"Halliburton’s Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War”

AMY GOODMAN: The private military contractor KBR was awarded a $35 million contract for electrical work in Iraq by the Army Corps of Engineers last week. The former Halliburton subsidiary got the Pentagon contract even though it’s under criminal investigation for the deaths of at least two American soldiers in Iraq caused by improperly installed or maintained electrical equipment.

Separately, the US government charged KBR on Friday with criminal bribery charges for promising and paying tens of millions of dollars to Nigerian officials in exchange for four lucrative contracts between 1995 and 2004. Last month, Halliburton said it would pay $559 million to end the investigation if the government approved a settlement.

Another lawsuit filed last week accused Halliburton and KBR of the wrongful death of a truck driver they had employed. He was killed two years ago by US soldiers who allegedly mistook him for an insurgent at a checkpoint near Baghdad. The lawsuit accuses Halliburton and KBR of negligence.

As the allegations against Halliburton and its former subsidiary KBR, Kellogg Brown & Root, continue to grow, we turn to the award-winning investigative journalist Pratap Chatterjee, who has traced their record in Iraq for years. His latest book releases today. It’s called Halliburton’s Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War. Pratap Chatterjee joins us now in our firehouse studio.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Thank you for having me on, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. As the US government says that the troops will draw down over the next year, year and a half, in Iraq, what’s happening with Halliburton and, as you call it, Halliburton’s Army?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Well, the US military is completely dependent on Halliburton. Despite all the news that you read of, you know, soldiers being electrocuted, drivers being shot, the company continues to get contracts. And it’s because half the people in Iraq are contractors, and a large number of them are KBR employees. You know, they’re South Asian workers, they’re Indians, Pakistanis, they’re Southeast Asian Filipinos. They are Halliburton’s Army, and they make this military tick. They make this army—allow this army to march forward on its stomach. It’s because they feed that stomach.

So, you had Peter Singer on last week talking about the jobs that are dirty, dull or dangerous and, you know, how they use robots to kill from the sky. Well, they still need to launch those robots, those drones, and they need to have people in place to feed them. And that’s what the Indians who—Indian—

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to P.W. Singer for a minute. We’ll play a clip of our interview. You know, he wrote the book Wired for War, about the robotics revolution in this country.

P.W. SINGER: Now, the problem is, what are the implications of that for our democracy? So, for example, if you are sending less and less Americans into harm’s way, does it make you more cavalier about the use of force? And one of the people that was fascinating that I interviewed was a former assistant secretary of Defense for Ronald Reagan, who actually had this to say about these systems. He worried that they would create more marketization of war, as he put it. We might have more shock and awe talk to defray discussion of the true costs of war.

You know, my grandfather served in the Pacific fleet in World War II. When he went to war, you know, he went to a place where danger took place, and the family didn’t know if he was ever coming back. And that’s very different than the experience of, for example, a Predator drone pilot that I met with who described that basically his experience of fighting in the Iraq war was getting in his Toyota Corolla, driving to work—he’s doing this in Nevada—driving into work, for twelve hours he puts missiles on targets, then gets back in the Toyota, commutes back home, and within twenty minutes he’s talking to his son at the dinner table.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s P.W. Singer, Wired for War. Pratap Chatterjee?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Well, my great-uncle actually served in Iraq under the British, and his job was to accompany the British troops. He was a doctor. Today, Indians are still serving in the war, and just as the French film that came out last year called Days of Glory, where they showed that half of Charles de Gaulle’s army was actually North African soldiers. So war has always used, you know, people from other countries to support and do the dirty, dull and dangerous work.

Today, some of that most dangerous work is done by robots, and the dirty and dull stuff that Peter Singer talks about is done by South Asians, Southeast Asians, and they comprise, you know, Halliburton’s Army. So companies like KBR, a former—Kellogg Brown & Root, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, are now able to make money by providing—my book opens with Donald Rumsfeld saying, “Why should we, you know, Americans, be doing these things like cleaning toilets? We can outsource that. We need our soldiers to be able to do, you know, the important things in war.” And really, this is only possible, because with a volunteer army, as opposed to a draft army, you can recruit people from other countries.

I talked to drivers. They’re Fijian truck drivers. I think you might even have an interview that I did with this Fijian truck driver, who—ironically, Peter Singer’s, you know, grandfather was a soldier in the South Pacific; now you have truck drivers being flown from Fiji, you know, and people being flown from Sri Lanka, to come to fight in somebody else’s war, the American war. And their job, you know, for $300 a month, is to make sure that American troops can fight in Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to that clip that you describe. You can set it up for us, the clip of the Fijian driver.

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: The clip—the driver’s name is Titoko Savuwati, and he’s from Fiji, from Totoya Lau, and he basically was lured to Iraq with promise of a $3,000 salary. Once he actually got there, he discovered he’s going to be paid 50 KD a trip, which is about—

AMY GOODMAN: KD are…?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: A KD is a Kuwaiti dinar, so that’s about $170.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to the clip.

TITOKO SAVUWATI: They never gave us any insurance. Most of our friends were shooting. Some was very badly shot, accident. But company never paid me anything. No single money. Like myself, I was fall down. My truck was tumbled, fall down. Yeah. So now, see my leg? I’m not going good now. I complained, but the company never gave me any money. Most of our trip to Iraq, we were only paid with 50 KDs allowance for trip. That’s all. Yeah. For 175 in one trip, they pay us 50 KD only for cross the border.

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: There and back?

TITOKO SAVUWATI: Yeah. Go, come back. Yeah. I think that 50 KD is filter for the drivers to go to Iraq, come back. I was asking, if anything happened to my life, I’m shooting from the Iraq people, maybe I die, is that 50 KD can send to my family to make my family survive by that 50 KD?

AMY GOODMAN: Pratap Chatterjee?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: I mean, this is $180 he’s talking about. Now, actually, it’s $170, because of the exchange rates, that he’s getting paid. And the irony of Titoko, one day he dropped me off, and he said, “Hey, listen. Can I borrow one KD”—that was $3.50—“so I can go get some lunch?” Here’s this man driving, you know, twice—he’s driven a hundred trips into Iraq, you know, each time being paid $180 from this company, Agility. It’s a subcontractor to KBR. And at the end of the day, he’s bringing food, he’s bringing ice cream and bagels and turkey and—you know, to American soldiers. But his life, when he gets injured, nobody pays him. If he dies, you know, who’s going to take care of his family?

But that is Halliburton’s Army. It is an army of cheap labor, you know, working for big contractors in Houston that keeps the US Army—the US Army will not shut this operation down. Obama is not going to kick these guys out, because how does he ship back the equipment from Iraq to the United States? He’s going to have to use these contractors. Everything went in with the contractors. It’s like shutting down a nuclear power station. Who knows the system best, you know, to shut down a nuclear power station? You go back to the Bechtels who built it to shut it down. Same thing here. When Obama—if he moves soldiers out of that theater, he’s either going to use more contractors, or he’s going to use those contractors to bring them back. So, they’ve made $25 billion in contracts so far. They’re going to make another $10 billion, at least.

