by Mary Pitt
February 28, 2010
"I've got yer clean sheet of paper right here!" This is the message that should be sent to the Senate Republicans by everyone who wants and needs the passage of the Health Reform measure which the House and Senate have proposed and it's a message that we can afford. We get appeals daily for contributions of money on behalf of one political agenda or another and we do not respond because we have no money to send. This is a simple request and one that is well within our means. It would cost only a US postage stamp.
With or without a letter of explanation, the point would be made that the donation is exactly what they asked for in their "summit" with representatives of the two parties. Further, it is highly appropriate for their stated purpose. Their suggestions for health care "reform" consist of only two measures:
Tort Reform: This is merely another Republican pay-off to the insurance companies and perpetrators of malpractice. It would limit the amount that a private citizen who is injured in any way by the inappropriate or mis-applied treatment by hospitals and physicians. Those who go in for a hangnail and find themselves with an amputated leg, or worse, the wrong leg amputated will be told that they need to "shut up and live with it!" Families of patients who are mistakenly given the wrong medication that leads to their death will receive no or less compensation for their loss. These are problems that have always been left up to the Courts but Republicans believe the Courts have been unduly generous. If you don't agree with them, hie yourself into the bathroom and mail them a piece of toilet paper on which to write it.
Allowing the purchase of insurance "across state lines": This would strip the states of their power to regulate the insurance companies that sell insurance within the state. Currently. most insurance companies have their home offices in states that are very lenient in their control, a condition that was created in order for the companies to base their headquarters there. Other states have an official, usually an Insurance Commissioner with the authority to investigate the policies and records of performance of the applying company. In many cases, their standards for acceptance are so high that few companies deign to sell to their citizens. The results are that those companies may create policies that do not provide the coverage that they represent in their advertising and, thus, forego applying to that state to sell their coverage. If you do not agree with canceling this local protection, get that piece of "Plain Paper" in an envelope and mail it to your Republican Senator or one in a neighboring State!
This would be a way that those of us who need insurance but can't afford it or those who have been denied coverage because of "pre-existing conditions" or discontinued while ill because your care cost too much can make Congress abundantly aware of our desires. While we can't afford to show up at demonstrations at The Capitol or even a Tea Party on a Court House lawn, most of us can afford one small sheet off the roll to make our wishes known. If it doesn't work, at least we can feel appreciated for our efforts to "cut government spending".
This writer is eighty years old and has spent a half century working with handicapped and deprived people and advocating on their behalf while caring for her own working-class family. She spends her "Sunset Years" in writing and struggling with The System.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
the bush surfaces
Bush takes shot at Carter for accusing him of torture
By Agence France-Presse
Saturday, February 27th, 2010 -- 3:49 pm
http://rawstory.com/2010/02/bush-takes-shot-carter-accusing-torture/
Former US president George W. Bush told a group of his White House aides at a breakfast Friday that he is "trying to regain a sense of anonymity," an event attendee confirmed to AFP.
Bush also told the group that he was pleased former vice president Dick Cheney had taken a lead role in defending their national security policies, declaring: "I'm glad Cheney is out there."
The former president, who also touted his administration's domestic agenda, said he was resolved to keep a low profile and indicated he did not want to be a thorn in the side of President Barack Obama.
"I have no desire to see myself on television. I don't want to be on a panel of formers instructing the currents on what to do. I'm trying to regain a sense of anonymity," Bush said.
"I didn't like it when a certain former president -- and it wasn't 41 or 42 -- made my life miserable," he said in a reference to Jimmy Carter, who infuriated the Bush White House in 2007 when he accused the administration of allowing the use of torture on terror suspects.
The online political publication Politico first reported the remarks at the breakfast, which was closed to the media.
What a little piece of chickenshit the little bush is. He doesn’t even have the clankers to get out and defend HIS OWN actions. He’s still got to have his lttle dick out there doing it for him. Well…georgie….YOU gave the orders.
You invaded two countries that were no threat to us. And don’t give me that crap about going after Al Qeada. That’s not what Afghanistan was about. It was about regime change, just like Iraq. Shit. there wasn’t even Al Qeada in Iraq until after we got there. And how many hundreds of thousands of death and maimed did all that cause? and to what end? To make you feel manly?
Whatever. The facts are that you have failed in every thing that you attempted. A failed student, a failed pilot, a failed businessman, a failed baseball owner, a failed president, and a failed human being.
And yeah, Jimmy was right. You were torturing people.
Let’s face the facts, georgie. You have no courage, you have no principles, and you have no shame. You’re just a privileged little snot. And you’re still scared of horses.
By Agence France-Presse
Saturday, February 27th, 2010 -- 3:49 pm
http://rawstory.com/2010/02/bush-takes-shot-carter-accusing-torture/
Former US president George W. Bush told a group of his White House aides at a breakfast Friday that he is "trying to regain a sense of anonymity," an event attendee confirmed to AFP.
Bush also told the group that he was pleased former vice president Dick Cheney had taken a lead role in defending their national security policies, declaring: "I'm glad Cheney is out there."
The former president, who also touted his administration's domestic agenda, said he was resolved to keep a low profile and indicated he did not want to be a thorn in the side of President Barack Obama.
"I have no desire to see myself on television. I don't want to be on a panel of formers instructing the currents on what to do. I'm trying to regain a sense of anonymity," Bush said.
"I didn't like it when a certain former president -- and it wasn't 41 or 42 -- made my life miserable," he said in a reference to Jimmy Carter, who infuriated the Bush White House in 2007 when he accused the administration of allowing the use of torture on terror suspects.
The online political publication Politico first reported the remarks at the breakfast, which was closed to the media.
What a little piece of chickenshit the little bush is. He doesn’t even have the clankers to get out and defend HIS OWN actions. He’s still got to have his lttle dick out there doing it for him. Well…georgie….YOU gave the orders.
You invaded two countries that were no threat to us. And don’t give me that crap about going after Al Qeada. That’s not what Afghanistan was about. It was about regime change, just like Iraq. Shit. there wasn’t even Al Qeada in Iraq until after we got there. And how many hundreds of thousands of death and maimed did all that cause? and to what end? To make you feel manly?
Whatever. The facts are that you have failed in every thing that you attempted. A failed student, a failed pilot, a failed businessman, a failed baseball owner, a failed president, and a failed human being.
And yeah, Jimmy was right. You were torturing people.
Let’s face the facts, georgie. You have no courage, you have no principles, and you have no shame. You’re just a privileged little snot. And you’re still scared of horses.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Who Are The ‘Progressives’?
by Mary Pitt
February 14, 2010
When we read reports of polls, we find that the "Independents" in the United States outnumber the declarents for either of the established political parties. In discussing this, the pundits assume that this indicates that most voters are in the "middle of the road" between the Democrats and the Republicans. This is not the case. The number includes members of small established groups that have been with us for years and their views are all over the map. There are the Libertarians who are far to the right, the Green Party with their ecological agenda, and now, the Tea Party whose views are more anti-government.
Buried and out of sight are the Progressives who have no party affiliations at present but who know what they want and need. There is a Progressive wing of the Democratic Party but they are not necessarily representative of those who advocate for progress but are not yet convinced that the party, as it exists today, are truly committed to the substance of their own needs and will not deal them away in the interests of "bipartisanship." President Obama was swept into office on a wave of support from these very people who are now waiting to see whether he can or will accomplish the promises he made to them in return.
But, who are these Progressives, these nameless, faceless people who claim to represent a majority of the populace of the United States? I am one and I will undertake the task of telling you exactly who we are.
We are the vermin of your life, We are white, black, Hispanic, Asian, and every shade of every color in the palette. Very few of us are rich or even "middle-class". We live everywhere yet we are largely unseen. We are in the long lines at the unemployment offices and at the gates to those plants that are still operating; we serve your meals, we clean up your messes, take out your garbage, and clean your toilets. We are on your streets, yet you do not see us because there is nothing about us to which to draw your attention. We neither damage your ears with loud jam-boxes nor are we using expensive cell phones into which we speak loudly so you will notice us. We are simply there.
