They suffer pangs of "Why don't people realize how great we are?"

Seriously, they have convinced themselves that they are heroes, that those who die are pawns and that those who oppose are misguided fools who will one day see the light and apologize.

W. very seriously believes that we'll one day call him a great president and he probably thinks that he'll be around to hear us all apologize.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Their is something shocking about this post coming as it does just after Al Qaeda slaughtered something like 500 human beings! You are not calling for a doubling of the effort to deal with them, but calling for those who launched a war, against the lawful tyranny of the former government from a 20% minority that tried to hold 80%+ in bondage, to be held to account for liberating those people!

Who could doubt the extreme right wing nature of pseudo leftists ranting on about this revolution! Of course the war was illegal (laws are established by revolutions not the other way round!)

LBJ etc tried to prevent democracy in Vietnam and were soundly defeated yet you compare the liberation of the Iraqi masses with the former attempt to prevent the liberation of the Vietnamese peoples. Sheesh!

If anyone ought to be held responsible it ought to be those that have run US policy since WW2 almost totally rotten to the core.

The people of the ME deserve solidarity and unity in the struggle against oppression. All former US policies of promoting tyranny deserve to be swept into the dustbin of history and the reactionaries passing themselves as 'progressives' with them.

The liberation of the entire region is now on the agenda, starting with the establishment of a Palestinian state and the ending of 40years of a failed war for greater Israel and yet you are not demanding greater effort against the reactionaries but shaking your head and regretting that the monsters have been let loose.

Ah yes tyranny nice and safe hey: don't rock the boat or we could all end like so many slaves that have tried to rebel before us!

I don't think so!

Everywhere the old world is under challenge get used to it.

Patrick

I'm sorry Patrick. That wasn't Al Quaeda. That was the Kurds. Your allies, Patrick. They were just engaging in a little urban renewal, opening up more land for good old Sunni Kurds.

I appreciate your outrage. It was well expressed. On a positive note, I was heartened by an article in the paper today on administration peace initiatives. It argued or at least claimed that, compared to 2000, we've the advantage now of involvement of Blair in helping to build a Palestianian future and of the Saudis and other Arab nations. It offers hope that, for all the spiral of violence that bolsters political extremism, we may be able to get past the Bush failure of leadership for years here. And a Democratic president is coming soon.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

More like Condi Rice is coming!

Patrick

There are over 150,000 contractors over there, too, doing jobs that were done by the Army a generation ago. Their casualty numbers aren't included in government war death stats.

But Wolfowitz, Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Perle, Kristol, Feith and the Members of Congress who voted for the war just sail on.

But they are heroes who have saved the world. They have not avoided committing crimes but have hidden those crimes in some amorphous war-times powers excuse. They are covered by the all-powerful invisible cloak of GWOT. They are really untouchable. The only way to hold them accountable is for the Democrats in the House to gather their courage and impeach.

First note what Valdron said, then consider just how silly this notion of separating Al Qaeda from other Sunni’s that are prepared to conduct such suicide bombings is; Al Qaeda is not targeting Sunni’s. These bombers are all equivalent! As with Japanese Militarism, Italian Fascism and German Nazism it does not much matter. The real question is what side are you on?

‘Sooner or later, my guess is that the Sunni Arabs will wage a major war with the Kurds over the oil fields of Kirkuk.’ Why ought they? If oil revenue sharing is proportional what would they hope to gain but a disproportionate share. How would anyone support a disproportionate share for one ethnic group? South Africa and Israel are the former models but are well out of fashion in the moder era.

Valdron correctly recognized that I support the Kurdish peoples and the Iraqi government against such aggression. Do you?

BTW: Iraq is not an Islamic state allied with Iran, but rather a threat to the Iranian theocracy as democratic elections are looked on with envy by the Iranian people who will overthrow the theocrats. Remember how the police states of eastern Europe infected one another with regional effect. The ME is ripe for revolution.

Patrick

W couldn't care less about his legacy. His only concern is too continue the reign of the oligarchs. Middle East oil and projecting our power there is the prop he needs to hold up the current hierarchy.

"We have become so brainwashed by the "America can do no wrong" patriotism jingoism..."

FTFY

Saddam was supported by about 20% of Iraq. Bush is supported by about 30% of America. See how much better Bush is than Saddam? On any other basis, you are correct.

Hoppy in Sacramento

I think the effort in WW2 was worth it and that the effort in Vietnam (when the US was the enemy) was also worth it even though the Vietnamese peoples suffered in their millions because 'the dust wil not vanish where the broom does not reach'.

But you say ‘and finally; Not one piece of evidence has been uncovered that justified Bush's reasons for invading Iraq. No WMD, no al Qaeda connection, and certainly its been proven that Saddam was no threat to the US.’ All true.

Your problem is that you are blind to the real reason the U.S. ruling elite decided to go to war.

Bush is no lefty because he is waging this war in the interests of his class, and it is only incidentally in the interests of the oppressed peoples’ in the Middle East. He has become a progressive-right-winger because history thrust greatness upon him.

