Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Condi Rice Talks More Shite

In a new interview with Fortune Magazine, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denounced the idea of withdrawal from Afghanistan with typical illogic heavily tainted with fear-mongering.

"The last time we left Afghanistan, and we abandoned Pakistan," she said, "that territory became the very territory on which Al Qaeda trained and attacked us on September 11th. So our national security interests are very much tied up in not letting Afghanistan fail again and become a safe haven for terrorists.
"It's that simple," she declared, "if you want another terrorist attack in the U.S., abandon Afghanistan."

Codswallop, horsefeathers, hogwash, claptrap and poppycock!

What Ms Rice is adroitly dissembling is the role the CIA and Rep. Charlie Wilson, that woefully misguided naïf, (to be kind) played in arming, funding and training the mujahidin ‘freedom fighters’ which were to be thorns in the side of the Soviet bear. These selfsame mujahidin then known as ‘the Network’ – and included Saudi millionaire, Usama bin-Laden - morphed with little effort into a larger movement to rid Muslim countries of all Western influence. That movement is now referred to as ‘Al Qaida’.

This bit of essential back-story skirts the larger issue, though. Ms Rice, like all neo-cons and many who sit on both sides of the aisles of Congress, wears the stripes of international interventionism whereby the belligerent presence of US military might is the righteous base-line upon which all foreign policy decisions are made.

Our ‘national security interests’ as Ms Rice and her ilk would have us believe would be solved by the further expansion of US military forces to encircle the globe and control by threat of force the policies of every nation and region on earth to suit the perceived needs of the United States and US-based multi-national corporations.

If one were seeking a more truthful observation of reality, it would much more appropriate to paraphrase Ms Rice’s neo-conic cant to state “Unless you want another terrorist attack in the US, abandon the policies of empire and hegemonic military dominance that breed exasperation, hopelessness and fanatical hatred of the US policy of global intervention.”

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/22/condoleezza-rice-if-you-w_n_294755.html

http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/21/news/economy/condoleezza_rice_gop.fortune/?postversion=2009092209

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

How do you spell 'Quagmire', again?

Gen. Stanley McChrystal writes, “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term…risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

Does this sound like circular logic to anyone else?

The 'initiative' - meaning the ability to control the battle theater - is an illusion in guerrilla warfare and 'momentum' can only mean sustained and relentless, perpetual military action against the citizenry of the country.

The fact of the matter is that 'insurgency' is a code word for 'citizens of the country that resent the US military for killing their friends and family and have taken up arms to fight hostile occupation'.

Support the troops!
Bring them home to lead productive - not destructive - lives.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Breaking the Silence - John Pilger

As we near the start of the 9th year of senseless slaughter in Afghanistan, take time to listen to the reasons voiced by George W, Tony B, William Kristol, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, and the other architects of the Project for the New American Century that were meant to justify the illegal invasion and armed aggression against a sovereign people. John Pilger's documentary of 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan. What is the point? What is the justification 8 years on for the death and destruction?


Watch John Pilger - Breaking the Silence in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Torture Investigation Gets Gonzo's Okay

It would seem that former Attorney General Gonzalez finally remembered something. He remembered the law and what a prosecutor is suppose to do when someone is suspected and accused of breaking it.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Richard B Cheney: please, go back to your safe-room and await the US Marshalls


Cheney's claim that his policies saved lives and foiled terrorist plots reminds me of that joke about the person shredding newspaper in NYC to keep away the tigers. When told that there are no tigers in NYC, the person rejoins,'See how well it works?'

Although correlation is not proof (as this joke illustrates), the number of plots foiled by Cheney's administration by torture and rendition are few and laughable. The heinous acts that they committed are numerous and vile.

Cheney (and Addington, Rice, Tennant, et al) were caught so flat-footed by 9-11 that they went off the moral and legalistic deep end in a frantic attempt to 1) avoid culpability and 2) make political hay.

In Cheney's own words, they went to the 'dark side' which to me indicates that he was already quite familiar with the territory having been there many times before.