Posts
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Friday, October 2, 2009
Judge Goldstone Defends Gaza Inquiry Alleging Israeli War Crimes
Judge Richard Goldstone: “We detail a number of specific incidents in which Israeli forces launched direct attacks against civilians with lethal consequences. These were, with only one exception, where the facts establish that there was no military objective or advantage that could justify the attacks.”
Around 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli attack, most of them civilians. Goldstone rejected Israel’s claim that it was targeting “terrorist infrastructure” in Gaza.
Judge Richard Goldstone: “If ‘infrastructure’ were to be understood in that way and become a justifiable military objective, it would completely subvert the whole purpose of international humanitarian law built up over the last hundred years and more. It would make civilians and civilian buildings justifiable targets. These attacks amounted to reprisals and collective punishment and constitute war crimes.”
Goldstone’s report also accuses Palestinian fighters of committing war crimes in firing rockets at nearby Israeli towns and urges both sides to conduct investigations or face prosecution by the International Criminal Court.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/30/headlines
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Killing the Messenger: Sibel Edmonds Documentary
Here are some informative sites:
http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2009/07/sibel-edmonds-on-mike-malloy.html
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/31/63124/3823
http://lukery.blogspot.com/2008/07/court-documents-shed-light-on-cia.html
http://nswbc.org/Op%20Ed/Op-ed-Part1-Nov15-06.htm
Sunday, December 21, 2008
A Not-So-Modest To-Do List for Obama's First Term
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.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
The First Big 'Debate' of '08
For the record, I am not a supporter of Senator Obama. The alternative offered by the Republican wing of the Business Party, McCain and Palin is, however, as pathetic mentally as it is disturbing morally.
Just heard part of the 'Big Debate' between Obama and McCain - little more than a parlour game with a moderator, not a debate at all but that’s the game.
McCain made a gaffe that some might have picked up on re: the opinion of his advisor, Henry 'I'm-not-dead-yet' Kissinger about meeting with Iran.
McCain vehemently refuted Senator Obama's claim that Henry K favored high-level discussions with Iran without setting preconditions. McCain then reflexively bellowed about Iran's vow to destroy Israel, asserting that any high-level meetings without preconditions would serve to legitimize Iran's bellicose anti-Zionist ravings.
Obama was correct, however. Kissinger stated the night before in a panel interview on CNN with other former Secretaries of State that he would recommend the next US president arrange a series of meetings starting with the Secretary of State without pre-conditions.
For McCain to use the vivid specter of the Holocaust as the prime rationale for continuing the failed policies of undiplomatic belligerence toward Iran is one thing. (Politically expedient. Plays well to AIPAC.)
To openly bluster that Kissinger, his own revered advisor, never said the very things he stated clearly the evening before on CNN points out two things, both distressing.
First, McCain’s out of touch on this most important foreign policy issue with one of his own most respected and experienced advisors. To disagree with his advisors is one thing; to rail on that Kissinger never said what he said and use McCain’s decades-long personal relationship with Henry as his supporting argument to refute the veracity of Obama’s claim is ludicrous. (It’s no wonder real debates aren’t presented. It’s also no wonder that McCain tried to opt out of having this little tete-a-tete; in a battle of wits, he’s an unarmed man.)
Second, McCain (and his campaign staff) are apparently so out of touch with current affairs that McCain would enter the most widely touted ‘debate’ of the campaign without an awareness of important public statements on US policy by his own advisor, Henry Kissinger, on a widely seen CNN special on the presidential election with focus on the very 'debate' for which McCain was presumably preparing.
There’s little wonder in light of this gaffe why McCain would prefer not meeting with Iran or other leaders ‘unfriendly’ to the US. He’d get blown out of the water for simple lack of preparation (if not intellect) and then blow a gasket in the resulting temper tantrum.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Kirchick's Unwitting Deception Defense
“Bush never lied to us about Iraq.”
That’s the claim passionately made by James Kirchick, an assistant editor of the New Republic, in an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times dated June 16, 2008. To forestall any uncertainty about his declamation, the subtitle reads, “The administration simply got bad intelligence. Critics are wrong to assert deception.”
