What's LEFT Of Blogs?

Magnifico reports at Docudharma today in his Four at Four on the Washington Post story today: Nuclear or Biological Attack Called Likely.

The story tells in a very serious "objectively journalistic" matter of fact manner of a new report produced by the "Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism".

WAPO's article notes that:

The odds that terrorists will soon strike a major city with weapons of mass destruction are now better than even, a bipartisan congressionally mandated task force concludes in a draft study that warns of growing threats from rogue states, nuclear smuggling networks and the spread of atomic know-how in the developing world.

The sobering assessment of such threats, due for release as early as today, singled out Pakistan as a grave concern because of its terrorist networks, history of instability and arsenal of several dozen nuclear warheads. The report urged the incoming Obama administration to take "decisive action" to reduce the likelihood of a devastating attack.
...
...the creation of the commission, chaired by former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), with former congressman James M. Talent (R-Mo.) serving as vice chairman, was one of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which explored the causes of the 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States.

I don't recall the 9/11 Commission ever doing any "exploring" of the root causes of the 2001 terrorist attacks or of the root causes of the oppression and imperialism and the general foreign policies of messing internally with other countries militarily and via CIA fomented insurrections, destabilization campaigns, and false flag operations to fog the minds of Americans over the past six or more decades.

I don't recall the 9/11 Commission ever doing anything other than their job: creating justifications for the "war on terror" fearmongering and propaganda campaigns that replaced the "cold war" mentality of 'political rule on behalf of multinational corporate stripping the earth bare like a swarm of locusts the rest of the world's human beings are our property and resources to be used till exhausted with no regard for their humanity' American Exceptionalism that was behind all the lies and deceits of the ten year sanctions war and eventual invasion and occupation of Iraq that was directly responsible for the deaths, maimings and poisonings of over a million Iraqis; men, women, and children.

But "explore the causes"? Deluded misinformation at best, and pure manipulative propaganda at worst.

Boo! The boogeymen are out to get you.

This story is all over the left blogs today, and most of what I read is people lapping it up as easily and thoughtlessly as the 26 percenters lapped up all of Bush's years of Rovian manipulations, and using it as justification for "pragmatic" hide their heads in the sand denial of Barack Obama's obvious militarist tendencies and full intentions to continue the war on terror memes and determination to militarily dominate the earth while blaming the blowback on "terrists" on behalf of the corporatocracy that rules America.

Have we learned nothing in eight years?

Glenn Greenwald: How Beltway reporters mislead the country
by: ek hornbeck
Sun Nov 25, 2007

I think this is the arena that we are most effective in, media criticism.

The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits - a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.

(I)t (is) a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world full of misfits and drunkards and failures. The business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.

Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long. - Stockton

I think this is the arena that we used to be most effective in, media criticism. But no longer, it seems.

What's LEFT Of Blogs?

The Unseen Lies: Journalism As Propaganda
By John Pilger, August 8, 2007

The truth about most modern journalism: You first become a career media worker, you start climbing the ladder, and then you prostitute yourself. It's as common as it's straightforward.

The following is a transcript of a talk given by John Pilger at Socialism 2007 Conference in Chicago this past June:
The title of this talk is Freedom Next Time, which is the title of my book, and the book is meant as an antidote to the propaganda that is so often disguised as journalism. So I thought I would talk today about journalism, about war by journalism, propaganda, and silence, and how that silence might be broken. Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media.

That was almost 80 years ago, not long after corporate journalism was invented. It is a history few journalist talk about or know about, and it began with the arrival of corporate advertising. As the new corporations began taking over the press, something called "professional journalism" was invented. To attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appear respectable, pillars of the establishment-objective, impartial, balanced. The first schools of journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional journalist. The right to freedom of expression was associated with the new media and with the great corporations, and the whole thing was, as Robert McChesney put it so well, "entirely bogus".

For what the public did not know was that in order to be professional, journalists had to ensure that news and opinion were dominated by official sources, and that has not changed. Go through the New York Times on any day, and check the sources of the main political stories-domestic and foreign-you'll find they're dominated by government and other established interests. That is the essence of professional journalism.

...

One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. "I have to tell you," said the spokesman, "that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV day after day that all the opinions on all the vital issues are the same. To get that result in our country we send journalists to the gulag. We even tear out their fingernails. Here you don't have to do any of that. What is the secret?"

What is the secret? It is a question seldom asked in newsrooms, in media colleges, in journalism journals, and yet the answer to that question is critical to the lives of millions of people. On August 24 [2006] the New York Times declared this in an editorial: "If we had known then what we know now the invasion if Iraq would have been stopped by a popular outcry." This amazing admission was saying, in effect, that journalists had betrayed the public by not doing their job and by accepting and amplifying and echoing the lies of Bush and his gang, instead of challenging them and exposing them. What the Times didn't say was that had that paper and the rest of the media exposed the lies, up to a million people might be alive today. That's the belief now of a number of senior establishment journalists. Few of them-they've spoken to me about it-few of them will say it in public.

Ironically, I began to understand how censorship worked in so-called free societies when I reported from totalitarian societies. During the 1970s I filmed secretly in Czechoslovakia, then a Stalinist dictatorship. I interviewed members of the dissident group Charter 77, including the novelist Zdener Urbanek, and this is what he told me. "In dictatorships we are more fortunate that you in the West in one respect. We believe nothing of what we read in the newspapers and nothing of what we watch on television, because we know its propaganda and lies. Unlike you in the West. We've learned to look behind the propaganda and to read between the lines, and unlike you, we know that the real truth is always subversive."

...

We need to make haste. Liberal Democracy is moving toward a form of corporate dictatorship. This is an historic shift, and the media must not be allowed to be its façade, but itself made into a popular, burning issue, and subjected to direct action. That great whistleblower Tom Paine warned that if the majority of the people were denied the truth and the ideas of truth, it was time to storm what he called the Bastille of words. That time is now.

Want change you can believe in?

Follow the leader:

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PALIN PUPPET SHOW

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NEW VP LITE MEETS FOREIGN "LEADERS"

NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO WATCH



It Must Have Been Awful

Awfully hilarious. I wonder if she told Muslim Karzai that "Jesus loves him"? Or that her Mom has an afghan, they're so warm & cozy, $49.99 on the Home Shopping Network, dontchya know? Did she tell South American Uribe that she and McCain would drop by his "casa" when they went to neighboring Spain? Or how much she loves the spicy Mexican food, like Doritos? Or maybe she just said, "Good job, Poncho. Let us know who you need us to bomb next." (And these were the only two Bush-installed mutts that could be relied upon to come when called, sit, stay, roll over, play dead, fetch, and beg for a foto-op.) Foreign policy is the McPalins' strong suit? What's their weak suit? Counting? The alphabet?

[continued]
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No wonder Palin has been hidden from the media. Even the tamest corporate network talking heads will have a hard time concealing the Governor's lack of knowledge and experience on all things non-Alaskan. In fact, why doesn't she just run for Vice-President of Alaska? Oh, wait, she has that job. Exxon is the President of Alaska. So, why doesn't she just fick off?

Oh, right, her Grampa John needs someone to change his diapers. Well, she's a good grand-daughter to do that, especially given all the moose he's been eating lately. And all the crow he'll be eating in the debates. Speaking of which, if our first female President-In-Waiting can't answer a few questions from Larry King or Baba Wawa, how's she going to handle Vladimir Putin or the Fed Chairman? Yeah, how is she on multiple debentures, derivatives, indexing with LIBOR, you know, all that boring Lower-48 economical kinda junk, ay? Hm, 'Cuda?

