Petraeus, the Iraq circus ringmaster, leads the chorus in indicting Iran

yeah, it's not only about making goddam sure the u.s. stays in iraq for the next 10,000 years, it's also about making goddam sure that every possible piece of groundwork is laid for our NEXT war against iran... bastard sons-of-bitches...

Army Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were critical of Iran when they testified Tuesday before the Senate , barely giving credit for an Iranian-brokered cease-fire that curbed the killing after a week of Shiite-on-Shiite bloodshed in southern Iraq and Baghdad.

then we have THE SUPREME GRAND EXALTED BASTARD SON-OF-A-BITCH, JOE LIEBERMAN...

"[A]s I hear the questions and the statements today, it seems to me that there's a kind of 'hear no progress in Iraq, see no progress in Iraq' and most of all 'speak of no progress' in Iraq.

[...]

Hey, let's be honest about this. The Iraqi political leadership has achieved a lot more political reconciliation and progress since September than the American political leadership has. So we've got to give some credit for that."

[...]

Naturally, Lieberman was quick to inject Iran into these proceedings, dutifully asking the leading question, "Let me ask you first, are the Iranians still training and equipping Iraqi extremists who are going back into Iraq and killing American soldiers?"

then there's the voice of reason...

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday called for a "diplomatic surge" including talks with US foe Iran, to help stabilize the situation in Iraq.

[...]

"We should be talking to them as well," Obama told the top US General in Iraq David Petraeus and US ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker.

"I do not believe we are going to be able to stabilize the situation without that" said Obama, adding that a plan for US troop withdrawals was needed to force Iraqi factions to work together.

talk...? why, THAT'S only for WUSSIES... REAL AMERICANS go to war...

Obama has taken fire from his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and Republican presumptive nominee John McCain for his offer to talk, if elected president, with the leaders of several US foes including Iran.

talking is free, easy to do, and might actually accomplish something, but since it doesn't feed the giant, gaping maw of the government-military-industrial corporatocracy, why the hell would we want to TALK, fercryinoutloud...?

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Offering advice to the Bush administration on Pakistan

shahin m. cole, a pakistani lawyer residing in the u.s., suggests some ways the u.s. can respond to martial law and the constitutional crisis in pakistan...

from juan cole's informed comment...

• Americans, who enjoy constitutional liberties of long standing, should support the lawyers in their protest against the suspension of the Pakistani constitution.

• The US should be earmarking aid to Pakistan not for military use but for funding and building schools for the millions of poor Pakistani children (some of them still from refugee Afghan families displaced by the US struggle with the Soviet Union in the Cold War). Such schools should stress east-west understanding.

• Washington should keep pressure on the present government to hold free and fair elections for parliament on schedule. US aid for election observers and voter education would be well spent.

my response...

a noble sentiment but completely at cross-purposes with the reasons the aid is offered in the first place... the u.s. is spending money to make more money, channeling vast sums of taxpayer-generated funds to pakistan in a quid pro quo, namely that pakistan will turn around and send that money right back to the u.s. in the form of massive defense purchases, purchases that only serve to maintain the rivers of cash flowing into the coffers of the already super-rich elites that call the shots in the u.s... offering principled advice to the criminals that run the united states is, as has been abundantly apparent for the past six and one half years, an exercise in complete futility... the u.s. will not engage in principled foreign policy unless and until there are principled people placed in office... in the meantime, your energy would be better utilized in helping to find a way to get those people removed...

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Room to train our warriors

Piñon Canyon, east of Trinidad, Colorado

a friend in southern colorado had tipped me off to the controversy that was brewing over this but couldn't tell me what the land was wanted for... i did a search of the local newspaper but couldn't come up with anything... now, i see what the fuss is all about...

The U.S. Army wants 418,000 acres of private ranch land to triple the size of its Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, a training area considered suitable -- some would say essential -- for preparing American warriors to do battle in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The 1,000-square-mile facility would be 15 times the size of the District.

Several dozen ranchers and members of 15 county commissions that voted to oppose the project find themselves pitted against the Pentagon and Colorado business interests in a struggle over property rights, personal heritage and the contested priorities of national security.