He asked the big questions that had to be asked, after 9/11. What more can they do to us? ...Well, Mr. President they will, if not stopped, eventually get hold of a nuke and destroy Washington or some other city.

What strategy must we adopt to defeat them? Mr. President we must set down policies to turn every country in the world into a modern (bourgeois) democracy. If all countries look, and smell like Sweden and France, we will have won. The world needs sewerage systems for the smell, and industrialization for the sewerage systems; it needs education for the industrialization, and it needs basic bourgeois political freedoms to permit the education… We must stop doing what we have been doing for the whole post WW2 period.

We must reverse all our old policies.

These mosquitoes are attacking us because we caused a swamp in the Middle East which breeds them! We must drain that swamp, and then there will be no more mosquitoes. Mr. President there is no other way of winning this war…. (At least that is what I would tell him if I was in the war cabinet)

If you want to think more about the type of issues that I am bringing up then go to

http://www.lastsuperpower.net/
and have a look at the Draining the swamp thread in the forum, or democracy was intended for Iraq

Your ruling class lies to you and has initiated this war for strategic reasons. The US ruling elite sat down after 9/11 and accepted that the former policies of propping up every tyrant and reactionary against the peoples struggle for democracy (while lying about supporting democracy) had resulted in the disaster.

All the former policies have been reversed and democratic revolution is now being supported.

Static thinking is your problem.

The Iraqi people fighting for their liberation against a heavily armed Baathist regime with tanks and artillery helicopter gun ships intact command and control etc would require many more casualties from the side I support. Then at the end of that struggle the enemy could still resort to the type of bombing we see now!!

Patrick

Spot on. I read a great theory a number of years ago about why the US had succeeded in forming a representative democracy and the French had gone the way of the reign of terror. The author linked the French Revolution, Leninism, Nazism as coming out of romantic utopianism. The utopian end justifies the means, and the means then terribly corrupts the utopian end.

The US was more fortunate coming out of the more rational Enlightenment. Gore speaks to that in his "Assault on Reason".

Neocons are corrupt utopians.

I have been reading the ravings of Hitchens for a few years now, but this is the first time I have encountered anyone repeating his rants.

Is that you Chris, hiding in there?

On August 17, 2007 - 6:51pm patrickm said:

............. the effort in Vietnam (when the US was the enemy) was also worth it even though the Vietnamese peoples suffered in their millions because 'the dust wil not vanish where the broom does not reach'.

"Worth it" to who? To the millions of Vietnamese who suffered? The 58,000 Americans who died and the untold numbers of wounded? To who?

What was the outcome of our war in Vietnam?

What was "worth it"? Worth what? What was gained?

'a broken broom sweeps not clean'.

Saddam was a horrible, violent, ruthless leader. But George W. Bush is infinitely worse.

You're pre empting the Historians. :-)

First note what Valdron said, then consider just how silly this notion of separating Al Qaeda from other Sunni’s that are prepared to conduct such suicide bombings is;

I'm sorry Patrick, but that's just self evidently dumb.

‘Sooner or later, my guess is that the Sunni Arabs will wage a major war with the Kurds over the oil fields of Kirkuk.’ Why ought they? If oil revenue sharing is proportional what would they hope to gain but a disproportionate share. How would anyone support a disproportionate share for one ethnic group?

Because the Kurds want an independent state, or as close to independent as they can get. They need those oil fields, they're vital to Kurdish aspirations. And the Kurds aren't interested in sharing. Everyone knows this.

Valdron correctly recognized that I support the Kurdish peoples and the Iraqi government against such aggression.

Glad to hear it. How many American lives will you spend to support the Kurds, because their plans involve Americans dying on their behalf in large numbers for the Greater Glory of United Kurdistan.

BTW: Iraq is not an Islamic state allied with Iran, but rather a threat to the Iranian theocracy as democratic elections are looked on with envy by the Iranian people who will overthrow the theocrats. Remember how the police states of eastern Europe infected one another with regional effect. The ME is ripe for revolution.

Actually, Iraq's ruling political parties, SCIRI and Dawa are closely allied with Iran. Iran gave these parties political asylum during the Saddam era, funded them, and helped arm their militias. Maliki and other Iraqi government figures frequently visit Iran. Basically, once America leaves, Iran will inherit Iraq. Thank Bush for that.

The Germans liked Belgium so much they invaded them twice.

Patrick:

These mosquitoes are attacking us because we caused a swamp in the Middle East which breeds them! We must drain that swamp, and then there will be no more mosquitoes.

To sound like Goebbels does not help your argument. They are attacking us because we are occupying them.

Now, a linguistic question: If you call those people mosquitoes, what does that make you? A cockroach?

Everywhere the old world is under challenge get used to it.

A few hundred, or a few thousand, random murders does not a new world order make.

We've had serial killers with three-figure body counts. Somehow, our Republic still managed to survive.

About three thousand people died during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. During that same year, over 50,000 people in the United States died in car crashes.

The terrorists simply are not a substantial threat to our way of life. We need to treat this as an international law enforcement issue against a handful of rogue murderers, not declare war against the entire Islamic world.