We work in your yards and in your homes, we nurture and nourish your children so that they do not suffer your absence unduly. We are as diligent with "Yes, Ma'am", and "No, Sir," as those who worked in utter bondage in centuries past. We prepare the hotel rooms in which you work or vacation, making sure you have all the comforts and cleanliness that you expect. We clean your offices after you have gone home or to your recreational pursuits. We live in your slums and your low-income housing projects, We live along the highways and the byways as you pass in your big gas-hog cars or fly over in your silvery airplanes. We grow and cook your food and clean your clothes; there is not an aspect of your life in which we are not an integral part, yet you do not see us.
We can easily be seen when we turn out to support President Obama when he appears in our area but we cannot afford to travel to attend Tea Parties and other big demonstrations. But we can be seen in huge numbers at the Free Health Clinics as they are held in larger cities offering life-saving health care for those who have been deprived of it, sometimes for years! These affairs are not covered by news agencies except, recently by MSNBC. Hundreds of medical professionals throughout an area will gather in arenas or in huge tents to dispense needed physical care to those of us who have no insurance but are deemed to be "too rich" for Medicaid or any other Federal program to be diagnosed and steered to free clinics for every complaint from new eye glasses or dental caries to life-threatening cancers.
For this reason, our principal political goal is for truly universal health care. Learning that President Obama approached this problem first by consulting Big Pharma and the heads of the insurance companies was a kick in the gut! President Clinton tried that and we still suffer from his failure President G. W. Bush told us that we had no problem; that all we had to do was to go to the nearest Emergency Room. We've been there and done that! We have thereafter received the over-inflated bills and many have had our assets attached and been hounded into bankruptcy if we could not pay. We will not be doing that again!
We are the "make or break" faction who will determine whether the Democrats are allowed to continue their majority status past the next election. We will do as we have always done. We will accept the fact that, once again, we have been lied to by a politician, crawl back into the woodwork and disappear until the great day, by and by, that some other political figure might arise and convince us that they will do something about our problems.
You see, we are the sixty per cent of the population who don't bother to turn out on election day. We are aware of our invisibility and unconvinced that you and the others like you are so consumed by your own lives, your good jobs, your beautiful children, and your secure lives that you have no reason to care about us. We will go on doing what we do, trying to scratch out a living from our poor endeavors living as long as whatever god we believe in decrees for us, allowing you to demean us at every opportunity as the "lower class" and a "drag on society" while giving you our offspring for cannon fodder in your wars of acquisition.
Think of us as the peasants of Middle Ages France who bore the burdens of serving the "upper classes" until they could no longer bear it. For we know that we are the base for everything you treasure. We are the ones who provide your creature comforts. Without us you would have to live in an unbearable world of chaos and your own trash. When you pray, pray for us. Pray that we will continue in our firm belief in the Brotherhood of Man and that we will continue to support you. That is because we know, though you obviously do not, that you are just like us!
Mary Pitt is eighty years old and has spent a half century working with handicapped and deprived people and advocating on their behalf while caring for her own working-class family. She spends her "Sunset Years" in writing and struggling with The System.
February 14, 2010
When we read reports of polls, we find that the "Independents" in the United States outnumber the declarents for either of the established political parties. In discussing this, the pundits assume that this indicates that most voters are in the "middle of the road" between the Democrats and the Republicans. This is not the case. The number includes members of small established groups that have been with us for years and their views are all over the map. There are the Libertarians who are far to the right, the Green Party with their ecological agenda, and now, the Tea Party whose views are more anti-government.
Buried and out of sight are the Progressives who have no party affiliations at present but who know what they want and need. There is a Progressive wing of the Democratic Party but they are not necessarily representative of those who advocate for progress but are not yet convinced that the party, as it exists today, are truly committed to the substance of their own needs and will not deal them away in the interests of "bipartisanship." President Obama was swept into office on a wave of support from these very people who are now waiting to see whether he can or will accomplish the promises he made to them in return.
But, who are these Progressives, these nameless, faceless people who claim to represent a majority of the populace of the United States? I am one and I will undertake the task of telling you exactly who we are.
We are the vermin of your life, We are white, black, Hispanic, Asian, and every shade of every color in the palette. Very few of us are rich or even "middle-class". We live everywhere yet we are largely unseen. We are in the long lines at the unemployment offices and at the gates to those plants that are still operating; we serve your meals, we clean up your messes, take out your garbage, and clean your toilets. We are on your streets, yet you do not see us because there is nothing about us to which to draw your attention. We neither damage your ears with loud jam-boxes nor are we using expensive cell phones into which we speak loudly so you will notice us. We are simply there.
We work in your yards and in your homes, we nurture and nourish your children so that they do not suffer your absence unduly. We are as diligent with "Yes, Ma'am", and "No, Sir," as those who worked in utter bondage in centuries past. We prepare the hotel rooms in which you work or vacation, making sure you have all the comforts and cleanliness that you expect. We clean your offices after you have gone home or to your recreational pursuits. We live in your slums and your low-income housing projects, We live along the highways and the byways as you pass in your big gas-hog cars or fly over in your silvery airplanes. We grow and cook your food and clean your clothes; there is not an aspect of your life in which we are not an integral part, yet you do not see us.
We can easily be seen when we turn out to support President Obama when he appears in our area but we cannot afford to travel to attend Tea Parties and other big demonstrations. But we can be seen in huge numbers at the Free Health Clinics as they are held in larger cities offering life-saving health care for those who have been deprived of it, sometimes for years! These affairs are not covered by news agencies except, recently by MSNBC. Hundreds of medical professionals throughout an area will gather in arenas or in huge tents to dispense needed physical care to those of us who have no insurance but are deemed to be "too rich" for Medicaid or any other Federal program to be diagnosed and steered to free clinics for every complaint from new eye glasses or dental caries to life-threatening cancers.
For this reason, our principal political goal is for truly universal health care. Learning that President Obama approached this problem first by consulting Big Pharma and the heads of the insurance companies was a kick in the gut! President Clinton tried that and we still suffer from his failure President G. W. Bush told us that we had no problem; that all we had to do was to go to the nearest Emergency Room. We've been there and done that! We have thereafter received the over-inflated bills and many have had our assets attached and been hounded into bankruptcy if we could not pay. We will not be doing that again!
We are the "make or break" faction who will determine whether the Democrats are allowed to continue their majority status past the next election. We will do as we have always done. We will accept the fact that, once again, we have been lied to by a politician, crawl back into the woodwork and disappear until the great day, by and by, that some other political figure might arise and convince us that they will do something about our problems.
You see, we are the sixty per cent of the population who don't bother to turn out on election day. We are aware of our invisibility and unconvinced that you and the others like you are so consumed by your own lives, your good jobs, your beautiful children, and your secure lives that you have no reason to care about us. We will go on doing what we do, trying to scratch out a living from our poor endeavors living as long as whatever god we believe in decrees for us, allowing you to demean us at every opportunity as the "lower class" and a "drag on society" while giving you our offspring for cannon fodder in your wars of acquisition.
Think of us as the peasants of Middle Ages France who bore the burdens of serving the "upper classes" until they could no longer bear it. For we know that we are the base for everything you treasure. We are the ones who provide your creature comforts. Without us you would have to live in an unbearable world of chaos and your own trash. When you pray, pray for us. Pray that we will continue in our firm belief in the Brotherhood of Man and that we will continue to support you. That is because we know, though you obviously do not, that you are just like us!
Mary Pitt is eighty years old and has spent a half century working with handicapped and deprived people and advocating on their behalf while caring for her own working-class family. She spends her "Sunset Years" in writing and struggling with The System.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
The Carp of Truth
Jack Straw, Colin Powell and the Smoking Guns of War Crime
Written by Chris Floyd
Tuesday, 09 February 2010 16:20
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1922-the-carp-of-truth-jack-straw-colin-powell-and-the-smoking-guns-of-war-crime.html
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out.
