Tag Archives: Baghdad

American government’s love affair with bunkers and walls

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Birds eye view of our Navy
Check this out! An actual building in San Diego accidentally built by the Pentagon that looks like the Nazi swastika! The Navy is now spending over $600,000 to change the appearance of their building!

Everywhere one looks, American government is building bunkers and walls! All though out Baghdad, the Pentagon is building bunkers and walls. In the West Bank, Israel and the Pentagon together are building bunkers and walls. On our southern border with Mexico, YES you guessed it, America is building bunkers and walls.

Do we think for one split second that the rest of the world hasn’t noticed that America is about bunkers and walls these days? All the sugary sweet talk in the world is not going to hide that fact away from the world. When one drives by an American embassy anywhere in the world one sees bunkers and walls. When one drives down the road in much of America, one sees bunkers and walls (prisons). Oh Sweet Land of Liberty…. Hardly!

Yes, America is now an imprisoning nation, land of bunkers and walls. Do you live in a gated community? Probably not, since you would not be likely to be reading this commentary if you were into that sick mindset. But many, if not in fact the majority of us, live behind bunkers and walls.

Bunkers and walls need regulations, lots of them. They need tickets, passports, and papers to go with this order. They need guns, barbed wire, and tasers. They need dope, lots of it, because bunkers and walls are shall we say it? … they are depressing. Bunkers and walls need uniforms, officials, and lawyers, though not to enforce the law but to break it.

Once it was parking lots, shopping malls, and interstate freeways. Today, it is more bunkers and walls. United We Stand. Divided We Fall. We are falling with bunkers and walls. Bunkers and walls is what brought elites, other than our own, down before, simply because most people hate bunkers and walls.

American government has a love affair with bunkers and walls.

Cynthia McKinney and Cindy Sheehan together in Mexico City!

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Below, we reprint 2 speeches made in Mexico City Friday, just yesterday, April 4, 2008. The speech Greed … by Cindy Sheehan, and another speech by Cynthia McKinney that is without title.

Cynthia McKinney
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008

Brothers and Sisters in the Movement

I am happy to be here in Mexico City where the people all over Latin
America are on the move:

On the move for justice, self-determination, and peace.

I love that you have created a Power to the People movement with your
votes that is stronger than the mightiest military force on the
planet!

With the power of your vote you have taken your countries back.

Now, all we have to do is to count all the votes in the United States
and Mexico!

In the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, an estimated six million
people went to the polls and voted, but their votes weren’t counted.

In 2000, and again in 2004, Democrats helped to install Republicans
into power rather than fight for the victory that the voters had
given them.

As a result of this kind of collusion, the Democratic majority in our
Congress has failed to impeach Bush. They have failed to institute a
livable wage, stop the multiple wars the U.S. is fighting right now,
and they have failed to protect human rights anywhere in the world,
including even at home.

That’s why I left the Democratic Party.

I refused to become complicit in war crimes, crimes against humanity,
crimes against the peace, spying on the American people, and ripping
our Bill of Rights to shreds.

And so I declared my independence from the U.S. leadership that gave
us tax cuts for the wealthy and a country 53 trillion dollars in debt
and Hurricane Katrina.

To my brothers and sisters at this Conference and in the United
States, I say:

Hands off Haiti!

Hands off Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Argentina now making a claim for
the Falklands!

Hands off Venezuela and Ecuador!

No to Plan Mexico; No to Plan Colombia! Hands off Pemex!

And finally, it was on this date, 40 years ago, that Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. was murdered.

We now know that Dr. King was murdered as part of a conspiracy that
included his own government. Hatched in the bowels of the Pentagon,
where so many other regime change operations have been hatched, the
government of the United States launched regime change at home on
Black America. We blacks in the United States have long known the
pain and the consequences of having authentic leadership snatched
from us; of having someone else pick our leaders before we pick them
ourselves.

I am proud to join this international movement for
self-determination; for justice and for peace. Despite today’s
difficulties, we must never let our dream be deferred. We in the U.S.
gain inspiration from your successes here so we can carry the
struggle to every nook and cranny of the United States.

Que vivan los pueblos de america!

Cindy Sheehan -Key Note Speech “GREED”
Segundo Encuentro Continental de los Trabajadores
Mexico City, Mexico, April 4, 2008

First of all I would like to thank the International Labor Council and the Electrician’s Union for such a warm welcome and I would like to assure you all, my brothers and sisters that I represent millions of North Americans who are in solidarity with you, because we are also plagued with an illegitimate President!