Mr Kirchick, with studied, journalistic style, opens his piece with a reference to former Michigan governor, George Romney’s Johnny-come-lately renunciation of the illegal US war in Indo-China – the Vietnam War. (In 1967, after tossing his hat into the presidential ring, Romney claimed he had been duped into thinking the war right and just.)
Ironic that Mr Kirchick should choose to refer to the claim by a former Republican governor and presidential candidate that he had been deceived about US involvement in another very unpopular and very illegal war. One can only assume that Mr Kirchick contends that such a claim, even coming from a privileged member of the upper echelon of government, loses veracity if used to exonerate or excuse oneself from complicity. Then again, one must be wary of piling assertions upon assertions. A caveat to which, unfortunately, Mr Kirchick pays little heed as a Bush apologist.
“Four years on from the first Senate Intelligence Committee report, war critics, old and newfangled, still don't get that a lie is an act of deliberate, not unwitting, deception.”
Apart from inferring that ‘unwitting deception’ is a morally tenable notion, Mr Kirchick might be commended for manning the wall against all of the many thousands of poor, deluded members of the US population whom he assumes do not understand what a lie is. (We all must have been out of the room when they explained that.) His commendation for setting the rest of us straight will have to wait until Mr Kirchick learns the corollary to that simple definition: once one realizes or is informed that what one has stated is in error, the statement must be apologized for (at least in polite company), a correction made to rectify the statement in question and if necessary, retribution paid if inconveniences or unpleasantries were caused by the non-factual information. So far, we’ve heard nothing remotely of the sort from Bush and company. (Maybe they and Mr Kirchick missed that part of the class on honesty.)
Additionally, if, after one learns that a statement one has made is false, contains falsehoods, or is misleading and then continues to affirm the truthfulness of the known falsehood, this affirmation is, most assuredly, a deliberate act of deception. A lie. And that is not putting too fine a point on the matter even for a kindergartener. The adult citizens of the United States should expect nothing less from their elected and appointed representatives than they do from their own children.
In an attempt to make lying and deception a partisan issue, Mr Kirchick recommends the following:
If Democrats wish to contend they were "misled" into war, they should vent their spleen at the CIA.”
Here one must ask, “Does Mr Kirchick mean the CIA which brought zero credible evidence to the Bush war planners of the presence of WMDs, a nuclear program, or any but the most gossamer of connection between Saddam and Al Queda? Does he mean to lump the CIA in with the rest of the US Intelligence network that were told to ‘cherry-pick’ and ‘stove-pipe’ information and politicize reports so as to support, contrary to available substantive evidence, the decision, which the administration had made years before September 11th, 2001, to invade Iraq? The self-same CIA, whose experts on the Iraq and Middle-east desks told the Bush administration that the assertions about WMDs, a nuclear program and Baathist ties to Al Queda were fantasy? THAT CIA?”
One must strive for clarity, after all. One would not wish to see the Democrats ‘vent their spleen’ against the wrong party.
Mr Kirchick continues his lesson:
“This may sound like ancient history, but it matters. After Sept. 11, President Bush did not want to risk allowing Hussein, who had twice invaded neighboring nations, murdered more than 1 million Iraqis and stood in violation of 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions, to remain in possession of what he believed were stocks of chemical and biological warheads and a nuclear weapons program. By glossing over this history, the Democrats' lies-led-to-war narrative provides false comfort in a world of significant dangers.”
“Ancient history”? Either this is clearly the expression of raw, brass-balls condescension by Mr Kirchick towards his readers or Mr Kirchick’s long-term memory has undergone some unfortunate trauma, leading him to actually think that 5 years ago is a very, very long time. Perhaps he’s pitching this passage to a fifth grade civics class somewhere; perhaps one of the classes which also missed learning the definition of ‘lie’. One can only speculate, of course.
Kirchick then makes the bold claim that ‘it matters’ what happened five years ago, thus truly insulting and patronizing his readers further. That Mr Kirchick should feel it necessary to point out that the official actions of and by the Chief Executive of the United States and his administration ‘matter’ (waging war, for example) - even those enacted in the ‘ancient history’ of five years ago – reveals an astounding contempt for the readers of the New Republic and the public in general. Even the readers of the on-line version of the New Republic could not be so dense, so intellectually challenged that such a rudimentary truism would escape their understanding without Kirchick’s writing it on the wall in crayon. This evident presumption that his readers are vacuous fools is unworthy of anyone beyond middle-school claiming to be a journalist.