-- Shakespeare, Hamlet
Britain's "Chilcot Inquiry" into the origins of the invasion of Iraq has largely faded from the headlines, following Tony Blair's bravura display of pious bluster before the panel of Establishment worthies last month. And in truth, it has been a rather toothless affair, with the already deferential worthies further constrained by the narrow confines placed upon their investigation by the government: chiefly, the cloak of secrecy wrapped around the many documents that detail the deceptions and manipulations of the Bush and Blair regimes as they schemed their way to war.
But as Chris Ames points out in the Guardian, in the wind-up of its first phase, the Chilcot panel seem to be trying to tell the public, obliquely, about some of the smoking guns in these buried documents: an official record of knowing deceit that confirms, yet again, the damning fact that the US and UK were determined to invade Iraq no matter what: with or without UN backing, whether or not Iraq had WMD -- and as we have pointed out here for many years, even if Saddam Hussein were no longer in power. The documentary evidence shows that every single purported reason or justification for the war -- the WMD, connections to 9/11, the repressive nature of Saddam's regime -- was false to the core, and known to be false by the leaders who put these explanations forward.
The Chilcot panelists were terribly craven when it came to confronting Tony Blair -- and they are likely to be equally circumspect when they politely pose a few inquiries to Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, sometime in the next few weeks. But they seem to have chosen the odious figure of Jack Straw -- foreign secretary at the time of the Iraq invasion, now serving, laughably, as justice secretary -- as the outlet for their frustrations at the strictures of the inquiry and the soft-shoe shuffling they've encountered from witness after witness.
And while their kid-glove massage of Blair was inexcusable, the Chilcoteers are quite right to focus on Straw. Like so many of his "New Labour" colleagues, this pathetic figure began his career as a radical leftist, honed his political teeth fighting for the poor and disadvantaged during the ravaging Thatcher years -- then transformed himself into a scurrying toady for the powerful and the privileged, championing war, Big Money and neo-Thatcherism, launching stern crackdowns on the "anti-social" lower classes, and imposing draconian "security" measures that have far outstripped even the liberty-gutting policies adopted by the U.S. government.
What's more, aside from Blair, Straw was the only top UK figure completely "in the loop" throughout the long, complex manipulations toward war. Along with his American counterpart, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Straw played a key role both in the transatlantic talks that engineered the act of aggression and the hugger-mugger manipulations at the UN.
And so, to close out its first phase, the Chilcot Inquiry recalled Straw -- who had already given one sweaty, white-knuckle performance on the witness stand a few weeks ago. With the implacable politesse of the true British mandarin, panelist Sir Lawrence Freedman seized the opportunity to suggest to the right honorable minister that the right honorable minister might, perhaps, be lying through his right honorable teeth in denying that Colin Powell had informed him quite clearly that the Americans were going to war, come hell or high water, in March 2003. As the Guardian notes, Freedman's questions "make it clear that [he] has obviously seen some very interesting paperwork. Here is the exchange, from the Guardian:
Freedman asked: Can you start by confirming that you knew that military action was planned by the US for the middle of March come what may? You were copied in, presumably, to reports of conversations between the prime minister and the president?
Straw replied: Yes, I don't think there was any key document that I should have seen that I didn't.
Freedman: Was there any point where [Colin] Powell said to you that even if Iraq complied, president Bush had already made a decision that he intended to go to war?
Straw replied: Certainly not to the best of my recollection.
Freedman went on: I was going to suggest you might want to look through your conversations and check.
Mr Straw at last got the hint: I will go through the records because I think you are trying to tell me something.
Yes, Mr Straw. He is trying to tell you, and the world, that he has the paper in his hand documenting your conversation with Colin Powell: a clear admission of the war crime of military aggression, as it reveals that there was not even a pretense of a legally justifiable casus belli among the American and British leaders -- just the cold, pre-determined intention to attack.
(And Powell, as we all remember, was the "good American," the "honorable American" in the run-up to war, a "decent man" who somehow got "railroaded" into making a false case for war before the entire world at the UN. A man so honorable and decent that the progressive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama proudly claimed him as one of his advisers, even as the million corpses from the war that Powell and Straw knowingly and willingly helped launch were rotting in the ground.)
But, as Ames notes, these kinds of oblique references are "the best we will get for now" from the panel: "At the end, Sir John Chilcot said that, however revealing the sessions have been, the great bulk of the evidence, telling us 'what really went on behind the scenes,' is in the documents." And the documents have not been and probably will not be released -- at least not for many decades, by which time Blair and Straw and Powell and Bush will have all lived out their days in wealth and comfort.
But although documents can be kept under wraps, and testimony can be falsified or prettified, the monstrous moral rot that has infected the warmongers can never be fully hidden. "For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak/With most miraculous organ." And Straw revealed his own moral depravity, his own arrogant and unfeeling blindness, in his remarks at the end of his testimony.
In his final statement, hoping to paint himself has a decent and honorable man (like Powell!), Straw spoke of how he "grieves" for the "huge heartache" suffered by "those who lost loved ones out there." But he could not resist offering up one more transparent lie -- a lie, furthermore, contradicted by his own testimony earlier in the session. Here is the lie:
The last thing I would say is this: the purpose of the action was not regime change.
Here is his testimony about an hour earlier, taken directly from the Inquiry transcripts:
SIR RODERIC LYNE: ... The American administration's stated objective was to change the regime in Iraq, and they didn't feel that further UN authorisation for that was required. At this point, these two objectives came to a crunch and time ran out for your diplomacy.
RT HON JACK STRAW MP: In terms of the American objective for regime change had gone back to President Clinton.
SIR RODERIC LYNE: Yes, we have been through all of that.
RT HON JACK STRAW MP: We have been through all of that.
Here the right honorable Mr Straw says clearly that the American aim was regime change, and that he knew it was regime change all along. Therefore, when "time for diplomacy ran out," he willingly and deliberately helped facilitate a war for regime change -- which in the circumstances obtaining in Iraq in 2003 was, by any possible construal, a blatant war crime under international law. It was, in terms of its illegality, the precise equivalent to the crime of aggression for which the Nazi leaders were prosecuted at Nuremberg.
Note too Straw's reference to "President Clinton." He apparently thinks this nod to a good "liberal" Democratic president somehow makes his kowtowing to the barbaric rightwingers of the Bush regime less humiliating. [A good deal of his testimony is taken up with whining about the "neocons" like Don Rumsfeld who put so much pressure on everybody to go to war.] But of course this reference makes his lie about the war's aims even more egregious, for it confirms the fact that America's intention to overthrow the Iraq regime -- officially enshrined by Congress and signed into law by Bill Clinton -- was known for years and years.
But Straw is not done yet. After assuring the grieving families of Britain that he himself -- yes, he, the great right honorable high minister of state -- feels their pain and shares their heartache, and after acknowledging that yes, it seems that perhaps a few mistakes were made (albeit only with the best intentions), he goes on to justify the whole mass-murdering enterprise:
But that having happened, I think there are few in Iraq, despite the bloodshed, would now say that they want to go back to what existed before 20 March 2003.
Putting aside Straw's unconscious but most apt echo of the poet Paul Celan's phrase for the unspeakable evil of the Holocaust -- "that which happened" -- the moral depravity on display here is astonishing, breathtaking, obscene. The right honorable minister might consider asking the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by the invasion and by the virulent extremists it loosened and empowered: would you want to go back to what existed -- i.e., you -- before 20 March 2003? The right honorable minister might want to ask the more than four million people driven from their homes by the war and the savage sectarian conflicts and "ethnic cleansing" it unleashed and abetted: would you want to go back to what existed before 20 March 2003? The right honorable minister might want to ask the tens of millions of Iraqis who have lost their loved ones: would you want to go back to what existed before 20 March 2003 -- and see if there were any alternatives for a better life other than a massive, unprovoked military invasion, mass death, mass destruction, chaos, collapse, civil war and violent terror from occupiers, mercenaries, sectarians and criminals?