[...]

In Piñon Canyon, where prehistoric dinosaur tracks lie near a surviving section of the 1800s-era Santa Fe Trail, the Army sees an opportunity when other training grounds are overtaxed by the demands of war. The move is also part of a long-term reorganization of the armed forces.

To Colorado business leaders, the expansion would help consolidate and enhance the state's growing role as a military hub: It is home to Fort Carson, the Air Force Academy and the U.S. Northern Command.

[...]

The land under discussion is an arid plateau that occupies a sparsely populated slice of Colorado near the New Mexico border. It lies alongside 235,000 acres acquired by the Army in the early 1980s. The open spaces provide rambling room for 67-ton tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles to practice maneuvers within a few hours of Fort Carson, home to a dozen Army units.

i grew up in colorado springs, one of the most military-obsessed (NORAD, Peterson AFB, the Air Force Academy, Ft. Carson, military retirees), right-wing (rabid libertarian, neocon, movement conservative, 24 per-centers), christian fundamentalist (Focus on the Family and at least a hundred similar organizations) towns you will ever run across, so it's no surprise to hear a colorado springs chamber of commerce shill spouting something like this...

Brian A. Binn, president of the military affairs committee of the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, said the benefits to the state economy and national defense are clear. If the ranchers triumph and the training site is not created, he added, other states would be all too willing to accept the troops and the business.

"We have to look sometimes at what's better for the national defense, the greater good," Binn said. "It is a national security issue. The men and women of our armed services deserve nothing less."

the issue isn't jobs, altho' that's one way to frame it... it isn't about needing more space to train our military, altho' that's certainly another way to frame it... it isn't about private property, altho' that's ANOTHER way to frame it... and it isn't even about preserving and protecting the environment, altho' that's yet ANOTHER way to frame it... it's about the fact that the united states is a militaristic, war-mongering country with an insatiable appetite for controlling as much of the world's resources as possible, and an unending need for warm bodies to toss in the path of death and destruction... don't believe me...? take a look at the very well-chosen word carefully and unobtrusively placed in the first paragraph of the above wapo excerpt... did you catch it...?

WE DON'T HAVE SOLDIERS
IN THE U.S. ANY MORE,
WE HAVE WARRIORS!

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"Every citizen is faced with a simple choice: organize or perish"

finally, somebody says what i've been yammering about for the past three years: there is nothing incompetent about the Bush administration...

charles sullivan...

These days it is popular to describe the events occurring in Iraq as the result of incompetence, mismanagement, miscalculation, and benevolent bungling; to characterize them as a well intentioned mistake on the road to freedom and democracy, rather than the moral abomination they are. What we have in Iraq is not the result of any of these phenomena. It is the intended consequence of cold calculation to bomb Iraq into submission, to thoroughly disorient its people, and to apply economic shock therapy before they can recognize what is being done to them.

The intent is to invade sovereign nations either militarily, economically, or both; and to force unbridled capitalism on them. This means, of course, that we must first overthrow the existing governments—many of them democracies, and replace them with ruthless dictatorships willing to betray their own people, and amenable to opening up their countries to corporate exploitation and privatization.

So called free market capitalism requires corrupt leadership on the receiving end that is willing to accept bribes while becoming a puppet to the US. This is how some of the must brutal regimes in the world came into power. Corporate America is always beating the drums of war in search of profits and ever increasing shares of the world’s markets. Enough is never enough—they want it all.

Aside from overthrowing popularly elected governments, the unspoken objective of mature capitalism, guided by the doctrine of economic shock therapy, is to turn once sovereign nations into totally deregulated corporate states, answerable to no one.

This objective will be accomplished by privatizing the nationalized infrastructure, inviting in foreign investors, removing tariffs that protect local business and cooperatives from predatory multinational corporations, and downsizing the workforce; by eliminating social spending, and removing all forms of corporate controls. In short, by conducting a fire sale of each nation’s stolen assets and auctioning them off at bargain basement prices to wealthy multinational investors.

