Tag Archives: Gulf

Are we, are we, are we there yet, Dad?

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‘What a vacation! Yeah, a vacation from reality, Kids! We could take it because we took out those loans though. We’ll pay back the national debt some day, but today let’s just enjoy the road trip, OK? Hey, look out the window! HEY! I thought I saw an al-Qaeda’s member flying by!’

‘Dad, are we there yet? Are we, are we, are we there yet? I’m hungry. I need to go to the bathroom now. Are we there yet?’

‘Now, now. I told you that there would be no clean bathroom in this desert. You’ll just have to wait. Besides, there are no good hamburgers here either. Just falafel, if even that? We’ll be getting into Tehran late this evening though. Just wait!’

‘Oh, Dad!’ You always take us on the most awful vacations. All we wanted to do this summer is go to the mall and shop. Why’d you have to take us here, Dad?’

‘Look! Someday you will appreciate this trip. You will thank me for it, you will. Besides, you will like the fire works display tonight, I am sure. Your mom Hillary and I have wanted to take this vacation for a long time. Now just sit quiet and watch the road. See that body of water way over there? It’s called the Persian Gulf.’

‘Oh. Dad….’ tears come rolling down the kids cheeks. The kids are tired. And then they fell asleep once again, in the back seat of the car. Meanwhile, good ol Dad continues to drive resolutely down the road, headed towards Tehran. This is the trip he had most planned for!

The mixed up Peace Community

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The Peace Community is just plain mixed up. They are always ‘commemorating’ false anniversaries, and have a great ability to count by thousands (though not by hundreds of thousands, or millions). ‘This is the 5th year of The War, and this is 4,000 down, etc. and yada, yada, yada’ …, however, they don’t really seem to have even a clue.

What I am getting at, is that The War date to remember really is January 17, 1991. That’s when the US went to war with Iraq. That’s the date the Peace Community should be commemorating, but doesn’t, simply because most of those years the so called Peace Community was MIA, or advocating even a US war against Yugoslavia. Congratulations, People, you are really on the ball! You were to busy with the Rush Limbaugh War those days, I guess?

Even now, many of the clueless people want to go campaigning to stop the Olympics, save the Fur people and give them a Dar, and to chop off a fifth of Chinese territory and make a new country out of it. Whoopeee!!!!!

Let’s think about the US some more, shall we? When did the US government go to war with the Afghan people? Come on, Peace Buddies! Hey, was it way back when Osama was still considered a Freedom Fighter? You guys are really quite clueless! Even today, you hardly are campaigning for America to end that war, now are you?

And when did the US go to war against Iran? Hey, wasn’t that back when Saddam Hussein was our government’s good friend? See the Wikipedia some about our history here… The Gulf War

Shoot, that was when most of the Peace Community was part of the porra (cheerleaders) for Daniel Ortega and team. They didn’t really have time to think about how Saddam was being backed by the US government to wage war on the Iranian people. They didn’t have time, as they took their revolutionary vacations elsewhere.

Yes, the Peace Community is just mixed up most of the time. So this election year, we’ll keep that in mind. Americans are always on Cloud Nine…. for an eternity it seems. And that includes the Peace Community. If I they didn’t forget to oppose the Drug War so much even, they might not be so drugged out? Who knows?

I guess what I am saying with this rambling rant, is that it is so sad that much of the Peace (and Justice, too) Community misses about 99% of what goes on around them, about 99% of the time. The corporate media just screws with their minds too much for most to follow what goes on in the world. The Peace People can see that in the conservative element of the population, but is quite oblivious to their own propensity to be manipulated, and about 99% of the time.

It certainly is frustrating to try to work with these people. It might be easier to work with Jehovah’s Witnesses, or some other hard-to-have-success project? Lord only knows? But I continue to work with Unitarians instead. It’s a Unitarian Peace Community.

Peace.

The contractors losing people in Iraq

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We’ve all heard of Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater, Custer Battles et al. Who are the other contractor / profiteer / mercenaries in Iraq? Here’s a partial list, sorted by most recent fatality.

Prolog Middle East, Wackenhut Services, Tetra Tech EC, DynCorp International, Armor-Group, L-3 Communications, Erinys International, Aegis Defence Services, CSS Global, BLP International, Odebrecht, Unity Resources Group, National Democratic Institute, The Sandi Group, Blue Hackle, Securiforce International, ECCI, Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group Inc, The Olive Group, Falcon Security, Lear Siegler Inc, EOD Technology, Inc., Cochise Consultancy, Inc., AIM Group, MPRI, Tetra Tech, Genric, SOC-SMG, Hart Security Company, Torres International, Danubia Global Incorporated, Kroll Incorporated, MVM Inc., Triple Canopy, Inc., Lucent Technologies Inc, Titan Corp, GRS Security, Control Risks Group, USA Environmental Inc., Lloyd-Owen International, CTU Consulting, Kuwaiti company, Edinburgh Risk Inc, Qatar International Trading Company, Janusian Security Risk Management., Steele Foundation, Bearing Point, Inc., CLI USA, Global Risk Strategies Limited, Taehwa Electric Co, Gorkha Manpower Company, Eurodelta d.o.o, Omega Risk Solutions, Gulf Services Co., MayDay Supply, Morning Star Co., Soufan Engineering, Siemens, Ulasli Oil Company, Bilintur, Al Tamimi group, InterEnergoServis, United Defense Industries, Readiness Mgmt. Svcs., Johnson Controls, Gana General Trading Co., Al-Atheer, Granite Services, Inc., General Electric, Titan National Security Solutions, Environmental Chemical Corp. International, Control Risks Group, Yuksel Construction, Prime Projects International, Meteoric Tactical Solutions, Bidepa, SOMAT, Chemoprojekt, Ensto Utility Networks, Air-Ix, SAS International, Ultra Services.Irex Corp., Omu Electric Co., Washington Group, Proactive Communications Inc, ToiFor Kft, IAP Worldwide Services, Sub-Surface Engineering, Bechtel, National Response Corp. of Long Island, Tetra Tech EC.