AMY GOODMAN: The title of your book is Halliburton’s Army; the subtitle, How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War. Very quickly, the history, how did this happen?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Well, this actually goes back many years. Most people think, you know, well, Halliburton was brought in by Dick Cheney. Not true at all. Kellogg Brown, & Root, or Brown & Root at the time, was building warships during the Second World War. In Vietnam, they built almost all the bases there. You can go to Cam Ranh Bay in Southeast Asia. I talk about Donald Rumsfeld actually arriving in 1966. He visits the bases, and then he comes back to the US Congress, and he speaks in the House of Representatives, and he says, “This company, you know, they don’t have receipts. They are wasting money, and they’re paying off the President.” This, you know—

AMY GOODMAN: And they were paying…?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: They were paying off the President.

AMY GOODMAN: Lyndon Baines Johnson.

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: In this case, Lyndon B. Johnson. So, fast-forward thirty-seven years, and he is the man who’s giving them a contract. And actually, it’s Rumsfeld really; it’s not even Cheney. It’s Rumsfeld who’s looking to this system of outsourcing war, of finding Indians to clean toilets and that sort of thing, so that Americans, you know, can invade Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: But it’s Cheney who was head of Halliburton.

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Cheney was the head of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, and he made out well. He was actually a very bad CEO in some ways and a very good CEO in other ways. I mean, he took the company from making $100 million in US contracts to $2.3 billion in the five years he was there, so a large increase for the company. In fact, he made some very bad business decisions. He bought up a company that had a billion dollars in asbestos liability.

People often ask me, did Cheney get the contract—did he give the contract to Halliburton? I really think the question should be reversed: why did Halliburton hire Cheney, as opposed to why did Cheney hire Halliburton? Well, Cheney hired—Halliburton hired Cheney because of the revolving door, because they knew he could bring business to them. And once he actually became Vice President, Halliburton’s lobbying budget actually dropped by half. They stopped having to recruit—you know, having to lobby, because they already knew they were in.

They had these contracts set up from so many years ago. I mean, starting in Vietnam, building Diego Garcia. You know, I talk about them in Turkey in Adana. You know, Operation Northern Watch was supported by people working for a consortium called VBR, which was partly Brown & Root, Halliburton. So this has gone on for a long time. In Bosnia, you know, in Kosovo, under Clinton, Kellogg Brown & Root, then just Brown & Root, subsidiary of Halliburton, was, you know, cooking for the soldiers, building Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. And today that continues. So this is not something that’s new. It is, in fact, you know, par for the course that Cheney would come in and work for them.

AMY GOODMAN: Pratap Chatterjee, we are seeing a huge discussion right now on this global economic meltdown and dealing with what is the solution to it. But rarely, in the concerns about the amount of taxpayer money that’s going out, are—is there a discussion about US taxpayer money going to corporations like Halliburton.

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Well, $25 billion in the last five years has gone to Halliburton, now Kellogg Brown & Root, their subsidiary, in Iraq, to be able to build the bases for American soldiers and to do this war. They get a guaranteed profit; these contracts are cost plus. So whatever Halliburton, or now Kellogg Brown & Root, do in Iraq, they are going to get two percent. In Bosnia, it was seven percent, nine percent. Doesn’t matter how much they charge, they are guaranteed—how much is spent, they’re guaranteed to get a profit. They never make a loss. And so, for them, this is—you know, it’s gravy, in some ways, because whether Obama withdraws from Iraq or continues there, they’re going to get the contract to supply the military.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, I asked Obama at Cooper Union, when he was running for office, if he’s going to support a ban on the military contractors, but he said no.

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: No. His point is, I will make them more accountable. I mean, in his legislation he’s promoted, he has never said that he’s going to withdraw the contractors. And in a sense, this is actually quite important, making them accountable, because this has not happened. I mean, the Iraq war, is—you know, there’s so much waste, so much incompetence there, and—

AMY GOODMAN: Afghanistan?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: In Afghanistan it’s exactly the same thing. I was just there in November for three weeks, and you have the same thing. You have, you know, troops who sit behind tanks, living on bases like Bagram, where you have, once again, workers from KBR who supply them with food and clean the toilets and that sort of thing. And nobody’s watching them, partly because—when I was in Kuwait, I asked one of the commanders there, I said, “I can prove to you that this particular subcontract by this company PWC was awarded—you know, should never have been awarded, because they lied on the paperwork. The drivers they hired from Fiji didn’t know how to drive these big reefers. You know, why are they here?” He said, “It doesn’t matter to me. It matters to me now that the soldiers are being fed.” I said, “Will you question this contract? Will you question?” He says, “No, not at all, because in order for me to send my troops into battle, I need to feed them, and I need to make sure that they’re taken care of, and KBR provides that service.”

AMY GOODMAN: Pratap Chatterjee, we just have two minutes, and I want to go to that top story, reading the introduction, how it was just awarded KBR $35 million for electrical work, despite the fact that it’s under criminal investigation for the deaths of at least two Americans, and separately, the US government has just charged KBR with criminal bribery charges for promising and paying tens of millions of dollars to Nigerian officials in exchange for lucrative contracts. Explain both of those quickly.

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Well, the contract in Nigeria, which was a contract with a consortium called TSKJ, Albert “Jack” Stanley, who was the head of KBR at the time, worked for Cheney, paid tens of millions of dollars to Nigerian officials. So they’re paying a half-billion-dollar fine to the US government for what happened at those times. So, this is a huge—I mean, this should be a much bigger story.

AMY GOODMAN: This is money that comes from taxpayers, US taxpayers. So US taxpayers are bribing Nigerian officials, or they’re doing it in our name.

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Absolutely, that is exactly how—

AMY GOODMAN: And the Americans?

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: So, now, when KBR works in a place like Iraq, they are able to get away with a lot of shoddy work. And my book covers the fact that a lot of the work that was done, you know, because people weren’t watching, there wasn’t oversight, there wasn’t accountability, they were able to get away with shoddy electrical work, often bad food, overpriced items. A lot of times, there’s also a lot of detail of how, you know, people walked away with—the book opens with this guy Jeff Alex Mazon walking away with a $1 million check. And he’s paid that by a subcontractor to Halliburton. When the case came up at the Rock Island Arsenal, he said, “Look,” he says, “what’s wrong with this, getting this money? You know, this is money that is owed to me, because I did this work for Halliburton.”

AMY GOODMAN: The two Americans who died? We have twenty seconds.

PRATAP CHATTERJEE: Well, the Americans who died—Donald Tolfree was killed by the US Army when he was driving a truck. It’s extremely dangerous for the contractors who live there, because, you know, they don’t—they are effectively fighting in somebody else’s war, and they don’t wear a uniform. So when they go to work for Halliburton, many truck drivers have been killed, because they are actually civilians in a war zone fighting a war, you know, with—where, you know, uniforms don’t count for anything.

AMY GOODMAN: Pratap Chatterjee’s book is Halliburton’s Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War.