Then again, here it seems is the crux of the biscuit: this is not journalism. Mr Kirchick, as evidenced by this editorial, does not concern himself with understanding the facts or seeking the truth; what any journalist worth their salt most assuredly aspires to. He is content, instead, to recite the proscribed myth of ‘Dubya and the Evil-doers’, as fabricated by the Administration’s cadre of P.R. spin-sters, no doubt gaining, at least for Mr Kirchick, ‘comfort in a world of significant dangers’.
Ignorance is bliss, everybody. Go back to sleep while ‘the Decider’ decides on how best to ‘smoke ‘em out of their holes’ while using the smoke as cover to gut the Constitution.
If Mr Kirchick were concerned with historicity, as a responsible journalist should be, must be, he would cite some of the following incontrovertible facts:
“…President Bush did not want to risk allowing Hussein, who had twice invaded neighboring nations, murdered more than 1 million Iraqis …”
The US was Saddam’s chief supplier of arms and armament during Saddam’s eight-year war with Iran, leaving upwards of a million casualties. The slaughter on both sides did nothing to discourage the US from selling arms or providing support to Saddam during the administrations of Reagan and Bush the First. It is well-known that the US supplied the technology and the know-how to build arsenals of WMDs, during Saddam’s reign. This support, furthermore, included whatever nuclear capability Saddam had. As long as he was holding the Iranians in check and rebuking Soviet influence, Saddam was ‘our man’ deserving of favor and support as an ally and a client. Once he decided to use his US-supplied military might for conquest un-authorized by Washington (i.e. invading Kuwait) he fell from favor.
His vicious suppression of the Shi’ite and Kurdish rebellions by utilizing US supplied poison gas and other WMDs following the First Gulf War – rebellions which had been publically and privately encouraged by the US leadership – was met with little more than hand-wringing from Washington in the calamitous aftermath. There’s little reason to think that the cabal led by Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, having been key players in the Reagan/Bush years before during and after Gulf War One and having returned to power with Bush the Younger, had had a change of heart regarding the desperate plight of the Iraqi people in the intervening years.
“…to remain in possession of what he (Bush) believed were stocks of chemical and biological warheads and a nuclear weapons program…”
As mentioned before and substantiated in numerous reports, the intelligence network of the United States had no verifiable evidence that Saddam had any active weapons programs or viable caches of WMDs. UN weapons inspectors, Hans Blix and Scott Ritter both contend that Saddam had no substantial stock-piles of WMDs nor any active weapons programs nor the capacity or capability of reviving or initiating weapons programs. After an 8-year stalemate with Iran, a crushing defeat by US and coalition forces in Gulf War Mark 1 and more than 10 years of crippling sanctions and UN inspections, all that was left of Saddam’s US supplied WMDs and weapons programs was what was found after the invasion and after victory in Iraq was declared by our tin-pot Potentate-in-Chief - NOTHING! Nada. Zilch. Bupkis.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had an agenda set well before 2001to finish the job they felt Bush Senior had botched back in 1991 by not getting rid of the recalcitrant Hussein and replacing him with a different, more amenable strongman. The calamity of September 11 gave them the opening they needed. Ahmed Chalabi was to be the replacement despot for Saddam, apparently. Chalabi was also, quite neatly, a prime source of the disputable evidence of Saddam’s WMDs – evidence long since proven false and repudiated as rank, self-serving, wanton, malicious fiction upon which the Bush-ites built much of their case for the invasion of Iraq.
“…in violation of 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions…”
As for those long-standing violations of UN resolutions as a just, compelling reason for invasion, one need only look at records of the Security Council and the General Assembly to realize that Iraq was not the only member state on the list of violators. (The United States, itself, would be on that list were it not for its omnipotent veto power by which disagreeable resolutions are stricken from the record and thence sent disappearing down the memory hole.) Israel has held in contempt any and all resolutions that have escaped the US veto regarding Palestine for decades without suffering the threat of US invasion.