On the other hand, Palin's first "international" outing (If you count New York as foreign territory, as most Republicans do) was a raging success, by past Republican Presidential standards: She didn't throw up on anybody, or put her head in their lap. She didn't forget their names or their countries' names or where their countries were. And she didn't compare them to waiters, busboys or dishwashers. She didn't even bomb any of them. (Yet.) So, she's more than qualified than Bush I, Bush II or McCain, at least at small talk. That's all there is to the job of President of the United States of America, isn't it? Chit-chat? Girl talk? Hm?


YAHOO NEWS
"Palin meets her first world leaders in New York"
How small was the talk? Well, let's just say you don't want to try any of Sarah's new Afghan Columbian brownies.

' Sarah Palin met her first world leaders Tuesday. It was a tightly controlled crash course on foreign policy for the Republican vice presidential candidate, the mayor-turned-governor who has been outside North America just once. Palin sat down with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. The conversations were private, the pictures public, meant to build her resume for voters concerned about her lack of experience in world affairs. lengths Tuesday to maintain that distance as Palin made her diplomatic debut. The GOP campaign, applying more restrictive rules on access than even President Bush uses in the White House, banned reporters from the start of the meetings, so as not to risk a question being asked of Palin. McCain aides relented after news organizations objected and CNN, which was supplying TV footage to a variety of networks, decided to pull its TV crew from Palin's meeting with Karzai. Overheard: small talk. '

FINANCIAL TIMES
"Palin begins course on foreign affairs"
It's the Bono one that really counts. "ACHTUNG, baby!"

' Sarah Palin was on the fringes of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday at the start of a three-day crash course on international affairs to address concerns, even within her Republican party, that the Alaska governor’s knowledge of the outside world is shaky. The schedule of the vice-presidential nominee included meetings with five presidents, a prime minister, Henry Kissinger, doyen of former US secretaries of state, and Bono, the fund-raising activist. '

CBS NEWS
"Palin “Disappointed” In “Understandable” AIG Bailout"
"Shot called by The Feds"? What is she, all mobbed up?

' During a quick stop at a diner in Cleveland, Ohio, Sarah Palin was asked for her reaction to the AIG bailout. “Dissapointed that taxpayers are called upon to bailout another one,” she said. “Certainly AIG though with the construction bonds that they’re holding and with the insurance that they are holding very, very impactful to Americans so you know the shot that has been called by the Feds its understandable but very, very disappointing that taxpayers are called upon for another one.” Told that her traveling press corps was getting lonely in the back of her campaign plane, Palin said, “Are you getting lonely? Gee, yeah, come on up then!” Though she has been on the campaign trail for nearly three weeks, Palin has yet to hold a press conference, and this morning’s stop marked the first time she answered a question from the press on the fly, prompting concerned looks from staffers. Palin did have a two-day interview with ABC News’ Charlie Gibson and sat down with Fox News’ Sean Hannity in Cleveland this morning. The media is sure to take the governor up on her offer to chat at the front of her plane, assuming the campaign is willing to comply with the boss’s wishes for more face time with journalists. '

POLITICO.COM
"Henry and Sarah"
Barracudas school with sharks, now?

' The pool report, from WSJ's Elizabeth Holmes: Again, your pool was in the room for half a minute. Peter Hamby and his outstanding sound tech, picked up this part of the conversation. Kissinger: (something about a speech, not sure to whom he was referring) “And I'm going to give him a lot of credit for what he did in Georgia.” Palin: “Good, good. And you'll give me more insight on that, also, huh? Good.” Palin emerged from the building at 3 p.m., making this by far her longest meeting (others were roughly half an hour). She was accompanied by Kissinger and the two hugged and she gave him a peck on the cheek. CNN’s Peter Hamby (the star of today) yelled, “Governor, how was your meeting?” and she mouthed “It was great.” '

FOXNEWS
"Palin Adviser On Karzai, Uribe, and Kissinger Meetings"
Wow! She said all THAT???!!! You could hardly see handler Biegun's lips move! Although she did seem a bit uncomfortable with his hand up her arse for so long.

' Sarah Palin’s Foreign Policy adviser, Stephen Biegun met with the press to give more details on Palin’s meetings today with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, and Former Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger. Biegun said that Palin is aware that she is a candidate for office and not the President of the United States, “So rather than make specific policy prescriptions, she was largely listening, having an exchange of views, and also very interested in forming a relationship with people she met with today.” With Colombian President Uribe, Palin spoke about the security situation and violence in the country, “They were in full agreement that a very important step in ameliorating the conditions that the FARC guerillas are exploiting is to address issue of increased economic opportunity. And both governor Palin and Sen. McCain, on Sen. McCain’s behalf, Gov. Palin emphasizes her and Sen. McCain’s strong support for Colombia free trade agreement and the degree to which it will contribute not only to economic prosperity but also social stability in Colombia which is critical to finally winning the war against terrorist elements of the FARC.” '

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
"Palin meets world leaders, but keeps the public at arm's length"
Of course Karzai warmed to her. By Afghan standards, she was practically naked.

' Controversy erupted when the McCain-Palin campaign tried to bar reporters from attending a brief photo session preceding a meeting between Palin and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. CNN, which was providing pooled video of the encounter for the other television networks, threatened to withdraw its cameras, according to network officials, thus denying the campaign the pictures it wanted of Palin-as-diplomat. The campaign relented. Peter Hamby, a CNN producer, wrote in a pool report that journalists were allowed into the room where Palin and Karzai met for 29 seconds. Above the click of cameras, the two were overheard discussing Karzai's 20-month-old son, Mirwais. Since GOP nominee Sen. John McCain chose Palin as his running mate, his campaign has tried to shield her from unscripted encounters with the media and the public. Jon Alterman, a scholar at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Palin's New York diplomatic mission could both help her and hurt her. "It cuts both ways. On the one hand, she can say, I've met with all these people, I know how to do this," Alterman said. "On the other hand, it underlines that she hasn't done it until the end of September," less than two months before she could be elected vice president. "The challenge is getting things out of your meetings and getting people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do," he added. "That's not the kind of meeting she's having. They're courtesy meetings." Karzai, however, who depends on U.S. backing to sustain his fragile government in Kabul, had warm words for Palin. The meeting was "very good. I found her quite a capable woman. She asked the right questions on Afghanistan," Karzai said in an appearance later before the Asia Society in New York. '

NY DAILY NEWS
"Sarah Palin meeting world leaders, passing up N.Y. public during visit"
What a rube! Nobody in NY buys retail politics. Anybody who's anybody can get it for you wholesale, schmuck.

' Sarah Palin swooped into New York Monday night to meet world leaders, but New York won't be meeting her. The GOP veep hopeful has served as a crowd magnet in other parts of the country - she drew 60,000 to a Florida rally on Sunday. But the Alaska governor will be kept largely under wraps during her stay in New York, where Dems outnumber GOPers 5 to 1. She's just too busy for that kind of retail politicking, say aides, who add that Palin andMcCain are due back in mid-October for a major fund-raiser. She and Bristol toured the New York Stock Exchange and met business executives, charging Alaska taxpayers for three nights in a $707-a-day hotel room, state records show. Her trip home was not so great. "I left New York City yesterday morning, and I hate to admit it but I am wearing the same clothes," she told a news conference back in Alaska. "They lost my luggage." '

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There's more: "PALIN PUPPET SHOW" >>

This makes me want to shout, "What a lying, cheap, ridiculous cop-out!"

In a change of heart the bush maladministration now claims that al-Qaeda is no longer the primary threat in Iraq, that it has been defeated and routed from Iraq, and that Iran now poses the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East. If this is true then it is time to bring our troops home after being victorious against al-Qaeda; the rest of the Middle East can take care of itself.