The Old Bastard Squawks on, Cooking his Own Goose (part 6)

The Annotated Interview Vice President Richard Cheney by Jon Ward and John Solomon, The Washington Times

Office of the Vice President
December 22, 2008
Vice President's West Wing Office

Q You would disagree that policy on detainee treatment was made opaque enough that these abuses at Abu Ghraib were–
(WTF am I trying to say without saying it?)
-- obviously not directed from the top,
(No. Obviously not from the top… cuz then that would mean that you and the ‘Dee-cider’ made the wrong dee-cisions. Better to lay the blame on a handful of moronic, under-educated yokels who don’t know any better than to follow orders.)
but under pressure for more intelligence
(More pressure but NOT from the top, aheh-heh…, like we said. Gotta get more intelligence, better intelligence. )
-- were allowed -- not allowed, but basically
(Oh, cripes, I’m in deep doo-doo and you got the shovel. Eeep…)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Abu Ghraib, like I say, I don't think had anything to do with policy, as I understand it.
( I say, ‘I don’t think’ but actually you know, it’s more like ‘I think but don’t say’. And as I understand it, I can say whatever the fuck I want because you two dweebs ain’t gonna press me on anything. Otherwise I would never have set up this phoney-baloney Q&A session with your bosses.)
And the people that they were –
(We’ll call them ‘people’ for the sake of their mothers.)
the people that were subjected to abusive practices there
(Not torture or cruel and inhuman punishment – ‘abusive practices’.)
I don't think had any special intelligence understandings, or if you will, special intelligence information that we needed.
(But since we couldn’t torture the ‘special intelligence understandings’ out of them, who’s to say?)
I mean, this was not --
(Maybe I’d better not bring that up…)
as I say, I don't think it was related to policy.
(And as I say, I think my opinion is Law around here so if it were policy – or related to policy – than that policy is Law and therefore I can do whatever the fuck I want to do and not worry about trifles like ‘legality’.)
I think it was, in fact, a case of individual personnel
(Not even members of a group; just individuals in a military hive.)
who were perhaps not properly supervised.
(I’m banking on you being so stupid as to ignore what patent nonsense this is: improperly supervised, individualistic, military security personnel who were acting outside of the chain of command even though they were constantly monitored by the CIA and their own superior officers in direct contact with the Pentagon on an almost daily basis. To put it another way – everybody knew about it from top to bottom but it’s nobody’s fault. Nevertheless, we’ll blame the enlisted bastards. )
And I think the military deserves a lot of credit for the way they handled it because they're the ones that cleaned it up.
(Like they had any choice in the matter.)


Q Foreign perception of the United States as we've had to fight these dual wars,
(Forced upon us as they were by unfortunate unforeseen circumstances, our own righteous honor and sense of duty as the appointed guardians and saviors of the Free world compelled us to use military force. If only those ‘Foreigners’ would come to realize how much America sacrifices for the common good the weight that we’ve been ordained to bear would feel lighter. Sigh…)
can you talk -- what you think has happened?
(Oops, I dropped my syntax again and it’s shattered to smithereens.)
Why has America – the perception of America changed so much in the last eight years?
(After all, in your administration, we’ve invaded two separate sovereign nations under the flimsiest of pretenses which were supported by bold-faced lies, overthrown the respective governments, slaughtered tens of thousands, forced the displacement, starvation and destitution of hundreds of thousands, destroyed the lives of millions more. Why would they change their perception of us? )
And what do you think will happen over the next few years?
(Oh, Great and Knowledgeable OZ! [Stoop here to lick boot])