Once, a couple of years ago, I was getting a pedicure in the deep south in the USA, of all places, and my pedicurist was a Latina from Mexico. She lived two hours from where she and her husband owned the shop and she left her young son home with her mother-in-law for six days a week, while she and her husband toiled at the shop. She was very sweet and sympathetic to my situation as a mother whose son was killed in Iraq, but she looked up from my feet at one point and asked me: “Why do you Americans have to have everything. If you all weren’t so greedy, I could still live in my country with my family.” Greedy? Hmm? Her earnest and passionate comment gave me much to think about.

Dictionary.com defines greed as the rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions

Greed is also one of the seven deadly sins and I know more than most Americans that the same twisted drive for, not just a fair share of prosperity, but ALL the prosperity is what caused my son’s death and, similarly, my nail persons’ need to have to leave the beloved country of her birth.

Greed is not what drives Latin Americans to try and cross the border to go north, existential necessity is; but corporate-capitalist greed is what makes the dangerous journey necessary. Building walls on the border is not the way to solve the immigration “problem” just as invading two countries and killing innocent civilians was not the way to solve the terrorism problem. Healing the systems of oppression that cause immigration is the way to solve the “problem.” People in Latin America want the right to not have to emigrate. Like my pedicurist, they want to be able to make a good living in their own countries.

In a study done by the Economic Policy Institute in 2004, it was found that 5% of the US population owns 58% of the wealth and only 1.2% of the wealth is owned by 40% of our citizenry. I am sure if a similar study were done, this disparity would be much wider in these days of irresponsible corporate bailouts while Americans are losing their homes at the rate of 250,000 a month and the war economy has made the fat cats astronomical profits while robbing our communities of essential services and needed infrastructure improvements. The Milton Friedman model of disaster capitalism, which Naomi Klein exposes so well in her book, Shock Doctrine, is responsible for economic disaster from New Orleans to Baghdad and the basic underlying root sickness of this is greed.

Statistics can be easily manipulated as we know the statistics reporting the “success” of free trade agreements such as NAFTA are. Facts, numbers and experiential data cannot be so easily manipulated, though. In the years since the Clinton administration (with the support of my Congressional opponent, Nancy Pelosi) foisted NAFTA on our continent, both Mexico and the US have lost farmland and good paying jobs. Many of our manufacturing jobs have gone overseas to Indonesia or China and the Wal Martization of our cultures creeps up on us unchecked and corporations such as Wal Mart have been the main beneficiaries of NAFTA to the detriment of working class people in both countries.

What can we do to improve the situation and reclaim our prosperity from the control of the 21st Century Robber Barons and slave-traders?

First of all, “free” trade treaties should be replaced with fair trade agreements. Small business owners and workers should be protected from being crushed under the heels of multi-national corporations. Any agreement should have protection for workers. A worker who makes shoes, computers, cars, or grows crops should make the same livable wage in Mexico or China, as they would in America. There would be no incentive for off-shoring jobs or relocating manufacturing plants if workers in China made the same wages as workers in America.

All workers should be guaranteed the basic human right of being able to belong to a union. Unions elevate the conditions of workers and families and should remain a strong political force for good and not allow them selves to be beaten into submission or weakness by governmental or corporate pressure. (But aren’t the corporations and governments so intimately linked these days in their fascistic oppression of us average citizens?)

The fragile ecology of our planet must be protected in these agreements and the same standard of sustainability and environmental protections should be uniformly recognized and practiced globally.

Small farmers should be protected from the encroachment of “agri-giants” and their lands protected from the eminent domain of greed.

I know there are many more solutions and a comprehensive platform of “No human left behind” would guarantee the rights of all humans to safe and plentiful food and drinking water; shelter; good and free education; sustainable employment; security and safety from US corporate-militarism; and the basic rights that were guaranteed of: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

For far too long, the United States of America has greedily gobbled up too much of global wealth and resources and our chickens of greed and violence are coming home to roost. As alarming as these trends are, we North Americans are only slightly beginning to feel the ravages of what we have been manufacturing and exporting for years: death and destruction. A new paradigm of global sharing and caring must be implemented and today is the beginning.

Today, as we commemorate and mourn the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr who was assassinated 40 years ago in Memphis, Tn; and as I mourn the murder by the war machine of my son Casey, who was killed in Sadr City, Baghdad 4 years ago today—we must renew our commitment to peace and justice to honor their sacrifices and the sacrifices of others who have also gone before us. We just celebrated the birthday of Cesar Chavez who dedicated his life to the most marginalized and exploited of workers and I am constantly inspired by the devotion of people like Dr. King, Casey and Cesar Chavez andI hope that we all take inspiration to rededicate our lives to peace and justice.