Patrick, Up until now I occasionally have troll-rated you because of your mindless quotings of neo-con talking points. 

I am beginning to rethink some things; I realize that you may not be an actual troll, but instead that you are one sick puppy.  I won't gointo all of your rantings, but the Vietnam bullshit just stands out. 

According to you, we LOST Vietnam because of lack of support for the powers that be, etc, right?  So, that means we lost.  We went in (theoretically) to keep it from going Communist.  Well, we LOST, but lo and behold, Vietnam isn't communist; we do business with them on a daily basis. 

So, if our 58,000 young men an women, and the untold millions of Vietnamese hadn't died, how would things be different? (Since we LOST, and they trade happily with us, how would things be different if we had WON?)  But don't lose that thought of the 58,000 and untold millions who died -- who of them might have been a real leader?  Who of them might have made this world a better place?  (If the coward chickenhawks Bush and Cheney had stepped up to the plate and NOT survived Vietnam, I am CONVINCED  the world would be a better place, but that is another argument entirely.) 

Hell, China isn't even communist any more.  Why?  Because they caught on to the idea of capitalism.  Yea US!  We taught China so well that they are poisoning our pets and children in the name of capitalism! 

You paranoid sociopaths have to get over the idea that WE know best! You paranoid sociopaths have to get over the idea that the end justifies the means!  You paranoid sociopaths have to get over the idea that the love of, and the act of making money is the root of all happiness!

And, Patrick,  you really need to check yourself in to a major mental health facility!  Trust me, I am a nurse, and I know pathology when I see it.

Jan

There is one important thing we can all do. It seems very small and insignificant, but if you don't do it, you shouldn't be offering your 2 cents worth on these blogs because it isn't worth that much. Write to your congressman and both senators and tell them how you feel about it. Blog readers can't vote on anything that isn't on a referendum.

Feed The Snake Its Own Tail

The lame and crippled democracy of Iraq is not even as noble as the Mob with the guillotine was at the dawn of the French Revolution, and this is now four plus years out. Yet this is the best reason this revisionary can offer for his miserable failure as Assistant Secretary of Defense; and it is most assuredly a revised vision of the Iraq War by Wolfowitz. In a May 2003 interview with Sam Tannenhaus from Vanity Fair, Wolfowitz expressly ruled out freeing the Iraqi people as a justification for bleeding American Soldiers in Iraq. Trouble is that:

There Were No WMDs
There Were No WMD Production Facilities
There Were No Ties Between Saddam and al Qaeda
The Threat Was Not Imminent
There Was No Gathering Storm

What else is left but to claim that this bloodbath of ethnic purges, which far surpasses even the most bloated estimates of Hussein's killing fields; that this pillaging of the American treasury, which in comparison gives the Oil for Food Scandal an aura of a two-bit grifter's scheme, is a worthy outcome for his dream's obscene manifestation in reality.

Feed the snake his own tail. Make him choke on his own words. What could be more appropriate to this end than a dish served off of the DoD's own servers?

United States Department of Defense News Transcript
Presenter: Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz - Friday, May 9, 2003
Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity Fair

The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but...there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two...

To wrap it up.

The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there's the most disagreement within the bureaucracy, even though I think everyone agrees that we killed 100 or so of an al Qaeda group in northern Iraq in this recent go-around, that we've arrested that al Qaeda guy in Baghdad who was connected to this guy Zarqawi whom Powell spoke about in his UN presentation.

[. . .]

...I took a very different view of what the argument that removing Saddam Hussein would destabilize the Middle East. I said on the record, I don't understand how people can really believe that removing this huge source of instability is going to be a cause of instability in the Middle East.

I understand what they're thinking about. I'm not blind to the uncertainties of this situation, but they just seem to be blind to the instability that that son of a bitch was causing. It's as though the fact that he was paying $25,000 per terrorist family and issuing regular threats to most friendly governments in the region and the long list of things was of no account and the only thing to think about was that there might be some inter-communal violence if he were removed.

The implication of a lot of the argumentation against acting -- the implication was that the only way to have the stability that we need in Iraq is to have a tyrant like Saddam keeping everybody in check -- I know no one ever said it that way and if you pointed it out that way they'd say that's not what I mean. But I believe that really is where the logic was leading.

The north of iraq was not under Saddam's control, but was intead under Kurdish control, and protected by US/UK/French Over-Flights. "this guy Zarqawi whom Powell spoke about in his UN presentation" was a one-legged Baghdad Hospital guest at Saddam's behest, who had lost his leg in Afghanistan fighting against American forces, btw. This was before he became Iraq's Qaeda One. Is there anything at all in this analysis that was correct?

Trust me, I don't know what I'm talking about on this subject which is why I deferred to Juan Cole.

I take your point on the Yezidi, but there's this from wikipedia [I know]:

It is alleged by some[attribution needed] that during the regime of Saddam Hussein, Yazidis were considered to be Arabs and maneuvered to oppose the Kurds, in order to tilt the ethnic balance in northern Iraq,[citation needed] but this cannot be entirely substantiated. It is known, however, that the Yazidi's unique identity, despite being culturally Kurdish, was in fact used by the Baathist regime to isolate one from the other. However, both groups fought against Baathist troops, often in joint Peshmerga units. Since the 2003 occupation of Iraq, the Kurds want the Yazidi to be recognized as ethnic Kurds to increase their numbers and influence.

