Cover-up… 29 September 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, 2012 Re Election, AFRICOM, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, WAR!.49 comments
Amman, Jordan: A veiled woman [Mohammad Abu Ghosh/AP]
yup, looks like a veil to me… heavily veiled.
*****
In other nooz… it probably helps to have a story line, and to stick to it. It’s not like we have representative, responsive, flexible government… now or anytime in the foreseeable future. So, we get a story line. In this case, hen’s scratchings.
TAPPER: The president today in the Oval Office with the NATO secretary general said that he defined the mission in Afghanistan as dismantling, disrupting, destroying the Al Qaida network and effectively working with the Afghan government to provide the security necessary for that country. What — how would he define “effectively working with the Afghan government to provide the security necessary for that country”? Can you explain more what he means, Robert?
GIBBS: Well, look, I think you’ve got — I think, as you’ve seen in places around the world, we’ve — while we can help the security environment in the short term, there has to be a training mission for police and security forces that that country can use to secure their own territory. Because we cannot stay there forever. Eventually, the functions of security and the functions of policing are going to have to be assumed by the Afghans. So, obviously, some robust training mission has to happen.
TAPPER: That’s what you mean by — just, kind of, open-ended concept of they need to be able to arm themselves…(CROSSTALK)
GIBBS: They have to be able to — they have to be able to secure their own physical territory.
TAPPER: That’s obviously not the case right now.
GIBBS: And that’s why — that’s part of — part of what the president talked about in March and part of what is in — obviously in the assessment from General McChrystal.
TAPPER: One other question is that retired General Gration is quoted in The Washington Post today making comments about U.S. policy toward Sudan that include suggestions that — that his goal is to normalize relations with Sudan. And there are a lot of other comments that have alarmed troops whose existence is to — to object to the genocide in Darfur. Did you guys have a reaction to that comment…
(CROSSTALK)GIBBS: Well, just — my reaction is more to the story The policy is being worked on. There aren’t new announcements of a new policy. Obviously, our policy would not include that unless there were a significant change on the ground in Khartoum.
– jpt
Or in the air. Ground, air, what’s the difference? Your border, my border… autonomous nations (or people), sovereign nations… they are ALL our borders. we’ll tell you where to put them and then what you can do with them….
****
Out of curiosity I went and looked at the Whitehouse.gov text of the full briefing. For the story line, you know…
Don’t know who the questioner is here…
Q Robert, was Rasmussen speaking for the President when he said today in the Oval Office, “We will stay in Afghanistan as long as it takes”?
MR. GIBBS: Obviously, I’m not going to get into parsing the words of –
Q It’s pretty straightforward.
MR. GIBBS: I understand, I just don’t currently hold the position of his spokesperson.
Q Well, does the President agree with that?
MR. GIBBS: I think the President believes that we have to do — we have to, as I said earlier, disrupt, dismantle and destroy al Qaeda, prevent it from having a safe haven that would allow it to plan the type of activities that we saw happen in September of 2001 in this country.
Q And that is the objective for which the U.S. will stay in Afghanistan, as long as it takes?
MR. GIBBS: That is the objective of our U.S. policy toward Afghanistan.
Other than low grade comedy, there is no point to this. A trained and diapered monkey could, at random, hold up signs that said:
I have not seen the president in a couple of hours, so I cannot answer that.
I had not heard that.
I am not able to comment on that.
And even if I knew, I would not say.
We obviously want to proceed carefully, wars may be entered into wrongly, but we must leave rightly.
Under this president, on day one, we banned torture.
We pledge to the American people to keep them safe, in their beds if they have one. But no matter, we will hunt down terrorists and kill them, randomly and specifically. In their beds, if they have one. Otherwise, at large.
We will.
And the monkey can laugh whenever he wants. I’d suggest using a little Capuchin monkey, the breed they use to attend the very disabled. Comb hair and so on…
****
Promise? 16 August 2009
Posted by marisacat in AFRICOM, Culture of Death, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, WAR!.65 comments
Note
President Obama holds a note from his personal assistant Reggie Love as he speaks during a town hall meeting on health insurance at a high school in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
[EWEL SAMAD / AFP / Getty]
***
More seriously… Spiegel has a two parter (each part is just a page) on rich investors in various countries buying up, long term leasing farm land across the globe… Think catnip put up a report from one of the UK papers last week…
Part 1 The new colonialism
[E]very crisis has its winners. A group of them is sitting in the Stuyvesant Room at the Marriott Hotel in New York. The conference room, where the shades are drawn and the lights are dimmed, is filled with men from Iowa, Sao Paulo and Sydney — corn farmers, big landowners and fund managers. Each of them has paid $1,995 (€1,395) to attend Global AgInvesting 2009, the first investors’ conference on the emerging worldwide market in farmland.
…
According to most prognoses, there could be 9.1 billion people living on earth in 2050, about two billion more than today. In the coming 20 years alone, worldwide demand for food is expected to rise by 50 percent. “These are pessimistic prospects,” says the OECD man. He looks serious and even a little sad, as he describes the future of the world.