On the contrary, Israel is the foremost beneficiary of the US State Department and American tax-payer-funded largesse, amounting to billions of dollars worth of military hardware each year with which they have brutally oppressed the Palestinians and invaded and occupied their Arab neighbors. (To cite just one example; Israel has invaded Lebanon 5 times in 30 years, killing an estimated 20,000 people during the 1982 invasion.) Israel is also the only country in the Middle-east that actually has a functioning and readily deployable nuclear arsenal – one surreptitiously supplied by the US, by all accounts. None of these acts of aggression, nor the presence of WMDs have merited US sanction, reproach or more than the occasional finger-wag of disapproval from Washington.
Further examples of other nations in violation of UN resolutions are easily discovered by anyone interested in knowing the facts. One must conclude Mr Kirchick is not to be counted as one of those. Otherwise, one would assume he would have attempted to utilize some factual evidence to support his preposterous assertion that “Bush never lied to us about Iraq”. He did not. He chose to build a ‘straw man’ and accuse the Democrats of “glossing over this history”; history that he himself distorts in his own feeble gloss in an attempt to purposefully mislead any reader gullible or ignorant enough to swallow such obvious bilge. (That fifth-grade class comes to mind.)
Given Mr Kirchick’s pathetic, fatuous arguments in support of his ‘Dear Leader’ amid the growing avalanche of testimony from reputable sources regarding the Bush administrations’ felonious finagling, one can safely conclude therefore that Bush did, indeed, lie about Iraq. Repeatedly. One must, as a result, soberly consider the unpleasant likelihood that George W Bush continues to prevaricate, equivocate, obfuscate, dissemble, and mislead the American people.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kirchick16-2008jun16,0,4808346.story
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
Thursday, May 15, 2008
A Vision Thing
The Bush-ster is in Jerusalem to join the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel. On the Palestinian side of the security walls, meanwhile, they’re observing the sixtieth anniversary of what Palestinians call the Nakba or “catastrophe” that resulted in the expulsion and dispossession of over 750,000 Palestinians from their cities and villages.
Perhaps with the US annihilation of the indigenous American population and South African apartheid in mind, Dubya praised Israel as a model for Middle East democracies. A model that is, despite its being Jewish and Zionist when all the rest of the Middle-east is Muslim or Christian. And in spite of the fact that more than 50% of Israelis want a peaceful solution to the Palestinian issue and favor the recognition of a formal Palestinian state but they ain’t getting it from their government.
Sound familiar?
So, Dubya starts to blather in front of the cameras…
President Bush: "You know, here…, you know, here…, here we are in the heart of a thriving democracy and yet that democracy as are other democracies are being challenged by extremists and terrorists–people who use violence, who try to advance their dark vision of the world."
Like… by invading sovereign countries to over-throw governments in order to control exploitable natural resources, bomb strafe and brutalize innocent men, women and children, destroy the country’s infrastructure, precipitating millions of refugees and millions more homeless and impoverished, torturing prisoners held without habeas corpus in contravention to the Geneva Accords, the United Nations Charter and the US Constitution?
Do you mean that kind of violence in service to a dark vision, Mr Bush?
Doug Feith and Obfuscation
Doug Feith served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Bush administration from July 2001 until he resigned from his position effective August 8, 2005.
Currently, he is hawking his book, ‘War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism’ a polemic refuting the generally accepted opinion that the Bush administration lied to the American people about the necessity of invading Iraq.
On the Daily Show, Feith stated that “I think the Administration had an honest belief in the things that it said. Some of the things that it said about the war that were part of the rationale for the war were wrong, but errors are not lies.”
True enough, Dougie, but the transmission of errors which are known to be errors is, most definitely, lying.
It has been shown and documented repeatedly that much of what Rummy, Cheney and other members of the administration were telling the Congress, the American people and the world to justify the invasion were known by them at the time to be falsehoods, deceptions and unsubstantiated conclusions.
Call it ‘cherry-picking’ or ‘stove-piping’ if you wish but what was offered as justification for war, my friend, was bald-faced obfuscation.
Lies.
One of the lies that Mr Feith continues to espouse is that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the region, to the United States and to Israel. This is malarkey. After the devastating Iraq/Iran war, Desert Storm and 10 years of crippling UN sanctions, Saddam was a threat to no one but his own people.