Excerpt from the washingtonpost.com:

Last week's violence in Basra and Baghdad has convinced the Bush administration that actions by Iran, and not al-Qaeda, are the primary threat inside Iraq, and has sparked a broad reassessment of policy in the region, according to senior U.S. officials.

Evidence of an increase in Iranian weapons, training and direction for the Shiite militias that battled U.S. and Iraqi security forces in those two cities has fixed new U.S. attention on what Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday called Tehran's "malign" influence, the officials said.

The intensified focus on Iran coincides with diminished emphasis on al-Qaeda in Iraq as the leading justification for an ongoing U.S. military presence in Iraq.[…]

During their Washington visit, Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker barely mentioned al-Qaeda in Iraq but spoke extensively of Iran.

With "al-Qaeda in retreat and disarray" in Iraq, said one official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record, "we see other obstacles that were under the waterline more clearly. . . . The Iranian-armed militias are now the biggest threat to internal order."

Partly in response to advice from Petraeus and Crocker, the administration has initiated an interagency assessment of what is known about Iranian activities and intentions, how to combat them and how to capitalize on them. The review stems from an internal conclusion, following last week's fighting, that the administration lacked a comprehensive understanding and a sophisticated approach.

President Bush reiterated yesterday that if Iran continues to help militias in Iraq, "then we'll deal with them," saying in an interview with ABC News that "we're learning more about their habits and learning more about their routes" for infiltrating or sending equipment.

If the administration and army leaders are correct and we have defeated al-Qaeda in Iraq, our mission there is complete, we are victorious, and we have no right to consider attacking Iran, which poses no threat to America or Iraq.

Iraq and Iran have previously, much to bush's dismay, formed a "mutual defense pact" that would require Maliki to turn his armies against Americans in the event that we unlawfully attack Iran. And wouldn't that be a hoot, battling Iran, which is no weakling country as Iraq was and remains, but having Iraqi forces turn on American forces because bush feels like he, still in his "god complex", must bomb Iran at any costs.

bush has already bankrupted us with this ridiculously expensive Iraqi Oil War, to the tune of over 3 TRILLION dollars, and I would wager that bush would spend another three trillion if he attacks Iran.Our military is being rapidly and dangerously depleted, and I don't believe our forces in Iraq could sustain themselves against a dual attack from Iranian and Iraqi forces.

Our country would suffer a multitude of terrorist attacks by from Hamas, the Quds Force, and loyal Iranian sleeper cells already, undoubtedly, in place here in America and around the world should we attack Iran.

Congress needs to yank in bush's chain, forbid an attack on Iran, reduce defense spending that is destroying the "Age of America," and get back down to the business of taking care of the American people and their needs here at home.

I have said it before and I will always maintain that we could have BOUGHT all the oil under Iraq for less than this senseless war will cost in lives and treasure, and attacking yet another Muslim country that poses no threat to America will just reinforce the Muslim worlds belief that America is truly on a new crusade to wipe out Muslims, compounding all our problems exponentially by several orders of magnitude.

bush needs to be hamstrung. Congress should stop action on any bill even resembling authorization or payment of more money for war.

If it were explained to the country by congress that their intent was to hamstring bush, leaving him impotent to pursue war, I believe they would be supported by the vast, vast majority of Americans who are also sick unto the point of death with bush's reckless and dangerous foreign policies and lust for eternal war and American hegemony.



Cross-posted from VidiotSpeak and Edgeing

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Dick Cheney Confession: The Continuing Story of "The Fall Of The House Of Bush"

Cross posted at Edgeing

During an interview with Craig Unger about his new book "The Fall Of The House Of Bush" Amy Goodman of Democracy Now (transcript here) refers to comments made by Dick Cheney in September 1992 after the first Gulf War, in a speech at the Economic Club of Detroit explaining why the George H. W. Bush administration did not go on to Baghdad after Saddam then.

Cheney's comments in the speech show clearly that they knew irrefutably in 2003 before the invasion, not only that Saddam Hussein was no threat militarily to any country, much less to the United States, but that they also knew exactly what the conditions in Iraq likely to be produced by an invasion would be, and that they did it with eyes wide open, with conscious and full intention of producing the humanitarian crisis and chaos and death that has followed.

And knew that the responsibility for it would be theirs.

Cheney's speech begins at about 3 min 50 sec into this Democracy Now Craig Unger interview video:


Parts two and three of the Democracy Now Craig Unger interview follow here:

There's more: "Dick Cheney Confession: The Continuing Story of "The Fall Of The House Of Bush"" >>

When You Know The Truth, The Facts Don't Seem So Important

Cross posted at DocuDharma and Edgeing

Jason Leopold of Truthout interviews Craig Unger, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, on the Rise of the Christian Right and Neoconservatism.

Unger garnered national attention with his previous book, House of Bush, House of Saud. Michael Moore cited it as a key source for Fahrenheit 9/11, and the film popularized the author's reports on Saudi investments in Bush family enterprises.

In his new book, The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future, Unger turns his attention to neoconservative officials and theorists. At times he focuses so closely on neocon tactics that he misses other forces driving Bush-Cheney policies. Even so, the book offers a vivid account of the use of disinformation to promote extremism.

Leopold: Craig, thank you for being with truthout today. What are some of the issues in your new book that we don't know about - that the public does not know about?

Unger: Well, I think we've been told again and again that we got into the war in Iraq beacause of intelligence failures - that various things just turned out not to be true - that we made one mistake after another.

I actually think we got into the war for exactly the opposite reason - because of intelligence successes - and by that I mean black propaganda operations - disinformation.

Chris Pepus of Chicago Reader takes the book review further for us with...

Bush and the Neocons
By Chris Pepus, Chicago Reader, Thursday 20 December 2007

When you know the Truth, the facts don't seem so important.
Craig Unger, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, garnered national attention with his previous book, House of Bush, House of Saud. Michael Moore cited it as a key source for Fahrenheit 9/11, and the film popularized the author's reports on Saudi investments in Bush family enterprises. In The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America's Future, Unger turns his attention to neoconservative officials and theorists. At times he focuses so closely on neocon tactics that he misses other forces driving Bush-Cheney policies. Even so, the book offers a vivid account of the use of disinformation to promote extremism.

Unger traces the origins of Bush's foreign policy to the 1970s, when prominent bureaucrats and writers gathered around such converts to conservatism as Irving Kristol and Albert Wohlstetter. The neocons scored their first big success in 1976, when two of their allies in President Ford's administration, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, created a group outside the CIA to assess the Soviet threat. That panel, dubbed Team B, was staffed by neocon worthies and led by Richard Pipes of Harvard University. One of the group's advisers was a Wohlstetter protege named Paul Wolfowitz.

Team B concluded that the CIA had vastly underestimated Soviet power and that supporters of detente were merely assisting the Kremlin's drive for world domination. It was an imaginative assessment, given that the economy of the USSR was crippled and its military infrastructure was suffering as CIA officers pointed out. Pipes's group held, for instance, that the USSR had probably deployed a top-secret antisubmarine system, even though U.S. intelligence had found no credible evidence of such a program. As Unger writes, "The absence of evidence, [Team B] reasoned, merely proved how secretive the Soviets were!" It was a bold preemptive attack on fact and logic.

Team B's creativity went unrewarded in the short term, as Jimmy Carter won the presidency that year. But Ronald Reagan would use the panel's report to justify his enormous military buildup (and consequent budget deficits) in the 1980s, and in the '90s Team B alumni and followers took aim at the Clinton administration's Middle East policy. In 1996 a group of neocons led by Richard Perle produced a policy statement, "A Clean Break," that prescribed military action to remove anti-Israel governments like Saddam Hussein's. When George W. Bush entered office, flanked by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, it became a blueprint for war.