O that the universe was not cold and indifferent, with no avenging furies to drive these bloodstained, sanctimonious wretches into soul-rending storms of madness and remorse. But there is not even an earthly venue where the scurrying servitors of power can receive even a modicum of justice. All we have are a few locked-down, buttoned-up, quasi-secret panels of worthies here and there now and then, to cause, at most, a moment or two of embarrassment before the servitors walk free to line their pockets and heap themselves with honors. Their only punishment, I suppose, must be to be what they are: the stunted, deadened husks of a full humanity that they have lost and will never recover.
Written by Chris Floyd
Tuesday, 09 February 2010 16:20
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1922-the-carp-of-truth-jack-straw-colin-powell-and-the-smoking-guns-of-war-crime.html
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out.
-- Shakespeare, Hamlet
Britain's "Chilcot Inquiry" into the origins of the invasion of Iraq has largely faded from the headlines, following Tony Blair's bravura display of pious bluster before the panel of Establishment worthies last month. And in truth, it has been a rather toothless affair, with the already deferential worthies further constrained by the narrow confines placed upon their investigation by the government: chiefly, the cloak of secrecy wrapped around the many documents that detail the deceptions and manipulations of the Bush and Blair regimes as they schemed their way to war.
But as Chris Ames points out in the Guardian, in the wind-up of its first phase, the Chilcot panel seem to be trying to tell the public, obliquely, about some of the smoking guns in these buried documents: an official record of knowing deceit that confirms, yet again, the damning fact that the US and UK were determined to invade Iraq no matter what: with or without UN backing, whether or not Iraq had WMD -- and as we have pointed out here for many years, even if Saddam Hussein were no longer in power. The documentary evidence shows that every single purported reason or justification for the war -- the WMD, connections to 9/11, the repressive nature of Saddam's regime -- was false to the core, and known to be false by the leaders who put these explanations forward.
The Chilcot panelists were terribly craven when it came to confronting Tony Blair -- and they are likely to be equally circumspect when they politely pose a few inquiries to Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, sometime in the next few weeks. But they seem to have chosen the odious figure of Jack Straw -- foreign secretary at the time of the Iraq invasion, now serving, laughably, as justice secretary -- as the outlet for their frustrations at the strictures of the inquiry and the soft-shoe shuffling they've encountered from witness after witness.
And while their kid-glove massage of Blair was inexcusable, the Chilcoteers are quite right to focus on Straw. Like so many of his "New Labour" colleagues, this pathetic figure began his career as a radical leftist, honed his political teeth fighting for the poor and disadvantaged during the ravaging Thatcher years -- then transformed himself into a scurrying toady for the powerful and the privileged, championing war, Big Money and neo-Thatcherism, launching stern crackdowns on the "anti-social" lower classes, and imposing draconian "security" measures that have far outstripped even the liberty-gutting policies adopted by the U.S. government.
What's more, aside from Blair, Straw was the only top UK figure completely "in the loop" throughout the long, complex manipulations toward war. Along with his American counterpart, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Straw played a key role both in the transatlantic talks that engineered the act of aggression and the hugger-mugger manipulations at the UN.
And so, to close out its first phase, the Chilcot Inquiry recalled Straw -- who had already given one sweaty, white-knuckle performance on the witness stand a few weeks ago. With the implacable politesse of the true British mandarin, panelist Sir Lawrence Freedman seized the opportunity to suggest to the right honorable minister that the right honorable minister might, perhaps, be lying through his right honorable teeth in denying that Colin Powell had informed him quite clearly that the Americans were going to war, come hell or high water, in March 2003. As the Guardian notes, Freedman's questions "make it clear that [he] has obviously seen some very interesting paperwork. Here is the exchange, from the Guardian:
Freedman asked: Can you start by confirming that you knew that military action was planned by the US for the middle of March come what may? You were copied in, presumably, to reports of conversations between the prime minister and the president?
Straw replied: Yes, I don't think there was any key document that I should have seen that I didn't.
Freedman: Was there any point where [Colin] Powell said to you that even if Iraq complied, president Bush had already made a decision that he intended to go to war?
Straw replied: Certainly not to the best of my recollection.
Freedman went on: I was going to suggest you might want to look through your conversations and check.
Mr Straw at last got the hint: I will go through the records because I think you are trying to tell me something.
Yes, Mr Straw. He is trying to tell you, and the world, that he has the paper in his hand documenting your conversation with Colin Powell: a clear admission of the war crime of military aggression, as it reveals that there was not even a pretense of a legally justifiable casus belli among the American and British leaders -- just the cold, pre-determined intention to attack.
(And Powell, as we all remember, was the "good American," the "honorable American" in the run-up to war, a "decent man" who somehow got "railroaded" into making a false case for war before the entire world at the UN. A man so honorable and decent that the progressive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama proudly claimed him as one of his advisers, even as the million corpses from the war that Powell and Straw knowingly and willingly helped launch were rotting in the ground.)
But, as Ames notes, these kinds of oblique references are "the best we will get for now" from the panel: "At the end, Sir John Chilcot said that, however revealing the sessions have been, the great bulk of the evidence, telling us 'what really went on behind the scenes,' is in the documents." And the documents have not been and probably will not be released -- at least not for many decades, by which time Blair and Straw and Powell and Bush will have all lived out their days in wealth and comfort.
But although documents can be kept under wraps, and testimony can be falsified or prettified, the monstrous moral rot that has infected the warmongers can never be fully hidden. "For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak/With most miraculous organ." And Straw revealed his own moral depravity, his own arrogant and unfeeling blindness, in his remarks at the end of his testimony.
In his final statement, hoping to paint himself has a decent and honorable man (like Powell!), Straw spoke of how he "grieves" for the "huge heartache" suffered by "those who lost loved ones out there." But he could not resist offering up one more transparent lie -- a lie, furthermore, contradicted by his own testimony earlier in the session. Here is the lie:
The last thing I would say is this: the purpose of the action was not regime change.
Here is his testimony about an hour earlier, taken directly from the Inquiry transcripts:
SIR RODERIC LYNE: ... The American administration's stated objective was to change the regime in Iraq, and they didn't feel that further UN authorisation for that was required. At this point, these two objectives came to a crunch and time ran out for your diplomacy.
RT HON JACK STRAW MP: In terms of the American objective for regime change had gone back to President Clinton.
SIR RODERIC LYNE: Yes, we have been through all of that.
RT HON JACK STRAW MP: We have been through all of that.
Here the right honorable Mr Straw says clearly that the American aim was regime change, and that he knew it was regime change all along. Therefore, when "time for diplomacy ran out," he willingly and deliberately helped facilitate a war for regime change -- which in the circumstances obtaining in Iraq in 2003 was, by any possible construal, a blatant war crime under international law. It was, in terms of its illegality, the precise equivalent to the crime of aggression for which the Nazi leaders were prosecuted at Nuremberg.
Note too Straw's reference to "President Clinton." He apparently thinks this nod to a good "liberal" Democratic president somehow makes his kowtowing to the barbaric rightwingers of the Bush regime less humiliating. [A good deal of his testimony is taken up with whining about the "neocons" like Don Rumsfeld who put so much pressure on everybody to go to war.] But of course this reference makes his lie about the war's aims even more egregious, for it confirms the fact that America's intention to overthrow the Iraq regime -- officially enshrined by Congress and signed into law by Bill Clinton -- was known for years and years.
But Straw is not done yet. After assuring the grieving families of Britain that he himself -- yes, he, the great right honorable high minister of state -- feels their pain and shares their heartache, and after acknowledging that yes, it seems that perhaps a few mistakes were made (albeit only with the best intentions), he goes on to justify the whole mass-murdering enterprise:
But that having happened, I think there are few in Iraq, despite the bloodshed, would now say that they want to go back to what existed before 20 March 2003.
