"Why the dilemma? The American people have spoken, and continue to speak out, against this war. So why not end it? How do we end it? Why not exactly the way we went in? We just marched in, and we can just march out.
More good things may come of it than anyone can imagine. Consider our relationship with Vietnam, now our friendly trading partner. Certainly we are doing better with her than when we tried to impose our will by force. It is time to march out of Iraq and march home."
* pcr:
"Bush claims that he invaded Iraq because he so highly values democracy that he desired to establish one in Iraq as an example for other Middle Eastern countries to follow. However, what Bush has demonstrated to Muslims is that American democracy is unresponsive to citizens and voters. Bush has demonstrated to the world that the U.S. government is controlled by a small oligopoly of vested interests, the public be damned. Democracy means a government that follows the will of the people. Bush is ignoring public opinion and has made it clear that he will continue the practice.
Bush has shown the world that the only difference between American dictatorship and other dictatorships is that, for now, Americans are permitted to remove their dictator after his term is served."
* RudePundit:
"You wanna know why the war is lost? Because it could never, never be won. We're asking people who live in a state of religious delusion to calm the fuck down and not respond to their delusions. Delusional reality. Delusionality, if you will. We in the West just think our delusionality is so much more civilized than theirs.* don't miss Moyers on Maher (10min)
But if the great and wondrous West is still trying to figure out if some invisible sky wizard lets the ghosts of dead babies into his invisible sky cloud city, if this is something that grown-ups have to have a "study" about, whether for reasons of public relations or theology, then we are not so far down that historical road from stoning for conversions."
13 comments:
with the permanent military bases, the new u.s. embassy palace and the pending passage of the iraq oil law, we will never leave iraq, which, of course, has been the plan from the beginning...
Right, Marcus. They were lying and stalling before we went in, and they still are. You hear a lot about the end of Vietnam, with lots of people congratulating themselves. The antiwar movement helped end it, but not much. When people abroad stopped buying our products, and a couple guys asked Nixon to end it, he did--unexpectedly. Within a matter of days, we were gone. It was very, very good. Soon, Nixon was, too. The GOP has been punishing America and the world with "conservatism " ever damn since. Anyone who suggests we have to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan, or that we need a phased withdrawal, and we can't just leave, is a lying killer. I don't let these dicks think for me.
You are correct Uranus; anyway, the war in Iraq is illegal in its entirety, as the invasion of a country that is doing nothing to provoke the U.S. is a war of aggression plain and simple. People who call it a "war of choice" need to face the facts; it's no different fundamentally than the Nazi German invasion of Poland, it's a war of aggression. And anything stemming from it is illegal as well, only compounding their crime day after day by staying there. And anyone who lets those war criminal, mass murdering dicks think for them needs to have their head examined. Anyone who takes proven liars at their word because it's more comfortable than facing the truth should take a look at this nice bridge I have for sale, rock-bottom price, no paperwork necessary.
P.S.-- Regarding Nixon being gone, that bears looking into. The real question is, why was the [second] Watergate burglary sabotaged with not one but two pieces of tape on the doorway so the security guard would definitely see it at least by the second time around? ;)
The war continues in Iraq because they voted for the wrong guy. Dopey and Darth bankrolled Ahmed Chalabi.
Dopey and Darth rejected the newly elected Iraqi government's Proposed Peace Plan which included an agreement with the sunnis to lay down their arms if we withdrew our troops within two years. Dopey and Darth knew if they stayed the violence would continue and the Maliki would fail and then they could have Chalabi. Watch and see.
Maliki is floundering now. Dopey and darth need continued violence in Iraq to justify our permanent military presence.
Ron Bryneart of Raw thinks we are in Iraq because we were thrown out of Saudi Arabia and need a new place to park our military in the region. Makes sense to me.
Iraq is crucial to them for one main reason, it's enormous oil reserves. It is a critical part of their war for resource domination that is thinly-disguised as a "war against terrorism". Only it isn't working out anywhere near like what they had hoped. What they wanted was a nice peaceful complacent puppet state with an oil ministry made up of people on America's payroll so that American big oil can suck the oil out of Iraq at cost, as if they own it. What they got was a mini-Vietnam in the desert. When the autopsy is done on the American Empire it will be concluded that it died of acute indigestion.