Unger is at his best in these early chapters, where he convincingly links neocon biases to the Republicans' most disastrous policies. He gleans a thicket of reports and think-tank papers to reveal that the Bush administration's claims about Iraqi weapons programs followed the same pattern as Team B's exaggeration of Soviet power in the 1970s. Likewise, many of the administration's rosy projections for post-Saddam Iraq originated with the authors of "A Clean Break." In 1999 one of them, David Wurmser, stated that Iraq's Shiite majority "can be expected to present a challenge to Iran's influence" instead of aligning with Iran. Wurmser offered no factual support for his claim, but wrote that his thinking had been "guided" by his ideological allies, such as Ahmed Chalabi. By that point, Unger writes, "the neocon echo chamber had begun to rely on itself to reinforce its own myths."

Four and a half years into the Iraq war, the price of upholding those myths is rising. The president and vice president appear smitten by the idea of air strikes against Iran. Unger cites Philip Giraldi, a former CIA specialist in counterterrorism, who argued that in the case of Iran, Bush officials were "using the same dance stepsódemonize the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux."

Describing three decades of right-wing gambits, Unger paints a stunning portrait of arrogance and duplicity. The Fall of the House of Bush may be the definitive group biography of the neocons. But he makes a few missteps when the story moves beyond that group. For instance, he calls President Bush a "genuine born-again Christian," despite finding evidence that the president's professions of faith are as cynical as anything Team B ever presented. Bush maintains that Billy Graham converted him to evangelical Christianity in 1985, but Graham has disagreed with that and so has Mickey Herskowitz, a ghostwriter of Bush's 1999 autobiography.

Herskowitz told Unger that Bush couldn't recall the details of his 1985 meeting with Graham and replied negatively when Herskowitz asked him whether Graham had said something like, "Have you gotten right with God?" (Herskowitz was "stunned" by the book's account of Bush's conversation with the minister.) "Witnessing" about your relationship with Christ is a key element of evangelicalism. Lying about your conversion experience for electoral gain is just about the last thing a sincere evangelical would do.

Unger also underplays the importance of oil-industry leaders, including his previous subjects, the Saudis. In his 2006 book Armed Madhouse, journalist Greg Palast writes about a 2000 report by the Joint Task Force on Petroleum, cosponsored by the James A. Baker III Institute (named for and headed by Bush I's secretary of state). The panel, which included oil execs as well as foreign-policy specialists, complained that Iraq was a "swing producer" of oil, with a propensity to "manipulate oil markets."

Saddam Hussein had a history of abruptly suspending and restarting oil production. In fact, he interrupted petroleum exports for 12 days the month the task force began its work. His tactics undermined efforts by the oil companies and Saudi-dominated OPEC to control the price of crude. An earlier assessment by the Baker Institute put it this way: "In a market with so little cushion to cover unexpected events, oil prices become extremely sensitive to perceived supply risks. Such a market increases the potential leverage of an otherwise lesser producer such as Iraq." For its part the task force recommended "an immediate policy review toward Iraq," including military options. Palast says Cheney got its report early in 2001, and its economic considerations may have provided the strongest impetus for war.

Likewise, the Saudis have played a large role in developing Bush's aggressive approach toward Iran and Shiite Muslims throughout the Middle East. (Saudi rulers are Sunnis.) Bush and his aides choose to blame Iran for the disaster in Iraq, even though it's the Sunnis who've inflicted the majority of casualties on U.S. troops. The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh has reported that the administration has joined the Saudis in providing clandestine support to Sunni extremists in Lebanon and Syria. The president hopes these Sunni militias will attack Iran's allies and not America's, even though some of those receiving aid have ideological affinities with Al Qaeda. It's an astonishing policy, completely at odds with the lessons of 9/11 and battlefield realities in Iraq. That contradiction is the best indicator of the House of Saud's continuing grip on Bush-Cheney foreign policy. The administration's close ties with the Saudi royals demonstrate that there are limits to the influence of the neocons, many of whom advocate regime change in Saudi Arabia.

Bush and his aides cite Iran's nuclear capability as justification for air strikes. But Hersh has reported that American intelligence thinks Iran won't have the ability to produce a warhead until sometime between 2010 and 2015. And according to an intelligence estimate released December 3, the country shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003. These assessments appear to have done little to deter the administration's drive toward confrontation. "Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," said President Bush in response to the new intelligence estimate. "What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program?"

There's more: "When You Know The Truth, The Facts Don't Seem So Important" >>

Jason Leopold | An Interview With Valerie Plame

Valerie Plame Still Wants to Know
By Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report, Tuesday 13 November 2007

Former covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson would still like to know the identity of the CIA official who passed her name to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney in the spring of 2003, and "under what circumstances."

That's just one of several unanswered questions Plame Wilson has been trying to figure out in the years since several senior officials in the Bush administration leaked her name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak and a handful of other journalists. That leak ended her two-decade CIA career.

"I'd like to know, why did Novak go with my maiden name, Plame, in his original article?" Plame Wilson said during an hour-long, two-part interview with Truthout. "I always thought that was strange. When I married, I took my married name. And then he [Novak] used Valerie Plame [in his column]. It was only the CIA who knew that I worked for them, and my maiden name."

Plame Wilson is promoting her book, "Fair Game," a memoir she wrote about the leak, her job as an intelligence operative working on counterproliferation issues, and the fallout that ensued when she became a public figure after her identity and CIA status were published in newspapers and magazines. Her book landed on The New York Times bestseller list two weeks ago and has more than 350,000 copies in print.

Perhaps the most important question yet to be answered for Plame Wilson is whether President Bush had prior knowledge about the leak of her identity.

"I'd love to know, what did President Bush know about all of this?" Plame Wilson said.

.......................................................................................................................................................
Jason Leopold is senior editor and reporter for Truthout. He received a Project Censored award in 2007 for his story on Halliburton's work in Iran.


See also:

Joe Wilson On Libby Commutation: Administration "Corrupt to the Core"

Bill Moyers On The Libby Sentencing: "Begging His Pardon "

Jason Leopold | An Interview With Joseph Wilson

There's more: "Jason Leopold | An Interview With Valerie Plame" >>

Why Do Debacles Like Iraq Happen?

Zeitgeist: What do Christianity, 911 and The Federal Reserve have in common?

The more you begin to investigate what we think we understand, where we came from, what we think we're doing, the more you begin to see we've been lied to, we've been lied to by every institution...

"Zeitgeist is originally a German expression that means 'the mind of the age', literally translated as 'time (Zeit) mind (Geist)'. It denotes the intellectual and cultural climate of an era." --wikipedia

John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Address to the American Newspaper Publishers, 27 April 1961

The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.
...
For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence -- on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations.

Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.
...
Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed -- and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment -- the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution -- not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply "give the public what it wants" -- but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate, and sometimes even anger public opinion.

Zeitgeist 2007: 1 hr 56 min. Or watch the film in parts on the flip.

• Part 1: 26 min: Greatest story ever told



• Part 2: 33 min: All The World's A Stage



• Part 3: 47 min: Don't mind the men behind the curtain

What do Christianity, 911 and The Federal Reserve have in common?

This is the full Zeitgeist production.

"They must find it difficult...
Those who have taken authority as the truth,
rather than truth as the authority."
--Gerald Massey, Egyptologist (1828–1907)

Part 1: 26 min: Greatest story ever told:

This section explores the little known foundations of the Cult of Equinoctial Christolatry (Christianity) which, unannounced to most, rests in the astrotheological belief systems of the ancient world.

Part 2: 33 min: All The World's A Stage:

9/11/2001 was the production of the century. "and the Emmy goes to..."

Part 3: 47 min: Don't mind the men behind the curtain:

The Revolution is Now.

The men behind the curtain?