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, has the perception of America changed?
(Didn’t think I’d turn the question back on itself, now, did you? Oh… you expected that, eh? Right…)
I suppose it has in some quarters.
(The hind-most, heh-heh.)
I think that some of the things we had to do after 9/11
(We were forced by panic, fear and greed. We had no choice.)
to respond to it and to protect the nation against a further attack
(Since we hadn’t see 9/11 coming, we were flying blind in a shitstorm.)
clearly generated controversy in some quarters.
(Limp-dicked, bleeding-heart liberals. Always whining about civil rights and due process. Makes me sick.)
But what a lot of our friends overseas never really understood,
(Because so many of them cling hopelessly to a shared outmoded concept of international law.)
at least not initially,
(Not until we agreed to spread the profits around.)
was that 9/11 fundamentally changed the way we looked at this question of terror attacks.
(Since this is one of the lynch-pins of our over-arching rationalization of the horrific and unlawful things we’ve done, let me recite it chapter and verse. Ahem…)
Prior out-of-date 9/11,
(Say what?)
we looked upon terrorist incidents as a law enforcement problem.
(Got that?: international terrorists; Black September, Bader-Meinhoft, Hamas, the PLO, Hezbollah, the IRA, al Qaeda, etc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist_organization ; the Cole, the embassy bombings, the first WTC, the whole violent enchilada was left to the cops – not the Marines, or the Army or the Air Force, the Navy or the CIA . Can you swallow that?)
You go out and find the bad guy, try him and put him in jail.
(Simple as a Tom Mix movie.)
That's the way we dealt with the World Trade Center bombing in '93.
(Never mind all of the other governmental organizations (State Department, CIA, etc) that went into the tracking, arming and infiltration that went before and after the act and the apprehension of the perpetrators. This was strictly ‘Barney Miller/Joe Friday stuff. Try to keep in mind these two gross distortions of facts that we’ll distill into this little catch phrase, ‘cops & robbers’. Otherwise the next set of bull-shit will leave you in the dust and I hate to repeat myself. )
After 9/11, we made a decision, and I think it was exactly the right decision,
(Of course it was exactly the right decision because I made it. Ergo: it was the Right one.)
and that when you -- when these actions result in the deaths of 3,000 people here on the homeland,
(Again, who’s counting ? The real emotional hook is that it happened on our homeland! The one we stole from the red savages and the Mexicans.)
more than we'd ever before lost in this kind of incident, more than Pearl Harbor,
(Actually, 2,402 were killed and 1,282 were wounded in that ‘Day of Infamy’. So, the 9/11 attacks yielded a roughly similar level of death and mayhem. No need to quibble, though. Both were disastrous. We just don’t want to cloudy the murk with verifiable information when falsely aligning two completely dissimilar events.
The apples-to-oranges elephant that you’ll have to ignore in the room, is the fact that Japan, a sovereign, imperialistic nation, attacked colonial military installations and targets with its own imperial military forces under its national battle flag whereas, al Qaeda, which is not a sovereign country or governmental or diplomatic entity, hijacked 4 commercial airliners with a force of 19 civilians armed with box-cutters.
Are you keeping the ‘cops & robbers’ concept in mind? Now, we’ve juxtaposed the Pearl Harbor ‘meme’ with all its strong emotive qualities with the false comparison of that event to attacks on 9/11 to shut down logical thought completely. A skillful blend of ‘Does not compute’ and cynically manipulated cinematic patriotism. Here comes the kicker - )
then this was a strategic threat to the United States.
(There’s no need to justify, quantify or in any way substantiate or support this preposterous statement with fact or argument. If I say, it was a strategic threat, that’s just what it was. Even though, tragic as the loss of 3,000 people is, their loss and the destruction of property did not cripple the functioning of state, local or federal government, the economy, nor the preparedness of the national armed services. Americans were stunned – the whole world was shocked – but the loss of less than 3,000 people from a population of over 200,000,000 does not constitute a strategic threat. )
And when you view it in those terms,
(Which are in near total disregard to the facts...)
then we believed we were fully justified, and indeed obligated, to use all the resources at our command
(And many that were legally outside of our command…)
to defeat that enemy so that they couldn't do it again.
(Which on the face of it – apart from the byzantine illogical blend of sophistry, non sequitur and red herring - would seem a reasonable aim.)
And that means you're prepared to use military force,
(No need to justify this statement for the reasons cited above. But if you idiots had brain ‘One’ between you, you’d have asked yourselves: ‘Why would the 9/11 attacks mean we’d prepare to use military force to forestall subsequent attacks by an undetermined group or groups of expatriated, stateless militant radicals who have no central command, air or naval forces when obviously the attacks of 9/11 were not deterred by the mightiest, best equipped military juggernaut in human history.)
use your intelligence asset
(Military intelligence; the original oxymoron.)
to go after those who support terrorism financially,
(Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, for example but never mind that or why two ill-advised and illegal invasions and two violent coup d’états were necessary to ‘go after those who support terrorism financially’.)
to go after those states that sponsor terror and provide sanctuary or safe harbor to terror. And that's what we did.
(Even though proof for such sponsorship by either Iraq or Afghanistan was tenuous at best at the times of the respective invasions.)
I think some of our friends overseas didn't agree with those policies.
(Most of the member countries of the United Nations, as a matter of fact.)
I think over time that has -- the situation has improved.
(But don’t quote me on that. I give two shits either way.)
And after people saw what happened here, but then saw what happened in London when the -- I guess the subways were bombed and buses and so forth,
(I wasn’t paying much attention to the internal security matters of our closest lap-dog... uh… ally. Of course, the bombings in July, 2005 were a direct response to Britain choice to go to war in Iraq.)
or what happened in Madrid, the train bombings,
(In 2004, also as a direct result of the Spanish joining the ‘Coalition of the willing’. After massive demonstrations against the ruling party, Spain withdrew from the coalition, so I’m really stretching the argument by referencing this.)
or more recently, what's happened in Mumbai,
(Though not on the same scale of any of the aforementioned attacks .)
that this kind of international terrorism is indeed a threat to those of us who lived in the developed world.
(Lived? Did I just let that slip? Lived?)
And tough, aggressive policy is what's required to succeed against it, and that's what we put in place.
(And if we get tough enough and aggressive enough with a large enough military force we could lock down the world and dare anybody to raise their head to protest. The fact that it hasn‘t worked so far should be proof that we aren’t tough or aggressive enough yet. Global gulags – that’s the answer; built by Halliburton.)
As I say, some of our friends weren't all that happy with it, but a lot of them were, in fact, and supported it.
(Our noble ‘Coalition of Patsies’)
And even as we went into Iraq, while some of our historic friends and allies criticized that, an awful lot –
(The pussies with their goofy ‘international law’ and stupid ‘multi-lateralism. Diplomacy is for the weak.)
for example, the NATO states, especially the new member states,
(The ones feeding at the trough of US ‘aid’ that we bought memberships for.)
sent troops to serve alongside our guys.
(Our guys. Oh, yeah, I guess there are girls there, too. Probably dykes, But that’s better than faggots, so far as I’m concerned.)
So I think it's evolved over time.
(From being a disaster in the making to a grade ‘A’ double-prime generational cluster-fuck.)
I think that it's less controversial now than it was,
(When we were still able to keep a tight lid on the whole mess.)
although there's still, obviously, controversy about things like Guantanamo and so forth.
(Silly, foreigners and their antiquated sense of morality and due process.)

End of part 6

The Annotated Cheney Interview (part 4)

For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
December 22, 2008
The Annotated Interview Vice President Richard Cheney by Jon Ward and John Solomon, The Washington Times
Vice President's West Wing Office