We must build upon the coalition that we have gathered here in this beautiful and historic place to include every group that we are a part of. We can no longer say that we have to focus on “one” issue, because all the issues are the same. My country is waging deadly and lost-cause occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and so many groups in my country say that we have to focus on bringing our troops home and not become “distracted” by other issues. Profound economic inequality and unchecked greed is the root cause of these occupations as it is the root cause of the occupation of Palestine by Israel and all the violence in the world’s hot-spots today.

In our coalition, we must educate our brothers and sisters that equalizing prosperity and neutralizing greed are the solutions to these acute problems.

I also stand here in solidarity with my brothers and sisters who are working in the Legitimate Government of Mexico to prevent the illegitimate government from privatizing PEMEX. The oil of Mexico belongs to the people of Mexico, and if I can’t be here with you all to block the crimes with my body then I will definitely be with you in spirit.

Thank you for allowing me to speak. It has been an honor to be here.

Moving Pictures, or pathetic Gazette pseudo-journalism?

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Today’s Sunday Gazette highlights its Iraq coverage with a huge headline titled, ‘Moving Pictures’. Below the headline in smaller print is the additional sub-headline, ‘Everyday Iraq Through a Humvee Window’. Our local paper has no shame at all, it seems, as it even brags about being ‘in bed with’ the American government occupation army of Iraq as it rides through the Baghdad suburban streets in super armored vehicles pointing high powered weaponry at the local kids !

What we get is not real reporting but Pravda style propaganda. Comical crap. We can expect no less from this Far Right Wing propaganda rag called The Gazette. Their paper is pure trash. The local community deserves much better.

Where are Salam Pax and Raed Jarrar?

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Collected posts of Salam al-JanabiThe BBC has an update on Iraqi bloggers. Riverbend is back, she’s now a refugee in Syria. Nabil is in Jordan. “Zappy” is in the UK. 24stepstoliberty now writes from California.
 
Livesstrong and Najma are in Mosul. Last-of-Iraqis writes from Baghdad and shares the dashed-syntax with neurotic-iraqi-wife from the Green Zone.
 
September last year, Raed Jarrar, namesake of Where is Raed? was not permitted to board a JetBlue plane at JFK because he wore a t-shirt which read “We will not be silenced.” Salam al-Janabi, aka Salam Pax the Baghdad Blogger last posted to Fat Whiner on July 2006, and made a CNN video in April.

Dallas whores to visit US troops in Iraq

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Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders do Apocalypse Now
As the morale begins to plummet, there is always one thing that will cheer up The Troops. Just send in the whores!

For over 3 decades as the USO article below states, Dallas’s finest plastic whores have been doing their patriotic duty as military circus clowns. This year will be no different.

How it must cheer up The Troops to have this bit of plastic Barbie Doll whoredom dance their way into the soldier’s none-too-pleasant desert reality, churning these young soldiers stomachs. Whores do love whores!

Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders to Entertain

Tom Landry can’t be there with The Girls, but how about having Franklin Graham on board in Baghdad, at least? Alas, this year’s musical will not be last year’s big hit, Spring Time for Hitler in Germany, but will be a delightful new score, Autumn Time for Bush in Iraq! Lots of song and dance to be had! But where’s the booze?

Operation Quagmire, 1994

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You know, the times come around and around and around… So this has been resurrected, I give you: Dick Cheney, advising NOT to invade Iraq.

Video Surfaces of Cheney, in 1994, Warning That An Invasion of Iraq Would Lead to ‘Quagmire’
By E&P Staff
Published: August 12, 2007 10:20 AM ET

NEW YORK It’s not the first time that citizen “investigative journalists” have uncovered some embarrassing, or telling, nugget from the past that apparently remained buried for years. But it has happened again with the posting of a now wildly popular video on YouTube that shows Dick Cheney explaining in 1994 that trying to take over Iraq would be a “bad idea” and lead to a “quagmire.”

The people who put it up come from a site called Grand Theft Country, the on-screen source appears to be the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and the date on the screen is April 15, 1994. That looks right, by the age of Cheney.

Posted on Friday, it had received over 100,000 hits by this morning, after being widely-linked around the Web. The transcript of this segment is below.