Putting aside Straw's unconscious but most apt echo of the poet Paul Celan's phrase for the unspeakable evil of the Holocaust -- "that which happened" -- the moral depravity on display here is astonishing, breathtaking, obscene. The right honorable minister might consider asking the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by the invasion and by the virulent extremists it loosened and empowered: would you want to go back to what existed -- i.e., you -- before 20 March 2003? The right honorable minister might want to ask the more than four million people driven from their homes by the war and the savage sectarian conflicts and "ethnic cleansing" it unleashed and abetted: would you want to go back to what existed before 20 March 2003? The right honorable minister might want to ask the tens of millions of Iraqis who have lost their loved ones: would you want to go back to what existed before 20 March 2003 -- and see if there were any alternatives for a better life other than a massive, unprovoked military invasion, mass death, mass destruction, chaos, collapse, civil war and violent terror from occupiers, mercenaries, sectarians and criminals?
O that the universe was not cold and indifferent, with no avenging furies to drive these bloodstained, sanctimonious wretches into soul-rending storms of madness and remorse. But there is not even an earthly venue where the scurrying servitors of power can receive even a modicum of justice. All we have are a few locked-down, buttoned-up, quasi-secret panels of worthies here and there now and then, to cause, at most, a moment or two of embarrassment before the servitors walk free to line their pockets and heap themselves with honors. Their only punishment, I suppose, must be to be what they are: the stunted, deadened husks of a full humanity that they have lost and will never recover.
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Annals of Liberation:
Obama Surge Driving Thousands From Their Homes
Written by Chris Floyd
Saturday, 06 February 2010 18:32
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1921-annals-of-liberation-obama-surge-driving-thousands-from-their-homes.html
Barack Obama's Bush-like "surge" in Afghanistan has not even reached its full strength yet, but it is already driving tens of thousands of Afghan civilians from their homes, as they flee an upcoming massive attack in Helmand province.
The attack -- which the Americans have been trumpeting far in advance -- is designed, we're told, to "protect" the people of the key town of Marjah from the twin scourges of Taliban nogoodniks and drug traffickers. Yet the primary effect of the much-publicized preparations has been to send the residents of the town running for their lives to escape becoming part of the "collateral damage" that always attends these protective, humanitarian endeavors.
Indeed, the real aim of the advance publicity for the attack seems to be forcing mass numbers of civilians to hit the road -- which will then allow the American and British attackers to claim that anyone left behind is an enemy. This in turn will free up the attackers to use heavy weaponry in a "free-fire" zone to clear out the "diehards."
This is, of course, the same strategy used in the savage destruction of Fallujah in Iraq. The city was marked for death after an angry mob mutilated four American mercenaries -- following a series of civilian killings by occupation forces in the preceding weeks: provocations that have been conveniently airbrushed from history (just like the U.S. massacre of Somalis that preceded the infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident). An initial attack on Fallujah failed in the spring of 2004, largely due to political heat from the vast civilian suffering that was being reported from the city, chiefly from its medical centers.
But in the following months, the noose was tightened around Fallujah's neck. Tens of thousands fled the city to escape the coming second attack, which was well-publicized in advance. Story after story -- or rather, puff piece after puff piece -- about the preparations streamed from the embedded mainstream media reporters. The ostensible aim of the attack was to "eliminate" groups of "diehard terrorists" using Fallujah as a base. But of course, the months of PR about the looming operation meant that the putative targets had plenty of time to slip away. And they did.
Even so, as soon as George W. Bush's re-election was in the bag, the attack was launched. This time, the US brass were careful to eliminate the main source of bad press in the first attack: hospitals were a prime target. As I noted at the time:
One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. Unlike the first attack on Fallujah last spring, there was to be no unseemly footage of gutted children bleeding to death on hospital beds. This time – except for NBC's brief, heavily-edited, quickly-buried clip of the usual lone "bad apple" shooting a wounded Iraqi prisoner – the visuals were rigorously scrubbed.
So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.
And now Marjah is being readied for the Fallujah option. (For as we all know, your real tough hombres never take any option off the table.) As the Guardian reports:
Ten of thousands of Afghan civilians are abandoning an area of central Helmland where UK and US forces are set to launch one of the biggest operations of the year. The evacuation of most civilians from the town of Marjah and surrounding areas will give commanders greater leeway to use mortars-and-air-to ground missiles which have enraged Afghans in the past when responsible for civilian deaths. ...
US generals have unusually made no secret of their plan for a major onslaught against the town close to Helmand's besieged provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. Larry Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force which will spearhead the fight, has said he is "not looking for a fair fight." ...
A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, as the Nato troops are known, said that the main reason for publicity for the operation was to encourage insurgents to leave, but if civilians were also encouraged to evacuate that would be "helpful".
Yes, it's always helpful to do some pre-winnowing of a densely populated area before you destroy it with mortars and air-to-ground missiles. But of course, while thousands of civilians flee, thousands more have "remained because they could not afford to leave," the Guardian reports. How many of these will be re-classifed as "enemy fighters" when their corpses are found in the ruins?
The Afghans themselves know the score:
A Marjah resident, an elder reached by phone, who was not prepared to give his name, said he had evacuated his family a week ago because he feared "the worst attack ever".
"Always when they storm a village the foreign troops never care about civilian casualties at all. And at the end of the day they report the deaths of women and children as the deaths of Taliban," he said.
Slaughter, ruin, fear and exile: yeah, it's the Good War, all right! "The war we should be fighting," as our tough-guy libs kept telling us when putting their always serious, always "nuanced" objections to the Iraq "fiasco" in proper context. Well, they have it now, the war they always wanted. And who knows? Maybe soon they can have their own Fallujah! Won't that be a great apotheosis of Progressivism?
Written by Chris Floyd
Saturday, 06 February 2010 18:32
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1921-annals-of-liberation-obama-surge-driving-thousands-from-their-homes.html
Barack Obama's Bush-like "surge" in Afghanistan has not even reached its full strength yet, but it is already driving tens of thousands of Afghan civilians from their homes, as they flee an upcoming massive attack in Helmand province.
The attack -- which the Americans have been trumpeting far in advance -- is designed, we're told, to "protect" the people of the key town of Marjah from the twin scourges of Taliban nogoodniks and drug traffickers. Yet the primary effect of the much-publicized preparations has been to send the residents of the town running for their lives to escape becoming part of the "collateral damage" that always attends these protective, humanitarian endeavors.
Indeed, the real aim of the advance publicity for the attack seems to be forcing mass numbers of civilians to hit the road -- which will then allow the American and British attackers to claim that anyone left behind is an enemy. This in turn will free up the attackers to use heavy weaponry in a "free-fire" zone to clear out the "diehards."
This is, of course, the same strategy used in the savage destruction of Fallujah in Iraq. The city was marked for death after an angry mob mutilated four American mercenaries -- following a series of civilian killings by occupation forces in the preceding weeks: provocations that have been conveniently airbrushed from history (just like the U.S. massacre of Somalis that preceded the infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident). An initial attack on Fallujah failed in the spring of 2004, largely due to political heat from the vast civilian suffering that was being reported from the city, chiefly from its medical centers.
But in the following months, the noose was tightened around Fallujah's neck. Tens of thousands fled the city to escape the coming second attack, which was well-publicized in advance. Story after story -- or rather, puff piece after puff piece -- about the preparations streamed from the embedded mainstream media reporters. The ostensible aim of the attack was to "eliminate" groups of "diehard terrorists" using Fallujah as a base. But of course, the months of PR about the looming operation meant that the putative targets had plenty of time to slip away. And they did.