But for the audience in the Stuyvesant Room, mostly men and a handful of women, all of this is good news and the mood is buoyant. How could it be any different? After all, hunger is their business. The combination of more people and less land makes food a safe investment, with annual returns of 20 to 30 percent, rare in the current economic climate.
…
Susan Payne, a red-haired British woman, is the CEO of the largest land fund in southern Africa, which currently includes 150,000 hectares (370,000 acres), mainly in South Africa, Zambia and Mozambique. Payne hopes to raise half a billion euros from investors. She talks about fighting hunger, but the headings on her PowerPoint slides, embellished with photos of soybean fields at sunset, tell a different story. One such heading refers to “Africa — the last frontier for finding alpha.” The word alpha signifies an investment for which the return is greater than the risk. Africa is alpha country. snip
A cotton farmer in Burkino Faso. To boost harvests and achieve annual returns of 20 percent or more, foreign landowners must operate their farms on an industrial scale. When the soil becomes depleted after a few years, many investors simply move on. Land is so cheap that they are not forced to value sustainable farming practices. [AFP]
Part 2 The investor needs a weak state
“When food becomes scarce, the investor needs a weak state that does not force him to abide by any rules,” says Philippe Heilberg, an American businessman. A state that permits grain exports despite famines at home, that is consumed by corruption or deeply in debt, ruled by a dictatorship, racked by civil war, or sends millions of workers abroad and is dependent on these workers receiving visas and jobs.
Heilberg has found such a nation: South Sudan, which is in fact a pre-nation, autonomous but not independent. The 44-year-old American, son of a coffee merchant and the founder of the investment firm Jarch Capital, is now the largest land leaseholder in South Sudan, where he leases 400,000 hectares of prime farmland in Mayom County.
The mere mention of the words South Sudan conjures up images of civil war, refugees and famine, not of a place where one would consider growing tomatoes. But Heilberg raves that his project will be more beneficial to people than the UN, and that he will create jobs and produce food. And he is adamant that Paulino Matip, from whom he has leased the land for 50 years, not be referred to as a warlord, but as a “former warlord” or “deputy army chief.” Heilberg neglects to mention that the rebels led by Matip are suspected of having committed war crimes.
Ah, war crimes… but then we have too .. committed war crimes I mean. Brothers in arms.
Solving the problem means developing new land, which is only available in Africa, Asia and South America. - Part 1
Not hard to figure out we don’t care the least little bit who starves in the countries themselves … Who starves now and starves tomorrow – ’til the land renews…
Probably part of the plan… less visible destruction than invasion – war – occupation. And, bonus! – the multi-national investor class takes care of it for us.
So simple it is brilliant!
pass the beer… 30 July 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, 2012 Re Election, AFRICOM, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, la vie en rose.59 comments
The floating stage on Lake Constance in Bregenz as seen in Quantum of Solace. Above, the stage that appeared in the film was created for Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Tosca” in 2007… [GETTY]
… so did the boychicks look each other in the eye?
I read they were joined by Biden, who, in my opinion, IS a racist – in that classic old Pennsylvania way, with white ethnic Catholic thrown in…. Maybe, as they sweltered in what I read was a steamy Washington day, they talked of the never very successful Rose Garden, put in by Jacqueline. Planted in a less than fortuitous spot, or so rosiers say.
From Politico’s Whiteboard:
OBAMA: “I am thankful to Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley for joining me at the White House this evening for a friendly, thoughtful conversation. Even before we sat down for the beer, I learned that the two gentlemen spent some time together listening to one another, which is a testament to them. I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart. I am confident that has happened here tonight, and I am hopeful that all of us are able to draw this positive lesson from this episode.”
We can consider ourselves “taught”. Thank you, Mr Obama!, we can cry in unison. (Anyone ever notice old student evals of Professor Obama surface? They did for the Unibomber, as he had taught at some university in the mists of time. But not for Obama, that I noticed.)
I think “crappy nothingness” was achieved here… and is a good take away ”lesson”. Pencils down, books closed. Carry on.
War Forever 19 July 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, 2012 Re Election, AFRICOM, Afghanistan War, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iraq War, Pakistan, Turkey, WAR!.63 comments
Farmers along the Euphrates say that they may have to abandon Anbar rice, a higher value grain that commands patriotic pride in the area, for cheaper varieties. [Photo: Moises Saman for The New York Times]
NYT has an article up on the shrinking of the Euphrates…
The shrinking of the Euphrates, a river so crucial to the birth of civilization that the Book of Revelation prophesied its drying up as a sign of the end times, has decimated farms along its banks, has left fishermen impoverished and has depleted riverside towns as farmers flee to the cities looking for work.
…
“Next winter will be the final chance,” said Hashem Hilead Shehi, a 73-year-old farmer who lives in a bone-dry village west of the marshes. “If we are not able to plant, then all of the families will leave.”