The intent is to create an unfettered corporate state in which the market, driven solely by profit, is the final arbiter of all things; an Orwellian world in which human rights, labor laws, environmental protections, and social justice do not even exist, much less enter into market equations.

[...]

We are witnessing naked greed unleashed upon the world like a swarm of locusts the size of North America. The fabulously wealthy are realizing obscene profits, while the majority of the world’s people are forced into economic servitude, many of them living in abject poverty, scratching out a bleak existence on sweatshop wages under horrendous conditions.

[...]

If the world were as enamored with capitalism as its adherents proclaim, there would be no need to masquerade it as anything other than what it is—economic self interest for the privileged, driven by insatiable greed, funded by the public treasure. There would be no need to impose it on the world through high tech militarism and occupation, preceded by elaborate propagandistic media blitzes and tricks. All people would seek it out, as they seek water to slake their thirst and nourishment for their bodies.

So we must ask ourselves: When has it ever been in the pubic interest to over feed the rich and starve the poor? When has it ever been in the public interest to destroy the earth for the sake of profits? When has it ever been in the public interest to promote war and injustice over peace and shared prosperity?

[...]

Every citizen is faced with a simple choice: organize or perish. The storm clouds of World War Three are looming on the horizon. These are extraordinary times that demand something from every one of us.

i rarely read things that put the truth out so clearly and unambiguously as this does... it's very sobering...

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OPOL's at it again

and, as usual, i am behind him 110%... a few teasers...

• [P]ay ... attention to what is really going on – a fascist/corporatist take over of America. People who still trust that electing more and better democrats will substantially change any of these unprecedented dynamics are fooling themselves. We are stuck with tyranny and perpetual war purely for profit – unless we take strong action to change it.

• If we don’t somehow summon up the will and wisdom to resist these bastards, and resist much bigger and harder than we have up to this point, the America we all know and love will be lost and gone forever.

• [T]he government of the USA is the biggest terrorist organization on the planet.

• Our leaders are hypocrites, liars, and thieves. And the secret agenda they have supported for decades has been anti-human, anti-democratic, and anti-American.

• I cannot bear the thought of a future without a free and democratic America. I have no interest in a world like that, and I am very uncomfortable with how close we have come to it.

• If the democrats were to suddenly wake up and do the right thing, they’d immediately defund the Iraq war, begin impeachment proceedings and file criminal charges against the entire Bush administration.

• America belongs to the American people – NOT to American corporations, multinational corporations, the Pentagon, or Wall Street!

• Wake up your friends and neighbors to what is really going on in the world. We have to stop lying down and taking shit off these fascist bastards! They will kill all life on this planet if we allow it.

• History demands of us that we do our patriotic duty and take our country back from the anti-human, anti-democratic, anti-American forces that have seized her from her only rightful owners – the American people!

i've said many, many times, i get very tired of beating this drum, but i will continue to do so until senile dementia takes over, i die slumped over my keyboard, or we succeed in taking our country back...

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"Someone else's blood" and "we were right to be wrong"

from tony judt, writing at the nyt, via atrios...

Tony Judt is director of the Remarque Institute at New York University and the author of “Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945.”

Yes, [the liberal hawks] concede, President Bush messed up his (our) war. But even if the war was a mistake, it was a brave and good mistake and we were right to make it, just as we were right to advocate intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo. (“The difference between Kosovo and Iraq isn’t between a country that wanted peace and one that didn’t,” the Slate editor and onetime war cheerleader Jacob Weisberg, now tells us. “It was a matter of better management and better luck.”) We were right to be wrong — and that’s why you should listen to us now.

[...]

[R]emember what Albert Camus had to say about his fellow intellectuals’ propensity for encouraging violence to others at a safe distance from themselves. “Mistaken ideas always end in bloodshed,” he wrote, “but in every case it is someone else’s blood. That is why some of our thinkers feel free to say just about anything.”

the big mistake the war supporting dems and r's, the neocons and the liberal hawks, make is thinking that why our country invaded iraq was actually in support of higher principles... well, yes, that's true, it WAS in support of higher principles, just not the ones they would like to think... those who truly call the shots in the united states (and in many places around the world), the moneyed elites, serve the twin principles of money and power... democracy, freedom from oppression and basic human dignity have no meaning for them except as slogans to serve their own ends... war, particularly in the context of modern warfare and weaponry, is the largest profit generation machine the world has ever seen, and it's being used to maximum benefit by those who stand to gain the most... when i read about liberal hawks and necons and their support for "just wars," i can only shake my head ruefully and think just how badly they've been suckered into believing the bullshit they've been fed...