Not in any sense useful--except perhaps as a kind of personal therapy.  This kind of screed convinces no one, and adds nothing to the discourse.  America with the k, been there, done that: how sixties .  It didn't do any good back then, either, -- saved no lives, preserved no integrity, stopped no atrocities.  Maybe then, too, it served as a kind of personal therapy. 

"Wogs" which has a specific corrupt meaning but an English one, brought in for who knows what reason. 

MJ offers an elegiac piece, an apology for those complicit in destroying Iraq from one who was not, and this kind of thing cheapens and debases it, and diverts attention from the atrocity which is Iraq to no purpose.  How many Iraqis are saved by the Israel-Palestine analogy?  There will be plenty of times to take this conversation down that road when MJ chooses to begin it in that direction.  It will be microseconds now before persons here will be tossing Nazi and Fascist at each other.  Thanks for nothing.

aMike

amike, I happen to believe that we need a shot of "therapy" now and then. A wake-up call, with lots of caffeine. Hot, straight and black, no cream or sugar please, and hold the fancy rhetoric.

One can make the case that the Iraqis, the poor shot-at Iraqis, are our Palestinians. Albert Champion makes that argument. We are, as he indicates, doing the bidding of the Israelis in the Middle East, and that includes a lot of killing.

Fellow bloggers, I support Albert Champion. Bring on the 0's and 1's. I look forward to them.

Somebody at the DOD must have left that interview up to show what the dumb, ignorant, self-righteous, flaming a**hole sounded like in his drivel from 2003.

Understatement of the 2003 interview by Wolfie:

...there might be some inter-communal violence if he (Saddam) were removed.

I wonder if it has struck anyone else just how handy al Qaeda and their atrocities have been to the fortunes of Bush Inc.'s gang of Neo-Cons.

I’m sure it's just an innocent symbiotic relationship that finds al Qaeda doing just what Bush Inc’s policy makers need an enemy to do…and so on cue…

Ouch...that one made my eyes sting! LOL

Pseudo says:

"There Were No WMDs
There Were No WMD Production Facilities"

Oh yeah? Well, well, he did have Weapons of Mass Destruction related aspirations.

-George Bush

(smirk)

aMike is fined $10.00 for forcing me to go to the dictionary to look up the word "elegiac," and finding this :

Etymology: Late Latin elegiacus, from Greek elegeiakos, from elegeion

1 a : of, relating to, or consisting of two dactylic hexameter lines the second of which lacks the arsis in the third and sixth feet.

(*&&^%$#@

:-)

"The liberation of the entire region is now on the agenda"

Oh, Jesus Christ. Finish junior high school first and then we'll talk. America is not somehow inherently on the good side simply by virtue of being America. We're the good guys when we act like the good guys. When we launch unprovoked "Shock and Awe" terrorist attacks on other nations and make alliances with guys like Musharraf, then we're the bad guys. Right now, in America, the biggest battle is the battle to capture and bring to justice the people who subverted our constitution and our democracy in order to launch an evil, ill-advised and illegal preemptive military action against a sovereign nation that had not attacked us or threatened to attack us (except in the criminally-paranoid minds of our neocon friends in power).

You must have some neighbor kids somewhere who need to be "liberated" from their mean mother or something, don't you? Have at it, hero. See you when you get out of jail.

Howard will have a 1500 word essay on this word posted by this afternoon ;-)

sPh

When you can write the script you do have the possibility of a symbiotic relationship that flowers. Imagine how effective a boogie man under the bed can be if used properly. It isn't like you have to worry about the boogie man actually coming out and refusing your script.

You might want to give a little thought to the close business relationship between the Bush's and the bin Ladens, and to the way Osama had such an easy time avoiding capture or killing by US forces.

Hoppy in Sacramento

sphealey,

HAHAHAHHAHHAHAHA

That's our Howard! :-)

Ward Churchill was fired for his irresponsible comments regarding 9/11 and "little Eichmanns." (Officially, he was fired for academic misconduct, but no one can actually be naive enough to believe this cover story.)

Why shouldn't John Yoo be fired for his equally loathsome (and far more influential) defense of the Divine Right of Presidents and his encomiums to torture?

lacks the arsis in the third and sixth feet.

a fancy way of saying that 6 people kick you in the arsis but #3 and #6 miss their target.

The mind of Wingnutus Limbaughtomi: nothing bad is the fault of The Decider because we voted for him, ergo, blame the Iraq fiasco on Madeline Albright and her boss, Bill Clinton.

How is it that innocent people can die by the hundreds and thousands thanks to policy decisions made by Americans and nobody here is held accountable.

One of the consequences we are paying for a representative for of government is, by allowing our servants in Washington more and more power, we have inadvertantly given them the ability to setup a separation... wall... between them and the common folk.