***
Elsewhere, exhibiting drought of a different sort, Peter Bergen says we (and who is that?) can win in Afghanistan. His writings on this are loaded from top to bottom with propaganda…
[N]or has the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan been anywhere near as expensive as Vietnam was—in fact, that’s in part why American efforts have not met with as much success as they could have. During the Vietnam War, the United States spent almost 10 percent of its GDP on military spending. Today’s military expenditures are somewhere between 4 and 5 percent of GDP, and of that, Afghanistan last year consumed only 6 percent of the total expenditure, while Iraq sucked up some five times that amount. And unlike the Vietnamese and Iraqis, Afghans have generally embraced international forces. In 2005, four years after the fall of the Taliban, eight out of ten Afghans expressed in a BBC/ABC poll a favorable opinion of the United States, and the same number supported foreign soldiers in their country. Contrast that with Iraq, where a BBC/ABC poll in 2005 found that only one in three Iraqis supported international forces in their country. While the same poll taken in Afghanistan this year reported, for the first time, that just under half of Afghans have a favorable view of the United States, that’s still a higher approval rating than the U.S. gets in any other Muslim-majority country save Lebanon. And a solid majority of Afghans continue to approve of the international forces in their country. What Afghans want is not for American and other foreign soldiers to leave, but for them to deliver on their promises of helping to midwife a more secure and prosperous country. …snip...
And for maximum insanity, he slobbers out the propaganda on McChrystal, that he is mindful of “collateral damage” civilian casualties.. and well, he’ll be “mindful”.
This evening I also landed on a strangely straight forward and direct article in the Telegraph on Afghanistan, saying quite directly that Obama plans to build up the Afghani security forces and quite showily ”depart”, in the months prior to the re election, November 2012. Really? I doubt it. Another fake withdrawal, like Iraq. And fake food for Africa, with guns. And a lecturing US President with a smiling black face. Advancement? I don’t think so.
[G]host soldiers and an enemy that never seems to be beaten despite big losses is reminiscent of another war that went awry. Journalists who have been here since before the Helmand operation of 2006 have a sense of foreboding that was present during the latter stages of the Vietnam war. There was a substantial surge in troops before the Americans withdrew from South Vietnam, leaving behind a corrupt government and army that collapsed at their first test.
The Kabul hacks struggle to be persuaded by commanding officers who fly in for six-month tours talking about a “winnable war” and keeping the terrorists off the streets of Britain. There is also growing cynicism over the politicians – Gordon Brown included – trotting out the line that we are there to prevent another September 11 or July 7. Even some officers are beginning to ask if “we are creating more terrorists than we are killing”.
…
The Americans have showed that numbers work. In the first six hours of Panther’s Claw, 4,000 men backed by Sea Stallion helicopters secured an area of southern Helmand that had been held by the Taliban for three years. Contrast this with the couple of hundred British soldiers clinging on to the same area since 2006 supported by the handful of Chinook helicopters serving an entire province.
There are now 10,000 US Marines arriving in Helmand, and the numbers and equipment could mark the “tipping point” that British commanders have been hoping for. Things could also improve once the Kabul government starts talks with members of the Taliban not wholly committed to its nihilistic ideology. That could happen soon after the elections next month.
To leave the country secure, an Afghan force of 250,000 trained men is needed. This is expected to be in place before the next US presidential election in 2012. A swift departure before American voters go to the polls is what the Obama administration wants. The current American review of Afghanistan is probably going to set low, achievable targets so it can reduce its forces. …snip…
I don’t even know what to say anymore…
***
On the flip side, Cockburn has a post up with several of the recent comments from Obama and Hillary. Geesh. It only matters if Bush (or Cheney, satan incarnate) says it. Very clearly.
Against the backdrop of their co-mingled gurglings is this:
Meanwhile the troops and weapons flow towards Afghanistan, with vast, Vietnam-style “sweep” operations under way.
And how is the antiwar movement here dealing with that? Answer, what antiwar movement? We certainly can’t watch what it’s doing, because the answer is nothing. And we can’t hear what it’s saying, because there too the answer is nothing.
Where are the mobilizations, actions, civil disobedience? Antiwar coalitions like United for Peace and Justice and Win Without War (with MoveOn also belatedly adopting this craven posture) don’t say clearly “US troops out now!” They whine about the “absence of a clear mission” (Win Without War), plead futilely for “an exit strategy” (UFPJ). One letter from the UFPJ coalition (which includes Code Pink) to the Congressional Progressive Caucus in May laconically began a sentence with the astounding words, “To defeat the Taliban and stabilize the country, the U.S. must enable the Afghan people…” These pathetic attempts not to lose “credibility” and thus attain political purchase have met with utter failure, as the recent vote on a supplemental appropriation proved.
A realistic estimate is that among the Democrats in Congress there are fewer than forty solid antiwar votes.
Suffer the little children… 13 July 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, AFRICOM, Afghanistan War, Border Issues, Chile - Bachelet, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Europe, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iran, Iraq War, Israel/AIPAC, Italy, Mexico, NORCOM, Pakistan, Somalia, Venezuela - Chavez, Viva La Revolucion!, WAR!.38 comments
Islamist insurgents and Somali government forces engage in running battles in Mogadishu: More than 200,000 people have been displaced in the past two months, while hundreds of civilians are believed to have been killed and wounded [AFP/GETTY]
… and we do cause them to suffer, in our job as Gawd.