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War profiteering must have hit a plateau

yesterday's story from the new york sun...

Attack on Iran Said To Be Imminent

UNITED NATIONS — In a sign that U.N. Security Council-based diplomacy is losing steam, a number of sources are reporting that a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities may be imminent. France and America also are pushing for tighter economic sanctions against Tehran, without U.N. approval.

prompted a few thoughts from moi...

the 2001-2002-2003, staged rollout of the latest cash generation war videogame and its related software, kicked into high gear by the gwot, has started to plateau, so it's time to crank it up a notch, dontcha know... after cutting all those recent arms deals in egypt, the near east, the middle east and south asia, it'd be a damn shame if there wasn't an opportunity to USE 'em... and, yeah, the aftermarket (parts, spares, replacements) is damn near as lucrative as it is for the new models, but if ya don't have SOMETHIN' goin' on SOMEWHERE, nothin's gonna fall to the bottom line... those pesky profit margins and quarterly results just gotta keep trending up, up, up... you know what it's like with those wall street analysts... it's the same old story... "what have you done for me LATELY...?" damn, running a business is just so LOADED with daily challenges...!

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The business of America is business - $1.6B in arms sales to Iraq (and $3.5B to Pakistan and $1B to Egypt and...)

it seems i post all too frequently on u.s. arms sales (here, here, here and here just since this past march)... with all the attention going to pakistan, egypt, saudi arabia and india, the 800-lb. gorillas of u.s. arms sales, i had completely neglected to consider the possibility that iraq was now an official member of that club... silly me... but OF COURSE they would be... we didn't invade just for their oil...

from salon...

The Pentagon confirmed that this fiscal year, the United States has finalized $1.6 billion in arms sales to Iraq, placing the country in an elite club of weapons buyers. For example, in recent one-year periods Saudi Arabia bought $800 million and Egypt bought $1 billion in arms from the U.S., while Pakistan spent $3.5 billion, including the purchase of jet fighters. "This would put [Iraq] right up there with the top handful of arms buyers," said William Hartung, a weapons proliferation expert at the New America Foundation.

In fact, the numbers Petraeus presented on Iraq were the tip of the iceberg. According to data obtained by Salon from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency at the Pentagon, which manages the arms sales, the military has alerted Congress to up to $4.3 billion in arms sales that have been under discussion since at least 2006 between the U.S. and Iraqi governments.

gotta keep that military-industrial complex cranking along at full capacity, dontcha know...

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Light Cast Into The Shadows From An Insider

Another great article from a financial industry insider, Ann Berg. Courtesy of the Information Clearing House.

Crackpot Realists and Permanent War

By Ann Berg

08/28/07 "Antiwar" -- -- While economic pundits point fingers at loose lending for the malodor in the housing market that is now filling the noses of financiers, they miss the primary cause: permanent war. Permanent war has caused the nation's institutions – political, social, and economic – to be organized into an impervious structure without which war could not be tolerated or financed.

Although 9/11 pushed the war machine into high gear, political centralization and the structuring of American society around war first gained a foothold during World War II. In 1956, five years before President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in his farewell address of the ascendancy of the military-industrial complex (a phrase that originally included the word congressional), the anti-imperialist C. Wright Mills described the triad of power in his book The Power Elite. Stressing how the military entered the political and economic spheres only temporarily during the First World War, he related how modern warfare and its need for massive industrial capacity – along with support from the technological and scientific communities – propelled the military to new heights of influence. Wrote Mills:

"For the first time in American history, men in authority are talking about an 'emergency' without a foreseeable end. … The only seriously accepted plan for 'peace' is a fully loaded pistol. In short, war or a high state of war preparedness is felt to be the normal and seemingly permanent condition of the United States."
[...]