Cheney had helped direct the Gulf War for President George H.W. Bush. That effort was later criticized for not taking Baghdad and officials like Cheney had to explain why not, for years. Some have charged that this led to an overpowering desire to finish the job after Cheney became vice president in 2001.

Here is the transcript. The YouTube address is at the end.
*

Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?

A: No.

Q: Why not?

A: Because if we’d gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families — it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?

Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.

Fecal material contacts rotary air circulation device…

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This is like 20 minutes old, I would do a link but feel a certain urgency so here is the article verbatim,

Yahoo! News
Back to Story – Help
Turkey bombards northern Iraq, Iraq says

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer 12 minutes ago

The Iraqi government said Turkish artillery and warplanes bombarded areas of northern Iraq on Wednesday and called on Turkey to stop military operations and resolve the conflict diplomatically.

The claim occurred amid rising tension and Turkish threats to strike bases of the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK, which has been launching attacks against targets in Turkey from sanctuaries in Iraq.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told The Associated Press that the morning bombardment struck areas of the northern province of Dahuk, some 260 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Col. Hussein Kamal said about 250 shells were fired into Iraq from Turkey. He added that there were no casualties on the Iraqi side of the border.

“We have received reports that the Turkish government and the Turkish army have bombed border villages. The Iraqi government regrets the Turkish military operations of artillery and warplanes bombing against border cities and towns,” al-Dabbagh said.

“The Iraqi government calls for ceasing these operations and resorting to dialogue,” he said, insisting that Iraq wants “good relations with Turkey.”

Earlier Wednesday, Kurdish guerrillas staged a bomb attack against a military vehicle, killing two soldiers and wounding six others near the Iraqi border, the state-run Anatolia news agency said.

The attack occurred close to the Iraqi border, near the town of Cukurca in Hakkari province, Anatolia said. Military helicopters flew the injured to hospitals as military units in the region launched an operation to hunt down the attackers, it said.

Last week, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Turkey had massed 140,000 soldiers along the border — a figure the U.S. disputed. Zebari said troop levels in the region were often increased during the spring and summer in response to increased activity by PKK.

U.S. officials cast doubt on the figure.

Turkish officials have repeatedly said they are considering military operations against the PKK in Iraq, a move that the United States fears would cause further instability.

Al-Dabbagh said the Iraqi government is ready either for bilateral talks or three-way talks that will include the United States. He added that the PKK matter is not new but years-old.

“We have said before that we will not allow Iraq to become a launching pad for operations against Turkey or any other country,” al-Dabbagh said.

Washington says it is working with Turkey to combat the PKK but that it is focused on combatting insurgents opposing U.S. forces.

The PKK has escalated attacks this year, killing about 70 soldiers so far. More than 110 rebels were killed in the same period.

Turkey has been battling the PKK since 1984 in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people.

Kidnapped Iranian diplomat says that he was tortured by CIA

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Kidnapped from Baghdad, an Iranian doplomat now released says that he was tortured by the CIA for info before he was let go. There was once a time when most Americans would have believed that a story like this would have been a complete fabrication. But not any more. We now have a government acting purely like Mafia thugs and the story is entirely credible.

So too are charges from Iran that the US government and its military are engaging in terrrorist attacks against their country. The charge is that the US is actively working with various opposition groups that have a long history of using terrorist attacks to oppose the Iranian government. ABC had a recent report documenting and supporting these charges.

We must rally now to stop an extension of the Iraq war into Iran and Syria. It is clear that only mass revulsion and rage against our own US government can stop this continual war expansionism that Bush and his Democratic Party enablers are currently engaging in. Sitting back and hoping for a change in government almost 2 years away is idiotic. No change is about to come about unless the American pulbic begins to engage in street rallies and protests, instead of riding around in their cars going shopping all the time with their thumbs stuck up their rear ends.

Green Zone goes way of Baghdad

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Senator McCain ventured to a market five minutes outside the Green Zone, accompanied by a company of (100) soldiers in Humvees, and five helicopters, to be able to say it was safe for an American to walk about Baghdad. When asked incredulously if he was kidding about a neighborhood in Baghdad being improved by the troop surge, McCain replied “I’ve just come from one.”

While Iraqi merchants later could express only disbelief at McCain’s misrepresentation of their worsening plight, he told stories about the market sellers being so “grateful” they wouldn’t accept payment for the trinkets the military souvenir shoppers had sought. Can you think of an opposite reason they might not want to take money from Americans, or been seen taking the money? One merchant recounted US General Patraeus buying a one dollar item with a twenty dollar bill, telling the seller to “keep the change.”

