosses' plaintive but coded warnings: the Iraq War is bleeding us dry.
On the second level of meaning – which the reporter may or may not have consciously intended to put across – we find something equally disturbing. Note well what the nation's top military officer, General Pace, has to say about this state of unreadiness:
In earlier House testimony, Pace said the military, using the Navy, Air Force and reserves, could handle one of three major contingencies, involving North Korea or -- although he did not name them -- Iran or China. But, he said, "It will not be as precise as we would like, nor will it be on the timelines that we would prefer, because we would then, while engaged in one fight, have to reallocate resources and remobilize the Guard and reserves."
The true import here is not so much the casualness with which these Beltway players – the generals, the legislators and the reporters – regard the prospect of war with North Korea, Iran and China as an unavoidable natural fact, something that is bound to happen sooner or later, and for which we must be massively steeled. This attitude is troubling, of course, but it's hardly news. No, what gives cause for the greatest immediate concern in Pace's remarks is his observation that in a coming "major contingency" – such as the all-but-inevitable attack on Iran – the Pentagon's campaign "will not be as precise as we would like." What is this but a tacit admission that when push comes to shove with Tehran, the United States will have to go in with a sledgehammer, lashing out left and right – no "surgical strike" against alleged nuclear facilities, but a blunderbuss assault, with the attendant "collateral damage" and destruction of civilian infrastructure that we have seen in Iraq (twice), Kosovo, Panama, Vietnam and other "contingencies."
Again, all of this is bad enough in itself. But it is the third level of meaning – never expressed either directly or indirectly but embodied by the story as a whole -- that is the most profoundly disturbing. The present state of affairs leaves the nation at grave risk, we are told. Why? Because it leaves the United States somewhat hobbled in its ability to impose its will military on any nation or region it so chooses. Again, attend to General Pace as he tells Congress that he is "not comfortable" with the Army's readiness:
"You take a lap around the globe -- you could start any place: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Venezuela, Colombia, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, North Korea, back around to Pakistan, and I probably missed a few. There's no dearth of challenges out there for our armed forces," Pace warned in his testimony.
This is not the statement of a military officer serving in the armed forces of a democratic republic devoted to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of its citizens. This is the action list of a Roman general seeking more funds so that he might fulfill Caesar's commands for further conquests and punitive raids beyond the frontiers of the Empire. Nation after nation, in every corner of the globe, is laid out for possible military intervention – "and I probably missed a few." And the legislators – of both parties – who heard these dire warnings merely nodded their heads in solemn agreement: the United States must be ready at all times to strike with massive force at short notice anywhere and everywhere in the world.
Not a single Congressional official – or the reporter – ever asked the simple question: Why? Why must we be prepared to invade or intervene in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, Venezuela, Colombia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan at the drop of a hat, with at least an Army brigade's worth of troops backed up by air and naval power? In what way does the maintenance and expansion of a military establishment that has, as Chalmers Johnson notes, some "737 bases in more than 130 countries around the world" and the capacity for assaulting every other nation on earth advance the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of the American people? Because it "combats terrorism"? But the vast majority of the Pentagon's international empire was constructed long before this most elastic abstract noun became the bogeyman of America's night-mind. Most of it was built in the name of "fighting communism," that former all-devouring bogeyman who has now retired to shabby pensioner's digs in Havana.
But of course, these earlier outposts of empire were actually devoted to the same aim as the new imperial fortresses going up in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa: to assert American dominance of global political and economic affairs, to enrich politically connected American contractors (and the pols who grease them so diligently with public money), and to prevent the rise of any possible alternative systems in foreign countries that might adversely affect the power, privilege and profits of the American elite and their local collaborators. (And any such system, whether it was based on Marxism or – as was most often the case – not, was reflexively labeled "communism" and its adherents dehumanized, dispossessed, incarcerated or simply killed. The history of El Salvador during the Reagan-Bush administrations is but one example. And this demonization was the case even with the "liberation theology" advanced by anti-communist Catholic churchmen in Latin America – a movement so dangerous to the corrupt status quo that it is still being actively quashed today by the former head of the Inquisition, Pope Benedict.)
Here again, Chalmers Johnson is instructive. In a recent interview with Buzzflash.com, he notes:
…History tells us there’s no more unstable, critical configuration than the combination of domestic democracy and foreign empire. You can be one or the other. You can be a democratic country, as we have claimed in the past to be, based on our Constitution. Or you can be an empire. But you can’t be both.…The causative issue is militarism. Imperialism, by definition, requires military force. It requires huge standing armies. It requires a large military-industrial complex. It requires the willingness to use force regularly. Imperialism is a pure form of tyranny. It never rules through consent, any more than we do in Iraq today.