Let’s see… Centcom is happy as clams… they are focus war one, 27 countries under their command and hot beds a plenty. No end of mischief and murder, for decades. Mercy is on hold. WMD abound, Iran wants a bomb… ? Hell, I want one! Or, at the least, a gun.
Southern Command salivates to bring “restive” S and C America under control. Bill C to do bed checks in Haiti.
Africom bubbles along. “Somalia has not had a government in 18 years”.. oh surely we can help? That is what we do. Goodness and Kindness and Mercy. We follow people all of their days.
Did you know that Ob visited a slave embarcation point? (How could you miss it?) Yes he did. And a pregnancy clinic in Ghana. Yes he did. Took Michelle along. Optics.
Who can keep track of the wars? I cannot. Who can keep track of the Pretzel Global Tours? I cannot.
And then there is Norcom. That is us. And Canada and Mexico. Big plans there, you can feel it.
Stories all over the place… from Tora Bora, new ones.. to CIA looking odd… are they trying to say they are new at this? Why, I think they are! Hell, in that story, everybody is lying. Panetta and Nancy.. and everyone else. We are total fictions, that is what we are. Ghosts with guns and bombs and planes loaded down with bombs, pack mules of a sort, we send forth to kill and kill and kill again. Drones run out of Nellis Air Force Base, in Nevada.. It’s like video games, they say that as recruitment tactics.. and, it really is. Optics.
Nellis sits in a ”Federal Preserve”, of sorts, encompassing Area 51… and, over all, larger than Switzerland. Classifed.
Sasha wore not one but two – count them if you can – one two buckle your shoe – peace symbol t-shirts in Italy. Here, have some peace, rub their noses in it.
Optics.
Playing out the long wars… 24 June 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, AFRICOM, Afghanistan War, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iran, Iraq War, Israel/AIPAC, San Francisco, WAR!.91 comments
Nablus, West Bank: ultra-orthodox Jewish men pray at Joseph’s Tomb [Sebastian Scheiner/AP]
Just one representative article… I mean why load up? We are swimming in it… the war debris, the porn, the horror… so I pop this up as I listen to a Charlie Rose show, selling ALL the wars, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran… (well they did leave out Africom!)
Kilcullen (who, it appears, has greatly modified his earlier strong position against drones), General Barno (big bud of McChrystal) and Ricks.. who basically loves the wars, loves his prizes for his books and shoulder-to-shoulder-with-the-war “reporting”… the longer the wars run, the more money and prizes. I don’t see that we will ever get free… a perfect storm of bleeding the nation dry for the foreign wars. But! grow your own vegetables and save water! (Nothing wrong with either, either!)
Compost or be fined (new, unenforceable rule in San Francisco for private residences).
Meanwhile the tanks roll out, the bombs will fall, the cradle will rock, the world over.
[N]ow again we have the leadership of both political parties with much of the journalistic establishment in tow promoting what will likely be exposed in the near term as another slough of lies, this time about Iran. At the center of them is this: Iran has a nuclear weapons program threatening Israel with nuclear holocaust.
That’s a staggering allegation, and designed to be so. It’s the son of the earlier allegation born of the White House Iraq Group propaganda team: Let’s not let the “smoking gun” be a mushroom cloud over New York City. Sheer fear-mongering.
Iraq didn’t threaten New York. The U.S. threatened, invaded and occupied Iraq, slaughtering at least tens of thousands in the process. And Iran does not threaten anyone with a nuclear weapon. It should be repeated again and again: the National Intelligence Estimate concerning the question of Iran’s nuclear program, representing the consensus of the 16 different U.S. intelligence agencies in 2007 concluded in “high confidence” that Iran does not even have an active nuclear weapons program. (The report appeared after nearly a year’s delay due to apparent obstruction by Dick Cheney’s office, the neocon headquarters).
Unfortunately, regime change in Iran is the single most urgent, outstanding item on the neocon agenda left unfulfilled after eight years of Bush-era empowerment. Its proponents refuse to allow a mere change of administrations to deflect them from their goal. Hence somehow a neocon has insinuated himself into the center of Iran policy, first as a Hillary Clinton advisor and “diplomat,” and now as an advisor to the president working for the National Security Agency.
Dennis Ross is an NIE-denier. With no real expertise on Iran or Persian linguistic competence, and no understanding of nuclear science—but lots of experience in U.S.-Israeli relations and settler advocacy garnering him the nickname “Israel’s lawyer”—Ross was principal author of an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal eight months after the NIE appeared. snip
We seem utterly obsessed with massive, ritual bloodletting. Death.
Ross’s change of jobs was announced in the midst of the street demonstrations following the contested election results in Iran last week. He will now literally move into the White House and provide day to day counsel to Obama on how to “deal” with a leadership he wants to topple.
I suppose we can pray that Obama is a stalwart fellow. They call him nuanced. They hold it out like it fucking matters. So…this is good right? I mean, intrinsically.. this is good… yes? 
Yes, prayer is good. Pray. And pray again… be nuanced in your prayers… be so resolute in your prayers that you do not notice the bombs falling, the starvation, the displacement, the refugees, the death and dismemberment.