This last little ethics bill passed by Congress is a good example. Any punishment involved with ethics violations will be burdoned by lobbiests, not congressmen. This was not a function of party. Both Reps and Dems agreed to this.

Exactly the same thing is occurring when one (or many) in charge decides it is to our benefit to attack another country, or assassinate a leader. they are pretty much exempt from consequences of thieir actions.

In essence, what has happened over a length of time is that we have come to a point in our history that the ONE major difference between our "democracy" and a dictatorship is that a dictator can have consequences (hanging), whereas in our "democracy", the only repercussion is that the important people committing the attrocities might be voted out and become less important.

The end result of this, of course, is an end to democracy and freedom and the full circle back to dictatorship. We are quickly seeing this occur. Although the rhetoric from above continues to be fear of external forces (terrorists), their actions tell an exact opposite story.

We have no border walls. Whether or not you believe we should have border walls, the powers to be have not erected them. If there was any concern for their (or our) lives at all, the 1st thing which would have occurred after 9/11 would have been border control. Instead, crowd control (a means of protecting them from us) has been enhanced. If you take a good look at the spying, secrecy, hiring of hundreds of thousands of more folks with weapons and arrest powers... notice the guards at Social Security office, mental health offices, other government buildings? These are all means of separating and protecting government employees and offricials from the disgruntled crowds, not terrorists.

I keep hearing about being in the Mideast because of oil..

This is nonsense. We are in the mideast to to support those who desire power, to stay in power. Today it's oil and defense contractors (guess how many congessmen and senators have defense contractors working in their districts?. Tomorrow, it will be something else. If it were oil, how's this for a scenario. We take $200 billion from our defense budget. This would cut our budget in half so we would only be spending about 1/4 of the world's defense budgetinstead of 1/2.

This much money would allow ALL of our homes in the United States to be completely self sufficient in 8 years. We could be putting electricity back into the grid to supply industry, and we could most likely be producing our own hydrogen at home for our automobiles. Our savings could be spent growing our economy.... End of oil problem.

This will never happen because oil is not our problem... The people we have given power to will keep their power at all costs. The two parties yell and scream at each other at times, but there is no way the Dems or Reps will allow anyone else but them in charge... and "We the "People" will continue to put them back into power... in the false belief that "they" will save us from "those bad guys". IMHO

There's also the little problem that all the things I think of right away -specifics edited -- are all quite felonious.

I've been trying to stimulate y'all to the hard work of building a long-term civil movement of resistance, yet getting far few takers than total mis-understanders on the blog comment wires.

So it's not fear of the right-wing sociopaths in themselves, it's more the fear of the severe legal consequences, the disruption to the family and stability I have invested in the reality of my private life, and the fact that my daily habits are so pacificist and oriented towards fulfilling my obligations to my three jobs, at age 56, that to actually take steps in the directions of my war-like thoughts would completely overturn most of my carefully-constructed infrastructure of mental stability.

So although I know most everything necessary to be the leader of the underground army, in reality it cannot happen.

Yet I imagine a young person with little to lose ... Is America is so stable, that we are not five to seven years from some severe social strife?? (And I would definitely predict at least localized conflict if civilized systems fail to keep delivering food to the cities, anytime in the next generation or so.) Are we really that much more stable than say, Yugoslavia in 1985 or Northern Ireland in 1965?

Every time a neocon gets athletes' foot he blames Bill Clinton.

Much too simplistic of an analysis, that doesn't even begin to pierce the complexities, but is a vehicle enabling agitprop fantasies.

• The "US Ruling Class", which you left undefined in haze, did not get their asses kicked, unless they were also members of the subset, terminally patriotic. The asses getting kicked were from America's middle and lower classes, the conscripts, the enlistees: those who believed in answering their country's call, while the 'ruling class' sat back on their deferments for weak knees, jaundiced stomachs, alabaster-hued livers, undeveloped vertebrae, and other afflictions broadly categorised as being in the class of genitalia deficit disorders (GDD), hiding within academia behind walls and in towers constructed from material that reeked of elephants' death.
• You polarise the blood-letting in a manner that places the whole burden upon 'liberals', even though it is now a given that the sanguinary Nixonian darkevil extended the Vietnam War out at least an extra two years, as an insurance policy for the success of the '72 CREEP.
• The Vietnamese People did not win when Saigon fell. Peasantry and former adversaries fared very poorly in the hive mind of Hanoi's Communism. Being Borg is vastly preferable to that fate.
• Many policy wonks who were then 'liberal', started swinging from the other-side of the plate, when Carter started musing that people who could trace their ancestry back thousands of continuous years in the area surrounding East Jerusalem, deserved to call that dirt theirs.
  
• Back then, Wolfowitz was a Scoop Jackson aide, as was Perle, Ledeen and Feith. Negroponte was a NSA attendee to the secret Kissinger Zhou en Lai meet, when Henry laid out the 'Decent Interval' disengagement plan, on a "particularly loquacious day" for Dr. K., when he sealed S.Vietnam's fate by betrayal, because of "more important business".