Somalia- a US-made genocide in the making, tying it all in together

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Even as the US spreads its intentional genocide into Somalia, there are naive US liberals vocally demanding that the US intervene yet more into Africa, to supposedly stop genocide, they say!

Somalia’s main market for the whole country just burned down yesterday, a direct result of the war that the US unleashed on the country by its bombings of the country and then using Ethiopian troops as the US proxy army. Fire engulfs main Somali market US military contractors the Ethiopians are, so to speak. It is a made-by-the-US genocide that is slowly unfolding in that country.

Cry for the Somali people which the UN itself has says is now has the worst humanitarian crisis at this time in Africa. I have yet to see many (if any?) US pacifist antiwar activists demanding that the US get its butt out of Africa. What the hell are they waiting for?

We need to stop now with all our confusion and mobilize. It seems that the national, state, and local antiwar coalitions are led by folk addicted to solely staring at their own navels. At times, they appear to have entirely forgotten that the US is waging a total planetary war and just seem to be on Cloud Nine with their religous dogmas.

WE… CAPITAL LETTERS… are the problem, not the Bush gang all by itself. I have sat through 2 excruciatingly silly soul trips by local followers of this creed in the last few days about the importance of using only non violence. Religious paralysis and delusions that we have a democratic system where voting matters at this point gives people the excuse to do so little. Just get out of the house and talk to your neighbors and get them to make up some signs and do something together. It’s nonviolent! Then do it, please.

US Out of Africa Now! US citizens out of their king-super-boxes now! And please stop all this nonstop drivel about peaceful non-violence all the meanwhile sitting on your collective asses! Non-violence hardly worked in Myanmar, but at least the Buddhist monks got out and tried.

The US pacifists still are in church though. LITERALLY. Or in little group get togethers talking about much of nothing except the importance of being non-violent. Meanwhile, their opponents are entirely too violent yet the pacifists are out to lunch giving out hugs and love to them. Or ignoring their pro-war opponents’ activities altogether.

Twin Towers given Second Life

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Odile jumps
Someone’s rebuilt the World Trade Center in Second Life, just for 9/11. You’ll find it in the Elegua Sim. We poked around the virtual erections and could not find any demolition charges set in the intact towers, but you can teleport to the observation deck and grab a snapshot of yourself jumping in the pre-war-on-terrorism age.

ADDENDUM: Who can know the minds of the WTC victims who chose to jump into the void of city sky out their windows, sooner than being engulfed in flames. With no aerial help on its way, did they hope that rescuers might be hustling up a means to catch those who jumped?

Perhaps the best of all terrible recourses was to make a final grand swan dive, a final extreme adrenaline ride, public or not, an expression of control over a predicament not of your making. Of course much hay has been made about whose actions brought this fate home to roost, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Who is to say we must avert our eyes when the WTC jumpers took a brave Warholian leap into the 9/11 national tragedy?

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.

Never forget remember no thinking

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Clever quilt but misguided like the rest of us.
A commercial van passes our noon vigil on occasion, its driver giving us one of our diminishing no-confidence gestures. On the back window of the van is a “9-11” sticker of the twin towers, the American flag and the admonition ALWAYS REMEMBER. Frequently I’ve seen this slogan prefixed with NEVER FORGET, so we know the dullards they are addressing.
 
Do you REMEMBER THE ALAMO?
Hot headed American expansionists moved to annex Mexican land and their “sacrifice” at San Antonio legitimized American Manifest Destiny over Spain’s.

Do you REMEMBER THE MAINE?
An American battleship blew up in Cuba, fueling the jingoist call to take Spain’s remaining colonies for America. The Maine was later found to have exploded from the inside.

Do you REMEMBER THE LUSITANIA?
The German U-Boat sinking of an innocent ocean liner brought isolationist America into the First World War. It turns out the Lusitania was bringing US-made weapons and ammunition to England.

Do you REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR?
The Japanese sneak attack galvanized public support to fight WWII. FDR knew about the coming attack, sent the most important ships out on maneuvers, and stood down to play the victim.

Remember the Gulf of Tonkin with which we contrived an excuse to attack the Vietnamese? Remember WMDs? Remember the Sudetenland? False-flag ops all. Always remember. Never learn.

Your dad is going to die of cancer

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Iraqi girl whose father has just been killed at a checkpointIt’s just been reported that the children of soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are more likely to suffer child abuse. Is this finding not terrible enough for their parents to take heed and refuse to to be ordered there?
 
All soldiers going to Iraq and Afghanistan doom themselves to exposure to Depleted Uranium. Does it give anyone pause that they are dooming themselves and their families to certain ill-health? They’re not making a selfless sacrifice, they’re sacrificing their kids.

By the VA’s own report, over 11,600 Gulf War vets have died since 1991. A third of the soldiers involved in that 100 hour engagement are now on disability. The health problems have been called Gulf War Syndrome because the military won’t admit responsibility, like it long denied the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam. But doctors are now certain the many common symptoms are due to DU. Already we are seeing birth defects from Iraq War veterans.

Of course the media is not addressing the problem, but why aren’t soldiers figuring out the cause and effect for themselves? Do they still think the Department of Defense is looking out for them? After the Walter Reed scandals? After the failures to deal with PTSD?

Remember an unusual report early in the Iraq occupation when Dutch troops were to replace a US Marines encampment? The Dutch commanders instantly forbade their soldiers to inhabit the American barracks due to DU contamination. They deemed it better to bivouac outside the camp, exposed to attack outside the fortifications, than to suffer the certain DU exposure about which the American soldiers had been told nothing.