I had a comment for this which I lost thanks to a dumb error. I knew the story about the two pieces of tape "back in the day," and don't remember now. It seems like it had to do with one of Nixon's "plumbers" having a momentary flash of conscience. It was kept quiet. After Eisenhower, republicans had a problem. Their domestic policy of iron fist rule and foreign policy of exterminating everyone was a minority perspective. Kennedy was hawkish at first and won barely enough republican support to carry the election. After a little time in office, he realized Vietnam was bullshit and wanted to end it. So, of course, he had to be snuffed, as did his brother and Martin King. The right wing program has evolved, but stays true to its foundation premise that they're right and everyone else is wrong, despite the fact they are a minority and always will be. So, breaking every law on the books is always right because they are so right. LBJ ramped up the war. College kids protested, thus the war on hippies and education. They smoked pot, thus the DEA. Now, you have an American right wing war on everything. They aren't going to be happy until all Americans are either in prison, in the army or dead, and we're at war with every country on earth.
It's done a pretty big hand job on liberty and democracy. The good news is, the American system is infinitely flexible and can snap back. The bad news is, education has become a babysitting operation which discourages curiosity, and the system is so badly rigged it needs an extensive clean-up.
Americans have to do with the system what Windows users have to do with their computers. Finally the system files and .dll files the program writes bring diminishing returns in terms of system performance, and the user needs to wipe the drive clean and reinstall--start over. The program on the installation disk is like our constitution, it still works just fine. All that's needed is to put it back in place, without the stuff it doesn't need. America has to break habits, sweep up--start over. Meanwhile, people should read Wot Is It Good 4 and get their minds right!
Enlightenment,
We know that privatizing/piratizing Iraq's nationally owned oil industry is a primary motive for invading Iraq. With legislation making it so working its way through the Iraq Parliament, one wonders why Busholini did not accept the newly elected Iraq government's Proposed Peace Plan. Wasn't that Mission Accomplished?
I think fomenting wall to wall war with Iraq's neighbors, Syria and Iran is another reason for our continued presence there and the continued violence "justifies" the need for permanent bases in Iraq.
One thing is for sure. We are not there to benefit Iraqis, to bring them "freedom", but to open their oil industry to American venture capialists.
Kax- you are absolutely correct.
Uranus- I agree with everything you said regarding the political assassinations of the 1960s, and I think I can shed a little light on the mystery of the Watergate burglary. I think rather than anyone growing a conscience it was a somewhat different explanation, one that turns the mainstream interpretation of the Watergate scandal on its head.
First we must remember Gerald Ford, formerly of Naval Intelligence (and almost certainly C.I.A., and not "former"). It appears that Ford was the seniormost politician in Congress who was effectively "controlled" by the C.I.A., working for their interests. During the Warren Commission cover-up, Ford was the chief gatekeeper, deciding which evidence is admitted and which is discarded, a very important position which he used expertly to facilitate the whitewash. Once Spiro Agnew's corruption scandal, almost certainly exposed by the C.I.A., forced Agnew from office, their man was maneuvered into the vice presidency.
Bear in mind, by this time Nixon was becoming far too liberal for the C.I.A.'s ultra-conservative tastes (as bizarre as it sounds to consider Nixon and liberal in the same sentence), as he had "gone to China", opening diplomatic relations with the "Red Chinese" which meant closing (formal) diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and supported China getting Taiwan's seat on the U.N. security council. He had formed the E.P.A. He had ended the Vietnam War. He supported detente with the Soviets by that point. Though he was still the Nixon that genuine liberals rightfully hated, to the C.I.A. he had become a profound disappointment.
Also bear in mind that in the "plumbers" team were people of known C.I.A. affiliation, E. Howard Hunt, James McCord, Eugenio Martinez and possibly others. What were they looking for at Watergate? Ostensibly I would imagine it was sold to Nixon as being a fishing expedition to try to find evidence of foreign campaign contributions to the Democratic Party, probably telling Nixon that if they found that then it would effectively kill the Democratic Party forever as a viable political force (such as it was, and is). Surely this wasn't the REAL purpose of the burglary, but that is most likely what they told Nixon who approved the operation. So they broke in the first time, to plant their listening devices and weren't caught. Then they went back for the second burglary, to retrieve the devices, and one of the burglars (I suspect McCord) made SURE they would be caught by sticking tape to the door, twice. Watergate was designed to be a scandal that could be connected to Nixon, to bring him down and elevate their man Ford to the presidency.