Probably not -- although I have to say that our military, if nothing else, has lots of great musicians. I met a colleague in his second career as a programmer, after he retired as arranger for the Army band.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

As I read thru these posts again I noticed in your closing paragraph that you are making a classic western mistake that has played no small part in the ongoing tension between the middle east and the west. You make reference to European examples of police states. This desire in the west to use our history and our perspectives to measure those in the middle east is flawed. The are very different people with their own unique history & perspective. Western comparisons will therefore often prove to be very wrong & in fact can increase the tension by rightfully being seen as arrogant & ignorant.

Back in the good old days we might be able to count on a straight-talking Marine to set straight a louse like this, but instead at Wolfy's retirement two years after the Vanity Fair interview we had General Peter Pace, soon to become the first Marine Chairman of the JCS.

The Pentagon transcript reads: "Pace called Wolfowitz a 'man of great intellect.' He said the deputy works hard and encourages collegiality. 'You are, in fact, a facilitator and a person who values the judgment of others. And for that, we thank you,' Pace said. The general said the deputy is also a man of great courage. 'Those of us who wear the uniform understand courage on the battlefield, but there's another very distinct form of courage, and that is intellectual courage,' Pace said."

It's not easy to use the word "courage" three times in one sentence after already using it once, but Pace had about run out of superlatives for the architect of Operation Iraqi Fiasco. Now it's time for Perfect Pete to say good-by. I'm sure he will be equally praised and get a nice medal.

One always tries to raise the tone.  I think this time, from C to C#, was about it.  I like the less technical... see Reference.com

Afterward, Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued that the elegiac is the form "most natural to the reflective mind," and it may be upon any subject, so long as it reflects on the poet himself. Coleridge was quite aware of the fact that his definition conflated the elegiac with the lyric, but he was emphasizing the recollected and reflective nature of the lyric he favored and referring to the sort of elegy that had been popularized by Gray. Similarly, William Wordsworth had said that poetry should come from "emotions recollected in tranquility"  (my italics).

Somehow I thought that of course all the posters here possessed reflective minds, and that Piaf's singing represents "emotions recollected in tranquility".  MJ's post represented his version of tranquil...about three shades below 5.1 on the Richter Scale.  <grinmode></grinmode>

(can I have the fine reduced to $6.99 with time off for good behavior?)

aMike

I am resisting with all my might punning on knowing one's arsis from one's feet.  (I guess I failed, huh?)

This string reflects more of my recent sentiments than any I've seen in recent times. I've been left a bit blue by watching a discussion among Bill Maher, PJ O'Rourke and Ben Affleck on the relevance of the netroots and the potential to bring about change, as well as a lot of the rightwing dreck that is out there, and the most cogent, poignant whine going in my head comes from something a friend sent me the link to. Google or search for George Carlin education on YouTube if anyone wonders what kind of statement can actually make it into the public awareness. But there is still the question about what one can do to take it down short of the kind of post-apocalyptic burrowing into a non-existent underground that would take one completely off the economic page all of us are forced to sign for our daily keep. It would be easier if I were alone, but others depend on cog continuing to have the right number of teeth on it, with the right amount of space between, and turning at the same rpm as all the rest.

JohnW1141; by omission I conclude that you believe the effort of the Soviets and the other allies such as the U.S. in WW2 was worth it; if so then I conclude that at least we have a base from where we can potentially build a unity in a struggle by progressives and even conservatives against the sort of base reaction that was on display, as much on 9/11 as it was the other day in the mass terror bombings in Iraq’s north.

Valdron suspects the Kurdish peoples even though it is clear that the whole series of bombs were a coordinated attack and that Kurds were a major target. I suspect Al Qaeda (and it is not the case that an Al Qaeda cell always claims credit when it is them).

Al Qaeda is not a top to bottom fully functioning command and control organization. Nevertheless I have to concede that it may be just another variant of Sunni supremacist grouping that may even pass themselves off as nationalist that may be responsible. It matters not one fig. Those that did this are anti-proletarian and are the enemy of all progressives, they are the enemy of all modernity.

Yet that is not what the note that started this thread is all about! It is about holding the revolutionaries to account for liberating the Iraqi masses!

The U.S. is not always the enemy of the people of the world. Even Karl Marx once remarked during the civil war that the workers of the world were behind the stars and stripes. Was the civil war worth it?

We may have a wish that it were not required, but the overthrow of the slave system was the result and it has produced 150 years later, and after much more struggle and the inevitable suffering, a society where a black woman Condi Rice is described as the most powerful woman ever, and who could realistically be the next President. That is worthy social achievement.

If we support the overthrow of oppressors then we can agree that there are quite a few oppressive regimes that the modern era is still dealing with. The Taliban, Baath, Mugabe the situation in Sudan and Somalia and on and on.

Fortunately most countries will manage to overthrow their own ruling tyrants (like the Philipines did with the U.S. backed Marcos; or Indonesia from the U.S. backed Suharto; or Iran from the U.S. backed Shah; or Chile from the U.S. backed Pinochet etc) but sometimes it will be better for outside forces to begin the process. Outside forces can only ever begin the process because ultimately it remains up to the masses that live there to solidify the progress.