I have an idea of how to bring this message home to our soldiers. It involves the soldiers’ families because they are already impacted negatively, and stand to bear the brunt of losing their father or mother, of having to cope with a bitter, violent veteran, or having to care for the eventually terminally ill invalid. Here’s my plan:

I live in a neighborhood that houses the families of officers posted to Fort Carson. Usually they’re newcomers, usually just the families, the fathers being away in Iraq. Kids know these families from talking amongst each other at school.

The next time this or that house is pointed out to me, I’m going to tell the kids to be nice to those children because their father is dying of cancer. Never mind succumbing to IEDs, or to mental illness, the veteran will more likely than not, die a slow death of cancer or leukemia or whatever mysterious debilitating fate, owing to the DU he inhaled over there. Imagine the talk at the school reaching the soldier’s children. They’d bring their fears home. It’s a heartless rumor to spread to kids, but maybe their alarm could prompt an awakening and ultimately save their dad’s life.

This subversive message can be directed toward soldiers at other opportunities. Be it a panhandler with PTSD, or a proud veteran in a parade, treat them both with a sincere gentleness because of their pending struggle with cancer. Thank them for their service, apologize that their sacrifice will turn out to be so tragic.

Bring the message home.

Mincing Words with Nature’s Matriarch

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I learned about Sudden Wetland Dieback yesterday. What’s that? The salt marshlands of America’s east coast are turning inexplicably to muddy wastelands and scientists have developed a euphemism for the occasion.
Not nice to fool Mother NatureThe nomenclature reminds me of another unnatural phenomena that’s been given its own death form: Coral Bleaching. That describes coral reefs which have suddenly expired white as ghosts. As if we’d need to call the piles of bones in the elephant graveyard, Elephant Bleaching.

I understand that scientist want to name what they are seeking to study, but doesn’t a name confer the unfortunate suggestion of a natural occurrence?

It also adds a step, is seems to me at least psychologically, between the effect and the cause. The poor Indonesians in 2004 didn’t suffer a Rapid Oft-Fatal High Water Relocation. It was a Tsunami. Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance wasn’t due to Cement Negative Buoyancy Cankles. It was the mob. Do we need to study the criminal element’s access to poured concrete, or do we need to go after who done it?

The immediate agent of the dieback may be dust from Africa, just as an impassive Pacific may be blamed on an intensified gulf stream (belittled with the appellation El Nino), but wherefore comes this unprecedented toxicity of the elements? We all know. It’s not nice to fool mother nature.

I’d like to know what specifically is meant by dieback? Perhaps those subversive academics are allowing after all for the inclusion of the principle of equal and opposite reaction: blow-back.

We know what’s behind wetland dieback, coral dieback and El Nino blowback, it’s man’s unnatural pollution. It’s our excess carbon emissions and then some, which are heating and killing the globe. There’s already a neat term, sufficiently unnatural sounding: Global Warming. Corporate polluter think-tanks have already re-termed the problem Climate Change to introduce an ambiguity of inherent badness. Change can be good. Only Luddites fear change. The fittest survive change.

The corporate media very cleverly reframed the recent Enviro-palooza concert event as A Climate In Crisis. Sound the alarm there’s a crisis! But what to do, what to do?! The Global Warming warning was too simple. When bath water becomes too warm, for example, we know what to do: shut off the hot water.

Do we need to rename extinction as Pervasive Survival-Instinct Reversal? We could, if we are seeking to ameliorate the intermediate effectiveness of the death blow. Or we could find out who took out the contract on our murder and prevent it.

To belabor mixed metaphors, put an ambulance at the base of the cliff to address Near-Instant Altitude Deceleration Injury, or go to the mountain and curb Dead Man’s Curve.

Russia, China and the Iran standoff.

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You know, the Chimp was anything but subtle when he told the whole world that Nuclear Weapons were on the table in his proposed Bombing Iran Back To The Stone-Age Plan, code named Operation Global Suicide.

Problem being, some of the most populous and most heavily armed, Nuclear armed, nations on earth border Iran itself.
India. Pakistan. China. Russia. Afghanistan where so many NATO forces are congregated, all of them no doubt eager for Bush to nuke them along with the infidels in Iran.

Also, even though the U.S. has continued to have a hissy fit for the past 28 years over dealing with Iran as a real government, a real nation and with real economic benefits to trade,…

Therefore no Iranian oil coming to the United States, the oil fields Mr Bush is threatening with Iran are essential to the economies of the rest of the world, those durned ol’ furriners whut talks funny, the ones what ain’t US. Two of those nations, China and Russia in descending order, hold enough U.S. debt markers that they would have a legal right to foreclose on the Persian Gulf and just evict George and his merry band of pirates.

Now, Mr Bush has been publicly rattling his toy saber.
And of course the single largest stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the world.

But the M.A.D deterrent hasn’t gone away.

So the Russians don’t have enough nukes anymore to destroy every city in America 40 times over… they only have enough to do it 27 times over.

And I imagine that once you’ve been personally nuked about the 10th or 11th time, the rest of it won’t quite matter anymore.

So Georgie-porgie makes another bluff, the Star Wars gambit that was never quite gotten to work. The super expensive star wars scheme. The ones we wouldn’t have enough money or time to develop even if we hadn’t pissed away all our capital and now all our international credit in Operation Quagmire Accomplished.

Say, Georgie, maybe you can hit up the Chinese and Russians for another loan or 500? I’m ever so certain that the Chinese and Russians would just love to throw away their economic booms just so you could put up a shield that allows you to shoot at them and makes sure they can’t shoot back….

The Russians and the Chinese are a little more into diplomacy than George.

I have no doubt that they have sent their ambassadors at the highest levels
to warn Mr Bush in what one of his henchmen called “the nuanced language of diplomacy” to back his shit down, or they will back it down for him.

All this is not a good development for anybody, incidentally.

Bush is throwing away all the Cold War gains in keeping the Russians and Chinese from controlling the trade routes AND the high seas AND MOST ESPECIALLY the oilfields out of the hands of the Russians and Chinese.