Q Sort of along those lines,(see part three of this interview) you've been a long-time fiscal conservative.
(Except of course when you’ve thrown money by the tractor-trailer load at the conflict in Iraq and the ill-suited, woefully mismanaged Coalition Provisional Authority (CPI) or whatever corporation, industry or project would best be served by tax-cuts and federal subsidies. )
How do you feel,
(The quintessential wishy-washy no-brain TV interview soft-ball)
what do you think about the markedly larger size of the government that this administration is leaving behind
(a huge hulking behemoth of bureaucracy worthy of Orwell or Stalin)
-- the size of the deficit,
(Ballooned past all control, past all conception, spiraling past fiscal irresponsibility into a macro-economic insanity; a mind-numbing level of deficit spending whereby you squandered the vast surplus that was the Clintonian legacy – the legacy of what you would call ‘tax and spend liberals’ – and mortgaged the future of the USA to the People’s Republic of China.)
from the financial commitments that the government now has to a lot of private industries?
(Not that so much has changed except for the fact that the ‘bail-outs’ are a lot more visible than the SOP of gratuitous subsidies, tax breaks given on silver platters to the corporate sponsors of election campaigns.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, given your druthers,
(That’s a ‘home-spun’ word I learned from the Brush-clearer-in-chief. Makes me sound kind of loveable, don’t you think? Like Wilford Brimley as the Grand Inquisitor.)
you'd rather not have a growing government in terms of spending,
(Growing in terms of executive power, sure. That was the center-piece of the plan.)
or in terms of authority over the economy.
(Not legislative control but executive control. As St Ronnie said, “The trouble is the government.” And so, we’ve always striven to dismantle and undermine the government of the Republic whenever and wherever we can. )
But there are exceptions.
(And you must admit we’ve been exceptional.)
And the exceptions historically have been wars.
(Luckily. Like the Frat-boy-in-Chief quipped, "We hit the Trifecta.")
We've been faced since 9/11 with a war,
(Of our own making and design.)
more than one in the sense that you count Iraq and Afghanistan separately.
(Assuming that you two goof-offs can count that high. It’s all the same ball of wax to me; defense contracts and bonuses from Halliburton.)
Defending the nation against further attacks from al Qaeda has been a preeminent concern of ours,
(Since we really dropped the ball on in 2001.)
and we've spent a lot of money doing that:
(Papering our asses with your hard-earned dollars)
creating the Department of Homeland Security,
(Which Clinton had in the works already to thwart terrorist attacks - we were too busy dismantling regulatory agencies and passing tax cuts for the rich to bother with until after the Towers fell. Lucky for us it was on the shelf, waiting for us to take credit for it.)
enhancing the security of our shipping container business and the airlines,
(It all comes back to taking care of business – Big Business, that is.)
and all of the other things we've done that have made us a safer nation.
(I feel safer knowing that firms like Halliburton, Blackwater, Bechtel and so on will be safe to profit from unending war as a result of the Muslim world hating our guts.)
And then when you talk about what we've had to do in Afghanistan and Iraq
(Which I trust you will not do but in glowing terms and with patriotic platitudes.)
of the commitment of troops,
(We commit the troops, when they get killed or wounded, the Taliban and Al Qaeda’s to blame.)
the cost of those wars,
(In dollars and cents – not inhuman lives. That’s of secondary concern to us, at best.)
those have all added to the burden.
(The rich, white-man’s burden.)
But I think it's better to do that than it would be to have ignored those needs and requirements,
(Q.E.D.: eo ipso – whatever we did was the right thing to do because doing nothing would have been the wrong thing.)
and seen us not respond the way that the President and I believed we needed to respond to those basic fundamental threats to our nation.
(Say, the EPA and the FCC running amuck with stifling regulation. How can anybody make a buck when you have to worry about wet-lands preservation or public commons. But I digress…)
I think
(So therefore, it's true.)
what al Qaeda represents is a strategic threat of considerable significance.
(Which we have greatly enhanced by the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.)
What happened on 9/11
(Even you dim-wits probably remember the official version of what happened.)
was you had 19 guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters
(Which explains why we need new fighter jets, bombers, nuclear subs, bunker-busters, tactical nukes and missile defense systems. How else do you expect to stop fanatics with box-cutters but by invading two countries that had little or nothing to do with the attacks?)
come into the country,
(where the CIA lost their trail and the FBI ignored them)
destroy 16 acres of downtown Manhattan,
(Prime real estate – figure in insurance pay-offs and re-sale; what a wind-fall!)
do major damage to the headquarters of our military over here at the Pentagon,
(Of course, if it actually had been a 737 the damage would have been truly horrific. Donnie’s office might have had to be redecorated. That’s why we decided to use the weaponized drone. Oops. I think I let one slip.)
and kill about 3,000 people.
(Give or take. Since no bodies were ever found at the Pennsylvania crash site or from ‘plane’ that hit the Pentagon, it’s hard to say.)
and If they had been armed or equipped with a deadly biological agent or a nuclear weapon,
(Or a zombie-making machine or a doomsday device like in ‘Dr Strangelove’ - I love that movie.)
we'd have a much larger problem than we did.
(Duh… )
So I fully support the spending we did because I think it was essential.
(Because it wasn’t my money and it was essential to the industries I serve.)
And it obviously has, as a byproduct,
(A byproduct of incompetency, failures in judgment and a willful and arrogant disregard of human life and rule of law.)
the fact that it increases the deficit and the overall size of government,
(etc, etc… blah, blah blah. How many times have I got to repeat myself? We did what we had to do to ram through our authoritarian agenda. Let’s move on.)
but I think this is one of those occasions like World War II when that was appropriate.
(Except of course that WWII was an actual declared war (i.e a declaration of war was passed by the House and Senate) in response to an attack on US colonial territory by a sovereign nation for the sake of territorial conquest; entirely unlike the Al Qaeda attacks. Not to mention the fact that after the cessation of hostilities, the surviving leaders of those Fascist states which had invaded various countries in Europe, Africa and Asia were brought to trial and executed as war criminals. Let’s be sure not to mention that.)
(to be continued)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/12/20081222.html

From Our Favorite Dick's Own Pie-hole

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/12/20081222.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Vice President
December 22, 2008

The Annotated Interview of almost former Vice President (and soon to be convicted felon if there is a speck of justice in the world) Richard Cheney by Jon Ward and John Solomon, The Washington Times (well-known brown-nosers and sycophants.)

Vice President's West Wing Office –
(the one with the man-sized safe)

3:20 P.M. EST
December 17, 2008
Q: Sir, let me ask one first,
(that is after all why I’m paying to be here…)
literally talking about your own public service
(pardon if I fawn),
seven presidencies.
(Seven? No wonder things are so screwed up!)
You left one presidency before where the President afterwards, Gerald Ford, became much more popular than he was when he left office.
(Say what? Try writing these questions down first.)
And I'm kind of curious,
(I’m purported to be a journalist, after all!)
as you look at this presidency ending now and where you are in popularity,
(the crapper…)
what you think will happen
(Besides the huge ‘Thank Gawd They’re Gone’ parties world-wide)—
how history might look back at this presidency
(Yours)
and President Bush compared to where he is now?
(deep in the crapper, kind of like my ability to formulate a proper question.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think there is a parallel in a sense with my experience during the Ford years in that President Ford made a decision that was extraordinarily unpopular at the time when he pardoned former President Nixon.
(But that ain’t nothing compared to Iraq, Afghanistan and the economic disaster we perpetrated, so forget parallels.)
He suffered from it,
(Awww…)
and he dropped to about 30 points in the polls in one week, as I recall.
(About twice what I’m at now.)
By the time of his passing a couple of years ago, opinion had totally turned on that.
(So, I’m really looking forward to when I kick the bucket; my popularity should surge like crazy.)
In fact most people by then, even many who had been very critical 30 years before, were in agreement that, in fact, it was a good decision;
(Just don’t ask me to name names cuz I made that up)
it was the right thing to do from the standpoint of the country.
(Not THIS country, but we’re hoping that it works again, if you know what I mean.)
I don't want to compare the pardon to what we've been doing.
(Gawd, knows it’s apples to road-apples, but the pardon sounds good right now.)
It's just the fact of Presidents making tough decisions and how they are perceived contemporaneously
(good word, right?)
versus what they look like 20 or 30 years down the road.
(Fat, old, bloated, wrinkled and smelling of urine.)
And I myself am personally persuaded
(by I, myself)
that this President
(whatshisname)
and this administration
(Mine!)
will look very good 20 or 30 years down the road,
(when it's really hit the fan and everything is commodified and owned by Halliburton)
in light of what we've been able to accomplish with respect to the global war on terror,
(I mean look how many more terrorists there are now! That’s an accomplishment.)
keeping the nation safe for the last seven and a half years against further attacks by al Qaeda,
(Too bad we missed that first one despite all the warnings but hey! Nobody bats 1.000, right?)
administering, I think, a very significant defeat to al Qaeda over the course of the last few years,
(and by defeat, I mean exponential growth and influence)
of liberating 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq.
(Not counting the dead. Death is a very liberating experience, I’m told.)
I just –
(farted)
I think the set of accomplishments there –
(meaning ‘absolute debacles that would shame anyone with a conscience or morals’.)
establishing democracies in both places with constitutions and free elections
(if by ‘democracy’, you mean puppet states with no choice at all.)
-- those are major, major kinds of changes in the course of history that I think this President deserves credit for.
(Or blame. Ranks right up there with Pol Pot and that Old Joe Stalin.)
And I think they'll be recognized as such in the future.
(And with luck, we’ll die before we’re brought before the International Court.)