Imagine the uproar in Washington if the leading Chinese papers reported that the Red Army's top general had appeared before the Politburo and gave them a "trot around the globe," detailing, by name, the many nations that China must be able to attack at a moment's notice. Or asserted that China must be able to install and maintain hundreds of military bases all over the world to protect its interests. Or if Putin's top general told the Duma this. Or if Iran's military leaders declared that they too were going to place military bases in 130 countries and raise a military force capable of meeting "contingencies" in a range of specific countries – with the proviso, of course, that they "may have missed a few" potential targets for military action. And all of this, of course, cloaked in the rhetoric of justified defense, of helping others, of peace, prosperity and security for all humankind.
What an outcry we would hear from the White House, from Congress, from the media: "The arrogance of these foreign devils! The rank hypocrisy, gussying up their unbridled aggression, their naked greed, with flowery phrases! Why should they need such a vast military establishment – which goes far beyond the necessary requirements of defending their people – except to impose their will upon other nations? These ruthless military ambitions will destabilize the entire planet, set off frantic arms races, spark wars, sow mistrust, foment terrorism, drive millions into want and ruin. We won't stand for this kind of domination!"
Yet it was precisely this aggression, this greed, this ruthless ambition that was on full display in the generals' Congressional testimony, and the Washington Post article. And we wonder why the other nations of the world mistrust us. We wonder why they would even try – in their own small, pitiful ways – to arm themselves against us. We wonder why they denounce our policies, our benevolent interventions, our cruise missiles, our bombs, our checkpoints, our house raids, our renditions, our secret prisons, our unfortunate infliction of collateral damage – all of which are devoted solely to justified defense, to helping others, to the peace, prosperity and security of all humankind.
Gen. Pace is famously concerned with morality, as he demonstrated last week with his stern denunciation of homosexuality. The idea of two people of the same gender giving pleasure to one another outrages and sickens him. But the obscenity of visiting death and suffering on dozens of countries who have not attacked the United States; of killing, maiming and despoiling multitudes of innocent people who pose no threat to the United States; of bankrupting the people of the United States and utterly corrupting the Republic of the United States in the service of a rampant militarist empire – this doesn't trouble General Pace, or Congress, or the arbiters of our national discourse such as the Washington Post, in the least.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
The Question for Year Five
Posted by Trish Mar. 20, 2007, 8:42 am
Pensito Review
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2007/03/20/the-question-for-year-five/
Asute PR reader tmkent asks what should be THE question as we open on Iraq, Year Five:
“Seen on CNN this morning: “Bush - ‘Artificial timetables could be disastrous.’”
O.K., How about a REAL timetable then?
Let’s all start asking that question, and asking the MSM to ask it too.
Pensito Review
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2007/03/20/the-question-for-year-five/
Asute PR reader tmkent asks what should be THE question as we open on Iraq, Year Five:
“Seen on CNN this morning: “Bush - ‘Artificial timetables could be disastrous.’”
O.K., How about a REAL timetable then?
Let’s all start asking that question, and asking the MSM to ask it too.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Body Bags and Death
“Why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it’s going to happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?”
- Barbara Bush, March 18, 2003
"feels good!"
- George W. Bush, March 19, 2003
Four years ago, the president bush began his Iraq atrocities. At the time, over 70% of Americans supported his obscenity, and those that opposed it were reviled and called unAmerican and treasonous. French fries became freedom fries, and French champagne was poured down the drain, because that country’s government wouldn’t support the crimes of bush. Only in the US was there popular support for this adventure. The world’s peoples were overwhelmingly opposed, but that didn’t stop several governments from jumping in, either from a desire to share in the spoils, or they were coerced by the US.
The Iraqi people have suffered through 4 years of death and destruction for no purpose, but to satisfy the US bloodlust. Six months from now, a year from now, it will still be happening. One would think that a righteous folk would rise and throw the people responsible for these crimes out of power and into prison, confiscating their riches in the process. But in America, they are still accorded respect and admiration. They and their allies have suffered no ill effects, on the contrary, they have grown even richer.
One would think that the scandals of corruption and abuse of power that have been revealed in recent weeks would cause a righteous anger in a free people. They haven’t.
On this anniversary, we need to ask ourselves, are we a righteous people, or are we just as greedy and mendacious as those in power. Will we tell are children and grandchildren that we sat by and let evil men destroy those who lacked the power to oppose them?
This occupation must stop. The United States of America can no longer hold it’s head up and declare itself a free and righteous and moral nation if we allow it to continue. How can we call ourselves christian when we see a child whose guts have been blown out by OUR bombs and say, well, it had to be done to honor the sacrifice of our soldiers who have died in that country. Are we fucking nuts? Oh yeah, I forgot, American Idol is on.