Those naughty things Mr Bush and his strident supporters whine so much about, Saddam Hussein killing his own people?

Not only has the U.S. done that repeatedly, the Russians and Chinese have been doing it for a lot longer and could teach either Saddam or Georgie Boy how it’s REALLY DONE.

These aren’t nice people and don’t even PRETEND TO BE NICE.

US Armada poised to strike Iran

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I found video images of our Persian Gulf Armada taunting the Iranians and restricting their movement. What would our flag waver, ass-kicker types do if some other country sent a navy to aim their guns at our shores? Indeed what did the English do when the Spanish mounted their celebrated Armada? I think the Iranians are showing incredible restraint.

US threatens Iran with war

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Nine US warships are now in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Iran just 2 weeks after Dick Cheney threatened that country with an attack. What does it take to waken the international public to the reality that the US government plans to extend its illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq into new attacks on neighboring countries?

Meanwhile, the US’s allies in Lebanon have been bombarding a refugee camp in their own country of 40,000 people with the Bush Adminstration cheering this on. It looks like we might just be days away from a major escalation of the US-made war on the varying people’s of the Middle East into new countries, like Iran and Syria.

The Democratic Party has refused to act against the plans of the Bush Administration to spread their war throughout the Middle East and it is now up to the world population to act decisively in opposition to this US governmental terrorism. It is absolutely the wrong thing to do to await until after the bombing of Iran begins to show opposition. Unfortunately, that appears to be just exactly what the Peace Movement in the US is doing right now.

Act to end the Endless War now. It just takes a couple of people to do a corner peace vigil and show opposition to continuing the carnage. US Troops Out of the Middle East Now!

Protest is patriotic so what are you waiting on? And contrary to popular cynicism protest does work when done with sufficient numbers. Add yourself to those willing to protest this evil war. It’s not really all that hard to do a peace vigil, even on your own, so don’t sit around acting utterly paralyzed.

Mexico slides into political chaos

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There is little news in the US press about it, but Mexico is beginning to sink into chaos. After stealing the Mexican federal presidential election in mid 2006 with US support, Felipe Calderon (FeCal), now acting president, began a struggle to obtain some public legitimacy by initiating a war with Mexico’s drug lords. He is now losing that war.

Of even more potential interest to the Mexican public as well as to the international public, is a split forming in the Mexican political establishment, exemplified by a new book by long time PRI leader, Roberto Madrazo entitled ‘La Traicion’ (The Betrayal). Madrazo book claims that Mexico was betrayed, as well as himself, by a secret pact made between previous Mexican presidents Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox. He dates that secret pact as having begun in 1994.

The essence of that pact was to seemingly end the over a half century dictatorship of one party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional or PRI, and to begin a planned-on ‘alternancia’, where political power would alternate between the PRI and PAN kind of like it does in the US between the Democratic and Republican parties. Except the pact was actually broken when Felipe Calderon followed Vicente Fox into presidential office, since both are from the same political party. Madrazo knows about this secret plot well, since he was a full participant to it when it was initiated. But he thought that it would guarantee him the presidency in 2006. Instead, he came in third, hence the ‘betrayal’.

But what political forces actually launched this secret plot? Roberto Madrazo dates this well and it is easy to follow the money. He dates the plot as beginning in 1994 and it was in precisely the time that the Clinton Administration and Mexican PRI government were negotiating an economic ‘bailout’ to stop the Mexican economic crash of that time. In 1995, the cash began to flow to the tune of over $55 billion dollars from the US into Mexico. What was purchased by the US government?

The US was sick of having ties to a corrupt Mexican dictatorship that had no world legitimacy. The European Union was formed as an economic bloc, but the US only had Mexico and Canada to work with, and Mexico had a most unsavory reputation. What was purchased by the bailout was an agreement to open up the Mexican system to another pro-big business political party, the Partido Acion Nacional or PAN. That way, the US would not be seen as dealing with a dictatorship.

The PRI establishment wanted some guarantees as to their future though, and Roberto Madrazo wanted the 2006 presidency to come back to himself. Well it simply didn’t, as change began to spin out of control of the PRI bigwigs in charge up to that time of all that was Mexico.

So where will the political chaos brake at? A lot will depend on what happens in the war of Mafias now engulfing Mexico. Presidente FeCal (Felipe Calderon) thought he had the best armed and best situated mafia. Perhaps not? Like Colombia, Mexico might now best be considered an evolving Narco-Death Squad state. Lots of dealing and wheeling gone bad. And FeCal as well as Roberto Madrazo may well fall to the wayside.

Bush and Dobson at Bomb ’em Summit (and other things)

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James Dobson met with Bush in a ‘pro-family movement’ summit and came to the startling conclusion that it was OK for Iranian families to drop bombs on them to save them from their president who Dobson compares to Hitler. Did you have problems following that logic?

Actually, James Dobson did not say that it was OK for Iranian families to drop bombs on Iran, but only that it was ‘pro-family’ for American families for the US government to do so. Ok, look it’s hard to link bombs with being ‘pro-family’, so you might want to call ‘Focus on the Family’ to get them to explain it all to you. I can’t. Certainly not that well, at any rate….

We live in amazing times and the American family has changed it seems. Iranian children must be nuked if they misbehave, and George is just the perfect big daddy to do it, too. And Poppy Dick from his aircraft carrier out there in the Persian Gulf is going to help out, too.

American children here in Colorado Springs on the other hand, have a much more permissive big daddy who goes by by the name of Richard ‘Liars’ Myers. Being a good liberal sort of guy, he will ensure that all Colorado Springs children will just get time outs instead of new generation ‘bunker buster’ nukes on their butts. And Father Lionel will protect all of us local kids without regard to whether or not we are ‘defense’ contractors.

It’s a privilege to live in Colorado and have such nice military-industrial-psychological complex working to keep us safe and sane. Thanks, All!