Lies.
Impeach Bush.
Impeach Cheney.
Indict and prosecute the war criminals and war profiteers.
Defend our Constitution from the onslaught of the neo-con fascists.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=168543
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Stop the War with Iran
Stop the War in Iran before it gets started.
Bush and his Boys are not about to let this one go. We won’t be any safer from terrorism – quite the opposite – but their compadres, the CEOs at Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater, Bechtel , Exxon-Mobile, etc, ad nauseam would be thrilled to death if the war widens to include Iran along with Afghanistan and Iraq.
CounterPunch.org is reporting President Bush has signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime. Bush’s secret directive covers actions from Lebanon to Afghanistan. Journalist Andrew Cockburn reports the directive is “unprecedented in its scope” and permits the assassination of targeted officials. http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew05022008.html
Of course, actions like this cost money. Not to worry. An outlay of $300 million has been approved with bipartisan support. Way to stand on your hind legs, Dems! So much for will of the people, you bunch of self-serving back-stabbing slackers.
Now, Hill the Pill is declaring she’ll unleash Armageddon on Iran if they attack Israel. Break out the testosterone suppositories! She’s gonna grow her some ‘nads!
'What’s wrong with saying that?', she asks in her campaign delirium.
“Why would I have any regrets? I’m asked a question about what I would do if Iran attacked our ally, a country that many of us have a great deal of, you know, connection with and feeling for, for all kinds of reasons.”
And stuff like that there…
Lord, Sister Hill, why are you buying into Cheney’s paranoid propaganda? Are you trying to get some wack-o swing votes from McCain supporters who think he’s ‘soft’ on terror? McCain has that area of Psycho-town nailed down with his 100 years in Iraq vision. Meanwhile, he’s getting spa treatments and taking meetings with Carl Rove clones while you and Obama dance the dance from ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’. Fire your advisors and stop shooting yourself and your party in the foot.
Let's all take a reality break!
As mentioned here a fortnight ago, Iran is in no position at all to attack Israel. They have no nuclear capability according to the current NIE report while Israel has hundreds of active nukes. That would hardly be stepping into a fair fight let alone provoking one. The old saw about bringing a knife to a gun-fight springs to mind.
Oh, and has anybody in the Clinton campaign or anyone else covering the ‘situation’ with Iran looked at a friggin’ map? Just how is Iran planning to attack Israel? (Sure, they’ve blustered about it. Look at all the trash talking coming from Washington and Jerusalem.) Let’s get practical: just how would the Iranians go about attacking Israel? March, unseen, 1200 kilometers across Iraq and Jordan to wage war against the second-best equipped army in the world?
That ain’t gonna happen.
Or would Tehran, just go ahead and toss all caution and sense of self-preservation aside and simply attack Israel with air-strikes – just to start a pissing contest? Right. No matter what the state of Iran’s air force, the US and Israel have them trumped, hands down. Especially when the Israelis have the capability to launch nuclear devices from their specially equipped, American supplied fighters.
Not a single Iranian plane would even be allowed to approach Iraq air-space unchallenged. How in hell would Iranian planes make it across Iraq to Israel? Even the attempt, even the feint of an attempt at such an insane self-destructive act of aggression would mean a shit-storm descending on Tehran.
And does anybody out there really think that given the chance, the Israeli leadership would think twice about letting a couple of tactical nukes find a worthy target or two for the sake of future deterrence? Not that the presence of 300 more nukes just like those aren’t deterrent enough.
I, for one, am inclined to think that Iran would rather err on the side of caution than seek the destruction of its republic and the death of a substantial number of its people.
Call me crazy.
Stop the War in Iran before it gets started.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Our Creepy Veep on the Warpath in Bizarr-o World
It’s time for another visit to Bizarr-o World, my friends. Break out the thorazine, open a fresh party pack of chocolate-covered Prozac and enjoy the fun as America’s zaniest bunch of psychopaths try for the trifecta of World Political Disasters.