Even so, as soon as George W. Bush's re-election was in the bag, the attack was launched. This time, the US brass were careful to eliminate the main source of bad press in the first attack: hospitals were a prime target. As I noted at the time:
One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. Unlike the first attack on Fallujah last spring, there was to be no unseemly footage of gutted children bleeding to death on hospital beds. This time – except for NBC's brief, heavily-edited, quickly-buried clip of the usual lone "bad apple" shooting a wounded Iraqi prisoner – the visuals were rigorously scrubbed.
So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.
And now Marjah is being readied for the Fallujah option. (For as we all know, your real tough hombres never take any option off the table.) As the Guardian reports:
Ten of thousands of Afghan civilians are abandoning an area of central Helmland where UK and US forces are set to launch one of the biggest operations of the year. The evacuation of most civilians from the town of Marjah and surrounding areas will give commanders greater leeway to use mortars-and-air-to ground missiles which have enraged Afghans in the past when responsible for civilian deaths. ...
US generals have unusually made no secret of their plan for a major onslaught against the town close to Helmand's besieged provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. Larry Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force which will spearhead the fight, has said he is "not looking for a fair fight." ...
A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, as the Nato troops are known, said that the main reason for publicity for the operation was to encourage insurgents to leave, but if civilians were also encouraged to evacuate that would be "helpful".
Yes, it's always helpful to do some pre-winnowing of a densely populated area before you destroy it with mortars and air-to-ground missiles. But of course, while thousands of civilians flee, thousands more have "remained because they could not afford to leave," the Guardian reports. How many of these will be re-classifed as "enemy fighters" when their corpses are found in the ruins?
The Afghans themselves know the score:
A Marjah resident, an elder reached by phone, who was not prepared to give his name, said he had evacuated his family a week ago because he feared "the worst attack ever".
"Always when they storm a village the foreign troops never care about civilian casualties at all. And at the end of the day they report the deaths of women and children as the deaths of Taliban," he said.
Slaughter, ruin, fear and exile: yeah, it's the Good War, all right! "The war we should be fighting," as our tough-guy libs kept telling us when putting their always serious, always "nuanced" objections to the Iraq "fiasco" in proper context. Well, they have it now, the war they always wanted. And who knows? Maybe soon they can have their own Fallujah! Won't that be a great apotheosis of Progressivism?
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Walk a Mile...
By Sheila Samples
February 6, 2010
I know you need your sleep now,
I know your life's been hard.
But many men are falling,
where you promised to stand guard.
- Leonard Cohen
My friend Bernie says he's suffering from Afghanistan information exhaustion. "During all those months that Obama was dragging his feet about escalating the war in Afghanistan, did you ever get the impression," he asked, "that foxes were in the hen house, chickens were squawking and running around crazily, wolves were tearing the foxes to pieces, and farmers were shooting wildly into the coop with no regard for the innocent?"
I stared at him, mouth agape, my mind trying to shore up all that activity. "Well ... I --"
"And that's just the generals -- David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal -- and their boss, or cohort, defense secretary Robert Gates. They were everywhere -- everywhere!" Bernie said, rolling his eyes. "And still are. Turn on the TV, pick up a newspaper, open a magazine, check out Congress, look under a rock -- peek behind a tree -- and there they are. They're a three-man brigade -- "we're going in, we're coming out -- we're winning, we're losing. Or maybe not. We won't know for 15 years...20 years...or until it's over --"
Bernie shook his head in disgust, and headed for the door. "You keep telling me to walk a mile in Obama's shoes; that he's got a lot on his plate. Well," Bernie said grimly, "every time I try to do that, I nearly drown. And, if you're paying attention, you know he's having trouble keeping his own balance out there on those turbulent partisan political seas."
President...who?
Bernie says he'd like to give President Obama credit, or blame him, for the decision to expand the war in Afghanistan, but is convinced that Obama's input was neither wanted nor accepted by the three top war dogs. I agree. What those of us familiar with military protocol -- with a properly functioning chain of command -- witnessed was a crude, but effective, military coup.
Aided by an eager and complicit media, for months these insubordinates fueled the fire of Obama's inability to come to a quick decision to meet their demands. They brushed him aside as idealistic and inexperienced. Commander-in-Chief? C'mon, get real. During the recent health-care fiasco, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) put into words what all Republicans, not a few Democrats, and far too many military brass think of Obama...
"...I believe he didn't serve in government long enough to understand really how things work...Remember, he was in the Senate four years, but effectively only two years because he spent two years where he was hardly ever here at all -- he was campaigning for president. He really does not have an understanding of how Congress operates."
The hateful audacity of Chuck "Obama wants to kill your grandma" Grassley is the typical Republican mindset concerning this president. Each time Republicans push him or challenge him, rather than push back or kick ass, Obama backs down, preferring to compromise to reach a bipartisan agreement. Unfortunately, Republicans don't work that way. They want it all, and the only way they know to get it is to -- as Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol said -- "go for the kill."
The military also goes for the kill. But that is its mission -- what it is trained to do. And Obama needs to understand the military does not function on compromises or bipartisanship. It has a chain of command, and when the Commander-in-Chief, after considering input from field commanders, makes his decision -- gives an order -- all those throughout that chain of command, whether they agree or not, salute and continue to march.
That is not happening here. After ten "war council" meetings and months of considering input, an angry Obama rejected McChrystal's plan that had been leaked to Bob Woodward at the Washington Post, and informed McChrystal that his goal of doubling the force would not be met.
Two days later, on Dec 1, Obama announced his decision from the US Military Academy at West Point. He didn't mention smoking terrorists out, getting them on the run and bringing them to justice, but he dredged up 9/11 and why we should remain convulsed in fear. He spoke of "huge challenges," "bold action," "seizing the initiative," and "long-term consequences." While we were trying to figure out if former president George Bush had left a copy of his speech on the Academy podium, Obama announced he was sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan but insisted since America has no interest in fighting an endless war, 2011 was a definite time frame. He said unequivocally that there would be no counterinsurgency and, beginning in July of 2011, the troops would begin to come home.
Or not. Nobody saluted. Gates, Petraeus and McChrystal, along with Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Michael G. Mullen continued to march in lockstep. They raced to the media both here and abroad, where they shrugged aside Obama's promise of a July 2011 transition, saying it was an "open issue." They insisted that counterinsurgency and special ops remained "embedded" in their war strategy. Ten days after being rejected by Obama, McChrystal's request to double the size of the Army and police to 400,000 remained unchanged.
Foxes, Chickens and Wolves
Obama should take a long, hard look at the Dick Cheney "stay behinds" who are wreaking havoc, especially in defense; insubordinates who openly challenge his decisions and defy his orders while whipping up confusion with daily conflicting announcements and interviews. Perhaps he should start with Cheney who not only stayed behind but remains in his Virginia bunker, just a stone's throw from CIA headquarters, where he "goes for the kill" by giving hate speeches and issuing press releases accusing Obama of being a coward that are published verbatim by the media.
Just hours after Obama's speech, the placid, eerily serene Gates, along with Mullen and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, testified before Congress that troop withdrawal depended on conditions on the ground rather than a deadline. The consensus seemed to be that their commander-in-chief was simply indulging in "wishful thinking."
Days later, according to Think Progress, Gates, Petraeus, Clinton, and another Cheney "stay behind," National Security Adviser James Jones, were all over the Sunday talk shows. Gates told CBS Meet the Press, "We will have a significant -- we will have 100,000 forces -- troops there. And they are not leaving -- in July of 2011."
Jones agreed with Gates on CNN's State of the Union, repeating what he had told BBC two days earlier -- "It's very important that people in Afghanistan hear this very clearly: this is not a withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan in 2011, it is a decision to turn over to the Afghans some of the responsibility where they are ready to accept that responsibility. But in no manner, shape or form is the United States leaving Afghanistan in 2011." (emphasis added)
These stay behinds, their shoulders blazing with stars, now so eager to expand their military industrial killing spree throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan -- even Iran -- are like wolves circling their prey. They are presenting a powerful, united front against Obama.