9-11 has nothing on 2003

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I’m thinking about the buildup to the US invasion of Iraq, an unimaginable aggression that yielded unspeakable suffering, speakably unsurprising. Millions of people took to the streets in 2003, an unprecedented two thousand in this city, in a desperate renunciation of our government’s blood thirst. Today as the US war machine mobilizes to demolish Iran, I wonder what has changed, where is the outcry? Where are the double-decker buses rushing to the Gulf to put human shields between the US warships and the Iranian people, lest the cowboys dare bomb white people?!

But life was simpler in 2003. We had yet to learn what a drunken, swaggering half-wit would do at the helm of the most powerful military. A half-wit propped up by malicious connivers shifting capitalism’s ultimate human-life harvester into irreverse gear.

The media likes to talk about how 9-11 changed the world. Nine-eleven was America’s first taste of violence brought home, to the tune of a Madison Avenue catch phrase. As it turns out, it was the overture. The world didn’t change until 2003.

It was a buildup to be sure, of crooked deals in high courts, back room contracts, corporate election tampering, transnational suppression of sustainability, collapse of sovereignty and law serving the people’s discretion, and the incomprehensible judicial malfeasance of Guantanamo, culminating in a climax of lunacy and self-deception with Iraq. I believe shock and awe was the dawning of awareness of the new world order: unchecked capitalism bearing arms, baring its steel molars, its black gloves and crew-cutted vacant soul, with nothing any dedicated resistance can do about it.

What was becoming evident to globalization’s victims about the race to the bottom is that the push has become a shove and they’re already trying to throw the dirt in over us.

The UN becomes a creature of Bush and The Pentagon in Somalia

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As the second US aircraft carrier moves into the Persian Gulf threatening to attack Iran and while Ethiopia is bombing civilians in Mogadishu, the UN is busy rubber stamping the joint Ethiopia/ US invasion and occupation of Somalia. UN troops are being organized to go and occupy Somalia for Dubya. Like the UN occupation of Haiti, the United Nations Security Council has again demonstrated that it is in fact a creature of Washington DC and the Pentagon, and not the world’s nations.

Far from bringing democracy to places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration and its Democratic Party loyal ‘opposition’ are spreading mayhem and terror throughout the world. Who would have thought that after decades of the US Right Wing screaming that ‘we’ need to get out of the UN, that in fact they would actually go on to make the UN into a tool of neocon reaction? But it has happened.

The only just thing that American peace activists can call for, is removal of all foreign troops out of Somalia, including those of the UN, US, Ethiopia, and all troops from other African countries bought and mobilized by the US. This onfolding chaos in the Horn of Africa due to the US oil-grabbing war on Islam, illustrates the dangers of calling for US intervention into Darfur/ Chad/ Sudan as some liberal do-gooders are doing. We need to call for European and US troops out of Africa, and not for them to go into countries there with their imperialist troops. That is just common sense.

US out to control Iran’s natural gas

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Most thinking people in the world now realize that the US invaded and occupies Iraq in order to control the oil underground there. While other oil producing countries were rapidly depleting their major oil fields of the precious natural resource that lay underground, that was not the case with Iraq. The country lagged far behind in developing their oil fields due to its disastrous war with Iran and the economic sanctions that the US later initiated against them. The oil largely stayed in the ground for about a 20 year period of time. But what about Iran? Why is the US government on the move to try to regime change there?

Iran at first seems to be not as worthy of Iraq to fall victim to a US energy grab. Their reserves of oil are in decline, and that is one reason that the government seeks to develop nuclear energy. However, there are 2 other carbon energy forms that are also of vast importance besides oil. Natural gas and coal. Iran has three and one half times the reserves of the US in natural gas, and is only behind one much larger country, Russia, in underground stocks of that commodity.

As we know, much of Europe is dependent on Russia’s natural gas to get their communities heated each Winter. This is an extremely important fuel resource even if it is not as central to the world’s growing energy crisis as oil is. And just like oil, both India and China are looking to increase their imports of natural gas, too. Being Number 2 in reserves of natural gas in the world is no small matter. And world natural gas supplies are due to peak in several decades, all the more to make Iran’s naturla gas a very important target for other’s greed.

It is true, that the American government’s political desire to destroy Iranian influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and the Persian Gulf is probably as large a factor to the US drive to engage in war against Iran as just the desire to commit outright theft.. But the drive to rob and control this huge reservoir of natural gas plays almost as prominent a part in the neocon ‘surge’ to fuck Iran over, as does the desire to only politically neutralize/neuter them. Excuse the bad language. But when I discuss the American mafia imperialist strategy, for some reason I begin to talk like Richard Nixon?

Natural Gas. All cause for more war profiteering.

We are weeks, and maybe just days before the US assault on Iran begins. No Blood for Oil! No blood for Natural Gas! This is not the way to begin to deal with the world’s energy crisis. A continued world wide resource war will only make the transition away from the unsustainable excessive misuse of carbon energy forms, even more painful and disastrous than it has to be.

Scorched journalist policy

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Shall we speculate as to who is killing journalists in Iraq and Afghanistan? (141 to date in Iraq.) Well, the who is documented, much of it labeled “friendly fire.” Shall we speculate about the why? Forgive me if it feels like I am connecting the dots with a crayon.
 
A recent documentary interviewed some Iraqi journalists about their inconsistent use of flack jackets. The journalists said they choose not to wear protection around fellow Iraqis because they don’t want to be mistaken for working for the occupiers. But walking beside American soldiers the journalists do wear flack jackets because they are fearful of being shot …by the Americans.

Witness to a crime
We’ve all seen it in the movies: the protagonist is accidental witness to a crime and becomes targeted by the perpetrator lest he live to testify. Or the victim begging for life, vowing in exchange not to go to the police. Both victim and criminal know it’s an offer the villain cannot risk.