Yes, do pray.
[S]ensationalistically entitled “Everybody Needs to Worry about Iran,” it alluded blithely, offering no evidence, to the Iranian regime’s drive to become “a nuclear state” and announced a drive to “mobilize the power of a united American public in opposition.”
Co-signators included Richard Holbrooke, currently Obama’s special envoy to “Af-Pak;” former CIA director and Project for a New American Century operative James R. Woolsey and Mark D. Wallace, a former UN ambassador who heads up with Woolsey and others something called “United Against a Nuclear Iran.” (All were major proponents of the Iraq War.) …
Such nuanced change I am blinded by the brilliance.
Gaza City: Mahmoud Al Segali, 9, works as a mechanic assistant at the Arayshi garage [Ali Ali/EPA]
***
UPDATE, 2:51 am on the Pacific Ocean
oh… this just fits in too well here…
The domestic long wars…
[O]nce Weill got the radical deregulation law he wanted, he issued a statement giving credit:
“In particular, we congratulate President Clinton, Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, NEC [National Economic Council] Chairman Gene Sperling, Under Secretary of the Treasury Gary Gensler, Assistant Treasury Secretaries Linda Robertson and Greg Baer.”
Summers is now Obama’s top economic adviser, Sperling has been appointed legal counselor at Treasury, and Gensler, a former partner in Goldman Sachs, is head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which he once attempted to prevent from regulating derivatives when it was run by Brooksley Born. Robertson worked for Summers in pushing through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which freed the derivatives market from adult supervision and contained the “Enron Loophole,” permitting that company to go wild. Robertson then became the top Washington lobbyist for Enron and was recently appointed senior adviser to Fed Chair Ben S. Bernanke. Baer went to work as a corporate counsel for Bank of America, which announced his appointment with a press release crediting him with having “coordinated Treasury policy” during the Clinton years in getting Glass-Steagall repealed. As a result of deregulation, B of A too spiraled out of control and ended up as a beneficiary of the Treasury’s welfare program.
Why was I so naive as to have expected this Democratic president to not do the bidding of the banks when the last president from that party joined the Republicans in giving the moguls everything they wanted? Please, Obama, prove me wrong.
I’d suggest Bob let his fingers do the walking, look up the financial services, banks and Wall St contributions to OBAMA. I am sure he knows all of that perfectly well. He should stop bleating and get used to using Obama’s name. He’s in charge, remember?
Everything now is geared to raking in a lot more $$$$ than in the 2007 – 2008 cycle… There is talk already that the administration wants a “Reagan-like” blow out in 2012.
Let’s not beat around the Bush. Or around the Obama.
The left, so called, plays this every election. To me it proves, whether voluntary or not, we have a completely closed political system.
They bitch and moan and then, when given the chance, they sell the next Democratic White or Black or Brown [false] hope.. it never ceases.
Face down in the gooey hopeyness of happyness… 18 May 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, AFRICOM, Afghanistan War, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Pakistan, WAR!.89 comments
Obama – Singapore restaurant promotion – Reuters
I see headlines from the NYT to MSNBC.com that Pahkeestahn is all too likely gonna take our money! and nuke up! Or nuke up more! Congress is worried!
Their jelly spines must be dripping on the carpeting we paid for… they are worried they will slip in their own slime. What else could they be worried about?
I have said it before, this is Condi and her mushroom cloud.
It is.
I dropped in over at Silber, as I had not been there in a while.. he quotes from Laura Flanders:
[W]hat I wish was a joke was some of the rest of what’s been coming [into my inbox]…
Like all the mail from supposedly anti-war groups who worked hard to elect Barack Obama on an anti-Iraq war platform, but now, when it comes to escalation in Afghanistan, are lining up in support.
After the president announced the deployment of 4,000 more troops (on top of the extra 17,000 he’s already sent) Jon Soltz, an anti-Iraq war organizer with VoteVets wrote in the Huffington Post: “With today’s announcement President Obama has shown that he ‘gets it.’ That’s why we at VoteVets.org are supporting the plan.” They even have a rah-rah petition going.
Americans United for Change ran hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of anti-Iraq war ads in 2007. But they refused to answer a Washington Post blogger’s question about Afghanistan. Anti-war organizers – and plenty of generals agreed — there was no military solution possible in Iraq. But many of those who got their head round that idea then, seem to believe the opposite is true in Afghanistan, even though Obama’s own advisers say the struggle there can’t be won on the battlefield.
On the website of the liberal Center for America Progress there are no fewer than five articles supporting the president’s policy, including one headlined “Seven Reasons Why We need to Engage in Afghanistan.”
On the Afghanistan deployment, as the Center for Media and Democracy’s John Stauber has pointed out, MoveOn has thus far been silent on Afghanistan.
When MoveOn’s members were recently polled on their priorities for 2009, the subject didn’t apparently make the cut.
Can’t be too surprised over VoteVets.. they were just biding their time til a Woodrow Wilson sort got in… nor can one be surprised at Center for American Progress, which was always a Clinton sourced gambit. Bill openly supported the Iraq invasion, he just did it in the UK press. Then later when the going got tough he did opinion pieces to help his old buddy (Blair) out – again in the UK press.