(too be continued)

Keeping Terrorists Away

Just read an article entitled ‘Two Dangerous Bush-Cheney Myths’. One is that ‘the Surge’ worked. The other is that torture – or something very much like it - is rationalized (justified?) by the fact that there have been no more attacks on the US since Bush II militarized the war on terror.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/122608.html

This strikes me as much the same rational as related in an old anecdote:

A man is observed shredding newspapers every day in Central Park. After witnessing weeks of this behavior, a passer-by finally asks, “Why are you shredding all that newspaper, day after day?”

The compulsive shredder replies matter-of-factly, “To keep the tigers away.”

To which the passer-by retorts, “There are no tigers in New York.”

The shredder winks and says conspiratorially, “Works pretty well, doesn’t it?”

This is the sort of insane pretzel logic Bush and Cheney are dishing out for us swallow.

I guess we're to assume that attacks on US service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan are not to be considered in this most preposterous syllogism.

Prosecute these people and make them account for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis that have been murdered and the thousands of Americans who have died as a direct result of their insanity.

A Not-So-Modest To-Do List for Obama's First Term

Here's a not-so-modest list of actions that should be taken by Obama in his first term in order to right the ship of state and return the United States to the path of a true democratic republic – of the people, by the people and for the people. This is by no means complete or comprehensive; nor are the items listed by priority or expediency.

1. End the illegal war in Iraq and remove all US personnel and contractors other than those necessary for manning and securing the US embassy at levels consistent with other embassies in the Middle-east.

2. End the illegal war in Afghanistan and remove all US personnel and contractors other than those necessary for manning and securing the US embassy at levels consistent with other embassies in the Western Asia.

3. Begin formal process for the providing war reparations to the people (not the governments) of Iraq and Afghanistan through NGOs. (e.g. Red Cross/Red Crescent, CARE, Doctors Without Borders, etc)

4. Arrange a series of formal meetings between the high-level US State Department officials and high-level Iranian officials.

5. Bring the US into full compliance with the IAEA and the non-proliferation treaty.

6. Fund and promote alternative energy sources, comprehensive energy and resource management policies and ‘Green’ product development.

7. Bring the US into reasonable accord with the international community regarding war, human rights, economic policy, etc and assume a temporary non-voting seat on the UN Security Council.

8. Withdraw unconditional support for State of Israel. France, the oldest ally of the United States does not have that permanent status. American foreign policy is NOT Israeli foreign policy and vice versa.

9. End the bloat at the Pentagon; keep our armed forces strong but keep them at home. (Homeland Security... get it?) Reduce the Pentagon budget by at least 50% over the next four years.

10. End the Federal Reserve's strangle hold on the economic lives of the US people. Make the Federal Reserve directly accountable to Congress by placing it within the Treasury Department. Limit each term of the Federal Reserve Board Chairman to 4 years with a limit of two consecutive terms.

11. Amend the fractional reserve system and return to the gold and silver standard.

12. Remove corporate entities from Constitutional protection as individuals. Corporate entities are NOT individuals any more than any organization (e.g. the Catholic Church, the Lions Club, the Republican Party, etc) is an individual but rather a formal association of individuals comprising a group. If an entity does not develop from a human fetus then the entity is not, CANNOT be a citizen and therefore is NOT entitled to the rights of citizenship.

13. Stop all of this blather about the Free Market as if it's Holy Writ. Regulation of industry, business enterprises and corporations are as necessary as regulation of government and therefore in a democratic society must be primarily for the benefit of the people.

14. Let failing commercial enterprises fail but provide workers a safety net. The bosses responsible for the failure of the enterprise are guaranteed ‘Golden Parachutes’ why shouldn’t the workers who toiled and gave their sweat, blood and life-force as wage-slaves be afforded the same guarantee?

15. Social services must come before service to commercial enterprises including the military-industrial complex (i.e. the Pentocracy).

16. Dismantle the Patriot Act brick by brick and restore the constitutional rights of citizens and residents.

17. Abrogate the Imperial presidency and restore the Constitutional balance of power.

18. End signing statements and restrict the power and number of presidential orders per term.

19. Declassify all documents related to the events of 9/11.

20. Declassify all documents related to the Torture Programs, Rendition and Black Sites.

21. Declassify all documents related to the illegal wire-taping of US citizens.

22. Repeal and renege on the order of amnesty to those companies which participated in any illegal wire-taping.

23. Establish a bi-partisan commission to re-investigate the 9/11 attacks.

24. Establish bi-partisan commissions to investigate the possible War Crimes committed by members of the Bush/Cheney administrations.

25. Establish bi-partisan commissions to investigate the possible crimes committed by members of the Bush/Cheney administrations against the Constitution and civic law.

26. Name independent prosecutors with full subpoena powers for each of the aforementioned commissions cited on this list.

27. Last but not least, repeal the National Security Act of 1947 and the subsequent mis-named security acts and dismantle the Security State for the sake of the republic, the people and the world.

Happy 7th Anni-war-sary!?

Break out the Champagne (or sparkling wine) to celebrate the capture of bin Laden, the dissolution of alQaeda and the defeat of the Taliban!

Ooops...

Sorry, not this year.

Not next year, either.

Or in any year after that according to NATO and British generals in Afghanistan and the British diplomatic corp.

So, maybe at this '7th-Year-Stretch' we should ask the question again: 'What is the American mission in Afghanistan?'

Revenge? Retribution? Justice? Freedom & Democracy?

Or is it a never-ending gravy-train for arms dealers and a never-ending murderous nightmare for the Afghan people?

They're At It Again!

Like murderous 2-year olds, you can't take your eyes off of them for a moment. They're making war with an ally, now!

The Bush and Cheney Gang - who else!? While the ridiculous spectacle of personality politics in the US distracts us, Bush/Cheney are attacking Pakistan.

Again and again!

Killing hundreds of men, women, children and - oh, by the way, the occasional member of Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

My, my. Do tell! There are Taliban and Al-Qaeda member in Eastern Afghanistan and Northwest Pakistan? In the Tora Bora Mountains! There!?

This is not news. This is the same old info we’ve had since before the Russians bailed on their Afghani adventure. The CIA and the ISI recruited and hired those thugs to harass the Ruskies. The thugs did a pretty good job and they continue to do a pretty good job at harassing occupying forces. And they’re still in the same area of the world where the USA armed them.

Of course, with the Bush/Cheney eyes on a different prize, they were not so interested in finding some Arab with bad kidneys in a cave and bringing him to trial. (What would you imagine we could all learn from several days of Bin Laden’s testimony in a witness box?)

A third of world oil reserves! Makes your head spin! Bush could revive Arbusco Oil (and probably run it into the ground)and Cheney would probably get free virgins and a gazillion bucks a month in retainers from Halliburton just for his rolodex.

But I digress…

US forces are attacking our ‘key partner in the War on Terror’! What the f… is with that? I suppose Bush/Cheney and their round-table of socio-paths figured the Pakistanis wouldn’t mind if the US killed a few dozen people in the Tribal Areas for a ‘good cause’. Of course, they were advised against such an insane, immoral action by the Intelligence Community, but did they listen? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

You’ve got to give credit where it is due, though. This is a tried and true tactic for winning the war on terror; it’s proven successful in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a nutshell, here’s the plan: make every person in the region hate the US for brutally murdering a family member or loved one. Then everybody in the region, man, woman and child, will share a culturally rooted vow to affect terrible, bloody vengeance on the USA.