Read barbara bush’s quote again. Why do we still give respect to people like that? Why do we reward them? We have lost our soul. Or rather, we have sold our soul. We have sold our souls and collected the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in return. What will you do with your share?
Thursday, March 15, 2007
KSM Deflector Apparatus Up and Running
by Larisa Alexandrovna
March 15, 2007
http://www.atlargely.com/2007/03/ksm_deflector_a.html
I had wondered how purgegate would be removed from 24-7 news coverage, what spin could possibly knock this story out of our attention. Perhaps, I thought, finally Osama bin Laden would be conjured up in the flesh. I was close. The next best thing to a PR Osama, is the real mastermind of the September 11 attacks and boy, he is singing just in time and like a canary.
"Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, confessed at a Guantanamo Bay military hearing that he planned and funded that al-Qaeda operation and said he was involved in more than two dozen other terrorist acts around the world, according to documents released by the Pentagon yesterday.
In a rambling statement delivered Saturday to a closed-door military tribunal, Mohammed declared himself an enemy of the United States and claimed some responsibility for many of the major terrorist attacks on U.S. and allied targets over more than a decade. He said that he is at war with the United States and that the deaths of innocent people are an unfortunate consequence of that conflict."
News?
KSM was arrested four years ago and has been tortured since that time. Now, had this confession showed up a bit, um, sooner, I might find it less staged. But given how the Bush administration abuses the tragedy of September 11 for political reasons and how often they do it, plus the timing of this "confession,' I am highly skeptical. No, I am more than skeptical.
There is no question that KSM is a terrorist and that he likely played a role in the attacks of September 11. But that no longer matters as he has been in custody for four years now. More importantly, nor is it news that KSM was involved. We knew this four years ago. What is the news here then? That he delivered a just-in-time mention of September 11?
A tortured captive delivering a just-in time PR gift is not news. It is manipulative and deceptive. It is ugly even.
Oh, KSM confession bogus folks
by Larisa Alexandrovna
March 15, 2007
http://www.atlargely.com/2007/03/oh_ksm_confessi.html
I was just watching TV and it appears that now KSM has also confessed to the murder of Danny Pearl. That just exposed this confession as a lie. Why? Danny Pearl was murdered by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, while tracking a money transfer from Pakistan (on the orders of then Pakistani General Mahmoud Ahmad to Dubai to September 11, 2001 lead hijacker Atta. More importantly, why are there only 2 pictures and no video of this man? Why is the tribunal closed? Why is he delivering his so-called confession in writing? I want to see a video of this man's confession, not a piece of paper. Where is Waldo?
Does this administration think we are so stupid that we would confuse reality for made-for-politics justice? And where the hell is the healthy skepticism of the fourth estate? I mean really, if you cannot see the man or hear the man, then what makes you so certain he is even alive at this point? I see there is a transcript, so apparently someone actually spoke. Why can't we hear this? What possible reason is there for our limited access to information about an event that is so important to our nation?
I call BS and I suggest that the media stop playing games with our national tragedy!
More on Omar:
British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh has been sentenced to death for abducting and murdering US journalist Daniel Pearl.
Omar Sheikh, 27, was born in London, attended the London School of Economics and was a close associate of Maulana Azhar Masood - founder of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) group, which India blames for an attack on its parliament in December 2001.
March 15, 2007
http://www.atlargely.com/2007/03/ksm_deflector_a.html
I had wondered how purgegate would be removed from 24-7 news coverage, what spin could possibly knock this story out of our attention. Perhaps, I thought, finally Osama bin Laden would be conjured up in the flesh. I was close. The next best thing to a PR Osama, is the real mastermind of the September 11 attacks and boy, he is singing just in time and like a canary.
"Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, confessed at a Guantanamo Bay military hearing that he planned and funded that al-Qaeda operation and said he was involved in more than two dozen other terrorist acts around the world, according to documents released by the Pentagon yesterday.
In a rambling statement delivered Saturday to a closed-door military tribunal, Mohammed declared himself an enemy of the United States and claimed some responsibility for many of the major terrorist attacks on U.S. and allied targets over more than a decade. He said that he is at war with the United States and that the deaths of innocent people are an unfortunate consequence of that conflict."
News?
KSM was arrested four years ago and has been tortured since that time. Now, had this confession showed up a bit, um, sooner, I might find it less staged. But given how the Bush administration abuses the tragedy of September 11 for political reasons and how often they do it, plus the timing of this "confession,' I am highly skeptical. No, I am more than skeptical.