There is a long list of the so called left collaborators.
Tired illusionists. But – it works quite well.
Jason Ditz takes an already well worn look at the reversals or hedges or somersaults (if you did not watch him and read him closely over the past two years) that Ob has managed in the past few days… but closes with something that is very true:
And where are the Democrats, President Obama’s own party, in all of this? Several have expressed concerns with the president’s ever more hawkish policies, but by and large they’re taking a wait and see approach. To the extent that they have spoken out at all, Sen. Graham et al. have excoriated them as being driven by “hatred of former President Bush.” To the extent the “new” policies greatly resemble the previous administration’s, it seems that the Bush faction’s allegiance lies with the executive, and the real change is the growing reluctance of Democrats to even oppose the policies in theory.
Bingo. Plus most all of the Dems agree and the others are headless chickens. Caged chickens.
Cheney has carried out a several weeks long campaign to influence the WH. And it worked. If any one caught This Week, Liz Cheney ate Katrina van den Heuval for breakfast. Polished her off. KvdH could not even lift her eyes to confront LC (they sat directly across from one another and carried the bulk of the “roundtable”).
How bad is that?
How shameful is that?
If they can run the global wars against terror for a hundred years, they will. Flicking the imagery of “Leader” back and forth – as suits them…
At some point the country will crash and burn… the various rising nations, one supposes, to pick up the pieces, but they, the USA! USA!, can run the 909 mil bases, or however many bases we have in foreign countries, for a long long time…especially as they bleed us to death.
I cannot do a damned thing about any of it, but I sure as hell am not going out face down, gulping in the slap happy cupcake frosting they serve… The pink and green sugar goop of a cheap propaganda play – one that is about killing.
Took a while… 16 May 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, AFRICOM, Afghanistan War, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iraq War, Seymour Hersh.62 comments
McChrystal and Clarke Brief Press at Pentagon
ARLINGTON, VA-MARCH 22: Army Major General Stanley A. McChrystal (L), vice director for Operations, listens as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke speaks at the Pentagon March 22, 2003 in Arlington, Virginia. McChrystal and Clarke briefed the media on the latest developments of the United States led war against Iraq.
Photo: Stefan Zaklin/Getty Images
Mar 22, 2003
… for me to catch on to who McChrystal was, that we had seen a lot of him before… when I began googling for his photo, noticed him beside Tory Clarke – it all came back. Day after day, those briefings from the Pentagon. That dumb-fuck face of his.. this man that all sorts of venues are trilling is a “scholar warrior”. Yes I remember when Kos used that scheisse to hose the thread commenters into supporting the mil. Why! my goodness! they have advanced degrees… from Ivies. Bow down.
So… do ya think Ob did his due diligence on this pick? Or did he snooze in the bubble of the Oval? I say he SNOOZED. Biden (too often in the Oval with Ob for the Daily Briefing and for the Economic Daily Brief) said Yes… Rahm said Yes… Axelrod said Yes…
There at the propaganda podium for the invasion. Side by side with Tory Clarke. More than whiffs of torture off his command in Iraq… and then there is Tillman.
There is bound to be more.
Mrs Tillman will not be shutting up.
Considering we are swimming in blood and guts, this should go badly.
I snagged a couple of graphs from Tiny Revolution:
It’s sickening to see Obama try to justify illegal secrecy by hiding behind the troops in just the way Bush used to do. It’s even more appalling to see him not only do nothing to hold torture commanders accountable, but promote them.
Good luck with that, Mr. President. The Tillmans are unwilling to sit quietly and let pass McChrystal’s part in the propaganda disgrace and coverup of their son’s death by ‘friendly fire’. Sy Hersh has tied McChrystal to Cheney’s assassination squads. And, if the principle of command responsibility had any force at all in the U.S. military, McChrystal would have to answer for the pervasive, routine use of torture by his dirty-war task forces in Iraq.
Late last year, confirmation hearings for his last post were held up by concerns about the torture under his command, but a private chat with members of the Senate Armed Services Committee appears to have given everyone involved the cover sought.
Photos or no photos, the upcoming confirmation hearings are going to be an occasion for looking back.
***
From one of the comments at Tiny Revolution, “oarwell” at 10:58 pm:
[B]ig money goes looking for a better return on investment. War is the most lucrative, the most profitable venture. [Smedley] Butler argues that the only way to smash the war racket is to take the profit out of war. But as long as the same concerns that profit from war own our press, that is difficult, to say the least.
Is Obama in thrall to these war pigs? Of course he is. They are cynically using him as the best mechanism by which to quell dissent. Policy is disconnected from politics. You think anyone except paid propagandists actually wants to escalate in AfPak? Elite financial interests seek access to oil in central Asia, as well as all the usual spin-offs of war (not to mention the heroin trade, which has boomed since we liberated Afghanistan). If, in their immoral calculus, releasing photographic evidence of war crimes (Hersh says it’s photos of children being sodomized in front of their parents) would interfere with rallying the public to their profitable enterprise, then enormous pressures are brought to bear to stop their release. Pressures that possibly include blackmail. You think they wouldn’t do that? And how many innocent civilians did they kill in Iraq, in Vietnam? They care only about profit, not about human rights or “liberty” or “freedom.” …
Of course a lot of what Hersh said and wrote about the unreleased photos, he said and wrote in 2004, 2006. IMO he would not be volunteering all of that these days. I heard him myself, on Hardball, following his own breaking of the story, say we had done things even Israel would never do.