Are things getting better in Iraq, or specifically Baghdad, where the increased US presence has pushed the resistance operations into the countryside? The car bombs may be fewer, but they’re bigger.

The real answer came last week, buried on Friday and repeated nowhere. Last Friday an American soldier together with a private mercenary contractor were killed INSIDE THE GREEN ZONE. Several others were wounded. The Green Zone’s been subjected to increased rocket attacks, but last week’s deaths mark the first. Where the Green Zone used to be the safe-haven Twilight Zone operating in virtual isolation, even disregard, for the mayhem in Baghdad, its occupiers now have to adopt battle stations. Everyone is mandated to wear their armor, even crossing to the cafeteria. No one’s allowed to congregate outside in groups any longer and the much photographed palace pool is now well off limits.

Has Baghdad become safer, as Senator McCain contends? Not even the Green Zone.

Get the US and its hired goons out of Somalia

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It has been weeks since the US and its ally Ethiopia invaded Somalia. Invasions of other countries, lest we forget, are violations of international law. Unfortunately, the United Nations Security Council acts as Bush’s puppet and is once again rubber stamping US imperialist aggression. Now, Mogadishu threatens to spin into total anarchy ala Baghdad.

Every place the US carries its wars, chaos develops and security disintegrates. That goes for whether it is the US international so-called war on drugs, are it’s phoney so-called war on terror. Get the US and its hired goons out of Somalia now. In fact, get them out of Africa altogether!

Reality sucks for the right… Right Michael?

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Now, our resident Provocateur, Slivka, has been talking (or writing) much smack lately about Walter Reed and comparing it to one of the Right Wingnut talking points, publicly funded health care.

On the other other hand,

Now this is a link to an Army newspaper, The Army Times. As everybody knows, a hotbed of Socialists and Liberals.

What it essentially means, (the story is about an Army General being silenced, by the Pentagon, but subpoenaed anyway to testify in Congress)
is that there seems to have been a little teeny small wee itsy bitsy thing Michael Slivka and his right wing Keyboard Kommando buddies didn’t want us to know. If Michael pleads ignorance, I for one am almost prepared to believe him.

You see, the health care at Walter Reed was privatized. To people with strong links to our old friend, Ali Burton, the Thief of Baghdad.

The righties got all wound up that it was a clear case of socialized medicine, and the failure thereof, and how a private health care scam ooops i mean “plan” would have made all better…

And then that bad ol’ wicked reality jumped up and bit them squarely on their right buttcheeks.

We should really be worried now

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The ventriloquist turned toward his public and said with a wide smile that it was the dummy who was calling the ‘conference’ and not himself. We should really be worried now. The US has ‘decided to ‘attend’ the conference that its dummy has called. I am referring to the announcement that the Iraq PM is calling for a regional conference on March 10 in Baghdad.

How reasonable. If it’s broke, let’s try together to fix it. Does this seem like the Bush and Cheney we know? We’re about to get neo-conned again I rather think. This so called regional conference is not for real. One could expect that Iran and Syria would be totally berated by the US if they attended, so why even respond? The new US strategy is merely to pass blame for the Iraq mess off themselves and onto the countries they next desire to attack. Possibly with nuclear weapons. But first, let’s conference! How sweet….

Yes, the US government we have is so very reasonable. It wants peace with Iran and Syria. But what do those rogue maniac Muslim states do? You know that they’re not reasonable, and right about now, we can suspect that ‘they’ will do a ‘Pearl Harbor’ on the innocent ol’ USA, led by innocent ol’ Oily Dick Cheney. We’re innocent he will shout! We tried to hold out the olive branch,but they only knew how to try to scalp us. These Muslim nuclear seeking monsters must be stopped, before they al quaeda us yet again.

Will our neighbors worry about torture and renditions then? Will they nobly oppose the hysteria by holding up pieces of paper, the US Constitution? Old Glory will become Oh Hysteria, we’ve been attacked yet again! Imagine your neighbors livid with rage as the one or two of us try to protest what will be ordered in ‘response’? It’s a scary day ahead. My God, we’re under attack! Nuke ’em! Lynch mobs will be back in style once again.

The latest, boy is it stupid

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I was on the bus going to Memorial yesterday. there was a copy of the Omygodzette laying on the seat across from me, open to a section somewhat removed from the headlines… Mr Bush has demanded a cut in Medicare and a quarter trillion for the war.

In related news, the Decider has said the intelligence that Iraq was spiraling downward out of control is proof we need to stay and make it spiral a little faster.