Dan Froomkin wrote an article entitled ‘Cheney on the Warpath Again?’ for the Friday, April 11, 2008 on-line edition of the Washington Post. (Imagine that; the press may actually be getting savvy to the fact that Cheney, Bush, and the gang are role-playing ‘Armegeddon’.) In the article, Froomkin quotes our curmudgeonly VP telling Sean ‘the Bean’ Hammity that Iran was filled with nasty apocalyptic zealots who might have a nuclear bomb sometime soon. (Hmm, this rings a bell.) Of course, the only appropriate action hinted at by our creepy Veep is - wait for it - showing them who’s the boss in Bizarr-o World. He started off by sowing his black magic seeds of ‘FEAR!’.
Quothe the Cheney:
"But Ahmadinejad is I think a very dangerous man. On the one hand, he has repeatedly stated that he wants to destroy Israel. … mutual assured destruction in the Soviet-U.S. relationship in the Cold War meant deterrence, but mutual assured destruction with Ahmadinejad is an incentive.”
So, let me get this straight, Dicky-doodle: the president of Iran is even crazier than you are. Is that what you’re saying?
Cuz, he doesn’t have any nuclear weapons. He doesn’t have any fissile material. And he hasn’t even had a weapons program for 5 years according to the latest report by the National Intelligence Estimate. The NIE reported "with high confidence" that Iran did have a nuclear weapons program until 2003, but that this was discovered and Iran stopped it. (Naughty Billies!) It also assessed that the earliest date by which Iran could make a nuclear weapon would be late 2009 but that this is "very unlikely" given that Iran appears "less determined" to develop nuclear weapons than US intelligence had previously thought. In other words, no nukes and nearly a zero level chance of producing one.
On the other hand, Mr C, at last count - I suspect counting them over and over is how you fall asleep in the wee hours - how many nuclear devices are there currently in the DOD inventory, cringing from your clammy touch? An estimated 5,736 active stockpile warheads scattered round the US (and elsewhere) – give or take. That’s what I’d call a very active nuclear weapons program. It’s been going on since the ’Manhattan Project’ without abatement for over 60 years.
Oh, and not to mention – and in polite, elitist intellectual company one simply doesn’t, you know – courtesy of the super sense of fair play and the hyper-sensitivity to anti-Semitism that are the hallmarks of US foreign policy - the state of Israel is the 5th largest nuclear power in the world. It has between 200 and 300 nuclear warheads just waiting for the ‘okay’ from Washington should an Arab or Iranian dare look cross-eyed at them.
And you think that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and all of his advisors are crazy enough to try to build a nuclear bomb and use it to destroy the Zionist State precisely, explicitly, because they, the Iranians, would then be annihilated by US and Israeli retaliation, destroying 6,000 years of history, culture and tradition and subjecting the Iranian population of over 70 million to a nuclear holocaust? Even when we’re talking about apocalyptic zealots – and that’s talking way crazy – nuking Israel and assuring self-induced annihilation is straight out looney-tunes. We’re well past thorazine party favors, booby. That’s more of your Bizarr-o world up-is-down, black-is-white, thinking at work there.
What is beyond question is that Vee-Pee Dick (in the role of Iago) leads a faction of officials in the Pentagon, State Department and elsewhere, who argue that before Dubya hands over the keys to 1600 (none too soon), the US should kick some more boo-tay there in oil-rich Asia, destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, punish them for not keeping the Shah in power and thwarting U.S. aims in Iraq.
(Which are what again? Oh, yeah, the ‘democracy’ thing.)
Froomkin added that some observers suspect Cheney of encouraging Israel to attack Iran as a proxy while he was there spreading sunshine and love from an Israeli check-point two weeks ago and accusing Hamas of trying to scuttle ‘peace talks’. (Those words must curdle in the man’s mouth.)
And Twisted Dick thinks Ahmadinejad is a very dangerous man? Oh, yeah…
So, if this Mahmoud joker is actually planning to pull a nuclear weapon out of his burnoose and use it on Israel, he must be without a doubt, top-to-bottom, upside-downside, backwards and forwards a whole lot crazier than you are, Sour-Puss Dick.
And if you think we are stupid enough to fall for that ol’ WMDs gag again, you ought to try re-doubling your dose of Prozac and start thinking how you’re going to spend your yard time in Leavenworth, Dicky-boy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/04/11/BL2008041102216_pf.html
BBC News, Tuesday, 8 April 2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4031603.stm
Monday, March 10, 2008
Debt - the American Way
It never rains but it pours.