There is no question that KSM is a terrorist and that he likely played a role in the attacks of September 11. But that no longer matters as he has been in custody for four years now. More importantly, nor is it news that KSM was involved. We knew this four years ago. What is the news here then? That he delivered a just-in-time mention of September 11?
A tortured captive delivering a just-in time PR gift is not news. It is manipulative and deceptive. It is ugly even.
Oh, KSM confession bogus folks
by Larisa Alexandrovna
March 15, 2007
http://www.atlargely.com/2007/03/oh_ksm_confessi.html
I was just watching TV and it appears that now KSM has also confessed to the murder of Danny Pearl. That just exposed this confession as a lie. Why? Danny Pearl was murdered by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, while tracking a money transfer from Pakistan (on the orders of then Pakistani General Mahmoud Ahmad to Dubai to September 11, 2001 lead hijacker Atta. More importantly, why are there only 2 pictures and no video of this man? Why is the tribunal closed? Why is he delivering his so-called confession in writing? I want to see a video of this man's confession, not a piece of paper. Where is Waldo?
Does this administration think we are so stupid that we would confuse reality for made-for-politics justice? And where the hell is the healthy skepticism of the fourth estate? I mean really, if you cannot see the man or hear the man, then what makes you so certain he is even alive at this point? I see there is a transcript, so apparently someone actually spoke. Why can't we hear this? What possible reason is there for our limited access to information about an event that is so important to our nation?
I call BS and I suggest that the media stop playing games with our national tragedy!
More on Omar:
British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh has been sentenced to death for abducting and murdering US journalist Daniel Pearl.
Omar Sheikh, 27, was born in London, attended the London School of Economics and was a close associate of Maulana Azhar Masood - founder of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) group, which India blames for an attack on its parliament in December 2001.
Fake Congressional Opposition to War
by Stephen Lendman
3/15/07
The US electorate sent a clear, unequivocal message in the November mid-term elections. End the Iraq war and bring home the troops. Many supporting war in the 109th Congress lost out to more moderate voices taking over their seats because voters want change and expect new faces to deliver starting with the top issue on voters' minds in recent polls - Iraq. A majority of the public demands it, protests and heated rhetoric continue building over it, and the Congress is about to disappoint again proving getting into war is easy but even an act of Congress can't get us out because doing nothing is less risky than taking a stand against the prevailing view in Washington.
So the best this Congress can offer is non-binding stuff with no meaning and a wishy binding proposal rolled out March 8 guaranteeing support for the war with billions more spending than the administration wants. It also sets a timetable for partial withdrawal far enough in the future to be laughable. It proves again expecting elections to change things in Washington is like betting on an early end to winter in Chicago. Hope springs eternal but never fails to disappoint.
full article
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Corruption in the New American Empire Part 2
Decadence, Waste, Corruption in the New American Empire [Part II]
by Rodrigue Tremblay
March 12, 2007
"The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread to the law courts. And then to the army, and finally the Republic was subjected to the rule of emperors."
- Plutarch (c. 46 A.D.-127 A.D.)
"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."
- Plutarch (c. 46 A.D.-127 A.D.)
"It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us. Perhaps the reason is that rich men are very clever at covering up what they do."
- Andrew Greeley
Corruption and moral bankruptcy take many forms. They are usually the end results of an insatiable lust for money, power and privilege, above and beyond any common decency. And money in politics is at the nexus of nearly all forms of corruption.
In the United States, for example, big money is so central to politics and to the functioning of political parties that anybody running for high office, even if he or she is personally a millionaire, is obliged to court those who have the big cash. Many good candidates thus refuse to enter into, or soon bow out of presidential races, because they do not want to submit to this kind of prostitution. As a consequence of the deals that must be made to raise the huge amounts of money required to be successful, it is difficult for any administration, once elected, not to get entangled in a web of scandals. Indeed, big cash is the key to influence in Washington D.C., and cash used to bribe politicians ultimately leads to greed and scandals. It happened to the Nixon administration (Watergate scandal), the Carter administration (Lance scandal), the Reagan administration (Iran-Contra-cocaine scandal), the Clinton administration (Whitewater scandal) and now, to the Bush administration.
There was the Enron scandal, the Abramoff scandal, and the Tom Delay scandal. In the aftermath of the Enron scandal, for example, it was made public that Enron spent a total of $5.8m on American federal elections, over a period of 12 years, with 73 percent of the money going to Republicans. Globally, 71 out of 100 senators and 188 out of 435 House members benefited from the company's largesse. President George W. Bush himself, a staunch opponent of any campaign finance reform, received $826,000 from this single Texas company over a period of eight years, since he first ran for governor of that state. —This seems to be all part of a pervasive culture of corruption.