That will take care of ‘collateral damage’ for good; whoever’s on photo-op detail at the White House will simply read the teleprompter and sign the executive order making ‘them’ all terrorists.

Ipso facto…

Presto change-o! Nobody’s an innocent because they’ve all been defined as ‘evil terr’rists’ by Imperial decree.

Then we just nuke ‘em all and take the oil.

Should Iraq Be Forced to Pay For Its Own Reconstruction?

NO!

Put the shoe on another foot: Russia invades Afghanistan, destroys the country, and then demands that the Afghanis pay for the cost of reconstruction to Russian corporations.

Or better yet, Iraq invades the US, destroys the American infrastructure, kills upwards of 1.25 million in the course of nightmarish devastation and adds insult to injury by demanding through a quisling government that the American people pay for its own reconstruction. How would that sit with the American people?

Asking Iraq to pay for its own reconstruction is insane, reprehensible and unbelievably immoral.

First, before the illegal invasion, the Bush administration told the American people that Iraqi oil would pay for the reconstruction. What presumption! - to commit resources of the sovereign nation of Iraq to a project without the consent of the Iraqi people.

Now, after dumping billions into a very ineffective, inept reconstruction effort, Americans want the Iraqis to pay for the destruction and devastation that American forces (both mercenary and DOD) have wreaked?

Utter nonsense! Alice had less illogic to deal with in Wonderland.

Like many other facets of this atrocity, the American people were lied to; the invasion and 5-year occupation and suppression of the resultant civil war have been far costlier in all terms than Rumsfeld and the others guestimated.

The proposition that the Iraqi people should pay for the ghastly mess that the Bush administration has made of their country should be abhorrent to any civilized, fair-minded person.

It should be said again that the number of Iraqis who have been murdered in this conflict are estimated to be in excess of 1.25 million. That is a horrendous death toll. The USA is morally obligated to pay restitution for these lives and reparations for the destruction of the Iraq.

Moreover, the companies paid to rebuild Iraq must be Iraqi-owned companies, not American companies. The self-evident righteousness of that proviso should be accepted as an unquestionable moral imperative by which the American people might regain a sense of decency and respectability.

An Open Letter to Those Who Still Support the Bush Doctrine

I find it truly dismaying that you cling to the belief that George W Bush, Richard Cheney and their administrations have not lead the United States to very dire straits with a growing litany of failures not only of policy but of moral rectitude.

Surely you must admit that considering…

1. the de-valuation of the dollar,
2. the sky-rocketing national debt
3. the worrisome American indebtedness to the PRC,
4. the astronomic rise in oil and food prices,
5. the sub-prime crisis,
6. the housing crisis,
7. rising unemployment,
8. the despicable, loathsome shyster-like lexical dissembling attempted by the Bush administration to justify the torturing of ‘detainees’,
9. the kidnapping and ‘torture-by-proxy’ program of ‘Special Rendition’
10. the waiving of ‘Habeas Corpus’ as a matter of policy
11. the illegal spying on American citizens conducted by the government,
12. the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that continue to devastate those countries and our economy,
13. the horrific loss of life due to those conflicts,
14. the growing clamor for investigation of war profiteering by Halliburton, KBR, Bechtel and other corporations with ties to members of these administrations,
15. the unlawful politicization of the Justice Department,
16. the loss of prestige by America in the international community of nations,
17. and the nose-thumbing at international efforts to address global climate change, have all happened on George W. Bush’s ‘watch’ – surely you must admit that he and his administrations have not exactly been a boon for our nation or the world.

It is sad and dismaying that any of you would prefer to pass off all of the above mentioned catastrophes as partisan smoke-screens set by 'liberals' to salve their sense of pride about not winning the political beauty contests of 2000 and 2004.

It is understandable that you would prefer to do that rather than face the truth about the horrific, disastrous political and economic situation that is the legacy of George W Bush and his administrations, but it is sad.

It is sad and dismaying that you actually believe that there remains the possibility of there being anything remotely close to what might be even loosely construed as a military victory in Iraq - a deplorable military mis-adventure that the Pentagon's premier military educational institute, the National Defense University, called a 'debacle' in its April, 2008 report. (I say 'believe' because it must be faith, there being no logical argument or rational thought or consideration of substantive data involved.)

This deeply felt dismay has been brought on by the lying, conniving, obfuscating, dissembling, misrepresenting, mis-informing, dis-informing clutch of greedy, self-serving ultra-nationalists 'serving' in the US government (such as Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Dick Cheney, David Addington, etc) whose actions have resulted in an illegal invasion and violent military occupation of a sovereign nation, the reduction of the 'Cradle of Civilization' to a bombed-out shell of a looted museum ruled by murderous force of arms, the continued occupation of another ruined wreck of a third-world nation, the death of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis, an estimated 4.7 million Iraqi refugees, the eviscerating of US banking regulations that took the legal restraints off of ‘predatory lenders’ (aka loan sharks) leaving thousands of Americans bankrupt and homeless.

It is sad and dismaying NOT because the vast majority of Americans who presently disapprove of Bush’s policies hold you personally responsible. It is sad and dismaying that you have swallowed the Neo-Conservative propaganda, hook, party line and sinker.

It is sad and dismaying that many of you continue to denounce as ‘unpatriotic’ those who didn’t take the bait.

It is sad and dismaying that you do not see that the clay feet of your 'heroes' are crumbling in a rising tide of irrefutable evidence of stark criminality and arrogant disregard for the fundamental values of this nation and the expressed will of the people.

No one would expect you to admit publically that the past 7 and a half years have been ruinous to the US, Iraq and Afghanistan. No one would expect an admission by you that you chose badly in placing your trust in Bush and Cheney. No one expects you to change your political stripes.

What is dismaying is that you would choose to place your sanity and your own moral rectitude in peril by not at the least admitting to yourself that the band-wagon you've been riding on in a high dudgeon of patriotic fervor is on fire and headed over the cliff with millions of people, millions of your fellow Americans, in tow.

That is cause for much sadness and dismay.

Sincerely,

DC Rapier

The Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University (NDU) Report for April, 2008.

Winning the War in Iraq

There’s no ‘winning in Iraq’.

This illegal conflict cannot be considered in terms of hopeful ‘win-win’ euphemisms and silver-lining slogans.

There is no ‘up-side’ to the war in Iraq.

Bush, Cheney, Rice, McCain and any other politico gas-bags sounding off with such absurd rhetoric should take a look around.

The war in Iraq is a debacle. Any attempts to paint rosy pictures of the war and any promises of happy endings involving honorable victory are pathetic delusions or the callous manipulation of public fear by those at fault for this catastrophe.

The invasion of Iraq was a psychotic nightmare scenario whipped up by power-mad socio-paths who think in terms of the ‘Grand Strategy’, the ‘Great Chess Match’ and other fantastic delusions that are brought on by monumental egos and class-based megalomaniacal self-confidence that they are the sole arbiters of truth and the rightful Masters of Mankind.