Massacres usually intend to leave no survivors because the dead tell no tales. Countless war movies have depicted the war correspondent happening upon a war crime in progress, recognizing immediately that a “stray bullet” will be eminent.

Kill Boxes
We’ve learned over the course of two Gulf Wars that our military employs such tactics as “Kill Boxes” and “Free Fire Zones.” Both describe a similar US M.O.. The first is Air Force lingo for an area bounded by given coordinates inside of which everything is considered a target. The airmen are tasked with killing everybody in that box. They have the discretion not to shoot something, but they will be held responsible for whatever they leave, authorized as they were to annihilate all.

Photo shown across the world except in the USA renowned Kill Box in 1990 was the Highway of Death, where thousands of Iraqi soldiers fleeing from Kuwait were incinerated in their vehicles. (American viewers were spared the graphic images.)

The Hague Conventions forbid firing upon soldiers who are no longer attacking you. Even cowboys know you don’t shoot somebody in the back. Both the Hague and Geneva Conventions outlaw the indiscriminate killing of civilians and other non-combatants.

Free Fire Zones
Kill Boxes violate all international conventions. They are as illegal as the US Army’s Free Fire Zone in which soldiers are ordered to fire freely at “anything that moves.” Civilians are expected to know beforehand to get out of the way. They figure it out when our snipers begin popping their family members’ heads off in their gardens. IED detonations now trigger automatic Free Fire Zones around the radius of the blast. An American reputation for ruthless overkill now precedes us. As a result, when IEDs explode, Iraqis have learned to run for their lives. Our soldiers lie to themselves that the escaping figures must be responsible for the IED, and are thus combatants. American Humvees carry extra shovels to plant on the bodies of the slain civilians to paint them as bomb laying insurgents.

The US has deliberately shot civilians since the Korean War, though this has only recently been revealed. In No Gun Ri, entire masses of refuges were machine-gunned to prevent fighters from passing amongst them. This policy continued in Vietnam, the My Lai massacre being unique only for having been uncovered. In war, Collateral Damage has always been a tragic unintended consequence, but by no stretch of a JAG’s imagination can it be a sanctioned consequence.

Secret and Confidential
Let’s speculate here… If military manuals exist with instructions for Kill Boxes and Free Fire Zones which explicitly require the killing of civilians and non-combatants, how do you suppose the instructions read for dealing with uninvited members of the press? The US military seems quite preoccupied with how its actions appear in news broadcasts. How might US soldiers be instructed to deal with journalists who stumble upon the bodies and capture the unbecoming bloodshed with their cameras? We’ll find out someday when a witness survives.

Lebanon and Mexico- Iraq and Afghanistan

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It was a coincidence of sorts, but last Friday both Lebanon and Mexico found themselves engulfed in 2 huge demonstrations for basically the same reasons. Both demonstrations had as their goals getting rid of their undemocratically minded, US propped up governments.

Both demonstrations were demanding that the governments they have forced upon them at present, stop doing the bidding of the Bush Adminstration in D.C. As a result, it has been difficult in the US getting news about these huge rallies, and what commentaries I have seen in the US press border on the absurd.

As example, on Lebanon’s demonstration of approximately 1 million in the streets of Beirut, The CS Gazette carried a conservative Chicago tribune editorial that it passed off as reportage (Sat A3), that began… “After last year’s Cedar Revolution, the counter-revolution began Friday.” Pure bullshit, and typical of the Right Wing nuts at The Gazette to print this nonsense. The demands of this demonstration were for a non-representative Lebanese government that is cooperating with a foreign power, the US, to resign. Nothing counter-revolutionary about that demonstration at all, and the crowd was huge.

They were demonstrating against a government that is seen as cooperating with the US and another power, Israel, that invaded Lebanese territory and left unexploded cluster bombs everywhere. Plus, they don’t want a UN sent in by the US providing defense for another Israeli-US attack on fellow Muslim countries, Syria and Iran. Plus, they just plain want the US out of Iraq. This is a revolutionary group of people, not countrer-revolutionary as the Chicago Tribune article asserts. It always gets me when Right Wingers call their opposites ‘counter-revolutionaries’! I imagine Hitler did quite the same.

Now, let’s turn to Mexico, and see the exact same situation, and the exact same idiotic commentary inside The Gazette. Several hundred thousand demonstrated against this new, and fraudulently installed, president Fecal (FElipe CALderon). He had to be snuck in at a secret ceremony at midnight, and the national chambers of government had already been engulfed in fistfights and chaos because of the reality that a recount was denied the Mexican people, in a dubious presidential electoral processs full of illegalities. The outgoing president refused to publicly give his departure speech and instead handed it in on paper! So what does our local whigs have to say about all this, despite they hardly being able to locate Mexico on a map?

Metro section Page 6, Gazette editorial- “Mexico made progress in Fox’s six years, but now Calderon must move the country further toward a free market system and confront the increasing violoence that plagues the country.” Oh brother. The country is plagued by violence because of the government that The Gazette is supporting. In fact, to twist this reality around as this editorial does, is simply to call for Calderon to move in a manner even more repressively, to crush by yet more state terrorism, the resistance to this US puppet government. Shame on these idiots at The Gazette!

And just how damn dumb are these assholes on the editorial board there? Mexico has ‘a free market system’ already. What did they think Mexico was, the Soviet Union? What a bunch of overly miseducated twits The Gazette has stacking their editorial pages with this juvenile nonsense. They see socialism when the reality has been completely the opposite. Mexico has always been a capitalist country, and it’s been staring The Gazette in the face for decades now.

Free Lebanon and Mexico of US government stooges. These 2 puppet governments currently in power are causing thier respective peoples untold harm. Stop the US from waging yet more war in both Latin America, and the Middle East. US out of Mexico and Lebanon. US out of Iraq and Afghanistan!

What is the purpose of the ‘War on Terrorism’, and when did it start?