In order to regain its status as the respected leader of the world's nations, America must eradicate the neoconservative movement from its body politic, and the only '08 presidential candidates committed to that goal appear to be Democrat Dennis Kucinich and Republican Ron Paul. If you think the neoconservatives packed up shop subsequent to their Mesopotamia mistake, think again. The neocons not only didn't learn anything from Iraq, they're betting large that nobody else did either--and that's a bet they stand a good chance of winning.
...
The top tier candidates from both parties talk of new approaches to the Iraq problem, but none of them--with the possible exception of Barack Obama--offer anything realistic that's substantively different from "stay the course." And though Kucinich and Paul touch on the essential task that lies ahead in setting the course of U.S. foreign policy, the mainstream information gatekeepers continue to treat them like pipsqueaks.

Is it possible that, under the surface, all of America's national profile politicians have crawled into the neocons' pockets?
...
With the exception of significantly increasing America's defense spending, the neocons' dreams of U.S. global dominance have dashed themselves against the shoals of reality. Today, though we spend more than the rest of the world combined on defense, friends and enemies alike shun us. We have to kiss up to countries like Turkey and Pakistan while the greatest threats to our national security are backwater outfits like Iran and North Korea, all states whose economies and defense budgets are less than five percent of ours and none of whom would amount to a pimple on our posterior if we hadn't let the neocons persuade us to stick said posterior into the crack its in now. Moreover, our security, prosperity and principles are more in peril than they have been since the beginning of World War II, and as recent events in Pakistan illustrate, our efforts to promote political freedom abroad have been dismal failures.
...
If America were still a true republic, the neocons would have been ridden out of town two years ago at the latest; they don't have enough tar, feathers or rails in Washington D.C. to give those characters the kind of send off they deserve. But they're still around and reeking havoc. Dick Cheney still lurks in undisclosed locations in between appearances at GOP fundraising and warmongering functions. Cheney side buoys like David Addington continue to infest the White House. Backyard variety chicken hawks such as John Bolton, Fred Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Newt Gingrich hang out in the Scholars and Fellows lounge of the influential neoconservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.

There's more: "Why Do Debacles Like Iraq Happen?" >>

Washington Post: "Al-Qaeda in Iraq Reported Crippled"

Well, the foam-flecked loons will have a field day with that WaPo headline. I can hear the chest thumping and chickenhawk bravado from here. They are already lighting bonfires around which to dance naked while chanting “Boo-Ya, Bitches! We Win! U!S!A! U!S!A!”

They are so predictable.

They will read the first sentence:

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

Then conveniently overlook the inconvenient parts…

But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved. At the same time, the intelligence community, and some in the military itself, worry about underestimating an enemy that has shown great resilience in the past.

"I think it would be premature at this point," a senior intelligence official said of a victory declaration over AQI, as the group is known. Despite recent U.S. gains, he said, AQI retains "the ability for surprise and for catastrophic attacks." Earlier periods of optimism, such as immediately following the June 2006 death of AQI founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air raid, not only proved unfounded but were followed by expanded operations by the militant organization.

[keep reading]

I hate that these jokers make me a conspiracy theorist, but what the hell? I’m just a crackpot blogger anyway, so here goes…is the WaPo article just a piece of a larger PR campaign?

Let’s take stock…last spring more astute observers started noticing that suddenly every single thing that happened in Iraq was the work of al Qaeda in Iraq. If a swarthy man sneezed, it was the work of al Qaeda. By last summer, virtually every report out of Iraq was citing violence by “al Qaeda” – but in reality, al Qaeda in Iraq has never really been more than a bogey-man, even the most generous assessments put their numbers at 10% of the insurgency, and likely only about 4%. (It has been long acknowledged that Shi’ite militias have represented a far greater threat than Sunni insurgents and jihadist fighters professing membership in AQI.)

Then the references slowed down.

And now, the WaPo prints a specious headline (Fred Hiatt is a perennial contender for the Wurlitzer Prize) and yellow feathers fill the air as the self-congratulating cowards and chickenhawks bust out the beer-bongs, launch at one another in belly-bumps and exchange high-fives and Hulk poses. “We’re kickin’ ass!!!”

Of a piece? That’s possible I suppose.

It’s always good news when groups attacking Americans are on the wane. But only if there is some “there” there, and this cast of characters has a lousy track record where honesty is concerned - having lied to get us into the war in the first damned place - so you'll just have to pardon me if I don't come running when the little boy cries "wolf!"

There's more: "Washington Post: "Al-Qaeda in Iraq Reported Crippled"" >>

Senator Lindsay "DADT" Graham Advocates Overthrowing the Elected Gov't of Iraq

Just a few minutes ago Senator Graham, being interview by Wolf Blitzer on CNN, clearly stated that if the current government of Iraq cannot pull off political reconciliation of all the disparate groups of Iraq within 90 days, he will admit that the current government will never be able to do so, and then "we" will have to consider replacing the al-Maliki democratically elected government with a government that can achieve American goals in Iraq.

This is the very height of chutzpa, gall, arrogance, and stupidity that shows the world what total frauds comprise the American government. The very idea of overthrowing al-Maliki's government after all the flowery words of the phony bastids we have running our government about the "purple finger" elections, hailed at the time as the first and greatest step towards a functioning democracy, is repugnant beyond belief and shows America cares not one wit about democracy and everything about gaining control of Iraqi oil, for it is al-Maliki's failure to gain agreement on the draconian oil law written by Americans for American Big Oil that is spelling the doom of al-Maliki.

All that remains to be seen now is whether we enable internal political parties to stage a coup, or whether we just have an American sniper put a bullet in al-Maliki's head.

At this point I think my money is on the bullet, as bush has no compunctions at all with ordering the extra-judicial killing of anyone he so desires.

America, soon to be destroying a freely elected democracy near you.

Cross-posted at VidiotSpeak

There's more: "Senator Lindsay "DADT" Graham Advocates Overthrowing the Elected Gov't of Iraq" >>

Iraq: What Television Censors Won't Show You

BUMPED from May 19 - because the cowardly, craven and complicit Democratic Leadership (Understand This!) still keeps funding and refusing to end the Debacle created by the psychotics in the Executive Branch and the Republican Party.

Which makes them different from the psychotics, how?

Courtesy of Information Clearing House: Iraq: The Hidden War

Iraq: The Hidden Story shows the footage used by TV news broadcasts, and compares it with the devastatingly powerful uncensored footage of the aftermath of the carnage that is becoming a part of
the fabric of life in Iraq.

Prod/ Dir: Christian Trumble; Exec Prod: Stephen Phelps; Prod Co: Zenith Entertainment Ltd - 2006

Images of Iraq dominate our TV news bulletins every night but in this film, Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow, questions whether these reports are sugar-coating the bloody reality of war under the US-led occupation

--- Warning ---

This video contains images that should only be viewed by a mature audience.

05/29/06 - Run Time 49 Minutes

George W. Bush's Iraq and Mid-East Debacle:

After 4 years of illegal, violent Occupation the post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq total ONE MILLION (UN Population Division and medical literature data). Taken together with 1.7 million excess deaths in the 1990-2003 Sanctions War (UN Population Division) and 3.7 million Iraqi refugees (UNHCR), this constitutes an Iraqi Genocide (as defined by the UN Genocide Convention) and an Iraqi Holocaust in comparison with the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million victims). The Iraqi under-5 infant deaths (1990-2007) now total 1.8 million, 90% having been avoidable and due to Western war crimes. Total Iraqi excess deaths (1990-2007) total 2.7 million. The post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Afghanistan now total 2.2 million (see MWC News: 5 ).

Three quarters of the people of Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan are Women and Children.

The Bush War on Terror is in horrible reality a cowardly War on Women and Children, a War on Asian Women and Children and a War on Muslim Women and Children.