The revelation that super lobbyist Jack Abramoff offered $100,000 to meet President George W. Bush and top adviser Karl Rove to push for legislation of his liking is an indication how things can degenerate quickly, even in the most solid democracy. Super lobbyist Abramoff was one of George W. Bush's principal fundraisers, earning the honorary title of "pioneer" in his fund-raising organization. And, in what is typically American, both Abramoff and Delay said that 'God' was somewhat behind their actions. –For one, Abramoff confessed that "I felt that the resources coming into my hands were the consequence of God putting them there. " –And, in Delay's words, "I firmly believe I'm innocent of the charges against me. We believe that God in fact is in control and indeed he does work all things for good for those who love the Lord." This is an indication that for some, religion and political corruption do mix.
In fact, what money buys in Washington D.C. is access to those in positions of power, direct influence on the framing of public policies and preferential allotment of jobs and juicy contracts. Corruption of civil servants and Congress by lobbyists follows. Political corruption quickly becomes a vicious cycle: The corrupters select the politicians they want to see in office by dumping tons of money in their campaigns, while the politicians thus selected are anxious to pay back their benefactors by opening jobs of influence and by dishing out rewarding contracts to them. —And the wheel turns. In particular, why do you think all leading Democratic presidential hopefuls this year are calling for an unprovoked American attack against Iran? It is because the big money contributors they are soliciting are pro-Israel hard-liners. Those who pay make the policy.—That may be the overriding reason why 60 percent of Americans do not bother to vote, come election time. They are not apathetic; they only know that plutocracy is not democracy and that there is not a chance in hell that the system can reform itself. Plutocracy is the government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. This is a far cry from the Lincolnian view of democracy of "a government of the people, by the people and for the people."
When Paul Wolfowitz, the principal technical architect of the war against Iraq, went from the U.S. Defense department to preside the World Bank, the world had a vivid demonstration how corrupt the American political system could be. Wolfowitz had no formation (political science) or experience in finance, but was nevertheless named to be president of the important World Bank for services rendered. Another example is the curious spectacle of Dick Cheney, a member of the American Enterprise Institute and a former CEO of Halliburton Energy Services, who, in 2001, chose himself to be George W. Bush's vice-president (he was Bush's Vice-Presidential search committee) and as chairman of the president elect's transition team found himself in charge of naming most of the high officials in the new Bush administration. How could he manage to do that, one may legitimately ask? Also, why did George W. Bush, on March 25, 2003, sign executive order 13292, giving Cheney the power to declassify intelligence and granting the greatest expansion of the power of the vice-president in US history? Why did Dick Cheney end up having so much power within the Bush administration that George W. Bush once even joked about 'President Cheney'? No political scientist that we know of has found satisfactory answers to these questions.
Another form of corruption in America may be derived from the first type. It comes from the fact that while the super rich gorge themselves on cost-plus military contracts and tax cuts, the poorest Americans are becoming relatively poorer. Indeed, economic inequality in the U.S. has increased markedly between 1979 and 2006: During this time, more than a quarter century, incomes adjusted for inflation of those at the top increased 34 percent, incomes of those at the median increased by 11.5 percent and incomes of those at the bottom have remained about stagnant, increasing a meager 4 percent over 27 years. —Recent reports have also shown that the percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high as the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" has continued to widen.
In 2005, for example, 35 million Americans went without enough to eat. This is due to the fact that 13 million American children, or 17.8 percent, were living in severe poverty. And, with the cost of health care increasing each year in the two digits, some 47 million Americans find themselves in the precarious situation of not being covered by any health insurance, all the while their government is wasting billions and billions around the world.
But perhaps the most insidious corruption in a democracy occurs when elected officials are not truthful with the people and rely on lies and propaganda rather than truth in the public discourse. Then confidence and trust are destroyed, and so is the moral fiber of the nation.
Such public corruption is often accompanied by the corruption that feeds political corruption, the corruption of the media. When the government and the media are both corrupted, all the other forms of corruption follow. The increasingly incestuous relationship that exists between large segments of American media and the government is harbinger of things to come. Indeed, propaganda machines seem to have replaced genuine investigative journalism in many media organizations where a cohort of "useful idiots" and yelling village idiots feel free to engage in public campaigns of disinformation and of outright lies.
When this happens, confusion and disarray result, and this is when the worst mistakes are made. The 2001-2007 episode will go down in history as such an instance when the American people were lied to, both by the Bush-Cheney administration and by the major American media.