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When did this war start that is now called ‘The War on Terrorism’ and what is its purpose? The answers to both questions would seem rather simple and obvious to Americans, but on closer examination are not what would be most considered. Why the war on terrorism’s purpose is to stop attacks from terrorists on our country and the world, would certainly be the most common reply. And the war started, of course, on September 11, 2001.

But are these 2 simple answers really the true answers here? And we really should ask yet a third question to get to the bottom of this issue. Is Osama bin Laden the original ‘terrorist’ that had the US government launch its ‘War on Terrorism’? Actually, the “War on Terrorism’ was launched by the US government on January 17, 1991. The terrorist then was considered to be Saddam Hussein, dictator of Iraq. His victim was considered to be not the United States, but the country of Kuwait that had just been occupied by the Iraqi military forces under the command of Hussein.

The war to stop terrorism was then labeled the ‘War to Liberate Kuwait’. To those Americans under 35 or so, this might be new history, of sorts. And to those under about 46, the decade plus before the launching of this war of liberation from Saddam Hussein, the ‘terrorist’, must seem like almost unknowable ancient history. So let’s review it some. Let’s review from February 11, 1979 (fall of the US backed Iranian dictator, the Shah of Iran) to February 7, 1990 (fall of the Soviet Union).

Pre “War on Terrorism’, the US favored the ‘terrorists world wide. They used them to fight 3 major proxy wars against their enemies. First off, the US spent billions that was sent to irregular forces who used the money to fund terrorist actions against the Soviet backed government of Afghanistan. This is where the US recruited Osama bin Laden and made him their ally. Second group of irregular recruits of terrorists was made in Central America, where the US funded terrroism against Nicaragua. Third use of terror by the Americans was when the US backed Saddam Hussein in the First Gulf War, when Iraq attacked Iran. It was only when Hussein later attacked and occupied Kuwait, that the media campaign began to call his war making terrorism. Before then, the media remained totally silent about Hussein’s use of terrorism.

So why did the US go from making terrorism ( in the eighties) its strategy, to making its strategy the fight against ‘terrorism’ (in the nineties onwards), so to speak? That would have to be from the negative publicity that the US got from using terrorism repeatedly against Nicaragua. This put a bad mark against the US in international circles. So propagandists within the uS government began to react from trying to defend terrorists as being so-called ‘freedom fighters’, to themselves attacking the supposed ‘terrroism’ of others. The fight to ‘liberate the Kuwaits’ was what launched the US continual ‘War Against Terrorism’. Nobody under about 45 can remember much being said one way or the other about Kuwaitis. But those 45 and older can remember how America became suddenly bombarded about how supposedly virtuous the Kuwaitis were supposed to all be. Kuwait being raped by Saddam Hussein, the terrorist! Babies being thrown to the ground even!

I personally heard American after American who claimed to know a Kuwaiti or two. They all told of what a wonderful folk they were in the most graphic manner! In the Arab world, the Kuwaitis had horrible reputations. The Kuwait citizens were the mionority of the population in their own country, yet employed huge numbers of other Arabs from around the Middle East who they treated like slaves. The women of Kuwait had absolutely no rights what-so-ever. Yet, the American press began a gigantic propaganda campaign to ‘liberate Kuwait’ from the Iraqi ‘terrorist’, Hussein! That is the reason, that even today so many Americans believe that Saddam Hussein had some sort of role in the toppling of the World Trade Towers. The US launch of the ‘War Against Terrorism’ began with plans to ‘liberate Kuwait’, and continued with the let’s get Hussein campaign.

But George Bush Senior was a smart man. Who was he going to have as ‘terrorist’ foil if he actually caught Hussein? So Kuwait was ‘liberated’, but the most evil ‘terrorist’ was not caught. That unfortuantely left the Democrats as the leaders in the ‘fight against terrorism’ when Bush unexpectly did not make it a second term. But what to do since the victim of terroism, Kuwait, was already ‘liberated’? Could a new victim be found? Well, yes it was soon found. The victim was potential, as Hussein was claimed to be developing nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and biological weapons! And of course, the potential victim could only be ourselves, us the poor US citizens, so the terrorist had to be stopped! Eight years of the ‘War Against Terrorism’ was then fought by Clinton and Gore against the people of Iraq, where hundreds of thousands weree killed by economic sanctions designed solely to stop the ‘terrorist’.

Now we know, all of that was the big lie. The Democrats actaully have the nerve to credit Bush Junior with lying about that! Takes some gall, it sure does. But with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, communists could no longer be the offical enemy, so ‘terrorism’ had to be it. The fall of the Soviet Union was over 10 years before 9/11, and Saddam Hussein was the big guy bad guy, before we ever began to think about Osama. Fast forward to now, where terrorists are all over, and all ephemeral.

We now know when the ‘War Against Terrorism’ started, but what has been the purpose? To stop terrorists from harming us? Why NO, that’s not it at all. To catch Osama? No, he has been killed already, more than likely. NO, the real purpose is to provide an official enemy that can camoflage 2 countries’ needs to steal from others. One Holy Land needs to steal land, and the other needs to steal oil. Together they have allied themselves to fight a continual conflict, that they now call, a “War Against Terrorism’. Even as it’s fought, we create yet more of the official enemy to fuel our production of war equipment. Oil and industry for us, and stolen land for our ally. That’s the purpose that makes our leaders march us like so many sheep, into this war against the shadows they create.

The ‘War Against Terrorism’ cannot be stopped, until the land is stolen, and the oil supplies are ours.

Borat Yakov Smirnoff

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Borat SmirnoffI recognize Borat. He’s Yakov Smirnoff Y2K, but I’m hung up on another parallel. Smirnoff was the yucks-mascot for the Soviet Empire near the close of the Cold War. If Borat’s Kasak buffoon is a similar Muslim foil, what is the comparable war?