The propaganda campaign of outright lies and criminal deceptions conducted by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and the rest of the neocons, enabled by obsequious sycophants like Alberto Gonzales and done with the complicity of mainstream media in the US, to justify and win political support for the invasion of Iraq, was very successfully prosecuted by the criminals in the White House. It took not very long.

The attack and invasion itself was very successfully prosecuted by the generals and the troops. They are the best at what they do. It also took not very long.

All that is left to be done is the hard work of giving back their country to the Iraqis, somehow compensating them for what has been done to them.

And successfully prosecuting the criminals in the White House who deceived the country into this shameful debacle.

Hopefully that won't take very long to complete.

The conviction of Scooter Libby earlier this year, and the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing into the corruption of Alberto Gonzales two days ago, were only the beginning of a process that should, if any honest morality still obtains, include the impeachment and criminal conviction of Cheney and Bush as war criminals.

That hard work cannot be avoided, because, as scribe writing in a diary at Talkleft described, there is an unavoidable choice to be made:

What we do, and what we vote and say, today, will ring down through the centuries. And those who stand with Bush and Cheney, or oppose removing them, will do so at the peril of being on the wrong side of history.

I wonder what it will be like to live, say a century or two in the future, when people may well look back at these days, shake their head and wonder "what ever possessed them...
...
On the other hand, in a century or two, torture, degradation and authoritarianism may, because of Bush, Cheney and their henchmen, be as normal and accepted as breathing, eating and drinking.
...
The paradigm for the future - for the descendents of those who may have kids today - is what the choices made today will decide. And that is why the precedent we set today is eternal. Once that choice is made, or ducked, it's done and the alternative path now available, is gone and can't be gotten back.

Kapish?

A Cabal of Criminality
By Manuel Valenzuela

Iraq is now, and always has been, a quagmire that has turned into a suffocating and inextricable tar pit for American forces, where the inevitable defeat of George Bush’s policy combines with the greatest strategic disaster in American history, where the total miscalculation of war and mismanagement of peace has resulted in the collapse of Middle East stability, making America and the world less safe, not more, where wet dreams of imperial domination, fused with delusions of grandeur have helped build a monolithic wall of bad karma that will take decades to tear down.
...
What the Iraq/Bush war shows the world is how a Cabal of Criminality, numbering less than a few hundred individuals, can bamboozle a nation into a war whose ramifications on our future we cannot yet fully comprehend. The Bush war, the single-greatest blunder in America’s foreign policy history, was spawned by greed-addicted corporatists and treasonous neoconartists, presstitute lackeys and political hacks, placed in charge of US foreign policy and the propaganda acting as corporate media, easily in control of a nitwit, ignorant puppet, possessing his bully pulpit from which to spew the fabrications and manipulations needed to con America. Delusional, incompetent, dangerous and trapped in bubbles of naked grandeur, expecting fictional flowers and candy to flow from Iraqis expected to greet Americans as liberators, the Cabal of Criminality had no qualms sacrificing thousands of American soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens, for greed, power, profit, wealth and ego.

Through lies, deceit, fear-mongering, immorality, chicanery and criminality a group of a few hundred people led America into war, using the new Pearl Harbor, 9/11, with its plethora of highly charged emotions and fragile psyches, to launch a war they thought would be only the first of many, using Iraq as a beachhead to invade Iran and Syria. Suffocating inside the clouds of 9/11, blinded to reality and captured by delusion, America’s normally stable citizenry was mobilized to seek revenge through war, was conditioned to hate through scapegoats, was silenced by fear and intimidation, was brainwashed to blindly follow through incessant propaganda, jingoism and Madison Avenue style marketing.

In short, Americans were used, enslaved to the dictates of power, branded as sheeple, not people, our emotions of hatred, vengeance, fear and justice used against us, making us impotent conduits of crime and murder. Complicit we became in the delusional game played by the Cabal of Criminality, where the death of 3000 people became the key to unlocking the gates of war upon Mesopotamia. The plan had been set in motion, the new Pearl Harbor was allowed to bear fruit, the cataclysmic event needed to enrage the people and grease up the machines of war would not be stopped.

more...

Originally posted at Edgeing: Saturday, April 21, 2007

There's more: "Iraq: What Television Censors Won't Show You" >>

An Apology For Media Complicity Selling The Iraq Invasion - Better Late Than Never?

Hat tip to Kel at The Osterly Times for this.

We need to be seeing much more of this kind of thing from corporate mainstream media.

CNN's Jack Cafferty admits he was wrong about Iraq:

TIME's publishing reporter Andrea Sachs recently spoke with Cafferty:
TIME, September 15, 2007:

No one has ever accused CNN commentator Jack Cafferty of being a shrinking violet. He routinely sounds off in his own tart, curmudgeon-like way on CNN's popular news show The Situation Room. Now Cafferty has written his first book, It's Getting Ugly Out There: The Frauds, Bunglers, Liars and Losers Who Are Hurting America (Wiley).

[Sachs]: One new poll says that a majority of people favor impeachment for President Bush. Your reaction?

[Cafferty]: I'm not the least bit surprised. There's a case for taking a look at what the Administration may or may not have done that rises to level of high crimes and misdemeanors. Impeachment was put into the Constitution for a reason. I think it was perhaps one of the most arrogant things I've ever seen in my life for [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi, on the day after Democrats won control of the House, to make this announcement as though this was Moses coming down with the tablets, that impeachment's been taken off the table. Well who the hell is she to take it off the table? It's part of the Constitution. I think there is reason to suspect that things have been done that may not be kosher, and I think the government's responsibility is to determine that. That's part of why they're there. That's what Congress does. That's the checks and balances. So whether he deserves to be impeached or not, I guess we'll never know, because they're not going to bother to look at it.
...

[Sachs]: Has anything you've ever said on the air really gotten you in trouble?

[Cafferty]: Once. I called Donald Rumsfeld a war criminal the night before the midterm election. The president of the network and the executive producer of the Situation Room and two or three other management gerbils assaulted me en masse, immediately as I got off of the air, saying, "You can't say that." Apparently, what happened was our correspondent at the Pentagon started getting these phone calls from people in the Pentagon, saying, "Cafferty just called Rumsfeld a war criminal." I had to go on the air and say, "You know, I've stepped over the line." That being said, I will go to my grave as Jack Cafferty, Private Citizen, believing that these people committed war crimes.

[emphasis added]

Thanks, Jack...

Would that the "president of the network and the executive producer of the Situation Room and two or three other management gerbils" had the same guts and honesty and morality to be able to admit their complicity.

Perhaps the invasion of Iraq would never have happened, and we wouldn't have a million or more dead Iraqis and tens of thousands of dead or maimed American soldiers? And yes, that question is also an assignment of blame.

There's more: "An Apology For Media Complicity Selling The Iraq Invasion - Better Late Than Never?" >>

We have been betrayed; again

(originally posted at The Motley Patriot and cross-posted at TalkLeft)

How does a man, or woman, betray their country? How does a person justify watching other people die for lies? What purpose can be called "noble" that it cannot be named outright, instead, lies are necessary in order to carry out that cause? America's involvement in Vietnam did not start with the "shock and awe" of invasion and it did not begin with the American public being fed lies by our President; that came later.

In 2005, Melvin Laird, former Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1973 under President Nixon, wrote an article entitled, `Iraq: Learning the lessons of Vietnam`. In the article, he wrote:

They join their voices with those who claim that the current war is "all about oil," as though the loss of that oil were not enough of a global security threat to merit any U.S. military intervention and especially not "another Vietnam."

The problem with this assertion by Mr. Laird isn't that oil is a security issue to the world, but, that the United States could lose something that it clearly never owned; the oil in the Middle East.