This has led, indeed, to a show of massive incompetence and to the monstrous American moral and financial corruption, which has been observed in Iraq, where the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Feith-Bremer wrecking crew went on a rampage that did great and irreparable harm, not only to Iraq, its economy and its people, but also to the United States, to Americans and to the international system of law and justice. The gross misuse of money, the suspension of the right of "Habeas Corpus" and the reliance on torture techniques in occupied Iraq (Abu Ghraib) are only the tip of the iceberg of what has the potential to be one of the biggest corruption scandals in American history.
Rodrigue Tremblay lives in Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
Also visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com
Friday, March 09, 2007
Lost In The Lust Of Werewolves
By Sheila Samples
3/6/07
"A lost infant in the ashes, lost faces in the dust, a lost finger in the garbage dumps, a lost mother in the debris, a nation lost in the fire, a country lost in the greed...and eyes lost in that endless tunnel of helplessness, anguish and despair...lost in the total emptiness, in the void of the living dead."
- Layla Anwar, "Ashes & Dust"
Sometimes I wonder if Americans are unaware of the malicious devastation the Bush administrtion is wreaking upon this good earth and its inhabitants, or if they just don't give a damn. I wonder if they ever put a "face" on even one of the hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children who are lost forever -- victims of arrogance, lust for power, insatiable greed. And lies .. all lost because of evil, deliberate lies.
I wonder why so many denizens of this Christian nation seem unable or unwilling to wrap their minds around the reality that Iraqi people are human beings just as they, themselves, are -- not rabid dogs to be hunted down and slaughtered. Perhaps it's because, in order to remain sane or to avoid being targeted by the Bush administration, they traded their Christianity for Religion, their Love for Hate -- their Life for Death. For protection from the Butcher of Baghdad, far too many Americans far too easily traded their souls to the Werewolf of Washington.
They don't want to know what it's like for families to cower in terror as their doors are kicked in, mothers and daughters raped, fathers and sons dragged off, never to be seen again. They don't want to know about prisoners being humiliated and tortured, secretly "rendered" to countries for more torture, held captive for endless years without charges, without hope, without life. They don't want to know about Iraq's rich culture, its secular society, its formidable institutiions of learning. According to the late Columbia University professor Edward Said, all of this, along with Iraq's "long-suffering people were made invisible, the better to smash the country as if it were only a den of thieves and murderers." (Al-Ahram Weekly, 24 - 30 April 2003)
Even if it were possible to know how many innocent civilians have been needlessly murdered, it wouldn't matter. Because America's leaders don't know and they don't care. As General Colin Powell, then Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, retorted to an April 1991 question about Iraqi casualties -- "That's not really a number I'm terribly interested in." And, following the assault on Afghanistan, General Tommy Franks, CENTCOM commander and architect of both the Afghanistan and Iraqi killing sprees, quipped at a March 2002 news conference at Bagram Air Base -- "We don't do body counts."
Even President George Bush, the commander-in-chief -- the Energizer Bunny Decider -- pleaded ignorance and apathy when asked on Dec. 12, 2005 about the number of iraqi civilians slain since the March 2003 invasion. "How many Iraqi civilians have died...in this war?" he asked. "Um...I would say about 30,000 -- more or less..."
Reporters in the room knew that more than a year before, the British medical journal, The Lancet, had reported for the period March 2003 - Sept. 2004, an excess mortality of nearly 100,000 civilian deaths. Yet none dared challenge Bush then nor in October 2006 when the journal released an indepth study that an estimated 655,000 Iraqis had died since the invasion, with more than 600,000 due to violence.
Is Politics really more important than life? Of course, when you consider the gandy-dancing, moon-walking and flip-flopping that's gone on within the political axis -- the administration, the Congress and the media -- since the November elections. If there were doubts that this axis considers the nation's military anything more than "dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy," the spectacle that has unfolded since Bush was backed into a corner with the release of the James Baker/Les Hamilton Iraq Study Group (ISG) report put them to rest. Its 84 pages boiled down to one sentence in the Executive Summary - "The United States has long-term relationships and interests at stake in the Middle East, and needs to stay engaged," which was another way of telling Bush not to cut and run until the oil law was passed which will legalize US corporate plunder of Iraq's oil fields via 35-year contracts.
The ISG was nine months in the making, March through October 2006, during which time 556 coalition "troops" were killed -- 515 of them American. For political reasons, Baker and Hamilton waited until after the election to release it, hardly noticing that 77 servicemen and women were killed in November. On Dec. 13, when Bush tossed the report on the table with the rest of the options and announced he'd make his decision after Christmas, US casualties stood at 2,937. On Christmas Day, when he bowed his head to thank God for making him The Decider, 2,975 Americans would never open another present.