Scores of Iraqis were killed by a car bomb in a marketplace in Baghdad.

Bushiites called it an atrocity, glad they can see that. But can they see that Americans killing scores of Iraqis in a bombing is just as much an atrocity?

Since the bomber pretty mangled himself beyond any hope of redemption, how much would you bet that he will be tentatively ID’ed as an Iranian?

If one group of Iraqis kills members of another group of Iraqis, that is baaaadddd .
Unless the Iraqis doing the killing are the ones supported by George. And the ones being killed are not supported by George.

They’re all foreign fighters anyway.
Our nigras wuz perfectly happy with segregation until all these here Outside Agitators started comin’ down here and stirring them up….

200-300 Iranian Messianic Cult Pilgrims killed with much smaller bombs (the explosives that push bullets down a tube pointed in the general direction of other humans) Goooooooddddd

Do these freaks actually believe that being killed by a bullet is somehow going to make the guys or their families feel better?

“It’s okay, they didn’t use nerve gas to kill him”

Where are they now?

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Whatever became of the children of Baghdad

If you do a Google search for images of Iraqi children, you’re led mostly to pro-war sites where war-bloggers are trying to foster the contortion that our soldiers love the children of Iraq. Operation Iraqi Children is a military sponsored project where concerned Americans can donate school supplies to the needy students of Iraq, for use in their newly painted schools.

Allgone

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Colonel Brian Allgood, West Point grad, army surgeon, Doctor Allgood, died last weekend in a helicopter crash, among a dozen unlucky American soldiers being transported across Baghdad. By all accounts he was an exemplary soldier.
 
Rest in peace. But why should he get peace, and not everybody?

Allgood worked for the Department of Defense whose chief function has been to kill people. As a doctor, Allgood’s particular role was to save people from dying, mainly of course those on our side. Allgood was a surgeon who healed battle injuries, reconditioning combat soldiers, as opposed to a doctor who ensured that subjects of interrogation did not succumb to their torturers before they fulfilled their intelligence potential. Without painting too dark a picture, we should be frank about the Hippocratic Oath in the military.

So let’s suppose for the sake of argument that Allgood’s proper name meant exactly what it said. Let’s say he wasn’t a sadist on a USDD Approved power trip, or a moral dimwit loosed on the sanctioned lawlessness of a battlefield, venting his anger with his sidearm, authorizing gunfire over video monitors, or ordering the destruction of communities for the sake of protecting US ambulance routes; say Allgood wasn’t a blind proponent of US imperialist superiority; say he wasn’t an Eichmann cog enabling the massive machinery of our military to grind its way through the bones of peoples and cultures; say he wasn’t an idealogue of convenience holding out for his honorable discharge, fearing a court-martial for disobeying orders, thinking about his family and his pension.

Say Mr. Allgood was an all-American do-gooder think-gooder. How much can that matter? Isn’t it time he would be the last?

Isn’t it time our soldier-citizens there in Iraq admit to themselves what they are seeing? Soldiers cannot blame a complicit media for keeping them from the darkness of their deeds. When can we expect these gun-ho idealists to figure out that shooting Iraqis is not the way to help them?

Allgood is dead -I wouldn’t be writing about him but for his name. Allgood was killed with a dozen maybe just as red-white-and-true soldiers. And this Blackhawk Down should take with it our national dellusion. Even America’s best are going to be pulled into the buzz-saw. Is this not the face of what will be America’s heavy price: Our innocence shattered, the same that we’ve done to the Iraqis as they look upon the senseless loss? The sacrifice of Allgoods of our own will join the sides of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi innocents.

65, 85, 100, how many more?

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Just surfed by yahoo again… 100 + people killed in market blast in Baghdad. Gaza television station bombed… and something from yesterday, our Favourite Asswipe Tancredo is actually thinking of running for President in ’08.

The F.A.T. as i will probably start calling him, ain’t got a chance. His Zani buddies, (Nazi spelled sideways, sort of) don’t even trust him.

Me, I just love the way he speaks (in milder terms, but not much milder) of things like ethnic cleansing and Relocation & Detention Centers and how glorious the New World Order will be once the liberal dissenters are silenced. Or “learn their place and stay in it”.

Here’s a Couple of Clues, F.A.T., old boy, YOUR last name ends in an “O”.  Your English Only buds just don’t like that. They are gonna use you until you are not of any more use and then put you “in your place”.

When that happens you had better pray to God Almighty that there are a few anarchists still outside of your Relocation Centers that you might be able to hide behind.