Credit card debt in America reached a record high of nearly $800 billion dollars last November. A new report from the Center for American Progress warns that a rise in credit card defaults could produce economic fallout on par with the current mortgage crisis. Approximately 35 million credit card customers can no longer afford to make more than the minimum payment every month.
Meanwhile defaults on home mortgages have reached another all-time high. The Mortgage Bankers Association say nearly 80% of all home loans in America were past due or in foreclosure at the end of last year. The Federal Reserve also announced that Americans’ percentage of equity in their homes has fallen below fifty percent for the first time since 1945.
But that’s not all!
The price of oil hit a new high Thursday nearly reaching $106 a barrel, a 300% increase over 7 years ago, at the start of Bush’s neo-con regime.
And that’s only part of it. The record oil price came as the US dollar struck a new low against all major currencies.
The Bush administration pats itself on the back for sending out checks for a few hundred dollars to each American family to off-set the collapse of the dollar.
What a bunch of great guys.
On the other hand, the US government gives out more than $5 billion a year in direct aid to Israel. Has done for more than a generation.
$13,812,154 a day.
That works out to more than $10,000 per Israeli per annum.
You got bought off cheap, sucka.
"The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
Oh, by the way, Dubya probably had to borrow the money he deigned to dole out to you. So, as US taxpayers, you’ll be expected to pay all of it back.
With interest. Just hope Dubya didn’t put it on his credit card.
http://www.x-rates.com/d/USD/table.html
http://www.americanprogress.org/
http://www.mortgagebankers.org/
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/7/headlines
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Friends Like These
I was watching a CNN report about the attack by a lone gunman at Mercaz Harav yeshiva, a religious school in Jerusalem. 8 were killed and 9 others wounded. This was cited as the deadliest in Jerusalem in over four years. At the time, little other information about the shooting was available. No group or faction has thus far claimed responsibility for the attack.
CNN televised a boiler-plate statement by the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, denouncing the horrific act of terror. Then, as Mr Gillerman left the podium, another man walked to the microphone. CNN did not bother to televise his statement. My curiosity was piqued. This second man, obviously a UN official or representative, must have been about to make a statement regarding the same incident.
In point of fact, the man was Libya’s Deputy Ambassador Ibrahim Al-Dabbashi who explained why Libya had vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning the attack but I had to wait until the following day, on ‘Democracy Now!’, to hear the statement by Deputy Ambassador. The statement in effect was that the resolution should be “balanced” by including condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza because the shooting at the yeshiva, atrocious as it was, followed one of the bloodiest weeks in Gaza in years as Israeli troops had killed at least 120 Palestinians over the past week, mostly civilians.
Ibrahim Al-Dabbashi stated, “For us the human lives are the same. We don’t judge the incident in itself. We judge about the killing. We think there is no superhuman and human from second grade or something like that. We think that the lives of the Palestinians are the same as those of the Israelis.”
Why was the Deputy Ambassador’s statement not deemed important enough by CNN to broadcast? To my mind, this is one more example of how the US media skews its reportage to favor the Israeli side of this terrible conflict.
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations decried Libya’s stance stating, “The Security Council was unable to reach a decision, a unanimous decision on condemning the massacre that happened in Jerusalem tonight. Unfortunately, this is what happens when the Security Council is infiltrated by terrorists.”
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3516295,00.html
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/israel-palestine/2008/0305killingspree.htm
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/7/headlines
http://www.uscrusade.com/forum/config.pl/noframes/read/1372
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/membship/veto/vetosubj.htm
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Cost Analysis
$16 billion dollars is being spent every month on the undeclared wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
$43,835,616.00 per diem – give or take.
In 2007, Washington gave $6.8 million a day to Israel – mostly in the form of military aid. More than a quarter of a million dollars an hour.
The Pentagon plans to bleed the stone for $515.4 billion in 2009; $42.9 billion a month; $9.9 billion a week; $1.4 billion a day; $58.8 million an hour; $980,000 a minute; $16,000 a second.
The blink of an eye.
Tell us again about the cost of ‘freedom’ and the price of ‘national security’.