The U.S. post WW2 has mostly been the problem. Even when opposing the revisionist Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the U.S. did so from the stupid position of backing Al Qaeda etc!

However this U.S. ruling elite has grasped the historical lesson and changed course.

Yet people on this thread think themselves somehow progressive, but without a plan to fight the reactionary bombers and trying with all their efforts to start a region wide sectarian war. There is not a progressive bone in this failure to render assistance from such racist scum.

The Iraqi masses deserve support, as do the Palestinian people as Rice brings about a Palestinian state. All the tyrannies of the ME need to be undermined and the revolution sought by the peoples of the entire region supported.

But this thread just whines how terrible it is to call it a swamp with mosquitoes. (ie to use Noam Chomsky's term) Reflect on the Chinese revolution to grasp the time scale that we may be dealing with. You can bet your bottom dollar that it won't take as long to produce Iraq's equivalent of Condoleezza Rice.

Consider the forty years since the Zionists launched their now obviously failed war for greater Israel.

What ever you do stop whining and build unity with right-wingers against fascists. Look to the broad united front of WW2 for inspiration.

The enemy terrorize for a very good reason and no progressive ought play into their hands by undermining in any way the fight against such racist scum.

Whatever the history of how this war was started, it is, since the election process, irrelevant. The war is now clearly about defeating the most reactionary elements on earth.

As with the enemy of WW2 their viciousness will not save them and the masses will eventually prevail.
Patrick

Remember way back in 1999 when "W" was the Uniter. This Administration has divided us on every issue put before us. As this great post points out, the War is the worst issue of all. It is time for the people of this country to join together and simply put an end to it. Some still support the President and his rhetoric for War. Others believe that the War was wrong from the get go. But, now, all of us need to look at the results of the War as it is today. Somewhere close or more to a million people dead. A country is reduced to desert rubble. Life will not be the same for this country for at least a generation. How many more must die for an argument? Your idealogy, your politics, your personal beliefs are insignificant in the face of the reality of all the death, human damage and destruction. Stopping it all now is only sane solution. A different path must be taken.

Oh dear God in heaven. You have the gall to talk about others having a problem with their way of thinking after typing stuff like this.Tom

PseudoCyAnts,

I am glad you mentioned the Assyrians, Turkmen. You can also add Chaldeans and Armenians. Most Americans know little about the ethnic composition of Iraq. There are over a million Christians in Iraq. Many of them supported us. Many of them are refugees in Syria, Jordan, Turkey. We owe these people something. We should at least give them visas for destroying their lives.

I have very little understanding of these minorities, and went looking for links a week or two ago, because it relates to a different issue I've been tracking and trying to understand: the Kurds and Turkey. I intentionally listed only non American based sites that had English translations in an effort to proffer immediate relevant information. I did not come across any Chaldean sites that fit this criteria, nor did I find any information that mentioned Armenians in Iraq.

Also, I did not post this for any religious reason, I claim no faith. Furthermore, I directly challenge the rectitude of anyone's Christian faith if they only care about this because Iraqi Christians are caught up in the middle of it. This is about atrocity and genocide; about the lies being fed to an acquiescent American people; about the destruction of an immeasurable amount of history from the very dawn of western civilisation that we may at this very moment be witnessing; about the responsibilities and blood debt that is now an inherent part of contemporary American citizenry. Each and everyone of us ARE RESPONSIBLE for the deeds of our unchained leviathan, because if we are not a government by the people, then America has ceased to be. NO ONE can claim absolution simply because they dissented. The dissent was anemic and wanting. ALL are blameworthy.

"They will wonder why the same people who, as young men and women, spoke out against war, were too complacent to act on their beliefs as they got older"Sorry, plenty of us anti-Vietnam war protestors have been out busting our butts trying to stop this insanity since before it started. So qualify what you are saying. Stop using "we". It is accurate to say not enough people protested but there are plenty of us worldwide who have tried. Look at the numbers from the worldwide 2/15/2003 protest. It was the largest coordinated protest ever.Tom

Makes one wonder. . . Is Ahnold, a.k.a Conan the Republican, eligible for President of the European Commission?  Brussels might devour that hunk of manly man. 

aMike

I am sure there are persons within the DoD, who would be pleased to see Wolfowitz get what he should have coming. This is not the reason that this document still remains on their servers though.

Government produced public web product is generally considered to fall immediately into the public domain. This was a public post by a high-ranking pentagon official political appointee. If someone started to play memory hole with these posts, it would be noted, and the response would be strident. There would be no place to hide, as some of the most vocal opposition would be from within government bureaucracy itself, NARA and The Library of Congress.

Others would notice and get into the act. Most obvious of these would be The Internet Archive, The Federation of American Scientist's Secrecy news blog, authored by Steven Aftengood, and The EFF. Then Congress would be likely to get into the game for political reasons.

An attempt to hide data like this by deleting it would be counter-productive in that it would draw more attention to the document deleted than just leaving it with the rest of the documents. Safety in numbers.

The Vietnamese People did not win when Saigon fell. Peasantry and former adversaries fared very poorly in the hive mind of Hanoi's Communism. Being Borg is vastly preferable to that fate.