Bush and Company would like to call this the War on Terror, but does that really describe this Christian-Muslim war? I’ve yet to come across a term coined to describe this conflict. Will historians call this the Bush Crusade? The West’s gambit for the Middle East? The New American Century Asserted? Did this entanglement began with Israel in 1948? Upholding white man’s last colonial aggression?

Forget the Gulf War, or Operation Freedom. Forget the Israeli-Arab conflicts. It’s all the same occupation. The US Zionist War.

A great embarrassment about Borat is that unlike Yakov Smirnoff who was a Russian making fun of Russians, Borat is actually a Jew who is making fun of Muslims. This adds insult to injury as measured by the ceaseless Muslim deaths every day in Palestine at the hand of Israelis, and in Iraq and Afghanistan perpetrated by Israel’s Mossad. Borat’s put down of Muslims is too insulting for words.

Senator McCain fake shining armor

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Victim of Vietnamese 
Do we assume because John McCain suffered mistreatment at the hands of the Vietnamese, that he empathizes with victims of torture? By presenting a false alternative to Bush’s torture bill, McCain is showing he may just want payback.

 

I’m not so sure we should believe that McCain was grossly mistreated by the Vietnamese. When he was shot down he was assaulted by angry people that did physically attack him. He was already injured at that point from the fall of his aircraft though.

Why did they attack him when he came down? The answer seems rather obvious, but this assault hardly can be called torture. It was rage at the American criminal that had been napalming and bombing those ‘Gooks’ down below.

As to his later imprisonment? He claims he was beaten and kept in solitary at times. There are hundreds of thousands of Americans who have suffered these abuses and much worse within America’s own jails. Nobody talks about this even as it goes on massively today in US prisons. I think we all know that rape is an epidemic in US prisons, and is actively encouraged by authorities as a form of control and torture of prisoners. Has McCain ever opened his mouth about this? I think not. He certainly was never threatened with it at the ‘Hanoi Hilton’.

McCain’s debriefing by the US military was set to make it publicly appear as if the Vietnamese were torturing American POWs on a routine basis. The reason for this is that the US was systematically doing much worse to the Vietnamese they held, and a loud campaign of denunciation of supposed Vietnamese abuse of the few Americans they held was meant to take the spotlight off what the US military did in mass to its captives. Returning US GIs were encouraged to join into this campaign with their stories, many of which might well have been coached.

The Pentagon actively pushed US POWs to voice claims that they were grossly mistreated. It became a major industry on the propaganda front. To this day, it is an urban Right Wing myth that huge numbers of returning veterans were spit upon and assaulted by hippie protesters. And the campaign suoppsoedly to aid ‘America’s POw/MIA’ went on for decades, even when it became quite preposterous. No campaign for the victims of US atrocities in SE Asia was ever begun though.

Let’s face it, many people lie and then even begin to believe their own lies. During the first Gulf War, I can’t count the number of Right Wing Americans that claimed to know Kuwaitis. I think we need to take McCains’s claims of being tortured with a big grain… make that a big rock of salt. The verifiable evidence is slim that he was tortured, to say the least.

My father-in-law was tortured by police though. He later died from complications related to that torture. Remember the so-called ‘Operation Cooperation’? It launched the decades long so-called drug wars. My wife’s dad was caught up in the militarization of the US-Mexican Border, thrown in jail, and then tortured. Acid was dropped into his eyes.
As a result, he walked around half blind the rest of his life.

In contrast, McCain is running for president as a Right Wing Republican. I think he is just an asshole and not a torture victim at all. He looks just fine though a little heavy from fine dining.

McCain hardly seems like a torture victim. He’s just your typical Right Wing ex-US-soldier type that wants to be publicly hailed as a hero, even though his activities as an imperialist trooper were dispicable. I can think of a jillion other ‘victims’ of torture out there whose claims of abuse I would take much more seriously. His claims to be a ‘compassionate conservative’ aren’t much more believeable than Bush’s.

Getting our re-fill of panhandlers

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Fresh vetI spotted this panhandler at a nearby offramp. Is she really a veteran? I’m not sure her age matches the Gulf War camo. Itinerants do confess that WILL WORK FOR FOOD gets more support when you say you’re a vet. Of course, as a result the public begins to look at “homeless veterans” with cynicism.
 
The pretend-vet ruse obscures the fact that an enormous proportion of homeless men have always come from the wars, and they are already emerging from this last.

Jet set

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Not twin engine Bonanzas anymoreThis is not the photograph I wish I had taken. I was in Snowmass for the Aspen Jazz Festival, Labor Day weekend. Crossing from Aspen to Snowmass we drove by the airport. Several evenings, past Gulfstreams and other private jets gleaming in the moonlight. More tailfins than you could count.

The point being, these weren’t Cessnas or twin-engine Bonanzas or even Lear jets. These were miniature passenger jets, parked higgledy-piggedly at both ends of the airport runway. The point being, wealth in abundance, overflowing the confines of their taxpayer funded playpen, for all to see, and only see.

This picture was taken at the weekend’s close, when the most of the jetset had flown.

Making Iraqi soldiers

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Iraqis have mastered rocket scienceUS troops are training Iraqis to be soldiers? Is that a laugh? Iraqi soldiers are already some of the most experienced in the world, many of them veterans of the ten year war with Iran and the Gulf War.
 
Iraqi fighters have shown their mettle against the overwhelming superiority of their American occupiers, twice. What do soft bellied Americans have to teach to seasoned Iraqis?

Indoctrination would be more like it. Inoculate them with vaccines, get their pledge of allegiance, record their identifying marks and family records, start a file on them, arm them with cast-off assault rifles, teach them our weapons systems I suppose, though I’m guessing not.

What ARE we teaching them? Is the timetable needed to train an Iraq security force really the time it takes to just assemble one? To convince enough Iraqis that they aren’t signing up for just one paycheck because that’s the only payday they’ll experience before they are summarily disgorged from an army bus and executed? Are Iraqi men given the choice of conscription or Abu Ghraib?