Please read the rest of the article at ICH. Also, take note of Ann Berg's credits. She is no outsider or extremist.
"The Power Elite", by Mills, is an outstanding read as well.
Bottom line, none of what is going on today is new. This has all been setup for decades, we were just too fat and happy to notice.
Now that the Elites have globalized their assets, they no longer need the US economy to sustain them. We may indeed be at the final stage of our economic imperialism, with financial ruin in the west just around the corner.
Or, we could just keep killing people and stealing their wealth.
I'm not comfortable with that, I have too many friends from those countries that we would potentially attack, just so we can prop up our economy.
The Republicans and Democrats must go. They have no shame and no respect for the Constitutional Republic.

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"How do you screw the taxpayer for millions?"

well, golly gee, rolling stone has the "screwing the taxpayers for millions for dummies" run-down... i must have missed this boat when it came in... i wuz probably at the airport...

The Great Iraq Swindle

How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini?

[...]

Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam ­Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity -- to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up.

it's a long article detailing just exactly how the money makes its way out of our pockets and into the pockets of those who who make up the corporate war industry...

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WMDs are good business

and, after all, the business of the united states IS business... never mind that a great deal of that business is arms sales... wars, death and destruction are hugely profitable... god help us all if peace breaks out...

meanwhile, just listen to that cash register ring... ka-CHING...!

The Bush administration will announce next week a series of arms deals worth at least $20 billion to Saudi Arabia and five other oil-rich Persian Gulf states as well as new 10-year military aid packages to Israel and Egypt, a move to shore up allies in the Middle East and counter Iran's rising influence, U.S. officials said yesterday.

The arms deals, which include the sales of a variety of sophisticated weaponry, would be the largest negotiated by this administration. The military assistance agreements would provide $30 billion in new U.S. aid to Israel and $13 billion to Egypt over 10 years, the officials said. Both figures represent significant increases in military support.

the u.s. not only sells arms to allies, we sell arms to ANYBODY who will buy, even if it's a developing country already involved in conflict...


Global arms deliveries in 2005

The United States last year provided nearly half of the weapons sold to militaries in the developing world, as major arms sales to the most unstable regions -- many already engaged in conflict -- grew to the highest level in eight years, new US government figures show.

According to the annual assessment, the United States supplied $8.1 billion worth of weapons to developing countries in 2005 -- 45.8 percent of the total and far more than second-ranked Russia with 15 percent and Britain with a little more than 13 percent.

[...]

The United States, for instance, also signed an estimated $6.2 billion worth of new deals last year [2005] to sell attack helicopters, missiles, and other armaments to developing nations such as the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, India, Israel, Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Developing nations are designated as all those except in North America, Western Europe, Russia, Australia, and New Zealand.

In addition to weapons already delivered, new contracts for future weapons deliveries topped $44 billion last year -- the highest overall since 1998, according to the report. Nearly 70 percent of them were designated for developing nations.

it would be nice if more people realized that the backbone of the u.s. economy involves the manufacture and sales of arms... if somebody is killed by violence anywhere in the world, the odds are great it will be done with a u.s.-made weapon...

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The Carlyle Group

i just finished watching the documentary on the carlyle group produced by VPRO television in the netherlands that jim recommended the other day... it's a must-see...

note: i had problems trying to view it directly from the site... it kept reloading after just a couple of minutes... i got it to work once i opened realplayer and played it in that software...

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I should know better than to be reading about why the U.S. needs a "warrior mentality"

it's a big mistake to start off the day reading crap like this... i should have known better from the title of the article, the source in which it was originally printed, and the author...





points of visceral nausea...

• War is a fact of the human social condition...

• [A]ny policy lacking martial vigor—any policy that fails to communicate a warrior spirit—only makes war more likely.

• [A] leader ... sanctions every manner of deceit provided it is necessary to gain strategic advantage [and]is never swayed by public opinion...

• Americans as a people are ever further removed from any semblance of a warrior spirit...

and if those weren't bad enough, he keeps right on going...