There’s no ‘winning in Iraq’.

‘The Surge was successful!’ cry the Dogs of War who have unlawfully taken control of our government and thrust us by devilish deception into this lethal calamity.

‘The Surge was successful!’ they bay in dissonant unison. Successful for the bottom-lines of Exxon-Mobile, BP, Total, Shell, Halliburton, KBR, Lockheed, Boeing, Rockwell and all of the Senators, members of Congress and those colluding with the Bush/Cheney cabal? – Yes! Resoundingly so.

We, the people, do not live our lives by the de-humanized rubrics of the corporate board-room. Yet, we have been thrust into this lethally untenable, calamitous conundrum by those who have vowed and taken oath after oath to protect our Republic, uphold the Constitution and act in accordance with the will of the people.

They have failed us and criminally dishonored their oaths of office.

Should the hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani civilians who have been slaughtered during this ‘Campaign for Democracy’ for the sake of ‘National Security’ consider the ‘Surge’ successful? Or the 4,000+ American troops?

The ‘Surge’ was a short-term rudimentary change in tactics and nothing more. ‘Send in the Reserves!’ Now the reserves are spent and there are no more to be called on for more senseless sacrifice either in Iraq or in Afghanistan.

Our ‘Troops’ are coming back from staring down Death and dealing out Death for so long - tour after tour, rotation after rotation in a ‘hot’ zone - that they are returning to the ‘Land of the Free’ and committing suicide at an unprecedented rate for combat veterans. These deaths, like the number of Americans injured or incapacitated are not generally known to the public. Neither is the number of Iraqi civilian dead, wounded, missing and displaced. That is official policy; the perpetrators of this nightmare want to keep us in the dark and under wraps lest we know the extent of their debacle and rise up in arms, bearing torches and demanding a righteous pound of flesh.

There’s no ‘winning in Iraq’.

There is no such thing as a successful exit strategy from Iraq or Afghanistan. There never was. There never will be. No matter how or when the US (or NATO or the ‘Coalition’) removes its troops and its mercenaries from these nations, people will lose their lives for a venal, dishonorable, ignoble enterprise engendered by despicable people to serve their insatiable greed for power, glory, fame and riches beyond the dreams of avarice.

There is no happy ending. Not for the Iraqi people. Not for the American people. Not in the short term. Not for another generation, at least.

There’s no ‘winning in Iraq’.

Parsing McCain's Call for Action Against Iran

“It’s time for action. And it’s time to make the Iranians understand that this kind of violation of international treaties, this kind of threatening of their neighbors, this kind of continued military activity, is not without cost."

Senator John McCain, July, 2008.

It is truly amazing that a presidential candidate, one who touts his foreign policy expertise, would make such tactless remarks in public. To anyone living outside of the vast ‘cone of silence’ that shields the American people from actually comprehending what their leaders spout, it must be nearly incomprehensibly impolitic. Let us take the time to parse the Senator’s statement in hopes of uncovering some semblance of truth.

Violation of treaties?

These are charges against a country which hasn’t invaded another in centuries. These charges are against the only nation to agree to the proposition by the International Atomic Energy Agency to a single-source control of enriched uranium for peaceful purposes.

Threatening their neighbors?

These charges are made by a man who sang ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran’ at one of his campaign rallies. More pointedly, these charges are made within a statement that asserts the necessity of military action against a UN member state.

Military activity?

These charges are made by a man whose comments about 100 years of an American military presence in Iraq are all too well-known.

Moreover, to assert that a nation does not have to right to hold military exercises or conduct military tests within its own borders is ludicrous to the extreme. Imagine any other country in the world challenging the US military’s use of White Sands Testing Grounds. This man is severely out of touch with a reality shared by much of the world.

That this does not come as a surprise to this writer and that Senator McCain’s supporters might not think twice about their candidate openly stating such an absurdity (because it so starkly reflects accepted, traditional US foreign policy) should be of great cause for concern for anyone who shares the reality in which rule of law – when right and just – is an ideal to be upheld and peace is the preferred state of international affairs.

As a further test, let’s replace ‘Iranians’ with ‘Americans’ in that list of charges intoned by McCain:

“It’s time for action. And it’s time to make the Americans understand that this kind of violation of international treaties, this kind of threatening of their neighbors, this kind of continued military activity, is not without cost."

‘Violation of International treaties’?

The invasion of a sovereign nation as other than a deterrent to an immediate, obvious threat of attack is a clear and blatant violation of the UN Charter and the Nuremburg principles.

CHECK!

Threatening ‘neighbors’?

Repeated threats by American leaders to attack Iran are multiple violations of the UN Charter and the Nuremburg principles.

CHECK!

‘Continued military activity’?

There are active American military bases and installations on every continent but Antarctica; more than 700 world-wide by several estimates with the likelihood that there are upwards of 1000 if one should be able to count secret, classified ones.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would certainly constitute ‘continued military activity’.

The recently revealed allocation of funds to support covert military action against Iran must be included here. Quite unlike the military activity so absurdly decried by McCain, the aforementioned military actions are most decidedly not within the recognized borders of the United States.

CHECK!

So, of the three charges Senator McCain levels against Iran in his brief statement, all three apply with even greater weight to the USA.

One must wonder with trepidation, what the ultimate cost will be of America’s continuing militaristic foreign policy.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh

http://www.alternet.org/story/47998/

“God damn the US…”

No, this isn’t another quote from a fire-brand minister. This denunciation was voiced by philosopher and anti-imperialist, William James in 1898. The full quote is “God damn the US for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles.” by which James referred to the slaughter and brutal subjugation of the Philippine people by the US military following the Spanish-American War.

Today, it is a cry that would rally many in the world given the ghoulish light of the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the war on Terror and the proposed war in Iran for which Bush-ite Neo-conmen such as John Bolton are hysterically beating the drum. The former US Ambassador to the UN and Under-Secretary of Defense continues to make the rounds bleating out this message of insanity, this time in conjunction with the release of his new screed, “Surrender is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations”.

JOHN BOLTON: “I think this is a case where the use of military force against a training camp or to show the Iranians we’re simply not going to tolerate this is really the most prudent thing to do, and then the ball would be in Iran’s court to draw the appropriate lesson to stop harming our troops.”

To summarize, the most prudent course of action according to the former UN Ambassador and US Under-Secretary of Defense is to attack another Moslem country and kill its people. Is there any wonder, with psychotic minds like Mr Bolton’s directing US foreign policy that the rest of the world considers the USA the biggest single threat to peace?

(See previous article about the attempted citizen’s arrest of Bolton by activist, George Monbiot.)

http://www.hindu.com/2008/05/30/stories/2008053061311800.htm

http://books.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2282556,00.html

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=57811&sectionid=3510203

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1551726/We-must-attack-Iran-before-it-gets-the-bomb.html
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/2008/05/29/campaigner-fails-in-war-crimes-arrest-bid-at-hay-91466-20989099/