And none has refused to follow orders more relentlessly than McChrystal, former commander of the clandestine Joint Special Operations Command, whose secret assassination teams answered only to him, and he answered to no one. McChrystal is a frightening lone wolf. Check him out here, here, here, and here.
It's difficult to imagine President Obama, after promising change -- promising to stand guard and end our wars of aggression -- deliberately putting himself in a position where he appears impotent when he is ignored and over-ruled by subordinates. He has been warned by those who have been there, done that. He is being warned by the people who are gathering for massive national anti-war marches in Washington D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco on March 20 -- the seventh anniversary of Bush and Cheney's illegal war of aggression against Iraq.
It's time for Obama to put aside empty, soaring speeches and come to grips with who his enemies really are. It's time for him to step onto dry land and walk a mile in his own shoes -- while he still has a pair.
Sheila Samples http://sheilastuff.blogspot.com/ is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites.
February 6, 2010
I know you need your sleep now,
I know your life's been hard.
But many men are falling,
where you promised to stand guard.
- Leonard Cohen
My friend Bernie says he's suffering from Afghanistan information exhaustion. "During all those months that Obama was dragging his feet about escalating the war in Afghanistan, did you ever get the impression," he asked, "that foxes were in the hen house, chickens were squawking and running around crazily, wolves were tearing the foxes to pieces, and farmers were shooting wildly into the coop with no regard for the innocent?"
I stared at him, mouth agape, my mind trying to shore up all that activity. "Well ... I --"
"And that's just the generals -- David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal -- and their boss, or cohort, defense secretary Robert Gates. They were everywhere -- everywhere!" Bernie said, rolling his eyes. "And still are. Turn on the TV, pick up a newspaper, open a magazine, check out Congress, look under a rock -- peek behind a tree -- and there they are. They're a three-man brigade -- "we're going in, we're coming out -- we're winning, we're losing. Or maybe not. We won't know for 15 years...20 years...or until it's over --"
Bernie shook his head in disgust, and headed for the door. "You keep telling me to walk a mile in Obama's shoes; that he's got a lot on his plate. Well," Bernie said grimly, "every time I try to do that, I nearly drown. And, if you're paying attention, you know he's having trouble keeping his own balance out there on those turbulent partisan political seas."
President...who?
Bernie says he'd like to give President Obama credit, or blame him, for the decision to expand the war in Afghanistan, but is convinced that Obama's input was neither wanted nor accepted by the three top war dogs. I agree. What those of us familiar with military protocol -- with a properly functioning chain of command -- witnessed was a crude, but effective, military coup.
Aided by an eager and complicit media, for months these insubordinates fueled the fire of Obama's inability to come to a quick decision to meet their demands. They brushed him aside as idealistic and inexperienced. Commander-in-Chief? C'mon, get real. During the recent health-care fiasco, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) put into words what all Republicans, not a few Democrats, and far too many military brass think of Obama...
"...I believe he didn't serve in government long enough to understand really how things work...Remember, he was in the Senate four years, but effectively only two years because he spent two years where he was hardly ever here at all -- he was campaigning for president. He really does not have an understanding of how Congress operates."
The hateful audacity of Chuck "Obama wants to kill your grandma" Grassley is the typical Republican mindset concerning this president. Each time Republicans push him or challenge him, rather than push back or kick ass, Obama backs down, preferring to compromise to reach a bipartisan agreement. Unfortunately, Republicans don't work that way. They want it all, and the only way they know to get it is to -- as Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol said -- "go for the kill."
The military also goes for the kill. But that is its mission -- what it is trained to do. And Obama needs to understand the military does not function on compromises or bipartisanship. It has a chain of command, and when the Commander-in-Chief, after considering input from field commanders, makes his decision -- gives an order -- all those throughout that chain of command, whether they agree or not, salute and continue to march.
That is not happening here. After ten "war council" meetings and months of considering input, an angry Obama rejected McChrystal's plan that had been leaked to Bob Woodward at the Washington Post, and informed McChrystal that his goal of doubling the force would not be met.
Two days later, on Dec 1, Obama announced his decision from the US Military Academy at West Point. He didn't mention smoking terrorists out, getting them on the run and bringing them to justice, but he dredged up 9/11 and why we should remain convulsed in fear. He spoke of "huge challenges," "bold action," "seizing the initiative," and "long-term consequences." While we were trying to figure out if former president George Bush had left a copy of his speech on the Academy podium, Obama announced he was sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan but insisted since America has no interest in fighting an endless war, 2011 was a definite time frame. He said unequivocally that there would be no counterinsurgency and, beginning in July of 2011, the troops would begin to come home.
Or not. Nobody saluted. Gates, Petraeus and McChrystal, along with Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Michael G. Mullen continued to march in lockstep. They raced to the media both here and abroad, where they shrugged aside Obama's promise of a July 2011 transition, saying it was an "open issue." They insisted that counterinsurgency and special ops remained "embedded" in their war strategy. Ten days after being rejected by Obama, McChrystal's request to double the size of the Army and police to 400,000 remained unchanged.
Foxes, Chickens and Wolves
Obama should take a long, hard look at the Dick Cheney "stay behinds" who are wreaking havoc, especially in defense; insubordinates who openly challenge his decisions and defy his orders while whipping up confusion with daily conflicting announcements and interviews. Perhaps he should start with Cheney who not only stayed behind but remains in his Virginia bunker, just a stone's throw from CIA headquarters, where he "goes for the kill" by giving hate speeches and issuing press releases accusing Obama of being a coward that are published verbatim by the media.
Just hours after Obama's speech, the placid, eerily serene Gates, along with Mullen and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, testified before Congress that troop withdrawal depended on conditions on the ground rather than a deadline. The consensus seemed to be that their commander-in-chief was simply indulging in "wishful thinking."
Days later, according to Think Progress, Gates, Petraeus, Clinton, and another Cheney "stay behind," National Security Adviser James Jones, were all over the Sunday talk shows. Gates told CBS Meet the Press, "We will have a significant -- we will have 100,000 forces -- troops there. And they are not leaving -- in July of 2011."
Jones agreed with Gates on CNN's State of the Union, repeating what he had told BBC two days earlier -- "It's very important that people in Afghanistan hear this very clearly: this is not a withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan in 2011, it is a decision to turn over to the Afghans some of the responsibility where they are ready to accept that responsibility. But in no manner, shape or form is the United States leaving Afghanistan in 2011." (emphasis added)
These stay behinds, their shoulders blazing with stars, now so eager to expand their military industrial killing spree throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan -- even Iran -- are like wolves circling their prey. They are presenting a powerful, united front against Obama.
And none has refused to follow orders more relentlessly than McChrystal, former commander of the clandestine Joint Special Operations Command, whose secret assassination teams answered only to him, and he answered to no one. McChrystal is a frightening lone wolf. Check him out here, here, here, and here.
It's difficult to imagine President Obama, after promising change -- promising to stand guard and end our wars of aggression -- deliberately putting himself in a position where he appears impotent when he is ignored and over-ruled by subordinates. He has been warned by those who have been there, done that. He is being warned by the people who are gathering for massive national anti-war marches in Washington D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco on March 20 -- the seventh anniversary of Bush and Cheney's illegal war of aggression against Iraq.
It's time for Obama to put aside empty, soaring speeches and come to grips with who his enemies really are. It's time for him to step onto dry land and walk a mile in his own shoes -- while he still has a pair.
Sheila Samples http://sheilastuff.blogspot.com/ is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites.
Friday, February 05, 2010
Super Bowl ad hypocrisy
The sports media's love affair with Tim Tebow's "courage" is excusing propaganda for a right-wing organization with creepy connections.
February 5, 2010
Dave Zirin
http://socialistworker.org/2010/02/05/super-bowl-ad-hypocrisy
IN OUR 5,000-channel, tweeting, shouting culture of constant distraction, there are precious few annual events that unite the national gaze. In fact, there is really only one: the Super Bowl.