[O]ur near obsession with finding ways to kill others at no risk to our own troops is a sign of strength in our eyes alone. To faithful or merely nationalist enemies, it is a sign of weakness, even cowardice.

[...]

Never-say-die faith, accompanied by old-fashioned nationalism, is alive in America. It is a match for the most fanatical suicide bombers anywhere, but with few exceptions, that faith is confined to our finest combat infantry units—and to specific sections of the country and socio-economic strata from which these “warriors” (as they like to call themselves) hail.

[...]

That kind of faith is receding in America among a social and economic class increasingly motivated by universal values: caring, for example, about the suffering of famine victims abroad as much as for hurricane victims at home. Universal values are a good in and of themselves, and they are not the opposite of faith. But they should never be confused with it. You may care to the point of tears about suffering humankind without having the will to actually fight (let alone inconvenience yourself) for those concerns. Thus, universal values may pose an existential challenge to national security when accompanied by a loss of faith in one’s own political values and projects.

kaplan, in this 5000+ word article, loaded with multi-syllabic, professorial jargon, literary and historical references, and examples drawn from his time spent with "real warriors," is a perfect example of the phony intellectual justification of a military-industrial complex, and money and power-hungry elites forever focused on endless violence, war, death, and destruction to maintain the world they've created for themselves... it's worth reading if for nothing else than to gain a full appreciation for the minds behind our country's behavior in the world... remember, it's men like kaplan who provide much of the theoretical horsepower for those in our government who are calling the shots... i find it to be a profoundly cold and twisted world view, particularly in its repudiation of universal values, but certainly accurate in depicting the mindset that drives our foreign policy...

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The incessant propaganda on Iran is having an effect

well, of COURSE it is... you can't have that shit pounded into your head day after day after day without it having SOME effect... even though i know 99% of what i read about iran is flat-out propaganda, i still catch myself thinking, gee, ARE they working on building nuclear weapons, and, if they do, WILL they use them...? it's almost impossible to swim in the terribly polluted pool that is our media without having some of the garbage stick to you when you climb out...

juan cole points out a trend...

Polling shows that the percentage of Americans who view Iran as the number one threat to the United States has risen to 27 percent now. I think it was only 20 percent in December 2006. First of all, how in the world can a developing country with about a fourth of the population of the US, about a $2000 per capita income (in real terms, not local purchasing power), with no intercontinental ballistic missiles, with no weapons of mass destruction (and no proof positive it is trying to get them), with a small army and a small military budget-- how is such a country a "threat" to the United States of America? Iranian leaders don't like the US, and they talk dirty about the US, and they do attempt to thwart US interests. The same is true of Venezuela under Chavez. But Tehran is a minor player on the world stage, and trying to build it up to replace the Soviet Union is just the worst sort of fear-mongering, and it is being done on behalf of the US military industrial complex, which wants to do to Iran what it did to Iraq. It is propaganda, and significant numbers of Americans (7 percent would be like 23 million people!) are buying it.

professor cole hits the nail on the head... our military industrial complex, its appetite whetted by the torrent of riches pouring in from iraq, simply can't wait for the next big thing... cheney can't either...

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Why the Iraq debate is a sham

the bush administration has no desire to stamp out terrorism... conflict, violence, terrorism, war and death have all been very, very good assets in support of the two items that have topped the administration's agenda since day one - power and money... the longer the u.s. remains in iraq (which could safely be said was the plan from the beginning), the more desperate the insurgency will become, the more people will join up to be trained and to fight, and the more those now experienced trainees will be exported to stir up trouble elsewhere... the longer the u.s. remains in iraq, the more permanent the permanent bases and the more entrenched the u.s. embassy complex and its extended tentacles will become... the longer the u.s. remains in iraq, the more money will continue flow to bush's corporate cronies and the military industrial complex...