What newspaper broke the story? The Washington Post, long manipulated by the C.I.A. as part of Operation: Mockingbird. What reporters did they have on the Watergate story? Woodward and Bernstein. Bob Woodward, before coming to work at the Post, was in Naval Intelligence (and C.I.A.?).
So the burglers got caught (and of them, McCord got by far the lightest sentence, only 2 months, and was the most vocal in saying that "it goes higher than us". So Ford makes a deal with Nixon, a pardon in exchange for his resignation, Nixon resigns, C.I.A. man Ford becomes president, and waiting one month later so as to make it look less obvious, pardons Nixon ostensibly to help the "national healing process".
It should be remembered that Ford wrote a book titled "Lee Harvey Oswald: Portrait of the Assassin". As president, in the "official" records of the J.F.K. "investigation", Ford quietly moved the location of Kennedy's wound on his back from "uppermost back" to "back of the neck". Most importantly, in Ford the C.I.A. had one of its own or at least someone devoutly loyal to it in the White House. That is almost certainly the real story behind Watergate.
Well dammmmn, amazing how many layers of intrigue an observant person can discern.
Then we had Poppy Bush from CIA. Dopey is too damned dumb to be CIA.
you guys are great - and smart, smart, smart.
In rereading today what I posted yesterday I apologize that what I said regarding Spiro Agnew may have sounded misleading, in that it may have sounded like I meant he was forced out BEFORE the Watergate burglary when in fact I should have been more precise in my wording. Agnew resigned in October of '73 and of course the Watergate burglary occurred in January '72, though not being conclusively connected back to Nixon until much later. Though I am certain both scandals are connected, part of the same plan to elevate Ford to the presidency, I should have been more clear on the timing. Certainly the "powers that be" had the goods on Agnew for a long time before the Watergate break-in, probably going back to when he was governor of Maryland, and simply sat on the information, holding it for later use whenever it might come in handy. It would come in handy when Nixon started becoming "too liberal" for the C.I.A.'s purposes. They apparantly knew they could oust Agnew whenever they wanted, sort of like having a man standing on a chair with the noose around his neck, they would wait for the appropriate time to kick the chair out from under him. Watergate as I said was intended to be connected to Nixon so as to bring him down and get their man in the White House, and it went according to plan.
Remember the Nixon tapes, in which he can be heard asking White House aide Bob Haldeman to talk to the C.I.A. to try to persuade them to invoke "national security" to twist the F.B.I.'s arm, to get them to back off on the Watergate investigation, saying to tell them "that it could open up the whole Bay of Pigs thing". This was Nixon's coded reference to the J.F.K. assassination (very much intertwined in terms of C.I.A. personnel with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion), which I would think indicates that Nixon at that time suspected that the C.I.A. was behind the effort to oust him, and was likely trying to blackmail them into backing off. They called his bluff, probably correctly assuming if he did spill the beans about what he knew about the C.I.A. being behind the J.F.K. assassination, that it would also expose himself to charges of at least being an accessory after the fact in helping the cover-up, as certainly Nixon knew at the very latest when he became president (and they are briefed on classified C.I.A. matters that they are instructed to never disclose) who was behind the assassination, and almost certainly long before, as otherwise why wouldn't Nixon have run for president in 1964? Because if he did it would make it look obvious that he was taking advantage of the fact that there was no J.F.K. to run against in '64, and conversely, if he didn't have anything to hide regarding the assassination (like foreknowledge etc.) then why WOULDN'T he run in '64? So certainly the C.I.A. saw Nixon's apparant blackmail threat for what it was, a desperate bluff, and basically ignored it, not doing much of substance to dissuade the F.B.I., and subsequently Nixon fired C.I.A. director Helms, ostensibly for not sticking up for him, but most likely because Helms' relative inaction regarding the "national security" tactic confirmed his suspicion that the C.I.A. was behind the effort to oust him. It was basically a bloodless "palace coup".
And I can't speak for anyone else Lukery but I thank you for my part in your compliments, and I think the same of you.
Thanxoxox, Lux
You're my fave.
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