Give it a break Sy. Really.
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Last, I was very entertained by this phrasing from the press release on Ob and Mrs Ob going to Accra:
The President and Mrs. Obama look forward to strengthening the U.S. relationship with one of our most trusted partners in sub-Saharan Africa, and to highlighting the critical role that sound governance and civil society play in promoting lasting development.
Yup. Blessed. Double Blessed. “Sound”, “civil”, “lasting”. I think they should take the children and the dog. Let’s be wholesome!
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Oh too good to pass up… MO at UCMerced today…
“Remember you are Blessed! And remember for those blessings you must give back!”
Each word, staccato.
I think the Obs should go to Africa wearing great towering papal mitres – emblazoned with the stars and stripes.
Tuesday… 21 April 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, AFRICOM, Germany, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iran, Israel/AIPAC, Somalia, UK, WAR!.93 comments
Jerusalem, Israel: A Palestinian girl walks in an alley in the Silwan neighbourhood. Eighty-eight homes in Silwan are set for demolition by the Israeli government, which claims they were built illegally [Photograph: Muhammed Muheisen/AP]
So. I read Monday that Germany joined our boycott of the Durban II conference in Geneva… and the UK walked out at Ahmadinejad’s speech.
The atmosphere at the Geneva meeting was tense even before the Iranian president began speaking, with pro-Israel protesters chanting “shame” from the other side of the chamber’s doors and a Jewish student group from France infiltrating the hall. Some countries, led by the US and Israel, had already declared a boycott, Others, including Britain, took their seats, but were braced, with their “shoes on”, to walk out if Ahmadinejad’s oratory was to prove offensive.
When he did speak, he was even more vitriolic than they had feared.
We’ll always have friends. To the death.
WE can be as disjointed, delusion ridden, insulting, propagandistic and demagogic as we wish. And our friends, too. But let anyone else steal our looney deadly thunder… well, just watch.
***
In other cartoons… have we finally found one simple (tho deadly) enough for us? From the new Tom Dispatch:
In the comic books, bad guys often team up to fight the forces of good. The Masters of Evil battle the Avengers superhero team. The Joker and Scarecrow ally against Batman. Lex Luthor and Brainiac take on Superman.
And the Somali pirates, who have dominated recent headlines with their hijacking and hostage-taking, join hands with al-Qaeda to form a dynamic evil duo against the United States and our allies. We’re the friendly monsters — a big, hulking superpower with a heart of gold — and they’re the aliens from Planet Amok.
In the comic-book imagination of some of our leading pundits, the two headline threats against U.S. power are indeed on the verge of teaming up. The intelligence world is abuzz with news that radical Islamists in Somalia are financing the pirates and taking a cut of their booty. Given this “bigger picture,” Fred Iklé urges us simply to “kill the pirates.” Robert Kaplan waxes more hypothetical. “The big danger in our day is that piracy can potentially serve as a platform for terrorists,” he writes. “Using pirate techniques, vessels can be hijacked and blown up in the middle of a crowded strait, or a cruise ship seized and the passengers of certain nationalities thrown overboard.”
Someone, stop us. And our melded into looney toons Texas Chicago Hawai’ian rancher with metrosexual cow boy boots. Someone stop the cartoon leadership. The swagger and the pecs. All of it.
Just the killing of the three pirates morphed thru several stages. The first animation, showed a small flat window – easy for a rapt public to forget or not know it was at the forefront of a pop up in the life boat cover – thru which 3 shadow heads were shown. A little triple burst of star like shapes was to indicate the sniper kills. Little shadow heads go away! Magic! Ok………………..
Later animations showed one head shot thru the [again] little flat panel window… with two heads popping up out of a hole in the top of the bump up.
Over the weekend Evan Thomas tried to say that the two heads popping up and out, were vomiting pirates. Sick on the sea.
Oh that so sounds like fishermen to me.
The reality? The front of the bump up is peaked, with two small windows, each angled.
Yeah, get a new cartoonist.
As we madly story board the cartoon weapons. Such fun for the “reformers”:
And of course, no new mission should lack its preferably expensive, high-tech weaponry: in this case, the Littoral Combat Ship, a mighty pile of money in a relatively small package. A third the size of a destroyer, this $500 million craft is meant to patrol the planetary shallows, even if it has so far proved a production-plagued nightmare. Nonetheless, Secretary of Defense Gates has just modestly upped the craft’s production — and there’s more to come from Navy “reformers.” Count on a new array of smaller, shallow-water vessels that could be formed into little armadas already termed by one naval officer “Influence Squadrons.”