In 1953, the CIA deposed a democratically elected leader in Iran. In 1979, the Iranian people took back their government. What "loss" did the United States suffer when the Shah of Iran was deposed? Did America lose access to the Iranian oil, or, did we merely lose the ability to control something that wasn't ours?

Mr. Laird states that when he took over as Secretary of Defense in 1969, America started a four-year withdrawal from Vietnam:

The memo had remained in limbo in the defense secretary's desk, neither approved nor rejected. As my symbolic first act in office, it gave me great satisfaction to turn down that request formally. It was the beginning of a four-year withdrawal from Vietnam that, in retrospect, became the textbook description of how the U.S. military should decamp.

The memo to which Mr. Laird refers is the memo authored by General Westmoreland requesting that U.S. troop levels be increased from 500,000 to 700,000. By 1968, the United States had 538,000 troops in Vietnam. 16,592 troops died in Vietnam in 1968 alone. From 1960 thru 1968, a total of 36,152 troops had died in Vietnam. During the four-year "withdrawal" from Vietnam that Mr. Laird cites, 20,863 additional troops were killed or declared dead. Mr. Laird wrote:

I cannot speak for the dead or the angry. My voice is that of a policymaker, one who once decided which causes were worth fighting for, how long the fight should last, and when it was time to go home. The president, as our commander-in-chief, has the overall responsibility for making these life-or-death decisions, in consultation with Congress. The secretary of defense must be supportive of those decisions, or else he must leave.

Mr. Laird is correct; he cannot speak for the dead. But then, who does? Who spoke up in 1969 for those who were going to die that year? Who spoke up in 1970 for those who were going to die the following the year? Who is speaking for the dead from Iraq? Who is speaking for the troops that will die tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year?

The most important lesson learned from Vietnam was that the American media had to be controlled, manipulated, and the true cost of war hidden. Today, our soldiers who are dying for a cause so "noble" that the public couldn't even be told the truth of it. Our soldiers are being flown back in coffins, not like heroes fighting for a "noble" cause; but in secrecy.

The American public knew why our forces were fighting in Vietnam; it was the reason to escalate that fight that was a lie. The Gulf of Tonkin incident, whether real or not (and there are still many contradicting accounts of it), was at best a gross mis-characterization of an incident to justify the escalation in Vietnam. It was that "incident" in 1964 that justified the escalation, that justified the continued fight, that justified the war that raged for another 5 years before we even began to withdraw from it. For Iraq, the lies to invade and occupy Iraq started from the beginning.

The lies were repeated for months by the administration and media with almost no fact checking at all. The justifications were changed over the years, until finally, the reason for the very war itself was lost.

Like Vietnam, we've had our "surge" and we've seen it fail. We have watched General after General enter and leave this fight in Iraq that has no clear mission, nor, a clear end to it. Like Vietnam, the American public is now tired of the war, tired of the rhetoric, tired of the dead piling up, and wants out. But, it is not 1969 and the withdrawal is not even beginning. It is, in relative terms, 1965, and the American public wants out only to know that more years of war, more years of dead, await us before a withdrawal begins in earnest.

After Vietnam, the American public, rightfully, was distrustful of our military leaders. After Vietnam, the American public, rightfully, was incensed by the fact that our government abandoned American soldiers. Once again, we are fed lies by our military leaders. Like Kent State, protesters are attacked, only this time with wooden dowels instead of real bullets. Yes, we have been betrayed, as a nation, as citizens, and as soldiers, once again, for the true lesson that was learned; that if you manipulate the media you can wage any war, at any time, for any pretext; that you can attack and smear anyone in the media without consequence; that you can torture and kill; and that nothing can stop you if you just refuse to listen. Mr. Laird wrote:

I didn't miss the fact that it was an ugly, mismanaged, tragic episode in U.S. history, with devastating loss of life for all sides. But there are those in our nation who would prefer to pick at that scab rather than let it heal.

And yet, even as he acknowledges that the Vietnam war was ugly, mismanaged, tragic and held devastating loss of life for everyone involved (except those who dodged the draft or got their daddy to get them cushy flying jobs in the Guard), he states:

The truth about Vietnam that revisionist historians conveniently forget is that the United States had not lost when we withdrew in 1973. In fact, we grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory two years later when Congress cut off the funding for South Vietnam that had allowed it to continue to fight on its own.

This is revisionist history at its finest. We had not lost in Vietnam when we started to withdraw our forces in 1969? We had four years of withdrawal, by his own account, and four years of soldiers continually dying as we withdrew; but we hadn't already been defeated? By his own words, President Nixon was elected, not because the Vietnam war was being won and needed another President to continue the war, but because the war was being lost and America said it was time to leave. This statement by Mr. Laird should sound familiar:

Over the four years of Nixon's first term, I had cautiously engineered the withdrawal of the majority of our forces while building up South Vietnam's ability to defend itself.

Yes, we were merely standing down as the South Vietnamese "stood up". Yes, and they stood up so well during that "cautious four year withdrawal" that, two years after the withdrawal, Saigon fell. But, it was those nasty people in Congress that "lost Vietnam"? If only we had not withdrawn our forces for 4 years, if only the South Vietnamese had 8 years instead of 6 years, they could have "stood up" enough?

This is the same rhetoric we hear today. We have heard since 2003 how we've progressed in Iraq despite all evidence to the contrary. We have heard how the insurgency was in its "last throes" as it only grew larger and more determined. We have heard how they will "stand up as we stand down" only to be told they cannot stand up in the time already allotted to them. We have already heard how we need our forces to remain in Iraq to protect Iraq because they, supposedly, cannot protect their own country. We continue to hear the same lies and rhetoric we heard during, and after, Vietnam.

What type of person does it take to betray their country, their military, and their own citizens? What type of person does it take to lie, over and over, about why our soldiers are dying while they sneak the coffins back into the country? What type of people use our military as backdrops and props, just to smear any veteran, any active duty person, who dares speak out against them?

No, it is not wrong to call it a betrayal, or, to call those who have betrayed us out for it. We do not own the Middle East or the oil in it. We could have invested in alternative energy sources for decades; but our government didn't. We could have found ways to avoid becoming so dependent on oil that it becomes a national security issue; but we didn't. No, it is not wrong to place the blame on our government for leading us into a war based on lies, or, to hold those in the military leadership accountable for supporting it.

There's more: "We have been betrayed; again" >>

War On Terror: The Rise Of The Politics of Fear: Nightmares, Lies And Manipulations

Incinerated body of an Iraqi soldier on the "Highway of Death," a name the press has given to the road from Mutlaa, Kuwait, to Basra, Iraq. U.S. planes immobilized the convoy by disabling vehicles at its front and rear, then bombing and strafing the resulting traffic jam for hours. More than 2,000 vehicles and tens of thousands of charred and dismembered bodies littered the sixty miles of highway. The clear rapid incineration of the human being [pictured above] suggests the use of napalm, phosphorus, or other incendiary bombs. These are anti-personnel weapons outlawed under the 1977 Geneva Protocols. This massive attack occurred after Saddam Hussein announced a complete troop withdrawal from Kuwait in compliance with UN Resolution 660. Such a massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Convention of 1949, common article 3, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who "are out of combat." --War Crimes

The 1990/91 Gulf War, The Death Of Reason, the ensuing long years of the sanctions war against the people of Iraq, the 2003 invasion of the country, and the ongoing occupation of Iraq since, are all aspects of and symptoms created by something much larger and much more insidious: War On Terror: The Rise Of The Politics of Fear.

To help shake off and counteract what Maryscott O'Connor called "the System's monopoly over opinion-moulding", watch the following BBC documentary from Adam Curtis. It's a long one, three hours in total, split into three one hour segments. I highly recommend it for a fuller and clearer historical context and understanding of how we got to where we are today.