all that's happening now is posturing and gaming, making it look like there's some sort of debate, when, in fact, there isn't... and it's working wonderfully well... polls are taken, opinions voiced, blogs and op-eds written, legislation crafted, votes counted, vetos cast, candidates positions staked out, accusations hurled, loyalties pledged, and huge amounts of media time devoted to what is basically an empty exercise... but, what's important is that we're made to FEEL as though we have a voice, that congress can fill its role as a separate but equal branch of government, that we as citizens can actually override the power and money interests who are the people that are really calling the shots...

so, while we're distracted and barking at the moon (which comes to full this week, btw), the relentless march to the one-party, authoritarian state continues unabated, gonzales remains in charge of politicizing the justice department, executive orders are issued authorizing the president to take control of all three branches of government in an emergency, signing statements are written, "enhanced interrogation" techniques are practiced, recess appointments are made, habeas remains among the missing, military tribunals are conducted, draconian legislation like the intellectual property protection act of 2007 is proposed that calls for making the download and use of pirated software a crime punishable by life imprisonment, and the constitution is repeatedly gutted...

could we be in any deeper shit...? i think not...

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White House mind-f***

from think progress...

[White House] spokeswoman Dana Perino: “We, of course, would like to be in a position to bring down troop levels, but certain conditions, as assessed by senior military advisers and commanders on the ground, need to be met to warrant that.”

we are there for the oil, for the money, and to keep things in a constant state of turmoil, which, of course, makes it easier to keep the money flowing and to maintain control of the oil... we ain't leavin', not until the bought-and-paid-for republican, democratic, media, oil, defense and super-rich power structures are brought down and replaced with individuals who are actually dedicated to the common good... as atrios says, na ga ha pen...

[UPDATE]

although it should be perfectly obvious that my earlier educated guess (the troop withdrawal discussion was leaked by "official sources" in an effort to push george in that direction) was spot on, the cool treatment given by the white house to the idea all but nails it as fact...

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"From time to time, things have to change in order to stay the same"

i had seen david vest's article in counterpunch referenced in a couple of other blogs, but i hadn't clicked over there to read it myself... in a way, i'm sorry i did... democrats... republicans... what the hell difference does it make...?

For the corporate powers behind the candidates, the rule is as it ever was: from time to time, things have to change in order to stay the same.

[...]

Once upon a time, Bill Clinton filled the Interior Department with "environmentalists." Bush filled it with oil company hacks. Who was more honest?

Lo and behold, when they cut down the old growth forest, it didn't make much difference to the trees and the rivers and the critters, whether oil company insiders or professional environmentalists were sitting at the desks in Washington. Eight years of Clinton-Gore, two terms of Bush-Cheney: the toxic dumps remain, and only the rhetoric has changed, to protect the naïve.

Demonstrably now, it makes no difference to the war whether Republicans or Democrats control Congress. Do you suppose the shooting will end, on the day when a refined, well-spoken Democrat, who reads poetry perhaps and scorns the religious right, and who doesn't embarrass us when receiving foreign dignitaries, succeeds the bumbling oaf Bush?

Think so? Or do you suspect people will soon be wailing, "I don't understand these people! They control Congress, the White house, and the military! Why don't they stop the war?"

i think this may be one of the reasons why i'm finding it so hard to get any energy going today... i bounced out of bed on a beautiful morning and, not long afterward, felt the malaise slowly creeping in, accompanied by thoughts of "why bother" and "what the hell difference does it make..." i think most of us who spend time seriously keeping up with what's going on and putting ourselves out there through blogs and political action, would like to believe we can actually make a difference... while i don't deny that it's possible, sometimes the enormous power of our entrenched and incredibly powerful system seems just too overwhelming to tackle and our efforts too puny and too futile to continue to pursue... when does commitment and dedication turn to masochism...? today, it feels like masochism...

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The Iraq bill passes both houses - a pox on both of them

a twin disgrace of epic proportions...

first in the house...

In a 280-142 vote, the House passed a $120-billion Iraq war funding bill that contains no timeline to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.

then in the senate...

[T]he Senate has passed the $100 billion Iraq war spending bill 80-14.

commenter...

HUGE miscalculation on these military complex enabling Dems. They grieviously misunderstood they are complicit in the crime of our generation and no amount of drivel and rationalization can erase that cold hard fact.

not that i didn't expect it, but i'm ill nonetheless...