This may also be something of an oversimplification.  It assumes that Vietnamese Society (and, for that matter, our own) are static, embedded in amber sorts of things.  If practitioners of history like myself know anything, it is that no depiction of any group remains viable for very long.   We compound this by having shorter and shorter historical attention spans.

A Borg is a Borg is a Borg, I guess.  But the same isn't true about the Vietnamese people any more than it is true about us.  A case in point:  Last semester I had two undergraduate Vietnamese students in my class.  A generation and a half ago, persons of my generation and their parents/grandparents were engaged in bitter combat.  I would never have predicted I'd be teaching young Vietnamese men in 2006 when I began my career in 1972.  Prowl around Vietabroader, and you'll see what I mean.  I should add that students from my institution are studying there, as well. 

The current number of young Vietnamese men and women studying here is in excess of 4,500, and it is growing by double digits.

(I don't know how many Borgs are studying here...could be more, could be less)  <grin></grin>

aMike

I learned to have affection for Vietnamese in my tour as a conscript chopper doc, and whenever I'm up around San Jose, I usually visit a business or two which are owned and predominantly frequented by Vietnamese/Americans. On the other hand, the North was much different from the South. It is impossible for me to accurately express the alien-like feelings I'd got when realising just how cheaply they valued an individual's life in the scheme of things. More often than not, American GIs preferred to go waist deep into a fetid rice paddy than to step on a human carcass, even one that while living, had been an enemy. South Vietnamese felt much the same way towards there own or towards Allies, but not towards North Vietnamese. The NVA, and the Viet Cong, even more so, were willing to waste human life at levels unspeakably foul for simple tactical advantages.

I also believe that much of this attitude is/was related to a fundamentalist variant of Maoist communism that reached down to its blackened core to spawn the Khmer Rouge. There is nothing of value to be had from the boot of a totalitarian, be it left or right sided. People do not believe me when I tell them, but I am walkabout in the Dreamtime, and I drink from the very fount that nourishes its force, believing that All Humans are born equally in possession of liberty at birth, endowed by that which they perceive as the Creative with natural rights, and that three of these rights are life, liberty and a freedom to pursue their own happiness; and that whenever a State's actions become antithetical to these ends, it is the right, as well as the duty of the people to muzzle their leviathan, using whatever force is necessary to achieve this end. Now couple that with "against all enemies foreign or domestic". To say that I am presently prone to slip into a melancholic state of mind, would be to greatly understate the truth.

The Government sites are not set-up in a manner that allows you to easily search them all in one swoop. Clusty has a specialised government search, which I haven't really taken out for performance testing though. You may find it to be usable.

There are methods which you can directly access content stored by the Internet Archive. if you use Firefox as your default browser, it is very easy. if you use IE7, then you need to click through warnings to implement it, but it still works. I'll try to get something posted within namespace I exert personal control over soon that can show you how toimplement the function in your browser, but no promises. I have an open email channel accessible through my member profile stored here at TPM Cafe. If you desire the data soonest, it's probably the best method to achieve it.

If you already are familiar with the concept called 'bookmarklets' for Firefox, and 'favelets' for IE, then it is a breeze. Let me know, because if you are aware of it, I may be able to just just it in a post. I use it often. It is an excellent research tool that cannot be properly compared to Thomas, which I also use often, as well as the GPO Access site, which has search methods that are arcane.

As for accessing Aftergood's Secrecy blog, I use the provided Atom news feed, and my present preferred Newsreader Program to access it. Just being kept up to date on the newest CRS Reports that FAS is serving makes it a worthwhile read.

I couldn't agree more with you, but when I say "we" I mean everyone and certainly not myself or we who have protested the war. I have attended every protest that has been held where I live (and some I have traveled to get to) including those leading up to the illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq, but simply because some of us took part in the largest one-time protest ever doesn't mean a whole lot. I have been there on cold days and hot days, dry and wet days when many others have chosen to stay home. The point of protest is that it must be sustained over time. One of the reasons (not the only reason) that the protests against the war have been so effectively marginalized despite the very large numbers that have been involved in a couple of them is because they were not sustained. If large protests continued, that would be very different than what we have seen occur since just prior to the invasion.

While millions of us have done something to publicly protest the war, there are many millions more who have done nothing. If we (collectively) were willing to do what is necessary to put real pressure on the politicians to end the war we would be doing a great deal more protesting on a far more frequent schedule.

Many, particularly blogophiles like to say protests don't mean anything or don't work, but they are wrong IMHO. History shows quite clearly that public protests are very, very effective and not just in the 1960's. I believe that is just a convenient out for those who would rather note their opposition on a blog or sign an e-mail circulated petition.

When protests are widespread and sustained they put pressure on elected and appointed officials in a very unique and effective way. A way, I might add, that all the blogging and letter writing and e-mail sending in the world cannot do. But that's just my opinion.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we need to have more world wide coordinated protests, but especially in the US. Frankly, I am surprised at how willing so many of us are to simply accept the situation while registering our disapproval but are unwilling to really go beyond that point.