The overwhelming vote in November 2006 was a national demand to stop the war. Bush responded in January 2007 by announcing not only that he was staying the course, but that he was "surging" an additional 21,500 military in a "New Way Forward" plan. Since that time, with the surge underway, Democrats and Republicans have sparred in a shameful display of shadow-boxing oratory and endless debates on debates, resulting in a single limp, non-binding resolution designed to do little more than give political cover to those voting for it. With the surge nearly complete, House Democrats now say they're working on a plan to restrict Bush's ability to wage war, with the stipulation, of course, that he can continue to kill if he "publicly justifies" his position.
With cruel indifference this pack of werewolves, led by a creature who deserted his post in a time of war, continue to fund a surge they claim they are against while shouting, "Support the troops!" They neither know nor care that, above all things, support means full force protection -- sufficient training, proper equipment -- and medical care for those who return broken in body, mind and spirit.
Like their more than 650,000 Iraqi counterparts, the 3,185 US victims of the Iraqi inferno have no individual form or substance in the minds of the general public -- certainly not in those of the media or the Congress. One is merely "collateral damage," the other a heap of body bags labeled "troops." Senators John McCain and Barack Obama were exactly right when they said that so many lives in this illegal war have been "wasted," rather than sacrificed. Victims of this war -- Iraqi and American -- are little more than debris scattered in the wake of the werewolves' lust to dominate the world and control its resources.
They are, as described so eloquently by Iraq's Layla Anwar -- "lost faces in the dust."
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@sirinet.net
3/6/07
"A lost infant in the ashes, lost faces in the dust, a lost finger in the garbage dumps, a lost mother in the debris, a nation lost in the fire, a country lost in the greed...and eyes lost in that endless tunnel of helplessness, anguish and despair...lost in the total emptiness, in the void of the living dead."
- Layla Anwar, "Ashes & Dust"
Sometimes I wonder if Americans are unaware of the malicious devastation the Bush administrtion is wreaking upon this good earth and its inhabitants, or if they just don't give a damn. I wonder if they ever put a "face" on even one of the hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children who are lost forever -- victims of arrogance, lust for power, insatiable greed. And lies .. all lost because of evil, deliberate lies.
I wonder why so many denizens of this Christian nation seem unable or unwilling to wrap their minds around the reality that Iraqi people are human beings just as they, themselves, are -- not rabid dogs to be hunted down and slaughtered. Perhaps it's because, in order to remain sane or to avoid being targeted by the Bush administration, they traded their Christianity for Religion, their Love for Hate -- their Life for Death. For protection from the Butcher of Baghdad, far too many Americans far too easily traded their souls to the Werewolf of Washington.
They don't want to know what it's like for families to cower in terror as their doors are kicked in, mothers and daughters raped, fathers and sons dragged off, never to be seen again. They don't want to know about prisoners being humiliated and tortured, secretly "rendered" to countries for more torture, held captive for endless years without charges, without hope, without life. They don't want to know about Iraq's rich culture, its secular society, its formidable institutiions of learning. According to the late Columbia University professor Edward Said, all of this, along with Iraq's "long-suffering people were made invisible, the better to smash the country as if it were only a den of thieves and murderers." (Al-Ahram Weekly, 24 - 30 April 2003)
Even if it were possible to know how many innocent civilians have been needlessly murdered, it wouldn't matter. Because America's leaders don't know and they don't care. As General Colin Powell, then Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, retorted to an April 1991 question about Iraqi casualties -- "That's not really a number I'm terribly interested in." And, following the assault on Afghanistan, General Tommy Franks, CENTCOM commander and architect of both the Afghanistan and Iraqi killing sprees, quipped at a March 2002 news conference at Bagram Air Base -- "We don't do body counts."
Even President George Bush, the commander-in-chief -- the Energizer Bunny Decider -- pleaded ignorance and apathy when asked on Dec. 12, 2005 about the number of iraqi civilians slain since the March 2003 invasion. "How many Iraqi civilians have died...in this war?" he asked. "Um...I would say about 30,000 -- more or less..."
Reporters in the room knew that more than a year before, the British medical journal, The Lancet, had reported for the period March 2003 - Sept. 2004, an excess mortality of nearly 100,000 civilian deaths. Yet none dared challenge Bush then nor in October 2006 when the journal released an indepth study that an estimated 655,000 Iraqis had died since the invasion, with more than 600,000 due to violence.
Is Politics really more important than life? Of course, when you consider the gandy-dancing, moon-walking and flip-flopping that's gone on within the political axis -- the administration, the Congress and the media -- since the November elections. If there were doubts that this axis considers the nation's military anything more than "dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy," the spectacle that has unfolded since Bush was backed into a corner with the release of the James Baker/Les Hamilton Iraq Study Group (ISG) report put them to rest. Its 84 pages boiled down to one sentence in the Executive Summary - "The United States has long-term relationships and interests at stake in the Middle East, and needs to stay engaged," which was another way of telling Bush not to cut and run until the oil law was passed which will legalize US corporate plunder of Iraq's oil fields via 35-year contracts.