Video: The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear
Written and produced by Adam Curtis, via AxisOfLogic, 06 August 2007

Editor's Note: This 3-hour, BBC documentary shows that the "threat of terrorism" is to a very large extent, "a fantasy manufactured by politicians, national security profiteers and Islamic terrorists in order to project and consolidate their own political power". The documentary reveals the origins of the "war on terrorism" in the Reagan Administration under the influence of Neocons like Michael Ledeen and their ally, former CIA Chief, William Casey. The two videos below offer a taste of the entire documentary which is linked below the following brief video excerpts. - LMB (Les Blough, AxisOfLogic)

Here are two short excerpts: (You can watch the full 3 hour production in 3 parts, on the flip)

Video Excerpt: Interview of Melvin Goodman, Head of Office of Soviet Affairs, 1976-1987: "The CIA's chief of Soviet affairs from 1976 to 1987 admits Ronald Reagan had nothing to do with the downfall of the Soviet Union".

Video Excerpt: CIA admits that "lies became reality" while hyping the Soviet threat. (includes Michael Ledeen, pro-war neocon, and his argument installing "democracy" by force in other sovereign nations. Melvin Goodman describes the beginning of the mythological "war on terror" under Ronald Reagan.)

Watch the full 3 hour production in 3 parts, on the flip
The first 2 1/2 minutes of each video below have the same intro.

The Power of Nightmares Part 1: Baby it's Cold Outside

The Power of Nightmares Part 2: The Phantom Victory

The Power of Nightmares - Part 3: The Shadows in the Cave

Articles on Hyping Terror:

Hyping Terror For Fun, Profit - And Power
by Thom Hartmann

The Myth of an al Qaeda Takeover of Iraq
by Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato Institute

Everyone we fight in Iraq is now "al-Qaida"
by Glenn Greenwald

http://www.armchairsubversive.org/nmares.html

There's more: "War On Terror: The Rise Of The Politics of Fear:
Nightmares, Lies And Manipulations" >>

The Iraqis Don't Deserve Us. So We Betray Them..

The Iraqis don't deserve us. So we betray them...
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, 23 August 2007

Always, we have betrayed them. We backed "Flossy" in Yemen. The French backed their local "harkis" in Algeria; then the FLN victory forced them to swallow their own French military medals before dispatching them into mass graves. In Vietnam, the Americans demanded democracy and, one by one - after praising the Vietnamese for voting under fire in so many cities, towns and villages - they destroyed the elected prime ministers because they were not abiding by American orders.

Now we are at work in Iraq. Those pesky Iraqis don't deserve our sacrifice, it seems, because their elected leaders are not doing what we want them to do.

Does that remind you of a Palestinian organisation called Hamas? First, the Americans loved Ahmed Chalabi, the man who fabricated for Washington the"'weapons of mass destruction" (with a hefty bank fraud charge on his back). Then, they loved Ayad Allawi, a Vietnam-style spook who admitted working for 26 intelligence organisations, including the CIA and MI6. Then came Ibrahim al-Jaafari, symbol of electoral law, whom the Americans loved, supported, loved again and destroyed. Couldn't get his act together. It was up to the Iraqis, of course, but the Americans wanted him out. And the seat of the Iraqi government - a never-never land in the humidity of Baghdad's green zone - lay next to the largest US embassy in the world. So goodbye, Ibrahim.

Then there was Nouri al-Maliki, a man with whom Bush could "do business"; loved, supported and loved again until Carl Levin and the rest of the US Senate Armed Forces Committee - and, be sure, George W Bush - decided he couldn't fulfil America's wishes. He couldn't get the army together, couldn't pull the police into shape, an odd demand when US military forces were funding and arming some of the most brutal Sunni militias in Baghdad, and was too close to Tehran. ...>>

There you have it. We overthrew Saddam's Sunni minority and the Iraqis elected the Shias into power, and all those old Iranian acolytes who had grown up under the Islamic Revolution in exile from the Iraq-Iran war - Jaafari was a senior member of the Islamic Dawaa party which was enthusiastically seizing Western hostages in Beirut in the 1980s and trying to blow up our friend the Emir of Kuwait - were voted into power. So blame the Iranians for their "interference" in Iraq when Iran's own creatures had been voted into power.

And now, get rid of Maliki. Chap doesn't know how to unify his own people, for God's sake. No interference, of course. It's up to the Iraqis, or at least, it's up to the Iraqis who live under American protection in the green zone. The word in the Middle East - where the "plot" (al-moammarer) has the power of reality - is that Maliki's cosy trips to Tehran and Damascus these past two weeks have been the final straw for the fantasists in Washington. Because Iran and Syria are part of the axis of evil or the cradle of evil or whatever nonsense Bush and his cohorts and the Israelis dream up, take a look at the $30bn in arms heading to Israel in the next decade in the cause of "peace".

Maliki's state visits to the crazed Ahmedinejad and the much more serious Bashar al-Assad appear to be, in Henry VIII's words, "treachery, treachery, treachery". But Maliki is showing loyalty to his former Iranian masters and their Syrian Alawite allies (the Alawites being an interesting satellite of the Shias).

These creatures - let us use the right word - belong to us and thus we can step on them when we wish. We will not learn - we will never learn, it seems - the key to Iraq. The majority of the people are Muslim Shias. The majority of their leaders, including the "fiery" Muqtada al-Sadr were trained, nurtured, weaned, loved, taught in Iran. And now, suddenly, we hate them. The Iraqis do not deserve us. This is to be the grit on the sand that will give our tanks traction to leave Iraq. Bring on the clowns! Maybe they can help us too.

© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited

There's more: "The Iraqis Don't Deserve Us. So We Betray Them.." >>

Who Will Be The Last?

Last to Die for that Man in the White House and His Lies
Meteor Blades at Daily Kos today:

Four thousand dead Americans and other Coalition soldiers will soon be in the count. Dead, in many cases, as we have seen, because of the incompetent know-it-allness of an Administration still swarming with chickenhawks.
...
They are dead for lies. Futilely dead. Dead because war criminals sent them abroad fraudulently in the name of liberation, security and prevention.

Dead because of people who waved the bloody shirt of 9/11 in one hand, Old Glory in the other, simultaneously managing to shred our Constitution and decades of international law. People whose closest brush with battle was reading the Cliff's Notes version of Sun Tzu, which they promptly forgot. People who, if this were a just world, would soon be making journeys in shackles to The Hague.
...
Not to mention the dead Iraqis.

We know how little those who lied us into this war try not to mention those dead Iraqis. To downplay their numbers. Nobody really knows how many have died. Estimates diverge wildly. Let me just say I think any count below hundreds of thousands is off the mark. Hundreds of thousands dead, still larger numbers injured or maimed, more than two million in exile, two million internally displaced. All for a pack of lies.
...
If Russ Feingold's August 2005 proposal for withdrawal had been adopted, American troops would have been home since Christmas. We might already know who was the last one to die for the lies of that man in the White House and those of his pals. But for two years, the withdrawal plans of Feingold, John Kerry, Jack Murtha, Wes Clark, George McGovern, the Center for American Progress, and, and, and have been ignored. So, the skulls are stacked, American, Iraqi and others. The bloodbath goes on, and the dithering ceases not.

With no end in sight.

It is time for everyone who believed or still believes the lies to face it squarely and, however painful it may be to say, admit what they know in their hearts is true. The Iraq invasion and occupation has turned into the worst Foreign Policy debacle in American history.

All for a pack of lies.

Who will be the last... to believe or deny the lies?

It is time to face reality.

It is time to bring this debacle to an end.

There's more: "Who Will Be The Last?" >>