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I believe that the Bush administration welcomes terrorism

there could be no other explanation for the strategy the administration has consistently followed... fanning the flames of anti-american sentiment through the continuing occupation of iraq serves many objectives - keeping the fear threshold high, running the defense and armaments machine at full speed, retaining the prerogatives of a wartime commander-in-chief, allowing the construction of military bases and the embassy complex to move forward, staying in control of iraqi energy resources, and insuring that swollen rivers of cash are flowing into the right pockets...

Thursday morning CBS News's Early Show criticized President Bush's latest justification for the Iraq War as being the first line of defense against al Qaeda, by citing an upcoming Senate Intelligence Committee report which states that the administration was warned before the invasion that a US presence in Iraq would actually increase terrorist influence.

[...]

When asked directly, "Is the United States winning the war on terror?" [analyst Paul Kurtz] immediately responded, "without a doubt no" and added that "our continued engagement in Iraq is spawning more terrorist activity."

in bushco's view, what's NOT to like about an ever-increasing threat of terrorism...?

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Dontcha think it's time to act?

is THIS what we want...?



cuz, like it or not, it's what we've GOT...

in an earlier post i said, "the pot is starting to boil and, when it does, look out..." a commenter responded with this...

Look out for friggin' WHAT, exactly?? We're all in our seperate little holes looking at our screens and bitching and moaning. Back in the 60's before people had individual and seperate access to information, they had to COME TOGETHER. It looked a lot more impressive than a zillion comments on a blog.

HERE'S what the pot starting to boil looks like...

from opol on daily kos...

• We snoozed when we should have been marching. We voted when we should have been screaming. We dropped the ball, we swallowed too much bullshit, we allowed people to tell us to be patient and accept that all we’d ever be offered is the choice between two evils – the greater and the lesser. And all the while our world has predictably grown more and more evil.
• We’ve listened raptly to insincere politicians who only sought to manipulate us in the course of playing their little power games. We’ve selflessly volunteered our money, our time, and our talents only to be promptly betrayed once the critter gets into office. They just lie their asses off to us while doing the bidding of their corporate masters. They scarcely even try to hide it anymore.
• We’ve all seen America’s considerable promise sucked out of her by the greedheads and criminals who have infiltrated our government and subverted the people’s will. This nation is at a moment of crisis unlike any it has ever seen. This is the moment when we will either save our country or watch it go down the drain.
• It’s time to organize in opposition to the government. It’s time for non-violent revolution. It’s time to take it to the streets – like we did back in the day.
• There’s no point in discussing abandoning the Democratic Party – they’ve abandoned us. They’ve done nothing but screw us at every turn ever since we helped put them in power back in November.
• Let’s get it going. Let’s get organized. It’s time to rise up and take our country back.

from jim burke, a contributor to this blog...

I think we need to start some targeted civil disobedience aimed at the wallets of the fat cats. I have proposed in the past that on a local level, we can all have a tremendous economic impact with very minimal effort.

Only a couple of dozen dedicated Americans can shut down an Intermodal Shipping Terminal by just gathering at the entrances.

These terminals transfer freight from around the world via truck, train, and ships.
They exist everywhere now. Some just do two forms, say truck and train at inland locations. I live in the N.E. My problem is which one to chose, there are so many.

What is the point, I hear you ask.

The point is this. By spending just a few hours on a Saturday afternoon preventing trucks from moving freely in and out of the terminal, it will cost the shippers and their customers several hundred thousand dollars per terminal!

If you do this all over the country, the business community will go nuts and start to complain to the Gov't they own.

When they ask why we are doing this, simply say that we want the war to end. Unconditional surrender of the Administration and Congress to our demands. Otherwise, the next Saturday, bring a chair and a bottle of water and pretend your a hunk of granite in the road.

Don't be suprised if some of us eventually wind up getting arrested.

A small price to pay, to save our tax money.

A very small price to pay to save our Nation.

A very, very small price to pay, to save the life of a Soldier.

THIS is what the pot starting to boil looks like...

if not us, who...? if not now, when...?

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