Over the last two decades, ratings for everything from the World Series to the Olympics have stumbled--but the NFL championship gets stronger with age, with Super Bowl Sunday becoming a de facto national holiday. The cultural power of the big game cannot be overstated, and that's exactly why CBS's decision to air an anti-abortion ad funded by Focus on the Family was so terribly wrongheaded.
The ad features Heisman award-winning Florida quarterback and staunch evangelical Christian Tim Tebow alongside his mother, Pam, speaking out against abortion. Pam tells the world how she ignored a doctor's advice while on a missionary trip in the Philippines and decided to have her fifth child, Tim.
She was suffering from a serious tropical illness, the story goes, and doctors thought that having the child would kill her, but she "chose life" for her child and the result is an All-American quarterback.
There is something sketchy about this story--given that abortion is illegal in the Philippines, carrying a six-year prison sentence. It seems highly unlikely the procedure would be recommended to an evangelical missionary.
But this isn't about truth in advertising. It's about Tim Tebow continuing his self-proclaimed goal to use football as a "missionary." After a college career wearing eyeblack with Bible verses stenciled in, it's the next step in raising his platform as the most outspoken evangelical this side of Sarah Palin.
To be clear, we should absolutely support Tebow's right to state his political beliefs loudly and proudly, and we should soundly reject the concept that jocks should just "shut up and play."
But there are other things we should soundly reject as well. We should reject the utter hypocrisy on display by CBS in airing this ad. The network has long stated that it has Super Bowl rules against "advocacy ads."
In 2004, the network rejected a Super Bowl ad from the United Church of Christ in which a church is shown opening its doors to a gay couple. The network has also refused ads from PETA, MoveOn.org and many others. This year, it even rejected a humorous commercial from a gay dating site called mancrunch.com.
And yet, the network takes money from Focus on the Family--which, according to People for the American Way, is "anti-choice, anti-gay and against sex education curricula that are not strictly abstinence-only."
FOCUS ON the Family's guru is the infamous and recently retired James Dobson. Dobson is a frightening fellow, choosing the second night of Passover last year to say, "The biggest Holocaust in world history came out of the Supreme Court" with Roe v. Wade.
Dobson's other pet project, the Family Research Council, has connections to white supremacist organizations like the Council of Conservative Citizens. In 1996, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke $82,000 for his mailing list.
The idea that this organization is acceptable to CBS--while MoveOn or PETA or the United Church of Christ are too radical--actually adds up to a right-wing assault on free speech. We could also point out the irony that this year, like all others, ads for the U.S. armed forces will be omnipresent, but that's not considered advocacy, either. I doubt there would be equal time for Iraq Veterans Against the War, even if it could pony up the millions.
The other thing we need to reject is the sports media's love affair with Tim Tebow's "courage" in being a part of this ad. People like CBS's Jim Nantz and Sports Illustrated's Peter King are like tweens at a Justin Bieber concert when it comes to Tebow, with King recently writing, "What I heard from Tebow was the voice of a kid with convictions, who doesn't shrink from what he believes--even if it might hurt his draft prospects."
Wrong: The fact that Tebow has massive accuracy problems and can't take a snap from center without fumbling is what is going to hurt his draft prospects.
Moreover, it rankles that Tebow is being extolled for his courage while athletes who have spoken out against militarism (Carlos Delgado and, most famously, Muhammad Ali) or racism (Josh Howard) are called crazy and tiresome.
Let's hope that the next time an athlete speaks out--even if it's in the service of a left-wing cause--the media remember their praise of Tebow and cut him or her some slack. And let's hope that the next time CBS gets an ad query from a group with an agenda diametrically opposed to Focus on the Family's, gives it equal time.
Hosting the Super Bowl, this great unifying event, ought to be considered a privilege. And CBS has already failed the test.
First published in the New York Daily News.
February 5, 2010
Dave Zirin
http://socialistworker.org/2010/02/05/super-bowl-ad-hypocrisy
IN OUR 5,000-channel, tweeting, shouting culture of constant distraction, there are precious few annual events that unite the national gaze. In fact, there is really only one: the Super Bowl.
Over the last two decades, ratings for everything from the World Series to the Olympics have stumbled--but the NFL championship gets stronger with age, with Super Bowl Sunday becoming a de facto national holiday. The cultural power of the big game cannot be overstated, and that's exactly why CBS's decision to air an anti-abortion ad funded by Focus on the Family was so terribly wrongheaded.
The ad features Heisman award-winning Florida quarterback and staunch evangelical Christian Tim Tebow alongside his mother, Pam, speaking out against abortion. Pam tells the world how she ignored a doctor's advice while on a missionary trip in the Philippines and decided to have her fifth child, Tim.
She was suffering from a serious tropical illness, the story goes, and doctors thought that having the child would kill her, but she "chose life" for her child and the result is an All-American quarterback.
There is something sketchy about this story--given that abortion is illegal in the Philippines, carrying a six-year prison sentence. It seems highly unlikely the procedure would be recommended to an evangelical missionary.
But this isn't about truth in advertising. It's about Tim Tebow continuing his self-proclaimed goal to use football as a "missionary." After a college career wearing eyeblack with Bible verses stenciled in, it's the next step in raising his platform as the most outspoken evangelical this side of Sarah Palin.
To be clear, we should absolutely support Tebow's right to state his political beliefs loudly and proudly, and we should soundly reject the concept that jocks should just "shut up and play."
But there are other things we should soundly reject as well. We should reject the utter hypocrisy on display by CBS in airing this ad. The network has long stated that it has Super Bowl rules against "advocacy ads."
In 2004, the network rejected a Super Bowl ad from the United Church of Christ in which a church is shown opening its doors to a gay couple. The network has also refused ads from PETA, MoveOn.org and many others. This year, it even rejected a humorous commercial from a gay dating site called mancrunch.com.
And yet, the network takes money from Focus on the Family--which, according to People for the American Way, is "anti-choice, anti-gay and against sex education curricula that are not strictly abstinence-only."
FOCUS ON the Family's guru is the infamous and recently retired James Dobson. Dobson is a frightening fellow, choosing the second night of Passover last year to say, "The biggest Holocaust in world history came out of the Supreme Court" with Roe v. Wade.
Dobson's other pet project, the Family Research Council, has connections to white supremacist organizations like the Council of Conservative Citizens. In 1996, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke $82,000 for his mailing list.
The idea that this organization is acceptable to CBS--while MoveOn or PETA or the United Church of Christ are too radical--actually adds up to a right-wing assault on free speech. We could also point out the irony that this year, like all others, ads for the U.S. armed forces will be omnipresent, but that's not considered advocacy, either. I doubt there would be equal time for Iraq Veterans Against the War, even if it could pony up the millions.
The other thing we need to reject is the sports media's love affair with Tim Tebow's "courage" in being a part of this ad. People like CBS's Jim Nantz and Sports Illustrated's Peter King are like tweens at a Justin Bieber concert when it comes to Tebow, with King recently writing, "What I heard from Tebow was the voice of a kid with convictions, who doesn't shrink from what he believes--even if it might hurt his draft prospects."
Wrong: The fact that Tebow has massive accuracy problems and can't take a snap from center without fumbling is what is going to hurt his draft prospects.
Moreover, it rankles that Tebow is being extolled for his courage while athletes who have spoken out against militarism (Carlos Delgado and, most famously, Muhammad Ali) or racism (Josh Howard) are called crazy and tiresome.
Let's hope that the next time an athlete speaks out--even if it's in the service of a left-wing cause--the media remember their praise of Tebow and cut him or her some slack. And let's hope that the next time CBS gets an ad query from a group with an agenda diametrically opposed to Focus on the Family's, gives it equal time.
Hosting the Super Bowl, this great unifying event, ought to be considered a privilege. And CBS has already failed the test.
First published in the New York Daily News.
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