The ISG was nine months in the making, March through October 2006, during which time 556 coalition "troops" were killed -- 515 of them American. For political reasons, Baker and Hamilton waited until after the election to release it, hardly noticing that 77 servicemen and women were killed in November. On Dec. 13, when Bush tossed the report on the table with the rest of the options and announced he'd make his decision after Christmas, US casualties stood at 2,937. On Christmas Day, when he bowed his head to thank God for making him The Decider, 2,975 Americans would never open another present.
The overwhelming vote in November 2006 was a national demand to stop the war. Bush responded in January 2007 by announcing not only that he was staying the course, but that he was "surging" an additional 21,500 military in a "New Way Forward" plan. Since that time, with the surge underway, Democrats and Republicans have sparred in a shameful display of shadow-boxing oratory and endless debates on debates, resulting in a single limp, non-binding resolution designed to do little more than give political cover to those voting for it. With the surge nearly complete, House Democrats now say they're working on a plan to restrict Bush's ability to wage war, with the stipulation, of course, that he can continue to kill if he "publicly justifies" his position.
With cruel indifference this pack of werewolves, led by a creature who deserted his post in a time of war, continue to fund a surge they claim they are against while shouting, "Support the troops!" They neither know nor care that, above all things, support means full force protection -- sufficient training, proper equipment -- and medical care for those who return broken in body, mind and spirit.
Like their more than 650,000 Iraqi counterparts, the 3,185 US victims of the Iraqi inferno have no individual form or substance in the minds of the general public -- certainly not in those of the media or the Congress. One is merely "collateral damage," the other a heap of body bags labeled "troops." Senators John McCain and Barack Obama were exactly right when they said that so many lives in this illegal war have been "wasted," rather than sacrificed. Victims of this war -- Iraqi and American -- are little more than debris scattered in the wake of the werewolves' lust to dominate the world and control its resources.
They are, as described so eloquently by Iraq's Layla Anwar -- "lost faces in the dust."
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at rsamples@sirinet.net
Thursday, March 08, 2007
George Bush's Samson Option
by Stephen Lendman
3/8/07
The Samson Option is terminology used to explain Israel's intention to use its nuclear arsenal as an ultimate defense strategy if its leaders feel threatened enough to think they have no alternative. It comes from the biblical Samson said to have used his great strength to bring down the pillars of a Philistine temple, downing its roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistine tormentors. It's a strategy saying if you try killing me, we'll all die together, or put another way, we'll all go together when we go. Richard Wagner had his apocalyptic version in the last of his four operas of Der Ring des Nibelungen - Gotterdammerung, or Twilight of the Gods based on Norse mythology referring to a prophesied war of the Gods resulting in the end of the world.
The Bush Doctrine isn't that extreme, and it's not the intent of this essay to suggest its unintended consequences may turn out that way even though the threat it may is real if they start firing off enough nukes like they're king-sized hand grenades. The Doctrine refers to the administration's foreign policy first aired by George Bush in his commencement speech to the West Point graduating class in June, 2002. It was later formalized in The National Security Strategy of September, 2002 and updated in more extreme form in early 2006 that makes for scary reading not recommended at bedtime. It mentions Iran in it 16 times stating: "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran" ...
full story
3/8/07
The Samson Option is terminology used to explain Israel's intention to use its nuclear arsenal as an ultimate defense strategy if its leaders feel threatened enough to think they have no alternative. It comes from the biblical Samson said to have used his great strength to bring down the pillars of a Philistine temple, downing its roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistine tormentors. It's a strategy saying if you try killing me, we'll all die together, or put another way, we'll all go together when we go. Richard Wagner had his apocalyptic version in the last of his four operas of Der Ring des Nibelungen - Gotterdammerung, or Twilight of the Gods based on Norse mythology referring to a prophesied war of the Gods resulting in the end of the world.
The Bush Doctrine isn't that extreme, and it's not the intent of this essay to suggest its unintended consequences may turn out that way even though the threat it may is real if they start firing off enough nukes like they're king-sized hand grenades. The Doctrine refers to the administration's foreign policy first aired by George Bush in his commencement speech to the West Point graduating class in June, 2002. It was later formalized in The National Security Strategy of September, 2002 and updated in more extreme form in early 2006 that makes for scary reading not recommended at bedtime. It mentions Iran in it 16 times stating: "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran" ...
full story
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