The rebellion isn’t about Liberals and Conservatives, there isn’t going to be a huge victory over the Tree Huggin’ Hippies, the hippies started packin’ guns a looonnnnggg time ago, and a lot of them because they were taught how to do it in the Army, into which they were drafted.

You and your Masters want to draft people like for instance ME?

And you REALLY think that’s a good idea, don’t you?

The worst single incident of non-government-sponsored home grown terrorism in our History was pulled off by Army Veterans. Who were pissed off, and righteously so, because of the way the your government treats the people. Specifically it was a Government terror-bombing of a Church in Waco Texas that set them off.

And if you are gonna give me that tired old CRAP about the Chuch being heavily armed, skip telling me and tell it to the Chaplain. You know the ones, the guys who sell their personal priesthood to be cheerleaders for your killing machine? Your friends glorify and almost worship the Crusaders. Get a grip, son.

The killings in Baghdad, today? They are all about YOUR government policy of bombing Churches. Or Mosques. The Israeli people ought to be investing in extra toilets, cause when your Master starts bombing synagogues they are all going to shit.

And you want this to happen here, too. Or so you and the groups you mouthpiece for think you do.

The next Big Lie

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As the befuddled, overly religious minions of America try to figure it all out about Muslims, terrorism, Satan, evolution, chimps, global warming, Osama, and when Jesus is returning, their next Big Lie is being prepared for them to hunker down with. Condi, Dick, Dubya, and the rest of the gang have got the ships, missiles, and soldiers in place, so they got to get the Big Lie in place, too. What will it be?

It is….
We have to threaten and attack Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, because they are assisting and arming the opposition that is fighting our troops in Iraq.

In reality, our government feels the need to attack the Shia, because they will not go along with the US government plan to steal their oil reserves. Stan Goff (ex US Special Forces officer) discusses this upcoming ‘surge’ in bloodshed where the US will attack the Shia in full force. Petraeus! Is Baghdad Burning?

It’s time to oppose what is just around the corner. What are you waiting for? It’s going to happen, simply because the Democratic Party is not going to effectively oppose Bush’s plan. In fact, the Clinton pair are calling for a ‘surge’ of troops to Afghanistan right now, even as they fail to oppose the main ‘surge’. Instead of withdrawal, the government is planning the new attacks to come.

STOP THE WAR! DEMONSTRATE

More news, really bad all of it

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Baghdad Dick claims unqualified victoryCheney said on DumFox news last night that the president has the final say on the course of the war, Mr Bush is about to make the same announcement tonight, I think in a few minutes.

Cheney also said that the policy course is going to be for the next 3 or 4 decades.

Apparently congress doesn’t matter, and neither do the American People.

Also on Yahoo news they finally admitted to the kids hanging themselves, added 5 more to the list and said that there were others, but not confirmed.

The big announcement…

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Coming soon… All of America and the world wait with bated breath….

The Chimp is gonna tell us all about his new plan to save us, pull our nuts out of the fire and then he will dance nekkid on the Oval Office rug, while singing “I’m a little crackpot, here me shout.”

Ok so I made some of that up… The part about everybody anxiously waiting…

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.

Already have been sent, on their way now, the first installment of the Big Surge. Also they have joyfully reported success in killing 50 militants in the house to house sweep in Baghdad. Although they as usual have declined to name any of them and are still trying to identify the remains of most of them what the hell?

If they don’t know who they were how are they so sure that they were actually militants?

It seems everybody who falls from a Yankee bullet is a militant as soon as the bullet pierces his or her vital organs, and if the militant is being held by his or her mom at the time they get two militants for the price of one.

Comparing the death tolls

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In the aftermath of bombings and indiscriminate attacks in Iraq which reached record numbers on Thanksgiving, I read that the combined Iraqi civilian casualties raised the Baghdad death toll to 202. For the day. For Baghdad. The count starts anew each day.
 
Meanwhile the US soldier death toll is 50 and climbing, for the month. For all of Iraq. Why the differing units of measure? Why not consider weekly totals for both Americans and Iraqis, to facillitate comparison?

I know something’s wrong on the grocery shelf when the price of some items is given per ounce, while a similar commodity is described per pound. Somebody doesn’t want the price comparison weighed, and I haven’t yet taken a calculator with me to discover who.

Why this discrepancy of value for human lives? I’m thankful at least we are new counting the Iraqi lives lost, although the numbers are themselves distorted. US forces are conducting more air attacks where it’s more difficult to measure the casualties. Won’t somebody come out and say it, we care quite a bit less about Iraqi lives compared to American lives? Even though the Iraqis were likely innocents, often children and children.