Carry on…
It’s bigger than Grenada… 13 April 2009
Posted by marisacat in AFRICOM, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Somalia, WAR!.52 comments
In Galcaio, the state capital, pirates from Hobyo even have a store named after their village: it sends a lorry laden with food, drink, cigarettes and khat to them three times a week [Veronique de Viguerie - Daily Mail - October 2008]
BUT!, Is it a small enough war for us to win?
[O]n Sunday night, one of the crew members said Phillips had gone with the pirates as a good-faith gesture. But the pirates did not follow through on their promise to let him go, and his ordeal began.
On Saturday afternoon, two U.S. helicopters buzzed over the pirate stronghold of Harardhere on the Somali coast, residents said. One helicopter landed for about 10 minutes, bewildering locals and scattering herds of goats and cows.
“I have no idea what is happening,” said Laila Arale, a local farmer who sent her sons to sleep elsewhere Sunday night, fearing that the United States might attack Somalia from the air. “I’m scared.”
The Bainbridge had offered to tow the lifeboat to calmer waters as the seas grew rougher, and the pirates, seeming worn down, agreed, said military officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. One pirate with a hand injury effectively gave himself up.
Phillips was by then tied up, having been bound and occasionally beaten by pirates after he tried to escape by jumping off the boat.
The rescue occurred at 7:19 p.m. local time Sunday, the Navy said, and involved dozens of SEALs. With one of the pirates pointing an AK-47 straight at Phillips’s back, an on-scene commander gave the SEAL snipers authority to fire.
John Reinhart, president and chief executive of Maersk Line, the ship’s owner, spoke with Phillips by phone. Reinhart quoted Phillips as saying that “the real heroes are the Navy, the SEALs, those who have brought me home.” [mmm three head shots in a "bobbing water" condition, at night, no less... hmm --Mcat]
“It’s a great day for all of us,” Reinhart said at a news conference in Norfolk. “It is truly, truly a wonderful moment.”
What, other than elections, have we ”won” lately?
Today on The News Hour the reading of the dead from Afghanistan and Iraq was 14. And there was just a similar reading toward the end of last week. Two today were from California alone. Years later… is that “winning”?
So, is waging war on Somaliland (I imagine the war mongers in the WH have worse names for Somalia) something to make us tall and strong again?
Goldman Sachs had a bang up first quarter… will that, mixed with shelling and air bombing Somalia, do it?
Poking around today I saw that the cheese eating surrender monkeys sent in a ground force of French special ops a few months ago, to free the hostages taken from a pleasure yacht… following that, crews from that town returned to spending their nights out at sea, while on pirate work and hostage holding…
We must not be outdone. Can you imagine if that short shrimp of a French Pretzel outdid our tall Amazons.
A Somali girl leads camels, tied head to tail and carrying all of her family’s household goods, as the family moves from the pirate stronghold of Haradhere to Adado in south-central Somalia on Friday last week. Somali pirates dominate the towns of Haradhere, Hobyo and El-Hur, forcing most people to flee in fear of military action against the pirates. [PHOTO: EPA - October 2008]
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Arcturus linked to Moon of Alabama in the last thread, this is their most recent post and thread on the incidents…
I fear that Obama’s ‘victory’ here will turn out to be like Bush’s ‘victory’ at Tora Bora. The starting point of a very costly and bloody campaign in which will no one will win.
And from the thread [my bold]:
open questions re this setup
# how many hijackers were involved in the initial boarding? media reports indicate four hijackers involved in this incident – how unusual was it for only four hijackers to attempt to commandeer a vessel of this size? was it flying a u.s. flag at the time?
# media reports state that the hijackers sank their own skiffs after boarding. has this behavior occurred previously? what was the purpose? how did they sink them?
# are there any cases of somali pirates holding an individual, and not a ship, hostage? how did the hijackers end up in the ship’s lifeboat? did they commandeer it? were they enticed? was it through a process of negotiation?
# why were the negotiations w/ the somali elders unable to move forward? who controlled the negotiations for the u.s. side – the fbi or military?
# what was the purpose of the use of the commando boat? to draw fire to guage the hijackers weapon capacity? to draw fire to shape a narrative and justify escalation?
# how did the one hijacker end up on the uss bainbridge to negotiate w/ u.s. officials?
# how did the bainbridge end up towing the lifeboat prior to the assassinations?
# media reports state that the maersk alabama was orginally scheduled to arrive at the port in mombasa on april 16th. was that date correct? and, if so, what accounts for the gap from the date it left the port at djibouti?
# why did the maersk alabama make a stop in djibouti? did it load or unload any containers? if so, what was that cargo? were there military supplies for delivery to the security forces in mogadishu?
# where did the maersk alabama load the cargo of reported humanitarian supplies? when will it offload this reported cargo in mombasa?
Posted by: b real | Apr 13, 2009 11:00:47 AM | 3
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Adding this from the close of the last thread:
Madman in the Marketplace – 13 April 2009
this reenactment makes no fucking sense.
I saw a clip of a reporter walking through one of those model of lifeboats … one person would BARELY fit behind that window.
marisacat – 13 April 2009
agree… it is a small window and this was at night. Does the life boat have electrified chandeliers?