How can news outlets simply set the standards of measure as if the most important factor was to have the result fall within manageable ranges, figures we can wrap our head around? Or more accurately, figures they can wrap around our head.

What’s going to happen when the daily toll of civilian deaths reaches higher? Will they break the day into parts, a morning Iraqi death toll for example? To compare not too insanely with the US deaths per month? What a ruse.

From Marine to Al Jazeera Journalist

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Marines are crazy as a rule. Or so, that’s been my experience with them. But crazy can sometimes be good,too. Al Jazeera online is one of my favorite sources of information, so it’s particularly interesting to see this particular ex-marine go to becoming a journalist working for Al Jazeera. If you get a chance, see the documentary mentioned in this article from Mother Jones. It’s all about how the Pentagon keeps assassinating reporters, from the Yugoslav television stations they bombed, to the hotel in Baghdad they blew away at. Remember when they bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade? So many ‘accidents’. Go get The Education

NPR versus Habeas Corpus

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I caught a little of National Public Radio today. Here’s what I heard: A news story about a new program of repatriating illegal immigrants: by flying them back their ancestral homes, away from the Mexico-American border. It’s working rather well administrators say. The program interviewed a freshly apprehended Mexican who has been returned to his $12 a day parking lot attendent job in Mexico City. He said through a translator that he is likely inclined to give up his dream of reaching El Norte.

So let’s see, that’s a story about subsidizing airlines, budgeting Homeland Security funds for the tickets, to be clear. And the one-way-trips seem to be along the logic of driving a live-trapped vermint a minimum of five miles away from your home to keep him from coming back. Works sometimes.

So is it working with the persistent Mexicans? Hard to say as yet. And yet, here’s a report about it on NPR.

Switch over online to Democracy Now and what are they talking about?

Holy Shit, the Senate has passed a torture/anti-human rights bill which repeals the right of Habeas Corpus! The Right of Habeas Corpus has been nearly universal in the western world since the Magna Carta, since 1215 AD. Thirteen Democrats joined with the Republicans to pass the bill, including our man Ken Salazar, and everybody’s slippery rodent Joe Lieberman. Commentators have likened this bill to the internment of the Japanese Americans during WWII and similar national disgraces. We’ll be struggling to apologize and pay reparations. Many are sensibly embarrassed already.

Next up, a description of the Green Zone in Baghdad. Halliburton is serving pork there, and alcohol, insensitive to the Iraqis who must work and eat there, unclean. And on and on.

Can you imagine an informed American populace without the media telling them what’s happening? Why are your friends and neighbors not able to hear Democracy Now on their radios? Who’s standing in their way from hearing the truth over the public airwaves?

In Colorado Springs the gatekeeper is KRCC, the public radio station with a dedicated community of listeners, most of whom are kept in the dark about Democracy Now. On a day like today, it would seem the difference of opinion about station programming is less about taste and more unthinkably out of touch.

News notes April 2006

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Who’s paying the bill, who’s tendering the bill?
U. S. gas prices have hit over three dollars per gallon. Let’s see: we have oil men in charge of the country, they conduct secret meetings with energy companies, they convince us to invade Iraq with the world’s second largest oil reserves, the oil companies post record breaking profits, and we’re paying twice as much as we used to for gasoline. Who’s the patsy? Though that word might be a little insulting if you’re the parent of someone killed in this charade.
 
Whose conscience was not bothered by secret prisons?
If CIA officer Mary McCarthy was not the source of the leak about the network of secret prisons to which America is abducting people, the question that comes to mind is not who was, but rather, who else was not? Who among the CIA, government and military administrators knew about the illegal un-American activities and didn’t blow the whistle?
 
Diplomatic immunity for beachheads?
On the subject of flouting international law, it has been revealed that plans for the American embassy in Baghdad include facilities for mounting military operations. Since when has it been permissible to treat embassies as military beachheads? When Iranians stormed the U. S. embassy in Tehran, they claimed that the diplomats held hostage were in reality CIA operatives. Our country vehemently denied these charges, but history has shown the Iranian accusations to have been true.
 
Air quote, Zaqawi, end quote.
A recent Al Zarqawi videotape issues new warnings to Iraq’s occupiers. It renews the defiant posturing and reiterates the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. When the BBC reported the latest story, they used quotations when refering to “Zarqawi.” Whose quotes might those be? Of what footnote to the Zarqawi story is the BBC reminding us?